EP. 21: Sales and Celebration with Katie Easley of Kate Ryan Designs
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Our guest this episode seriously has some great advice for anyone, especially if you’re in the business world. She is part florist and part business coach who is focused on helping business owners reach their potential. If you are interested in running a business, flowers, and any kind of celebration this episode is truly for you. Introducing Katie Easley!
Katie started Kate Ryan Occasions after leaving the Interior Design World. When she started there were not a lot of people in the market for weddings. Everyone was friends. Everyone helped each other. She started in a role as a planner, but with an interior design background. Slowly, she was able to unravel the business and moved to event design with flowers as a focus.
“As life happens, and you take moments to sometimes just kind of resettle or regroup and you allow for yourself that bit of quiet space, things will happen and ideas grow.”
The really cool thing about Katie and her business is that she doesn’t typically arrange flowers. Although she is coined a florist, she explains that she is more of an event designer that uses flowers as her muse. Now that she is more comfortable in the industry, she does get her hands a little dirty and learns from her designers. She is inspired by the things we surround ourselves with every day. She can spend time with her couples and find the things they love together to pull into her designs. Katie describes herself as traditional and classical but has an eye for trending designs. She laughs that her company helps her use both her left and right side of her brain. She is able to balance her creative size with her sales and business passion.
ADVICE FROM THE BUSINESS SAVANT
Katie got into consulting when someone referred her to two business owners who needed help flourishing in their industry. She questioned why she would be of any help to them not knowing her full potential. This was her first step to using her sales background and eye for business to help others. Katie gave us great advice about the people we should surround ourselves in the business world to help you continuously grow. She shared what she heard on a webinar once and said,
“30% of the people you surround yourself with should be coming up to where you are. 30% should be about where you are and 30% should be ahead of where you are. The last 10% should be people who support you.”
She looks at other people she surrounds herself with and looks at the aspects that she can learn from to help her company improve. Katie lets us know that social media stalking is totally okay. It is okay to learn about people and what is important to them so they can get better information from their clients. The more questions you ask gives you a better understanding of the clients and makes you fit into their idea of what they need. It is so important to connect with potential clients in an initial consult and see if both sides are a good fit.
CELEBRATING FAILURE
Katie says that a huge celebration that happens in her household is over failure.
“You can’t get up if you don’t fall down.”
She teaches her daughter to celebrate failure because she wants her to know that trying for things is better than never knowing. Even if you find failure, you can choose to take the opportunity to learn for it and be better. While she celebrates failure, she also spends time to celebrate life and friendships. When in the business world, everyone knows that the clock does not stop. She works hard to bring people together to create moments that are really going to matter at the end of the day and focusing on being present during each moment she is in to make the most of it.
We are so excited to share all of her great advice with you and share what makes her so successful. We hope that you use this advice and implant into your daily life, as we have!
SOCIAL MEDIA
