Paul and I didn’t plan to capture the number one spot in the $25 billion dollar Hotel Selection industry. Nor did we plan to eventually go on to have hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts, or experience nearly 25,000% growth over our first three years in business and make the Inc 500 twice, ranked #23 and #2 – becoming the second fastest growing privately held company in the United States.
So if we didn’t plan for that level of success, how the heck did we accomplish it? Think we were lucky? Think again. As the Roman Philosopher, Seneca, said: “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” We were prepared for success, the kind of success that isn’t traditionally tied to a single life event like winning the lottery, but rather a series of planned and unplanned life events that ultimately preparing you to recognize opportunity.
But recognizing opportunity is one thing. Having the ability and taking the initiative to seize it is something altogether different. What Paul and I realized was the key to seizing an opportunity is identifying a need greater than our own…that of our customers.
You see, a potential customer, who is oftentimes a business owner, has many needs – personnel needs, supply needs, payroll needs, and scaling needs just to name a few. But by and large all of those needs come down to one very simple need: money. People are in business to make money, which ultimately is the vehicle to getting all other needs met. And that means that although a potential customer can have a plethora of needs, not one of them involves paying us money. So how did we unlock an opportunity to make money by satisfying someone’s need if they weren’t willing to pay us? We had to convince the customer of a need they didn’t realize they had, then get a third party to pay for it!
Think about what a real estate agent does for a home buyer when brokering a deal. They meet with the future homeowners, perhaps at their kitchen table, and ask, “What’s important to you in this new house that you want to buy?” Then the realtor shuts up and listens. They identify all the homeowners needs, put together a list of homes to visit, help negotiate the sale, then get the seller to pay them for their services, not the homeowner. After all, the seller is the one with the product, and to get the buyer’s business, they are willing to pay the realtor’s commission out of the sale of the house.
Translate that model to event planning, and suddenly you have EventPrep®, a home-based, life-style franchise opportunity, a forward-thinking, full-service event planning and management company, headquartered in Central Florida with a primary focus of saving clients time, money, and anxiety while planning unforgettable events.
Paul and I say all the time that we didn’t invent event planning. We just found a way to seize an opportunity and build a better mousetrap – a model that creates a win-win-win for everyone, the clients, the hotels, and the event planners.