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, ideas, tips, and tricks that will give you your dream wedding business too. Thanks so much for tuning in today. Now let's dive in. Welcome to episode 67. Today we are going to talk about the skills that nobody talks about that actually build a profitable wedding business.
Nicole:I kind of wanted to dive in to this concept because I feel like everybody out there on the social media, Instagram, TikTok, whatever is saying building a business is so easy. You can have $20,000 months. You just quit your job, go on, all of a sudden you should be making money. But that is so not true. I don't know if you guys have been seeing a lot of this stuff in your feeds, but it's kind of annoying because building a business, any business, is not easy.
Nicole:Everyone has a different starting point. It's difficult. It takes grit. It takes time. It takes commitment.
Nicole:And everyone that's talking about, you know, it being easy and going viral and, you know, that $10,000 months, just jump in $10,000 months. You know? Like, that's not how it works. It your business doesn't just pop off out of nowhere. You you're gonna need to commit and really be all in, and I'm gonna keep it real here and tell you straight.
Nicole:Building a business, especially your first one, is incredibly hard. It takes a long ass time. It takes grit. It takes unwavering, never give up attitude. You have to be all in even when you're making no money.
Nicole:And it takes a huge amount of self trust. You need to build a whole new set of skill sets that are probably totally foreign to you and stuff you don't even know about yet because you're embodying a whole new persona. So profitable wedding businesses, they don't just pop off out of nowhere. They are built slowly and intentionally. And so today, I kinda wanted to bring some realness in here in case you were feeling like it's not happening fast enough, or you're wondering if you should quit because that's not the truth.
Nicole:It's just how it is. Like, you need to really really be committed. So today I'm going to break down the real skills that actually make you money and go into a little bit of detail about why nobody talks about them. So here's what people think that they need. They think, you know, when you're first building a business, you think you need more followers.
Nicole:You need better branding. You need a better website. Everybody in their mother is like, I need a logo. I need a I need to buy this website that costs $5,000 or whatever, but it's not those things are just so superficial, so surface level. What actually matters is skill sets.
Nicole:So you need to build a set of skill sets that are going to be able to convert potential looky loo bride and grooms to clients. So you need to convert attention to inquiries, to bookings, to profit. And this is a set of skills that take time to develop and embody and to learn and master. You need to master sales, marketing leadership, and of course everything in your wedding niche. Like a photographer, you need to learn how to edit better and export faster and provide, you know, the final product in a way that makes them happy.
Nicole:But there's so many little minute, little, you know, skill sets that you need to master. Like it's just impossible to do that quickly. It's going to take time and you need to be okay with that and you know what? That's totally fine because this is going to benefit you in so many amazing ways later on. So don't feel like you need to rush to to get there faster.
Nicole:Everything is happening for you in its perfect timeline. Profit or money doesn't come from aesthetics. It doesn't matter how beautiful your Instagram feed is. It's about skill sets that you need to embody and become. You need to master basically and once you master these that's when you become profitable.
Nicole:So what are some of these invisible skill sets that I'm talking about that can help make you money? That's what you want to know right? Okay. Number let's let's talk about skill number one. It's messaging.
Nicole:I do a whole module on messaging in my wedding business masterclass because it's so important, but it's not just about posting every day, even though consistency does help. It's about knowing what to say and who you're talking to. You need to speak to the bride and groom's exact desires and fears, You need to sort of hit them in a place where they really feel it. Pretty content is not enough. So just posting pictures of beautiful weddings is not enough to get people to want to pay you money.
Nicole:You need to be authentic in a way that really touches them and they feel that they need something that you have. You need to show them this extra value through the way that you're talking in your posts. And you also, this is the next skill, need to learn how to develop and master sales. So this is something that all of us in the wedding business do not generally feel, like, comfortable around because we don't wanna be pushy because we just want them to love us for our, you know, our how good we are at taking photos or at planning their wedding. We think they should already know, but they don't know.
Nicole:So you need to master sales and be able to respond to new inquiries confidently and authentically in a very timely manner. All of this stuff, are not taught. You don't go to school to learn sales. You don't go to school to learn how to send these very curated perfect emails that touch brides and grooms in the exact way that they need to be touched. Nobody teaches you this shit.
Nicole:So that's why, again, I have a whole module on how to do the initial email inquiry response, because there's a very specific way that people, brides and grooms need to be talked to. And you need to lead them through these conversations instead of just like saying, here's all this information. I hope you book. That's not how it works. There's a specific way to sell to brides and grooms where you're not being pushy.
Nicole:And that's something you're going to need to master, which is going to take time and practice and doing it over and over and over again. So if you're not there yet, don't feel bad because this is so new. It's so different. It's like a totally unique, very, very specific type of skill set that needs to be learned and mastered. You need to learn how to handle pricing conversations without shrinking.
Nicole:So how to stand in your confidence, your value without feeling pushy and talk about price in a way that makes them understand the bigger picture. And this is a skill set that takes time again to master because the chances are if you're building a new business, you just don't understand all that stuff yet. And you will, it's just going to take, you know, doing it over and over again and doing a bunch of weddings basically, and talking to a bunch of different people. It's how you show up to the conversation in a state of confidence, in a state of knowing, in a state of helping that makes sales become something that you get really good at. But again, this is something that needs to be learned.
Nicole:It needs to be practiced. So the next skill set that you're going to need to develop is learning how to price your services for profit not just bookings because if you're underpricing over and over and over again, you're keeping your, you know, packages so cheap because you want to book more weddings. This is what keeps you stuck. You got to remember that this business needs to support you for the long haul, right? If you want to quit your other job and you want to go all in on your wedding business, you need to develop a, a pricing, you know, that can support you.
Nicole:I mean, don't know where you live, but where I live, shit is expensive. Like, gas right now for my car is $6.50 a gallon. And that is a $100 every time I fill it up. Right? So you need to, and it's not just that, it's groceries, it's everything else.
Nicole:It's expensive to live. So you, if you're gonna build a business that is going to support you, your pricing needs to be at a certain level and you need to learn how to feel comfortable in that. So understanding profit versus revenue is something that you'll need to learn. Also learning how to sell the value of what you're providing versus just selling all the things that are included. That is how you get brides and grooms to book you.
Nicole:They're not booking you because you give them a six hour package. They're booking you because you give them the wedding of their dreams. They're booking you because you're making their life so much easier. They're booking you because you're taking away all of the pressure. So, learning to sell that value versus just that list of services is huge in getting brides and grooms to trust you enough to pay you money.
Nicole:Okay. Skill number four, Being able to be consistent even when results are slow. So, a lot of us are going through this right now. People don't seem to want to book weddings right now because of the economy and all the stuff that's going on in the world. But you still need to show up consistently.
Nicole:And in this showing up consistently, need to have this high level of trust in yourself that things are gonna work out for you. You need to show up when nothing's happening and you need to detach from the effort detach from you know the immediate reward so even though no one's booking even though you don't have any money yet you have to know that they're coming and this is why and where most people quit. This is when you feel like I did everything I could I'm showing up every day nobody's booking it's not working I'm just going to move on to something else. This is exactly right when you quit and also if you would have just held on for a little bit longer this is right when you book your wedding so it's holding this belief for a certain amount of time you need to stay in alignment for a certain amount of time and be willing to believe for however long it takes so being consistent even when the results are slow or non existent. The next skill is being able to manage your brain and your beliefs and having resilience.
Nicole:So, it means not spiraling when inquiries are low or non existent, not comparing yourself to everybody else that's out there. You need to build a set of beliefs that go from, you know, this isn't working to I'm going to figure this out. You need to shift from someone who thinks they can do it to someone who knows they can do it. And this takes time this takes practice this takes proof this takes failing over and over and over and over and over and over again it's not easy but you got to keep going because the more you fail the more you learn the more confidence you get, the more you shift into this person that you need to become in order to hold the business that you want. Right?
Nicole:You need to become someone who knows that their people are coming even when nobody's buying. You need to become someone who knows they can figure things out when shit is hard even when nothing's working. You need to become someone who can stand behind their services knowing that they are incredibly valuable, the best of the best and until you become that person, you know, business is not going to take off. It's going to take time. It's going to take effort.
Nicole:It's going to take failing and failing is awesome because this is what gives you that confidence. This is what teaches you that you can figure it out. And these are all the beliefs that you probably didn't have or don't have when you are first building your business. And when you're first becoming an entrepreneur, like, of course, you don't. Why would you?
Nicole:You've never done this before. Totally normal. This is how you are supposed to feel in the beginning and the persona that you need to step into if you want to build a profitable profitable business. So why is nobody talking about these things? I don't know.
Nicole:Probably because they they want to sell you on something thinking it's gonna be easy, but I'm not gonna do that. It's not easy. It's hard. You have to become a whole new person. It takes time to step into this new, you know, to embody this new person.
Nicole:And it's not like it's a new person. It's just a bigger, greater, more expanded version of yourself, and it's gonna require discomfort and repetition. And the other part is that, you know, people aren't talking about is that everybody is literally at a different starting point. So some of us come into building a business having sales and marketing background. Well, lucky you, you already know that ship.
Nicole:You just need to now apply it to weddings. Some people come in, you know, maybe having another business but a different kind of business. So maybe you already have that leadership skill. Maybe you already know how to hire people. Maybe you already have the business background.
Nicole:You don't know where everyone else is starting, so don't compare yourself because you are a totally different person and you need to grow a whole new very unique set of skill sets. So it's easy for me to sell you a shortcut but I'm not gonna do that. What I do in my wedding business masterclass is I'm teaching you skill sets. What it actually takes to become this version of yourself and that can hold a wedding business that will sustain, you know, over time that will make you money over a long period of time where if, you know, COVID hits or something crazy like that and nobody's coming, you can still be profitable because now you have the skill sets to know how to make money even when it gets tough. So the good news is that all of these skill sets are learnable and nobody's really teaching them but I'm going to teach you all of them in my wedding business master class.
Nicole:And once you build these skill sets, nobody, no algorithm, no COVID, no nothing can take them away from you. You can build any business. So that's the cool part. It's gonna take time. Yes, but you have these skill sets for life.
Nicole:Like, my second business that I built happened so fast because I already had, you know, spent literal decades of building these skill sets. So I didn't have to start from scratch and the same will be true for you and you want to have a business that gives you predictable bookings, that gives you confidence in your pricing, a business that actually supports your life and you want to have the skill sets that will give you the ability to start from scratch again if you need to to handle any circumstance that comes up and to give you an immense amount of self growth something that nobody can take care Most people don't fail because they couldn't do it. Don't fail because they weren't capable. They don't fail because they couldn't have it. They fail because they quit before they've given themselves enough time to build these skill sets and as you can tell there are a lot of them so yes it's going to take longer than expected but that does not mean it's not working so don't ever not have your back through this process you have to have your back the whole time you have to know in your gut in your soul in your heart that it's working You have to know that you are going to become the kind of person that does not give up.
Nicole:You're going to stick it out no matter what. You're going to make this work because that's who you are. You're good at figuring things out. Your people are coming. You're going to build all of this knowledge.
Nicole:You're gonna master these skill sets but it's gonna take time and you're in it for the long haul because this is who you are becoming and this is something you get to take with you forever so I hope that didn't sway you from building a business but it is 1,000 million percent worth it if you have your own business and it just hasn't started rolling yet stick it out it's so worth it you get to have this dream life you get to work from home like I'm working from home right now you get to create your own schedule you get to go surfing in the morning you get to you know be at all your kids soccer games and baseball games you get to be a present parent You get to have the life that you want and it gets to be amazing but you got to stick it out. If it feels hard it doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. Every growth era feels difficult. You are becoming someone new. You are learning new skill sets.
Nicole:You are embodying a whole new persona. You are mastering skills that nobody is teaching and you got to figure all of this stuff out and there's a lot but you are gonna do it. So if you found this interesting and you would like some guidance along this path because it isn't an easy one definitely check out weddingproacademy.com get on my list to get into the masterclass because that will guide you and give you a lot of these skill sets that you're probably missing that you probably don't even know you're missing and it will help you to get there faster but also know that you have to be all in and if you're all in you will get there. You can't not it has to happen it is law like you have to make it if you you decide you're gonna make it you will make it so that's what I got for you guys today. I hope you have a great weekend again check out weddingproacademy.com if you need help with this I'd love to help you help coach you help get you there especially when it starts feeling difficult.
Nicole:Okay. Have a great weekend, Bye for now.