Nobody Has It All Figured Out: What It Really Takes to Build an Event Business

In this special episode of Event Matters, David Watt looks back at some of the conversations he has had with event business owners and leaders so far, bringing together the recurring lessons that have emerged around starting, growing and building a business that can last.

Across 16 previous conversations, some surprisingly consistent themes emerge. Few successful event businesses began with a perfectly formed plan, but as those businesses grew, their founders had to change with them – learning to step away from delivery, trust other people with responsibility and build the structure and culture needed to support the next stage of growth.

David also revisits conversations about the realities of building a team in a demanding industry, from creating a culture where people can learn from mistakes to recognising when constantly working harder is no longer sustainable. The episode finishes by looking at technology and AI, and why service, empathy, judgement and human connection remain so important to creating great events.

Expect insights on:

• Why successful event businesses rarely start with a perfect plan
• How the founder's role needs to change as a company grows
• Learning to step away from delivery and trust other people
• What good culture actually looks like inside an event business
• Building a business that doesn't depend on everyone constantly running at full tilt
• Why founders need to create space to focus on the future
• Where technology and AI can add value without replacing the human side of events

Bringing together perspectives from across the Event Matters series, this episode explores what it really takes to build an event business that can grow, evolve and become bigger than the person who started it.

Host: David Watt, Partner at Kershaw Partners

Featuring insights from: Lucy Nicholls, Andrew Charlton, Gavin Farley, Chris Lind, Jason Brown, Jennifer Davidson, Holly Faulkner, Craig Mathie, Rita Chandarana, Ben Hardy, Taran O'Doherty, Shea McNelis, Cindy Eisenhuth, Lisa James, Deborah Rey-Burns and Hugo Campbell.

Transcript

SPEAKER_06 0:00

Welcome to the Kirch Your Partners podcast, Event Matters. Conversations about the realities of running, growing and scaling event businesses today. This podcast is for established event business owners who want clarity, confidence, and a different perspective on the road ahead. Our aim is to keep these conversations open, informal, honest, practical, and even sometimes a little bit informative. So you can walk away with fresh insights and ideas you can put into action in your own business. I'm glad you're here, so let's get started. Over the past few months on Event Matters, I've had the chance to speak to people running businesses across pretty much every corner of the events industry. They're different businesses, of course, at different stages, and the people behind them have taken very different routes to get there. But listening back to some of those conversations recently, I realized how often we ended up talking about the same things. How do you turn something you're good at into a proper business? How do you grow without losing what made it successful in the first place? When do you stop trying to do every single thing yourself and build a team around you that can eventually take some of that responsibility away from you? So we're doing something slightly different this week and revisiting some of those conversations through five themes that have kept coming up. And perhaps the most reassuring place to start is that very few successful event business owners seem to begin with a perfectly formed plan. Lucy Nichols from PS Event Group, Andrew Charlton from Hashtag Events, and Gavin Farley from Assemble Group all took very different routes. But there's something familiar in each of their stories.

SPEAKER_10 1:36

Do you know what? I was very much in denial for a long time that I had a business because I absolutely I'm obsessed with that. I love it. I couldn't believe that you could make a career out of something like this. So for a long time, it's because we started as pro-singers productions, and still to this day, a lot of people refer to us as pro-singers. And over the years, all of these different elements have forged from the original concept of pro-singers. So we've got the production styling and the prop store. We've got performance specialists, which is what pro singers derive from. So that's with the select performers, or it could be the talent, it could be big celebrities, it could be comedians, it could be magicians, whatever it is. So as it happened as a business, I realized that I was getting paid for this. People were wanting this, and also that we were really bloody good at it. We spoke not so long ago, David. We haven't ever advertised our company. We've only taken a website live this year because someone tried to clone us. It's all been incredibly word of mouth. And I think because there was never a strategy, there was never a let's go after this, there wasn't ever a big business plan. So yes, as much as it was officially registered, I was no longer a sole trader because I thought, I'm dean, there's some money here. I should probably like do this properly and get all the insurances. And that was it, get the bank account, register it with companies house as a limited company, and it just took legs.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

I remember speaking to a very good friend of mine at the time and saying those foolish words, we could do a better job than this crowd, or words to that effect. And you know, a conversation in the pub next door to the race course in Newcastle at the end of the append and doodling on the back of a napkin. Um, and we literally came up with the idea of let's put on an expo. So it was it was a real Wayne's world moment of build it and they will come. And we just thought this was a great idea. And of course, not being like the business links of this world, we could sit there and decide it, and the next morning, buy the men, build a website, and almost by tea time the next day, we could be banging out tickets. It literally was that quick, and that got us into partnering up and putting on the first ever Northeast Expo, and that really was the springboard for everything.

SPEAKER_13 3:58

I didn't know that I wanted to do events. In fact, I didn't know anything about corporate events world or anything like that. But I was doing leisure and tourism business, and then part of whilst I was at college, we then started the Wush Promotions. Good name. Yeah, which was of its time. And we started doing nightclubs promotions across the South Coast, first in Portsmouth, and then we did a few other bits and bobs. And I still didn't really know what I wanted to do. But I had a lecturer at the time, Richard Gridley, who was the head of leisure and tourism at the college, and he said to me one day, he said, Look, here's this opportunity. They do it every two years. A company called IS Travel. Every two years they want to try and get someone from college to go and work in incentive travel. And I was like, What the fuck is incentive travel? I mean, no idea, you know, you're 16 years old.

SPEAKER_06 4:44

There's a lot to be said for instinct. Spotting an opportunity and being prepared to have a go, but getting something started and building something that can keep growing are two very different challenges. At some point, being very good at delivering work just isn't enough. The business needs different things from you, and often that means accepting that your own role has to change. Chris Lynn from Sure Events, Jason Brown from Technical Solutions, and Jennifer Davidson from Sleek Events have all experienced different versions of that transition.

SPEAKER_03 5:19

We've done it twice. Honestly, we did it once at the beg at the beginning and then we did it again after COVID. So we we we did it very differently after COVID than we did at the beginning. I think that the we uh employed people that like the project managers at the beginning and nothing else, and they were great and everything else, but we just what we operated was as a project management team and just got the team bigger. We didn't concentrate on the business as a whole. I still view myself as a project manager and and we all did everything pre-COVID and it worked and everything else. But COVID actually was a great time for us as a business in terms of we were financially secure during COVID. That's something that my dad drove into me, was like, when I made the first got the first big client, it wasn't, yeah, I'm gonna go buy a Porsche and do this and spend the money. It was like keep it in the bank, you never know what's gonna happen. Um and uh and and then I met Jody, uh Jodie Jones on a on a farm trip with Max uh in Sri Lanka and immediately knew that that this was the September before COVID, knew that she was the right person for the business and and to test me and to and to help grow it. Um luckily she joined us from Yellowfish and um and during COVID we talked through everything. And then since then we built it up, and and it's that person who has been next to me questioning what I do and bouncing ideas off that has made the business grow the way that it is. It's she's very good at process, and it's a pushing me to go, you're not a project manager anymore. Yes, I love doing that, but you've got to become the MD, you've got to become the CEO and and have different different stages. We've now got different groups. We've got a marketing team, marketing and commons team, we've we've just started our creative team. Um, we've got those things, and it's hard to get you we look at it on events as going, right, we've got another event, we need two project managers, right? Let's get that. But that's not sustainable. You've got to get those senior level people in, like Amy, who's just joined us, who's brilliant. We've got um Becky that looks after our HR and in an internal comms, we've got Rob who looks after our marketing, and and and having that tiered system so that I don't know everything that's going on in every project because I can't do that and still grow the business.

SPEAKER_07 7:40

I'm an engineer, you know. That's my background. I love being on Star, I love building massive LED walls, I love building LED floors, I love building LED ceilings, projection mapping buildings, like I love it. And there is certain clients I still deal with because I still I still like getting my hands dirty. But the end goal of where the business needs to get to and where I want to get to one day with a business, it won't get there and it won't become finished in a vertical commerce if I keep getting dirty on site. So I find it tricky, but bringing in the right staff that I can trust and I know I can trust with my customers, and I can trust to deliver to the stand, and I would want stuff delivered is the key to it. You know, having that right ops person, the right technical manager, the right project manager, the right freelancers on the ground without all of that. I can't possibly step back and not be a control freak.

SPEAKER_16 8:33

I mean, without them, Sleek wouldn't exist. I wouldn't be able to grow it. And I think that's the naivety that a lot of people forget, you know, those see a big paycheck offer. We we have multiple offers on the table um over the years, but the only person that would benefit would be me. But it's not me that's taking all these years to build it up by myself. Yes, I lead it, sure. But everybody plays a role in that. So it would be crazy for me to think, you know, actually, yeah, sure, let's do the paycheck. And then as soon as that goes through, people get laid off, nobody really cares. Like it's just not for me.

SPEAKER_06 9:09

So if your role is gonna change, you need people around you who can take on real responsibility. Which brings us to something that's probably come up more consistently than anything else on event matters. Culture. It's a word that gets thrown around a lot, but I've been much more interested in what it actually looks like inside event businesses. For Holly Faultler at Purple Patch Group, Craig Matthew at Project 30, and Rita Chandarana at Adventologists, that means three quite different things.

SPEAKER_02 9:40

We communicate with our team a lot in environments, whether it's over Teams or it's phone calls or whatever it is, but we communicate a lot to the point where nobody feels left out, nobody feels siloed, nobody feels isolated. And in a strange kind of way, I think the remote working takes away any of that office politics that we might have if we were all in the office five days a week because they just don't have the chance to have office politics. But we do get together quite a lot as well. So, you know, us as an events team will get together every Monday in an office, and the presentation team get together two, three times a week quite often in their office. It just happens to be that we're not all together as a single team very often. We've got used to communicating on Teams or Zoom or whatever it might be to the point where I think we get to see the real person, even though it's through a team's call. I feel like we've created a culture that allows people to be open and honest with us, because I think we're open and honest with them, and I think it goes two ways. And we know it works because when we do get the chance to get together as a full team, everyone gets on so well. It it just constantly, I don't know. I'm always so proud when we're all together.

SPEAKER_08 11:00

Culture is everything, I think your team is everything. Like both Paul and I come from kind of a sporting background, and we have been in that environment where the captain talks and everyone listens and respects and follows. But you all kind of dig in together, and when times are hard, you all properly work together to make it happen. Like that teamwork and that culture in our space, in the event space, which is a high-pressured environment with big decisions being made almost every day, particularly when you're in a live environment, knowing that everyone is bought in and pulling in the same direction is so, so, so important. And before we even had a member of staff, I've done a staff handbook that said, these are the perks you're gonna get, these are the ways we're gonna look after our people. Like I've set this business up to be professional and considered right from the beginning, so that as we do evolve and build a culture and build a team, it can have a culture that facilitates that growth. And I do think that collective piece is so important to me. Really interestingly, when you mentioned ego earlier, I think ego is a such an interesting thing because like I think you need some ego to succeed and to put yourself out there and say, hey guys, we're we're really good. But for me, it's about balancing that ego.

SPEAKER_11 12:26

In fact, sometimes I actually watch them. I I won't let them ruin a customer event. I'm because I'm always conscious that I know where by letting them fail, they learn the most, but it's never to the detriment of my customer. But I have let people go into a dark alley and then they go, Oh, I don't want to be in that space, but they have to go there. Sometimes, you know, my dad used to say that to me. Sometimes you're not gonna learn unless you fail. So obviously, from that point of view, I won't let them not in a million years, I'll let them sort of fail, but I'll let them get to that place where they're like, gosh, I've really not done a great job here. And then that piece of learning is probably some of the best pieces of learning that my team have had. And I'm doing that with somebody who started off in my business and actually he thought he was like one of the best people around. And actually, slowly, slowly, as we started unraveling, not because I want to break you, I never want to break a human being, but I want to be like if you take away all of that self-esteem, ego, everything, and then we bring you back to you. You've got, I wouldn't have employed you if you weren't what I thought you were, but you've just got to let me help you. And so by creating this really open environment, it gives them the safety to go, yeah, that was my bad. Whereas I couldn't do that in industry, I couldn't say it was my bad to my managers. I don't want to be the manager that I had. I had these really big, scary managers where actually I spent most of the time trying to lie to go, yeah, yeah, I've done it. I've done it. It's just in my draft, it's in my inbox. We've heard it all before. So by me saying, look, I've heard that before, I'm not born yesterday, but also by keeping that safety, they learn the most because they grow as they feel safe.

SPEAKER_06 14:30

And none of that makes events an easy industry to work in. There are deadlines you can't move, weekends when everyone has to pull together, and moments when things simply have got to get done. But there's a difference between working hard when the job demands it and building a company that depends on people running at full tilt most of the time. Ben Hardy from Richmond Event Management, Tarina Dohti from Yaha, and Shay McNeilis from Integrity Security all touched on different sides of what it takes to build something sustainable.

SPEAKER_05 15:03

That's actually a policy that we adopted a couple of years ago here at REM. You know, time and loop probably wasn't historically a thing in the business, but that's now company policy. So if you work a weekend, you get a day off. And I insist that if you work both weekend days, you take one of those within the first two weeks after that event. You're no good to anyone if you're not refreshed, rested, and ready to go on the next job. It's not sustainable, not at all.

SPEAKER_14 15:29

So I think in the sense of round about the tribe and stuff like that, I think that's stuff we've more landed on more recently. I think what it did coming back out of COVID was it allowed for us to build that brick by brick. So we started with one person in each department, and obviously you could operate outdoor events, and I can remember being really happy. You know, there were some months where we might have done 50,000 revenue for the month, and that felt like a success. But previously we were doing six hundred thousand in this month. But the fifty, when you've got when you're eating nothing, it feels like a something, I suppose. But um yeah, the people we built back one seat by seat, it was we was just forever thankful, you know. They they could have made it difficult or they could have refused, like some people in some positions did, to make it hard to come back or make excuses why they couldn't. And it allowed for us to build back, you know, with the best and really be open with them as well about the the challenge ahead and uh what we're thinking and you know making a promise to them that, you know, if you know, longer term that we are forever thankful as well.

SPEAKER_04 16:42

As business owners, you get bogged down in absolute nonsense and noise. Um when it will sort itself out, you know, or someone will sort it out. Because if you're sorting all the small problems out, you can't see the future and build into the future. For me, what it did is when it came back was when we started having our conversation with Mike and everything else that was right right. I know now that we can build this and double what we're trying to do because I kind of saw the wood from the trees and knew that we had a great team that could take up you know the mantle from the day-to-day running of the business. Any entrepreneur, anyone's trying to run the business. I think you start off with an ego. I hope as I've got older that has changed and I've realized that it doesn't really matter. You know, money and all the other stuff that come with it doesn't really matter. And what I'm trying to do is build something with Pat that has a legacy in the future, you know, and the only way to do that is for the other people that are around us and the other people coming through get it and understand it, you know, and uh hopefully we can achieve what we're trying to do to give ourselves this better life for the future where we can step right back and you know the business will run itself.

SPEAKER_06 17:56

Building a business that works better inevitably means looking at technology too. AI is already changing her VM businesses handle administration, marketing, planning, and thenty more besides, and that's only going to continue. But listening to these conversations, I found myself coming back to a slightly different question. What is the bit we don't want technology to replace? Cindy Eisenhooth from CLE, Lisa James from the Wentworth Collective, Deborah A. Burns from Propeller, and Hugo Campbell from Together all come at that question from very different parts of the industry. But there's a pretty consistent answer.

SPEAKER_12 18:35

First of all, I need to look at what I learned. So because I did work in some of the best establishments in London, one of I think the the one of the best places and and and and two gentlemen that probably taught me the most in that period was Chris Corbyn and Jeremy King when I worked at LookerPrace. What they taught us all was about detail and about knowledge and about you know service detail knowledge is the recipe for the guest experience.

SPEAKER_09 19:08

As you get older, you have more responsibilities, what that might be. So life does get in the way. So often when you do have a boss who is stressed, it might have nothing to do with work, and often it's never about you. It's always people have problems in their life, health, or whatever it may be outside of work. And sometimes they bring it to the workplace, and that's fair enough. But if you have empathy and you can understand that, often you can be quite, I suppose, like say business-like, but have that emotional intelligence to understand, okay, let's see what the problem here is. And I think we're living in an age now where people are very disconnected and we have lots of distractions. But a simple moment to look someone in the eye and make eye contact and ask a question of how are you, or language, or how are you feeling today means a lot. And you might get the answer that you're looking for to connect with that human being. And you know, I've certainly found in the events understanding the human condition, understanding people, what their needs are so important in running successful events.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

As a designer, you tend to challenge briefs from different perspectives. You and again, I like to have a plan B, someone that's a bit more interesting, a bit more exciting, someone that's maybe um up and coming, that might they might not be known, but they actually be the one that'll be the one that will be the most memorable. So that's how I like to see it. Um so I have a client in in Zurich, and for the last 22 years, they are running an event for business people on the future and on trends. And most recently, they came to me looking for speakers on focus and how to regain focus in a world of AI slop. And you could see that as speakers that talk about the science of attention, or it could be the benefits of attention. So I actually find the profile, find their talks, are they a good speaker? Preferably, obviously keynote level, and then I present them to a client. I would someone's background, like you say, doesn't mean they're going to be a great speaker. So it's more about trying that's why it's like find sometimes finding a needle in a haystack because you're trying to find this specific expertise or something very interesting, but they also need to be a great speaker. So that's why that's why we exist, I guess, as a net as a as an industry, because it's not easy to find these people.

SPEAKER_15 21:31

We started as a tech marketplace. We're still very, very tech enabled, and it's the forefront of everything we do. I cannot stress strongly enough, events will never be carried out by AI and will never be more important than human curation. There are a million small touches that elevate an event from being good, acceptable, or you know, a nice time to being really, really exceptional. And, you know, if I'm thinking about something like the Isle of Wight, it's the pub that they built on site, or all of the little creative production touches that take it from being, you know, something that's really, really fun to feeling like you're completely immersed in an environment. And, you know, there aren't 10 things that make that happen, it's 10,000. And I really, really do feel very strongly that we are in one of the probably most AI impervious industries that exists because humans are so vital in it.

SPEAKER_06 22:33

And I think Hugo's right, for all the change happening around us, this remains an extraordinarily human industry. And listening back to these conversations, perhaps that's the thread that connects all of it. Businesses start because someone sees an opportunity and decides to have a go. They grow because that person eventually realizes they can't do everything themselves. They become stronger when good people are trusted with real responsibility, and they last when the culture and structure around those people allow them to do their best work. But what I've also found reassuring is that nobody I've spoken to seems to have everything figured out. These are people running successful businesses and they're still learning, changing the way they lead, questioning decisions they've made, and working out what the next stage should look like. And perhaps that's what running a business is. You don't suddenly reach the point where you know all the answers. You get better at asking the right questions and surrounding yourself with people who know the things you don't. Thank you to everyone who's joined me on Event Matters so far, and of course to everyone who's listened. We've got plenty more conversations to come.