About

I notice what's about to happen before it happens.

That's the closest I can get to describing what I do. I've made a living reading rooms, and I've spent most of my life taking apart how the places that get it right make you feel looked after without ever letting you see the work. Guestcrafters is that, pointed at your business.

Kevin Stauss

Wilmington, NC

The short version

I film weddings. My wife Haley and I run Heartline Films, and for years that's meant being the quiet person in the corner of a room on somebody's biggest day, working alongside venues, planners and coordinators while the day either flows or snags. You learn to read a day like that: who's about to need something, which handoff is about to go wrong. The whole job is to notice everything and be in nobody's way, and that doesn't switch off when the camera's down.

Before that and still now, I work in live production: lighting, sound, video switching, show control. When you're the one deciding how a room looks and sounds, you find out how much of what a crowd feels comes from choices nobody notices. Bring the lights down at the right moment and the whole room settles, and no one could tell you why.

As a teenager I did sleight of hand. That sounds like a footnote, but it's where most of this started. Magic teaches you that the effect someone feels and the method behind it are two different things, and that you can hold both at once: know exactly how it works and still feel it land. The best-run places work the same way. The guest never sees the effort; they just leave feeling like the place had it together.

The rest of it

Most people in this line of work come from hospitality. I came at it sideways.

A few other things I've done that turn out to matter here.

Behind a counter: I worked the floor at a game store here in Wilmington, and liked it. Specifically the part where you help someone with something you care about.
Games and software: I've designed board games and shipped iOS apps. Both are practice at writing rules people will follow without feeling managed.
The numbers side: My day job is managing a large set of ad accounts, which means I live in conversion and retention numbers. That's where the cost lines in the report come from.
How people pay attention: I read about it for fun: how impressions form, what people notice, and what they never see. No degree in it; just a long-running interest.

Where the method comes from

I've spent years studying how themed entertainment puts a guest's day together.

I'll say this once and then not oversell it. I've never worked for a theme park. I've just spent years studying how the best ones, Disney most of all, design a visit down to details almost nobody consciously notices: the order you encounter things, the way a line gets built so the wait is part of the story instead of a hole in it, and the way a problem gets fixed before you've decided you're upset about it.

None of it happens by accident; someone sat down and designed every moment of the visit. That's the toolkit I bring to a laser tag place, a dental office or a restaurant. The castle is optional. The walk from your parking lot to your front counter deserves the same seriousness an Imagineer gives the walk down Main Street.

Why I started this

I kept noticing the same thing everywhere I went as a guest: places that were almost good. A great core experience wrapped in a dozen small breakdowns nobody had looked at, because the owner was too close to it and too busy running the thing to see it the way a first-timer does.

I take it seriously that a room does something to a person, whether or not anyone designed it to. And those small failures are expensive. They're the difference between a five-star review and a three, between a regular and someone who drifts off; and they're almost always fixable once someone points at them. So that's the job. I come look, write down what I find, and help you see your place the way your guests do.

I'm based in Wilmington and work across the region out to Raleigh. If any of this sounds like your place, I'd love to talk.

Request an evaluation

I notice what's about to happen before it happens.

Most people in this line of work come from hospitality. I came at it sideways.

I've spent years studying how themed entertainment puts a guest's day together.

The evaluation, and what it costs