The Apprentice: Business Lessons for Wedding Planners from Episode 12 – You’re Hired!
Our experts turn the mistakes of The Apprentice contestants into valuable advice for you wedding & event planners. Here’s the final instalment…
Episode 12 – You’re hired Contains spoilers.
The Show: Lord Sugar chose his business partner.
I can’t help thinking there are easier ways to get your hands on £250,000 of investment but then what would we do with our autumn evenings?
What really struck me was how similar Mark’s growth model was to most good weddings and events businesses. He had few overheads other than staff, so he could start small or even alone, get some sales, use that money to recruit more staff, get more sales, recruit more staff and so on. Your business is likely to be just the same. Start alone from home, use the profits to invest in manpower and grow your events businesses organically until the company is big but built on stable foundations. Far less risky than opening big on day one.
I was pleased to hear Lord Sugar say that he wasn’t afraid of entering a crowded market when he thinks he can do a better job than his competitors. Mark’s winning business model was based on an existing business – his employer’s business – but with added customer service and good branding. Not that wedding planning is particularly crowded but it’s no longer new so can you find a way of doing what other wedding planners do, but doing it better? Of course you can. Just get the basics right first like Mark did by learning well and getting work experience.
Mark proved to his investor that finding customers was easy by actually sending out a sales team and recruiting a customer before the pitch as a form of proactive market research, so if you want investment do the same thing.
That’s it for another nine months.
Happy Christmas everyone and here’s wishing you a successful new career in 2015.
This comment is made by Amber Hunter, expert tutor in Wedding Planning & Business from The Wedding Planner School
The Wedding Planner School's Blog
The Apprentice: Business Lessons for Wedding Planners from Episode 12 – You’re Hired!
Episode 12 – You’re hired Contains spoilers.
The Show: Lord Sugar chose his business partner.
I can’t help thinking there are easier ways to get your hands on £250,000 of investment but then what would we do with our autumn evenings?
What really struck me was how similar Mark’s growth model was to most good weddings and events businesses. He had few overheads other than staff, so he could start small or even alone, get some sales, use that money to recruit more staff, get more sales, recruit more staff and so on. Your business is likely to be just the same. Start alone from home, use the profits to invest in manpower and grow your events businesses organically until the company is big but built on stable foundations. Far less risky than opening big on day one.
I was pleased to hear Lord Sugar say that he wasn’t afraid of entering a crowded market when he thinks he can do a better job than his competitors. Mark’s winning business model was based on an existing business – his employer’s business – but with added customer service and good branding. Not that wedding planning is particularly crowded but it’s no longer new so can you find a way of doing what other wedding planners do, but doing it better? Of course you can. Just get the basics right first like Mark did by learning well and getting work experience.
Mark proved to his investor that finding customers was easy by actually sending out a sales team and recruiting a customer before the pitch as a form of proactive market research, so if you want investment do the same thing.
That’s it for another nine months.
Happy Christmas everyone and here’s wishing you a successful new career in 2015.
This comment is made by Amber Hunter, expert tutor in Wedding Planning & Business from The Wedding Planner School
Lessons from other episodes:
Episode 11
Episode 10
Episode 9
Episode 7
Episode 6
Episode 5
Episode 4
Episode 3
Episodes 1 & 2
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This entry was posted on Monday, December 22nd, 2014 at 10:22 am and is filed under Advice, business, Business advice, Commentary, event planner, wedding planner. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.