It’s here! Eleven and a Half is Corwin Hiebert’s tell-all event planning eBook. This 18 page down-loadable PDF is crammed full of insights, ideas, and action steps with you, the event planner, in mind.

Whether you’re an event “professional” or someone who self-inflicts events on themselves through entrepreneurial necessity, volunteerism, or an ever expanding job description this eBook will help you make your next event a huge success. Eleven and a Half is written in such a way that any level of event planner can apply these concepts and strategies to any type of event.

You can purchase Eleven and a Half for just $5 USD. Simply click the Add to Cart button at the top of this post to purchase this exciting eBook!

It’s also available to Amazon Kindle users:

Page examples:

Connect With Existing Clients. I spend a lot of time reconnecting with my clients through simple little gestures like sending a post-card, inviting them out for an organic free trade coffee, or treating them to lunch. I find this invaluable because it’s during this time that we often have the freedom to brainstorm about the next event project without anything actually on the line; it’s very freeing.

Reach-out to Potential Clients. I don’t advertise. My business is built exclusively on relationships. Each October I send out referral letters (actual letters on paper, not an e-mail) to all my business contacts. This letter is simple, it highlights a couple past projects and let the recipient know how my company can help make their next event highly successful. Not all my contacts have events but they are suppliers or know of a company that could use my help. This is a great way to build “word of mouth”.

Establish Processes and Documentation. This is the boring stuff of business, sort of. I like to review all my previous projects to see if there’s any deliverable that can be turned into a template or that needed some tweaking so that next time it can be more streamlined. This exercise helps me make more money – plain and simple. The faster my company gets at delivering excellent service the less time it will take to accomplish the project goals. This inturn gives me more time to work on new projects and generate more money. It’s not rocket science.

So, in the end… October is MY TIME of the year. I love it. I would definitely encourage every event professional to carve out a bit of time (maybe even smaller chunks twice a year) to step off the event-train and spend some time building your business. I highly recommend it.

When I was working out my business plan to start my own event management company a couple years ago I asked companies who have hired event professionals in the past what they wanted to know about their planned event and all of them said “everything”. The more I poked around I discovered that event planners often keep a lot of critical information to close to their chest, or worse, in their e-mail inbox or just in their head. Clients often get told “it’s all being taken care of” in lieu of actual status reports or access to project tracking. Well, as far as I’m concerned, that’s a bit like dressing the emperor with air instead of fine silk.

SharePoint is designed to be installed on your server but if you’re like me then you don’t have a server and you wouldn’t even know how to get or use one. I recommend using the online service available through www.apptix.com – there’s a monthly fee but it’s worth it (just include it in your quote). If you’re looking for something a bit more managerial then try the project tracking wonders of www.smartsheet.com - their free trial package is actually pretty good. At minimum use Google Docs. My expectation is that by making the project details available to the stakeholders 24/7 then they won’t need to e-mail or phone me very often and that’s a great thing. It’s less for me to “do” because we all know that  that taking long phone calls and processing e-mail doesn’t actually get a lot of work done.  

At the end of the day the goal is to be transparent with your client. Keeping them updated on the details of the project empowers them to better understand the value of hiring you and makes them an expert on the event which they’re are ultimately accountable for. Educating stakeholders is part of an event managers job and by removing dependancies on e-mail, conference calls, and long in-person meetings, while at the same time putting critical project information at everyone’s finger tips, will make your life easier and make you look like the professional that you truly are.