Tara Wilson Events was founded in February 2007. After eight successful years executing social events, Wilson rebranded her company as the Tara Wilson Agency and focused soley on experiential marketing.
HCOB: My first question for you is — what prompted you to leave a very successful career managing millions of dollars in assets for high net-worth individuals to start an events management firm, something you had no expe- rience in at the time? Wilson : I think it all came down to passion. That’s a word that gets tossed around a lot these days: “Follow your passion. Do what you’re passionate about and the rest will come.” In my case the passion was about starting and run- ning a business. It wasn’t a passion for event planning — I had never even worked at an event planning company. I just knew instinctively I would be good at it. HCOB: So, there you are, it’s 2007, the economy isn’t exactly on steady ground, and you started your firm— what was your process? Wilson : I spent about six months preparing to make the leap, taking a three-pronged approach. First, I banked my salary so that I would have some start-up capital, realizing there wouldn’t be any revenue coming in right off. The sec- ond thing I did was to research the events planning mar- ketplace — what the business looked like, how I could get plugged into that market, how to start a company in general, the nuts and bolts of getting a new business entity estab- lished legally. The third thing I did that was critical was to create my website and the marketing materials I would need to hit the ground running.
HCOB: I understand that it was just you for the first few years, right? Wilson : That’s right. I often joke that when I used the term “we” early on, what I meant was “me, myself and I.” But it was just me for the first five or six years before I added a second person to my “team.” HCOB: That must have been quite a switch, moving from a day-to-day working environment at one of the largest financial firms in the world to being — in effect — a solo practitioner? Wilson : Yes, it was quite a shift, and the isolation was one of the things I didn’t expect — just how lonely it can be as an entrepreneur. HCOB: Can you expand on that a bit? What do you mean by it being a “lonely” endeavor? Wilson : Sure. I don't think I realized just how lonely it would be, the swing of emotions in a 24-hour period. These days, social media glamorizes so many things about en- trepreneurship. It is nowhere near as glamorous as it may appear because the buck stops with you. You are the last person to be held accountable. At the end of the day it is on your shoulders and you have to be prepared for that. You don't take it home to your spouse, you don't take it to your friends, you don't spitball your concerns with your employ- ees. There’s no one that builds you up and there is no one
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