This month, we're shining a light on Frankie Tee!
Frankie is Managing Director of enTEEtainment, the event production company her dad Dick Tee founded back in 1981 (happy 45th birthday to the business this year 🎉). She grew up on festival sites, joined the PSA Council this year, and brings a brilliant mix of perspectives to the table; a woman's voice, a younger voice, and a small-business voice.
Want to know her industry life lessons, her goals for the year, and her advice to new members? Read on!
Where do you work?
I'm the Managing Director of enTEEtainment, an event production company my dad, Dick Tee, founded in 1981, which makes us a second-generation family business, and makes the company 45 this year. We deliver festivals, large-scale public events and cultural moments, and increasingly the more intimate end of things too, rooms where the detail really matters. I grew up on festival sites, so this industry has genuinely been my whole life.
What do you love about the event production industry?
The people. There's a particular kind of person who chooses this work, the ones who take the rain personally and get it done anyway. I love that no two days are the same, and I love the moment an event opens and you watch a site full of plans become a room full of people. That's the point of all of it. Connection is why events exist, and getting to build that for a living still feels like a privilege, even on the hard days.
How long have you been a PSA member? Tell us about your experience as a board/council member.
enTEEtainment has been a member and supporter of the PSA since the association began, and I joined the Council this year. What I can say already is that the people around the table care deeply, and there's real appetite to make the association useful to the people actually doing the work.
What are your goals for the PSA this year?
Mostly, to represent well. I run a small service-based business, and companies like ours, the ones sitting between the large suppliers and the freelancers, don't always have the loudest voice in the room, so I want to bring that perspective to the table. I also want to help shine a light on the topics people in this industry are sometimes scared to say out loud: pay, burnout, working around motherhood, the everyday realities behind the shows. And honestly, I'd love more members to discover the wider support the PSA already offers, I'll admit I hadn't been making full use of it myself, and there's more there than most of us realise. Part of my job this year is helping change that.
Why is it important for you to be part of the PSA council?
Because representation matters, and the Council should look like the workforce it serves. I bring a woman's voice, a younger voice, and a small-business perspective — three things the industry has plenty of on the ground and historically less of around the table. Having grown up in this industry and now running a business in it, I can see both how far we've come and where we're falling behind. I'd rather be in the room helping close that gap than commenting on it from outside.
What is your advice to new members?
Use it. Membership isn't a badge, it's a network, come to things, ask questions, talk to people who've been doing this longer than you. This industry runs on relationships and generosity, and the PSA is one of the few places that's formalised. And if something isn't working for you, a resource that doesn't exist, support you can't find, say so. That's exactly what the association is for.
Industry life lessons?
The way you treat the people no one sees is the truest measure of who you are, look after them and everything else tends to follow. Also, honesty is always the best policy. Don't hide problems, don't oversell, don't go behind people's backs, this industry is smaller than it looks, and trust takes years to build and one bad move to lose. Don't disappear when it goes wrong. Clients become friends when you behave like a friend from day one.
