It wasn’t what she originally planned upon starting her own business three years ago, but Spokane Valley resident and entrepreneur Karen Herford now is using her skillset in the hospitality industry and applying it to a second job working with homeless women and children.

“I get goosebumps thinking up about where I am right now and how I’m in a position to be able to help serve so many people unlike I ever have before,” says Herford.

Herford, 49, left her job as director of sales and event planning at Spokane-based Catered for You Inc. in 2014 and started her own company, Events! By Karen Herford Inc. Herford says she had desired for a long time to operate her own business.

Herford also was once a sales manager and representative at Red Lion Hotels Corp., of Spokane, from 2004 to 2010. 

As her company’s sole employee, she frequently coordinates with Spokane-based party- and event-rental supply company Event Rents LLC for functions and events.

Herford has an undergraduate degree in hospitality management and is a certified meeting planner. She’s worked within the Hyatt Hotels Family, Marriott, Wyndham, and Red Lion.

Her business serves as Herford’s full-time job, and in November, while pursuing a chance to do some volunteer work in the community, she landed a job at the Union Gospel Mission Shelter for Women and Children at 1515 E. Illinois where she works an additional 20 hours per week.

“Both of my parents were pastors, and I was previously a youth pastor, so community involvement is something that’s always been strong on my heart,” Herford says.

She says her volunteer work diminished after going through a divorce four years ago and becoming a single parent.

“I got off track, and last year said, ‘You need to refocus and get back to volunteering,’’’ Herford says.

Herford now is coordinating event planning for Union Gospel Mission for setting parenting classes, which she also teaches, as well as resume workshops and life skills seminars.

As for her business, with more than two decades invested in the hospitality industry, she believed the transition to operating her own enterprise would be seamless. But that just wasn’t the case.

“It’s been a lot harder than I ever imagined,” Herford says. “It was very hard in the beginning. It’s amazing when you plan stuff on paper and then get into the daily operation and realize there’s so many things you never thought would be challenging.”

She says the biggest challenge she encountered was working from home.

“I’d hear these stories about people working in their pajamas with a cup of coffee for most of the morning, and it sounded wonderful. But the problem I had was that I couldn’t separate the house from work. I’d start cleaning and doing things around the house when I should’ve been working on the business,” Herford says.

She says she finally rented an apartment at 9310 E. Montgomery in Spokane Valley not far from her home and established the 700-square-foot unit as the business’s headquarters.

“Most of the time, I’m out meeting with clients at planning and meeting sites and not here very often,” she says. “But it helped me focus tremendously on the business. I needed to wake up, shower, get dressed, and leave the house.”

Herford says revenue has been modest, ranging from $30,000 her first year to $70,000 last year. She says money has never been a driving force for her; rather, what drives her is helping people and businesses put on a flawless event.

“I want to make sure that they’re taken care of and that their day is amazing,” Herford says of her clients. “Whether it’s helping a family arrange for a funeral to a business lunch to a wedding, I want them to know I’ve got their best interests at heart.”

Herford says her clients have come via word-of-mouth referrals and those who’ve located her online at her website and Facebook page.

Herford’s client list includes Nectar Catering & Events, St. George’s School, GeoEngineers Inc., and Taylor Engineering Inc., and she also catered two events at the home of Gonzaga University men’s basketball coach Mark Few.

“They were absolutely wonderful people, and they asked me to help them put together a second function after the first one,” Herford says of the Few family.

Though she confesses it took her some time, Herford says she finally considers herself to be an official Spokanite. She was born in Palo Alto, Calif., and lived there until her family moved to Dallas when she was 5 years old. Her father had family living in Spokane, and they moved here when she was a junior in high school for the 1984-85 academic year.

“So here I am from Dallas with my big red beret and big high heels clicking down the hallways of Rogers High School, and everyone’s got mullets,” Herford says. “I was a little worried. I considered going back, but I’m glad I stayed.”

At Rogers, she ran track for then-head coach Dick Kinzer, and in her senior year, she won state titles in the girls’ 100- and 200-meter events, and 4x100-meter relay, she says.

“Mr. Kinzer is a wonderful man, and we still get together at least once a year to catch up with each other and have lunch,” Herford says.

The speed at which she ran on the track paralleled the pace of life she was accustomed to in Texas.

“It was tough for me to slow down. I felt like I was on crack from Dallas. The pace of life was just so different,” she says.

After graduating from high school, she entered the U.S. Army and spent the majority of her six years in service as a military police officer. Upon leaving the Army, she spent time briefly in Rhode Island with family members, and then moved back to Spokane in 1993. It was on the East Coast where she began studying for a career in hospitality.

In spring 1994, Cavanaugh’s Inn at the Park—now called Hotel RL Spokane at the Park—hired Herford as an executive assistant to the general manager. She spent a year in that position before rapidly advancing in sales and management, she says.

Herford and her then husband weren’t in Spokane long before they moved back to Texas.

“He’d lived in Texas all his life, and Spokane was an even bigger shock for him than it was when I first came here,” she says.

Upon returning to Texas, Herford spent 12 years working for a Hyatt Regency in Dallas. She was placed in Hyatt’s year-long Hyatt University program, and there she says she learned every facet of the hospitality industry.

“They trained you on everything,” Herford says. “You’d spend two, three weeks, up to month with valet staff, concierge, banquet, human resources. It was time spent with between 15 to 20 departments over the course of the year.”

Herford moved the family, which now included four children, back to Spokane in 2004 when her mother retired.

“At that point, I was ready to slow down,” Herford says. “It felt so good to come back to Spokane. It finally felt like home. Here, there are all these lovely, adorable people that when I first got here was just too young to appreciate.”