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

Alright, Kenitra thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with 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 like to introduce myself as a nurse by trade and planner by passion. The easiest thing to say is I’m an advocate. As a nurse, i’m taught to advocate for my patients. As a believer in Jesus Christ i see that church hasn’t stewarded some moments well, so i advocate for Kingdom. As a young widow, the desire to grieve well was my catalyst into owning my wellness journey. Now I’m seeing the void our community experiences with wellness skills to manage their humanity! I’m a community advocate!

After my husband passed i began to write, grieve,heal and discover myself. So many things that i had hidden from myself began to emerge from a sea of facades. My self discovery stirred a passion in me to help create spaces where other can discover themselves. Working at my job quickly became not enough. My joy in tracking and trending program data dwindled as my desire for tracking and trending the thermostat for our human experience swelled. I am compelled to create spaces where people can be safe,be honest and courageous conversations.

This journey has produced the Hospitality Suite. I realize that as event planner i can’t plan and manage everyone’s event but i can train and coach rising entrepreneurs, leaders, visionaries and business staff how to strategically curate a hospitality experience for their target audience. Appropriate attention needs to be given to background, experiences, trauma and more! This is different from the logistical perspective of event planning.

So the nurse, the planner and wellness cheerleader combined is an advocate for all
things Kingdom and Community.
I’m able to compound my impact by serving through those encounter the Hospitality Suite and the Hospitality

Kenitra , 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?

I like to introduce myself as a nurse by trade and planner by passion. The easiest thing to say is I’m an advocate. As a nurse, i’m taught to advocate for my patients. As a believer in Jesus Christ i see that church hasn’t stewarded some moments well, so i advocate for Kingdom. As a young widow, the desire to grieve well was my catalyst into owning my wellness journey. Now I’m seeing the void our community experiences with wellness skills to manage their humanity! I’m a community advocate!

After my husband passed i began to write, grieve,heal and discover myself. So many things that i had hidden from myself began to emerge from a sea of facades. My self discovery stirred a passion in me to help create spaces where other can discover themselves. Working at my job quickly became not enough. My joy in tracking and trending program data dwindled as my desire for tracking and trending the thermostat for our human experience swelled. I am compelled to create spaces where people can be safe,be honest and courageous conversations.

This journey has produced the Hospitality Suite. I realize that as event planner i can’t plan and manage everyone’s event but i can train and coach rising entrepreneurs, leaders, visionaries and business staff how to strategically curate a hospitality experience for their target audience. Appropriate attention needs to be given to background, experiences, trauma and more! This is different from the logistical perspective of event planning.

So the nurse, the planner and wellness cheerleader combined is an advocate for all
things Kingdom and Community.
I’m able to compound my impact by serving through those encounter the Hospitality Suite and the Hospitality coach!

I reflected on how i could have such an amazing upbringing, be college educated, in a successful career and still have such an expansive gap with personal awareness on wellness.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

A major pivot for me was the change in my target audience. I initially branded myself to serve brides. Now I serve builders. This transition was easy and difficult simultaneously. I had done the work, business planning, building a SM platform, refining processes and all around build a system to serve BRIDES.

As I transitioned in my personal journey my desire was to serve others who were experiencing pivots. I didnt mention it earlier but my first pivot was the found a non profit for middle and high school aged students to learn professional skills and life skills. My second pivot was to build a community for women of faith to take ownership of their wellness journey.

This was all happening while I worked a 9-5 and scaled my event planning business. YES. All of this wrapped in a pretty bow while moving through my first year of widowhood.

As I had experienced a major life pivot, it introduced a transition in who I wanted to serve, how I wanted to serve them and why I wanted to serve them. I still enjoy planning and executing but that genius is now to serve others who are experiencing pivots and have decided to build what helped them heal. No more brides. I plan for builders!

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I immediately think about how I’m unlearning building business on instincts. Instincts help us survive. They make us quick on our feet. However this is not a system that breeds longevity. My business is pivoting to serve others who are building business. Business dont need instinct at the heart, they need a thrive amongst systems. I am unlearning depending on instincts and learning to teach and train a team to help execute.

Interesting story, I hosted my first conference for my women’s community and didnt hire an event planner for me. Figuring I could do plan and hand off at a certain point. No sir. No maam. That didnt work out the way I saw it because I was juggling being the leader of community and the planner. I was literally “that bride” who says she’s okay and has everything figured out and just drops everything at the end point.

You have permission to laugh. I did. I absolutely was able to diagnose the problem the same way I know my brides need to give me everything 60 days out.

What saved me? I brought on an associate planner/intern who has instincts like me. She was able to run being the day of coordinator with ease because she has the instincts. Now where am I? Building the team and refining the system. No more solopreneur, full fledged entrepreneur!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.eventsbonafide.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hospitality_suite
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EventsBonafide/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenitra-mason-6b118b1b8/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkVMemnpqmR_YScz7I15jpw

Image Credits
@linkemichellephotography @justinevansphotography