We were lucky to catch up with Claudia Montoya recently and have shared our conversation below.

Claudia, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So, let’s imagine that you were advising someone who wanted to start something similar to you and they asked you what you would do differently in the startup-process knowing what you know now. How would you respond?

*BUILD A BUSINESS PLAN!* Definitely one of the things that still hunts me down, is not having a clear idea on where I wanted to take my business since day one.
Not having a set plan containing a mission, vision, values, and most importantly, objectives, has led me to reinvent the business a couple of times. Even though the business is working, and growing, it is doing it so in a disorganized and uncontrolled way, that sometimes makes the job overwhelming and not very enjoyable.

If I’d have the chance to start over, I would make sure that having a clear and complete business plan is the first step of the way. That is, and should always be, the stepping stone of any business idea.

Please please, invest in a complete Business plan!

Claudia, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Claudia Montoya, a creative and passionate professional Event Planner & Designer from a beautiful country in Central America, my beloved Nicaragua.

I am a Marketing major from FIU and a Meeting and Event Planner’s Graduate from UCLA. (quite a jump from my small little country)

I am the founder of CM Eventos (Nicaragua 2014), a company dedicated to event rentals, Casa Jardín Eventos (Nicaragua 2017), which is an event venue that host over 100 events per year, and more recently, La Clau Event Services (Florida 2021), which is a professional event services company, servicing other event industry professionals.

At La Clau Event Design we focus on helping our clients develop the creative and esthetic proposal for their events. This includes the whole creation of space distribution, color selection, furniture selection and decor proposals. We also assist other colleagues in the logistics and operations of their own events as part of collaborative initiative that has work wonders.

As part of our services we engage in event planning and coordination, we offer protocol staff and some other specialized services in the event industry.

The most rewarding part of my job is being able to help other event industry professionals.
So many years working together, and I never before realized that I enjoy enormously to be part of my “friendors” projects and see them thrive.
I absolutely feel the wins as my owns. It’s just amazing how that feeling propagates as you build trust amongst the industry.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

10 years ago I decided that corporate life was not for me anymore, and that didn’t want to work for someone else. I sold my car and invested ALL my money buying tables and chairs to start my party rental business. It was a pretty rushed decision and I didn’t give myself a chance to actually make a business plan, or even reason where I wanted to get with this business idea.

If I had to do it again, I’ll start my investment with a strong business plan.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

Non creatives have very successful businesses, very strong foundations, a business structure to dream of. I learn from them every day, but I think they struggle to understand creative based businesses because we not only lay on reports and numbers, the majority of us creatives live our businesses through our passion.

We do it a lot for “the love of art”, we also have a business to run, and mouths to feed, but our fuel is the rewarding experience of doing what we love as a way of living.

Contact Info:

• Website: laclaueventdesign.com cmeventosnic.com casajardinnic.com
• Instagram: @laclaueventservices @cmeventosnic @casajardinnic
• Facebook: laclaueventdesign cmeventosnic casajardinnic
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/claudia-montoya-58a220167/

Image Credits
AMBC MOMENTS Ayubi Photography