FEBRUARY 2006 :: CAREERS

Life of the Party
How I Got Here: Maneesh Goyal, Event Planner

BY ADELLE WALDMAN
CareerJournal.com

There are career transitions, and there are career overhauls.

Maneesh Goyal made one of the latter. He went from a promising career in the nonprofit sector, where he saw himself as being on a track to become an executive director, to entrepreneur—the founder of a company devoted to planning lavish parties for high-profile corporate and celebrity clients.

Maneesh's Insights

Party planning was something he had never imagined doing when he was a student. ‘I always thought I'd probably become a doctor.'

The 9/11 attack reminded him that life is short and uncertain, and caused him to rethink his own life. ‘I wanted to do something that didn't feel like work'

He'd always had an entrepreneurial itch. ‘I had a feeling that somehow I'd do something independent'

Mr. Goyal, 29, hasn't looked back since. After starting MKG Productions from his apartment in 2002, he now has five employees, working out of a loft-like office space in New York. His company has planned exclusive bashes for clients ranging from Diddy to Virgin Records America and Song, Delta Air Lines' low-cost service.

"I couldn't be happier," Mr. Goyal says.

Sorry, Mom and Dad

Not that this was something he had ever imagined doing when he was a student.

At Duke University, Mr. Goyal was pre-med. "I always thought I'd probably become a doctor," he says. "In part, that was a cultural thing, being Indian-American." Mr. Goyal's father had been an engineer, and his parents would have been pleased to see him go into medicine.

But though he completed the pre-med coursework, Mr. Goyal gradually realized it wasn't for him. He spent time abroad, studying the AIDS epidemic in India, and gradually decided that he wanted to focus on public health.

When he graduated, he headed to Yale University for a master's degree in that subject. His plan? A career working in the nonprofit public-health sector.

The plan seemed to be working. When he completed his master's in 1999, Mr. Goyal got a job as a program officer at the Dyson Foundation, a private grantmaker in Millbrook, N.Y. Mr. Goyal was focused on children's health programs.

But in the summer of 2001, the foundation did some reorganizing and wanted to move Mr. Goyal's job from its New York office to Boston. Mr. Goyal didn't want to make the move, which meant that he was out of a job.

And then 9/11 happened. Mr. Goyal lived in Lower Manhattan, very close to the World Trade Center. The attack reminded him that life is short and uncertain, and it caused him to rethink his own life. "I wanted to do something that didn't feel like work," he says.

He knew from reading the newspaper that there were companies that put together events and parties, and he was intrigued. Not only did it seem exciting and glamorous, but also something that he would be good at. "I like details, logistics and putting out fires," he says.

While Mr. Goyal was receiving severance from the Dyson Foundation, he began to volunteer for party-planning companies. He wanted to see how the industry worked. So he made calls and sent out resumes, and soon enough he was doing some pro bono work for companies that did major events. "I got to help on everything," he says.

Meanwhile, his parents were less than thrilled at his new interest. "They were absolutely mortified," he says. "They were like, ‘What is event planning? Is this why you went to those schools?'" They asked other family members to call him and talk him out of it. But Mr. Goyal was determined.

And then he caught a break. At one event in which he was working, he says, he made a good impression on someone—someone who worked for Diddy. A few weeks later, that person called him and asked him to plan a New Year's Party for Diddy in Miami.

Mr. Goyal had a client. He was nervous, he says, but he pulled off the event, and that's when he decided that if he was going to work in the field, he should do it on his own, rather than seek a full-time job with an event-planning company. Once he got back from Miami, he filed papers establishing MKG Productions.

He says he'd always had an entrepreneurial itch. "I had a feeling that somehow I'd do something independent, how cool that would be," he says.

His first year was rough. Not only was he starting a new business—always a challenge—but he was doing so at a time when the economy, particularly in New York, was very slow. He worked out of the apartment he shared with roommates and did only four events. He barely made enough money to live on that year, he says.

But he never thought about giving it up. He got clients by going out and meeting people socially, always explaining his company and distributing his card. And he'd put together a small mailing list of a few hundred names.

Red-Carpet Treatment

Slowly, it seemed to be working. By 2003, his business was picking up, largely because Mr. Goyal started building successful relationships with PR firms. And he'd had a knack for planning events that the media covered, he says, citing a party he did for an upscale New York retailer. Its store was tiny, he says, too small for a big party, but Mr. Goyal says he was able to put a red carpet on the street and sidewalk. That was because in his previous dealings with the police and parks departments, he cultivated relationships with employees who were then willing to help him out. Closing off part of the street in front of the store alone got the event some press, he says.

In the summer of 2003, Mr. Goyal moved into his first office, which he shared with another lone entrepreneur, and then that fall, he hired his first employee.

These days, Mr. Goyal doesn't do much of the actual event planning, leaving that to his employees. Sometimes he misses that aspect of the job, but his time is devoted to the logistics of running the company, and bringing in new clients. His goal is to continue to expand the company and to move beyond events to marketing plans for corporate clients, he says.

But for now he's thrilled with how things have worked out. He no longer loses sleep worrying about making payroll. In fact, the business is doing so well that Mr. Goyal has just purchased a new apartment in a fashionable downtown neighborhood.

And his parents? "Now they love it," Mr. Goyal says. "They weren't worried about what I was filling my days with, but whether I'd be successful."