Create Your Event Invoice Template for Planning Effortlessly

Event invoice template for Planning

hey guys this is Kyle at projection hub and today we are going to be talking about how to write a business plan for an event or a wedding venue now what this video is not going to be is I'm not going to write every single word to the business plan here in front of you but I am going to show you a great structure or an outline for an event venue that's been kind of pre-filled out with a fictitious example for an event venue so that you can get a good reference here what I'm going to be showing here is actually a free template you can grab that down in the description no strings attached at all because you know the business plan is only going to be as good as the information that you put in it but the primary focus of this video is going to be to hit on five key points that I think will make or break the success of the business plan now this is coming from the perspective of you know if you're trying to get approved for financing for the event or maybe even pitch an investor that's really what these five key points are going to be mainly hitting on is making sure your business plan is ready to be funded so even if you're just trying to do business planning for internal planning purposes I still think these points are going to apply but I just want to want you to know kind of where I'm coming from on that so who is projection hub we've helped over 50 000 small businesses entrepreneurs create Financial projections for their business plans for their loan applications their pitch decks and and we've worked with a lot of event venues a lot of wedding venues that are you know trying to do that right in that process and who am I as I mentioned my name is Kyle my experience even aside from working here at projection for a couple of years is I was a loan officer at a small business lending agency where you know we actually reviewed a lot of loan requests for different event venues so I've seen a lot of business plans a lot of financial projections and Loan packages for event venues and have had the pleasure of helping some get approved but also I've had to unfortunately deny some so I kind of know what to look for you know we're trying to put together an application for that so if at any point you find this video helpful please give us a thumbs up a video that's really helpful for us you can also subscribe to the channel if you'd like you know we don't just produce videos on event venues and management but just business in general that might be helpful for you as you're trying to grow or launch and grow your business and I think I might have already mentioned but this template I'm going to show here is is a totally free template you can grab it in the description and we'll go ahead and get started okay jumping into this first of all let's touch on why are business plans important now I don't mean that this to sound cliche but you know for a business plan the point of this isn't to educate your audience or your lender on what this industry is now if it was a more novel industry that you know nobody had really ever heard of or a concept then you know the business plan does need to kind of pull double duty and do that education but really the purpose is going to be you're demonstrating your plan to succeed if you're trying to convince someone to give you a loan they need to see the road map to success so that's primarily what we're doing here and you know as you can see here from the table of contents there's not a ton in here you know contrary to popular belief business plans don't have to be really long to be good now if you need to write a 40 page 50-page business plan for your sake to kind of get all your your notes and your thoughts and your plans down to really do that definitely go for that but what you hand over to your lender you know a five to ten page business plan can be really good as long as you you know you include the necessary information so don't be intimidated by business plans that it needs to be a really elongated process because your lender you know wants to get into the important things really quickly which are primarily the five key points I'm going to hit on here in this video so what we're going to do is I'm going to roll through the business plan and as I come to different sections I'll pause there and dig in a little bit deeper and hit those five key points okay so first of all look at the table contents you can see we're gonna have an executive summary market analysis we're gonna you know you're gonna outline the products and services that the event then he's gonna offer your marketing and sales strategy how you plan to acquire those customers the operations and the actual management of the facility itself and the business and then Financial projections obviously we're a little bit you know biased what we specialize in is financial projections but in an unbiased opinion Financial projections are really important when it comes to business plan probably the most important part of your business plan all right let's jump into this so in your executive summary think of this as kind of like a cover letter to a resume you don't need to have everything about the business in here you know one page is totally fine but you want to hit the the key points so you know the name location even potentially your total startup costs uh you can see how you'll be you plan to be funded you know are you going to be getting a loan and investment are you putting in money so that's just a good setup for what they're you know about to read you can even include you know who the owners are key employees that kind of thing if that's an important threat on that so moving forward market analysis and this can to bring us to key Point number one you need to be able to demonstrate that there is room in the market for whatever you're planning to start so maybe let's say you live in the community that you plan to open up an event center and you say why you know I live here I know that there's an opportunity while that might be sufficient for you that may not be sufficient for your lender they might want to see a little bit more research a little bit more data to support that so what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you a little bit of example of maybe some easy things you can do to to do that process so let's say let's go for let's look at a couple of tools this first one is a free tool it's on Google ads you have to make a free Google ads account but you can come down here and go to tools and the Keyword Planner now what this is doing is I'm going to we're going to see what people are basically searching on Google so if they're searching I've got put in here event venue near me and wedding venue so we're gonna use Fishers the city of fishers I live in Indianapolis and a close by suburb is called Fishers so that's what we're going to focus in and you can also see here that I've selected the location as Fisher so this is is going to be you know if I'm looking for that venue near me I'm telling Google like I want to act as if I was standing in Fishers when I searched that and see the results now what this is going to do is it is going to show us how often those phrases are being searched now a vet venue can be a little bit tricky again because if you are if someone's going to book a venue that's in their Community they may not necessarily go to Google and search for that because they're like well I know this building is there and that building is there and they might call those places and they kind of you know Skip Google all together so we're not neces we're not going to lean too heavily on the search volume right here but what I'm more interested in is the growth is the Trend so you can see in these search phrases wedding venue near me Fishers Event Center rent for party near me people looking for those you know in in Fishers let's see the growth here so you can see three month change positive which makes sense we're coming in I'm recording this in the summer right so or the before the summer so we're coming into the wedding season but you can see the year of the Year change look how much that's growing 175 1600 percent 33 Bank walls 200 venues near me 400 so you can see that there's the trajectory is good that the area is growing and people looking for event and wedding venues is growing those areas so that's a good sign right that's not necessarily telling us that there's room in the market but the market is growing that's a good sign and the competition is low for those so if you just opened up and you need to run some advertisement this is telling you that a lot of people aren't competing for those keywords if you were to pay for advertising so that's step one that I would do step two good old-fashioned Google Search right so again if you should be familiar with the area that's a good plan but just come over to Google zoom in this is Fishers Indianapolis so now we can start to see event news Indianapolis you know I could switch that to the vet venues near me you're going to start to see all these event venues now what you're going to want to do is you're going to want to highlight you're going to want to know every event venue within 10 miles of you okay you want to make sure you know the market who's all included even more so than which venues there are their price ranges because that's that's a key thing right if there's 20 event venues in Fishers and all of them are really high price points it might be tough to come in and expect to be even higher or another high price point but maybe you see an opportunity like oh there's a good option here for like a middle of the road price that's a key thing that your your lender is going to want to see in your business plan and yes I feel like that's a sufficient maybe example as to how you can do a little bit of market analysis and get an idea for what opportunity exists in your community so actually one step further you could go there you could actually like kind of call those venues undercover to act interested in it and just ask like how far are you booked out you know like when when's the the soonest date that I can book a wedding in the next year and start to get some feedback on like if every place is like well you know we're booked out for 18 months that's a good indicator there's room you know everyone's there's high demand in that area so that's that's kind of another tip all right moving along business plan product and services offerings I'm not going to stay on this too much not because this is important it's very important but because I'm not I don't own an event center and this is going to largely be based on what type of events can your facility support what type of pricing do you decide is going to be best and again that should be informed by the market you're starting in but you're going to want to list you know your packages you know sometimes uh an event then you might also have like a restaurant attached is that going to be your case or are you only doing weddings can you also do corporate events how big of an event you know can you do so that's really where you're going to want to dig into that here that's going to be very important specifically for this industry but it's not one of the five key points I'm going to mention but still you're going to want to spend a lot of time in that section okay marketing and sales strategy and here we're going to come to key Point number two and that's going to be customer acquisition so it's not going to be good enough if your Marketing sales strategies will have a website and we'll post on social media that's not going to be sufficient for a lender now those are both good things and things that you should do but look kind of like the market analysis we're looking for a little bit more tangible examples data to support that research to support that solid plan or what's called traction that's an example that you actually have a little bit of you know momentum to make this work um you can't do though we you know we'll build it people will come it's not gonna it's not gonna work here so what are examples of customer acquisition this can be a little bit tricky for this industry because it's a big purchase to see it's a big build out process likely especially if you're building a building or renovating a building that's going to take time a relatively high cost and you know getting people interested in it starting to make a commitment if the event venue isn't open so I understand that can be a little bit difficult but some examples what you can do you could try to gather an interest sign up form you know if you you know know some engaged couples or something like that and you're looking to do weddings you can get an interest form going of people that might be interested in maybe a discount or something like that and see how many people you can get interested you can speak with local vendors so if you're gonna host weddings you're probably gonna need to know florists DJs Caterers you know potentially table and chair rental companies if you're not going to have those things yourself and you can talk with them find out what's the demand like in the area like are they booked solid with a lot more venues looking for them or you know just a lot of weddings happening so they're close to the industry so ask them you know like if we considering open another venue we'd be interested in having you if we do that as one of our you know preferred vendors what's it looking like out there is there room for us to to be in there and note that on your business plan like yeah we spoke with a lot of local vendors they said the demand is still really high you can contact your local government their Economic Development Office see if they have any insight on Trends or event venues in the area and one thing you might be able to try this is a maybe a little tricky but you can actually go to your your local library or even maybe the recorder office and ask to see how many marriage license have been issued in the county in the last year right and then you can kind of compare that now some doesn't if they get a marriage license there I think you'll get a marriage license in the county that you're actually getting married that might differ from state to state that's how it is in Indiana um so you might be able to see like wow there was you know 20 000 marriage license issued in Hamilton County in 2022 and you can kind of compare that well there's only 25 event venues in Hamilton County you can maybe start to do that math a little bit so those are some examples of tangible examples of both the the market opportunity but also how are you going to acquire those customers other obvious things like are you gonna run any special promos you're going to do Flyers uh examples that you're actually going to get out there and acquire those customers maybe you have a good relationship with a wedding photographer that's going to refer business to you like that's kind of stuff you want to prove there that you're thinking about it's not just that you're going to open up and people are going to show up okay moving on operations and management key Point number three here and that's going to be relevant industry experience so this is where you're going to want to highlight who you are what your background is is your background relevant to owning or managing an event venue if it's not is there going to be someone on your team that does have that experience so not that that's going to be required but if there isn't relevant industry experience or knowledge on your team that's going to raise some questions from your lender they're going to make sure you know what you're getting yourself into are you going to be successful at getting customers or are events going to be able to go off with a hitch so that's a key thing to include here if you don't have that experience is someone involved that does have that experience that can be trusted and give and give confidence to a potential lender so that's key Point number three is relevant industry experience all right Financial projections obviously as I mentioned this for biased we think this is a pretty big deal we're gonna dig this a little bit so key Point number four is not just to have Financial projections you need to have Financial projections regardless but I'll get into what key point for it is here in a second just want to show you the section some things included Your startup costs quick breakdown of the the important numbers in a financial summary this is you know five years of projections Revenue profitability some event specific data a total a number of events percent you know the the cost to run those events sales growth key ratios and then we've got five years uh income statement projection balance sheet and cash flow now quick plug all this data you saw right here was generated using this event venue Financial projection template this is something we we offer and it has been used by I think over 100 event venues now and you'll be able to see you can put simple things like your startup costs in here your startup funding it'll help you calculate how much cash do you actually need to get started or put in details about your your events you can account for seasonality which is a big thing in kind of the event industry your event packages and then you'll put in your operating expenses and if you have any you know salaried employees and then what going to do it's going to generate all those charts for you all these financial statements for you ready to go exactly like you just saw copied in that business plan broken down by annual and monthly so this you know most lenders are going to require three years of financial projections this is going to give you five to be conservative but very easy to do this was built with the intention that you could do it yourself but our team is also here to answer questions and help you through it so that's a quick plug but key Point number four on financial projections is you have them but are they realistic and do they fall within industry expectations well and maybe you ask well how do I know that best thing to do just do some Googling so look I search for typical startup costs for an event venue okay 200 to 500 000 let's go back to our projections what are we accounting for here we're doing cash needed 625 000 with a recommend above or 700 000. so I'm a little bit above that average okay so maybe if I feel confident in that amount I need to include why you know why do I think that that cost is Justified you know another example you might say is what is average revenue for a new event venue and whatever that is compare that to my projected Revenue another important one might be what's a typical profit margin for an event venue and I can see okay do I fall within that percentage so that is a good practice to do to make sure that your your projections are realistic is do some research do some Googling on on these key numbers key metrics key assumptions and make sure that you're not an outlier okay so you don't want to be high you don't want to be low if you are high or low and you still feel confident in your projections make sure you explain why that is okay so that's key Point number four and then the finance projections mostly round out the rest of your business plan and just keep in mind like and that's a 10-page example the financial projections were like half of the business plan that's real when I was a loan officer a lot of times you read just a little bit of the front and then you skip right to the numbers and you read those to ask questions so that is not uncommon but you'll notice we're missing one key point and that's key Point number five and that is skin in the game this is very important if you're trying to get you know a loan for your event venue skin to the game is a demonstration of mutual risk so very similar to maybe if you're buying a house you're trying to get a mortgage and you were required to have a down payment as a percentage of that so let's say we needed to get it's a hundred thousand dollar loan or a hundred thousand dollar in total funding for your event venue probably gonna be more than that but you go to the bank they're not going to give you a hundred thousand dollar loan if a hundred thousand dollars is a total startup cost they might give you eighty thousand but say you need to inject either twenty thousand personally so they're going to want to see you pitch into that and the second part of skin in the game is collateral so maybe that's if you purchase the building they're gonna probably want to have a second mortgage on that building if you have equity in your home they might want a second mortgage on your house if you have a free and clear car they might want to hold the title to that car so that's just a thing to be aware of um now they don't do that to wreck or control your life but more so to to see your commitment to seeing this through now we would hear this all the time as lenders and that was people would say well I need to keep my business my personal separate that is great advice do that for your accounting do that for your bank account but when it comes to lending you're going to be required to be just as committed personally as our to our business and if you're not comfortable with that then you're likely not going to get financing so that's just a thing to be to keep in mind and that rounds out the five key points on an event then you business plan now as a thank you for sticking with me this long um I want to give you if you need the financial projections you can use ph20bp to get a 20 discount on the template I think it might be 100 before that maybe even a little less than that so definitely affordable once you buy the file it's yours but you can ask us any questions you want there is a video complete video walkthrough guide of how to fill the template out as well and that does it for us here if you enjoyed the video or if it was helpful please give us a thumbs up also consider subscribing to the channel if you'd like more tips on managing your business both of those things really help us and if you already have Financial projections he likes to review them feel free to send them to us at support projection hub.com I would be happy to give you some feedback on that and yeah we appreciate you guys being here I've linked the business plan template and the financial projection template down in the description so you can get those easily thanks foreign