How to become a celebrity party planner: Sairah Pinnock's story

Sairah: My name is Sairah and I am a celebrity party planner.

We work with clients, where we will plan their big day, whether it be like a birthday party or album launch or single launch. We work with various different sectors of the creative industries. So, it all started when my sister Leigh-Anne, who's in Little Mix. She asked me to plan her 21st birthday. And at this point, she just won X Factor. It was a big celebration for her and she wanted it to be really special. So I planned it – the party was really good. The girls then released a single called Black Magic and they asked me todo their single launch party.

Leigh-Anne's manager was like: "Sairah you really need to make this a job, you're really good at this" and it was at that point I thought OK, maybe actually I might look into that, maybe it might be something I can do as a career. Throughout that whole time of me doing this 21st birthday, my best friend was constantly helping me, the person that I literally would call for for ideas. So, we joined forces. We then came up with the name Inclusive Industry and then it's been going ever since. I prefer doing the creative stuff, like deciding the colours and where things should go. Mason's very good at the logistics, like, you know, finding the venues and how it's going to work and also very good at talking to people. He's very good at building those new relationships.

You have to be good at communicating with people. You also have to be very patient. I would say Mason is probably more patient than I am. We don't pull off the party by ourselves. Obviously we plan it, but we have lots of other small companies that we work alongside that obviously make a lot of it happen for us. We bring everybody together – all our special vendors, you know, different balloon suppliers, different decor suppliers. An outcome is throwing the most amazing parties. At university, I studied Community Art Practice, which is the most random degree ever. My degree was focused on the arts, but within the community. So doing community events, doing a lot of charity things. I did a lot of project planning within my degree as well.

I've learnt that, when you have a business, you have to put what you like and what you think aside and you have to deliverwhat your client wants and there'll be some times where our clients will say: "I want this, I want that" and we've done this so many times, let's do something more creative, but it's not up to us. Obviously our job is to put on an event that our client wants.

It's taken a long time for us to kind of establish ourselves, get a name for ourselves. You can't just pluck a business out of thin air, like, you have to put in loads of groundwork. The more effort that you put in building it and the longer it takes, the more solid it is. I'd say just trust in your brand. Try to think about how your brand should be different, like, what can you do that other brands aren't doing? Don't be like everybody else. The best part about this job is working with my best friend, because I couldn't imagine doing this job with anybody else.