Today we’d like to introduce you to Janelle Frampton.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Growing up my amazing mom always loved having fun little parties and events. She’d go all out to have my friends over for a fashion show, or make gingerbread houses. From a young age, I always loved celebrating occasions and making them special. After my son was born I started planning birthday parties for him. I just loved the creativity to make spaces beautiful. As friends and family would come to parties they would leave and say would you please plan my kid’s party? At first, I would laugh and say, sure anytime.
Then some friends really encouraged me to make this a business. My first attempt at it was creating a custom party in a box. My idea was to get a theme and then pack all the decor in a box, including custom decor, favors, and setup instructions. Unfortunately this idea never really took hold, but it gave me a good background for developing some processes and understanding what works and what doesn’t. Around this same timeframe, my SIL became my first official client. She called me and asked for a Halloween-themed party in February.
This was a huge challenge as at the time all of the stores had put Halloween decor away months previously. This first event really taught me about resilience, being creative, and finding different ways to get the right look even when the official Halloween style wasn’t available or in stock. From that point, my husband and I made a decision to start investing in my event planning business. We built the business using social media and word of mouth.
We’ve done everything from kid birthdays, showers, weddings, corporate events, new product launch events, Halloween parties, new years parties, photoshoots, influencer events, and what seems like a million balloon garlands. Over the last couple years, the business has grown tremendously. I truly feel grateful for all the amazing clients I’ve had to work with.
In fact, my husband and I were just chatting the other day about the first time we had to do a balloon garland, and how we just did these events by ourselves. We now have a team of 11 assistants working for us and can’t imagine trying to do an event without their help. I’ve been so grateful to see this little company have success and grow in the last few years, and am excited for what the future holds.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Of course. This job is full of non-stop challenges and difficulties. One thing you learn when doing events is they never ever are 100% perfect. So many things go wrong all the time. Sometimes something as simple as a decor item that didn’t get packed, to big stuff where a vendor cancels on you last min. The one challenge/struggle which happens all the time is requested for event types, themes, & styles I’ve never done before.
I actually quite like this challenge because it allows me to be creative and come up with the next biggest and greatest thing ever. My goal however is to always ensure the client never knows about these issues, they just show up and everything appears flawless.
Probably the biggest challenge I’ve had to learn to overcome is helping get client expectations in line with budgets. I’ve always really had a hard time talking cost with clients as my personality is more on the creative side. While it’s still a struggle for me personally I’ve been able to overcome and learned how to be confident to say yes we can do that, and here is the cost.
For example, they may show me an inspiration picture with an entire event space decked out. While that is something that certainly can’t be done it may be unrealistic with the budget they have. So I’ve learned how to help them focus on space and deck it out to get the wow factor.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Events by Janelle is a full-service event planning company. We do specialize in custom full-service events. Everything from Weddings, Showers, Birthday Parties, Religious Celebrations, Holiday Parties, and Tables-capes to Corporate Events, New Product Launches, Training Events, Corporate Retreats/Offsite Meetings, Charity Events, and any other challenges we get from clients.
One thing that sets us apart from other companies is our ability to pivot and provide just a piece of an event. For example, if a client just wants balloons, or just needs consulting. We’ve also helped set up core materials, or even just coordinate vendors for an event.
One special thing about our brand is clients know they will be getting a quality product, they don’t have to worry about any of the details, and they get to just show up and enjoy their event.
Risk-taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
Opening a business is a risk. It’s expensive takes time to grow be successful, and never really stops asking you to take risks. When I started doing this business my idea was to provide a custom party in a box. So a client could get the box, with instructions on how to set it up, and what it should look like.
I spent a lot of capital trying to get it up and running with advertising, supplies, and web services and after 6-7 months we had a total of one sale. Luckily at the same time while the party in a box idea was crashing I got my first client to plan a tea party through a friend. We are still taking risks today, it doesn’t stop whether it’s investing in products we can provide to clients, planning an expansion of the business hiring more employees is what is required if you want to grow.
Risk is truly one of the things that makes this business fun, interesting, and stressful, and it helps push you to be better than you were yesterday. I would suggest to anyone if you want to do something, take that risk. The hard work and sweat with it are totally worth it. Even when it crashes and burns like my party in a box company.
Contact Info:
- Email: events.janelle@gmail.com
- Instagram: @eventsby.janelle
