Meet Taylor Estes of Apple Box

Today we’d like to introduce you to Taylor Estes.

So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
It all began when I was born at a very young age. But to fast forward a few years, I grew up performing in the Atlanta music scene, singing at festivals, venues, corporate gigs, and the occasional wedding. I helped run events for the Georgia Music Industry Association and worked as a production assistant to the Georgia Music Hall of Fame Awards for years as a teenager. All of these varying experiences really cultivated a preference for working behind the scenes rather than on stage as a performer.

I was hired as a production manager’s assistant right out of high school for a small event company and this catapulted my industry experience. I learned so much during my time there and was responsible for pre-planning and on-site coordination for multiple festivals, concerts and corporate events around the Southeast. However, my husband and I were both raised by business owners and entrepreneurs, so after about 5 years of working for others, we decided to step out on our own, and answer the calling to build our own business, together.

Has it been a smooth road?
Life as entrepreneurs is turbulent at best. When you make the decision to rely fully on your own small business, as a husband and wife team with children and a household to support, it can feel downright scary. However, I wouldn’t change a single thing about the last 7 years. Every poor judgment call, decision, lost client, slammed the door, and missed opportunity has been a chance to grow and learn. One of the largest personal struggles is the battle of always trying to prioritize family over work.

Family comes first, but serving our clients often means responding to urgent matters whenever they arise. Since we are in the same family, the logistics can become challenging. On the professional side, I would say the event industry as a whole cause a daily struggle. It is a demanding industry soiled with greed, Gratitude Deficit Disorder and mayhem, but I enjoy the challenge of creating order from the chaos.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Apple Box story. Tell us more about the business.
We are a young team of event producers who have rapidly grown into a full-service creative agency providing consultation, design, planning and management of live events. We come to the table with a collaborative mindset empowering client teams to focus on long-term business objectives while we align their event strategy with those objectives. This helps the client focus on its core business while leaning on us as an incubator of event innovation.

Candidly, the client feedback we consistently get is that they choose to work with us because we are good listeners, and they decide to become longstanding clients (and friends) because it’s apparent that we love people, we love what we do, and we simply produce great events.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
The event industry is one of constant change. Traditionally, much of the role of an event planner revolved around logistics and vendor coordination. Meeting and event planners today have to have more discipline around financials, data analytics, and strategic thinking and the future of (corporate) event planning is going to have an exponential pace of transformation. It is no secret we live in a time of extremely rapid growth in technology and data.

Technology has never changed this quickly and will never move this slowly again. It is the job of the modern event producer to harness emerging technology trends such as AI, VR, machine learning and big data to ultimately identify and increase the return on investment for all stakeholders of the event.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.appleboxsolutions.com
• Phone: 404-590-5207
• Email: [email protected]

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