Women Entrepreneurs – Career Shifts
Jane W. Lee – Serial Entrepreneur
Jane Lee is a native of Hong Kong. It’s a very prosperous but small city but packed with over 7 million people and many are still becoming women entrepreneurs. It ranks at the top of the world for having the most expensive land.
Jane didn’t start out as an entrepreneur. She spent many years in the Corporate world as an accountant. It was while working as an executive, she met her Canadian husband who had moved to Hong Kong for a better job.
Jane’s first became an entrepreneur in 2008 just as the whole corporate world of finance was changing and a recession was starting. Jane has become a serial entrepreneur and is the first to thank her husband for encouraging her to explore different businesses. Events and wedding planning is just one of her businesses.
Jane Tells Her Story
What I love most is to help out those expatriates who choose to get married in Hong Kong, as I always love to showcase our best and value for money wedding supplies from Hong Kong that they can hardly find in their home town. I once organized a wedding at the Chinese junk boat and that got featured in the UK Times as well!
Pivoting the Direction of the Event and Wedding Planning Business
After having spent the first two years, and for me, also juggling raising a child at home; it was time we introduced something new and refreshing. We felt it was time for a change and we needed a new revenue source that would not lead to burn-out.
Solving the Problems Facing Wedding Couples
We asked ourselves: “How can we generate extra revenue that will enable us to work shorter hours?” This led to us thinking about what actually troubles wedding couples the most. The answer: They don’t even know how to get started with the planning of their
weddings. Although there were (and still are) plenty of wedding blogs, magazines, and forums to choose from, couples still found it difficult because this led to information overflow. Readers can find all this information overwhelming and confusing.
Because we had the necessary knowledge to plan a wedding and access to a vendor’s network, we understood that not every couple would want to hire a wedding planner to take advantage of these resources. So, in order to create the extra revenue stream, we created our own wedding blog to build our email list by offering a step-by-step wedding planning guide. For those couples opting to go the D.I.Y. route, they could follow our guide book and ask us if they needed any assistance, giving us the opportunity to step in if required. As a result, we altered our business strategy from wedding planning to an provider of wedding media that thrives on sponsorship and marketing. Check us out here.
Wedding Inspirations
Wedding couples come to us for help because they need “weddinginspirations”; they need ideas and the support of our network. When it comes to planning a wedding, there could be numerous ideas going through your mind and it is hard to decide and compromise, especially when it is your own wedding and there are emotional ties to each decision. After all, the bride and groom come from two different families, so it is not uncommon
to have different expectations and requirements from the families. Our business is a challenge, but it is also a way to demonstrate our own capability in managing the clients’ expectations, and to deliver using objectivity, but based on their values.
So that’s why and how I try to manage my own business that doesn’t require big investment, yet able to do some great things and maintain a great lifestyles!
But that’s not all, Jane has lots more to share; her book, “Executive to Entrepreneur”, and her other businesses. We will be featuring her in future blogs and in our December 2016 magazine.