The fifth in a series by Stress Matters, who have been asking those across the events industry – how are you doing?
Claire Lee of Venue Queen and Borrow my garden, on working to overcome the struggles faced this year.
I set Venue Queen up four and a half years ago, and Borrow my garden only about 18 months ago with a business partner, but I’ve been in the industry for just over 30 years.
I would say lockdown number two has been harder than lockdown number one. I have good days but I also have bad days where I just can’t get motivated. And mainly because the enquiries that we were seeing that just used to come through the door are just not coming through the door anymore. Or they’re coming through the door, and there’s nobody in the venues to answer them!
When we’ve managed to get a client through to the contract stage, there’s that realisation that if it’s within the next six months, it may well have to cancel anyway. Which means we are right back to square one, and you’ve done all the work. It can be really demoralising. Some days are really hard.
Other days my attitude is, no, this isn’t going to beat me. We’re on top of this, we’re gonna get on, we’re gonna do it. Borrow my Garden has kept me really busy, particularly through the summer, and we’re still getting very large inquiries through there as outdoor space is so much more of a focus at the moment which helps. I don’t know where we would be if we hadn’t launched Borrow my garden last year, so for that I’m thankful.
We’ve always worked from home so apart from the phone’s not ringing, and the emails are not bringing in any enquiries, in that sense, little has changed. To start with, the phones were bringing in a lot of cancellations, which is again, really, really hard, because you’re cancelling all the work that you’ve done sometimes over the last two years. But, you’re still speaking to venues and clients, so it’s all good.
We all thought this would be over in two, maybe three months when we started this in March, and we have got clients that we’ve kept on and that we know can’t really afford to pay out. So we’re working on a donation basis with some, but actually, we’re just grateful that we’re still needed because it gives us a purpose.
It’s just astounding how quickly people have become creative. If you want any money through your door at all this year, you need to adapt. There are still a lot of venues that are still not educated, even for lockdown number two and have just closed their doors. You’ve just got to go with it and work out what you can do. Some of it’s been quite exciting, but other times, it’s been really hard to get motivated.
I’ve learned that you need to work with other people. You can’t do it all on your own, you do need to ask for help, and I do sometimes still struggle with that. Now it’s more of an emotional challenge where you need support, not just for the workload but having people to talk to about how you’re doing. I’ve also gone back to reading a lot, and my biggest challenge now is I read on a Kindle and I forget to charge it up!
My advice is definitely to stay in contact with people. You can sense check that what you’re doing or what you’re feeling is the same as everybody else. Pick up the phone, I don’t think anybody at the moment wouldn’t be happy to chat to someone.
If you would like to share your story, please visit www.stressmatters.org.uk/pandemic-stories for more information.
