We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Samia Kohler. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Samia below.

Hi Samia, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

I didn’t stumble into hospitality. I was born into it. My grandmother was a cook who taught me that feeding people was one of the most profound acts of care a human being could offer. My mother owns a catering company , planned and operated festivals and events, productions where hundreds of people showed up and everything had to work, all at once, on a deadline that didn’t move. I grew up inside the machinery of live events before I could even name what I was learning.
Then came 18 years of doing it professionally, Europe, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Phoenix. I crossed time zones and cultures, walked into venues that were underperforming on events and private events revenue, and turned them around. Every single time. The uncomfortable truth is that I ran other people’s companies like they were mine. I was making my employers financially successful while quietly capping my own potential.
Then came the breaking point. the last company I had poured myself into began operating on values that were no longer mine. I found myself not just tired, depleted. And in that depletion came the clearest thought I’d ever had: I had been solving the private events revenue problem for everyone else. I had the expertise, the track record, the instinct. Why was I lending it out when I could be building with it?
Because here’s what I knew from the inside: venues are hemorrhaging private events revenue, not from lack of space or demand, but from lack of expertise, knowledge and sales infrastructure. Inquiries go unanswered. Follow-ups don’t happen. Proposals are an afterthought. That’s not a lead lost that’s $250,000 a year walking out the door. I had watched it happen everywhere. And I knew exactly how to stop it.
That’s why I built SPHERE. A platform that combines automated proposals, 360° virtual tours, BEO generation, e-signatures, pipeline management and a dedicated expert sales team that closes private event bookings on behalf of venues, if the venue doesn’t have the ressourse internally. Not just tools. A full solution, built by someone who grew up inside this industry and spent nearly two decades proving it works. Venues I’ve worked with have seen booking increases of over 189%. That’s not a projection. That’s a track record.
Starting Event Sphere Solutions wasn’t a calculated pivot. It was an act of finally trusting myself enough to stop giving my best to others and start building something that was mine.

Samia, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’ve spent 18 years inside the engine room of hospitality & Events, Europe, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Phoenix, building events systems that consistently turned underperforming venues into high-converting, fully booked operations. I didn’t study this industry from the outside. I lived it, market by market, deal by deal, until I understood exactly where revenue goes to die and precisely what it takes to bring it back.
That knowledge is what became SPHERE.
SPHERE is a complete private events sales platform for restaurants, bars, hotels, brewery and venues, combining automated proposals, immersive 360° virtual tours, BEO generation, e-signatures, marketing and pipeline management. Venues can use the platform independently, or layer on our dedicated expert sales team to manage inquiries and close bookings on their behalf. One solution, built to meet operators exactly where they are.
We also leverage AI, but deliberately, and with deep respect for what makes hospitality irreplaceable. In this industry, human connection is not a feature. It is the product. Our use of AI is designed to eliminate the administrative friction that slows teams down, so that the people behind the venue can spend less time on process and more time doing what they do best: creating exceptional experiences for guests.
The problem we solve is costing venues over $250,000 a year in lost private events revenue — not from lack of demand, but from lack of infrastructure. Inquiries go unanswered. Proposals arrive too late. Follow-up never happens. Private events is one of the highest-margin revenue streams in hospitality, and most venues are barely touching what’s possible.
What I’m most proud of is what SPHERE represents: what happens when a woman with eighteen years of hard-won expertise stops building other people’s success and starts building her own. I am sharper here. More purposeful. And more certain than I have ever been that the venues who invest in smart sales infrastructure are the ones who will define what hospitality looks like tomorrow.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

The truth is I don’t have one story. My whole life is the story.
I was not born into privilege. I was born into a family where every day was a challenge, where you learned very early that the world was not going to hand you anything, and that the only way forward was through. That foundation didn’t break me. It built me. It gave me a relationship with resilience that isn’t circumstantial, it is constitutional. It is who I am at the core.
Resilience, for me, has never been a single act of courage. It has been a daily practice, built across all of these years of navigating new countries, new cultures, and new rooms where I was often the only woman at the table. It has been rebuilding after professional betrayals, after emotional exhaustion, after giving everything to something that didn’t give it back. It has been starting over, in a new city, a new market, a new chapter and arriving each time somewhere stronger than where I left.
I didn’t learn resilience from one defining setback. I was shaped by an entire life of them. And rather than harden me, that journey cracked me open into someone who genuinely believes that the most difficult path is usually the one worth taking.

How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?

Honestly? I care. Deeply, genuinely, and without reservation. That is not a strategy, its simply who I am.
The people who choose Event Sphere Solutions in these early days are not just clients. They are believers. They are operators who looked at what I was building and said yes before the world had fully validated it. That kind of trust is not something I take lightly. It fuels everything I do.
I go above and beyond for my clients. When someone bets on your vision early, the only worthy response is to show up completely, every single time. That means being accessible, personally invested, and thinking about their business even when they aren’t asking me to. It means bringing solutions before they have to ask for them.
Brand loyalty in hospitality has always been built the same way through relationships, through trust, and through the consistent experience of being genuinely cared for. That is what I bring to every client. Not a script. Not a ticketing system. Me, fully present and fully committed to their success.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.eventspheresolutions.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eventspheresolutions/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samia-kohler

Image Credits

EMOM ( Eric Greenhalgh)