We recently connected with Josh and Tara Joseph and have shared our conversation below.
Josh and Tara, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.
Tara: That has kind of evolved over time from when we first started. BPH became our holding company and really our culture.
It all started with Edgehill Music Publishing. That was really to get our foot in the music industry. It was about just bringing incredible talent in and helping to facilitate getting their songs into the world. As that developed, we realized people were coming to us from all over asking us different questions about business aspects in general.
So, it went from just being able to have a purpose of helping musicians and artists in the music industry to how can we help different aspects of people and business in general? We ended up building out what is now Big Plan Holdings in so many different areas because we realized that we actually had a purpose of being able to help facilitate growing businesses and give them advice. With that, we continued to realize that our business had endless possibilities. That’s how all the verticals ended up happening in our business because we realized all these different opportunities were coming to us, and now we were able to develop off those.
The purpose is just growing.
Josh: We didn’t really have an identified purpose out of the gate other than we figured we would dabble in something together. Tara and I in the music publishing business. I often lose sight that’s how this all started and has mushroomed into something much larger and much more significant, both from a business standpoint as well as a philanthropic standpoint over the last few years. It really has taken on a life of its own.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
Josh: Big Plan Holdings is an authentic atypical family office that is primarily focused on real estate, cannabis, music and entertainment, professional sports, fashion, and philanthropy. I characterize us as an alternative investment vehicle, not your traditional family office that makes passive investments. We are more along the lines of making investments in deploying our own capital as well as our investors’ capital into alternative investments that folks typically wouldn’t see and taking an active role in those positions. We also have a family foundation called The Joseph Family Foundation, which is our philanthropic arm.
Tara, primarily, has curated a very authentic family feel to what we have at BPH, our platform, and the people that work with us. We have a music publishing company called Edgehill Music Publishing with a great roster of songwriters, producers, and artists.
We’re also involved in hospitality. We have three bars and restaurants opening in the Nashville area – two downtown and one in an area called 12 South, which is just a couple of neighborhoods outside of the core-urban downtown market. Two of those three are going to open by November [2023], and the other by next spring.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Josh: What has helped us is communication. It has been critical. It’s been a new journey for Tara and myself as well as our family through creating Big Plan Holdings as a family office and actually working together. We’ve always been pretty solid communicators in our family, and I would say that has been a mainstay and has continued to be a core foundation of building our business with our daughters, Sydni and Sophie.
I’ve been involved in a couple of prior companies that have started up, and I’ve had partners in those. So being able to find and work with the right partners in building those companies and putting people as we would hire them in appropriate places within the organization is extremely crucial.
Find the right partners and employees and put them in the appropriate places that fit their skill sets as they start working with you. This allows you to delegate and your team to continue to build.
I read something recently, which was very insightful, that to build a successful company, the ability to find the right people and delegate appropriately can do the job to 70% of what you think you can do it. If you hit that 70% threshold with someone in the right position, you’re going to find continued success. So, I think finding the appropriate places for folks is very important.
Having done that before in a couple of companies has been very helpful from that standpoint.
Finally, expose yourself to new areas of knowledge and various new adventures. Tara has opened my eyes to new adventures and new opportunities. Our friends and coworkers that we surround ourselves with have done the same.
Tara: Along similar lines, I would say surround yourself with people who are different or bring different qualities to the table than you do. When Josh and I became partners through marriage, and then business partners with our daughters, we all discovered we each bring different strengths to the table.
Josh is very business-like, and business minded. I am more of a creative. By working together, though, he’s found his creativity and I’ve built strengths on my business side.
We both were able to offset, bring those different qualities out of each other. That’s super important when you’re picking a partner or partners. Find those qualities that you each have, but also be able to help bring out other qualities that you don’t realize that you have in each other.
This also taught us to never pigeonhole ourselves with one idea or stick to just one strength. Not everything fits perfectly into a particular box. There are so many ways of looking at something.
You also must take risks. Entrepreneurs truly make a difference in this world because they take a chance to bring something new or unique to the world, but that doesn’t happen if they don’t take risks or have the ability to step out of their comfort zone.
That’s what we’ve been able to do at BPH, and we’ve been able to help others feel like they’re able to do it, too.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
Josh: Yes, absolutely. Tara and I have a podcast called The Big Plan podcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-big-plan/id1626591689), and we just recorded an episode about this topic.
We talked about partners and our experience with them. There are, of course, pros and cons to having partners, but I think having partners is a good thing. Surrounding yourself with folks that are smarter than you and can add different synergies to your respective skill set is integral.
We have investments and opportunities that we are considering from coast to coast. We also have an active investment in the music, entertainment, and film space in the Middle East, which is very exciting.
We have partners in virtually everything we do. However, with that said, we are typically in the control position even when we do have partners.
But there are projects that we’re involved with where we’re not fully in control, and we would love to continue to collaborate with people. We really enjoy it.
We’re always looking to meet new people that can add value, whether it’s from experience in certain industries to access to different opportunities, investments, or access to new investor capital that we don’t have. Those are all very important to us.
Our potential partners must be good, solid people. That must check the box right away for Tara and me. We need to make sure that they’re good human beings, and after that, everything else must fall into place.
You can find us directly through our website at bigplanholdings.com. There’s an opportunity to access us either via email to Tara, tara@bigplanholdings.com, or me at josh@bigplanholdings.com
Tara: We’re always looking for new investors and partners. We vet our opportunities up and down, in and out. There are some unique things that come across our table and we’re always looking for people to share them with.
If there are things that come in the music space, the fashion space, or something else that you can bring to the table, we’re willing to listen.
Josh has vast knowledge in real estate and cannabis. That comes about quite a bit so we are able to share our knowledge with others, but finding the right partners is not only just in what they can do on a day-to-day basis, but investor partners, people that are in financially just as much as we are because we do find that that it does make a difference in how involved you are as a partner. We’re always interested in collaborating and looking for that.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.bigplanholdings.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bigplanholdings/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bigplanholdings
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/big-plan-holdings/
- Other: https://shows.acast.com/thebigplan
Image Credits
Britt Hart Katie Larson Sara Kauss Ford Fairchild
