How to Start Your Own Event Management Company?
One of the most frequently asked questions to a successful event management director is “how did you get here in the business?”. There is really no magical recipe for being a successful person in business and to start out your own event management company. Every person has their own journey, but there are some key elements to their success. In this article, we highlight the major steps for how to start an Event Management company?
If you are sitting in your home and daydreaming about the glamorous life of owning your own event management company, then it’s time to wake up and move further. Starting up and establishing any business can be crucial in this socioeconomic climate. Ultimately, to be successful in business, one has to face the reality of hard work, long days (and nights), and a whole lot of work in their plate.
There is no time like the present to start your event management business. But before you get started and have your first customer, you need to do some pre-work. There are some major steps that you should follow to start your business. We’ll take you through each one so that by the time you’re done reading this, you’ll be better prepared to open up your own event management company.
Get Event Planning Experience
Before entering into the industry, gather some event management experience and the more event planning experience you will get the better the service you are going to offer your clients. This experience isn’t just limited to event planning skills either, any business requires skills and experience to 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 it is required then teach yourself about how to use tools that will benefit you as a small business. Today, many of the marketing trends available to expand any business so find these programs online and there is a wealth of video tutorials and written content present to help you learn how to use them.
Make a plan and Be confident
Before taking the action for beginning an event management company, make sure you have gained a lot of events and administration experience and you are confident with planning events independently.
Identify the gaps in your skillset and work hard to strengthen these areas through paid work or volunteering at some events.
If you need to keep costs down the planning part for yourself then, teach yourself the core skills that you will need. Learn things such as email marketing, survey tools, accounting programs, design systems, and website building for planning an event management company.
Complete 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. Look into 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.
Dig into the Realities of Starting a Business
Think about how you are going to survive as it may take some time before money starts coming into the business and you still need to be able to pay your bills during this period. Many people start their business “on the side” during their free time, evening and weekends, whilst working for somebody else. This will obviously depend on the role you have currently to ensure that you are not in breach of contract – make sure you act ethically and fairly to your current employer.
Discuss your aims with your partner and family to try to prepare everyone for the change of lifestyle and circumstances. Working for yourself isn’t the same as working for an employer. The buck stops with you. You are likely to work the longest hours of your life, working 80 plus hours a week is not unheard of for business owners. Also, no work = no pay. Your salary is directly linked to the amount of profit you can generate.
Register your company
Making your company your own brand name is important but there is no point in coming up with a catchy name for your company if it’s not registered. Make sure you have completed all the documentation for the company and you register your company with the relevant body. For example, if we talk about the UK then you can simply register your company with Companies House.
Certainly, by simply registering your company does not give you all the trademark protection, this needs to be done separately. You have to raise that brand name by your own hard work and skills.
