What is the name of your business and how did it start?
Through our academic experiences at Morehouse and Spelman and our corporate work experience, we both identified within ourselves a passion for designing and planning events. This passion was the driving force that led to us establishing our company, Posh & Private Event Design, two years into our marriage. Before getting married, we knew that we both wanted to be entrepreneurs at some point in our lives, but never imagined that it would occur so soon!
Please describe your role as business partners?
Segmenting roles and responsibilities helps to better organize our company and allows our daily operations to be more efficient. We try to better understand each other’s professional strengths and weaknesses and ensure we are each working in the area that plays directly to our strengths and is most enjoyable to us. Brandi heads the social events division, which encompasses the business development and marketing for clients who are looking to host vow renewals, birthday parties, wedding and baby showers, and anniversary parties. Additionally, she is the lead designer on all design creations and organizes daily operations. While Brandon leads our corporate division, which encompasses the business development and marketing for clients who are looking to host grand openings, VIP dinners and receptions, and client / employee appreciations. Also, he is lead event planner and handles the administrative aspects of the company.
How do you balance work and home?
Balancing work and home life is something we strive to constantly balance! As married business partners, it is easy to bring work day into our home life, but we are very adamant our marriage and home life separate from the business. It really comes down to setting firm time boundaries for ourselves and holding each other accountable for sticking to them.
What is the mission of your organization?
Our mission at Posh & Private is to position ourselves as the prominent resource for the design of posh, sophisticated, private celebrations for those who want to commemorate life’s unforgettable moments. We create a tailored experience for each of our clients that removes frustration from the planning process, and allows them to focus solely on celebrating and creating lasting memories.
How do you approach business challenges?
People tend to overthink business challenges, but we strive to simplify them before making a decision on how to approach and solve them. We remove all emotions and subjectivity, as much as possible, analyze all applicable data, and then make a business decision based on the facts.
How do you evaluate talent you are hiring and what are the skills that you are looking for in this market?
In the event industry, it boils down to creativity, analytical ability and efficiency. Anyone we are evaluating has to be comfortable working in both the creative and analytical part of their brain, and have the ability to switch sides at a moment’s notice.
What are the top three benefits of using Posh & Private Event Design?
The top three benefits of using Posh & Private are our design sesthetic, technical approach, and professional narratives. As a company, our design aesthetic is our calling card. We seek to use contemporary and sophisticated designs in order to present a modern look and feel to our clients’ celebrations. Our technical approach to the design and planning process allows our clients to get a glimpse of what they are going to see before they walk into their event. Our professional narratives have garnered us more than 15 years of combined experience in planning and designing events.
We have been blessed to work with various celebrity clients across the professional sports and entertainment industry, as well as various levels of the federal government including the White House. We take those three ingredients and apply them to every single client and every single event. We take great pride in our aesthetic, approach and narratives because those are the things that make us unique and are ultimately our contribution not only to the event industry but to this world.
How do you utilize technology to give yourself business advantages?
As previously mentioned, one of the ways we use technology to give ourselves a business advantage is to develop a technical visual representation of our design before execution. This gives our clients the ability to really see the environment we are going to create for them versus just hearing us describe it in detail. In our business, sight is one of the most important senses and we want to make sure our clients are aware of what they are going to receive before they even step foot into their event.
What technological advances have you used to communicate with your membership?
We use a variety of technology to communicate with our supporters – ranging from social media and blog posts, to email blast and digital advertisements. Our goal is meet people where they are in order to engage them where they feel the most comfortable.
What are the two key factors for business success?
Discipline and focus are two key factors we think are essential for business success. Being an entrepreneur presents unique challenges in the sense that you have to be a jack- (or jill!) -of-all-trades and have to put on a different hat at any given time. However, the key to success is laser-like focus and discipline that will allow you to complete your tasks or meet your deadline regardless of whatever else comes across your path. If you know what your goals are and begin with the end in mind, your focus and discipline will kick in and take you across the finish line.
Name your three favorite business books for insight and inspiration.
Although our schedules stay pretty hectic, there are some books we have found to be both insightful and inspirational:
Brandi
Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell
The Millionaire Next Door, Thomas Stanley & William Danko
Breakout!, Joel Osteen
Brandon
The Bible
21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, John C. Maxwell
The Richest Man in Babylon, George S. Clason
If you were giving a speech about skill sets needed in the future to remain relevant to 500 workers at a retraining seminar, what would the title of your speech be and why?
The title of the speech would be “Flexibility, Coachability and Transferability.” With the demanding volatility of today’s workplace it is essential to remain flexible in all situations, coachable by your superiors, and develop transferable skills that can be used across various industries.
Describe your leadership style.
Within our company and our community and civic engagement activities, we lead by example. We’ve been taught through our education and formal work experience that even the best leaders are putting in long hours with the team, making copies when needed, and stapling presentation packets the night before the big meeting. With this type of leadership style, what we have found that you do not need the title of leader in order to lead. Showing others that we are willing to get our hands dirty, whether we are the designated leader or not, sends a message to our team and colleagues that not only do we appreciate their service, but it also shows we are not asking them to do something we are not willing to do ourselves.
How do we contact Posh & Private Event Design?
We can be contacted via our website, www.PoshAndPrivate.com, or on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram (@PoshAndPrivate).
