#25 Red Coat Rock Star Jenna Beagan

What do you look for when recruiting Red Coat Ladies?  Flexibility, ability to think on her feet, and multitask, always with a smile.  If you want to succeed in this Jewish Party world, you've got to understand the traditions and customs so important to our clients.  Always be learning!

Join Pat Blackwell here every week to learn and understand the traditions & vocabulary so important in Jewish celebrations. So glad you are here! 

Links mentioned in this episode:

1.   CLICK HERE to get the FREE DOWNLOAD JPM Top 12 Wedding Words the Best Vendors Know        
2.   For more information, check out the Jewish Party Maven website Click Here

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Transcript

25-red-coat-rock-star-jenna-beagan

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

vendors, jewish, party, jewish weddings, coat, lady, red, incredibly loyal, work, understand, ketubah, pat, amazing, venue, learn, execute, podcast, timeline, maven, dewar

00:04

Hello there and welcome to the book more Jewish weddings podcast. I'm your host Pat Blackwell. Today, we're going to interview one of our famous red coat ladies, Jenna beagan. As a Catholic farm girl in Minnesota, I certainly never expected to ever be the Jewish party, maven. But 4400 parties and 26 years later, I am indeed an expert at Jewish parties. I am fiercely committed to helping the best vendors, book more parties in this amazing, lucrative and incredibly loyal Jewish party market. Let's go. Hey, Pat, how you doing? I am doing just terrific. And I'm thrilled to be talking with you today. Can you give our audience a little taste of how you got started as a red coat lady? Well, long

00:51

story short, I worked in several venues in the Metro Detroit area, and saw parent running around and every time she was in an event, it just ran really smooth. And I just watched her and I was like, wow, I like what she's doing. And I think I can do that. And you know, so I went up and talked to her. And here we are,

01:11

and you do it very, very well. You have become one of my best recruiters and you're terrific at finding people with the best attitude and I love that about you. You always have such a great attitude. Tell me what you're looking for when you're recruiting red coat ladies.

01:25

Oh my goodness. So yeah, they're they're special. So this red coat special person cuz you know, we like the guys too. But I yeah, a Dewar, somebody that's a Dewar has lots of patience, super positive, very proactive. You know that multitasker, you know, somebody that's always, always working, and always smiling. While there were always smiling, just happy to be there. Just tons of energies feeds, you know, just make sure everything goes well.

01:56

One of the things I really, really appreciate about being a red coat lady is that emotions, Bond your memories. And so we're part of people's most memorable days in their whole lives. And I love to go shopping and have some clients recognize me and say, Oh, I remember when you were at my kids Bar Mitzvah, I remember when you were at the wedding and, and it's always such good memories that come rushing back for them and for us. And it's amazing to be part of those big days.

02:22

Absolutely. And, to me, it's like that special person, you not only have a good bedside manner, you know, you're tactical too, because you have to execute the day. And we're building relationships with people. And a lot of times, you know, we're building those very quickly. So it's got to be that person that can come in and really make people feel comfortable. And you know that they're capable of managing such an important day for them. And I know our red coat, ladies do that.

02:48

And it really does take a whole team of vendors to make these events happen. And one of my other favorite parts as a red coat lady is when some vendors come in and say, Oh, I was so happy when I read your name on the list, or when I saw your timeline, or when I walked in the door and saw you I knew I was going to be a good party, because we work very, very hard to make it possible for all those vendors to do their best job. We want them to have accurate information, we want them to have an accurate timeline, we want them to call the family by the correct name. We want them to do their best job ever for each and every client. And I love that they appreciate that and appreciate us for that. And we're a good team.

03:28

And absolutely, and pet you do such a great job of doing all that, that preparation for all of us, you know, and then as a red coat lady, I'm able to get all this information. And really, I mean, you said before that I scare you because I don't have too many questions, but you just provide so much information for me that I feel like I got it, you know, and then stepping into that day. You know, it just, you know, then you have to go and do your thing, but you really get us ready.

03:55

So what is your role as a red coat? Lady? Are you the chef? Nope. Are you the DJ? Oh, I got it. You're the the maid of honor.

04:05

No, no. I am, you know, we execute the day and we are all on the same team. And so that's what I love about it is that, you know, we go in and you work with kind of, you know, a different team every every week, you know, we come in there and we we learn and we start working with the same people sometimes and it's like, Oh, great. And so that makes it more cohesive. But, you know, regardless, we're there to help and help. You know, all the vendors you know, in addition to the client, just execute the most amazing day ever.

04:34

And I often describe ourselves as the extra wife for the day and that I joke a day. Yeah, almost a full service wife something. Yeah, absolutely. It's amazing. The things that we get involved in last week I was sewing on some buttons and putting on boot nears and fix in somebody's shoes and you were sewing up some flower girls dress and

04:52

Oh yeah, we were taking shelter for a tornado. We did that a couple weeks ago. And you know, it's never the same event twice. That It's always something different. So being a red coat lady, you just have to be very flexible and ready for anything.

05:06

I got to climb into the pool and get the table out of the way that was something new for me. Yeah, if I remember that I was there. Anyway, as a red coat lady, we work with amazing vendors. And so tell us what are some things you've seen that vendors have done very, very well, or maybe some oil vai moments where you thought, Oh, my gosh, if they understood what the tradition really means they wouldn't be doing that? Do you have some stories for us?

05:32

So the ones the vendors that do it very well, are the ones that you know, I, you know, we tend to work with over and over again. So I know what the Jewish, you know, community, they're very loyal, as well. So you start getting your name in there, and you start working with the same people. So these vendors, a lot of them, you know, the ones that do very well just understand the timeline, they know how to say the words and what they are. So just they understand the big picture. You know, the, the new vendors in this Jewish party world, you know, because we can't train the day of and so it's very hard and you want to be patient and be helpful. But there's, there's a ton of things like a venue that doesn't have the right chairs for the horror, you know, are they too heavy? Do they not have sides? The photographer that doesn't understand that the ketubah signing is an incredibly important part of the day, the venue that orders, you know, pizza for the band, and it's a kosher wedding, and they bring in ham, you know, and the pizza and just a lot of things that could be disrespectful. Instantly, I hairless

06:39

I love to travel. So I bring everything back to my travel brain, when you travel to a different country. If you know just a couple of words, it makes a huge difference to the local people to think that you care enough to try and understand what's going on or their language. And it's the same with Jewish weddings, if you don't make any attempt to learn their customs, or learn their traditions, or learn the vocabulary of what a ketubah is, what a yichud is what a kiddush cup is, then you're not doing yourself any favors. And you shouldn't be surprised that you're not working in this industry very long. This community is an incredibly loyal and referral based community. And referrals are like gold in this community. If you do a good job, they're gonna spread the word fast. If you don't do a good job, that word spreads, too. We work hard as redcoat ladies to make sure that everybody can do a good job. And one of the ways that we started doing this now as this branch off during COVID, is to start this Jewish party Maven, I'm sincerely hoping that a bunch of vendors will take this course and their business will profit because of it. In the course, we're teaching a bunch of vocabulary things we're teaching General, Judaic history. I mean, in terms of a couple of different kinds of things in the Christian world, there's Catholics, and Lutherans and Baptist, in the Jewish world, there's a lot of variety as well, there's orthodox, there's reformed, there's conservative, and they all have different rules. And understanding those rules when you walk into a place is important. I know I'm rambling on. But Jenna, you Oh, this

08:15

is great. I'm always learning from Pat. And I'm like, just like, bring it on.

08:20

You have brought all kinds of skills to your job as a red coat lady, and I so appreciate having you on the team. And I appreciate your being here with me today, we're going to wrap up this podcast by saying if you want to be a vendor in the Jewish party world, then if you want to start, you should sign up for our 12 Jewish words that every vendor should know. Check out the website, Jewish party maven.com there's a bunch of good stuff already there. And those courses are a great way for you to get confidence so that you can do a good job at Jewish weddings.

08:55

Absolutely. And my advice would be, you know, always be learning, you know, be prepared to ask questions. You know, anybody can learn this stuff. I know Pat is a farm girl from Minnesota.

09:06

I'm not just a farm girl.

09:09

Farmer you know, if she can do it, I can do it. And if I could do it, you can do it. You know, and and pat makes it easy because when I started with the red coat ladies and you know, learning Wow, a lot of this is Jewish to the Jewish community. I mean, I just dove right in and I was YouTube and Google and everything and I told her it was kind of confusing, you know, because of the resources out there. We're not cohesive enough for me are just find a little piece and it was just like, Oh my gosh, but she makes it you know, simple when it needs to be simple. And she dives deeper, you know, when need to be and there's always these actions to to, you know, take it basic or, you know, go go further with it. But, you know, it's an awesome resource Jewish party Maven, and I'm just so proud to be a part of the red coat team.

09:52

Well, thank you very much for being with us today. Jenna, and thank you for listening. I appreciate your listening now. You appreciate your reviews. We got a bunch of things in the show notes this week. So check it out Jewish party Maven.com. We got all our podcasts there. And there's transcripts of every podcast listed on our website as well. So, hope to see you next week. Thank you very much.