Vanessa Dineen is an inspiring Canadian entrepreneur. As the co-owner of Toronto’s Sash and Bustle bridal boutique, she and her sister have grown it from an 800 square foot space with room for only 1 client at a time, to a 5-room bridal experience and a staff of nearly 20.
Listen to the conversation with Vanessa and discover:
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Watch the video of the conversation below:
Steve Haase 0:00
Welcome, everybody, to the Superabound podcast. And we are super excited to have a special guest with us. Vanessa Dineen, Vanessa is an entrepreneur. She is the co owner and founder of one of the Toronto's area's best and most beautiful bridal shops called Sash and Bustle. And we can't wait to hear all about Vanessa's story and how she has created something so remarkable in her world as a business owner, so welcome, Vanessa.
Vanessa Dineen 1:16
Thank you, Steve. Thanks, Erin for having me. I'm excited to be here today and to share hopefully get to give a little insight into the bridal world and how we got here. Yeah, so
Ezrin Aquin 1:27
yeah, it's it's so amazing. We were talking before you hopped on Vanessa, about how it's one thing to grow from a small business into an empire which I think you have done, but it's another to also do that as you're growing in your own leadership. It's something I really admire about you is what you've been able to create. And I will say, you're, I think one of the very first entrepreneurs that we've had on the show that actually has a brick and mortar business like you have an actual store that people can actually go to you, which I think is really interesting, because we often talk to more online entrepreneurs. So I'm really excited to have you here. And thank you so much for for joining us.
Vanessa Dineen 2:19
Well, thank you very much. Yeah, it's been a definitely owning brick and mortars to challenge. And I'm glad to share, you know, kind of some of those challenges and what we've kind of gone through over the last little bit. I mean, I'm excited to just be a part of this with you guys. So thank you.
Steve Haase 2:33
Absolutely.
Erin Aquin 2:35
If you're willing, I would love because I know a little bit of your origin story. Steve does not and I would love to maybe share that with our audience, if you don't mind telling us like how you got started in creating one of the best bridal stores in Canada.
Vanessa Dineen 2:53
Cool. Thank you. That's, that's uh, I like to think that we're that as well.
Erin Aquin 2:57
That's not one of the best.
Vanessa Dineen 3:00
So I feel so lucky because I have the opportunity to work with my sister who's also my business partner, Andrea and I, we always knew that we were going to be in women's retail women's clothing. I think I was probably 12 And she was about nine when we made that decision, which seems incredibly young now that I think back and like my kids are about that age now. So how did I know where I was gonna go? But so when we were young, I was always drawing pictures of like, women and clothing and like I thought I would be this fashion designer one day I quickly learned that I do not have that skill set and I am not an artist. As much as I would have liked to be. Luckily my sister is very much that side of the brain. She's very creative. She's, she can really dial in on like, you know, on how like something is put together and the craftsmanship of it and she gets a lot of joy out of that. Fast forward. Several years we were in I was in college and about just about to go to college, I think and I called Andrea because I was thinking about going into school for business management. And Andrea was still in university or high school and I called him I was like, hey, you know, I'm thinking about going to school for management. Do you still want to open a store one day did that still like a line? She was like, I have no idea. I'm 16 like what are you crazy, like, perfect, done. Good enough for me. So I ended up going to college for business management and later on to university for marketing. Andrea finished high school she was in an art school she went into Ryerson fashion design program. And we always knew that you know, we were like kind of on this track. Both of us decided we were going to get jobs right out of school we were going to try and you know obviously we can make some money maker might pay off our debts. And Andrew got a job at fashion bustle straight out of university I would say roughly like she might have had one or two other little things in between. And I went in on her first day and you know, I got to walk into this dream world where like I had been like, you know what is this awesome place a beautiful wedding dresses. And she you know was showing me around and meeting me I'm like so where's the back room? Where's this? How does this place work? You know what's going on? And she kind of gave me the lowdown. I was like oh this like seems like something I could do seems like interesting. But nothing serious. At that point. Her and I were creating a clothing line kind of simultaneously at the same time. And it was a women's like dresses with prints screening and really pretty cute stuff. We went through those kind of motions of building our website, getting your business cards. I even kept running into all these roadblocks where like, you know, the business cards came and they were like all scratched out in black and then our website wouldn't go live when we needed to, you know, would do a photo shoot and models like when it wasn't working out. So we just felt like we were walking into like walls constantly. And the opportunity to we found out shortly, probably early 2014. That Sash and Bustle where Andrea was working at the time, was a for sale. And you know, she just was told hey one day, Andrea your dark jobs on Jeopardy, but I might tell the business. My mom heard this and me and Andrew were in the car with her and she was like, Well, that sounds like an opportunity. Why don't you guys like think about buying it and like so Andrea and I got on the phone with our grandfather. Who's a serial entrepreneur on tons of restaurants and businesses throughout the GTA his entire life. And I called him immediately and was like, What do you think? Like what do we do? And he was like, you know, we went over the financials. We went over the business. We talked about how it was operating. And it was a lot of negatives, I would have to say, but after you know lots of phone calls, and I was at the time I think seven or eight months pregnant. So me thinking about like, what am I going to do after this? You know, like I'm gonna have this baby and we're gonna go back to a job like where how's this going to work in life? And my grandfather said to me and Andrea, it was one of the last phone calls that we had about this and it was either you're going to do this and you're going to you know, spend a bunch of money but you're going to learn a lot and you're going to potentially fail and lose that money, but at least you'll have learned something or you're going to spend this money and you guys are going to succeed. I was like, Okay, sounds like I have no choice here. Either way, we're spending a lot of money. And luckily, but you know, fast forward now, nine years later, we're, you know, been very successful. We didn't lose that money. We followed his advice, which was probably some of the best advice I've ever gotten is to just like you know, jump in, go for it. And, you know, either way, you're even if you fail, you're learning something. And I think that's something that we've taken pretty literally through this entire journey, and something that we continue to live by even like as we even make decisions, you know, to this day, so yeah, that's kind of like how I got session muscle now. It's now we've you know, obviously we've gone through many other things and and growth but that's how we all came to be.
Steve Haase 14:21
That's very cool. So wise counsel. From your grandfather and then a leap of faith on the parts of you and your sister.
Vanessa Dineen 14:28
Definitely, definitely. Yes.
Steve Haase 14:31
Tell us a bit about your growth, right. So you take over the business now you're the person in charge How did you
Erin Aquin 14:40
and you have a newborn baby?
Vanessa Dineen 14:44
Yeah, that was that. So I was, you know, Andrew, and I made a promise kind of to each other in the beginning because I was pregnant, and it was, you know, I wasn't going to really be an active person for the initial part of it. And Andrew had been running basically the business. You know, obviously she didn't know it all at that point because she didn't the previous owner was there but so she took over for the first six months I was able to take over the previous owners position because it was very similar to my previous jobs, submitting orders and you know, kind of the logistics side of things, which is still where I would operate us. But we knew we knew we weren't gonna do anything right away. Me being you know, me and learning about Andrea and like I just was seeing how the business operated. We get about six months deep into this. My sister's got an arts background and I remember watching her and talking to her after her shift one day and she was like, you know, telling me about how people are buying dresses and you know, and how her process goes through the sale. And I was like so and at the very end she's like, tells me you know, they leaving and they're not buying the dress and I was like well, did you ever ask them to buy the wedding dress? And you're like, No, I can't do that. I was like, yes, you can you have to ask them like so the first step to our growth was asked for the sale, and it entered not having any business background and she was like, oh my so nervous. And I loved the first day when she started asking because she came home from work that day. She's like Vanessa, four to five people said yes to buying their dress. And I was like seeing you just had to ask. That was a huge step for her and for us in learning that we basically my first when we first bought the store, we only did one appointment at a time and you know that was great. But we learned very quickly. That one payment wasn't gonna support us and it wasn't really a successful business model for this store. So on my second weekend working this is like early, probably the end of 2014. I was said to Andrea, you know, like let's try and do two brides at a time we have a big enough space. We'll go to winners will close by like a $20 mirror and a couple of chairs. Because my sister was so nervous. She's like, we're gonna ruin our experience. It's not gonna be great. Vanessa was like, Okay, no problem. Well, let's try and spend $400. So we did, it's been foreign to us. We'd set it up. It looked cute. Luckily we already had kind of had to fitting rooms like places for women to change. And that next day that first Saturday, we like danced out of the store. It was like the most amazing thing we got to see all these women saying yes, clients speaking with other clients. We weren't ruining the experience. They enjoyed seeing that other people were getting married and that there was validation in the fact that you know, we were, you know, a busy successful business because they were seeing other people want to be there. And it was really all positive. And a bunch of women found their dresses that day. And from there, we knew it was like, you know, this thing's gonna be it's gonna be great. We're gonna take it to the next steps. So
Steve Haase 17:43
can I just pause to kind of pull out lessons. The two lessons we've learned so far are to ask for the sale and to test your assumptions, test your hunches.
Vanessa Dineen 17:55
Totally, definitely. And, yeah, we grew about a year and a half into owning the business we moved. We went from having about an 800 square foot space to almost 2000 In our second space. Which was amazing and you know, we got really got to see that development of clients working with each other. Having a bigger team Wow. Was that a challenge if you want to talk about challenges and growing a team? Because we do we're going to I know because like let me tell you that that was something I learned very quickly and we kind of forgot about that part. In the beginning. Andrea and I were like really excited, like, fly by the seat of our pants. didn't really think about anything. And then realize very quickly Oh shit, we can't do this all by ourselves. We need to hire people. We need to have others with us so that we can make this like, you know, available to more clients. But also, you know, so we can have lives outside of here. So
Erin Aquin 18:51
those kids we were having those kids
Vanessa Dineen 18:54
that needed to see them so yeah.
Steve Haase 18:56
Did you ever bring your kids into help at the store?
Vanessa Dineen 19:00
They're still pretty young. Help is probably not the right word to use. Yeah, I was just thinking the other day too, because like my son and my daughter both when they were really little, I took you know, basically didn't take a maternity leave the first time. And then the second when I had my daughter in 2017, I was able to add about your team, my sister, you know, we were a little bit more setup. So I was able to step away for about two months. And that was you know, a short amount of time so the kids were at the at work with me. We did a little setup under my desk. And now and again now they begged to come because they love it. They're really all they think about they don't even realize I sell wedding dresses. They think it's a candy store.
Steve Haase 19:46
Position. positioning is key. Yeah. How did you know that? You were ready for more space. Like did you just do the numbers? Was it was it a customer experience thing? What did that growth
Vanessa Dineen 19:58
was based around? Yeah, the customer experience we didn't want like our biggest concern was customer experience. In the beginning was that we thought we might wreck it and that we were going to take away from it because they had this one on one consultation, the whole store to themselves. You know, like I mentioned earlier, we could see that there was like people were enjoying seeing others so I knew that was like a driving factor. We were waitlisted to like, you know, four to five weeks in advance which you know, I didn't mind so much in the beginning but then I called the restaurant one day and I was like called and I was like trying to make a reservation on the weekend for like three weeks out and I couldn't get a table and I was like, that's frustrating. So immediately I was like That must be how my clients feel and that is not what I want. So there's like instant frustration or feeling like you need to like rush so that you can like be a part of our experience and I didn't want that. I basically want anybody that wants to come to be able to be to come but also enjoy it. And you know waitlist is good in some senses but I don't think a weightless five weeks in advance. Is what it wasn't what we wanted. And so that was a big driving factor. And so when we moved the first time so because we've moved twice now, that was the driving factor there for that move with our second move when we decided to expand again. So we did expand in 2019. Right, like, you know, made the decision 2019 signed the lease early 2020. And then our lovely pandemic came and decided to mix things up a little bit for us. So we moved again in 2020 Right, was it 2020 I think we actually moved in 2021. By the time the pandemic allowed everything to kind of play out. And that one was very much experience. Our Space prior to the pandemic was a Queen Street store about 18 feet wide with 100 feet deep so you know long and narrow like most clean street shops. It was we loved it except you know we're selling at that point we you know, one of our goals through that we'd been working on was to increase our average sale. When we purchased the store just for reference our average sale was about 1500 When we moved it was about 2800 So after our first move, we got it up to about 2800 Now it's it's closer to 35. So it's always like you know, trying to play with that I don't wanna get too expensive because I want to be accessible but my clients were seeing that I was pushing my price point. And I was offering stuff in that like five to $6,000 range. And they said Vanessa, like if you want me to spend money on this, I need a different experience. So so that was you know, not everybody said that but and I could feel it. I could see it I wanted that I wanted to give something different. So our current store now is an old Victorian home. We're about you know, five minutes from the old one on Queen Street. It's old Victorian home. You walk into beautiful open like showrooms and big space. And then upstairs well on the main floor, we have a fitting room but then upstairs we have another five so we have six fitting rooms total and they're all private. So you're not feeling like you know, if you want to spend $5,000 or $2,000 You don't know what anybody else is spending, you feel comfortable. You have your own space, you can really we can cater to each client and set their experience and make it different. So yeah, I would say experience was definitely the drive for the second move.
Steve Haase 23:23
It's fascinating to hear,
Erin Aquin 23:25
wait, oh, my turn, I want to talk. I want to ask a question. And I'm sure it'll go with whatever you're about to say. We have a psychic connection. I believe that. I want you've alluded to the important things to you like your customer experience. And one of the things I really admire about you as a business owner is how strong your vision is in like every aspect of what you do, from how you lead your team to how you show up on Instagram. By the way, Sash and Bustle's Instagram is amazing. So I would love to just hear how you've been able to basically use your vision to create the culture around your store and have it be such a powerful place that people want to shop at. That's
Vanessa Dineen 24:25
the challenge, that's for sure. Andrea, and I think one of the things that like really sets us apart or that we find is one of our big strengths is that we have the same vision we have the same values and we have the same morals and we have very different ways of getting there. So we are always seem to be on like different roads driving to the same place. And then we communicate a lot along the way so that we can like make sure we're getting there so I feel really lucky to have her because we've been able to like, you know, we can share that our ideas and our expectations. We know a lot of it's driven by what would we want. Were how do we want to be treated? How do we want to feel? How and if we can put our you know, you know, I think I have pretty good taste and I you know tried to like be pretty, you know, understanding of others. So, when we do that we're like okay, obviously think about how other people want to feel too but it's like if I'm gonna feel amazing. I'm pretty sure they're gonna feel amazing too because I want to feel great. So you know, I tie that in to a lot about my mom is my mom has pretty high standards and has taught us to like, you know, what she, how she, you know, like to be pretty meticulous through things. So we really do think about a lot of it and we my sister, Andrew and I talk a lot and that's one of the things that now we and probably one of our challenges news right now is that we don't have the time to talk as much as we used to. So finding that time and setting it aside more intentionally, which is what been one of the great things we've been able to do is you know, if we you know, kind of Book Two days together so we can really decide what our vision is and something this is something we did in January. We sat down in January for two days. We talked for two days really talked about personal goals, family goals, and then what is our goal for our business? And how are all three of those things as well as you know, like, you know, trying to consider her husband, my husband, my children, you know, everybody else, how are we so we can still work on this awesome thing that makes so many people happy and like us included and also achieve those other goals as well. So communication, for sure.
Steve Haase 26:44
As a beautiful thing, and how you can put everything in the picture and not just how can we double the size of our business but how can we live the lives we want to live while serving the mission that the business has and why it exists? Yes, exactly. Amazing. Along those lines, something that struck me when you were talking about increasing your average order value. It was not an extractive feeling. It was a generous feeling. It was a we want to give the experience aligned with a $5,000 dress rather than we want our business to make more money. So let's sell let's like let's ask for more money. It's good speak more about like how the nuts and bolts of growing a business go together with the touchy feely stuff of working with people. Yeah, so
Vanessa Dineen 27:38
we like you know, one of the things I've learned is like, you know, even though what like wedding dresses are expensive let's they just are whether you spend $1,000 or $15,000 It's expensive. So we knew in the beginning when we started the store, and we had that $1,500 kind of average price point, which seemed you know, it was so much but we knew that we weren't getting it wasn't enough for some people. Which what we found was kind of interesting and something I learned quickly. I was like you know, price is a factor but and it can be a negative factor or, or positive depending on where you were. And so we found that the price we were selling wasn't actually what people wanted. And people were more inclined to buy that those products if we were above $2,000 Just because of
Steve Haase 28:26
this is not just the craziest thing that you can make something more valuable literally just by charging more money for it totally.
Vanessa Dineen 28:33
And it was just it was seemed and I tested it out because that's what I initially did is I just changed the price partially was undervalued and not priced properly. So I put it to the proper price. So and that was really interesting because we saw sales change immediately with that. And I think that it was just the experience we were giving we were attracting somebody that wanted to spend some money, but then we didn't have like the product didn't make them feel like they were spending the money or that they were getting the value for what they wanted. So we changed the price initially. That is where and then that's where we realized we knew we wanted to bring the average price point up and we also oh we fall in love with everything like the wedding industry is gorgeous. So Andrew and I you know we shop and we go route travel quite a bit and speak with lots of different people within the industry. And we found that what Toronto was missing is this kind of alternative, like easygoing, effortless look, and you couldn't really find it anywhere. We tried it. And so we really thought out collections and designers that aligned with that. Since it's grown a little bit now we really you know, as opposed to just aesthetics, we focus a lot on inclusivity and working with brands that encourage inclusivity in basically all senses and so that's been like a big driving factor for the how kind of we've been taking the business and you know, I find that our sweet spot now for like price points is that around that 35 to 3800. I'm sure we could drive it up more. We don't want to just based on our value, like I mentioned our values we like we don't really want to sell something that we wouldn't buy ourselves. And maybe if I may, you know that changes then we would go above 10,000 But right now our store caps around 7000 Because that's our comfort zone and what we can stand behind and be like yeah, this is worth it. And you know, not your down payment on your house yet. So
Steve Haase 30:35
it's something that we talked about a lot as coaches. Because what's the value of an hour with us? What's the value of six months with us, right? You can only charge so much per hour. It really eventually comes down to what's the value that a person sees in their life and that they feel they will be getting for kind of paying a premium which is it's just such a fascinating thing when you talk about pricing.
Vanessa Dineen 31:01
It is definitely yeah.
Erin Aquin 31:06
You also have in this journey, growing your team you talked about it. And I would love to maybe hear a bit about some of the ways in which you've really taken on leadership probably in your business more than you ever had and when you're working in anyone else's There are I think there's a lot of folks that listen to this show who are on the cusp of their businesses being at a point where there may be making there within the first three or four people who are working with them on a team. And you have quite a few more people. Yeah,
Vanessa Dineen 31:47
I think my dad was sitting we would fluctuate because we're seasonal a little bit but it's anywhere and we're trying to find our sweet spot right now anywhere from about 17 to 23 depending on time of year. Like I mentioned, so when I started like most of us we'd all start we started just the two of us. I think we in you know one woman rolled over with the sale, but they were working like eight hours a week just Sundays. And so we really didn't kind of forgot about the fact that employees when I started so that was a learning lesson. i We hired our first couple just to sales consultants and to work with clients. One on one that was you know, that was honestly it was just great to have somebody there somebody else's opinion. You know, it allowed us to see you know, learn those processes of a hiring when we moved to the new store, but that a year and a half mark, we had to do a pretty big hire, because going from one fitting room, one to two on the weekends to three almost all the time. You know, I had to have a team of I can't remember how many were on that. Team at that time. But I would say it's probably around 10 is where we ended up getting up to. And I heard all salespeople because I was like I can do everything else and then quickly realized that I could not and had to hire some other roles. But we hired salespeople and just really tried to like you know, we really hire based on values. So if they, you know, match or have similar values to us and want to help, you know, and meet similar core values to what the businesses is which are, you know, you know, making memories being being there for everybody helping people find their wedding dress, whether it's at session bustle or somewhere else. If they met aligned with those then we could move forward and we found it was pretty easy. You know, I don't necessarily want to sell people wedding dresses, ever. I want people to buy the wedding. dresses with us. I want them to want to be a part of the session bustle of family or community. And so we don't hire like hard salespeople. We don't use big sales tactics. And that's something that's really like has allowed us to, you know, find our true selves within this industry and within sales. I remember when I was hiring like this, I had this new role and I was gonna I'd hired like a supervisor at this point to help me and like manage emails and like submit orders and kind of just like, you know, make be there when I couldn't be there because we're open six days a week and you know, 10 hour to 12 hour days so I couldn't be there all the time. So I had somebody that supported me, which was the supervisor basically like an executive assistant type role. They grew into a supervisor and then managing the store later on. But at that point, we were like what, like we needed somebody else and we didn't know what it was. So we were hiring a receptionist and I was like, What is this person going to do? And I actually started because my husband used to work down the street from us and he would bike by every day. And he was like Vanessa, it's so weird. You guys have a front desk. You don't have anybody sitting at it. And I was like, You're right. That is really weird. Like, people don't realize that we're open most of the time. And so I followed his observation we he was like, What are we gonna do? I was like, I don't know when I have no idea how we're gonna afford it. And I don't know what they're going to do. And so basically let's just hire somebody to sit at the desk, and we'll just pay them I think at the time you know, above minimum wage but like it was around 1415 bucks an hour. And we were like, okay, like, is this gonna work? Are we gonna be able to, like, you know what, we're just, we just did it. We were just like, if we don't try, we're not going to know. And I've learned like, since then. I don't always know the answer. I do usually hire and I kind of figure it out along the way. I tell typically, the higher you know, I always tell the person that's, you know, taking on this new role that we're creating together, that it's gonna be a bit of trial and error. It's gonna take a bit it's not gonna be the easiest, but together we're going to develop a role that fits them and fit session bustle. So we meet each other's needs and haven't had any like negative impact by it yet. It's been like the best way to like kind of push ourselves beyond where we are. And I don't think that there's ever been a role Marketing Coordinator at one point that roll we kind of started it and stopped it and started again a year later. It was too early in our time that we realized that that was like, that was the one time we did the trial and then realized quickly that it was not like going to be something that we could handle, but just jump in.
Steve Haase 36:36
Yeah, what happened with the front desk person?
Vanessa Dineen 36:40
They started, we found, you know, immediately we had a list of like, so long of things that they needed to do all these things just like everybody's like, Oh my God, and they can do this. And they can do this. And I was like, You're right. How did we and now I'm like, how did we ever live without them? Now I have a team of four that do it. Because it's always roughly two of them working. They support the team and like really the whole operation now we either consider we call the title is boutique assistant. They really do everything from like, receptionist kind of roles to like, helping people through like picking up their dresses and like guiding them through the collection and just being a support system for the clients. Because it is a you know, a lot going on when you're planning a wedding. So all from
Steve Haase 37:23
these little observations, right? You're just paying attention to the world around you. You hear an observation, like the frustration that you feel when you're you have to make a reservation long ways out and then boom, it opens a new door in your business. Yeah.
Erin Aquin 37:38
No, I was gonna say I think you also gave us something that is so important that a lot of people miss which is you just don't know until you try and you've said this kind of several times weaving it in. You have to test those assumptions. I I think so many people waste so much energy, thinking about it. Like let's spend six months thinking about the potential of having a boutique assistant, or, yeah, we're just gonna try it.
Vanessa Dineen 38:12
Yeah, and if you try it, it doesn't work. It's okay. It is okay. It's fine. You can be wrong, but likely you're gonna learn something out of it. And you're gonna adjust it and you know, that's happened to me to where I've hired and I realized, you know, what, I've kind of hired wrong now I need to like, the role is actually different. So I need to we need to edit. So it's a learning process for sure.
Steve Haase 38:33
So we heard about your vision, and how you support your customers and grow the business. We heard about some of the challenges that you've had and how you've met those challenges. The third area that we work in is static, those unhelpful voices within yourself, voices of self doubt voices of frustration or confusion that can slow an entrepreneur down and really prevent your genius from coming through, you know, damping your light. What does static feel and sound like for you and how do you handle that as you manage the business?
Vanessa Dineen 39:12
I feel like maybe my static it would probably be somewhere along the lines of like I have so many ideas. I am very entrepreneurial. I want to do it all. And I can get caught up in that a little bit. You know, for the last couple years, we've been talking about opening another store or going into another segment of this industry. And I get you know, I can go down that rabbit hole quite a bit and then I you know, it's not all once I'd like really drill into like what I want. It's not necessarily what doesn't align. But I love the ideas. I love that you know, constantly like dreaming of it and being there. And like to being a visionary but bringing myself back to my my core on what I really like my goal for my family and for myself where I want what I want out of fashion bustle, making sure all of those things line and so I get quite distracted. I find with wanting too much maybe
Steve Haase 40:16
the one of the phrases that we use that one of my companies was we aren't going to die of starvation but we could die of indigestion. There's so much that we could do. Yeah, no shortage of opportunity. But if we take on too much, that's how we could die. Yeah,
Vanessa Dineen 40:38
definitely. That's hilarious. I love that.
Erin Aquin 40:41
So when that comes up for you, and you do know this about yourself, I totally relate. I'm like, yeah, that's, it's really hard to to sort of pull it back in. Do you have any practices? Do you have anyone that you work with in terms of just helping you do that process of checking in with your goals? Is that something you and your sister do? Like how does that work so that you eventually come to a space of I love my ideas and this is what we're doing?
Vanessa Dineen 41:14
Yeah, so I you know, one of the part of it is like when we have those like, you know, kind of bigger life conversations her and I try and do that we did a vision board recently or a vision exercise that kind of took us through it. Those can also like make me go like, totally the wrong direction. But when I'm like being true to myself, and then I find that that you know, and I'm not then they do really work. That's typically you know, often like what brings me back talking to my family to my kids like you know, those little light little moments with my husband and my kids realizing oh, I don't want to miss that. Yeah, it's really I think being with around my sister is probably the biggest one she's probably my she's, she's a little bit less risky than me, which is exactly what I need and a little bit more realistic about what our capabilities are and also what we want and you know, what we kind of envisioned for like our daily life. And bringing me back to in grounding me that Okay.
Steve Haase 42:23
Anything else that we haven't touched on or that you'd like to share with? Oh,
Vanessa Dineen 42:28
I think this was lovely. It was so nice to spend the time with you guys and I really appreciate all having this conversation. Well, Vanessa,
Erin Aquin 42:38
we really appreciate you. You've been such an inspiration to me. More specifically, I know Steve as well, but just seeing what you're able to create when you you do pick one of those ideas. If you do go for it and then you have the internal resilience and confidence to see it through. I think your vision and your values shine through every aspect of of what you do and who you are. And we just really appreciate you.
Vanessa Dineen 43:13
Thank you, Erin. I appreciate that. That was lovely.
Steve Haase 43:17
Thank you so much Vanessa and where can people go to learn more about you and buy a wedding dress from you?
Vanessa Dineen 43:24
Like please come and visit us. It's always the most fun in store so we're downtown Toronto, at Sashandbustle.com. You can find us on our website and book directly there or on Instagram @sashandbustle as well. Get lots of fun content there inspirational and fun wedding stuff. So we're a little bit quirky, so it's a good time.
Steve Haase 43:45
One fact we used to be in the same industry back when I was a trumpet player because everyone loves a good trumpet at the wedding. So that was really