Lessons from the Field: Know that you will never get it all done

This blog post continues a series of lessons from the field for a new event business. See: Lessons from the Field: Be Open for Business; Lessons from the Field: Focus on Great Strategy; Lessons from the Field: Become an Expert, not a Jack; Lessons from the Field: Find Yourself a Great Team

Lesson 5: Know that you will never get it all done.
I am a guy who has always worked in small companies. There was a thrill for me in the ability to wear multiple hats in an organization and contribute to the work being done. While, when you go into business with yourself – that experience is taken to the extreme. Every hat is your hat and quickly I had to learn that I just would not get everything done. That the client might have to be called back tomorrow. That the website would take another week or month. That there is no way I can keep up with my tweets, let alone blog! (Ghost writers anyone, I am hiring!) The illusion that leaving the comforts of a 9-5 job is that you will have freedom over your schedule is somewhat true – you do have control of your schedule, but your job is now 24/7 and at a client’s whim your plans will regularly change. The challenge is to find a schedule and rules that work for you (and it you have employees, for them as well). Limiting distractions is critical in keeping focused when you answer to yourself. Because when you are the boss, it is much easier to take long lunch, sleep in or grab drinks early than it was when someone was watching you!

Lessons from the Field: Find Yourself a Great Team

This blog post continues a series of lessons from the field as a new event business. See: Lessons from the Field: Be Open for Business; Lessons from the Field: Focus on Great Strategy; Lessons from the Field: Become an Expert, not a Jack

Lesson 4: Find yourself a Great Team.
In my last blog I spoke about become an Expert and not trying to be a Jack-of-all-trades. As an Event Expert surround yourself with other Experts who fill in your weaknesses. This could be as employees or independent contractors, or even more simply as fellow vendors with whom you work. Building a great team of colleagues will support and promote your business as your develop and grow. They will be the partners who make you look good and vice versa. So the task is to surround yourself with great people – for me that means creative, curious, at-their-best, innovative service providers who demonstrate that willingness to think and the appetite to try new things.

And you may just find a funny thing will happen. If you know yourself, remain open to possibilities and deliver great service, your team will do the sales work for you. Indeed, I have yet to really need to sell myself. Through diligent networking locally and internationally, by attending and speaking at conferences, by entering and winning awards, by being an actively engaged member in industry organizations - like ISES, the absolute best spend of money I have ever made – I have developed a great community of colleagues who have kept me in business. By delivering what I promise and offering something unique, one of my biggest surprises has been that the variety of individuals and vendors who I have enjoyed working with on projects continue to bring me along with them to the next one, reinforcing our teamwork and building bigger and better events every time.

Lessons from the Field: Become the Expert, not a Jack

This blog post continues a series of lessons from the field for a new event business. See: Lessons from the Field: Be Open for Business; Lessons from the Field: Focus on Great Strategy

Lesson 3: Become the Expert, not a Jack.
What’s the saying – “to thine own self be true!” This is inherent in the beginning of any business. Before you can provide great service and be open for business you must know yourself – who and what you want your company to be. I launched BeEvents in 2007 with a furious desire to constantly having ideas and fostering live conversations. What I love about the event business is that we create the platform on which a facilitated dialogue occurs. And it is the strategy and design of that platform which can guide the conversation and engage participants into interaction with one another. Despite and alongside the huge advances of technology, human beings are social creatures and that need for in-person interaction will never go away nor not be of value. Yet looking out on the landscape of the industry, I did not see many who were fostering a strategic conversation about the value of and design for events. And so I set out to do that – to focus on the strategic power of people to come together, be present and share an experience. In saying this out loud, I picked what I was passionate about and defined a brand for myself which I now have the pleasure of maintaining, refining and living up to. And I have also defined what my company is not.

This, to me is the definition of being an expert. Experts know what they have to offer and also who and what they are not. By contrast, Jack-of-all-trade types try to offer everything. To be all to their clients. Particularly in a tough economy when the budgets are slim and the margins slimmer, the desire to be a Jack gets stronger. But it is Jacks who do the biggest disservice to the industry as a whole. Because no one can ever be everything to a client, and deliver everything excellently. There is compromise in diversity. That is not to say that sometimes you have to do things outside your expertise or deliver services because the budget to bring in other experts is not there. But on the whole, focusing on being an Expert, defining your brand for what it is and what it is not, and sticking too that will reap rewards in the long run.

Lessons from the Field: Focus on Great Service

This blog post continues a series of lessons from the field for a new event business. See: Lessons from the Field: Be Open for Business

Lesson 2: Focus on Great Service.
Being in the event business means you are in the people business. Whether it is your employees, your clients, or their guests, it is always our job to be hospitable. While there are many definitions of great service, my mantra is that our business is not to only give clients what they ask for nor tell them what they need, but to be their guide to what they want. Yes, clients want and need to be listened too. Yes, often clients need to be told what they should do - we as event professionals are the experts after all. But beyond that, being the expert is not about spewing your vision or verbatim taking theirs, but instead being the guide who can facilitate what they say with what you know to eventually give them what they want, even if they cannot articulate that.

To do that ego cannot be a player in the game. There is no room in service providing for superiority, passivity, or the demeaning of anyone on the team or project. In ego’s place, find confidence in a sense of creative curiosity stemming from a constant willingness to think and an appetite to try. I firmly believe that the ROI of events is located in retention of the created experience by those who participate, and those memories are derived by implementing creativity and innovation. And the you can only be creative and innovate if you constantly foster a willingness to think and an appetite to try in the delivery of great service for your client.

Lessons from the Field: Be Open for Business

Tomorrow is my one-year anniversary. It’s a year ago tomorrow that I took a leap from a steady job as an internal event producer/creative director and started working full time for myself at BeEvents. It is not that I intended to be an entrepreneur, and, believe me, there was never a scarier decision I have had to make than to leap. But I have never felt a greater sense of freedom as I did on that day.

Starting a business is an adventure, with all the emotional baggage that entails and little of the action of Hollywood. As I reflect on the year behind me, along the way, I have learned many things that as a creative I never wanted to know – how to drive, or more importantly back-up a box truck, the limitations of rig points never being where you want them, the value of a great union crew chief, taxes – you get the point. But along the way I think I have discover a few small truths, lessons about being in business, which may serve as guide posts in a tough economy for anyone thinking about heading out on their own or as a reminder for the many before me who have taken the leap. Over time I will continue to share these lessons as I continue on this journey of self-employment.

Lesson #1 Be Open to Business.
As I said, I never intended to start my own company. I was working a great job but had nowhere to grow. Inside the organization I couldn’t find the mental space to determine what I wanted next nor was I able to find the right job opening available for what I needed. With a project in the works that could pay the rent, I made the decision to go on my own, for now.

The great thing about starting a company at the start of a recession is that you never knew business could have been better – any business is great. I left my corporate job assuming I would spend some time freelancing as event planner. To my surprise, people kept calling to hire me as a designer, a different role that I have greatly enjoyed. And the opportunities that have come to me as a designer have greatly surpassed what I would have been offered as a planner. But only because I was open to that possibility. Over the last year, I have come to realize that being open for business is more than just having a business card, a phone, email and website. It is about being open to the possibility of what you can do, not just what you think you will be doing. But within that realm of possibility, success, I have found, comes from focusing in on what is right for you to do, not just every little project that comes your way.