What’s inside a party planner’s home office? One look around the work room of a budding party entrepreneur will tell you exactly what his or her strengths and weaknesses are. There are files and file folders everywhere, a few telephone units, and a desk containing the basic necessities like a personal computer and a receipt printer or two. Then you start to notice the small stuff: a desk full of craft materials, a shelf of recipe books, a design coffee table book and a calendar with squiggly lines written on it. You will also notice a list somewhere containing hotlines of other businesses or personal numbers of various party hosts.
is there a sense in all this? Or, is the planner haphazardly running her business? If she has been in the business for a time now, you will realize that her workroom is a reflection of her strengths and weaknesses and how she handles them.
Capitalizing on your Strength as a party entrepreneur means taking on the jobs involved in planning a party that you already know about, or an expert in. For example, a party entrepreneur who used to only cook and bake for leisure will focus on that strength and delegate the rest. She will be researching on which cartoon characters are “in” at the moment so that she can offer theme cakes and pastries (not to mention giveaways) to her clients. She will also be looking for ways to garnish the food on the buffet table so that her parties become truly memorable.
Her weaknesses, promotion, hosting, organizing, table setting and in-venue decorating, she will delegate to a competent team or business. Maybe she has a staff who can do things for her, but if she doesn’t, she won’t expend more time and energy into learning the things she can delegate. She will simply hire a competent business and make sure they do their jobs.
It’s easy to say “I’m a jack of all trades”, but the reality is that you need to delegate. At the end of the day you wil realize that 24 hours is too short and you will have to find ways to make planning and running a business as effortless as possible.
