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Event planner invoice example for Operations

statistics show that actually most event planning business are more likely to fail in their first three year of business in a large part of that after doing the research and looking at the stats is that a lot of them the reason why they're failing is because they're not actually setting up their business correctly there are so many things that are missing their structures that weren't done well from the beginning and in this video I'm going to share with you is how to actually start your event plan in business in such a way that your business is geared for Success because once you make it Beyond year three you're 90 more likely to still be in business 10 years later so I'm going to use a five point system to break down all the different areas in which you should focus on when you're starting your business to ensure that you're geared for success I find if you take this piece by piece and just work through it it's so much easier than looking at starting a business as this massive big giant Mountain that you have to go conquer the first piece that I want you to jump into is validating your idea so yes I know you had the idea to start event planning business maybe you're the person in your family who you're always finding everybody's events you're planning birthday parties the kids birthday parties everybody's celebration their engagement all of it and you just thought you know what well why not do this and get paid for it since I'm doing it anyways well here's the thing before you jump in and actually start a business you want to ensure that there's a demand for your service so yes there's a demand within your circle within your friends and family group but that's just because people might rely on you because you're good on planning now when you're looking to expand beyond that you really do need to test that idea so if I'm going outside of my friends and my family are there people out there who actually want this service are there people out there who are willing to pay money for this service and are what they're willing to pay what I want to charge and still be able to make a profit right because keep in mind now you're going to be putting your time on the line right is it going to be worth it for you you need to validate that before you jump into the business and I find some people just missed the step they have a great great idea they think it's good they have a passion and they jump in but here's the thing before you do that there's a place that I want you to be at before you start your business I want you to validate the idea to ensure that your passion so the thing that you enjoy doing is also meeting demand meaning that there are people out there who would like someone to do that and are willing to pay for someone to do that and that you're good at it right because you might find that you know what you enjoy doing kids birthday parties but what people are demanding are weddings but what you're really good at is kids birthday parties right so you need to have ensure that those three things are intersecting so how do you validate your idea go out and do research look around your market look at what the demand is look around your area are there a ton of wedding planners but not enough party plotters maybe there's a reason maybe there's a ton more weddings or people willing to pay for weddings than they are for like kids birthday parties or maybe it's the reverse but you need to do that research to validate the idea so one of the best ways to actually survey the market is to speak to people if you can if you know someone who's getting married and I don't mean your immediate circle try to see where they're at are they hiring a planner how much are they paying the planner how much would they be willing to pay upon or if they didn't hire one right try to have those conversations but do your research as well just to see what other companies are out there in your area so one of the things I found is I've met someone who said you know what I started a wedding plan in business I had it up and running and I'm not getting hired and no one is booking me and when I did the research for her area it turns out there was like one other wedding planning company and that company was about to go out of business so that means that there was not a ton of demand for wedding planners in her area now that doesn't mean people won't get married in the area it could just be that a lot of them were doing their weddings themselves maybe they're doing weddings on a smaller scale so they didn't need to hire a planner whatever that is I want you to do the research to find that out next thing you want to do in the validation stage is that you do want to get a business plan together now when I see a business plan I know it's going to scare a ton of people but here's the thing you want to do I don't want you to focus on doing these like really professional standard straight box Cut like Cookie Cutter business lines I want you to think about what goal you have for your business what's the goal when would you like to achieve it by and what do you plan to achieve it like what do you plan to do to get there if you can do those three things you have your business plan pretty much up and running right because that's the main thing you need to outline what's your goal you want to start a business what kind of business event planning business do you want it to be successful yes so what are you trying to achieve maybe you want to ensure that your business is making two hundred thousand dollars every year when do you want to hit that buy do you want to hit that by your second year how do you plan to get there right how do you plan to get to that two hundred thousand it's not about just saying well I've started event planning business and then now all of a sudden I'm making two hundred thousand dollars for the year no you need to put in a little bit of work right you might need to do some marketing you might need to reach out to some contact you might need to ask people for referrals right what are the things that you're going to do to get there so that's essentially what your business plan should be and that's in the validation phase now once you've done that phase and you realize you know what this is still an amazing idea I want to do it well let's get on to the second phase so the second phase of starting your business is where you actually want to get your business Foundation set up now I cannot stress these enough because so many people skip over this step now I know it's really exciting you want to start the business when I could jump in you want to start booking clients making money and doing the pretty work I get it I was an event planner but here's the thing you do want to set your business up properly because the business Foundation there it's basically just a structure of your house and you can't build the house and then go fix the structure after well you might be able to but let me tell you it's way more difficult than if you just did the foundations first so what's in the foundation well those are the basic things like choosing a name for your business setting up your business bank accounts getting your social media accounts in place minor domain name setting up all the little things that will make your business illegal right choosing a business structure registering your business all these things are the things you want to do in the foundation side of it now here's the thing one of the things I don't want you to focus a ton on in this area is actually choosing a business name I will meet people who will have spent months trying to come up with the perfect name I don't want you to do that your business name is not the thing that's really going to bring you clients yes it's important to help people who don't know about your business to be able to find you especially when they're searching online but it is not the key thing so yes you've now spent two months coming up with a perfect name that you're the concierge of love and then you spent the next two months where you have no clients you have no income and then you're wondering what exactly am I doing with this business I don't want you to be in that position I would rather you spend four months actually doing client source and work and marketing and then spend one week coming up with a business name because it's something you can always change later on right now I'm going to link a couple of resources for you that you can do this very easily with I'm gonna put together a full list of resources that you can use when you're starting your business a full checklist and I'm going to link it down below so you can download it so you want to get that business name started once you have your business name I want you to start securing everything in your business name so do things like set up your social media account with your business name even if you don't know which platforms you're going to Market on as yet set them all up because the important part is once you have your name you don't want to then keep it have it or laying around while you do other things and then have other people come up with similar names and then they have your website domain they have your social media accounts and you have to start doing variations on each on these different platforms so go ahead and hit them up Instagram Facebook Pinterest just sign up for all of them secure the accounts they're all free and just let them sit there until you figure out what you're gonna do there's nothing you need to do at that point now if you are going to register your business which I highly recommend if you're starting this out properly is you do want to have your legal structure in place now I cannot advise you on this because you might be in a different country different state different Province different location that I am so what you want to do is you do want to speak to either a legal professional right that's the first step or you also want to speak to an accountant person because sometimes they might be able to give you some advice based on what the different tax benefits will be based on the structure you choose but ensure that you speak with these people before you decide on something so that you know all the information before you actually make that decision now once you have your legal structure and you register your business you're official right here's where I want you to get something really quickly now I know this is not mandatory but I want you to get your domain name yep I love the online marketing space that's my jam right and I want you to secure your online presence even if you are not planning to put up a website I want you to go ahead go to bluehost.com or one of them and just purchase your domain name in the name of your business because you're going to keep it there on until you're ready for the website the next thing you're going to do is you're going to go set up your business bank account set up a business bank account yes I know at this point your business probably have zero Revenue am I doing that zero right zero zero right but you still want to have your account in place one of the biggest mistakes I made when I started one of my businesses was I started I just had everything going through my personal account and when it came to tax time I had to sit there and go online by line through everything try to separate what was a business expense or was a personal expense and trying to remember what each one was do you know what my memory is like months after the fact after I bought something and the line in my bank account just said like dc1069 I had no idea what that was so it's important to try to separate them very early depending on where you are I know in my location I'm in Canada a business bank account was was free it didn't charge me anything now there are certain fees associated with it depending on what I'm doing in the account but just to have the account and do everyday banking there is no fee so if it's the same for you this should not be a roadblock go into your bank and see if you can just open a separate business bank account that way when you do start having in their revenue and expenses associated with your business you have a separate account to funnel them into you it makes it way easier for you to track your business expenses your revenue and your profit at the end of the day but most importantly come tax time it is so easy to get it all together and do your reporting because nothing is jumbled up I think you also want to do Under the faith the business Foundation phase is that you want to speak to an insurance company so yes you probably have not started planning events yet or anything you know really big and anything that's having any liability at the moment but what you want to do is reach out to a couple of insurance companies I recommend two to three just so you have a comparison and ask them you know what what kind of insurance should I have if I have an event plan in business if I'm going to be planning these types of events if I'm going to be working with these type of clients right what would you recommend should I have insurance period what type of insurance should I have a general insurance for my business or should I have more just event specific insurance as I'm booking different projects speak to them get their advice because that way before you get an actual client in you know what the next steps are so that you're not in any trouble any legal battles any liability cases later on trust me you will thank me for this one the third phase and this is the phase that I find that everybody enjoys is getting the pretty stuff set up so this is getting the business pretty set up this is the part everyone love and they all Jump Ahead too and they don't do step one and two but I promise you if you do step one and two you'll enjoy this part even more well maybe not but either way your business will thank you later on when it's not failing because you have your structures in place so here's the thing the pretty stuff that is getting your website up getting your logo choosing your business colors choosing your business font now I'm gonna link something below as I said before I'm going to link a reason Source where you can get all of this linked downloaded in a nice pretty list so you can go through and check them off I also link a couple of resources that you can do this through so for example choosing your business font and colors like you know your branding elements you can do very easily through canva canva.com which I highly recommend and you can do that and just set this all up then you can get your logo done now I will say this video is for 2023 so I'm making some changes here now before I used to recommend people get business cards but I'm gonna be honest I can't do lose the last time I gave someone my business card especially after 2020. I don't think I've handed out one business card well partially because I'm not touching people a lot I do so much of my business come through online um marketing so think about where you are if you want to do that I know the business card just seemed pretty in legit but think about if you actually need it if people are referring you and just sending people to like an Instagram account or a Facebook page don't waste your money if you don't need to take that extra cash and put into something a little bit more substantial like your website right and speaking of websites yes I'm gonna link resources that you can use in my download of course I'm gonna link all the ones that I recommend like the different platforms and some key things to get you started now one of the things that I also included was for some people who don't have you know the money to invest in a website designer right now or you don't have the design skills yourself what I do is I've linked an actual template for free that you can access in the resource just to get started now it's not a full website don't get me wrong it's just a quick splash page that you can use to get something up and ready so if someone is asking you like do you have any examples of your work or a website that I can look on you have something to show them right away until you get everything in place along the lines of the business pretty is you also want to get some tools in place and these tools I'm referring to are your actual business tools so things that you need when you're working with clients so some templates if you're going to be sending them brochures which you are right you're going to be meeting clients they want to see brochures or they want proposals or you book someone they want invoice on these little templates are very good to have set up and ready to go and one of your branding elements are in place they're so much easier to design I of course have a ton of templates I'm linking them in the template shop eventplanning templates.com you can definitely check them out but I'm going to link them so you can see them all these are great to start with because you don't have to do a ton of design work I've already designed them for you you just gotta pop in your branding elements right change a font change the color put in your pretty event photos and they're ready to go so if a client does reach out and they're saying hey I have an event coming up I just want to know your prize can you send me a proposal you have it ready to go now there are a couple of tools that can also help you to do this really efficiently and they're called crms right so they're client relationship Management Systems so there are tools like honeybook I'll planner dubsado right they're really CRM tools where you can just set up a workflow you can have put in a client's information you can send them a proposal electronically they can respond you can send them a contract electronically they can sign it electronically they can pay invoice electronically okay I've said electronically too many times but you get the idea it just really helps to streamline your business now here's the thing that I'm not going to touch on is your event supplies so in my opinion I don't recommend actually doing event Supply purchasing as a part of starting up your business the reason for this is when you start purchasing event supplies you're purchasing them