Many Event Planners start out working from home. This can be a great model for setting up an event planning business as it keeps overheads down in those critical early stages of trading and can maximise productivity. If you are considering whether it could work for you and how to make a success of it, here are some things to think about. When I set up my Event Management company over 10 years ago I started working from home. It seemed like a natural choice and it meant that instead of worrying about paying expensive office rent in the early stages I could focus on building my business. It worked for me and I worked from home for over a year before outgrowing my home office and renting an office. Many other Event Planners, Wedding Planning and Freelance Event Managers report the same and find it a workable solution for them – either for the short or the long term. Others just don’t seem able to imagine the realities of working from a home base and I have been quizzed and insulted in equal measures by people trying to understand the intricacies of working from home!
An Event Planner can work from almost anywhere if you have a laptop, internet and mobile phone. Most important are your personality and event management skills. Starting out by working from home keeps costs lower as renting office space can be a huge outgoing for a fledgling business and you may not wish to be tied into a long term rent contract from the outset. Starting from home gives a new business the best possible start during those important early months. Commuting to work every day can be time consuming and stressful in terms of both time and travelling expenses and is a part of the day that many would not miss. By working from home you are not only potentially saving on your monthly travel outlay but you are probably removing the big city temptations which are so easy to fritter away money on (coffee, cake, and other high street temptations). Most important though you become more time rich. If your daily rush hour commute was an hour each way this gives you the chance to extend the productivity of your working day by a whole two hours (if you want to) in the blink of an eye!
Set up a specific workspace which can be your dedicated work area. Ideally have a room that you can close the door on at the end of the day, rather than being reminded about the mounds of paperwork on your desk and hearing the phone ring afterhours! You can design the space based on your work preferences. Perhaps you want to use a room with a view or perhaps staring at a brick wall would be better for your concentration. Think about what furniture you will need to work – desk, chair, phone, answer machine, shelves/filing cabinet, etc. Just because you are working from home doesn’t mean you should be any less disciplined. As well as working set office hours some people still choose to dress as if they were still going to an office job everyday. In a creative industry such as the event industry I don’t necessarily agree with this – it makes sense for me to dress more casually on non-client facing days at the office – but do whatever works for you. When working from home the most frequent questions I used to get asked is “how do you concentrate on working from home with the lure of daytime television?” and “do you work in your pyjamas?”
I think people that asked these questions completely missed the whole point that you are WORKING from home. If you are working for yourself it means that if you don’t work, you don’t get paid! It is up to you but no one else is going to pay your salary for you. Furthermore in my experience running your own business keeps you busy, busy, busy. Organising events is a time consuming operation and organising events and running your own business doesn’t give any time for slacking! I actually found the opposite in terms of discipline – it is actually hard to switch off and working from home can fudge your work-life balance as the lines are blurred between the two. Whether you struggle to focus or struggle to switch off though discipline has to be key! One of the things we struggled with as our business grew was storage space. We invested in bigger and better printers, event equipment, marketing materials, banners and so forth, but this investment also takes up space. Furthermore our regular clients increasingly wanted us to hold some of their materials and banners between events which put a further strain on storage space.
When event boxes of literature started taking over the lounge every time we had delegate folders to collate ahead of an event we realised it was time to move to a more purpose built office solution. I find that many of our clients prefer us to travel to their offices to meet but if you ever need a space to meet and your home office isn’t large enough/suitable enough there are plenty of coffee shops, hotels and meeting places which offer a convenient place to meet face to face so this need never be a concern. One of the biggest perks of working from home is the productivity element. As event deadlines get close hours are often long for an event planner and it is great to feel safe in your own home and able to carry on working for as long as you need to. Likewise if you have international conference calls across time zones it is convenient to be able to do this from the luxury of your home office. Don’t forget to update and take out the relevant insurance policies as you should with any business working from a home or office base.
There are however many other perks to working at home too – for example paying no or reduced business rates, tax relief and off-setting a percentage of your household running expenditure through the business. These elements will of course vary from country to country so do look into the realities of this before you take the plunge. Perhaps you are currently employed but wanting to test the water by starting to develop your own client base and run your own events for people? You may be part of the rise of 5 to 9 entrepreneurs – those that work evenings and weekend to get their own business off the ground. Or you may have decided that you want to be your own boss and are simply itching to go it alone. I hope this article has given you some thoughts to consider and motivation if you are looking to start your own Event Planning Business from home. I would love to hear your advice and experiences of this in the comments below.And in another troubling sign, the number of families re-entering shelters within a year of leaving is increasing as well.
The statistics depict a far different picture than the one Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, promised days before he was sworn into office. His campaign for mayor had tapped into the economic frustrations of New Yorkers struggling with low wages and rising rents, and forced out of neighborhoods by gentrification. He vowed to curb the surge in homelessness under Michael R. Bloomberg, his predecessor as mayor.“An ever-growing homeless population is unacceptable to the future of New York City,” he said. “It will not happen under our watch.” A Homeless Epidemic in New York? Thousands Hit the Cold Streets to Find Out Many people across New York believe the city is experiencing an epidemic of street homelessness. Mayor Bill de Blasio has disputed this. Just as wages have not kept up with rents, Mr. de Blasio’s long-term strategy to combat homelessness — a combination of rental subsidies, anti-eviction efforts and mental health initiatives — has not kept pace with the flow of women, men and children streaming into centers every day.
The mayor has repeatedly defended his administration’s efforts on homelessness, and he did so again last week. But he has also acknowledged that the rise in resident complaints about homelessness is rooted not just in perception, but in reality.The closing of several drop-in centers by the Bloomberg administration left street homeless people fewer alternatives to the sidewalk, while the de Blasio administration’s less confrontational approach has made it easier for them to stay on the streets unbothered by the police.As public attention to the presence of homeless people has grown, Mr. de Blasio and his aides have tried to highlight other, more immediate efforts, including the addition of 500 shelter beds at spaces provided by churches and faith-based organizations, and expanded hours at the remaining drop-in centers, where homeless men can shower and eat a meal.And the administration frequently points to the relocation in the last fiscal year of more than 38,000 people from shelters to permanent housing, including more than 15,000 through the administration’s new rental assistance programs.
Yet as quickly as people move out, others take their place, keeping the shelter population high. And the 57,000 people who are in shelters overseen by the Department of Homeless Services do not include an estimated 3,000 who survive on sidewalks, in subways and huddled in encampments in parks and beneath overpasses. Nor does that figure count the thousands of women and children escaping domestic violence or the runaway youths in specialized homeless shelters run by other agencies. The number of homeless people “would have gotten a lot higher but for the efforts of a lot of people in this administration and beyond who worked feverishly, rightly, to get people services,” Mr. de Blasio said last month, defending his record on the public radio station WNYC. Homelessness has been a challenge for many of Mr. de Blasio’s predecessors, and across the country, from Los Angeles to Madison, Wis., mayors are facing a rise in homelessness, as meager wages among lower-income workers have left more of them unable to afford housing.
But Mr. de Blasio is on a stage all his own, ushered into office with a mandate to address income inequality in a city where the chasm seems to grow wider with the building of each new luxury condominium tower.Casting himself in the liberal tradition of his political idol, Fiorello H. La Guardia, Mr. de Blasio has taken an expansive view of how a city can address the forces that drive poverty. He pushed through universal prekindergarten, engineered the first freeze in 46 years on regulated rents, won approval for mandatory paid sick leave and wants the $15-an-hour minimum wage for fast-food employees expanded to a much larger pool of workers.While those initiatives may help reduce homelessness in years to come, the thousands of people packing shelters and dotting sidewalks have become an inexorable concern for the administration. State and city investigators have documented health and safety problems at shelters, the city comptroller has blocked shelter contracts that have not been vetted, and the mayor’s top social services official stepped down just as questions about the city’s homelessness strategy were gaining traction in the press.Mr. de Blasio and his aides have consistently attributed the rising shelter population and the more visible street population to Mr. Bloomberg’s policies and decisions
, particularly the elimination of a rental assistance program called Advantage. After the program ended in 2011, the shelter population grew to about 53,000 from about 37,000 people within three years.But the de Blasio administration got a late start on its own rental assistance program, called Living in Communities and known as LINC. It did not start until almost a year after Mr. de Blasio took office, and landlords have been reluctant to participate in the program, which limits rents to $1,213 for a single person. The Department of Homeless Services set up a so-called war room to make daily calls to landlords and to entice them with $1,000 bonuses and three months’ rent in advance.Even if enough landlords can be enlisted, the sustainability of the mayor’s rental assistance programs has been called into question by the Independent Budget Office. One rental subsidy program, aimed at long-term shelter residents, relies on state funds that the city can use for rental aid only if it saves money on shelters.