The Event Business Plan to Launch, Grow, and Propel Your Event

“Just do it” is a great sportswear slogan, but you need foresight - not just tenacity - to host a successful event.

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Events that come from a place of passion only thrive if they function like businesses. That’s why a grounded event business plan is an essential component of your journey from first gathering to international phenomenon.

Whether your goal is to get initial funding, convince stakeholders to partner with you, or grow your event beyond your comfort zone, a business plan is a formidable tool.

With this guide, you’ll learn:

  • How to gather and structure the data that goes into every event business plan
  • What it takes to transform your successful event into a fierce contender
  • How to expand, diversify, and explode your event far beyond your startup dreams

Preview

The idea of typing out a text-heavy business document on your laptop might make you shudder. But the thinking that goes into creating an event business plan is a powerful entrepreneurial exercise. It helps you put your ideas in words and back them up with numbers, so you can prove to anyone (including yourself!) that your idea is a good one.

It’s not as intimidating as it sounds – use these steps as your template to create your first event business plan.

Step 1: Gather your materials

Your event mission statement

You mission statement is essentially an elevator pitch, describing your event in just a few words to investors and attendees alike. It also serves to guide your decision-making. You know you’re on the right path when you can consistently map your business decisions back to your mission.

But writing it is much easier said than done! Try to cram your beliefs, goals, and values into a few lines, and you’ll quickly see that there’s an art to writing a good mission statement.

Your vision

A mission is what your event does. A vision is what your event aims to become. Today, you might be organizing a local fiddling competition – but one day, you hope to turn it into the biggest old-time bluegrass festival in the country. A famous acronym in the business world is BHAG, which stands for “big, hairy, audacious goals.” These are the goals that might seem crazy at first, but you have the vision to get there.