Jared Judge: 0:02

event professionals? Welcome back to another episode of the Denver NACE podcast. I am your host and music director of Extreme Strings, electric Violins, jared Judge, and today I'm joined by a special guest, another member of our lovely chapter of NACE. Welcome to our podcast, Luis Martinez. Luis, how's it going? It's?

Luis Martinez: 0:21

wonderful Thanks for having me on here. I've been excited to do this and I'm just kind of getting involved with NACE, as we just became members earlier this summer, and so I'm excited to be here, thanks.

Jared Judge: 0:33

Yeah, awesome. Well, welcome to our chapter. Hopefully you've had a chance to enjoy some of our programming before the end of the year. But we are not here to talk about NACE. We are here to talk about you and Lucia Event Design Services. So I guess let's start kind of from the basics. Tell me a bit about you, and I know that you work closely with your wife on some very cool things in our industry.

Luis Martinez: 0:57

Absolutely so about me. So I got involved with the wedding and event industry. Obviously my wife, shannon Martinez. She owned the Olive and Poppy, which is a floral design studio, and so she started her business, I believe about 11 years ago, and in that short time frame she was doing really small weddings to where we were providing a small 50-guest wedding out of the back of an SUV, right, we were traveling around and we were hauling all the flowers and all the candles on the back of her, her Jeep, and so I'd be sitting at home and she's like, hey, do you want to go help me strike my event? And I'm like, what is that? Do you want to go help me pick up my stuff? And I'm like, why don't you just say that? So I started, I went with her and we had our first one.

Luis Martinez: 1:43

It was at Villa Parker and I don't know if you I mean, I'm sure you have, but wedding cake is probably the best thing ever, and so when I got there to help my wife, like they were offering wedding cake and so I started eating wedding cake and that didn't help my wife strike anything. The second time I went, when there was a wash park boathouse, and same thing happened. They gave me a whole like pan of a cake, like a sleeve of a cake, and I was like, what am I gonna do with this? So I thought that every time I went I was gonna get cake with my wife and I was like I'll go anytime, you need me to help. So but what happened was is I started to see a deficiency of not just only the labor, but at night, right, like you've been around industry sometimes at night, like some of these venues are not the backside of these venues are not in the best areas. You know what I mean? It's poorly lit, um, alley traffic. There's people around, especially in Denver, you know, even the four seasons downtown. You know you get caught in a box truck down the block, you know, and I'm not saying anything's bad, it's just you, our, our, our industry has been when I started in here. So my wife was heavily female and it still, it still is right, um. And so I noticed that night that there were people struggling with getting their stuff in cars. They were working on short time frames, like it was dark out, you know, and and at the end of the night, like everybody's just in a hurry, they're like throw it in there and get out of here, and so I started to notice the deficiency in a couple of different ways.

Luis Martinez: 3:10

And this time I worked at the mint, at the us mint, so I was a machinist there and I was making the dyes that strike um the coins. But it was a great paying job. It was a six-figure job, and I love what. I didn't love what I did. I loved the fact that I had a full-time, 40-hour workweek job with benefits, but I hated what I did. I hated the culture. I hated, not hated. It just wasn't me.

Luis Martinez: 3:32

And so I really started to catch this idea of what she was doing in the industry and I was like, hey, I've had 30 years of experience because I started out in the city of Commerce City doing large fireworks shows city of City of Commerce City doing large fireworks shows. City of Thornton doing huge festival events Thornton Fest, Winterfest, harvest Fest, huge and then went to Adams County did fair and rodeo, and so it's been inside of me where I've done large event work and so I took a leap of faith in 2018. And I was like you know what? I think I want to sit down and really look at this labor side of the event industry and I started the strike crew in August of 2018. This labor side of the event industry and I started the strike crew in August of 2018. And I did maybe about 20 events that year and I had about three people that worked for me, right? So, and then in 2019, I went to about 350 events and then went to about 15 to 20 people that started working for me, um, and so it was.

Luis Martinez: 4:21

It was it was drinking through a fire hose. You know it was drinking through a fire hose. It was really learning how to provide labor and logistics for people who do things differently. There's not one way to do things and so we learned a lot. We learned a lot over the last five or six years on just what the wind and air industry needs and, to be honest with you, jared, this is a luxury service, right, like that's.

Luis Martinez: 4:48

The hard part about this is that we're providing a luxury service. And so, over the years, what we've done I believe what we've done with Strike Crew is we've brought the awareness of labor and a lot of people now have their own in-house strike crews. You know a lot of people that we used to work for. Um, now don't hire us rightfully so, because you know we are actually our luxury labor, you know we are luxury uh product, and so they started their own. So it's been really cool to kind of what we do isn't wasn't trendsetting, but starting a company to help provide with the labor has kind of pioneered a couple of things, you know, for people in-house and things like that. So and it's just um led us over the years as growth happened, right like.

Luis Martinez: 5:36

So I talk about my wife, like she was doing one wedding you know of like 10 or 12 tables and we were hauling it in the back of an SUV.

Luis Martinez: 5:44

The other day she went to go do a styled shoot and she could barely fit one centerpiece in the back of her vehicle. Yeah, so so you can see the growth, right Like you can see just massively the change of things, and it's not like how we want to do now is focus on the big and the luxury and everything. It's now, with us coming together and combining our company and having a lot of skin in the game and being around the industry for quite a while. We want to create a community, right Like we want to create community over competition. You know how can we better serve the community instead of trying to take people's business or trying to be all things to all people. Instead of trying to take people's business or trying to be all things to all people. Yeah, and I think that's what's kind of separating us a little bit now is that we really want to help the community. We don't want to try to work against or separate ourselves. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, that makes sense.

Jared Judge: 6:42

Well, that's, by the way, congratulations on you know having an idea and then just going for it. You know that takes a lot of guts. I would love to dive a little bit deeper into the Strike Crew story, because that was some impressive numbers that you just threw at me. Yeah, you know, starting out with, you know, single double digit events and then literally over 10x and 20x in the next year, how did you accomplish that kind of massive growth from a marketing perspective? You?

Luis Martinez: 7:07

know what it was super like. So having a wife that's already been in the industry and having those connections, literally what I've done, 75 to 90% of my business came from emails and Instagram, right, so all I did was I reached out to my wife, started sending me like hey, reach out to this for us, reach out to this florist. And it's crazy because, over the growth of time, right, like our perception of how we look at things, right, like you know, I remember certain florists that we've worked for was like Holy cow, like we're working for this florist and they're big and we were. We were learning, right, we were learning how to do arches. We were learning how to do arches. We were learning how to do, you know, backdrops. We were learning how to do bars.

Luis Martinez: 7:46

So I was learning all the mechanical stuff and the construction stuff I knew, but the finesse stuff and then turning it from like design, right, something in design is it's got to be lightweight, it's got to be, you know, something that withstands a lot of movement and it's got to be practical, and so that's hard, that's really hard in our industry. So I really tried to learn how to bring practicality into the labor side of things, right, because that's where most people struggle with is like, oh my god, I can produce this big, great event and I can do all these things. But the execution part is where it's the hardest part, because that's where you have so many variables. Right, like, yeah, everybody has their set times. Where it's like, okay, we got to load in at 10 o'clock, yeah, but one vendor's there late and their truck is in the loading dock for another hour and a half and and now we've crunched an hour and a half time frame and you know.

Luis Martinez: 8:39

So we've had to learn how to adapt and learn how to come up with different ways to get things done. And I think that's been really cool. And I think we're doing that with me having the experience and going and telling people hey, you don't have to go pick up your stuff, we can get a van for you, we can come to your shop and we can pick it up for you and load it. Oh my God, are you kidding me? And so that's kind of how we started to grow this. And I'm like, oh my God, are you kidding me? And so that's kind of how we started to grow. This was like let us do what you don't want to. Yeah, I love that.

Jared Judge: 9:10

And that's been the key to it. Yeah, that's awesome. And then I also noticed that on the Strikers website, you are probably one of the few events industry people that has a mission outside of just making the events go fantastically, and once it's cleaned up, it's cleaned up. You know, it seems like you hire people based on a specific principle and you support an underserved population.

Luis Martinez: 9:34

Do you mind talking?

Jared Judge: 9:35

about that a little bit.

Luis Martinez: 9:36

Yeah, some of my personal story, and my wife too, is we're both in recovery. I'm coming up on 17 years, alcohol and hard substances you know, my wife was kind of, she just celebrated, uh, sobriety congratulations. And so I think with us like having a servant heart and understanding, like to me being in in recovery, being a spiritual man I'm not trying to weigh off here so I think think the principle is, when you're of service to people, good things happen in your life. Right, like that's. That's just a paradox. Like you'd be of service, you help people, good things happen. It doesn't always work out that way, but that's the truth of it, right? So there was a lot of people that helped me. It was a lot of people that offered a hand to me and said I see you, I know you're not a bad guy, I know you've had a rough time and I'm going to help you.

Luis Martinez: 10:26

And some people in the industry, a lot of people in the industry didn't really know my story until they knew me. Right, because I'm fully sleeved, I have all the tattoos I have. I can be a very intimidating presence and I can change my demeanor in a heartbeat, because that's where I come from. I come from the streets, I come from this rough area. That's where I come from. I come from the streets, I come from this rough area. But that's not who I am. Right, it's the fear that wants to take over and the fear that wants to guide me into being a really tough, mean guy. But who I really am is a kind, caring, compassionate man who wants to help people. And so when people started giving me the opportunity, I know what it was like when I was first getting sober and trying to get a job. I know what it was like trying to get out of certain situations and trying to put one foot in front of the other. And there were people in front of me that helped me do that. And I want to be, I want to have the ability to give people that opportunity Right. And so it's been amazing Like I've.

Luis Martinez: 11:20

I've watched some of the greatest stories. You know we have one working for us right now. You know, love. She's got a pretty characteristic story and she's got a pretty colorful past and she is, she is one of the bright spots in our company. You know, everybody knows her, everybody loves her, everybody sees who she is. You know what I mean and and yeah, we come with a little bit of baggage. We come with tattoos and we come with certain things that have you know, kind of tells our story, but it's not who we are. And I'm trying to break down that, that idea of of who you are, by a perception right, like I want people to to, to see perception off, but when they've encountered with them they're like oh my God, these guys are the greatest things that have ever worked for us and that's kind of what we get Now.

Luis Martinez: 12:05

Here's the caveat You're still dealing with, say people right. So that's the hard part is that you can give all your heart in the world and people will still turn around and shit on you. You know what I'm saying. So that's the hard part that comes with it and that's the kind of the part that kind of makes you a little bit scarred or kind of want you want to stop doing it because everybody's vetted. You know, it's not like I'm allowing criminals on people's sites or anything like that. I mean everybody's. And there's a lot of people on these sites that we don't know their story and we don't know their past, and so I'm not trying to make any big deal about that, but I make sure I vet everybody. I don't deal with anybody that has theft and I don't deal with anybody that has child theft. So there are certain standards that we still uphold with doing that.

Luis Martinez: 12:50

But for the most part it is people that are looking for a second chance and in my experience you get the right one. They will do everything they can for you. There's something to prove with somebody who's been given a second chance and really sees that light. There's something to prove and there are a lot of stories that we have that are remarkable. You know what I mean.

Luis Martinez: 13:14

But there are the ones where we we it's, it's hurt us in a way.

Luis Martinez: 13:18

You know people come out of halfway homes and then they don't have a ride, they don't call, no call, no shows, and so we really kind of watch where we kind of put those people in play.

Luis Martinez: 13:29

A lot of them stay at the warehouse and help us until we can see that they have some level of commitment or something to go out and do that. So it's not like in the beginning it was right, because it was me learning how to do this and then I saw red flags. I'm like I shouldn't put some of those people on site or I need to watch this a little more and so it is still what we do, but it is not the basis of how we hire anymore. I mean, we're getting too big, we're on multimillion dollar sites you know what I mean Like we still have to make sure we're doing things the right way and going outside and hiring through Indeed hiring, through hiring sites and stuff like that. But yeah, it is a big part of my story and it is a big part of of who we are. You know, we're a very, we're a very colorful group and I think we've shown the wedding event industry that you, you, you you're wrong by by judging by perception. Do you know what I mean?

Jared Judge: 14:18

Yeah, I love that. I mean thank you for doing that. That sounds really amazing. And it also sounds like you know maybe that is you've mentioned you work at such a large scale.

Luis Martinez: 14:30

Now Like I wonder, that's probably how you figured out how to scale a workforce was by starting from the ground up and dealing with issues as they came up, developing systems and processes around that think the biggest thing is is for people. Well, not people, I think my experience is is that when you're looking at the labor so you're looking at the event side of things nothing can happen if you don't have bodies to put the shit up. Nothing. I don't care who you are like, you can design all the greatest things in the world, but if you don't have fabricators and laborers, nothing's gonna happen. Right, and I'm noticing that those guys, once you give them a sense of worth and then you explain the importance of these things I've watched a couple of our guys just awesome and it's you know take off on a whole new level right now. The caveat of that is you train these guys to be really good.

Luis Martinez: 15:22

Well, it's a big wedding event industry, right like I. I. I have a lot of people that have worked for me, that are working for other people right now. I've trained them, I brought them in this industry and at first I used to take that really personal. I used to be like wait a minute, you can't go to work for that. I trained, I showed you, I introduced you to these people, but understanding that and understanding like I don't have a monopoly on this thing, and then there's so much to go around for everybody. So much to go around for everybody. That's where the sense of left has stopped. And they come back with, like we're training and we're losing all these people because they're going and helping other people or we're training them to help the industry. Like what do we know? You know what I mean? So, yeah, it's kind of the turn we've taken on it now. Is that community over?

Jared Judge: 16:04

competition. I love that. It's that abundance mindset. There's more than enough to go around.

Luis Martinez: 16:14

Absolutely hey, even if you're helping your competition, you're making the world a better place, and that's been my experience with personal like, right Like, like. I've battled some of the worst addiction. I mean I was homeless, you know what I mean. I was living in Mission Viejo Park 16 and a half 17 years ago. This time right now, this time 17 years ago, I was living in Mission Viejo Park right before the holidays. I had to break into my mother's house on the day after Thanksgiving because they didn't want me in the house and I liked her cooking. You know what I mean.

Luis Martinez: 16:38

And so there's a different perspective on things, right Like. I know what bad is. I know what being down and out and broke is. I also know what being on top of the world is right, like, and so there's a. There's not a far, there's not a far distance between both of those, the distance in between that is service. You know what I mean. It's doing the right thing or it's being selfish and doing the wrong thing, and either one of those will send you either way right.

Luis Martinez: 17:06

And so in the industry, you see it, and if you're around long enough, you see a lot of those people who really, really, really do work for themselves. They become successful quick and then all of a sudden they find themselves standing alone going, well, wait a minute, like why is this not working for me? Well, it's because you've been so selfish with it. You know what I mean, and I've been there. I've 100% been there. I'm not saying I'm different. I've been there. I've wanted it all for myself and I got all the people and I got everybody working for me and then I suddenly I was like great, you guys can run it. Now I built this and now I'm going to go work on my other business and it hurt me. It hurt me tremendously. You know what I mean. I stopped caring about the small, important things that started my business for a moment. You know what I mean.

Luis Martinez: 17:52

I started to see that hurt me and it was the relationships. It's all personal relationships. Everything is the personal relationships and I wasn't nurturing those relationships. I was depending on guys that I was bringing in to nurture those relationships and they weren't doing it. It. So you know this order of success kind of screws with you, right, like I got really big really fast and I'm like, great, here we go. You know, now I'm gonna go start my next adventure. I didn't stay with the like the, the nuts, like the nuts and bolts of it right, like the compassion they carrying the service, like I'm still there but I wasn't doing it personally. So that's what kind of has hurt and ebb and flow of the harp is. Yeah, wow, that's. That's a kind of has hurt and ebbed and flowed our business.

Jared Judge: 18:29

Yeah, wow, that's a very great lesson to learn. Like, as we're all in various stages of our business. I'm curious, you know, I really do believe in everything that you're saying. How could the industry as a whole embrace this concept of uplifting each other and even just bringing in people that we may not have otherwise given a chance to be a part of this industry and grow them in the way that you have? How could we be a part of this?

Luis Martinez: 19:00

I think we need to have more conferences or lunches, just lunches. Nobody provides anything, nobody. Nobody provides like it's not a donated, you know lunch, or it's not a donated floral, it's not a donated speaker, it's not like you know. We have a lot of these nace and and with uh and the alliance and all these things and they're amazing. They're all amazing and and you know, they survive on having people sponsor and do all these things. And I think what that does is it categorizes certain people, right Like. It puts people in a nice category or an event category or a category and they go do their own things and sponsor some of those events, right Like.

Luis Martinez: 19:42

I think we should just start doing lunches just to, hey, bring a lunch, we've got a room, let's all sit down and let's all start talking. There's no agenda, right, you will, as I do is when you start talking about the event industry that energy starts. Right, and all of a sudden, if you can just start simple communication and you can just start having people sit around, you will start to create the community. You will start to create that community over competition, because I think right now is that you start to see like, oh, I'm not a part of that. So I'm not really gonna engage. Yeah, you know what I mean and I'm not a part of this. So I'm, I see it, I like it, I support people that are in it, but I'm not really going to engage.

Luis Martinez: 20:22

And a lot of these different chapters are providing valuable information in certain areas, right, right, and so and I get it they're all fees and we need to do that, right. But I think I think sometimes we put down this, this blanket of like I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here and just collectively just say, hey, let's all sit down and just have a chat. Like, let's not make any keynote speakers. If you have an idea or you want to share something with somebody, I don't know, you know what I mean. Yeah, things like that. Like just just increasing, um, the level of us getting together and and and sharing, I think a lot of people are afraid of they share their recipe for success, like people are going to run and steal it and go make it theirs and it's not going to be successful anymore, right, like yeah, it's wrong for sure.

Jared Judge: 21:07

That's where it's. The only unique thing about a business is the people right, you can't think about this.

Luis Martinez: 21:14

Don't think about the industry though. Think about like, think about the wedding event industry as one business, right, like you have a lot because the wedding event industry is, you got to love it or you don't do it. It's very true, you know what I mean. Like it is not the best hours, it is not the most convenient time and you're around a lot of people who are in high stress environments and they're all trying to do the same thing, and then, when the event's over, everybody's like oh my God, I'm so sorry I did this. Oh my God, you know what I mean. And that's just. That's just the lifestyle we live in, right, and I think, if we can slow that down a little bit and not make it about competition and not make it about if you're a part of this or you're a part of this, we just start bringing that industry in as a whole and start filling the gaps on like needs and things like that.

Luis Martinez: 21:57

Right, because that to me, because I'm in the softball world, right, like there's a whole other thing. I own a business. I own a 5280 fast coach. I own my indoor hitting facility. I work with 50 hitters a week. Like my life is run by teenage girls like I'm the butt of every joke you can think of. That's very funny. And so we have a lot of different organizations and leagues and this and that and stuff, and so it's the same thing. With battling more right, you get a lot more to this competition and it separates. It is what I'm saying yeah, for sure.

Jared Judge: 22:29

I love how honest you are about everything. Um, I'd love to. Just because we're we do have a time limit here. I'd love to learn a little bit more about lucia. Would you mind sharing us about that and what you and your wife do together now?

Luis Martinez: 22:43

yeah, lucia is just the combination of years, right, like I've been doing large work for 30-some years. She's been doing flowers and she's been a florist for over 20-some years, owning her own business for the past 13, I think 12 or 13 years and we just saw how big we were growing. My company Strike Crew has literally helped her company grow because we were able to provide the labor and staffing and so we started to see that it's like holy cow, like you've grown tremendously and it's because we've had this labor logistics team right at her beck and call, like right at the service, right, and that's happened for a lot of other people a lot of other floors in the industry. So you can see helping them grow and, like I earlier, they started to create their own strike crews and their own labor and logistics teams within Right. So with us, you know you're either growing or you're not. Like you know, it's either a choice of what you want to do. So it's based on like the choices that Shannon and I have, like the goals that her and I have, and it's not like we want to be orphans to all people, but we're in the prime of our life right now. My daughter's a junior in college. You know what I mean, and so you know we have the ability to do these things when we have the love and passion to do these things right. And so that's where we combined Lucia, as we brought our all of our knowledge base together.

Luis Martinez: 24:02

And I'll be honest with you, man, in December the first part of December we had had our roughest year last year. The first part of December, we had had our roughest year last year. We had a huge, explosive, expansive year, but financially, we were losing things in certain areas because of growth and because of things. And then, plus, I went through a personal thing with my old indoor facility that I had to go through, and stuff like that in 2022. It was a really rough year last year and we were literally thinking of we're done, we're throwing in the towel. You know what I mean like yeah, and I think a lot of vendors have said that after, like yeah, a large wedding where they're like I'm never doing this again. I I'm done. You know what I mean and I think I think this industry is really good at doing that yep, um. And so we just said our business coach, chris starkey um, you know he's a great man. He's been my business coach for about three and a half years now. So he got both of us together.

Luis Martinez: 24:57

We decided to combine our company and go full decor and everything, and it's been over the year. This last year we have started to come in and we've got a labor and logistics department, we've got a fabrication department, we've got a pipe and drape department. We are now a full warehouse full of decor, lounge sets, furniture sets and all that. And then we have our labor and logistics team and then now our design team has grown two to four designers, full-time designers, and so it's just been a year of massive growth. And I think truly what has happened to us is that Shannon and I have come together and we work well together, like, oddly enough, like we're a married couple, but we do work well together, and I truly believe it is that sense that her and I have with, like, our recovery background and the ability to put service first and things like that.

Jared Judge: 25:54

Yeah, well, that's awesome. I mean, if we had time, I'd love to learn more about how do you make working together work together, cause there's that's kind of a hard thing to accomplish A husband and wife duo.

Luis Martinez: 26:07

We communicate we communicate very well, we have our moments at night and plus coming from recovery, right Like I, like I don't share internally what's going on. That's where bad decisions happen, and and the bad decisions always aren't against anybody else. The bad decisions are sometimes against me. I'm not good enough, I don't deserve this. You know what I mean. Like they're better than me. Why even try and so a lot of those things, just personally.

Luis Martinez: 26:30

In business itself right now, you get two people that are doing that and sometimes, if you catch both each other on the same day, it can be toxic. It can be really toxic. So I think for us, it's me working with my sponsor and also working with our business coach, who keep things very level-headed, and just the ability to have tough conversations right. And then we separate it. We have a time a night done, we don't talk about it, it's not here, it doesn't come into this part, it doesn't come into our realm of our marriage or anything like that, and we become a married couple that aren't in business together. So it's been a huge work in progress. I'm not trying to say that it's been perfect. There's been some massive blowouts, but some of those blowouts have needed to happen for us to grow in our group.

Jared Judge: 27:09

Yeah, that's awesome, super inspiring. I was just thinking to myself like this is the kind of beach and talk that we need to hear in NACE. Like you know, the content we get is good and I like a lot of the speakers, but none of it has been this real and maybe this personally applicable. So I appreciate you bringing it to this podcast. I'll bring it up If you're interested. I'd love to kind of like this to our board is like we need this kind of stuff too.

Luis Martinez: 27:39

Let me know, like I said, I love doing it. I love being raw and vulnerable. I'm a coach. You know what I mean. I coach 10 year olds to college kids athletes and it's like I love. I love getting people uncomfortable to make change. Yeah, I like being the trendsetter. That's the one that says, eh, that's tough. I'm like good, let me do it. Please, let me do it because I'm okay with it.

Luis Martinez: 28:01

I'm 100% okay with failure, because I've been sleeping under a tree, waking up by a sprinkler head at 630 in the morning. Yeah, it doesn't get much lower than that. You know what I mean. And so failure is to me, it's a perception, it's a mindset, and if you're okay with failure, that means you're going to be really good at success. Yeah, I love that, that's awesome and that's what I try. That's what I want to instill in everybody. It's like look, I'm not trying to come after you, but I'm also a bull that, if you allow me and like you're going to like passively lay down and we're moving forward. Like watch out, watch out, that's business, that's who I am. But at the same time, if you show some kind of compassion, I'm going to reach my hand out and help you in a heartbeat. Yeah, because again there were people there that have done that for me in the lowest times of my life, in the lowest times of business, and I don't forget that.

Jared Judge: 28:58

You know what I mean. I can't forget that. Yeah, that's awesome, very cool. So, with Lucia, tell us about, like, some of the most extravagant designs that you put on.

Luis Martinez: 29:02

Oh my God, we're really known for hanging installations, right, like, really known for hanging installations. We did one, Spruce Mountain Ranch. We did it for this lady, her niece, mary smith. Um, she's a friend of ours. I did her 60th birthday party in tampa, three days long, five million dollars, like, um, it was extravagant. So she had a niece getting married and picked us to their floors, to spruce mountain range, and we did this 40 foot hanging chandelier. Wow, I mean 40 feet long, and it had, I mean it. You go to the website. It's purple light and you'll see it.

Luis Martinez: 29:36

Um, you know, and, and it's just been my wife's designs, are she designs based on the fact that, knowing I can hang it? Yeah, and that's kind of been how it's gone, and now we've shown our teams how to hang it. So big, extravagant designs have been part of what we do now Big, more floral, getting, getting, getting the big wow, getting the big wow factors in the pops. It's, it's scary right To hang anything in the air, suspend it, you know, and to go bigger and bolder. It's like the first thought is, what if this doesn't work? Right, like our thought is, our thought process is so negative and so that's what we're trying to do is break down those barriers and check this out. And so just recently, um last weekend, on the 12th, on 12, 12, 24 we did a wedding in aspen. We couldn't say much about it, um, because it was a nascar driver. Oh, wow, and uh, it just got published so you can find it was um, ryan blaney, nascar driver, ryan blaney. So we have, uh, the write-up right here in people magazine.

Jared Judge: 30:39

I don't know if you can see, yeah, I'm just pulling that up right now.

Luis Martinez: 30:42

Yeah, that's awesome and so if you go through that article and it talks about, it says you know, winter enchantment, it's the beautiful floral installations, and you clicked on that and our company is linked in the people magazine. So, hey, congratulations, yeah, thank you. So it's, we've been involved. You know we've done um, victoria secret models, and it's just, it's, it's, I don't care who we do it for, I really don't like.

Luis Martinez: 31:09

It's great that we, you know, get that. I just care that the people we do it for are happy. I don't care if you have five hundred dollars and a million, you know that you're spending on floral. You know that's where we pride ourselves because we took away our minimums. Right, like again, you start growing and then all of a sudden it's like well, we got to do this, we got to do this, we got to do this.

Luis Martinez: 31:30

But then you're starting to exclude everybody else who got you right. You know what I mean. And so we've taken away our men's and we don't care if we're working for a nascar driver or if we're working for betty lou who wants to get married out in her backyard. I, I don't care, we're gonna give you the same love and appreciation. And so that's where lucia grows, like right, we can do these huge, extravagant installs and we like to to make ourselves uncomfortable, like we like to grow to like can we do this? Let's figure it out. You know what I mean. Let's go. You know, and that's kind of been our thing is God's got this, god's got this right, like a hundred percent. Like if you're a man of faith, you know, you practice it, you got to believe in it and to believe in it and that's kind of think.

Jared Judge: 32:18

What helps us grow is like if we're doing things, the right way and we're doing it for the goodness of our heart and we're making sure it's honest. We gotta fail, we gotta lose. I love that. I think that gives us permission to try things like. I think there's a lot of fail.

Luis Martinez: 32:28

Yeah, I tell my haters all the time I need you to fail. I need you to fail hard. Please fail hard, because that means you're giving me the effort and we're going to learn how to correct it. Now, obviously, you don't want a hanging install to fall right, but you want to push yourself to some uncomfortability, so you're learning in the process, and I think that's where the big events and the big stalls and big things that we've done have been extremely scary. But we have a lot of experience now, like dealing with fear. We have a lot of experience that, like is this going to work? I don't know. Let's do it.

Jared Judge: 33:00

Yeah, that's amazing. Well, luis, I have loved hearing your story and and your wife's story and Lucia and the strike crew. This has been also amazing. I definitely would love to like connect with you more and share what we talked about with the rest of NACE, so I will be doing a little bit of following up on my end. Was there anything that I missed asking about in our remaining couple minutes here?

Luis Martinez: 33:27

No, I think, with mine and my wife and who we are in this industry, we've got a colorful story. We have a pretty hard past and I think we're not ashamed of that and I think that's what's catapulted us into the people we are in business is like we're not afraid to fail. We're going to say yes because we want to help you out and we're really, really trying to do it very, very humbly. I think that's the key right Bringing humility into this and and understanding it's like we don't want to be all things to all people and say, hey, look at us, but we do want to be all things to all people and say, let us help you or how can we do this together? Right, you know, closing this like something a little bit about me and my wife. Like we're getting ready to launch.

Luis Martinez: 34:11

I've been working on my nonprofit for for almost three years now, and so it's called the martinez foundation and so we have five initiatives in it, um, and it's uh. The website is not up yet, but if you send me your cell phone, um, I can text you the link and you can check it out. Yeah, right now. Yeah, and uh, what it is is it's, uh, providing food for kids that can't um afford it on the weekend, backpacks and stuff like that, providing sports scholarship opportunities for kids that can't afford sports, even youth sports, rec sports, it doesn't matter.

Luis Martinez: 34:45

Senior connection, helping seniors, you know, adapt and survive and just get grocery shopping or whatever. And then we have Generations United, where seniors are going to sponsor the youth and youth are going to sponsor the seniors. Then our last program is called Lose Lunches, where I've got a food truck where I take it into low-income communities and provide food and provide hygiene bags and provide doctors, dentists, all this stuff. So all that's getting ready to come out next year and it's mine and my wife's initiative on who we we are on giving back to the community. I grew up in calmer city, poor community out there, and so that's kind of where my base is going to be. Is is really diving in and and bringing, and so what I'm saying this for is because I really want the wedding and event industry to like grasp this I absolutely could see it being grasped like that's amazing.

Jared Judge: 35:34

congratulations and and thank thanks for doing that. Yeah, like I could totally see. Let's, let's set up a conversation, because I think we need to get some, some balls moving for this. I appreciate you.

Luis Martinez: 35:45

Yeah, absolutely, let me know what I need, you know what I can do to help you guys, or you know if you want to come in and, like I said, I love, I love the people, part of people, man, and like I, said I love.

Jared Judge: 35:54

I love the people, part of people. That's awesome, very cool. Well, this has been incredible, like one of the most inspiring episodes I've ever, ever done. So I appreciate you providing that inspiration? Yeah, where would our listeners go to find out more about you and Shannon and the different companies that we could interact with?

Luis Martinez: 36:16

Everything is on lucia eventscom Awesome.

Jared Judge: 36:19

And I'll spell that out.

Luis Martinez: 36:21

Yeah, and that's our website and then Instagram. So we have two Instagram pages and what we're doing with our Instagram is we're going to kind of like, so the main one is Lucia events, kind of like. So the main one is lucia events, um, and then our uh, other one is, um, what we're doing it's kind of like a behind the scenes and, um, it's called, uh, lucia strike crew, the strike crew awesome. So we're, yeah, so we have lucia strike Crew and what that is the BTS for Lucia, and so if that Lucia Strike Crew goes in and shows all the labor logistics is set up and kind of the builds and all that, and then the Lucia page is where it shows all of our, our events. But Instagram is the biggest one and stuff like that, so it's it's awesome.

Jared Judge: 37:10

So, and then, just if you were going to go and check that out, it's lushaeventscom Dot com. Yes, fantastic, luis. Well, thanks for being a member of NACE and for joining us on this podcast To our listeners. Thanks for tuning in. Hope you guys got as much inspiration out of this as I did and connect with Luis, connect with Shannon, and can't wait to see you at our next NACE meeting. Take care everybody. Bye.