Exercises: Starting Your Planning Business
Part A recall · Part B application · Part C field work · Part D critique · Part M mixed review · Part E extension.
Starred (★) problems have worked answers in appendices/answers-to-selected.md.
A note on this chapter's exercises: several require jurisdiction-specific information. Where they do, the exercise is to find out, not to guess — and the finding-out is the point.
Part A — Recall and Comprehension
A.1 ★ Give the six-line method for the cost of an hour. Which step does everybody get wrong, and by roughly how much?
A.2 What is a billable ratio? Give the four typical bands.
A.3 ★ State the relationship between the market price and your cost of an hour. What does it mean if the floor is above the constraint?
A.4 Name the two things people get wrong about limited liability.
A.5 Give the six foundations, plus the seventh that is not administrative.
A.6 ★ What is deferred revenue, why is it dangerous, and what is the fix?
A.7 Name the ten fixed-cost lines and the four that people leave out.
A.8 ★ Why can a profitable event business be insolvent? Name the four defences and the fifth structural one.
A.9 Give the five elements of a payment structure that prevents most problems. Which does most of the work?
A.10 ★ What two things make the day-14 chase effective?
A.11 State the test of a real niche. Where do ownable niches come from, and which source is most under-used?
A.12 Give the four parts of a positioning statement.
A.13 ★ Name the eight core documents. Which must not be a template, and which two should you not make?
A.14 Give the tool stack in purchase order. Which item do new planners buy first and should buy fourth, and why?
A.15 ★ Where do the first ten clients come from? Give the ranking and the instruction it produces.
A.16 What actually gets a planner onto a venue coordinator's short list? Name four things.
A.17 ★ Why is a styled shoot a poor business strategy, and what makes it worth doing anyway?
A.18 Give the three routes out of employment and the four things to do before you leave.
A.19 ★ State the threshold concept about billable ratio and client count. Give the arithmetic.
A.20 Give six honest expectations for year one, and the single most useful thing to do in it.
Part B — Application
B.1 ★ Compute your own cost of an hour, or that of a hypothetical planner. All six steps, with a real fixed-cost list. Then state the rate below which you would be working for nothing.
B.2 Track your own working hours for one week and compute your billable ratio honestly. Report it and say which band you are in.
B.3 ★ Build a first-year fixed-cost budget for your own market. Research at least four of the lines for real and say which surprised you.
B.4 A planner has $9,200 in the business account, of which $5,600 is deposits for future events. Write the two-account protocol and the schedule by which money moves.
B.5 ★ Build a twelve-month cash-flow forecast for a planner with five weddings (deposits at booking, balances at −14 days) and one corporate event billed at 60 days. Identify the negative months and say what you would do about them.
B.6 Write the payment schedule and late-payment clause for a $6,400 full-planning engagement.
B.7 ★ Write the day-3 and day-14 chase for an instalment fourteen days overdue. Then write the work-suspension message.
B.8 Write three positioning statements for yourself using the four-part structure. Then have somebody who knows you say which is true.
B.9 ★ Take an unownable niche ("luxury weddings") and rebuild it from one of the three real sources. Show the working.
B.10 Write the service-level definitions for full, partial, and coordination — with explicit exclusions and an out-of-scope hourly rate.
B.11 ★ Do §36.8a's arithmetic for your own market's fees and your own estimate of hours per event. Report which service level's required fee sits inside the market range.
B.12 Compute the runway required to leave employment, including bookings already contracted. State the number and how you would get it.
B.13 ★ Write the four questions you would ask a venue coordinator, including "what would make you comfortable giving them my name?" Then predict the answers.
B.14 Design the enquiry questionnaire — under eight questions — and say what each one is for.
Part C — Field and Practice
C.1 ★ Find out what business structures are available where you work and what each costs to set up and maintain annually. Report all of it.
C.2 Get a real quote for public liability and professional indemnity insurance at the limits a local venue requires. Report both the premium and the required limits.
C.3 ★ Ask an accountant what they would charge a solo planner annually and what they would need from you. Report the answer.
C.4 Find out what licences, permits, or registrations apply to event planners in your jurisdiction. Report what you found and how hard it was to find.
C.5 ★ Ask three working planners what their billable ratio is. Note how many have ever computed it.
C.6 Ask a venue coordinator how many planners they can name and what got those planners onto the list. Record verbatim.
C.7 ★ Price the tool stack for real in your market. Report the monthly total for items 1–4.
Part D — Critique and Judgment
D.1 §36.1 says a planner who has not computed the cost of an hour is "pricing against a fantasy." Is that fair to somebody whose prices are set by a competitive market they do not control?
D.2 ★ §36.8a argues for fewer, larger engagements. Build the case for a coordination-only business, including things the hours arithmetic does not capture.
D.3 The chapter says the first ten clients come mostly from people who already know you. What does that imply about who can realistically start this business, and is the chapter honest enough about it?
D.4 ★ The productive struggle recommends taking a four-day contract role. Argue that this is how businesses quietly die — and then decide.
D.5 §36.10 says not to work for free "except deliberately and once." Where exactly is the line between building a portfolio and being exploited?
D.6 ★ The chapter recommends buying a planning platform fourth rather than first. A software vendor would say this costs you a year of good process. Answer them.
D.7 §36.5's worked cash-flow year is profitable and insolvent for two months. Is that actually normal, or has the chapter chosen a flattering example? What would a bad year look like?
D.8 ★ Chapter 35 said a planner's income scales with event size and budget. Chapter 36 now recommends fewer, larger engagements. Are these in tension? Work it out.
Part M — Mixed Review
M.1 ★ (Ch.2) How do service levels become a business decision here, and where do unpaid hours live?
M.2 (Ch.8) Which contract terms matter most in year one? Name five.
M.3 ★ (Ch.9) What does §36.2 add to Chapter 9's argument about insurance?
M.4 (Ch.12) What does vendor management have to do with getting your first ten clients?
M.5 ★ (Ch.30) Why is the finding log the most useful thing a year-one planner does?
M.6 (Ch.31) Which cash-flow problem does a corporate client create, and what were the three defences?
M.7 ★ (Ch.33) What did Chapter 33 say about destination pricing that this chapter's arithmetic explains?
M.8 (Ch.35) Where does §35.9's conflict of interest reappear in this chapter?
M.9 ★ (Ch.29) The chapter says to answer the phone kindly to somebody starting out behind you. What Chapter 29 principle is that?
M.10 (Ch.27) What is the business-building equivalent of the napkin fold?
Part E — Extension and Synthesis
E.1 ★ Build a complete business setup plan: cost of an hour, structure, foundation, first-year budget, cash-flow forecast, positioning, documents, and transition. Then show the cash-flow forecast to somebody who runs a business and record what they ask.
E.2 Interview somebody who closed an event business. Ask what actually ran out — money, work, or willingness. Report all three answers.
E.3 ★ Write 800 words on whether the economics of this industry are sustainable for the people in it. Use §36.1's arithmetic and Chapter 37's preview, and reach a position.
E.4 Research the failure rate of small businesses in your country's first three years, and the specific rate for event services if it is published. Report what you found and what it does not tell you.
E.5 ★ Design the one-page monthly business review a solo planner would actually complete. Under fifteen minutes, and it must surface the cost of an hour, the cash position, and the pipeline.
E.6 Compare this chapter's economics with another creative service business — photography, design, catering. Report which structural problems are shared and which are specific to planning.
📐 Mini-Project
Build the business, on paper, completely.
- The cost of an hour, with real local numbers
- The structure decision, researched — not assumed
- The foundation checklist, priced
- The first-year budget
- A twelve-month cash-flow forecast with the negative months identified
- The positioning statement, tested on somebody who knows you
- The eight documents, at least three of them actually drafted
- The transition plan with the runway number
Then do the thing that makes it real: show the cost-of-an-hour arithmetic to a working planner and ask what they charge.
Record whether the two numbers are compatible.
If they are not, you have found either a positioning problem or a market you should not enter — and finding that out on paper is enormously cheaper than finding it out in year three.