Meet Betsy!
Hi everyone! Betsy here! If we haven't had the pleasure of meeting in person yet, I hope you'll take a moment to read my bio, get to know me a bit, and leave a comment on this post to say hi so that we can connect!
Happy 2016 to you!! We're just barely two months in to it, and I can already tell this is going to be this best year ever! There are so many things happening around here, we are bursting at the seams to tell you about it all! Over the weekend, we launched our new website. If you missed it, be sure to read all about it in the post Becca wrote yesterday.
At the end of every year, we have a 2-3 day team brainstorming session in which we snuggle up under blankets, eat holiday cookies and talk honestly about our business. We evaluate our strengths and weaknesses, and set goals for the impending new year. These days are both the best and most mentally exhausting few days of the year. This year we were reminded, yet again, that at the core of our business we believe that weddings are just the beginning of the long journey of marriage. A wedding day should represent the best parts of a couple- their likes, tastes, values, and preferences. A wedding planning process should mean that we're learning about all of these qualities and developing the best ways to showcase them. Before we ever begin planning or designing with a new client, we want to get to know them. This has and always will continue to be a pillar of our business.
When we were sitting by the fire this past December, it hit us like a ton of bricks. Why should we expect our clients and friends to share so many personal details about their lives when we don’t do the same? It’s not as though we have been intentionally trying to hide our own stories... we just got so caught up in running our business and getting to know others that we forgot to make time to allow others to be able to get to know us!
We've neglected this blog so badly over the past year. In this job, sometimes the hours are long and the days are too short, but we refuse to let that be an excuse any longer. This week, with this newly improved site, we're officially kickstarting our daily blog by sharing a bit about ourselves. There is so much more to come, including stories from behind-the-scenes here at RRE, our clients' weddings and events, new announcements and developments, educational content...and the list goes on.
If you read my story in our beautiful new Meet the Team section, you already got the basics, so I won’t bore you here! You have probably started to figure this out, but I truly love all things lists and organization. Bullet points just seem like the logical way for me to share a bit about myself. So, hold on to your seats because here I go.... Happy reading!
Next week I'll share much more about myself (the real nitty gritty!), but for now I'm going to let you in on a few of my personal professional goals for 2016:
1.Answer Emails Within 24 Hours: Emails can quickly become the bane of my existence during our busy season (anyone else feel me?). To boot, my type A personality always likes to see white space at the bottom, which just isn’t possible without non-stop time and attention. This year my goal is to send some kind of response within 24 hours of receipt during our business hours (Tuesday-Friday). This year, I want to focus on sharing information. If I can’t respond right away, I want to give my clients, partners and friends a realistic expectation of when they can hear back from me with the answer. This is also my chance to finally make use of the underutilized auto-response feature. Isn’t technology great?
2.Tackle the Worse First: As a lover of lists, I always have a to-do list (who is shocked?). This year, I’ve decided to tackle my least favorite things first thing in the morning. I am a morning person and to that end, am most productive before lunch. My hope is to finish the icky early in the day and save the fun for the afternoon slump. It’s so simple; I can’t believe I haven’t done this before!
3.BK Money Day: Each month I have set aside a day on our calendar to do my least favorite task- bookkeeping. I literally HATE scanning, organizing, uploading, and classifying receipts. In the past years, I have put this off until it is an unmanageable mess that takes me days. My scheduled "Money Days" are now my sacred time so I don’t get myself in a pickle this year. As an added bonus, if I finish by 4:00pm, I let myself call it a day early and treat myself to a pick-me-up (i.e.: pedicure, massage, or new outfit). I realize this makes me sounds like a little kid, but I have no shame for whatever works!
4.Mentorship: I was blessed to have the most amazing mentor and friend early on in my career (I’ll be sharing more about her soon on this blog). I want to commit to being that person for other young women with entrepreneurism in their future. On that note, I am excited to announce that after a two-semester hiatus, our student internship program is coming back. Stay tuned for more information coming soon!
Be sure to come back tomorrow for more. We're blogging every Tuesday-Friday and you'll find fresh, new content here each morning!
Happy reading!
Betsy