Kyle: Welcome to Great Things Tampa Bay. We podcast about great eats, great places, and great people in the Greater Tampa Bay Area. I’m your host, Kyle Sasser, a Tampa Bay native and realtor. This is episode 19, Markets for Makers.

This is the Great Places feed of the Great Things Tampa Bay podcast where you will only hear episodes related to parks, stores, events, shows, and things to do about town. In our main podcast, which you’ll find under Great Things Tampa Bay, in addition to these chats about entertainment and events, we also cover great eateries and delicious grub as well as interviews from the great people, movers and shakers in the area. You can find our main feed at greatthingstb.com or you can subscribe to us on iTunes or Google Play just by doing a search for Great Things Tampa Bay. Thank you and enjoy.

This is Kyle Sasser with Great things Tampa Bay and I’m here with…

Natalie: Trista Tripp and Natalie Nagengast.

Kyle: Of?

Natalie: Of Markets for Makers.

Kyle: There we go. Yeah. So I found you all on social media and you all are doing some pretty cool and great things in the area. I even overheard, and I’m sorry but I got ears, but you all are looking to expand all the way out to like Lake Wales. Was that it true?

Natalie: Yeah, we’re doing a little, tiny market out there. We’ve been working with other festivals. So it’s been fun. Whenever we get to put a little…even if it’s a tiny amount of local, we always jump at the opportunity.

Kyle: So if you’re anywhere in Tampa Bay, all the way out there, and including Tampa and St. Petersburg, you’ll definitely wanna listen to this, because it’ll be some good stuff. So tell us a little bit about what you all do.

Natalie: Yeah, so we run markets, so we run a lot of local markets in the Tampa Bay area. We’re kind of focusing more as we get bigger on bigger markets less often. So we have a lot of handmade, and we have all kinds of items you can find in the markets. A lot of them are a lot of mom and pop shops and food trucks, etc.

Kyle: So this definitely isn’t like the crap fair, as my wife calls it.

Natalie: No, and it’s not a farmers’ market. That’s where a lot of people get that wrong.

Kyle: Like a lot of markets you go to, you go and everything is basically sourced from China…

Natalie: We do a lot of boutiques because we feel like those have been hand curated and so it’s fun because we get to pick out boots that are not just handmade but they’ve put something together, they took something and they upcycled it, making something better.

Trista: It’s different. We really curate our markets.

Natalie: Sometimes people don’t necessarily hand make it themselves, but they’ll design a T-shirt and then they get it printed.

Kyle: So you all do actually vet the people that you have at your markets. You’re not just taking all comers…

Natalie: Oh, it’s funny. In the first 2 years, we had about 1200 applications and I think we rotated about 400 to 500 out of that 1200.

Kyle: That’s impressive actually.

Natalie: We are very picky but we look at a lot of aspects to each person and each booth and that has been part of the success of our company.

Kyle: No scrubs at the Markets for Makers.

Natalie: No, it’s really hard.

Kyle: How did you all get started with this?

Natalie: I had a handmade jewelry company a while back and I was attending a lot of markets in St. Pete and Tampa, and there weren’t any in Clearwater. And so, I kind of had this idea of, “Oh, let me just put something together, like 40 booths and that way I don’t have to drive so far.” And so, I put something together and it was October of 2015. And I had the first market, we hit 60 vendors, and I found this perfect spot in Downtown Clearwater. And the city was amazing in getting us started and it exploded. It went amazing. So many people turned out because my background is marketing. Basically I had 60 booths and then by November, we had another huge turnout. By December, I went in front of the Downtown Development Board and asked for funding. So they gave us $15,000 right off the bat to get us going and we put all of it into marketing.

Kyle: Very nice.

Natalie: I know. It was awesome. So we got huge.

Kyle: Was there a name for that market? Would people know it?

Natalie: Yeah, it’s Pierce Street Market. So it was on the waterfront in Downtown Clearwater. Basically, we got so big after two years that the city put the whole market out for a public bid because it was of a certain size. And so that’s when I brought Trista on. She came in to kind of…first of all, I had to figure out, “Okay, how are we gonna win the bid or not win the bid, and if we don’t, what are we gonna do?” And Trista’s background was in consulting, go ahead.

Trista: So I basically had a background in consulting for businesses and I was doing that in Hawaii at the beginning of this year, which was really fun and really nice but…

Natalie: She got a really nice tan.

Trista: I had a great tan. I really liked it. But Natalie came up to me and basically, the timing was just perfect. And I was done with the job I was working in Hawaii and she needed help, and I loved the whole idea of it. Because this again is like helping small businesses and it’s helping bring the community together and that’s something that I was just very passionate about. So I came in. I also have a background in fashion as well, which I know is kind of interesting but because of that, a background in PR and helping with that aspect of things. So coming on here, I could bring what I knew about all of that previous stuff into this.

Natalie: And she’s from LA, so she brings a whole big city vibe to our company. I’m from the Midwest. I’m from Indiana, so like, “What do I wear? What do I wear for this TV shoot or photo shoots?”

Kyle: And you’re the, “Uh-uh. Uh-uh.”

Natalie: She knows it inside and out. My style has gotten 10 times better. The girl boss vibe is on point.

Trista: On fleek, as I like to say.

Natalie: Yeah, on fleek. [inaudible 00:06:19]. And so she and I together, we’re able to transition the company over to basically doing a lot of night markets. We got that started before we found out about what direction the company was gonna go in and we’ve just been hustling like crazy.

Kyle: So you started with the one in Clearwater. What markets are you running currently?

Natalie: What happened with the public bid was that two other companies bid and unfortunately we didn’t win the bid, which for us was incredible because that pushed us forward as a company. So what it did was we weren’t even really thinking about night markets. So when we found out that the company could be moving and transitioning into something else, we started the night markets. And so that’s at Ferg’s and the last one was in December.

Kyle: And that’s Ferg’s in Tampa, right?

Natalie: Yeah, downtown across from the Amalie which they’re gonna be moving because of the whole Water Street project. It’s gonna be interesting but everything has exploded for us. We have to be careful with how much we promote now because of how many people come out. Our fire marshal doesn’t like too many occupancy in a small area.

Trista: Exactly. It’s been so successful to the point where we just don’t have to barely market at all. We still put a lot into it because it’s important to us but the fact that we don’t have to is kinda cool.

Natalie: We’ve gotten this reputation and that’s been amazing. And so when we found out about Pierce Street with her, we’re like, “Okay, what do we want to do as a company? Do we wanna just do night markets? Do we wanna try to find a new location for Pierce Street?” I actually was vetting a lot of options for Pierce Street to see if we wanted to move it, but the truth is, is we’ve never been about trying to compete with any other markets. I want there to be more markets. I want all my vendors to do amazing. I don’t ever want to be the reason why someone doesn’t do well, like I had to call a vendor and…do you get what I’m saying? It’s just not what we’re about.

Kyle: High tide lifts all boats.

Trista: Exactly. That’s what we want.

Natalie: Exactly. And we never wanna be the reason why someone doesn’t do well. So the plan was to figure out what we wanted to do and we found a couple of markets that grabbed our attention, like the Renegade Craft Fair is huge all around the U.S. and unique in a way.

Kyle: I’m not familiar. Tell me about it.

Natalie: Yeah. There’s West Coast Crafts. It’s these large scale indoor markets where the booths are more expensive or they charge a door fee, and they are less often but bigger. So that’s kind of…

Trista: Highly curated.

Natalie: Highly curated and what’s great is that they’re not as often so that you can get better vendors, you can do a lot with those. So we basically decided as a company, instead of trying to get so much quantity, let’s work on quality, because we wanted to hire more people and when we looked at having lots of staff and lots of salaries, and we wanna pay people well. Our staff, we wanna make sure that they’re not just minimum when working for us. They’re supporting themselves. This is something that they get to do that they love but also be able to support their families. So we looked at it and this was the future for us. So Trista was incredible and found this warehouse in Ybor, which we’re sitting in Ybor right now because we have a huge holiday market this weekend.

Kyle: And if you all have been wondering about all of the noise in the background, we’re actually at the bunker down here at Ybor City. Lovely coffee shop.

Natalie: If we’re not in Clearwater in our office, we’re in some coffee shop in Tampa. We have a list of our favorites all over the area.

Kyle: This one’s pretty good.

Natalie: Oh, we love the [crosstalk 00:09:34].

Kyle: Also, I like The Hall on Franklin. I just did an episode on that.

Natalie: And then you got the Foundation Coffee.

Kyle: Yeah, that too.

Trista: And we have a great…what was thing that we always get there?

Natalie: Foundation?

Trista: A coffee that we get…it’s not coffee, it’s a tea. What’s this right here?

Natalie: Chai tea?

Trista: They have really good chai tea latte.

Kyle: They’ve got magical tea?

Natalie: Exactly. So we now have the holiday market happening this weekend. So we’re gonna have about 100 vendors for 2 days. And then, we’re bringing in now full beer and wine which goes 100% to a nonprofit. Yeah, we’re working on that one with the educational, it will go towards entrepreneur and entrepreneurs’ college, so that’s gonna be exciting. It’s our future. After December, we might do some night markets but the hope will be is that we have a night market on Friday nights and then we find a great location for Saturday and Sunday. So we’ll just ride out the weekend.

We have a holiday market that we’re gonna probably be doing annually and then anyone that wants to check us out, go check out our website which is marketsformakers.com. And we’re probably going to have, quarterly, a large market in the Tampa Bay Area. We found this amazing warehouse in Ybor, so the longer we can have it, we might do something every other month. At this point, we’ll try to…because we’ve painted the whole place. It has been quite a project.

Kyle: Put the heart into it.

Natalie: Oh, my gosh, and we’re so happy because it looks so amazing now. And so, we’ve that one and then we have an LA market.

Trista: We do.

Kyle: Exciting, exciting.

Trista: Yeah, we’re on bose [SP] coasts. I just said bose coasts, I meant to say both coasts.

Kyle: I felt that was like the cool new term.

Trista: Oh yeah, I just create new terms as I go.

Natalie: But we’re trying to expand into major cities so that way, we can have our own footprint in the big city.

Kyle: For a long time, listeners of the podcast, you might remember Alessandro and the Aoki Family, they’ve also been out in LA and New York and stuff like that. So I’m gonna try to hook you all up and you all can collaborate and…

Natalie: Oh, I love it. I love it.

Trista: I would love that.

Kyle: Get something done. There’s some good guys over there.

Natalie: Oh, yeah, it’s so much fun. Yeah, that’s our future. It’s is going to be hopefully all over the U.S. and lots of big markets less often.

Kyle: I love it. What do you feel is your most successful failure?

Trista: I think this will be our greatest learning experience and probably the thing that we’ll look back on as being so happy for it having happened.

Natalie: Yeah, it was a bit of a shock because for me, you create something, you put your heart and soul into it for a few years and to hear that it was going to be changing than what I had expected before. And I think that at some point though, I looked at it and was like, “You know what? I’m a little bit outgrowing this.” At the moment, it didn’t necessarily…it was a bit of a, “Oh, my gosh, what happened?” And then afterward, I looked at it and went, “Okay, this is a great opportunity for someone else to hopefully grow their business and then this allows me to take that next forward.”

But as far as small, little failures, we fight generators every night market. And that’s always fun.

Trista: When the lights are going on/off, on/off. Why won’t it stay?

Natalie: I know our favorite amazing failure.

Trista: What?

Natalie: I talked Trista into getting a trailer. And we’re like, “Okay, we’re gonna get this trailer. We’re gonna pull up to all of our markets…”

Trista: And I was really not into it by the way. I was like, “Convince me, Natalie, convince me.”

Natalie: It was like a $5000 trailer. I’m like, “Okay, it’s so cute. It’s vintage. We’re going to get made. It’s gonna be amazing. We’re going to have all of our outside markets…” This was before we decided to the less often markets, so I was like, “Okay, we have to go.” And we only got a couple days to get there. So we literally were driving up to Chattanooga where this trailer is being built.

Kyle: Now, that’s a good drive.

Natalie: And there is a hurricane coming.

Trista: We were trying to outrun the hurricane.

Natalie: This was that hurricane that hit Alabama. It was like the fourth hurricane that came through. So we’re trying to outrun all of this hurricane and the wind. We drive up to Alabama…not Alabama, Chattanooga. We drive up to Chattanooga and we’re doing like 95 miles an hour to get there. It still took another like four hours. I feel like…

Trista: Every time we stopped to get gas, it added an hour.

Natalie: It did. Every time we stop for like 10 minutes, it was like, “Okay, another 45 minutes to get there.” So we go to pick this thing up and we buy all these tarps and we wrap it up, and there’s this like…

Trista: It looks like a narwhal.

Natalie: I know. There’s this huge pole sticking out the back, and we had to wrap the whole thing. We’re exhausted and we’re driving like…we were really ready to be…

Trista: We looked like complete white trash [crosstalk 00:14:01].

Natalie: Well, I had my slippers on and I had my…like I just looked terrible. So we drive up there, we wrap this whole thing, and then the brake lights keep going out. We’re driving it back.

Trista: So slow.

Natalie: It took twice as long to get home. We’re at the Florida and Georgia line, and it’s a two-way act.

Trista: We’re trying to outrun the hurricane coming at 20 miles an hour.

Natalie: And it’s the weekend… All the kids are graduating, so every single hotel is totally booked out. And so it was a nightmare and it was something where it’s still sitting in a warehouse of one [crosstalk 00:14:33] Shout out for Rockin’ Rhino which is an amazing company because they do collectibles, because they have been housing this trailer for a month. And we’re gonna have to drive the whole trailer back up, because we have to like put the skins on and we have to paint it. And we’ll probably just sell it because at this point, we’re not going to be doing as many outdoor markets.

Trista: It’s not what we’re gonna do. So it was a little bit of a waste.

Kyle: Yeah, but the one truth about being an entrepreneur and owning your own business is things never…you never end up where you think you’re gonna be. [crosstalk 00:15:03]

Natalie: The other thing was was the tarp kept ripping. So we duct taped it…

Trista: There was so much duct tape on this thing, we looked like crazy people.

Natalie: [crosstalk 00:15:11] I’ll send you a picture, because we duct taped everything. And then, we were fighting over the fact, like, “Oh no, you need more here.” These wires…

Trista: We kept 10 rolls of duct tape by the way. You can get the idea of how much duct tape was used.

Kyle: If you send that to me, I’ll put that up on the show notes, I’m sure some people will wanna…

Natalie: I will send you the picture. We looked like [crosstalk 00:15:31] a little smiley face on the back. One day it’ll be beautiful but we have to drive this whole thing back up to Chattanooga. And I’m like we’re just staying there for a few days and enjoying that beautiful area.

Kyle: Yeah, there’s lots of good stuff up there.

Natalie: Yeah, so that was probably the one time in which we came home after 25 hours of driving.

Trista: We wanted to kill each other.

Kyle: Yeah, that’s probably was not the best use…

Natalie: Yeah, we needed to take a moment after and…there were certain points when I’m like, “Let’s just put a Book on Tape on for a long time and podcasts.”

Kyle: There you go.

Natalie: It’s a really cute vintage trailer. If we could figure out what to do with it, we would keep it. I think we’re gonna probably fix it up and…

Kyle: Well, if anybody is in the market for some interesting trailer and they like the looks of it…

Natalie: It looks like an old Shasta. So cute.

Kyle: So where do you see yourself in five years?

Natalie: Our year plan this year would be to do at least five or six markets.

Trista: Major markets.

Natalie: Yeah.

Kyle: That’s 2018, right?

Natalie: That’s 2018 and we wanna be able to do at least 2 or 3 holiday markets, 3 different cities in December, and then more probably the next year. It’s a matter of how many can be done without going down in quality. So we are always slowly adding people to our team and it’s a lot to bring in a new market. It’s like starting a whole new company because you have to go, vet a lot of new vendors. But as we get bigger and bigger, we hope that our reputation gets better and better as it has been. We’ve exploded this past year and a half.

Kyle: Yeah, it sounds like it.

Natalie: No, 2 years we’ve been in business and we have now 50,000 plus followers.

Kyle: I’m still working to figuring out that section and space.

Trista: Oh, we love social media. That’s definitely our forte.

Natalie: Yeah, it’s a lot of constant…posting all of the time.

Kyle: So my forte is tenacity and follow-up, as you all probably know, because I sent out quite a few follow-up emails. [crosstalk 00:17:17]

Trista: So we appreciate that, we appreciate that..

Natalie: When you’re juggling…I don’t know, I probably answer around 100 to 150 emails a day.

Kyle: The one rule in sales is most sales…and I consider this sales because I still do on interviewing, but most sales happen on the ninth or more contact.

Natalie: Ninth or tenth, yeah, I read that.

Trista: As entrepreneurs, as business owners, we appreciate that. There’s so much going on all the time and it’s so nonstop. It’s the person that keeps persisting and keep going for it.

Natalie: That’s how we are, too.

Trista: Those are people who, like, yeah, we need to do this.

Kyle: Or have the software to remind you, which is my case. Is there one problem that you wish that you could solve right now?

Trista: More hours in a day.

Natalie: Oh, my gosh, that’s…

Trista: If we could figure out how to get more hours in a day. We’re doing so many things that [inaudible 00:18:04]

Natalie: Well, the thing…I don’t know if you’ve ever had this with emails, but you come to your email box, check, “Okay, great. I have 75 emails I need to get to today.” You answer them all and then you’re like, “Oh, my gosh, you still have 75 emails.” Because everybody answers you back. That’s why I love answering at night and I love answering on airplanes.

Kyle: Personally, I keep a zero mailbox policy. So I look at it two or three times a day. So like what my real estate clients would tell you, like I tell them, “If you send me an email, I’ll get to it but it’s not going to be immediate.” I just zero it out every day. I don’t usually read stuff. I just delete it if it’s not pertinent, just ruthlessly.

Natalie: I’m a believer in unsubscribe. Any time I get something I’m on a list, I’m quickly like “unsubscribe.”

Kyle: But please don’t unsubscribe to the Great Things Tampa Bay newsletter please.

Natalie: Oh, no way.

Trista: No.

Natalie: [crosstalk 00:18:48] That’s when I haven’t signed up for it and somehow they sign me up for some random investment something.

Trista: It happens more often than I like.

Natalie: It’s some random person in Kentucky trying to sell me houses or something…

Kyle: It’s true. I know, like me personally, because I have a list that I built over the years and whenever I start up something new, I use the list for that. I apologize but sorry, not sorry.

Trista: [inaudible 00:19:15] sorry, not sorry.

Kyle: Any memorable booths you’ve had to reject or cancel?

Natalie: There’s a lot of booths that are an amazing fit for our company but I don’t know, like there are some that are terrible, that we don’t really know what they did, they are like upcycling something and they have no idea what they’re doing.

Kyle: Like hot-gluing shells on the things or something?

Natalie: That’s a big one. That’s a really big one is like hot-gluing shells on to random items which sometimes have no purpose. But what I say is that there’s a lot of markets out there and sometimes they’re just not a good fit. I know our target market and I know the right fit for our target market is women between 20 and 40. And so I happen to be one of those women and so I put items in the market that I would personally buy. Sometimes I put items that I would maybe buy for my parents too, but I really don’t have any grandparents around, so I don’t really know what they would buy or not buy. So we tend to stick to specific types of vendors that do all kinds of different things like candles and…

Trista: Totally, all of that. We also find that between 20 and 40, I just wanna touch on that, those are the people that are buying the most as well, spending a lot of money.

Natalie: For us, we have a lot of boutiques. We have a lot of, like I said, candles.

Kyle: I don’t think about going to markets other than the times that my wife is like, “Yeah, let’s go,” and I’m like, “Uh, all right.”

Natalie: Exactly. So we try to put some men’s items in there. We have beard care and…

Kyle: It’s appreciated.

Trista: We do think about you guys.

Natalie: What’s been great about the night markets is there’s a bar. So the guys go to the bar and the women…

Trista: Yeah. So it’s kind of a win-win.

Natalie: But you know what’s funny, because there’s a lot of amazing artists, like fine artists, and they try to get into our markets and they’re not the right fit because most of people, they’ll spend anywhere from $10 to $50. So when you bring in a couple of $100 item, they’re just not gonna buy it.

Kyle: Yeah, it’s tough. I couldn’t imagine dropping $2000 or something on a piece of fine art.

Natalie: Hey, that’s when you have made it and I feel you don’t really make it until, unless you’re really lucky, until you’re 40 or 50. But even then, it’s like, I don’t know, for us, if you have a lot of money and you are our age, you’re gonna be investing it into real estate.

Kyle: Please give me a call.

Natalie: Exactly. [inaudible 00:21:20] Most people, if they had a great following and they’ve got some really great products, that’s awesome. Sometimes, there’s fair food, and we don’t really… We just know who we are.

Kyle: No fried butter at Markets for Makers?

Natalie: No, not with us but you can go to the state fairgrounds. [crosstalk 00:21:36] experience. So you need to know who you are and embrace it.

Kyle: Yeah. Gotta hit the market.

Natalie: Exactly.

Kyle: So what exactly does it take to get a booth at your market?

Natalie: So our website, marketsformakers.com, has all of the markets listed and then you can apply. Some of the applications have a small fee, anywhere from $15 to $25, but others are free depending on our timeline. And if it’s a newer market we tend to try to incentivize people in and once we fill up, we’re full, that’s why we have a little bit of a fee is because it covers a lot of administrative costs.

Kyle: Yeah, and there’s always administrative costs.

Natalie: Oh, and try to make sure people are really serious about the fact that they really wanna be in the market because we don’t want people applying and then we never hear back from them. And so when we’re looking at a booth, we’re looking at their overall layout, their products. We look at their social media. The first thing I do, I don’t even look at the photos they sent me. I go directly to their Instagram and their Facebook. And I’m looking at how many followers do they have and how often do they post.

Trista: And it kinda shows us how serious they are about it. You know what I mean?

Natalie: Yeah, a person that’s more serious in trying to build their brand is going to be a higher priority for us to put in the market than somebody that it’s just a side hustle. If somebody has left their job…I remember there was this one company that was like, “We left our jobs to do this.” That was the company name. I was like, “What is this? What is it that you’re selling?” I don’t know if they’re still in business. I just know that they weren’t quite the right fit for us, but we love the passion.

Kyle: And honestly, I’m intrigued that you all actually curate your booths like that.

Natalie: It’s having a really amazing selection of vendors and then it’s also, for us, we’ve been really focusing on the vendor experience. And so we have, like for this next market that we have, huge Instagram walls, we have a whole Christmas wrapping station for free.

Kyle: Awesome.

Natalie: Yeah. So when somebody comes in the door, even though we have a ticket sale, then they feel like they’re coming in for a memorable experience. They’re supporting the entire market. What that allows us to do when we have a ticket as well for any of our markets is we get to take all of those vendor fees and dump it right back into marketing and helping promote those businesses inside the market. So that way, it incentivizes us as owners to get a lot of people through the door and so it’s a really great strategy that seems to be working really well for us.

We have our market this coming weekend and we have presold over 1000 tickets and e expect thousands of people out for the night.

Kyle: That’s pretty good. It’s almost like a self-driving machine almost.

Natalie: I’ll tell you about my [inaudible 00:23:59] I have to hustle in order to make sure that you’ve got people here. So your money is safe with me, it’s going into the user experience, it’s going into marketing and…

Kyle: And they can see where it’s going.

Natalie: Exactly and I love it. It’s so great. We want it to be something where someone walks in the market and it uplifts them, and we’re lifting an entire community. That’s the part of our game plan since day one, is know we could work…there’s a lot of different types of jobs out there and it’s great. Especially for you, you’re helping people find a new home and that helps the entire community.

Kyle: So two final questions. First up, wind or rain, what is the mortal enemy of outdoor markets?

Natalie: Definitely wind. You cannot have a market with wind. You can have a market with rain.

Kyle: Yeah. Those sandbags can only do so much.

Natalie: Oh, my gosh. You can’t even set up a table sometimes. Especially in Clearwater, it was just insane.

Kyle: What’s the funnest part about getting an outdoor market permitted, with the various cities and municipalities?

Trista: There’s fire… Oh, what is funnest part?

Natalie: There’s a lot of hoops to jump through and there’s a lot of people that could just say, “No, you can’t have this market.” We try to make sure we get the whole city on board with the entire idea of what we’re doing.

Trista: The funnest part is when we get the permit.

Natalie: Yeah, that’s the best part.

Kyle: You’re just like, phew.

Natalie: It’s literally like, “Please tell me we’re good to go.” I almost had a heart attack because we needed to make sure that we had the fire sprinklers in place for this big warehouse and it was [crosstalk 00:25:26].

Kyle: Fire marshals are always fun.

Natalie: It’s scary but it’s also one of those things where you have to, as a business owner, understand their job is to keep everyone safe.

Kyle: For those who aren’t familiar with it, if a fire marshal finds something an issue, it’s usually going to be $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 to… [crosstalk 00:25:42]

Natalie: It’s like, “Oh, by the way, you need to fix your sprinklers this time. Yeah, that’ll be $50,000.

Kyle: And it’s not like you need to add a whole new zone. It’s, “Hey, this needs to be four inches over this way.” I have had experience.

Natalie: Yeah, you get it. I think the one great thing about us as a business is that we understand that they are there for everyone’s safety. And if we can keep everyone’s safety our number one priority and really acknowledge that and tell them that’s what we’re about, they are a lot more easier to work with than trying to fight them. So we try to create a really great relationship with the community including anyone that is there because, for us anyone that’s in police and fire, we’re so thankful.

Kyle: Good stuff, good stuff. All right. Well, thank you so much, Trista and Natalie, for being on. If you people wanna know more, where should they go?

Natalie: marketsformakers.com.

Kyle: And we’ll have all this information in our show notes as well as I’m imagining a hilarious picture of a trailer that was towed all the way back from Chattanooga.

Natalie: Oh, yeah. Oh, my god.

Trista: Oh, we got a narwhal to show you.

Kyle: Well, thank you so much and check them out.

So I want to take a little bit here towards the end of the episode, just going to give a little information on what we’re doing. We’re lining up some new things for the new year here. One of the things we’re doing is reaching out to local bands and musicians, asking them to submit music that they would like featured on the podcast. We’ll probably put it in the lead-in and give a shout out to them in the show notes and also on the audio here. Pretty excited about that. I had a lot of great feedback in my initial asking who everyone would like to hear.

Things should be going pretty well here towards the new year. We’re going to be having some new episodes out. Specifically, there’s gonna be a Christmas episode coming out. So keep an eye out for that. And that’s going to be full of great stuff like where to go to see some cool lights, just holiday events, where to go ice skating, all sorts of cool things like that to make it feel like the holidays.

Segment 2. In England, there is a hereditary office known as the Queen’s Champion, and his job is to defend the monarch against any challengers. Whenever you hear the phrase “throwing down the gauntlet,” that is what this guy actually did. Historically from what I read, he would throw down the gauntlet three times during the coronation and he would basically call people out and challenge them to a fight if they wanted to try to challenge the claim of the new king or queen. And they also are the standard bearers, so whenever the king or queen goes into battle, this would be the guy next to him with the flag on the pennant and horse charging and all that. This is still an actual position in the English Order. It’s still an actual position and the current heir to the office is an accountant, which is relatively amusing.

Thank you for tuning into the Great Things Tampa Bay podcast. It’s been a lot of fun this year and we’re going to continue having fun next year. I would like to ask that you share a little bit. Just think of one person, just one person. Just share this with them. Just go to the website and share it with them. It’s really going to be through your referrals and your friends how we’re gonna build the following for this and make it into something truly awesome. I’m very appreciative of you all listening and looking forward to 2018.

And before I forget, if you like the podcast and would like to support it, all you need to do, just go to our website, greatthingstb.com. There’s a link there. You’ll see the Amazon logo. Basically, just click on that. That’ll take you to the normal Amazon site and just shop on Amazon as you would normally do. They pay us a little bit of a commission just for sending traffic. So if you’d like more content like this, just go to our website and click on the Amazon link. Thank you so much.