0204: Building Rental Business Success On Another’s Foundation with Collected & Co.
Purchasing an existing business and making it your own comes with its own set of challenges. Jacqueline Johannesson is here to walk us through the process. After buying Collected & Co. from a close friend, she and her husband have taken the business to new heights...and learned plenty along the way! What’s in this episode: A look at buying a business from a friendHow Jacqueline and her husband made Collected & Co. their ownHow to build on someone else’s collection Growing your core services, like, adding event planning to the mixHow to handle client disappointment, both before and after it happens Quotes: “What can we do to really stay ahead of the market and just push Minneapolis to be something that you just don't see all the time?” - Jacqueline Johannesson “Would that be easy? Yes. But we’re never about the easy.” - Jacqueline Johannesson “It sounds like you don't want to just fulfill the vision; you want to cast the vision.“ - Allison Howell “So for our lounge furniture, we try to, on the third time it's going out, it's got to make some sort of return, whether it's three dollars, it has to bring something in. We know that there are some pieces, like our dining chairs, that's going to take more rentals to bring that back in. We want our pieces to, you know, hopefully last a couple to three seasons before we have to retire something out.” -Jacqueline Johannesson “We've worked really hard to build great relationships with the other vendor partners in the city to be trusted, to say, ‘they're the people who are willing to take a little bit of a risk sometimes.’” -Jacqueline Johannesson “We learn something new every single day, every single event. There's always something that we are learning, whether it's from a client, an experience, an event professional who knows more than us because we are not naive to say we don't know half of it. Like, we're always learning and growing, which is what you need to do in order to continue to grow and have a successful business.” Jacqueline Johannesson “When you start out, you're thinking of all the beautiful things you're going to create, and that's sort of the primary stuff of your vision and your dreams. But, a big chunk of what you do is actually move furniture around.” -Allison Howell “There's always room for growth. There's always room for growth in your business. There's room for growth personally, always. Like we always need to strive to be better the next day. We can always wake up and do better.” -Jacqueline Johannesson Resources: The Lend & Gather Conference The RW Elephant mailing list features more event industry resources and happenings—including announcements about new Trunk Show episodes! Thank you to our sponsor: RW Elephant: Mighty inventory management software designed to help you conquer chaos and reclaim your creativity! Website | Instagram And our guest: Jacqueline Johannesson of Collected & Co. Website | Instagram
