Queen Elizabeth's party planner Johnny Roxburgh compares running his business to parenting: 'Children and employees need parameters'

• The royal family's party planner Johnny Roxburgh spoke to Insider about his business, JRD.
• The 73-year-old has planned events for private and corporate clients all over the globe.

Johnny Roxburgh is refusing to discuss the British royal family.

Roxburgh, 73, has spent the past three decades planning parties for opulent households across the world, from Russia to China and the UK, where he is based.

He launched his party planning company, JRD, in 2014 after getting his start running a successful catering event company in the '80s, according to JRD's website. The late Queen Elizabeth II was undoubtedly his most famous client; Roxburgh provided the catering and decorating services to Her Majesty's Christmas parties through the years, and he also planned Prince William's 21st birthday party in 2003, he told Tatler in 2018.

As Tatler reported, these experiences earned Roxburgh a royal warrant, a prestigious title given to those who provide goods and services to the royal household.

I'm in the process of recounting Roxburgh's royal successes during a phone interview when he cuts me off mid-sentence.

"No, I'm not going to talk about that," he says. "I had a royal warrant. I've done lots of work for them. And every interview I do, all people want to talk about is the royal family, and I don't want to do that anymore."

Roxburgh goes on to say working with the royals was — and still is — a "hugely enjoyable part" of his life. But at the end of the day, "they're just like you and me."

Roxburgh is more than a royal headline

The 73-year-old's bluntness comes as a surprise to me, given the businessman's underlying sense of patience.

But it's understandable, given the recent press coverage of Roxburgh (just Google his name and you'll understand how often his connection to royalty is mentioned). As it stands, Roxburgh has plenty of wisdom to impart that has little to do with palace soirees — in 2019, the London Evening Standard named him as one of London's most influential people of the year.

He was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and says he was raised predominantly by his father and a female nanny after his mother was diagnosed with brain cancer when he was only 4 years old. She died when Roxburgh was 7, he says.

Roxburgh grew up with a talent for hosting parties. He says his 21st birthday party, attended by 300 people, was considered a "big party" at the time. Flash forward to 2019, and Roxburgh's 70th birthday was hosted at Spencer House, the home of Princess Diana's brother Charles Spencer. Twice as many people attended the party than his 21st, he tells me.

For the celebrations, Roxburgh wore his signature glasses, a velvet robe, and a bow tie, as shown in photos published by The Telegraph at the time. The Christmas-themed bash featured a snow machine, a shirtless Santa, and a faux polar bear, according to the publication.

But the key to an amazing party won't be found in extravagant gimmicks, Roxburgh says. It's all about being a good host.

"You can't just stand there. It's knowing how to introduce people," Roxburgh says.

His other top tip is reserved for seating charts. Roxburgh says that while it's common for Americans to seat guests beside their spouses at dinner parties, he wouldn't advise it.

"You spend all your life with your partner... the last thing you want to do is sit beside them for dinner," he says.

The path to Roxburgh's success wasn't easy

After spending several years working as a chartered accountant, Roxburgh changed direction and started a catering event company with a friend in the '80s.

"For the first six months, whenever the phone rang, we said we were fully booked," Roxburgh says, adding that they lived on around £4,000, or around $4,980, during the first year of the business.

"It was a brave thing to do, but when the doors opened, people must have thought 'They're good at what they do,'" he adds.

And when the business started taking bookings, there were "no limitations" on the types of events they accepted, according to Roxburgh.

"If somebody said to me, 'Build a tent on a platform on the sea,' we did it," he says.

Roxburgh's not exaggerating. The types of parties he has thrown over the years have been nothing short of magnificent. For example, JRD recently hosted a three-day-long party in Venice that included a treasure hunt around the city and a 40-piece orchestra; the company also transformed a client's garden into a harbor for a makeshift "ocean liner," according to the website.

I wonder aloud whether this initial inability to say no took its toll on Roxburgh, who had no formal training in the events industry before launching the business.

"Nobody died of hard work," he responds matter-of-factly.

The entrepreneur "hand-picked some of the brightest talent in the industry" to join JRD after its launch in 2014, according to the website. Together, Roxburgh and his team have worked for thousands of private and corporate clients, including Harrods, Chanel, Dior, and Versace, the website states.

Ellie Koska, a party planning assistant at JRD, has been at the company for just over a year. She tells me that Roxburgh is a strong leader and that little will stop him "from getting the job done."

Speaking on his management style, Roxburgh says he's a self-proclaimed "tough" employer.

"Whenever I get an employee who says, 'That's not in my job description,' I will look at them and say, 'You know what? I'm not asking you to do something I haven't done," he says. "'And if you don't like it, the door is there. Walk through it.'"

He goes on to say that leading a company is similar to parenting. The businessman adds a disclaimer that he doesn't have children of his own, although he has 22 godchildren.

"Children and employees need parameters. They'll naturally push against it... but they also want the security of knowing when they push against it, there's a wall. And I think people feel much more comfort if they have someone strong leading them and taking care of them," he says.

"He is one of a kind in the best way possible," Koska says. "You have to meet him to understand. Anyone who knows him would know exactly what I mean by that."

After spending just one morning speaking with Roxburgh, I understand what Koska means. As we wrap up the interview, he lets me know that the team is "absolutely drowning" in work before he's whisked off to another meeting.

As Koska says, there's not much that would stop the planner from throwing his next big bash.