Bex Tacon is the owner and founder of Planit Events and Planit Staff and a Business Owner Programme alumni, formerly known as the Owner Operator Programme.
This Kiwi Business Story is based on a podcast from 13 October 2022 and all figures and facts quoted are from that time. You can enjoy the complete podcast here.
Who is Bex Tacon?
Born and bred in Hawke's Bay, I spent a number of years travelling throughout New Zealand, Australia, the UK and then came home. I am married with two boys, very passionate about my community and the region that we live in. I'm just a busy mum with a business!
What led to Planit Events?
I always knew that I wanted to be my own boss, and always loved hospitality and events. So I chose, well, life chose, not to go to university straight after school and I worked and travelled instead.
Everywhere I worked I used to write all the pros and cons about what I saw about how that business operated. I really tried to lock in the ins and outs of that business, just so I could teach myself about how to do it.
I did sales for about three years, while I was trying to create and build a business, just to give me a different perspective. That was huge, because I built some great connections, learned a lot about the sales process, and I started Planit Events at the same time – [it was] my side hustle until I could build it up to be a business where I could step away, and just do Planit Events.
What is Planit?
Planit Events is event management. We do a lot of things within the wedding industry, corporate events, charity events, awards nights, private events – a huge array of things from for 10 people to 500 people.
Planit Staff is a sister part of the company. We'd get phone calls from caterers or venues that we'd worked with, saying, ‘Your team are amazing, we're short staffed this weekend, would any of your team like some extra hours?’
A light bulb moment went off! Hang on a minute, here I am becoming the middleperson of giving my team more hours – which is great, but there's probably an opportunity here to turn this into a business.
Obviously, in 2020 when Covid hit, everything shut down for us. It was terrible. In that first 10 days of lockdown, we lost seven months of business. We pivoted and because we had the model running for Planit Staff, we started doing horticultural contracting – placing staff into orchards, which were fully functional at any level, so that safeguarded us.
How is the events sector now?
It’s great that confidence is back… There still is that fear, it's just not as great anymore, but there's a new level of confidence now.
How did you hear about The Icehouse and the Owner Operator Programme (OOP)?
After Covid, we'd obviously had a massive shake up. We'd had the craziest two years I hope I'll ever have in business. I don't want to go through that again.
I'd had coaches in the past and I just was looking for a little bit more. I heard about OOP initially through the business hub here in Hawke's Bay – the Chamber of Commerce – I've been an active member in the Chamber for years and have known people and business owners who’ve been on programme.
What have been your key takeaways?
It was just so valuable.. that first, probably half an hour after my first workshop, I was thinking; ‘Game changer! What have I been doing all this time?’
There’s lots of little things. I’m a lot better at looking at my numbers… I'm a lot more in tune and probably pay a lot more attention to that.
I loved how you had to have your goals set in regards to things you were doing, things you knew you needed to do, and things you had done. It was really nice to have to go, ‘Hey, I'm doing that and I've done that’. And each month you go back and you go, ‘‘Actually I have achieved quite a lot,’ which is really neat.
I just tidied up lots of things… when you’re time poor and trying to wear multiple hats, you don't get the ability to see or tick off those things.
To be in the same room with a real mix of genuinely great people going through the same thing on the same journey is just really cool. Make the time, make the investment. It's an absolute no brainer. I just can’t speak highly enough of the programme and anyone I deal with now and I talk about it, I just say, ‘You’ve got to do it!’ Otherwise, you'll always wonder, and you don't want to look back in 20 years, and regret not giving it a go.