5 Ways Your Event Planning Certificate CAN’T Help You
Your event planning certificate can do a lot of things—like look amazing on your resume—but there are quite a few things it can’t help you with. Want a brighter smile in 28 days? Nope! Help you become an internationally renowned flamenco guitarist? Forget it! Need to learn Latin before meeting your boyfriend’s family in a week? We wish you luck! But while we can joke and jest all day, there are some legitimate things that an event planning certificate can’t help you with even if you’re using it in the field of planning. Ready for a rude awakening? We know you aren’t, but here we go!
1. If you can’t stand people
If you don’t like being around people, well, we’ve got some bad news for you—event planning is a super social career! It doesn’t matter if you get straight A’s in our courses or if you’ve taken four or five specialization courses to amp up your resume—if you can’t communicate with people, scoring an event planning job will be incredibly difficult!
Much of your time is spent meeting with clients, coordinating with vendors, and of course attending events to make sure everything goes smoothly. You need to be ready to work with all sorts of people on a day-to-day basis. Unless you think an event planner certification can help you become more social (personally, we don’t), this may not be the career path for you.
2. If you want to make a 6-figure profit in your first year
We don’t want to burst your bubble, but if you think this is true, you may be flying too close to the sun. Don’t get us wrong—many wedding and event planners run successful, profitable businesses… but it takes a ton of work to make it to the top.
The first year in the job market can be especially hard. Unless you somehow manage to snag a celebrity client straight out of the gate, expect to start from the very bottom and work your way up slowly, but steadily. Make sure that you take every opportunity you get to network and maintain good relations with people. Your start-up costs can be hefty—website design and other business overhead—but being friendly, honest, and kind to everyone you meet can accelerate your business’ rate of growth like no other.
You hear it time and time again, but hard work really does pay off!
3. If you can’t stick to a deadline
We don’t just mean deadlines set by your client. You also have to be able to set your own deadlines and follow them closely! If you’re not adept at working independently, you’ll find yourself struggling to pull an event together.
You have to be able to get organized and keep to schedule! The knowledge you gained from your event certificate training will inform you that trying to find a vendor for a 200 person event with only two weeks to spare isn’t enough, but if you’re a slacker, you might trick yourself into thinking it is!
This isn’t a 9-to-5 job where you can clock in 8 hours each day and be done. Your event planning certificate can help you land those clients, but be prepared to spend every hour you’re on the job working to make sure they don’t regret hiring you! Expect to work some long days here and there, as necessary.
4. If you like predictability
Every seasoned event planner knows that this job is one of the most stressful, dynamic, and rewarding careers out there. This doesn’t mean that you have to hate structure and having a right way to do things. It would be absolutely nuts if there was no structure whatsoever for what you’re doing!
Through your event planner training and practical experience, you’ve determined the best way to approach a potential vendor or find the right lights that would work best for an intimate event. The unpredictability comes from all the different people, companies, and shifting contexts you’ll find yourself in. Sometimes a projected timeline just can’t be followed – and that’s okay. This is where your ingenuity and creativity step in.
If you don’t think you have it in you, your best bet is to drop everything right now and go get a desk job! This career isn’t for the faint of heart.
5. If being creative isn’t your shtick
Speaking of creativity, you really can’t get away with being a Boring Barry if you want to succeed in this industry. Creativity can be nurtured but it’s rarely easy to teach, even if you’ve got months of event planner training behind you!
Some components of an event can’t be forgone—like a podium for key speakers at a product launch-but with those aspects of an event set in stone, you have tons of wiggle room to be inventive. If you think that being original is to simply change the tablecloths from a burgundy color to a navy blue color, then you may struggle to keep a client who specifically requests “creative” event planners.
Go to conferences, network, work with imaginative people, make sure you’re constantly exposing yourself to new ideas. You won’t believe how well that creativity rubs off on you!
