Alex Palmer, Corporate Event Manager & Strategist, Kina Events

Momentum 2017 to 2018

Website: www.kinaevents.com/

Success Highlights:

  • Clarity of the bigger vision of her business; moving from week by week muddling to a crystal clear focus and weekly action plan.
  • Focus on projects that will bring in sales rather than simply be reacting to emails.

“Before I was in a state of wishful thinking. Now having a 90 Day Plan and the follow through to help implement it, it’s given me the clarity to do the right stuff to make sales.”

What was business and life like before you started Momentum?

I had a relatively new business up and running prior to being involved in Momentum. I was kind of muddling through each week without much of a plan or strategy and living by “getting to Friday” stage, not knowing each week’s targets.

Before joining Momentum, I felt I didn’t have accountability. When you have a boss and they tell you to do x by Friday, it gets done by Friday. But in your own business, you can let yourself off the hook. I found it’s harder to prioritise and easy to be busy with work without any focus on the bigger picture. What I needed was clarity on that bigger picture, as well as weekly accountability and touching in with other business owners to be able to bounce ideas off other people.

When you start out in business, it feels you are pulled in different directions and, in reality, it is not because those things are urgent or have a higher priority. I was not getting the right focus on the business. I’m great at dealing with and managing my clients’ projects, but not at getting clarity on what I should be doing, how I should be doing it, and prioritising.

I was struggling with the time I had available and where I was going in the business, as opposed to the events I was running and because of this I was not doing any forward thinking.

Why did you decide Momentum was the right programme for you join?

Momentum came into my sight at the right time. Having had an initial call with Karen and discussed the pros and cons, I had the confidence this was right for me. It was the promise of having the weekly accountability, support from the group and specific advice from Karen that made the programme something I knew I should do.

What key things have you worked on during your time in Momentum that have made a difference to you and your business?

The key areas have been planning in a general sense. I discovered that whilst I was exceptional at planning events, I wasn’t good at planning for the business. I am now doing this planning and it is starting to have an effect on the business, my energy and focus.

Before I was in a state of wishful thinking. Now having a 90 Day Plan and the follow through to help implement it, it’s given me the clarity to do the right stuff to make sales. I’ve made the time to make changes to my website and make it sales focused; before there were no testimonials but I’ve no had the courage and structure on how to ask clients for those.

I found that when you have cash in the bank, it’s easy to get complacent. But in reality, you have to make sales, which means that I need to have a clear plan for each week on what I and my team can do to develop the business. It might only take you a few hours to work on your plan in a quiet place to work, but the impact on this is huge.

Momentum has been a catalyst to help me understand where I have been going wrong, and the 90 Planning Process and implementation have given me crystal clear focus on what is the best use of my time. For example, I’ve realised I’m not good at bookkeeping. This needed to be delegated and now being able to outsource such tasks, I can use this time to focus on something more business critical. I have also taken on an employee to help with the day-to-day event planning for my clients, which has helped me have time to focus on my business rather than spending all my time in the day-to-day client work.

One day a week, I go outside of the office and think about business planning. This has given me the headspace to get on with it and not get distracted by emails, which is really hard to do in my job as I have to read a lot of emails! The real clarity and discipline that Momentum has given me have been around what is important and what is urgent.

I’m thinking about different approaches, thinking about our strategy and packaging of services, getting variety, and also now offering event mentoring. This clarity of the bigger vision I have now has come from working in Momentum.

In the last few months, I have decided to host a small round-table lunch for prospective clients. Event management is a high-risk service for people to buy into, especially for people who don’t know us so well. So we decided that I needed to make these first steps less risky for them and make it easier for them to get to know us better through different offerings to build that trust and credibility.

Before Momentum, I didn’t have clarity around what I was doing or why I was doing it, and now I am clear on what we are doing and how we are doing it, which makes me feel I am walking confidently in the right direction.

What is like working with Karen?

Karen has an infectious enthusiasm for everything she does. She is extremely supportive, clear and very good at knowing who to nag, who is struggling with time and challenged by that. She is very knowledgeable and shares a lot from her own experience over the past 14 years.

Karen also conveys that some sense of balance is important and reminds us to rest and get some fresh thinking. She is good at reminding us that to take one day out; more work is done in that day than in the other 28 put together in terms of what is really important to grow your business.

The two core things Karen has helped me get right are prioritisation and time issues. I do struggle to juggle everything my business needs me to do and the weekly accountability in Momentum has helped me have a sense what my priority for the day is. I can now recognise decision fatigue, I’m focused on what is the priority and give myself permission to ignore some of the other stuff that wasn’t important to my business growth.

What words of wisdom would you offer others who were thinking of joining Momentum?

You get more out of Momentum, the more you put in. It is not a totally passive thing; you don’t just get to sit and listen, with a jolly chat. This process is really important for your business and helps challenge you whilst offering a very supportive group.

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