Episode 31: How To Keep The Peace With Vendor Relationships

Episode Summary

Working with wedding partners can be a wonderful mix of friendship and professional responsibility, friends. Today, I’m sharing how I navigate that balance, from trying out new collaborators to having honest conversations when something doesn’t go to plan. We’ll talk about why I pick up the phone, how a voice memo helped me clear the air, and why I think of some vendor relationships as dating and others as marriage. I’ll also share what clients should know about the trust, expectations, and hard conversations behind the team we recommend.

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julianleaver.com | @julianleaver

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Full Episode Transcript

Welcome back to Mind Over Matrimony. And today we're really going to talk about communication. I think like we've talked about here before and a lot, everybody is a different style of communicator. And I think from the client side, understanding how someone communicates is generally pretty straightforward. We can get very quickly to how you like to communicate, how you like to make decisions, how you like to focus on problems and resolve them. We can get to that very quickly. I think where it's a little bit more difficult is and more nuanced. I don't know if I would even say difficult. I think it's more nuanced in the vendor relationships that we cultivate. And the fine balance between working with someone all the time.

And so they become your friend and you become very comfortable with them versus working with someone all the time. And they are also still delivering a product to your client that we in the planning seat are ultimately responsible for, right? We recommended X, Y and Z vendor. We've vouched for X, Y and Z vendor. And we've contracted X, Y and Z vendor. And so then now it's our job to actually manage that contract. And how do you navigate and tap dance through friendships and also the vendor relationship all layered on top of each other, right? And I think that is, it's just a delicate balance. And I think every planner comes at it from a little bit of a different way. Some planners come at it from, I only use the same people every single time, no matter what, doesn't matter.

This is the list. If you want to work with me, this is the list. Full stop because they can trust those people. And they've also decided that they are not going to allow for any room of error. And then there's a other camp I think that says, I want to work with new people. I want to keep it fresh. I want to keep it interesting. I want to take maybe a little bit of a risk, but with that risk can come great reward because baking the recipe can be different with different people. And so you get sometimes a better result than you ever imagined that you could. And so there's a fine line. I would say here at Julian Leaver Events, we're definitely on the latter side of that. I've always loved working with people that I know. I've always loved working with new people.

It's sometimes fun to work with new people. You get challenged in different ways. You learn how to communicate in a different way. You kind of get a little off the rails of, oh, we're always saying it this exact same way and we're always communicating it this exact same way. And you come over here and you're like, oh, this process is a little bit different and I like to be communicated within this different way. And that then opens you up to the whole different set of possibilities. And I think that can be very good. It can also be very challenging. Because it is also our job to figure out who can do what the best. And for me, that has always been about direct communication and sometimes having the hard conversations.

And because every vendor knows what their limitation is and knows what their best work is. And but sometimes they want to work with us or with a certain team. And so then they'll say yes to something that maybe isn't the best fit for them. They're like, oh, I can do that. It's going to be so good. Don't you worry. I got it. Here we go. And then sometimes it's not. And that's just the honest truth is that, oh, sometimes this got us 90% of the way, but we really needed it to get us 100% of the way. And that 90% is just not what the client was expecting or what we were expecting and how to have those conversations. And what I will say has been the best fit for me in this space is to just have the conversation, is to just pick up the phone and say, Hey, this and this happened.

And some of it was out of your control. Some of it was out of my control. Some of it was out of the client's control. But how are we going to resolve that and how are we all going to move forward? And that's a very interesting part about this job that I think. When you're first getting into wedding planning, you don't really know. That's also part of this job, right? Because when you're first getting in, I think. You don't know what you don't know. And so you don't know if something is actually at 90% versus 100, right? Because that standard hasn't been established. And so you're not really worried about having that conversation, but the longer you're in it, the more you know. And so you can't sweep things under the rug because maybe the client doesn't know about it, but you know about it.

And for me, I can't sit with that for too long. And I feel like that 100% for me goes hand in hand with my mental health piece of things that we talk about here. I can't sit in discomfort for too long because it will kind of mess with me. It will make me feel uncomfortable. I don't like feeling that way. So I like to clean up my side of the street very quickly and also allow a vendor to clean up their side of the street very quickly so we can have a like a clean slate and move forward. And maybe sometimes I think that means, okay, this client is not the right fit for you. And so we need to move. We need to shift. We need to pivot. We need to go over here and set and do this other thing that's going to be great for them. But that doesn't change our relationship.

That just means this client wasn't the right fit and through a comedy of errors sometimes, right? Sometimes the client says, oh, I really love this one thing. And then when we get into it, they don't really love that thing. And people's minds change all the time. That's a very normal thing. I think it's just how do you handle having that conversation? And for me, the best way is always just a direct pick up the phone. And for my little millennial friends and the newest planners out there, the phone call is literally the best gift that anyone could give you. Picking up the phone and hearing someone's voice and hearing their tone and hearing their the way that they are saying something is so important. Because that is not something that can be conveyed via text.

And it definitely can't be conveyed via email. I will tell it myself. This week, I had two interactions where my words didn't match the way that I actually felt about what this person or what I was actually saying. It was more about a reaction to something else that had happened earlier in the day. And I left kind of these two interactions and I thought, OK, clearly, I'm going to need to clean up my side of the street on this one. Because it's like, but it just like all came out. And I was just like, no nuance. Normally, I'm a very nuanced person. You all know this. You listen to this podcast. You know, I'm usually very deliberate in the things that I say. And I think in both of these conversations, I just didn't sugarcoat anything. I just went for it and said exactly how I felt.

And that was not the right delivery. Maybe in the long run, the message was correct. But botched, botched the landing, Leaver. And so I thought a lot about how am I going to fix my side of the street on this one, right? I could send a text message and say, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean it this way. But in all honesty, that was never going to work, right? And an email I think is just in these situations were clearly out of the question. And so the way that I needed to do it was a voice memo, which I've been using a lot lately, actually, and it's been really lovely for me because I think in a voice memo, if someone can hear the tone, someone can understand exactly what I was trying to say. And also it allows someone to not have to have any kind of reaction in the moment.

They get the ability to listen to it and then react or think about it or sleep on it or never fucking respond, frankly, right? Whatever you want to do with it is what you want to do with it. It doesn't put anyone in an awkward position. And it allows you to start to clear the air. And so I had to do that. I had to say, hey, my side of the street, I botched it. And here's how I feel really. And I love you and I'm sorry. And these are also the circumstances of what what else was going on? Because sometimes I think we don't give a whole picture of things. And there's there's an introspective part of this job in a lot of ways, because there's always a lot of emotions in all of these things, right? Because again, your friends and you're also vendors and partners in that way.

Vendors is really not the best word, but partners is a better word. And so you have to treat those relationships with care and with understanding. And you have to also toe this line in between the two things. And really keep them in their own separate spheres, the friendship and then also the partnership. And what I'll say to the client side of this, right? I think clients have a harder time understanding. They're like, oh, that's your friend versus that's my partner, right? And there's this very interesting balance in that because what's very odd about this industry in particular is we do spend so much personal time together, that it's almost impossible not to have those people as your friends, right? Because we spend crazy, weird hours and especially in the destination business.

We're like all in a location in the middle of nowhere together. Are we just going to like all eat dinner separately? No, we're going to have the burger that we're having at 3 a.m. All together, because it's more fun to be all together. And so in that all togetherness, you would just ask questions like, how are your kids? How's your husband? How's your wife? How's your whatever is going on? It's just a natural thing that kind of happens. And so there is this different level of trust that we all have with each other because we've been through kind of crazy situations together. And sometimes also we have to jump in and fight through the rain together, right? So we're all soaked and it's horrible and we're up to our elbows in mud. But we all trauma bonded through that experience.

So it just makes you also friends, right? But also that's who I want to recommend to you because like when we were in that situation and the mud was like up to our knees, this person kept going and they kept pushing for whatever the result was that we were all trying to get to. So there is this like fine balance of all of this communication. And I think as long as people are open and transparent and willing to have an open conversation about that, it can give you some peace of mind as a couple. Hey, these people have been like through the fire together and and come back. I think it's also about you as the client having the understanding that we have just as high an expectation from the planning seat that you do, if not higher, because we are the repeat customer.

And I've continued to repeat this relationship because this person has shown up for you as the client in lots of different iterations, again and again. And so we continue to recommend them and to know that we are doing the hard work of having those hard conversations of saying, hey, this didn't really work out the way that I wanted it to work out. This didn't work out the way that you wanted it to work out. And there are different types of relationships there. And that's, I think, the other nuanced part of this communication thing that both the vendors and the clients need to understand. There are vendor relationships where you're married, okay? And then there are vendor relationships where you're dating.

And the vendor relationships where you're dating, you're truly dating, just like you were as a couple at the beginning, right? You're not giving it all away. You're tiptoeing through those first few dates and then it gets a little deeper. And then you get to the conversation like, do we want to have kids or we don't? And there's maker breaks in each of those little moments and you continue that dating relationship. And at any time either of the parties could say, hey, look, this is not going to work for me. I got to go. Or you said this in this certain way. And that is a non-negotiable and we got to maybe not work together anymore. And then there's these relationships where you're married.

Where you have done the many events together, where you have been through the worst of it and you've come back from it. And but in those relationships, there are also mistakes that are made on both sides. Okay. No one is perfect here. This is not like I'm saying, oh, we as the planner are like the most perfect one. No, no, this is pot and kettle. Okay. We all make mistakes just like the one that I just illustrated for you with my mouth, right? But also, sometimes people don't deliver all the way that they should. And so there's just a different type of conversation that happens there where everyone is as honest as they possibly can be. And then you get to the next thing. And then the next thing is delivered in a certain different way, right?

Because of this learning process and being willing to say, okay, in 95% of the ways we match, we're a good compatibility fit. You're a good compatibility fit with a client. And so you have these harder conversations that definitely aren't more comfortable, but they're just easier to have because you've been through the thick of it together. It's just that's a different nature of conversations. And so I think looking from the outside, it's hard to sometimes tell what relationships are married and what relationships are dating. And I don't know that there's any good way of saying that, except for that as a planner, I will say we're open to working with anyone, right? I'm open to date anybody. Let's see. And let's have that conversation.

And it's about being open on the front side to the dating relationship and then also communicating the marriage, right? And saying I work with this bus company almost exclusively because they provide me live updates of where the buses are. They provide me all the photos of every single bus driver. They provide me every single bus driver's cell phone number. They provide me with a very clear, open and honest communication with a piece of things that sometimes tends to go wrong. And so it's gone wrong enough that this is the person that I trust. And that's why I'm going to recommend this person to you. But this photographer who maybe I haven't looked at, let's date. Cool. Amazing. There's just different bits and bobs of this relationship and and nuances of it.

Again, going back to that nuanced word, it's a nuanced situation. And one that we all have to play in the same box together on and that when things go wrong, the easiest thing always to do is to pick up the phone. And honestly, that's just in life, right? This is like a microcosm of just how everyone lives their life. But picking up the phone is in most cases the best thing to do or send a voice memo. That's my newest thing. It's been really fascinating for me and has allowed me to understand that maybe somebody doesn't want to react in a certain way right now. So there you go, friends, all you do, if you have an Apple device is hit the plus button, scroll down to audio, you click audio and you can record a nice little voice memo.

Also, pro tip, you have to wait for the voice memo to go through and then you have to press the little keep button. If you'd like to keep the voice memo that you sent, Apple doesn't automatically do that for you. If you're an Android user, I unfortunately cannot help you today, but you do definitely have a better camera. So thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.

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