Being successful at being an Executive Mom often hinges on knowing how to tap your network to get things done, resourcefully.   In planning an event on the scale of a Bat Mitzvah, most parents with demanding careers (or other significant demands on their time) would look to professional event planners to support them… providing of course they can afford this help.

However, as we were moving toward the very beginning stages of planning our oldest daughter’s Bat Mitzvah (and thus our first), I actually had been vacillating over whether we would go this route – weighing the obvious benefits of professional assistance with a desire to save on cost.  I also recognized that I had built considerable experience of my own planning and producing large events for Executive Moms and I had a vague concern that a standard Bat Mitzvah planner would get me a standard Bat Mitzvah.

So, as I’ve been wont to do in other situations, I created my own Option C… and only time will tell if this choice will prove to be the best of all worlds… (or not).  Through speaking at industry events in my corporate life I had gotten to know a conference producer who in turn became my producer partner when I threw a big company conference of our own.  As he broke away to start his own conference business we remained in touch, and over a drink several months ago, we discussed the whimsical notion that he might test out a whole new potential avenue for his fledgling company by helping us plan Hannah’s big day. 

He has never planned a Bar or Bat Mitzvah before. 

Yet off of that one conversation and a handshake, imbued with a mutual trust test we would each take a risk on the unknown in the interest of each getting something new, different and hopefully really terrific out of it, we said, “deal.”  Savvy?  Or Silly?  I don’t know yet!