Meet Sarah Johnstad

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sarah Johnstad. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sarah below.

Hi Sarah, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?

Developing grit and “resilience” is in my opinion, one of the most crucial traits you MUST develop to survive as a business owner, especially as a female business owner.
You would think that being a luxury wedding planner, you wouldn’t need grit or resilience. BUT LET ME TELL YOU!
Even in 2024, some people don’t respect or listen to a woman in charge.
I have realized that to make it in the business owner world, you have to have a rock-hard tough skin and TRUST yourself.
I was raised by two parents who worked extremely hard while I was growing up. My mom was a district manager for a large corporate company, constantly gone working. My father has been a Firefighter and Paramedic for 25 years as well as a Dive Rescue scuba diver. I have watched my dad go through and grow through the hardest, traumatizing and difficult things in his career.
I figure that if my dad can make it through 72 hour shifts on no sleep, and deal with trauma+physical exhaustioin, I can handle my career and standing up for myself as a female business owner!
The BIGGEST piece of advice I give to fellow female business owners is to ALWAYS trust your gut. Always.
The only times I have ever ended up with a nightmare client, in a bad situation or dealing with something I don’t want to ever deal with again, It’s because I ignored my gut feelings/intuition.
Learning to trust yourself, your opinions and your beliefs will get you SO much farther in business and in life then cute business cards or a catchy slogan.
Work hard, treat your clients right and VALUE your instincts/intuition.
You are stronger and more capable then you realize.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

I am the CEO and Lead Planner at Three Sisters Weddings, a luxury wedding production company in the PNW.
My company is breaking boundaries and opening doors for more people like you and me (aka: not millionaires) to have the luxury wedding of their dreams!
Three Sisters Weddings provides an all-inclusive suite of wedding services! What would normally take hiring 4-8 vendors for, we do for our clients!
-Custom ceiling drapery installation
-Custom dancefloors
-Luxury florals using live AND fake florals
-A huge rental inventory
-Full wedding planning services and custom prop/decor fabrication.
I am a mother of three young daughters, hence the name “Three Sisters”. They are 9, 7 and 3 years old.
We are actively teaching business ownership, responsibility, money management and people management to them as they get older and help more on wedding days.
Our oldest daughter Paige (9) frequently assists me on 12-14 hour wedding days, assisting the clients, lighting candles and watching what goes into a luxury wedding.
Our dream is to bring awe worthy weddings to more clients in the PNW.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Oh if I could go back and have 15 minutes with my pre-business owner self… the knowledge I’d pass on!!!
Here are my top three tips to someone just starting their business, especially if you are a female business owner in the creative world.

1.) DROWN OUT THE NOISE
Aka: Be yourself. Do not focus on what everyone else is doing, they are already doing it! Focus on what makes YOU different and unique, and DON’T hide it! Being yourself will inevitably attract the clients you want to work with who value you for you.

2.)START THE RIGHT WAY
Legally and correctly form your business before starting to DO business. Trademark your name, so if you make it big, no one can steal your identity from you! Find a good accountant or CPA and start things correctly from the get-go. We made the mistake of trying to do state taxes/accounting ourselves the first year… oh my gosh. NEVER again.

3.)BE EASY ON YOURSELF BUT HOLD YOURSELF ACCOUNTABLE
Realize and understand that you WILL make mistakes, learn from them. Own it, try your best to fix it and move on. Don’t beat yourself up and feel horrible for forever. We are all human here, and no one gets it perfectly right 100% of the time. If you see a pattern that is becoming an issue, try to set boundaries for yourself, and learn new habits to avoid those mistakes in the future. Oh. and ALWAYS have a rock solid contract.

Who is your ideal client or what sort of characteristics would make someone an ideal client for you?

The DREAM wedding client who we would kill to work with has some of the following traits:
-They are creative, or let us be creative for them and trust our vision
-They prioritize their vision, ideals and experience on their wedding day, over what their family/friends think
-The know how to have fun! We love having fun with our clients and going above and beyond, if you are fun to work with we will overprovide every time!!

Basically, it’s a couple who actually love and enjoy each other, want a great and fun wedding day and want a phenomenal team of vendors to do it for them.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.3sistersweddings.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/3sistersweddings
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/3SistersWeddings

Image Credits

B.Jones Photography
Ashley Deans Photography
City and Soul Photography