By Theresa Aisha
Nigeria’s event industry continues to attract creative talent. New planners, stylists, and designers enter the market each year, many of them self-taught, building their skills through experience and observation. The results are often impressive. Events are visually refined, concepts are executed with precision, and client expectations are met. What is less visible is the gap in business knowledge.
Most professionals in the industry have never received formal training in how to run an event business. There are no widely adopted standards for pricing, contracts, operations, or financial management. As a result, many creatives enter the market equipped to deliver events, but not to manage the enterprise behind them.
Architect and business strategist Theresa Aisha Mebitaghan, known as Tessie, sees this gap as a structural issue. “People are trained to create,” she says. “They are not trained to build businesses.”
This distinction is critical. A creative professional focuses on output. A business owner focuses on systems, structure, and sustainability. In the event industry, these roles are often merged without the necessary knowledge to support them.
The consequences are consistent. Contracts are either absent or poorly defined. Pricing lacks structure. Processes are informal. Financial tracking is limited. Many professionals rely on instinct rather than defined frameworks when making decisions.
Over time, this creates instability. Disputes arise from unclear agreements. Projects exceed budget because costs are not properly accounted for. Growth becomes difficult because there are no systems to support expansion.
Tessie’s work through the BeeZees Training Academy is designed to address this gap directly. The academy provides CPD-certified programmes focused on the business side of events. Participants are trained on pricing frameworks, operational systems, contract structures, and brand positioning.
“The goal is to move people from practice to structure,” she explains. “You can be skilled at what you do and still struggle if the business side is weak.”
Her flagship programme, The Elevated Event Planner & Stylist Masterclass, brings together these elements into a structured framework that professionals can apply to their own businesses. The focus is not on design or aesthetics, but on building systems that support consistent delivery and financial stability.
Across the industry, the absence of formal training continues to shape how businesses operate. Many professionals learn through trial and error. While this builds experience, it also leads to repeated mistakes that could be avoided with structured knowledge.
As the market becomes more competitive, this gap is becoming more pronounced. Clients expect not only strong creative work, but also professionalism, clarity, and reliability. Businesses that lack these elements risk losing opportunities, regardless of their creative ability.
Tessie is expected to address these issues directly at her upcoming session in Lagos, where the focus will be on equipping event professionals with the business frameworks they were never formally taught. For many in the industry, the conversation is shifting from how to execute events, to how to build businesses that can sustain them.
In a sector driven by creativity, the missing layer has always been structure. Closing that gap may determine which businesses grow and which remain limited by the knowledge they never received.
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