Many Event Planners start out working from home. This can be an excellent way to launch your business as it keeps overheads down in those critical early stages of transitioning and can maximize production. If you are considering whether it could work for you and how to make a success of it, here are some things to think about.
There are plenty of Event Management companies who first opened their business doors at home, before it was ever in an office. Especially when you start out without a team, it comes as a natural choice, mainly because it means that instead of worrying about paying expensive office rent in the early stages you could focus on building the business. It has worked for many New York City event planners and many have worked from home for well over a year before advancing into renting office space.
Event Planners in New York, Wedding Planners, and Freelance Event Managers report that they too started off the same and found that it was the most viable solution for them. Either for the short or the long term. Others just don’t have the capacity to imagine the realities of working from a home base and I have been quizzed and insulted in equal measures by people trying to understand the intricacies of working from home!
An Event Planning Business from Home is Inexpensive
An Event Planner can work from almost anywhere if you have a laptop, internet and mobile phone. Most important are your personality and event management skills. When you launch your event planning business by working from home, it keeps costs lower as renting office space can be a huge expense for a new business and you may not wish to be tied into a long-term rental contract from the outset.
The more experience you have as an event professional the better the service you are going to be able to offer your clients. This isn’t just partial to event planning skills either, any business skills and practice will make you a more rounded business owner. Jump at any opportunity to get paid or unpaid work experience. Use this to learn the things that work and the things you would do differently.
If necessary, teach yourself how to use tools that will benefit you as a small business. Today, many of these programs are available online and there is a wealth of video tutorials and written content to help you learn how to use them.
Be confident in what you have to offer:
- Before taking the plunge, make sure you have gained lots of event and administration experience and are confident with planning events independently.
- Identify any gaps in your skillset and work hard to strengthen these areas through paid work or volunteering.
- If you need to keep costs down, teach yourself core skills that you will need, such as email marketing platforms, survey tools, accounting programs, design systems and website building.
Begin Your Market and Competitor Research
The first thing you need to establish is if there is a definite requirement for the services that you want to offer. Instead of just believing it is a good idea you need to do some actual research to confirm this.
This information can be difficult to find, and you will need to refer to lots of different sources to try to get a reliable picture. Investigate public data, reports and analysis on the web, talk to people and try to undertake a focus group and individual phone calls with those that you are looking to develop relationships with, to determine evidence of a need.
Once you’ve done the research and have made space available at home to use as your home office, you’re well on your way to climbing the event professional ladder!
