Scaling up, scaling down, scaling laterally. Laterally. What does that mean? Listen to this episode and find out. Hi, it's Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast. I am so happy to have my friend David Osborne on today to talk about something a little different with scaling. David, how you doing?
Hey, I am great. How are you doing, Al?
I am doing wonderful. And you and I were talking the other day. You actually reached out to me about, you know, helping with your business. He had some questions and it got me thinking. I havent had anybody on the podcast recently to talk about scaling because ive talked about scaling up a business. Right. So youre entertainment company and those people listening, not everybodys entertainment, but, you know, going from, in a dj world, from single op to multi op, if youre a photographer, its just you. To a bunch of people, you have one venue to have a bunch of venues, whatever it is, right? Just different kinds of scaling.
Ive also had people on talking about scaling down where they went from having a whole bunch of people to having fewer people, or maybe just them. But I havent had anybody on to do. What we were talking about were your business, which is you saw a hole in the market at a price point much lower than another part of the market, and you actually have two companies running in parallel for that. And I thought, this is interesting. I was interesting to me, but I think this is interesting here as well. Give us a little bit of how did you start in entertainment yourself? You didn't start out by doing this. Right? So how did you start?
Yeah, so I started in entertainment. Well, if you talk to my mom, I started in entertainment from the day I was born. Uh, and now I have a five year old who is following in my footsteps very nicely with his gold blazer that he wears to school. Um, but professionally, uh, I graduated the University of Georgia in 2004. And then four years later, a lot of my friends were getting married. You know, I said that 25, 26 year old period and going to a lot of weddings, I was noticing that the quality of the entertainment was rather terrible. And being the entertainer that I was, the tech nerd that I was, and the trained musician that I was, I kind of was like, you know what? I think I could probably do this. I live on stage.
I am on stage daily. So I was like, I'm going to buy some gear. And some friends invited me to do their wedding. And it was love at first gig, man, I loved it. I fell in love with it. And then from zero eight to 17, I did both. I taught elementary school music, and I was a dj at the same time. And then in 17, I went full time.
Nice. So you were teaching violin to those third and fourth graders?
No, I was teaching general music for k to five.
Okay. Cause I have the utmost respect for the people that teach violin to little kids. And, you know, I'm a musician as well. My kid. My sons are also musicians, but we'd go to concerts and, you know, violin at that age is like a whole bunch of cats in the room. They're getting strangled. You know, it is. It's.
It's adorable. It's adorable, but it's a little bunch. Anyway, so that. So that's you. That's.
That's David doing. David, right, just you. When did you bring somebody else on?
In 2017. So the year that. Last semester that I was teaching, I saw the writing on the wall. My wife also was teaching, and she decided that she was going to stop teaching. And we're like, well, guess what, folks, you know, I can't just sustain my family on just my income here. So we started a photobeach division, and then my friend Chris from music school, he stopped teaching as well. And I was like, okay, this is perfect. Storm, why don't you come work for me? And I affectionately say he was the easiest person to train in the world, which is a curse, because when I went to the second and third, it didn't work out so good.
Yeah. You had a known commodity there. Someone also, music school also, you know, the personality and all, and that. Listen, people is always going to be the problem of any business. Right? When I was at the knot and I had 50, 60 sales reps, I said, the one thing I'll never be able to control is people. People get married, people get divorced, people get. Have kids, people move away, people's partners. You know, things happen.
People get sick. You know, stuff happens. You can't control that. But, you know, you do the best you can by finding the people that are the best fit. So you've obviously gone beyond Chris, but at this point now, were you and Chris, were you charging the same for both of you?
Definitely not.
Okay. All right. And. But now, what about today? Does Chris has been doing this for a long time with you? Do you charge the same for Chris as for you?
Nope.
Okay, right, because you're still the owner of the company, correct? Yeah. Right. Okay. But you have other people, and do you have multiple price points with those people?
We have multiple price points across the different brands.
Okay, so let's talk about the different brands. So at what point did you say, okay, we're at this price point. Now, was that a higher price point, would you say?
Yeah, we were, we were on the, so it was 2019. So it was two years after I'd gone full time. So we were already on the high end. And it was pretty much just me and Chris. Higher than the average.
Okay, good. That's fine. I like being higher than the average. I think that's a great place to be. I actually always say the further my prices got from other people, I think the more in demand I became, because then people start questioning, you're not just a little bit more, you're a lot more. What do I get for a lot more that I don't get for that? I think when your price is too close to other people, even if you're a little bit more now, it's just like you're just the more expensive option, but they look the same. All right. But you saw, let's talk about this lateral expansion.
You saw a big demand at the lower end. Was that because people were reaching out to you and couldn't afford you?
Correct.
Okay. Yeah. So, but you could just say no.
I could just say no. However, the budget, I call it a budget brand. But our second company solved a bigger problem than just the price point, which is why weve kept it around for so long and why we still always put a lot of energy into it. It solved the problem of training and recruiting. And the secondary solution was that it solved the problem of the fact that my local town needs a lower priced solution thats still quality, the signature brand, the higher price brand. Most of our clients, we live in a college town, Athens, Georgia. University of Georgia is here. Most of our higher end clients went to the university, went off somewhere else, Atlanta, La, New York, Chicago, whatever.
They go off, make some big bucks. They come back to the alma mater to get married. Theyve got money to spend. But the local folks, its not a very, its surrounded by farmlands and chicken farms.
Right. Very common in college towns. Right. You have this transient population there as well. Is that REM country?
It is.
There you go. Okay. Again, you see this? Because I know I have clients that'll see that and they'll say that's just not my market and that's it. But you saw that other part, which is I need to train people and I need to get them out there doing actual events, because it's one thing to train someone in a classroom. It's another thing to actually have them there and doing actual events, but you're not charging what you do for the, we'll call it the premium brand because they're not yet delivering that. But you also, we were talking the other day, you also said they also get five star reviews. They do, right. Which is great, but it's not the same five star as the higher brand.
Right. And that's what I was telling you about a friend of mine who's got a wedding band who complained that this mass market dj company got their award on the knot and they got his award and he said, how can mine be worth anything if they got it? I said, because those people got what they wanted and more and they gave them five stars. And your people get what they wanted for five times the price. Right. And they give you five stars as well. So it's people's expectations. And when you meet or exceed them, then they give you the great review there. So you also had some confusion among the people that refer you.
So what's going on with that?
So I think when I talk to other DJ company owners or aspiring owners that want to have multiple brands, one of the things that comes up all the time is how do vendors separate you? Or like, you know, people will say, hey, I want to start a second company, but I don't want anyone to know that I'm doing it. I don't want to get caught up in the shuffle. And I was, I originally thought that I wanted to do that as well in 2019 until I realized that it was going to be a really long road and really difficult to keep me out of it. And so I just went the other direction and I put myself out there. There's a, there's still a video on my facebook of two of me where one of me is wearing one company shirt and then there's another of me wearing the other company shirt. And we have a conversation about the brands and what they do and how they work. And so then everyone got associated with me. Both brands are some planners and some venues are like, oh, you work with David? And I'm like, well, yes, but they're different companies, completely different brands, completely different staff, equipment, systems, processes, everything.
Totally different except for me. And that's been the biggest source of the confusion just over the years is that people, I think people that are more relational based humans, they see the connection between the person. They go, oh, you work with David, so you must. They're just, they just see this web. They don't see. They don't see the division, right?
And again, that's the blinders that we all have on is they see that now, the good news is doing it the way you did it, because people know you. They know that you're putting out a quality product. Whatever the price point, they're putting out a quality product. So that's why doing that, that's why saying it would have been a long road. The other way is nobody knows this company, nobody knows this brand, nobody knows these people. It would be like you, David, moving to Oklahoma tomorrow. You're just starting from scratch, and it's a harder road over there. My first thought when you were telling me that was Lexus and Toyota.
Everybody knows that Toyota owns Lexus, but people don't go to Lexicon and go, oh, it's just a fancy Toyota. If that's what you think, you're probably not going to buy it. And that's okay because you can go buy a Toyota. It's all right.
What's fun to watch is on the administrative side. When we see leads come in. If someone inquires with both brands, usually they go with the cheaper one. Usually. Because that means they've contacted both companies almost arbitrarily. You can tell that they didn't spend any time looking around the website, because if they did did, they would have picked one.
Right?
And if we get both, they just carte blanche. Just click, click, contact, contact. And then we go, okay. It's very rare for them to pick the signature brand after reaching out to both, because they're just not as discerning.
And the reputation of both is really good. The reviews are really good. So people have to perceive a difference. And if they don't perceive any difference, we never pay more. Doesn't matter what it is that we're buying. We don't go to a, you know, pricier restaurant and then go back again if we're thinking, well, that was about as good as Fridays, you know, so I might as well, you know, Chili's, that was like that, right? We only go back because the experience, the service, whatever was better. And that's with anything that we do. Why does anybody buy a Lexus? Right? Partly because of status, partly because, you know, they want to be seen in that.
My wife told me years ago. Finally she admitted, I like driving a BMW. It didn't have to be new. But she likes driving a BMW. Okay, well, she drives a BMW and she's happy. And you know what they say, if mommy ain't happy. Right? Or the actually updated version is happy spouse, happy house.
Oh, I like that.
Yes, that's a more. That's a 2024 version. There you go. Happy spouse, happy house, and. But again, could she drive another car? Yeah, she has. She's had many, many, many different kinds of cars over the years. She likes that. There you go.
That's an intangible. It's a total intangible. Right. I drive an Audi. She could drive an Audi, and sure, she'd be happy with it, but nope, she likes getting in that BMW. Great. Great. It's wonderful.
It's got 80,000 miles on it, and it's paid off. I'm very happy for. There you go.
There's a lot to celebrate there.
There is a lot that was. I'd say my favorite feature of both of our cars is that they're fully paid off. That is my favorite feature. Working on that for the house, but that's with the cars. So what you and I talked about the other day on the consultation was this idea of, how do you get these different venues to not recommend both brands? Because you don't want more leads like that. You don't want more leads. You want the higher end ones referring the premium brand. You want the other ones referring the more budget friendly brand.
So what have you decided on that?
Well, what we've decided is to continue to do what we started doing, which is to hedge them, is to say, these venues are going to. We're going to put time and energy into these venues supporting this brand and these other venues. We're going to support this other brand. And a few years ago, the way that we started doing that was, I did a research study, just like you would do a competitor analysis, and I went and I researched every venue within 2 hours of our town. And a lot of the venues will have their pricing on their sites or the ranges, but a lot didn't. So we'd have to inquire. And what we determined for our market is that if they charged less than $5,000 for their services for a venue, we just put them on this list. This was for the Athens DJ service, our budget brand.
If they charge more than $5,000 or they had more complicated scenarios, we'd put them on the signature level brand. And then we just started pounding the pavement, and we'd go, hey, this is the during COVID I went to every venue that was on the lower end list, and I would bring a box of donuts, and I'd wear the budget brand shirt, and I'd say, hey, I'm David. And that's how that's really how we got traction on that, on that company going to all these barn venues in 2020 and 2021.
Yeah. And then you change your shirt and go to the other ones, correct?
Yeah. And what was interesting is that when I was managing both brands myself and I was doing all the management and all the sales and all the operations, it was relatively easy to navigate all of this because I was living in my own owner head. But when we started to scale the administrative side and I started bringing on people to do different administrative tasks, one of my DJ's, who's wonderful, started doing sales for the, for Athens DJ service, the budget brand, and hes very good at it. He actually was in your class in Mex this year, and the energy that he put behind sales was so good that I started noticing that they were taking business from our signature brand. And I was like, oh, no. If you look at all the data from 2023, it was really starting to just take over and were like, whoa, average dollar sales going down. We gotta move this over here. And so we created an entire strategy in quarter four to get everything back on track.
And we've had to do all the same things, go back to those same venues that we, that support our signature brand and say, no more budget brand, like hedge that out, have a dedicated marketing campaign with social media and all the different relationship building techniques to get those back on track. And it's working.
It's funny when you have a salesperson that's too good, right? Yeah.
And I was like, wait a minute. And now the fit that we found is that that salesperson does sales for both, both brands. And they can see the totality of the relationship between the two brands and the market now. And that has made the biggest difference for how we, how we can have that lateral expansion, because we're not, our sales team's not competing against each other. They're moving leads where they need to go.
Right? And that's the key is there are times when you want to compete against yourself you actually don't like, I have companies that own multiple venues, and we'd rather be competing with ourselves because we're going to win. One way or another, we're going to win. But those venues might be similar price points, just different neighborhoods, availability, stuff like that. But here it's a different price point. That's why I said, sometimes expanding that difference between the two price points at least makes it. Oh, I get it now. But we also talked about, you have to be able to explain what is the difference? It can't just be that we charge twice as much because thats never a good answer. Theres got to be a perceived value difference.
And I say perceived because it doesnt have to be tangible. The perceived value differences, my wife driving a BMW against, say that versus lets say an Audi, same size suv, same, whatever, same price point. But why would somebody pay more for a BMW than Hyundai?
Its all priorities.
Yeah, right. Because we know that if you look on paper, they look the same. Right. They have four wheels and a steering wheel and 28 airbags and Bluetooth and. Yeah, right. You look at it, they have everything the same. Why is the difference, and a lot of that difference is intangible. It's, I want to be associated with that brand and that's again, your premium brand is associated with the higher end venues.
The other one is associated with people that are looking to spend less on their wedding. And there it is. So, so your salesperson is wearing these two hats, right?
Yeah.
Has to take. Which lead is that? Who am I talking to? That's also an important lesson because I don't care if you're at just one company, you have to hit the reset button before every call, before every email. It's not in that this is, I got to change brands here. Right. But you have to put that reset button and say, this conversation has nothing to do with the last one. They have to say, it has nothing to do with the last one because it's not about what that person is saying, it's about what they're hearing.
It's totally about that. And it's totally about understanding their expectations and understanding their priorities. It's like you were saying, the way that we differentiate in an elevator pitcher in a quick conversation, if you said, david, tell me the difference between your two brands. It's easy. It didn't used to be easy, but I can articulate it. There are people that say, I just need a DJ. I just ju sd just need a DJ. They'll say that about other vendors, too.
I just need a caterer. It doesn't really matter. But when people say, just need a DJ, ding, ding, ding, ding, door number one, right? If someone says, listen, I've been to ten weddings, I've been to 20 weddings, I've been a bridesmaid in seven of them, and I've seen good and I've seen bad, and I need my wedding to be spectacular. I need to impress people and I want to feel like a rock star. Door number two.
There you go. How? Priorities. Priorities. And that's anything we spend on in life. I remember I was speaking at a wedding expo to couples was interesting because I don't usually get to do that. And I said how did you set your budget? And I was waiting for somebody eventually who said, we saw a survey that said the average cost of a wedding is this. And I said right. And if you would like to have a nice average wedding, thats what it costs.
Not a bad wedding, not an exceptional wedding, but you want to have a nice wedding, thats what it costs on average. I said whats the most important thing to you? And it was a bride. And she said the food. I said well, youre going to spend above average for your food because the food is the most important thing. Now you might not spend above average for other things, but youre going to spend above average for your food. So if it says the average cost of catering is this, expect to spend more if thats the most important thing. Funny thing was the next couple, I said what's the most important thing to you? And they said the photo booth. I said really good.
I said, then find the coolest photo booth experience that you can get because that's important to you. And who knows, they might have chicken fingers for the meal. Right. But that's the most important thing. And that's by listening is what we hear that, how important is this? But it's also by asking questions. And your person that was in my workshop, we talked about asking better questions. What have you seen at other weddings and events that you definitely want? What have you seen you don't want at yours? Right. What kind of experiences have you thought about something fun for your guests when they're not dancing or eating? Right.
It's just asking a question which gives me permission to tell you what we can do for you instead of what most people do. And you know, this is just tell you what they can do for you.
Yeah.
Right. And you might not care.
And we like to, we put this information in our email campaigns and it's on our website and it's the same advice I give my friends. And the reason why it ended up on our website is because I was telling all of my friends and my family this, oh, John's getting married. Oh John. Listen, listen. I'm in the industry. Let me tell you, this is the way to have the best wedding possible. So you got to sit down, make a list of everything that you're going to have at your wedding, every single thing, the dress, the catering, everything. And then your fiance do the same thing but separately, like write them all down, number and prioritize them.
And then compare your lists and the things that are on one, two, three. The little overlap where you have the top priorities. Boom. Go big on those. And if it's number twelve or 13, forget about it, you know? Right, right. Get to it. If you can get to it. If not, it'll be fine, depending on what's important to you.
All right. And if you're the first of your friends or relatives getting married, you don't have that history there. If you're the 12th, it's like, okay, I've seen some stuff. I've seen what this is over here. I have an article on my website about video, which we don't have for our wedding, and it's let's watch our first dance. Oh, that's right. We can't. That's the name of the article.
And it's not that we said no to video. My sister got married the year before, didn't have it. Our best friends got married the year before. It didn't have it. Right. Nobody had it. It wasn't even on the radar. It wasn't even on the list.
Yes or no? And what? We found movies of my parents wedding in 1954. Professional movies. 1954. Right. I can watch no sound that I gave my parents for their 40th anniversary, a compilation of their wedding. And the reels when my sister and I were born. Eight millimeter reels. My kids VHS has put it all together into this 40 year timeline.
I'll never have that because we don't have the beginning of that. And how would you know it's important if it wasn't even on the radar? It wasn't even a question there. So it's just, if you're getting a chance to talk to someone, this is the most important part. They're already interested in something like what you do, right? If they want your results, they have to pay your price. And if they want the sound insight, you know, results, they have to pay the sound insight price. If they need just the DJ, who, by the way, is going to make nice announcements, is going to play really good music, and he's going to get five star reviews, then it's the athens DJ, 100%.
And that's exactly how we, that's how we do everything on the administrative side. That's how we, we handle everything with our equipment systems, that's how we handle everything with our, our training processes and all of our checkpoints and certifications is like, it all matches everything on the front and the back. Match front of house, back of house. All of the things that you see all the things that only we see. There's like matching systems and processes for support for both. For both things.
So that idea of the elevator pitch, I actually had a conversation with somebody the other day that came up with this new idea, and she wanted to run it by me. And I challenged her on the elevator pitch. I said, okay, you got 7 seconds to tell me what this is. And very few people can do that because 7 seconds goes by fast. If I say you have 30 seconds, it seems like an eternity. But 7 seconds is fast. But 7 seconds is the tell me enough for me to want to hear more. And I actually went to a session at a speaker conference where I don't know if you remember this, maybe you're not old enough, but mad libs, do you know what mad libs is?
Absolutely.
Okay. Yeah. She didn't, I felt old. She didn't know what mad Libs was. But for those of you who don't know what mad libs lives, it's, you have a story that has blank lines in it, and then you fill in the words in the blank lines, and it makes the story, finishes the story, and it could go any way at all because you can say that a penguin was on Wall street, you know, whatever, you could just fill it. And I. It is. But I said, so this is what I was taught there, which is I help blank do blank.
So that. Blank. Right? And that's it. And those of you listening, challenge yourself on that. If somebody's online at the grocery store behind you and says, oh, you're that. You're that film, you're the DJ, you're the photographer, you're the whatever. Right. What do you do? Can you say, I help couples have amazing times at their events so that they and their guests say it was the best time they ever had? Whatever.
Something like that. And you want them, my friend calls it the Scooby Doo. You want them to go, ooh, yeah.
Who? Ellen, let's hear yours.
I help winning and event professionals sell more profit more and have more fun doing it.
Heck yeah.
She didn't like the end of mine, though. She didn't like to have more fun doing it. She liked the idea of have more fun doing it, but it wasn't they. So that, right, so that they have more fun doing it wasn't quite what she wanted. So it's, I help winning an event. Professionals sell more profit more, have more fun doing it so that they can help more couples have great weddings, maybe something like that.
So she liked that would be 80%.
80% of mine. Yeah, it was 8 seconds. She liked 80% of mine. She didn't like the end over there. But you see people just tripping over their words because they want to tell you and tell you and tell you and tell you and tell you. But, no, it's not about your services, your products. Right. It's about the experiences you're creating for people.
So, for sound insight, what's your 7 seconds?
My 7 seconds is I'm David with sound insight, and I help really fun couples have rager wedding receptions.
Okay.
I don't have a so that, but.
I think so that, so that their guests will remember it for years. Yeah.
So they get sweaty.
There you go.
Uh, and then, yeah, so, and, uh, we have one for.
And Athens.
Yeah, I don't have one for Athens, but we have a, I need one. It's because I never introduced myself from that company.
But you don't have to say, I'm David. Just say, you just say that. Uh, or we, you could even have, Athens could have its own. Right.
That's a good point.
So we help fund couples in, what are you, northeast Georgia? Is that where you are?
Northeast Georgia?
Northeast. We help fun couples in northeast Georgia have amazing weddings on a budget. Right. And then there's a. So that, right, so that no one messes up your name.
There you go.
Yeah. I'm learning so much. This is great. Yeah. I never thought, it's funny that I never thought about having one of those for, because, like I said, I go to chamber meetings or whatever. I always introduce myself. And because I dj for that company. I dj for the company.
Right.
So on the other side again, you also want to equip your people with that same message. So everybody's singing, singing the same thing there is doing that. So before we finish, what piece of advice would you give to somebody who is at one part of a market and it could be either any part and is thinking, hey, I'm missing out on this other part of it. Again, yours solve two purposes or maybe multiple purposes. Its your training ground as well as its a profit center for you. And that was one question I had asked David, which is great. You have this low end brand, but are youre profiting? And you said, oh, yeah, and its training my people. Win. Win.
Here you go. So what would you say to people? Because, remember, theres venues, theres photographers, theres videographers, invitation people. People are thinking about moving into a different part of the market. What one thing would you say, hey, if I did this again, don't do this or definitely do that.
One piece advice would be getting someone else to help run that other division sooner than later is probably the biggest piece of advice I could give because it is just a lot. It's a lot of extra administration to have more than one brand. Um, so delegating either, you know, sales for both or someone that does the entire other venue, or, you know, I'm thinking if you're a photographer, like having an editor that just handles all the things for that brand, something that can help alleviate the administrative burden of having two whole, complete separate brands is something I would have done a lot sooner.
Yeah. And I think it's one of the things I had said to you is you have to treat them like two separate companies because they are, you know, and I don't care if you have one LLC or one S corp or C Corp or whatever it is, they are two separate companies because you're trying to sell them that way to these different venues and to the different couples. So, you know, treat it that way from the beginning. Kind of like what I say to people when they get into the business. Let's say they leave a company, start their own business, and it's part time. Yeah, treat it like a full time business. Right. Don't treat it like a part time business, because it'll always be a part time business.
If you have any aspirations of it being bigger, feed it, nurture it, you know, give it. Give it the love that it needs to have. If it's. If it's the ugly stepchild and it stays there, it's never going to give you what you need out of it. So we will have in the show notes how to get a hold of you, David, in social and all that kind of stuff. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us and sharing your experience with us. I really appreciate it.
Hey, you're welcome. This was fun.
I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or you can text, use the short form on this page, or call +1.732.422.6362, international 001 732 422 6362. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.
Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:
©2024 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com
