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A Wedding Business Podcast - Tips and tricks to, grow and sustain a amazingly successful wedding business in a way that's is fun and gives you tons of freedom.
Welcome everyone to the Wedding Pro Academy Podcast. I'm Nicole, your host. I'm an expert in the wedding industry and I've personally built two 6 figure businesses from the ground up. I am obsessed with building businesses that make lots of money but do so in a way that also create luxurious amounts of freedom. So if you're looking to build, grow, or scale a wedding business in a way that doesn't burn you out, and you'd love some guidance from someone who has done just that, this podcast is for you.
Nicole:Each week I'll cover strategies, tips and tricks that will give you your dream wedding business too. Thanks so much for tuning in today. Let's dive in! Hi guys! Welcome to episode 50 five-zero!
Nicole:I'm so excited that I have done 50 episodes this year. I hope that if you've been following along that you have gotten some really helpful information out of this podcast and been able to apply some of it so that your wedding business can grow and scale start to make money and do all the things and that's really the whole point of it. I'd like to help you guys get to where I am more quickly so you don't spend years trying to figure out all the things and hitting all the dead ends and wasting time doing things that don't really bring you progress, don't move you forward. So today I have a fun one, since it is my fiftieth episode. Today we're going to talk about 50 things I would do if I was starting a wedding business from scratch.
Nicole:Things I'm going to go through them kind of quickly, and some of them you may have already done, but maybe you haven't done all of them. If I was going to start a brand new business, a brand new wedding business, here are the 50 things I would do: one. Choose a wedding business that feels aligned with you. What do you love? What would be really fun?
Nicole:What do you feel is your jam? What kind of business reflects you? I would choose a business that is reflective of me, something that I really enjoy doing, something that I am really good at. So for example, if I was going do wedding planning, you can choose from a variety of different types of wedding planning services to offer. You could be a full service partial day of planner.
Nicole:You could be a designed focused planner where you just do wedding design. You could be an elopement planner because you like the smaller more intimate weddings. That's what I do. You could be a luxury planner if you like the bigger scale multi day events. Which kind of wedding planning feels most aligned with you?
Nicole:Which one are you most drawn to? I would start the business with a specific plan that is connected to the type of wedding planning that I like best. You can sub that out for a wedding photographer or anything else, but choosing a wedding business that feels aligned for you. That's number one. Number two, I would choose a name with built in SEO.
Nicole:So built in search engine optimization. For example, something like simplebeachweddingshawaii.com. There's a company that does this and they only do simple beach weddings. Anyone that's searching for a simple beach wedding in Hawaii, their company name is going to pop up on top. How perfect, right?
Nicole:They don't even have to work hard to get that SEO so it makes it super easy for people to find them on Google. If you can choose a name with built in SEO that is going to serve you so well. It's so key and so important and if I was starting from scratch I would definitely do that. Okay, number three: buy a domain. Obviously you want to choose the name by the domain ASAP.
Nicole:The quicker you buy the domain, the quicker nobody else has a chance to get it. Number four: You want to get an EIN, and any new business is going to have to do that, so get an EIN. Number five: Register your business with your state. And every state has a different process and these are just business essentials that you're going to need to do if you're building any kind of business. Number six, set up your business email, and I would make this super simple.
Nicole:Don't even worry about getting a custom, like, back end to your email. I would just do, like, yourbusinessname@gmail.com. You can always change it later, but having a simple email will be super helpful and then you can use this email for all of your business related stuff. Number seven. You want to make sure that everything business related goes through this email.
Nicole:Keep it separate from your personal email. Don't mix business and personal stuff. Keep everything separate. Eight. Create a basic wedding business contract.
Nicole:You can find samples of business contracts online. Is going be the contract that once you book a wedding, the couple will need to sign it and it's going to protect you. A very easy thing you can do now that I couldn't do way back then is you can use ChatGPT. You can say in ChatGPT, here's what I do, here's who I help, here's where I live and work, and here's how I would like to be covered. Create a professional wedding business contract to cover me, and ChatGPT will set one up for you.
Nicole:And you wanna make sure you're covered on all aspects. So what happens if a tornado happens? What happens if there is rain? What happens if the couple switches the wedding date at the last minute? What happens if, you know, they cancel the wedding?
Nicole:What happens if they're late? Make sure that you're covered and that all of this is outlined in the contract. I also like to put in there that I have legal rights to the photos so that I can post about their wedding on my social media and they've already agreed to it. That way they don't have to get their permission later on they've already signed the contract. Nine.
Nicole:Buy a simple but beautiful website template. Don't do it yourself from scratch, but don't hire a web designer either. The reason why is because you want to keep the costs low you're just starting, you're probably just getting established. You want something professional looking, so that's why you would pay for a template that you can get on Squarespace, on Showit, and they have beautiful templates that you can pay a small fee for, and then you just plug in your information, your photos and everything else but it already looks a certain way so you don't have to spend time building it from scratch, don't have to hire someone and pay big bucks and you'll get something professional up that goes up very quickly. Number 10: Set up hosting.
Nicole:You'll do that for your website and whichever platform you use you should be able to set up hosting directly through them. The hosting, the domain process, it's going to take time to figure it out, setting up the website. All of that's going to take time. Expect it to take time. It's not a really quick turnaround thing, but don't spend too much time trying to perfect it.
Nicole:Remember that you can do hard things and you will figure it out. And don't go crazy in trying to make this perfect here. You just want to get something simple up and out there. 11. Invest in professional wedding photos.
Nicole:Now, if you're a wedding photographer, you probably already have some. If you're not, if you're a wedding planner, a wedding officiant, another type of wedding vendor, you might not have professional photos, so do a styled shoot. Pay for professional photos and use them on your website. This is number 12 only use professional photos on your website. The reason being is you want brides and grooms to take you seriously.
Nicole:The only way they are going to do that is if they think you're a legit wedding planner, which means you've done real weddings, you have professional photos, so use professional photos only. 13. Set up your packages. Choose one signature primary package and then two supportive packages or smaller version. Which is the package that is going to be your main one?
Nicole:Try not to create 10 packages. Keep it as simple as possible in the beginning three basic packages and make sure each package is clearly outlined, doesn't have too much stuff in it. Keep it simple and make sure it solves a very specific problem for your couple so it's something that they're looking for something that they want. Number 14: Price your packages. The way I would do pricing is I would first look at what everybody else is charging.
Nicole:You want to see what's going on in the market right now. What are other wedding planners charging, doing the same thing that you're doing or similar? And you want to choose a price point that reflects your value. So, in the beginning, if it feels too high, so you see someone that's charging like $4,000 for wedding planning, and that to you feels like, Oh my God, that's too high. Then it probably is.
Nicole:You'll feel it. So start low because you need to get behind a cost that you feel secure in, so that when you're selling it, then it feels like a deal. You want to know that you can over deliver on this package at this price point without being taken advantage of. So choose a price that feels good in your body and you'll know, you'll be like, Oh, what I'm offering, what I'm giving is worth this plus some.' That's a good price. Number 15: Set up your social profiles.
Nicole:So, what I would do first is just secure all the names, make sure that you have accounts in Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and all that and secure the names. 16 Invest in a wedding business master class and a wedding business coach. Now, this is optional, but highly, highly recommend and it's one area I would spend money in. If I was doing this all over again, I would have spent money in this right at the start. Because having a clear plan direction in the beginning, it's gonna save you years of trial and error, and it's gonna get you booking weddings more quickly.
Nicole:Right? That's gonna jump start your business. And that in itself is totally worth it. So if you can get booking weddings within three months instead of one year, I mean, how quickly does that pay back for the course or for the coach? 100% worth it.
Nicole:Remember this: twenty percent of small businesses fail in the first year, and fifty percent fail in the first five. I got this off of Google, and if I'm being honest, I think it's way more. I have seen so many businesses start when I started and they just don't exist anymore. You would see them just drop off. They get excited, I'm all in on this, and then they don't book a wedding for six months for one year, they're like, Forget it.
Nicole:Not worth it. So, you want to ensure that you get this business moving quickly, that you book a wedding kind of quickly so that your heart stays in it. Right? You want to ensure this success by investing in yourself, by having a plan, a course, a coach that can help you early on. 17.
Nicole:Open a separate business bank account. Put $50 in there, and use this account ONLY for your wedding business. Pay yourself from this account. Pay for everything business related from this account. 18.
Nicole:Get a separate wedding business credit card. Just one. I like the Blue Sapphire Visa it has good rewards, but you can do your own research, find one credit card that you're going use for all business related stuff, and use it for business related stuff. Don't use it for other things. Keep business and personal separate.
Nicole:19. Get a checkbook for your business account. You can probably get that directly through your bank, but you want to have a checkbook. 20. Don't overspend.
Nicole:I know it can be super easy to get excited when you first build your business. You want to buy stuff. Photographers want to buy new equipment and wedding planners want to buy new business notebooks. I don't know, whatever. You want to buy stuff because you're excited about the business.
Nicole:Right now, you're probably not making money, so you don't wanna overspend, and you wanna track all of your expenses that are for business. And try to be really frugal until you have consistent income coming in. Number 21, track your expenses. Get in the habit of doing this early, and it should be really simple if you've set up your business the way I just told you to. So all your money coming in and out goes through one credit card and one bank account.
Nicole:You can track all expenses and all money coming in through those two places and that should be very simple to see that whenever you log into your accounts. Number 22: Get your website up and live ASAP. Remember, doesn't need to be perfect. What so many new business owners do that keep them stuck for months and months is they try to make their website perfect. Well, don't worry about that, just get it up and here's why.
Nicole:Because nobody's going to be able to find your website anyways, it's not going show up on Google because it's going to take a long ass time to get ranked. So get your website up, just get it in Google so that it can start getting crawled by the bots and Google can start to find it. Then work on it as once it's up and and make it better. Add in your SEO, all of that. But get the website up.
Nicole:Make it live as soon as possible, as soon as you can. Don't worry about it needing to be finished because it doesn't matter. Nobody's searching for it. Nobody knows who you are. Google's not even gonna show it for months, so just get it live.
Nicole:Okay. Number 23. Start implementing SEO. I talk a lot about SEO because it's so, so important. Search engine optimization.
Nicole:You want to do this while you're building your website, and if you're not sure where to start, you can get my freebie five day SEO challenge at weddingproacademy.com/seochallenge. And in that challenge, I teach you exactly how to get started with SEO and how to implement SEO in five days. And if you want a deeper dive into that, you can learn more in my wedding business masterclass. I go deep on SEO. I personally feel SEO is so so important and the more quickly you can get your website ranked on Google, the more quickly your business will take off, the more inquiries you will get, the more weddings you will book.
Nicole:So you want to work on SEO. Number 24: Claim your Google business page. I worked with a few newer wedding businesses who had been in business for years and never had a wedding business page up because they didn't think it was important. Well, it 1000% is for so many reasons, but SEO is one of them. And another reason is like you need testimonials on there.
Nicole:So get your claim your Google business page, get that set up. It should only take a few hours. 25: Set up Google Maps. 26: Set up Instagram. 27: Set up TikTok.
Nicole:28: Set up Facebook. I went through all these really quick but I just want you to get basic business profiles up in all these places. Largely because of SEO. You want as many online places as possible online listings that are linking back, creating backlinks to your website because the more of those you have in place the more Google will start to pay attention to your website and start pushing it up in the rankings. Set up the Google business page, Google maps, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook all of that and link it back to your website.
Nicole:Number 29, Start telling people that you know about your business. Do not worry if your website doesn't look perfect. That doesn't matter. Just start talking about it. And I'm saying this not necessarily to advertise but mainly what I want you to do is start to step into this new identity of being a business owner.
Nicole:The more you talk about it, the more you're going to sink into this as your identity and you need to be very secure, very confident in your role as a professional wedding photographer, as a professional wedding planner so that when you are selling it to brides and grooms it's not something new, something you don't feel confident in. Telling people about your business is going to help you step into that confidence. Number 30: Join your local wedding association. 31. Go to local wedding association events.
Nicole:32. Introduce yourself at these events to as many people as you can. Make friends. Keep showing up. You want to try to get connected in the wedding industry because these are the people that are going to throw you business.
Nicole:These are the people that going to help you figure out how to get your wedding business moving, how to get weddings booked. These are going to be your long lifelong friends. So go to the events, show up, start talking to people that are in the same boat as you make connections. Number 33, spend some time working on and simplifying your websites. And here's what I mean by simplify.
Nicole:You only need the basic homepage, services page, an about page, testimonials, portfolio, and a contact page. Don't feel like you need to go in a whole lot of depth on all of that. Make sure it looks professional, but have those those basic pages in there. Number 34. I want you to set up three separate testimonial spaces online.
Nicole:Yelp, Google and your website. When you ask couples for a testimonial or review, ask them to post it in two places on Yelp and on Google. Copy that onto your website and repost it on social. You want testimonials even if they're repeated ones in multiple places. The more testimonials you have, the more credible you appear to brides and grooms, the more weddings you'll book.
Nicole:35 Start collecting testimonials from friends, from family, from anyone who knows you, who can vouch for you. It doesn't even need to be from real weddings to start. Have you helped plan that first birthday party? Ask them for a testimonial. Did you shoot a family for Christmas photos?
Nicole:Get a testimonial. The more testimonials the better. And if I look for you and I only see like three testimonials, I'm not going to trust you enough to want to reach out to you. You better have at least ten-fifteen testimonials on there and the more you can get the better. So start collecting these testimonials now.
Nicole:Number 36: Create set work times and show up. Decide at the beginning, make a plan, make a goal for yourself. You might want to decide I will work on this wedding business from eight to twelve every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday before my other job for six months. I will show up and put the work and time in. I will not give up.
Nicole:I will not question myself. I know this will take time. I'm all in on me and follow through at that. Creating set work times and then just showing up for that, putting in the time, creating a plan, and following through is what it's going to take in order for your wedding business to actually get moving, book weddings, and start making money. But you've got to show up.
Nicole:You can't just talk about it and say, I'm going start a business, and not actually follow through on any of it. If you're going to say that you're going to build this business, don't half ass it. Go all in. Otherwise, what's the point? Number 37.
Nicole:Get super clear on your why. Want you to journal on it every day. Have it written on a post it on your wall. Why do you want this business to work? Is it so that I can be present in my kids' lives?
Nicole:Is it so that I can go to their baseball games? Is it so that I can pick them up from school when the school calls and tells me they're sick? Is it so that I can create my own hours? Is it so that I can have a job that feels fun and rewarding? Is it so that the effort that I put in actually get to reap the rewards instead of a boss that doesn't see me, that doesn't appreciate me.
Nicole:I get if I'm gonna put in the energy and time, then I get rewarded. What is your why? Why is this so important to you? Get behind that and step into that. 38: Start showing up on socials.
Nicole:Choose just one platform in the beginning and keep it super simple. Choose an amount of time that you're going to post and stay consistent with it. This might be Instagram, three Reels, and three Stories a week. And that's it. Don't try to do too much unless you can actually pull it off.
Nicole:You need to stay consistent for two months or more before you up the amount that you're going to do. Choose something that you can actually do make it easy because it's going to be so easy to get lazy about this and if you're going to put the effort in, do it right. Go all in on it, set a goal and actually follow through. 39: Use professional wedding photography on social as much as possible Brides want to work with someone who's a pro, not the girl next door who shoots for fun on weekends. Try to keep your social profiles looking really professional because we work in an industry where how it looks is really really important.
Nicole:Brides will choose to work with you based on how your profiles look, how your websites look. That's how you're going to build trust with them. So use professional photography. 40. Use testimonials on your social.
Nicole:I want you to interweave testimonials throughout your social media because that's how you get them to trust you. That's how you get them to see that you're a professional. Number 41: Make sure that all social, all business listings like Yelp, Google, The Knot, etc. Any online areas that you can be found in I want you to make sure that it links back to your wedding website. The whole point I said this earlier but the whole point of all this is to create these backlinks.
Nicole:It all needs to link back to your website. Number 42: Spend time weekly, set some time aside every week to learn about and implement SEO search engine optimization. The way I would start here, I mean you can grab my free five day SEO challenge on my website, but one thing I would do right off the bat is I would start by naming my main pages on my website with SEO searchable names for example your about page should be the name of your business Texas wedding planner instead of the name of your website about because if anybody searching for it in Google they're going to be searching for Texas wedding planner and about is not going to show up in the rankings. Use that to your advantage and try to title the names of the pages to things that people are actually searching about. So keep that in mind when you are setting up your website because it's going to make things a lot easier for you when you're trying to get ranked on Google and again grab my SEO five day challenge freebie on my website weddingproacademy.com/seochallenge if you'd like a simple way to get started with this.
Nicole:Number 43: Check your links! Make sure all the links on your website work. That can mess with your SEO too. Make sure that couples can easily contact you if they stumble across your website, if they find your social or your online listings. Is it super easy for them to click one button in five seconds and figure out how to contact you?
Nicole:If it's not, make sure that it is. Contact buttons should be very simple, easy to find, quick to spot, kind of bright. They should stand out. You don't want to lose brides because they can't figure out how to reach you. I've seen that a lot too.
Nicole:Make sure it's very easy for brides to figure out how to reach you. They don't have to jump through a bunch of hoops to try to figure out how do I even get in touch with this person? They should be able to do that really quickly, really simply. 44. Set up a blog on your website.
Nicole:This is old school. This is something that I did when I first started but it's still very helpful especially with SEO. You want to choose blog titles around what brides are searching for to make sure it has these specific words. So, for example, if I was trying to rank on Google for Hawaii wedding planner that was me, okay? I want to rank for that.
Nicole:I might write a blog titled five unexpected ways your Hawaii wedding planner will save you thousands of dollars. So, have those exact words in there and it will start showing up in the Google rankings because of those words. 45. Repurpose all the blogs as and posts in your socials. This is going to make social media easier for you.
Nicole:It's going to link people back to your website. What you want is you want people to move through all of the places that you're listed online. They should check out your social, be connected to your website, they should check out your reviews on Yelp and just work moving this circle, checking out all the different places you are and that's what's going get them to reach out to you. That's what builds the trust. Makes that's what makes you appear like the expert and professional that you are.
Nicole:Number 46: Create an onboarding system. You probably don't need to do this until you've booked your first wedding but once you have a few weddings you need an onboarding system and you want to begin with just creating an email draft that you can use over and over and over again for new inquiries. When people reach out to you you have a draft email that you send out that goes over what your packages are that gives them the information that need that they need and you can personalize it. You want to continue to improve this email draft as more people reach out and work on other email drafts for emails that you send out all the time. What happens after they reach out to you?
Nicole:When do you reply? Have a plan so that when brides reach out to you, you respond to them within a day with this email, then you follow-up within two days, then maybe you send them something in another two days. What is the plan? What is the onboarding system? 47: Show up for vendor networking events.
Nicole:This is so helpful and it could be through your local wedding association, it could just be through reaching out to other wedding vendors in the same like arena that you're in or that are at the same level that you're at and this is how you're going to meet some of your best longtime friends in the industry. You want to connect with other wedding vendors who are trying to get their businesses up just like you. Like you don't want to try to reach out to the wedding planner that's been around for fifteen years because she doesn't have time for coffee dates. But the other wedding planner or wedding photographer that is just starting, she's in the first six months, Set up a coffee date with her. What's she doing?
Nicole:What's she trying? This is how you nourish create connection with other vendors and you guys will support, encourage, and uplift each other for years. This is really, really key and something I did early on that was really helpful to me. Number 48: Once you have a wedding booked, start to create systems. Onboarding systems, planning systems, thoughtful touches that will keep a consistent flow of communication happening up until their wedding day and then a process on following up and getting testimonials.
Nicole:You want to have systems that are going to make your job easier. The more weddings you book, the more this will happen naturally, but start thinking about it early. 49. On the actual wedding day. Besides just executing your job to the highest level obviously and connecting with your couple and their family and making sure that they're taken care of and you're doing the best possible job for them, want you to think about connecting and prioritizing caring for the vendors on-site that day.
Nicole:So the vendor team. So for example if you're a planner what can you do to help the photographer? Does she need help executing the family photos? Can you call out names for her? Can you get the vendors like the DJ and whoever else like meals and water?
Nicole:Can you check-in with them? Can you make sure that they know what's next on the schedule? Can you let the photographer know 'okay we're coming up on this, need like where are you at? Do need more time? Or can we move on to the next part of this wedding?' Check-in with them.
Nicole:Communicate in a way that's super helpful. Vendors love other vendors who are extremely helpful. We love them. I love it when I bring on a new photographer or whatever and they're just like total team player. They're like, here's where I'm at.
Nicole:They're checking in with me, we're communicating, we're working together, we're a team. Even though we're separate vendors, we work together to help each other out. This is how we connect with other vendors and if you have other vendors who are super helpful, you want to keep working with them, right? So being the type of vendor that is super helpful at the start, that is going to ensure that other vendors are going to throw you more weddings because they like working with you. Right?
Nicole:And that is how you book more weddings a very easy way. Be a team player, help everyone else out. Okay, number 50. This is the last one, so I'm going say it again because I think this one is really, really important and something that I did maybe in the fifth year but I wish I had done it in the first because it would have saved me tons of time and energy and money. Get a wedding business coach or invest in a wedding business course.
Nicole:You want to do this from someone who has already achieved the type of success that you are wanting to achieve. You could be holding yourself back years in ways that you're totally unaware of because there's no way for you to really understand what you're doing wrong. This is what this course is going to do. It's going to help you to figure out what to do first, why to do it, what are tricks of the trade that are going get you to book weddings more quickly, how experts do it, what you can take from them, little nuances that you just wouldn't understand until you failed a 100 times. This is what you're going to get out of it.
Nicole:This is why you need a coach. This is why you need a course that's going to tell you exactly what to do, what not to do, why to do it, how to book your first weddings quickly and efficiently so that your heart stays in it, so that your wedding business takes off, so that you actually make this into a profitable business that can create a dream life for you. And that's why I created the Wedding Pro Academy Business Masterclass. If you want to learn more about that check out weddingproacademy.com I hope you guys found this helpful. I hope even if you've been in weddings for a little bit you could pick out a couple of those things that you could implement and take some of the years of trial and error that I have had and learn from it and get your wedding business going because wedding businesses are honestly the best.
Nicole:I love mine. I still love it. I've been doing this for like since 2011, a long long time, and I still really really love this business. I still think it's the best and I want that for you too. And not only is it the best because of well, you get to work in weddings, which is really fun.
Nicole:Doesn't even feel like a job, but it's because of the people in the wedding industry. They're all creatives. They're all really fun. And a lot like you, some of my best friends I've met through the wedding industry, but also it's given me the life that I want. I've talked about this before, but I get to, you know, be there for my kids.
Nicole:I get to have weekdays off to go surfing in the morning when nobody else is in the water. I get to get my hair done on a Monday or my nails or whatever. I get to take time off for me when I want. I get to set a schedule up that works around me, not the other way around. And the amount of effort and time and energy that I put into my business is what I get out of it.
Nicole:So if I'm gonna work my ass off on a business or at any job, I want equal reward, equal pay. You know? If I'm gonna put in this much time and energy and heart, I want that much money. I want to be rewarded on the same scale, and that's what a wedding business can do for you. Again, make sure you get into weddingproacademy.com, the masterclass, the business masterclass, because I teach you how to get your wedding business up and going quickly and efficiently and stop you from, you know, making mistakes that could cost you years.
Nicole:Again, that's weddingproacademy.com and then you want to click on the Wedding Business Masterclass. Alright guys, I hope you have a great weekend and I will see you next week! Bye for now!