Courtesy Events by Kelly (2021)
Kelly Jeanmaire has been a beta-tester on the new smartphone app Clubhouse. It’s a combination of podcast (since it is an app), live radio talk show (since it runs all day nonstop), and social media (because it has a healthy chatroom on the side).
Like radio, the app is broken into audio stations--the app calls them rooms--that people listen to. On the side, people respond to what is said or interact with the host on the chat. She listens in the wedding planner’s room.
“It’s not scripted, so you don’t know if you’re going to find information” or how long it may take on any given day, she said. So she gets coffee and listens in the background until she hears the discussion turn to something she likes.
As the owner of a newly-formed wedding planning company, she has gotten a lot of ideas about software to use in her business and how to handle situations with clients as she talks to people in the wedding industry all over the world, she said.
The app is in beta-mode, and on its Apple store page, the developer posted, “We're working hard to add people to Clubhouse as fast as we can, but right now you need an invite to sign up. Anyone can get one by joining the waitlist, or by asking an existing user for one.”
Jeanmaire said the main goal is connection and education.
“So far I haven’t gained clients but I’ve gained a lot of knowledge,” she said.
Jeanmaire started her company, “The Main Event by Kelly,” in Albany, after being laid-off in early 2020. She had spent seven years in the wedding industry in the planning, catering and hospitality areas.
She had a baby in August and had been working with family and friends on their weddings.
“I had nothing to lose...so I made it official,” she said in an interview last month. “It’s really a great place [the Capital Region] to get married. There are so many great locations," she said, from the Hudson Valley and Albany to Saratoga and the Adirondacks.
She has a degree in Marketing Management from the Kedge Business School in France, but it is marketing during the pandemic that is giving her trouble.
“Well, for me, [starting in the pandemic] was actually pretty nice, simply because I had a lot of time,” she said. With social events locked up, however, she is finding the networking more difficult. “You have to work harder to get the word out.”