What are the steps to making a special event for the first time?

Question I received from a graduate student on Quora: I am a recent Hospitality graduate with no hands-on experience in creating a special event. I took on a project for a company that I am interning for, and I am expected to plan a carnival event.

How do I get started planning this type of event? What tools should I use? What should I look out for?

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Ah exciting times.. this is the beginning of your hands-on experience!

First step is to get as much advice as you can… tick. You’ve started that. Great.

Get free advice first

Feel free to check out the Free Advice section on my Event Kit. There’s lots of tips and checklists. You can also download free planning advice and milestone checklist here: Event Kits.

Plan your time from NOW to EVENT DAY

Planning properly is KEY.
Once you know what you want to do for your event, and how long things will take, and the proper order to do them in… then you start getting everything organised.

I know it can be overwhelming at first, but look around and see what other people are doing. Use the free milestone planner from my website to get a list of what you need to do, and by when.

Get the tools you need

Ok so what will you need to organise your event… here’s a pretty neat list that sums up what every event manager needs.

Have a look at this list and see what you already have, and what you might need to create…

…alternatively you can get them ready-to-use in the Event Management Pack by Event Kit.

And then JUST GET GOING...

Chookas!
Rachella Thomas

How do you start your own event management company?

As you'd know by now, I’ve run my own successful event management company. It is hard work, but worth every minute if you love organising events.

I’m often asked by new and aspiring event managers, what’s the best way to break into the industry. After being asked so many times, I decided to pull together the event organiser's toolkit to help new and aspiring event managers. This is how this all began...

My advice is for you to first build your event management experience and NETWORK your brain out while you do it. When you strike out on your own, you will need to know a lot of people in the industry. They will be the people you call on to get clients!

Then make the move to being a Freelance event manager, which is your next step to building your own event management company. When you freelance, you are no longer working for an employee full time, you are seeking employers for contract work on projects and this gets you in the groove for SEEKING projects and SEEKING clients. Being a freelance event manager is somewhere between being an employed event manager and running your own business. Yay.

Spend this in between time building your suite of business documents. You will need so many documents, agreements, business planning tools, a business plan, client meeting templates, event services list, client and project tracking… oh and much more.

Chookas!

Rachella Thomas