How An Asheville Elopement Pro Built, Lost, And Rebuilt A Thriving Adventure Wedding Business with Jon-Paul Brown

0:02Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of the Epic Entrepreneurs podcast where we are all about helping business owners just like you achieve success. So we don't do fancy smancy. We don't do flashing lights. We don't do a lot of things that a lot of podcasts will do. These are just real stories about real people and their entrepreneurial and business experiences. We go into their wins, their challenges, and their learnings. So we hope you enjoy it. All right. Welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs. I am Cliff McRae filling in for Bill Gilliland with your local business training and coaching firm, Action Coach Business Growth Partners.

0:44I'm excited to have John Paul Brown with the Lope Asheville as the focus for our Epic Entrepreneurs podcast episode today. So, John Paul, please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself and your company and what primary products or services you offer the community. Hi, Cliff. Good talking to you today. Thank you so much for having me on. Like you said, my name is John Paul Brown. About, well, not about 16 years ago this month, I created my business, Elope Asheville, and we plan destination elopements in and around Asheville and Western North Carolina. And when I say destination elopements, they're really kind of adventure elopements.

1:24I mean, we go hiking up mountains, we go down to the base of a waterfall, we stand in a creek or paddle down a river or whatever you can imagine that makes your mountain wedding dream come true, we'll do it. We kind of have a no, no policy. It's like, if you have a really good, wild request, we'll do it. But the vast, vast majority of my weddings, like 99.999 % of the weddings, are a beautiful couple in wonderful clothes with beautiful scenery. And we do a very meaningful ceremony and take a lot of pictures. We even offer flowers and cake. So it's a full wedding experience for a tiny fraction of the cost of a traditional wedding.

2:11If you had to start your business from square one, would you do anything differently? Well, when I did start this business from square one 16 years ago, I didn't have much experience in the adult world of starting a business. Whenever I was a kid, I went around the block and mowed yards and I sold things door to door. And I even started a little magic business, doing magic at birthday parties when I was a young teenager. But starting it now, it's a lot harder to get a business out there into the world and get eyeballs on it. So I would have spent a lot more time just studying marketing because I would say 90 % of any business is just telling people what you have and offering it to them.

3:05You don't just open a business and everybody flock to you. So I would spend a lot more time learning all of the ins and outs of marketing. Okay. And I'll be honest with you, John Paul. I hear that often, you know, when I ask this question is the marketing. So, I mean, you know, if you had to do anything differently as far as a strategy, what would you do as far as your marketing strategy? For me in particular, for my business, what works best and what has always worked best over all 16 years of doing this is social media. Getting that set up has been the most critical thing for me. When I started, we had Facebook.

3:47I don't even know if we had Instagram yet. I've sunk a lot of money into Google ads over the years and it does okay. But what really matters the most is marketing and setting up your social media profile. So it's very easy for someone to see a post. Hey, I like that post. Go to the profile and boom, here's how you book. Here's how you call me. Here's how you mess with me. It's making it super easy for the customer to get in touch with you. I'll see a lot of times people have a product online and I'm kind of interested and I can't figure out how to get my money into their pocket. So making it super easy for someone to actually contact you and book you is probably the best thing you can do.

4:34Okay. No, I love it. I love it. And I agree with that. Social media, especially now, is the number one way you can market your business. TikTok, Instagram, all that stuff. Everything is great. So gotcha on that. Yeah. And it's free. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. You really just have to, you're really at the mercy of the algorithm of any of the, the, um, social media sites, but, uh, at the end of the day, you're still getting it out there. So I agree with you on that. Exactly. Um, so what have your biggest learnings been as an owner since you started your business? Um, basically to listen to the market, uh, whenever people say the customer is always right, I kind of believe that, but in a way that most people don't interpret it.

5:15When you say the customer is always right, people think any Tom, Dick, or Harry can come in and say, oh, I don't believe that you should be doing this. And you have to agree with them. No, the customer is the market as a whole. And the market as a whole is always right. I mean, that's who is deciding if you're going to be getting paid today or not. And so you have to start looking around looking at the trends even if it's not something you would have picked or you believed in you you see what people are doing again on social media um things go viral for a reason so you have to always have your antenna up looking for that um i probably wouldn't have brought along uh brought on a business partner that was a big mistake i'll never do that again But, yeah, just paying attention to your customers and always making sure their experience is your top priority.

6:16Yeah. Okay. So let's dig into that a little bit more. That's a little interesting that you said something about a business partner. What happened with you and your business partner that makes you change that, make that logic? So when I first started, it was just me, January of 2010. It was just me. And I honestly thought I started this. It was just going to be a part-time thing. I'm going to make some beer money, maybe, you know, go down to Charleston on a paid trip every now and then. But it very, very quickly grew beyond my greatest expectations. What I dared to hope to make with this business.

6:53And at the same time that I was realizing that I'm going to be very busy, my wife at the time gave birth to twins. So here I am very busy. And I'm also a dad of newborn twins. And so this person I'd been working with for a while, we kind of started this unofficial partnership. They'll do a little bit of work for my behalf. They get a little bit extra money to help me. And then in 2010, whenever it just really became obvious that this is a major thing that we're making a lot of money here. We needed to do something really quite official. So we started up, created an LLC, became 50-50 partners. And very quickly, I was working a whole lot of money.

7:47And you okay there? Yes, I'm here. Oh, okay. I heard some weird noise coming in. So let me start back. No, that's fine. That's fine. I can cut this out. Yeah, go ahead. Okay, okay. So very quickly after forming the LC, I was finding myself working a lot more and making a lot less, and questions were risen. I'll just, I'll make, I mean, there's a lot to the story, but I'll boil it down to November, December of 2023, when I just got sick and tired of working all the time and making very little money, and I decided to do an audit of everything and discovered an insane amount of money missing that went to buying things that had nothing to do with the business.

8:37And I'm talking about insane money and the multiple seven-figure amounts of money. And lawsuits started, the whole business kind of went to bed for a while. Everything got shut down. So for a year and a half, I wasn't working on my business. The website got taken over by Russian hackers and social media dried up completely. And then May of 2024, lawsuit settled. And now I'm back in the driver's seat, 100 % owner of my business again. And I literally had to start back from scratch. I had no bookings on the calendar. And, you know, I literally had to start back from square one. So your question, you know, what would you do different?

9:27I did get to start the business over again and do it differently. And I liked how it went the second half of 2024. I did very well. All right. So what would you say are some common misconceptions about running a business? I tell people all the time that if you can do anything else, don't run a business. Don't be your own boss. because if the reason you're wanting to leave your nine to five is that you feel like you're working all the time, you're stressed, you don't like your boss, all these reasons, owning a business is that times two or three. I mean, you are literally working all the time. Your boss is you and you can really be a jerk to yourself.

10:18And I don't mean that jokingly. I mean, you can make yourself work 16 to 20 hours a day. You can make yourself work on the weekends. You can make yourself think about work during dinnertime. It's a lot of stress. I mean, your ability to feed your kids depends on if you're good at all of these things kind of put together. It's a lot of stress. It's a lot of pressure. And add on to that when you have people working for you and you're the purpose, you're the source of their well-being it's like suddenly their kids are your responsibility and it's man if you can start if you can do anything else and make a living and you're somewhat happy doing it do that thing because owning a business is a lot of work it's a lot of stress there are a lot lot of benefits to it.

11:15There's a lot of pride to it. But I'm the kind of guy, I don't make a good employee. I'm a terrible employee. And it's one of the things that I feel like I'm a much better business owner than I am an employee. So that's why I own my own business. Okay. Yeah. I actually like that. Let's dig into that a little bit more. What qualities make you a bad employee and a better business person as this owner i'm i'm uh an extreme outside the box thinker and um and i'm kind of cocky with my uh opinions well no i appreciate the honesty yeah if you don't think this idea is is a winner then you know screw you type attitude and it's not an extreme one you know i'm not i'm not walking around during the year and a half of the lawsuit i became an employee again And I actually think I was a better employee because of what I've been doing the past 16 years.

12:18I really like the chain of command. And whenever it was time to hang up the hat for the day, I got to go home and not even think about it. But yeah, being an outside-the-box thinker, what are some other things that I just don't like? I think that's the big one. It's like I have, in my own opinion, nobody else has told me this, but in my own opinion, I think I have some really good ideas and I want to run with them. And I hate it when people restrict me and pull me back and they tell me that I can't run with these ideas. And it just makes me bitter. Okay. Okay. No, I really appreciate the honesty on that.

13:01That's great. Yeah. So how do you handle taking vacations running a business or do you?

13:12It's gotten to the point to where whatever vacations we do take, I have to incorporate a little bit of business research into it just for my own curiosity. For example, my wife and I went to Vegas for about four or five days a few years ago. And while there, I wanted to go to one of those wedding chapels that are so famous in Vegas. And so I did the whole process, like booking the wedding chapel and booking a tuxedo rental. And I got a 1980s powder blue tux with a cummerbund and the frills and a top hat and a cane. It was awesome. but it was very interesting to see how they do their communication how they do their sign up process how they do their photography how they do how they do all the things and so um i learned a lot and i incorporated a lot of what i learned there into what i do today and when we go uh like the Charleston or went down to Jacksonville earlier this or last summer.

14:19And, you know, you go to a bar and start meeting people. And over the years, I've gotten to where I started training people how to start this job. I've become somewhat of a consultant. And so I get people started on this job. And it's just, you know, when you go to a bar and you start talking to somebody, hey, what do you do? And I'll tell them what I do. And they're interested, you know. And I started asking them questions and I almost turned a night at the bar into a business lead. And so, yeah, vacations are kind of half work as they are. I always bring my laptop and I do emails and whatnot.

15:00So and we we kind of schedule our vacations around when wedding weddings are booked. OK, OK. So always a little bit of work involved, even. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. On their vacation. Okay. Unfortunately. No, no, I hear you. I hear you. So what have you attributed to your growth so far in your business? Being true to what I feel is a fair deal to my clients. Over the years, I've had numerous, numerous people tell me, you could be charging a lot more for what you do. And I 100 % agree with them. I absolutely could be charging a lot more and make a lot more money. but I can't do it. I feel bad. Like I don't need to charge a couple.

15:48Like as a matter of fact, I just got off the phone before talking to you with a client who wants to book with me. And she said the other elopement company that she reached out to, they charge$5 ,000 for exactly what I do. And she said they just felt kind of cold on a phone call with her. And like, I want couples to feel safe and trusting me with not only their money, but with their wedding day, which is, you know, one of the most important days of your life. And I want them to have a very good experience that doesn't break the bank, that they, I don't want them to have any regrets that they went in this direction.

16:33And there's been times where I just, I've made a decision and deep down, it felt icky to me and I would lose sleep over it and I would get up the next day and reverse that decision, like raising prices when I don't need to. And it's just, I'm very true to that old, almost like an old timey feeling of wanting to be fair and true to my customers. And I think a successful business over 16 years can be attributed to being true to your customers. Okay, I love that, love that. So what qualities do you look for in potential employees you're looking to hire? I need somebody who is a good writer. The vast majority of my email is email or of my business is email work.

17:21And usually whenever I put out a call for, you know, I need some help, I need a new employee, I tell him to just bypass the resume. Don't even send me a resume. Just write me a one-page letter that tells me why you think you'd be good at this position. And you can tell who doesn't even read the job description because they'll send me a resume and nothing else. But really, the people I like the most are the ones that are just good writers. And they can kind of put their, not heart on their sleeve, but heart on the paper. and because people are trusting you with their stories. You'll notice on my website and on like my inquiry form and all the emails that I send, it's like, I want to hear your story.

18:14This, everybody who gets married is in love and every love has a story. And they're all great. Everyone's unique in their own way. And, you know, deep down the photography, where we're doing the ceremony. Is it a hike? Is it a waterfall? Is it, you know, a picnic somewhere? It's a story that we're telling photographically at the end. And I need a good storyteller. I need somebody who can identify a good story and tell a good story. So we're a part of our customer stories and I like seeing that in somebody that works with me. Okay, okay. So how do you foster a positive and productive work environment for your employees?

19:01I'm very laid back. There's something I say when I'm talking about bosses. And I really love the TV show MASH. And MASH is a good illustration of the two types of bosses there are. the first three seasons was Colonel Henry Blake and he really had a laissez-faire attitude to his employees it's like he hired the the or he didn't hire but he had under his command the best people and so he felt like as long as they remain the best people he didn't really have to do or say anything and that's kind of how I am the opposite side is Colonel Potter who is a a more commanding more uh here's a definite way we're doing things and you must follow this letter to the law and as long as you do that i'll be cool with you but you better not step outside these boundaries and now i'm kind of the first guy anthony bourdain said the same thing in his kitchens he he had he ran kind of a pirate ship and uh and he thought that was the best way for him, but he knew another chef whose kitchen was military grade.

20:14And he thought that chef did a great thing too. So I think it's, it's whatever style you are, be committed to it. And, and I, I hate trying to bend my style to what is written in books and leadership instructions and all this stuff because that's just not who I am as a leader. I get the best people and I kind of let them have the space they need to do the job at hand. Okay. Okay. All right. So now we're going to head into the quick fire round. And basically what this is, is, you know, I'll say one word and you give me the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of running your business and what this one word means for you.

21:02Doesn't your response doesn't have to be one word. It just has to be kind of one idea i guess you could say um okay all right so first word is education oh gosh um education i guess uh educating and in in my mind for what i do i think writing and there aren't many good writers out there i mean there's decent writers there's good um there there's writers that that can do it but you know they can they can make the day-to-day but writing and being able to convert what you're feeling to a written word that people can feel it's almost like star trek where you're teleporting or something like that you're like how can i teleport what's in my heart to inside your heart and um a lot of what the the compliment I get the most for my weddings is when people say to me that what I said during my ceremony really felt like I knew them.

22:06And so I get that compliment very often. And it's, I feel like I'm doing my job whenever I can write them a ceremony and it feels like I've known them for years. so yeah when i say education that's what i mean there and you say one idea but you also have to educate yourself on social like one of the trends this that and the other but maybe that was a bad answer i don't know no no that was great no i loved it i loved it planning oh god i mean i am a planner and i didn't get into the wedding business because i love wedding planning i i got to the wedding business because I love all of the things that go along with it.

22:51There's a guy named Rick Thieves. I don't know if you know him. He's a big travel guru. He's written countless books about traveling Europe. And he has a show on PBS about traveling in Europe. I mean, he's been my idol since I was a kid. And I've always wanted a job like his. So how do I How do I be my own Rick Steves here in Asheville? I take people on guided trips to the top of a mountain and I plan their wedding for them. I want them to be as hands-off as they are comfortable being. And so they can just relax and focus on themselves. And so all of my planning is really done for their benefit and for their happiness and for their story.

23:42um and i know you said uh what do i think of when i say planning when you say planning but i mean planning is what i do it's my job and uh i love it inspiration we just talked about rick steves and he's my inspiration um yeah uh a nice segue there but uh i'm inspiration. Well, I like to inspire people. Like I said, I've been a consultant here for about three years now, helping people get this business that I run open in their area. And I had a woman in Lexington, Kentucky on our first phone call together. And I asked her, you know, or I asked her what her, what would change her life? And she said another 10 ,000 a year would be life-changing.

24:41If I could only get an extra 10 ,000 a year, all of my problems will be solved. And she starts crying when she's telling me all this. And I told her that, I mean, if 10 ,000 is your goal, we'll get there. But I think you should aim higher for that. And sure enough, like she's booking weddings left and right. She's creating these really great bourbon trail weddings that she takes people to distilleries and does weddings on the bourbon trail. And it's really cool. And she's really making a killing. And I think she's far surpassed what would change her life. And so knowing that I helped somebody change their life means more to me than any kind of money I would make being a consultant or selling my own weddings.

25:35It's absolutely incredible. I really do think a lot of my clients inspire me more than anything. because like I did a wedding at the Suananoa Women's Prison right down the road. It was, this was several years ago and they couldn't find a preacher in the area that would go and do a wedding for them on the prison grounds. And so, you know, I spent three months getting background checks and getting clearance and went in and it was an outside person marrying an inmate. And for two hours I sat and chatted with the inmate about why she's there and the choices she's made in her life and how she's excited to move on.

26:20And, you know, she inspired me. She's out now and her and her husband are living a happy life. And I get an update about once a year about how they're doing. So a lot of my clients inspire me more than anything else. Commitment. The correct word for a wedding business, commitment and uh i i i really am committed i know i'm using it the point of this excuse was you say a word and i i kind of adjoin it to another word but i'm when you're saying the words i'm thinking about what it means for me in my business and you know uh i i create commitment i it's kind of a neat thing when you think about it you we go on a hike and we hike up to the top of a mountain and when you hike up there's two people there there's the one party a there's party b and when they hike down there's three parties there's party a and party b but then there's party c their marriage and that marriage is their the third member of their family now you know um and starting it like they are, I really like the idea of my couples not being deeply in debt on their first day of being married.

27:41The average US wedding and reception is right around$50 ,000. And so knowing that they can get that for a tiny fraction of that. I mean, the vast majority of my weddings are about$850. So, you can tell that the amount of money they're saving by not having a$50 ,000 party is going to increase the chances of their commitment over the next 50 or 60 years. So, that's kind of one of my fringe benefits of starting this business. Okay. All right. So, what words of advice would you offer to other business owners who are looking to grow? So listen to your couple or I say couples. My clients are couples.

28:32Listen to your customers. Find out what they want. Be true to them. If something makes you feel icky, you know, listen to that gut instinct. Because if you're truly an entrepreneur, if that's what you were born to do, your gut's going to tell you what you should and shouldn't do. and you really need to listen to that because a lot of times books and online influencers and whatnot will try to steer you in a direction that may not feel good to you and I think listening to that voice inside of you over listening to the influencers is going to send you a lot further along than any influencer can. Nice.

29:23I like that. I like that. All right. So what's the next big thing for a little bashville? Well, right now we are booking up for spring. Weekends go really fast. Spring is our first busy season of the year, starting around mid-March. And we're very busy from mid-March all the way to early June. And weekends book up real fast. Um, weekdays, not as much, but if you have a specific day, a specific time that you want, um, booking earlier is better. Um, also it's the same for, you know, getting, staying here in Asheville, getting a hotel. It gets, things get booked up here really fast. Reserving a restaurant, they, they book real fast.

30:10Um, my wife and I are going to be launching our own podcast. It's going to be called the Lope Asheville Insider. and what it is is yeah a lot of people they get married but they want to know what do we do what what's going on this weekend uh where can we go wheat where's a good place to stay so the lope ashville insider is going to be a weekly podcast where we talk about the cool events going on this weekend because there's always some kind of festival some kind of outdoor market sometime some kind of fair you know there's always something really cool going on in asheville so So we'll be going over all the goings on in Nashville for the upcoming weekend, as well as tips and tricks on getting married and what you can do, what you want to do.

30:57So that's coming up probably starting here in the next month or so. And lastly, what's the best way for someone to find or get in touch with you? So there's always my website, elope-ashville.com. and social media is at Elope Asheville for Facebook, for Instagram, TikTok. Let's see, what else? What other ways? Also, I have on my website a little pop-up window that says text me and it just opens up your SMS thing. So if you want to shoot me a text message, my number is 828-301-2959 and I always have my business phone on me so you can text me anytime. Perfect. Fantastic. Yeah. Thank you so much for being a part of the community and all that you're doing.

31:45You know, we certainly wish you continued success. Thank you very much. Yeah. After Helene, Asheville has bounced back incredible. And so we're very happy to have people coming back to Asheville. Yeah, it sounds great. Well, yeah, appreciate your time. Thank you very much. Thank you, Cliff. Yep. Thank you. hey thanks for listening to the epic entrepreneurs podcast here's three things that you can do number one remember to subscribe to the podcast it takes very little effort on your part it's going to help you and your fellow entrepreneurs plus you you guys know how it works the more subscribers we get the more cool things we can offer to you second to learn more about growing your business, just download my book, The Coach Approach.

32:36It's free for you at giftfrombill.com. That's giftfrombill.com. Hey, and if you'd like more info about growing your business and what we can do to help you grow your business, send me an email directly. Just send it to williamgilliland at actioncoach.com. That's my personal email that I read. No one else reads at first. It's not screened. It's my real email. Just send it to me. I can't wait to talk to you. Hey, and until then, all the best.