Today we’d like to introduce you to Keith Willard.
Hi Keith, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
When I was in college, I didn’t have much direction. I knew that I like throwing parties. And when I say parties, I’m not saying dinner parties or keggers. I was the guy that put together the 90’s midnight jam where several hundred college kids would come. The experience had to be more than just everyone arriving in pajamas, the entrance itself had to raise the anticipated experience.
Shortly after college, I had two very specific job opportunities. One was as a flight attendant for Southwest Airlines and the other was as the Executive Director of a little Non-Profit called Immunocise. Southwest had the promise of getting to meet new people and new places as far as they flew. The other allowed me to satiate the need to be of help to my fellow peers.
During this time, it should be mentioned that the AIDS/HIV epidemic was at its peak, so the non-profit dealt specifically with the health and wellness of people affected or infected with HIV. Plus, there was very little money outside of my salary. Well, I do love a challenge so the not-for-profit world it was!
First thing was to use what I knew. Build events that people would pay tickets to come to and do in a way financially that the profits could feed the funding needs of the non-profit. Over the next several years, I became known for creating the go-to events resulting in several of my last events hitting ten thousand attendees!
It was at one of these over-the-top events that my life changed dramatically. To set the scene, I rented the Dallas Arboretum which had one of the largest wood floors in the city that had floor-to-ceiling windows facing several acres of manicured gardens. Lighting, food, a live band, and entertainers of all sorts were helping to create a once-in-a-lifetime moment.
I was feeling particularly proud when a gentleman named Russel Hollaway came up and asked a series of questions… Such as what you did about Certificates of Insurance, how did it go with the fire department, power issues, etc. The same questions I would have asked someone else in the hope of replicating them in the future. After maybe 10 minutes, he asked for me to come work for him doing events full time, not just locally, but globally.
After saying yes and ensuring that the not-for-profit was set up for success, I was literally on a plane to London to plan a dinner for a thousand people in the wax museum Madame Tussauds. Let’s just say that the next four years were a massive learning curve.
I had to figure out how to convert electrical currents so that equipment would continue to work regardless of where we were in the world. Or how I was going to lay two thousand square feet of carpet in a third-world four-hundred-year brick square. It was an education that I could have not gotten from any book.
After many years, I decided it was time to go out on my own. I moved to Florida to start fresh but didn’t know anyone. I ended up taking a job as catering manager for the Hyatt Regency Piers Sixty Six in Fort Lauderdale as an entree-level catering sales manager. It’s during this time I find my second favorite thing… Weddings.
Much of my future clientele ended up being couples creating an event that would adequately share their joy and love with the rest of their friends and family. Not only was I able to use years of experience in creating an experience, but I also had an incredible group of banquet captains, servers, bartenders, and Directors that taught me all of the ways of the hotel.
From the moment a person drove up to the hotel until the time they left our doors, there was a plethora of opportunities to create moments that added to their joy in their stay. A kid that had forgotten his teddy bear randomly found a new one in his room. The opportunity of creating a brand new vegetarian dish for a client that had just gotten so tired of eating salads on vacation all of the time. Surprise and Delights. Because the big stuff matters, but the little stuff matters more!
I spent the next seven years working my way up in the hotel world until my last position as Director of Catering for Ritz-Carlton. It was then I realized that I had the knowledge I truly needed to start my own event company. There wasn’t going to be a location, situation, or opportunity that I wouldn’t be able to handle.
Even Covid provided an opportunity to start a podcast called Behind The Veil where we get to speak to some of the biggest names in the event industry but it was primarily used as a way to get important information out to couples and hotels during the pandemic, Answering questions about what happens when moving your event, what happens to the deposits, what should couples get in writing, even how to talk to your parents about having to cancel the wedding.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg! I haven’t even gotten into the details of doing amazing things like Mark Cuban’s 40th birthday, comedian Michelle Buteau’s Wedding, or the thousands of events that I have had the privilege of my client’s trust and faith in creating
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Ha! Has it been a smooth road? I can’t think of a person that goes into business for themselves that says it was a smooth road! The first thing I had to overcome was self-doubt. There were things in my past work that I was amazing at and there were some things that took me time to learn, but these were on someone else’s dime.
The good and the bad would directly influence whether not I could feed myself. It is said that a lot of people in the event industry are not good at business because they are creative type. I agree wholeheartedly about this. In all my experience, running my own business was not one of them so I had to learn.
I’m going to mention Covid but I think you have a pretty good idea of what that has been like. Self-worth was a hard challenge. By that I don’t mean am I pretty enough, talented enough, or am I smart enough. This is more of what are my skill sets worth to other people. It’s one thing to say I’m so good that this place would fall apart if I was not here, it’s another to say I’m so good that I am going to charge you twenty grand to plan your wedding.
When I first started, I was way undercharging. A friend said to me after I had been in business for about a year. Take the total of the monies that you charged, and then divided it by the number of hours that you worked on it, then take out staffing, purchases, gas…. basically everything that it took for you to put on that event.
Now, look at what you are left with. Well … I was left with … nothing. I was working harder than I had ever worked before and realized that I was right back at my first job. I was running a charity for no money. After I reevaluated my pricing, I doubled my rates. And the business continued to come in. A year later, I doubled them again – and the business continued to come.
Just recently I raised them again and this time the customers still came but they were different. I was now attracting a higher level of client that had the means to pay my higher rate, which in turn allowed me to do higher-end weddings, and I also could let go of doing Day Of stuff to pay my bills. Everything is a learning curve.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Keith Willard Events LLC?
Keith Willard Events is a social and corporate event planning company that specializes in kind weddings. On the corporate side, I have handled the relaunch of the iconic Duty-Free company to 3Sixty Duty-Free and More. Additional high-end clients include Heesen Yachts, Super Yacht Magazine, Eclectique, Roger Dubuis watches, Tiffany’s, and the NFL just to name a few.
On the social side, I created a ‘backyard barbecue and concert’ for Mark Cuban with John Mellencamp and his band. More recently my events include the wedding of comedian Michel Buteau who Stars in “The First Wives Club”,” Always Be My Maybe”, and “Someone great”. NFL Dolphin Long Backer, Taybor Pepper’s surprise proposal to his girlfriend at The Oceanic Restaurant, over five hundred weddings ranging in size from backyard affairs to multimillion / multiday events.
My clients know that I am hardcore about getting a response back to them as soon as possible. It’s not the question that causes the most stress, it’s the time waiting for an answer. That’s why I don’t have any “bridezillas”. Bridezillas are created because of a lack of communication or being misled about detail or the intensity of planning particulars.
I’m also big on providing as much information as possible – including mentoring. I speak at our local colleges and universities, I provide internships so up-and-coming planners get to see what it is like, and I’ll spend an hour on the phone with a bride who I know does not have the budget to include me, but I want to make sure they have the right information to make educated choices.
I’m also the immediate Past President of the National Association of Catering and Events for Broward and Palm Beach Counties and a repeat professor for Junior Shark Tank, So that just seemed like a lot of words …. What I’m trying to say, and what I hope my life has emulated, is that I love this industry. I love the people, the companies, the clients, and the events. I have a passion for making a moment happen that guests will remember for the rest of their lives! We get one chance, and I never take that for granted!
Any big plans?
The future includes doing more of what I have been doing! Our weekly Podcast just hit 50,000 listeners a week, and I want to keep providing fresh content that continues to increase that number! The idea of having a weekly live podcast that is life. We do no editing, so what you hear is what is said, and sometimes there is a whoopsy – but that is what makes it so fantastic.
Recently we had some bigger names like Colin Cowie, David Tutera, Monte Durham, and CeCe Todd, and what I loved about their episodes is how truthful they were. Not just about what it took to get where they are now, but some of the adversities they had to deal with as kids, as people that weren’t the norm, or didn’t look the way they thought people should look. It’s those moments where you see the human under the celebrity.
As far as the business, I want to keep doing what I love to do – which is to put on a perfect wedding. And I don’t mean my perfect wedding, but my client’s perfect wedding. The idea that Love equals Love which is Love which equals love is becoming a reality for more and more people. My clients are no longer just brides and grooms, they are grooms and grooms, brides and brides, and Them and Theys. Happiness knows no bounds and neither does the opportunity to be creative for future events.
Pricing:
- Partial Wedding Planning – $6,500 to $9,500
- Full Wedding Planning $10,000 to $20,000
- DIY Brides – Day Of Plus – $3,500 t0 $6,500
Contact Info:
- Website: www.keithwillardevents.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/keithwillard
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/keithwillardevents
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/keithwillard
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/c/BehindTheVeilByKeithWillard
- Other: www.bit.ly/4BehindTheVeil
Image Credits
Suzanne Delawar Photography, Light Sky Photography, The Wedding Traveler, The Cardonas Munoz Photography, and Vanilla Brides Photography
