Meeting Planner Careers

A freelance meeting planner might seem like a glamorous job at the outset, but nothing good comes without a catch. Getting to rub shoulders with the elite and make a great living obviously comes with some serious responsibilities, including:

• Most successful freelance meeting planners try to wake up early in the morning so that they can get a head start on what typically proves to be a busy day. It also helps to be up and awake when business starts in New York, and working when things in Los Angeles start to slow down as that provides access to an entire country of companies needing meeting planners.
• Top notch meeting planners are well equipped with a desktop, a laptop, a smartphone, and plenty of notepads ready to take down notes with almost no notice. Why? Because the best meeting planners know that asking twice is a no-no.
• Unlimited phone access is important for a freelance meeting planner as they are often on the go. This means multiple batteries, unlimited long distance, and often more than one phone. Being connected equals making money for a freelance meeting planner.
• Reliable transportation is also critical for any freelance meeting planner. Some people feel that just because they work out of their home that a reliable vehicle is not important, but they are wrong. Not only are they wrong if they are meeting planners, but they need to keep in mind that image is important.

The economy has certainly closed many doors of opportunities, but it has opened plenty of windows too for the right people. Meeting planners are one career choice that may actually experience far more new opportunities being open to them than opportunities denied, and this leaves the door open for a little moonlighting. There are a few things to be aware of before moonlighting as a meeting planner:

• Your day job may not be too happy about you moonlighting, even if you do it on your own time. Discretion is the key word here, and learning how to exercise it could be the difference between getting along and putting a few thousand extra dollars in the bank each month.
• Some of the most successful moonlighters have discovered that they can make the time zones work for them. If they live in a region on PST then they try to find work from home meeting planning opportunities for clients as far east as possible and arrange to come in a little late and leave a little late at their day job. The opposite is obviously true of those living clear across the county.
• Leveraging your existing connections and knowledge is ultimately what will make you more attractive. It might be difficult for caterers or concierges to keep things straight when they don’t know that you have two sets of clients, so be sure to let them know that you are semi-freelance and that discretion on their part is rewarded with more business.

When one thinks of meeting planners they may be thinking of an office job where answering phones and entering information into a computer is all that happens. This might be true of some meeting planner jobs, but certainly not for all of them. Some meeting or event planning positions might involve a significant amount of travel, often to very interesting destinations. In short, the amount of travel involved will often depend greatly upon where one works as a meeting planner and the needs of that company/industry.

High powered executives are usually looking for meeting planners that have a flair for the dramatic or interesting. This will often entail higher salaries and/or benefit packages, but it will also mean more travel and interesting destinations. The workload may not be substantially different than that of a meeting planner for a more modest company, but the competition for such top-echelon meeting planner positions is likely to be fierce indeed. This competition is certainly justified by the compensation packages and travel opportunities, but there is also an option for homebodies who just want money: freelance meeting/event planning.

Freelance meeting planners do not always get to travel with their clientele, but it is not unheard of. Luckily, freelance meeting planners are free to collect as many clients as they can handle, and that means that there is no limit on their earning potential.

Meeting planners draw reasonable salaries when they work for companies, usually on par with a college graduate or better despite not the fact that many meeting planners lack degrees. Freelance meeting and/or event planners can make even more, especially if they can remember one thing: meetings are about people, not the issues. Some people believe that meetings are about issues, but the fact is that people create the issues and cause them to exist and not the other way around.

John Rockefeller may have said it best when he said that he would pay more for employees with people skills than any other resource or commodity under the sun, and he was one-hundred percent correct; people-skills are more important than anything else, especially for a meeting planner. This does not mean that diligence and attention to detail are not required. Instead, it means that anyone who has basic time management skills and modicum of organization can become an all-star meeting planner if they have people skills.

A meeting planner can expect to make upwards of $40,000 their first year, and they almost always enjoy substantial benefits. One of the best benefits is often going to meetings in exotic or interesting locations on the company dime, but meeting interesting people can be a boon as well.