We caught up with the brilliant and insightful DaRonda McDuffie a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

DaRonda, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Your ability to build a team is often a key determinant of your success as a business owner and so we’d love to get a conversation going with successful entrepreneurs like yourself around what your recruiting process was like -especially early on. How did you build your team?

Almost 3 (three) years in and I was still flying solo. In year one and two a few friends offered to pitch in for The Princess Within, then girls conference. They donated funds, they signed up as volunteers. They showed up — a stellar move on their end. They helped on site, they shared ideas and helped me move forward, as we were all delighted to connect with young girls who were excited to be in the space where bonding and sisterhood was promoted. In year 3, during the event, a parent, astonished at the positive experience her 2 girls had enjoyed, came up to me to express her approval and placed a $100 bill in my hand and said ‘I understand now, here you go’! Immediately after the event two family members, with their family present, said ‘we love it and we want to help, and be on your team.’ Unbeknownst to them I didn’t even yet have a team, but was leaning towards that plan. To my delight, they did move forward and became my first two team members. A few months later, our first team meeting was underway, along with another individual, who is a seasoned event planner that shared vital input and guidance.

Great, we appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers?

As a now ‘seasoned’ event planner, there are three ways I attribute to how I entered and grew into the event planning industry space. As an intern, a faith-based parishioner, and a volunteer. These all have a role in how I learned and developed in my craft of organizing, designing, developing and creating events. As a Signature Event planner, my skills came about as I carried out several duties and wore many hats while serving as an event planner, assistant or volunteer for various types of events.

Birthday parties, bridal showers, weddings, baby showers, were enjoyable, however, I really felt like my gifts, talents and skills for organizing, creating and designing got more leverage and offered more innovative impact whenever I was involved in helping to plan conferences. In my first year of business, I received recognition from a business newspaper and was named in the Top 14 Signature Event planners category and that stuck for me. From then on that became my specialty – creating and designing my own specialty events as well as for clients. Since, I have created, co-created, hosted, co-hosted more than 100 events.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Being new In this solo entrepreneur space, I needed to learn to not limit myself when it came to accepting big opportunities. As I realized my limitations, I would turn down opportunities that I felt I couldn’t handle. But after I was informed upon completing a government bidding process, that ‘I offered the same or more of the services that my competitors of big companies offered’ but for a much lower fee. That taught me a valuable lesson, to not underbid, discredit, devalue my skills in the marketplace. I needed to learn to create a price point equal to that of my competitors since I had the same skills and experience in the industry. It also taught me to be the prime to manage the contract and hire subcontractors to help fulfill the contract and carry out the work. In my new entrepreneurial mindset, that never occurred to me. But now, I don’t run from opportunities that are presented.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

As we all know, the pandemic and COVID created the need for everyone to pivot in business, ministry, career and in our personal lives. As an event planner where participants are always gathering, one of the events that I was in the process of finalizing was cancelled all together. The client ended up hosting it virtually a few months later. The other event in which I was involved as a business owners, helping behind-the-scenes as well as being a workshop speaker, had to be interrupted due to the hotel restrictions. Then, I had to add a virtual component to the event I was hosting later that Fall. It was new for me, and thankfully I had a tech volunteer who helped me towards the effort, but the guest list that had exceeded 200 participants the year before, had to dwindle to 40 onsite and about 36 online, which took them some getting used to as well. It was a valuable lesson, and a learning experience. The numbers are starting to reach the 100 mark again, two years later as we are still impacted by issues related to the pandemic.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.daronda.com

Image Credits
Linda Tucker Photography