Tammie Hawkins: For The Do-It-Your Self

Tammie Hawkins says that she is not in the habit of sharing trade secrets on a public forum, but doesn’t mind sharing some tips with the readers of her blog.

She is the founder and CEO of Hawkins Events, LLC, a Los Angeles-based Special Events planning company. She makes two to three posts on her company blog each week, and uses the forum to talk about anything from business to her grandmother’s recipe for pumpkin pie, which she shared with readers just before Thanksgiving one year.

“You should leave event planning to the professionals!” she wrote in a recent post. “But we all know that there are committed do-it-yourselfers out there – and is there any better way to grow as a person than to take on new challenges?

Also Read: Tammie Hawkins: Customer Service - Consistency is King

“So, if you’re not going to heed my sage advice and call us at Hawkins Events, LLC, to plan your event, here are a few tips you may find useful. The first consideration should always be: how do you want your event to look and feel? Of course the answer to this question is determined in large part by the sort of event it is. Once you have answered this key question, make a checklist of the things that need to get done. It should include the date and time of the event and how much money you want to spend on it.
“Identify the venue and schedule it well ahead of time. Book some kind of entertainment: if it’s a kid’s birthday party, magicians or jugglers or storytellers are ideal.

“Above all, make sure that it is a meaningful event. This is guaranteed to make it a success!”

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Tammie Hawkins: Damage Control

Tammie Hawkins is the President and CEO of Hawkins Events, LLC, a Los Angeles Special Events company. Tammie Hawkins communicates with her clients and just about anyone else through her company’s blog, on which she shares industry insights along with occasional flights of fancy.

“I had a client cancel on me last week,” she wrote in a post not long ago. “It was a big contract, and we had to do some scrambling to shore up our immediate short-term prospects. We succeeded, and all is well.

“But it got me to thinking about my previous employer, Acme Events, founded and still run by my good friend and mentor, Jill Samuelson. A small part of the business at that time was public relations. It has since been phased out, but that’s why Jill hired me in the first place, to work in the PR department.

“I got pretty good at damage control. If that client who cancelled on us last week had talked to me first, I think I could have saved them a lot of trouble (and probably the contract, too!). There are some hard lessons I learned about damage control that would have served him well. So I thought I’d use this post to share them.

1. If a crisis hits your company, own it. Immediately publish an explanation of what happened and the steps you are taking to make it right.
2. Apologize, and be sincere about it. Make sure the amount of information you share is adequeate.
3. Don’t feed the fire. Pressure can bring out the worst in any of us. Don’t succumb to it.
4. Get on top of your story before your competitors do. Don’t let them use it to destroy you.

Bad things happen to good people and good companies. If you follow these suggestions, you’re likely to survive your crisis and endure.

Tammie Hawkins: Five Basic Steps

Planning a special event like a wedding or a graduation is a demanding undertaking. It takes a lot of time and expertise to plan and organize such events, and have them done right. And that is why so many organizations turn to Event Planning professionals.

When it comes to event planning, the devil is in the details, and the planners who excel are invariably detail-oriented people. While no two events are identical, there are five basic steps to planning a successful event. If they are followed carefully, success is all but guaranteed.

1.The first step is to define terms: establish a time frame for the event, and set goals. Creating a realistic timeline is probably the single most important step in event planning. It lets the event planner set various deadlines and identify all the tasks that need to be done.

2.Get a team in place and establish a master plan. A team that can be counted on is essential. Team members need to have specific roles and responsibilities that do not overlap.

3.Create a budget. Like any budget it is critical to stick to it, since budgets let the planner see the actual costs of the event and see whether there might be a profit involved.

4.Identify needs, and find necessary vendors. This cannot be done until after the event’s budget is in place.

5. Finalize all of the event’s details.

Tammie Hawkins is the founder and CEO of Hawkins Events, LLC, a Los Angeles even planning company. Tammie Hawkins is as member of the Event Planners Association and is a Certified Special Events Professional.

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Tammie Hawkins: Owning Your Own Business - Risk Vs. Reward

Starting your own business is not without risk. About one-third of all small businesses in the United States fail in their first year. Many businesses aren’t profitable until after their third year. Many people have to declare bankruptcy because they can’t pay back the loans they took out when they started their business. If you can make it, however, owning your own business can be a highly rewarding experience. The key is to weigh risk and reward.

All businesses have startup costs. Even selling lemonade on a street corner requires you to buy the lemonade, a table, and a chair. Most businesses start small, with a combination of business loans and investments from benefactors to get started. All of your profits once you start with these investments are weighed against the cost of setting up and running your business. The reason that businesses struggle to make back their investments initially is because they often have trouble developing a customer base in the early days. If you can develop a business plan that details how you will find customers, you will start with an advantage over many other businesses. Developing a marketing strategy doesn’t need to wait until you have an established, profitable business. The more work you put into finding customers when you first start up, the less you will have to do when you’re struggling to keep your business afloat.

Tammie Hawkins started her own event planning business after working as an event planner for six years in Los Angeles.

Follow Tammie Hawkins on Social Media:

https://www.crunchbase.com/person/tammie-hawkins

https://www.linkedin.com/pub/tammie-hawkins/17/7aa/99b

https://www.facebook.com/public/Tammie-Hawkins

Tammie Hawkins: Customer Service - Consistency is King

Most large companies have a set pattern they use to handle customer service. Companies like Netflix, with large customer bases and call centers set up to handle customer service issues, have scripts they use to keep their employees consistently helping customers in a uniform way. Customer service interactions can be difficult, of course, and each customer has his or her own reason for speaking to a company representative. Because of the uniqueness of each of these interactions, a script will only go so far, but consistently dealing with customer service issues in a productive way is a crucial part of any business. 

If you’ve started a company, and you’re finding it difficult to stay ahead of customer service issues, the best thing you can do for your employees and for your own peace of mind is develop a consistent plan for helping customers. If you can consistently handle customer complaints and other issues, you can nip potential problems in the bud before they begin to seriously affect your bottom line. Developing a protocol for how customer service issues are handled at your company is the best way to start this process. The protocol should allow for some leeway, but still provide your employees with a standard for proper customer service. 

Tammie Hawkins created a consistent way of dealing with customer service issues before they have a chance to affect her business. She owns an event planning company in Los Angeles, catering to a wide range of customers in the area with fine service.

Also Read: Event Planning - Responding to Customers