Today we’d like to introduce you to Amy Goldman.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
After graduating from Brandeis University, I attended New York University’s School of Social Work. Whereas I had anticipated a long and enriching career in the field of Social Work, I gave birth to my son two weeks after earning my Master’s Degree. My daughter was born 18 months later, and I had another daughter 18 months after that. I was engulfed in motherhood, and I was happy as a stay-at-home mom. My husband and I moved from New York to Sharon, Massachusetts, in the early 2000’s, and a few years later, I gave birth to another son. Throughout these years, I cherished my time at home with my kids, and the thought of a career in Social Work slowly started to lose its appeal.
Although I was not working in any official capacity while my kids were little, I did volunteer for several local organizations during those years. Often, that volunteer work took the form of chairing events, and I found that I absolutely loved planning these functions. One morning after a particularly successful event, it dawned on me that Event Planning was a field that I wanted to pursue further.
Before I could start an official business, I knew that I needed to invest time and energy into learning the ropes of Event Planning so that I could gain confidence in myself and credibility with others. I spent a year researching the industry, meeting with vendors, and asking anyone I knew who was planning an event if I could help them plan it — pro-bono.
In 2007, I launched It’s Your Party!, and even then I was certain it would be successful. I remember thinking that I needed just one person to have faith in me for It’s Your Party! to take off. That’s exactly what happened.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I feel very fortunate that my business has grown and flourished since its inception. My greatest concern at the outset was the possibility of having to work with difficult clients. But my experience has been quite the opposite: the vast majority of my clients have been fabulous — and I’ve become close friends with several of them. I spend a lot of time with my clients, and part of what I love about my job is getting to know them and their families, and being part of one of the most important events in their lives.
The greatest challenge I have encountered is that since I take such pride in my work, and because I feel a deep sense of ownership over each event, I have a hard time delegating work to others. For this reason, I have kept my business rather small: I oversee, plan, and am intimately involved with each It’s Your Party! event. I have fabulous assistants who are often on-site at an event — either with me or in my place if I can’t be there myself — and I fully trust them to execute all of the plans and to trouble-shoot on the spot, if necessary. But as far as the actual planning, I have a hard time giving that up to others. I am sure that I could grow my business further if I were more willing to delegate that aspect, but for now, I am very content limiting the number of events I do each year so that I can be the lead planner for each one.
Please tell us about It’s Your Party!.
It’s Your Party! specializes in social events. We plan Jewish weddings, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, not-for-profit fundraisers, and other special parties.
Because It’s Your Party! is a small business, I am able to give special, personalized attention to each client, and to each event. I am a perfectionist — and my goal is to make sure my clients not only pull off an event that far surpasses their dreams, but that they also deeply enjoy the planning process. Of course, every event lasts only a short amount of time, so it is critical to me that my clients have fun, get excited, and enjoy the process of putting their event together. Some might find that surprising, but I’ve found that the client’s ability to enjoy planning an event is a critical part of the overall experience. While working together, I believe my clients realize that I take a deep pride in every event that I plan, and that theirs is of the utmost importance to me. It’s never easy, but I absolutely love what I do, and I see every event as a new creative challenge, which enables me to expand my skills, develop relationships with my clients, and produce an event which is out of this world.
In my opinion, what sets It’s Your Party! apart from other event planning companies is the personal attention that each of my clients get. For me, each event is not simply a “job”; rather, it is a priority, as if it were my own family’s event. I take pride in my ability to really listen to what my clients say and to understand what they want — even when they themselves don’t know quite what that is! I think that my training in social work has helped me recognize what a person is trying to tell me, at which point my creative talents enable me to translate what they are looking for into an event that is meaningful, fulfilling, beautiful, and uniquely special to every client.
I don’t push my clients into any decisions that are contrary to their interests — whether that is spending too much money, or choosing an aesthetic that doesn’t represent who they are or what they want. I start from where my clients are, and I take them along a path that leads them to an event that fully suits them, and yet beyond anything they could have envisioned.
From working closely with clients to using my creative design skills to being able to create incredibly fun, exciting, and unique events, I feel that what I do is not work, it is true pleasure. And I think that this sentiment becomes clear to each of my clients during our very first consultation. This, more than anything else, is what has made It’s Your Party! so successful.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
This is going to sound so cliché – especially since I am now an event planner! – but my favorite memories from my childhood are my birthdays. My parents (particularly my mom) went above and beyond to make my birthday, as well as those of my siblings, as special, fun, and memorable as possible. We would wake up the morning of our birthdays, and the entire dining room was decorated with color-coordinated streamers, a plethora of balloons, a delicious home-made cake – overloaded with our favorite frosting – and numerous beautifully-wrapped birthday gifts. My parents made sure that my siblings and I felt that life was as close to perfect as could be on our birthdays – and boy, were they good at it!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.iypeventplanning.com
- Phone: 781-956-4868
- Email: amy@iypeventplanning.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ItsYourPartyEventPlanning/
Image Credit:
Ken Berman Photography, Nancy Gould, Nir Landau, Scott Zuehlke Photography, Grazier Photography
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