{ "version": "1.0.0", "segments": [ { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "6.0", "endTime": "39.68", "body": "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." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "40.059998", "endTime": "57.114998", "body": "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. Let's dive in. Hi, guys. Welcome to episode 12." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "58.04", "endTime": "110.744995", "body": "Today, we are gonna be talking about building a scalable back end for your wedding business. Every successful wedding business has a very solid, well established back end structure setup, which has allowed their business to run super efficiently and to be able to scale. And this is something that you're gonna spend years figuring out, and the way that each business does it is totally different. And different systems and different processes will work better for different kinds of businesses, but every business that is making a good amount of money needs to have these systems and processes in place. They're gonna make your business run so much smoother and so much easier." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "111.020004", "endTime": "156.845", "body": "And once you have all of these sort of back end systems set up, your business will be like an internal machine that just runs on automatic and everything just feels really easy and smooth. And that's where you want to get to. So I thought today I would spend a little bit of time sharing where I started off and where I am now and some of the back end systems in my business that help it to run really, really well. So when I first started my wedding business, which is in wedding planning, I had a partner, and we just were figuring things out as we went. We didn't really have any systems in place." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "156.845", "endTime": "188.585", "body": "We were just like, you're in charge of this, I'm in charge of that. She was in charge of the money stuff, as I know now was a bad idea. But at the time, I didn't think that I was good at with money, which is complete bullshit because I was just as good as she was. I just didn't have that belief in myself, so I let her take that on. And then I was the front end, the marketing side, the let like, figure out how to get business in, And then we would just both work on the planning together, so that that was kind of our roles." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "188.725", "endTime": "245.86499", "body": "We didn't really have any systems in place as to how things would happen, and that sort of came later. Once we started booking weddings and we had a bunch under our belt, it was we I started realizing that we have all these emails and all these different events, and we needed to have some kind of organization to them. So I began searching for a project management system because the inside of our business was so messy, and things were getting forgotten. We were doing, at the time, invoicing on Excel Excel spreadsheets for tracking our numbers and doing our invoices that we sent out to couples, everything was done manually and there was no real organization system besides just having folders on your desktop. So if your computer went down, everything could get lost, which is a real problem also because we had we were partners." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "245.86499", "endTime": "302.225", "body": "I didn't have access to the stuff she had access to, and we couldn't both work on things together. So I began this big search for the perfect project management system for our business that could help, you know, hold files, that could keep wedding projects organized, have notes in there that we could upload files to, and I ended up finding one that was perfect which I found in the beginning and I'm actually still using now and I'll tell you about that one a little bit later but where I am now is I have this business totally on my own. If you listen to my story, you know what happened with my partner, so I won't go into that, but everything in my business runs like a well oiled machine. I have processes and systems for everything, I mean literally everything. There are checks and balances in place, so nothing's forgotten." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "302.225", "endTime": "332.845", "body": "I am super organized and on top of everything all the time. There's nothing that falls through the cracks. I save time and energy because of all these processes, so I don't need to recreate stuff over and over because I have drafts of everything. There's a professionalism within my business because of the organization and the processes that I have set up at a foundational level. And that really has allowed me to be a my business to be able to scale." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "333.065", "endTime": "378.14", "body": "It allows me to take on more weddings, to hire more help, to hire a team, and it's allowed me to grow tremendously. So I think having a really solid foundation of scalable back end systems for your wedding business is so important. Here are some of the back end systems that I have, and I'm just going to share them all with you because maybe you have some of these in place, maybe you're struggling with trying to figure out what to use. These are the ones that work really well for me, and like I said in the beginning, it's going to be different for every business. You're going to have different kinds of back end systems for invoicing for all of this stuff, and you need to find one that works well for you." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "378.36", "endTime": "428.52", "body": "But just to get an idea of all the ones that I have incorporated, and there are a lot, I hope you guys find this one helpful. So, first of all, emails. I have like a personal internal structure for the way that I organize my emails and that is through the labels in Gmail, I use Gmail. I also have a draft section of draft emails that I send all the time, so whenever there are emails that I know I'm gonna have to resend over and over and over again, I save them into a draft folder organized by the types of emails they are. So if they're like a new inquiry, if they're a booking email or whatever, I have drafts of them and then I can just copy and paste and change the information." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "428.97998", "endTime": "491.84", "body": "That makes it super easy and it saves me so much time. Also, the titles on the emails, I title them in a very specific way so that if I'm searching for something, I can just type in that title, and then it will go directly to that specific wedding. So and the way that I do it is I'll use if the wedding is done March third of this year, I would use 2025Dash0303 and then whatever the email is about. So if it's about officiate, if it's about photography, that would be next. But then if I'm searching for anything having to do with that March 3 wedding I could just type that in it would pop up I also send that particular email to a label with that couple's wedding so each wedding is organized within a label and there are subcategories for all the labels too The other part is that I I make sure that there is a set time that I check emails, like in the morning." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "492.3", "endTime": "518.91", "body": "I don't check emails like all day long. That that's my system that allows me to get other stuff done because I can't just be doing emails all day. Like, that would take up way too much time and it's too much busy work and back and forth. So, I set up a time in my calendar where I am just checking emails and then once that time's up, I move on to like some other bigger things like marketing. I have a system for requesting reviews." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "520.17", "endTime": "567.935", "body": "So, usually after the wedding is done, I will wait two weeks after the wedding and then I have a draft template for that and I send it to the couple that I just did their wedding and I ask for a review and I have a very specific way of asking that works really really well and I always get awesome, you know, reviews out of it. I send them links. I make it super easy for them and I know that I don't that this project, this wedding isn't completely done until I've requested that review and then once that's done then I can sort of file that wedding away. That system has worked really well for me but it allows me to sort of have a close to the wedding, you know, okay now it's done. Now I can file this one away and move on to the the next ones." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "568.61005", "endTime": "604.19", "body": "I also have a system and a process for hiring and training new teammates, so new employees. I like to use indeed for hiring and if and there are other smaller ones, but Indeed works really, really well for me. I generally don't do a huge budget because I get so many people that inquire about wanting to work, you know, for me. And then I have this huge pot of people to choose from. And then I have a system for narrowing down the people by email first." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "604.19", "endTime": "655.2", "body": "So I make them go through these questions, and if they respond in a very well professional way, then they move on to interviews. I have a system for the interviews, so how I interview them, it's a really quick and simple, very efficient way to hire. And it helps me to narrow down, you know, potential prospects really quickly and easily, and I usually spend about a week hiring if I need to hire a new person. And I get I can get through, like, 75 people in this process. Because I've done this so many times, I each time I've done the hiring process, it gets better and better and easier and easier, and I'm always able to narrow it down to choose the best possible candidate, and it's it's really efficient." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "655.33997", "endTime": "694.075", "body": "So there's a process for that. I have a process for training my team, and that is done within a program called Suite Process. I don't know if you've heard of this one, but it's so awesome. It's like you can create all of these trainings for people that like that work for you or for your team or for anyone so that you don't have to do it live and in person. So, instead of me, what I used to do in the beginning was I would actually sit with them in front of a computer and show them exactly how to do everything just to make sure that they're doing it right." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "694.135", "endTime": "736.47", "body": "Now, they can just go through this. I'm like, okay, here's the process for booking a photographer. Follow this, and there's step one, two, three, four, five, six, all the way to step 12 or whatever with sample draft emails, with sample videos, with me talking, with all of this very clear, very easy to understand direction, and I'm not even there training them. I've already set all this stuff up so that they can basically get trained in their house on their own, and I don't even have to be there, but they're doing it the exact way that I would want them to do it. It's as though I'm there, but I don't have to be there, which saves me a ton of time, ton of energy, and makes things really, really easy for me to hire someone." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "737.00995", "endTime": "766.42", "body": "So, this works really well if somebody unexpectedly quits, which doesn't happen often, but it has happened before, and that used to stress me out because then I gotta hire someone, I gotta train them, and all this stuff. But now I I hire someone, that's the hardest part, and then I'm like, okay. Now watch these training videos, and then they can just take off running. And all I have to do is sort of follow them a little bit until I feel comfortable with where they're at. But I basically have it set up so that they are training themselves." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "766.88", "endTime": "798.56", "body": "I mean, technically, I'm training them, but I'm not really there in person. So, suite process is an awesome, awesome program for training if you're looking for one. I like to do personally like paper calendar planning for my week. So that's another system that I use. So what I know exactly what I'm working on when I'm working on it, what I need to achieve that week, the results I need to get, when what days I'm supposed to work, how long I work, and what I need to do." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "798.94", "endTime": "815.80505", "body": "And I calendar all of that out every Sunday, so I'm not wasting time, like, just dailing around on the computer. No. I have three hours to work today. What am I gonna get done? So that's how I'm able to get, you know, so much done in a very short amount of time." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "815.80505", "endTime": "850.22003", "body": "I only work, like, six to eight hours a week on my wedding business because I have two other businesses. So I and I have three kids. I can't spend all day doing wedding stuff, and I'm and the reason why I am able to get so much done and be so efficient is because I'm very, very focused when I'm working. I know exactly what I need to work on, how much time I have to get it done, and what result I need to achieve. Another system that I use for social media posting is called Plan That." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "850.6", "endTime": "883.33", "body": "I don't know if you guys have heard of this. I mean, I I found it online. I really like it, and it allows me to preschedule all of my social media posts ahead of time with the captions and the pictures and, you know, the hashtags and all of that. And then it will post it on automatic on the every day, and then it will repost it to other platforms like TikTok or, Facebook. And I don't have to do anything." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "883.63", "endTime": "912.05", "body": "So I spend about one week working on my posts and my reels, and I scheduled them all out for about a month and a half, sometimes two months. And then I don't think about it. I just walk you know, they're just automatically posting. And then I also will schedule in, like, two days a week to do stories. So I'm not just, you know, scrolling around on my phone all day checking social media." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "912.27", "endTime": "930.15497", "body": "That stuff's just happening automatically. It's like a machine. It's just happening. I'm getting people inquiring. I schedule time two times a week to check my DMs and respond to new couples, but my posts are just going out automatically." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "931.47", "endTime": "995.01996", "body": "This program I'm about to tell you about is the one I was telling you in the beginning that when I was searching for this ultimate perfect project management system that could help me organize all my wedding projects with A very easy way is the best thing I think I've found, and I don't know if you have a system for organizing wedding projects, and it's different for different types of vendors, but for wedding planners, for a lot of wedding vendors, I think this one is awesome. I use Basecamp. Basecamp is a project organization system that allows me to keep each wedding in a different project. And then within that project, there are discussions, so I can constantly update discussions. So every time a couple sends me an email about photography, I'll have a discussion labeled photography, and I'll just copy and paste everything into that one discussion." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "995.39996", "endTime": "1016.925", "body": "I can upload photos. I can upload files, and then there's also a section on notes, a section on to do's. There is a calendar. I could assign different people to this project. So if I want to assign Julie from my team to take over this wedding, she has access to everything having to do with this wedding." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "1017.05", "endTime": "1034.9249", "body": "She doesn't need to go through my emails. Every bit of communication that has happened between me and the couple is in this project, and she has now full access to it. And then, she can just update it, and we can all see it together. It's a really, really awesome project management system. It's called Basecamp." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "1035.065", "endTime": "1061.315", "body": "So, check that out. I have a system and a process for the back end invoicing and stuff for my business. Now, I'm at a point where I have a bookkeeper. I didn't always, but I realized that bookkeeping, invoicing, $10.90 nines, monthly tax stuff is not my favorite thing to do. It is not my, you know, specialty." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "1061.315", "endTime": "1075.06", "body": "I don't love doing it. I can do it. I just don't really want to spend my time doing that because I I'm better on the creative side. So, I hire a bookkeeper. I have a bookkeeper that is amazing." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "1075.06", "endTime": "1107.18", "body": "He does all of my invoicing. He handles my QuickBooks. I use QuickBooks to manage all of the money coming in and out of my business to give me my, you know, profit and loss sheets. I also have my bookkeeper handle my monthly tax payments that need to go out. And then at the end of the year, I have a tax preparer who is different from my bookkeeper, and he is the one that, you know, submits my taxes and helps me to do that part." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "1107.8", "endTime": "1128.505", "body": "I also have a system for contracts. So any new couple, I have a contract with them, and I have a system that helps me to create that contract, store those contracts, send updates on them. And it used to be called HelloSign, but now it's called DropboxSign. I like that one a lot. It's easy." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "1128.8049", "endTime": "1181.235", "body": "It's really simple, and it looks professional, and then I store all of my contracts there and also on Google Drive. So I use Google Drive for organizing contracts, for organizing photo galleries, timelines, any files that me or my team are going to need access to over and over again is stored on Google Drive and we all have access to it and they're organized in folders. Super easy way to keep things in place and to have everybody have access to it. I have a system for my employees, like how I pay them, when they get paid, how they submit timesheets, how they organize their work and emails to me, how they email our couples. There are very clear expectations of what I expect out of them and what their duties are." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "1182.015", "endTime": "1212.215", "body": "So those are just a few of the back end systems that I have for my business that help it to run really well. And it it's super important that as your business grows, you start implementing more and more of these systems so that there's a solid foundation that will allow it to scale. And here's why you need this. It's for the client experience. So for your couple's experience, it makes it that much better for them." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "1212.4", "endTime": "1225.775", "body": "Oh, here's one more I totally forgot to mention earlier. I have an onboarding system for new couples, and it's so clean. It's so good. So the couple, once I book them, they get the contract. They sign it." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "1225.775", "endTime": "1267.895", "body": "They get a welcome email. Then they get invited to this inside guide website. It's a totally separate website from my regular website that I created to help, like, address any questions that might come up in the very beginning planning stages. It tells them exactly what's gonna happen when they're working with me, common questions, how the planning process works, what to expect, when to expect it, a bunch of, like, extra stuff that they might need, like where to stay at hotels in the area, what they should be doing, when they should be doing it. Here are some of our preferred vendors, just like all kinds of stuff, plus questionnaires on every part." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "1267.895", "endTime": "1295.7151", "body": "So, like, when I'm getting to certain parts of the planning process, I'm like, okay. Now we're here. We're working on flowers and decor, and I need you to fill out this questionnaire, which is on this insider guide website. That, is a really, really easy way for us, my team, to keep the clients, to keep our couples on track, to make them feel cared for. They automatically as soon as they see that, they back off on asking so many questions." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "1295.7151", "endTime": "1313.42", "body": "They're like, oh, I love this. This is so helpful. This is amazing, and it helps my team now to guide them through the planning process in a very easy and simple way so that I'm not having to step in and help. It makes I I feel like I've covered every base with this website. It's amazing." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "1313.42", "endTime": "1337.4601", "body": "It took a lot of time up front, but it was one of the best things I implemented in my business. So all of these back end systems, super important for your couple's experience, for your team's experience. It makes things easier for you. It saves you hundreds of hours. It's a safety net so that there aren't any mistakes so you don't miss anything." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "1337.68", "endTime": "1370.5199", "body": "Plus, it cuts down on stress. So all this stress I used to have about last minute stuff happening, like, oh, this tax bill is due or this client missed a payment because of this invoice, and I have to try to find stuff and it's messy and I don't know where shit is. And it's like, I don't have that problem anymore. And now I have a very clean process for everything which has allowed me to grow and scale. So if I were to book, you know, five new weddings next week, I would be ready for that." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "1370.5199", "endTime": "1394.12", "body": "It would be easy. My whole onboarding process is seamless. I could just hand it out to my team to handle it, and it would work, you know, effortlessly. So if you think about it, it's kinda like a plant. Like, the soil, in order for a plant to really flourish and grow, the soil needs to be fertilized, watered, nurtured daily." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "1394.5", "endTime": "1430.975", "body": "There needs to be a system of how it's watered, of how it's fertilized, of care that goes into it. All of that needs to happen before the plant is able to really dig its roots in and grow to its full potential. And if you're sloppy with this, if you only do it some days, you miss one week here and there, like, the plant gets stunted. It doesn't ever really grow to its full potential, this beautiful, strong, large, healthy, vibrant, green, flourishing tree that it could be, and that's because its foundation, the soil, is not strong. So here's how you do this." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "1430.975", "endTime": "1470.54", "body": "You need to start really thinking about what are the things that I do all the time? What are the things that I'm doing over and over again that are taking up a lot of my time, and how can I create a processor system to make this easier? How can I make my business flow more simply? How can I set this up to to be easier for me? And it might take some thought and time and energy and research and testing things out, but that is what it's gonna take in order for you to build this foundation that will allow you to scale." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "1471.02", "endTime": "1502.38", "body": "And if you don't make the time for this, things are just gonna get sloppy and messy, and you won't ever be able to grow into that big, beautiful, flourishing plant that you were meant to be. So you'll never be able to reach your full potential because you don't have a foundation that's strong enough to support it. So you need to start thinking about this now and be constantly thinking about this. Like, I spend so much time thinking about, how do I make this better? This this is sloppy." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "1502.44", "endTime": "1518.735", "body": "Like, this needs to be more efficient. How can I create a system that will make this better? You gotta think about it all the time, and then ideas will pop into your head. And then you do some Google research. Now you can ask chat g p t, like, what can I use to make this more efficient?" }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "1519.1951", "endTime": "1549.475", "body": "And the more you implement stuff like this, the better, stronger, the more solid your wedding business is going to be and the more capability you will have to scale and grow. And the more successful and more money you'll make, so you know win win all around. Start implementing back end systems as soon as you can. And quick recap, here's the ones that I love the most. I love PlanThat for social media, Basecamp for project management, QuickBooks." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "1550.0149", "endTime": "1577.455", "body": "I mean, that's a no brainer. I like Dropbox sign for contracts, Google Drive for everything. Suite process is the best for hire once you're at the place where you can hire new employees and need to train people and scale, that's the pro the system that makes it all possible, totally worth the cost. It's the best thing ever. So I hope you guys found this episode helpful." }, { "speaker": "Nicole", "startTime": "1578.235", "endTime": "1596.0399", "body": "And no matter where you are in your wedding business, you can definitely start implementing some of these back end systems now. So enjoy your weekend. It is Friday. Have a great day, guys, and I will see you next week. Bye for now." } ] }