Episode 245: Think Not Having Enough Time Is Your Problem? Think Again.

Most busy wedding pros think that not having enough time is their problem. But that’s not actually the case.

Feeling like you don’t have enough time is just a symptom of the actual problem. And just like when you get sick, if you don’t know the real root cause of the illness and you only know the symptoms, you can’t treat it effectively.

In my 10+ years of helping wedding pros grow their businesses, I’ve found that about 90% of wedding pros think not having enough time is their problem and in this episode, I’m revealing the actual root cause of that feeling so you can finally fix it.

In this episode we’ll cover:

• Why most wedding pros think they don’t have enough time
• The real root cause of feeling like you don’t have enough time
• How common this problem is in the wedding industry
• Why hustling harder can massively backfire and actually cost you clients
• The counterintuitive thing most wedding professionals need to do
• How to make the time to create a marketing strategy that works for you

Think Not Having Enough Time Is Your Problem? Think Again.

Hello there my friend. I’m your host, Heidi Thompson, and I help wedding professionals of all kinds, just like you build wedding businesses that give them the freedom that they’re after, whether that’s financial freedom, time freedom, or creative freedom.

Today we are going to talk about time freedom because a lot, I would say the vast majority of wedding professionals that I talk to, tell me that they don’t have enough time.

They’re not being consistent with their marketing because they don’t have time. They’re wearing all the hats and they don’t have time to do it all. But they just need to get themselves out there more.

And surely the harder they work, the better things will be. If they could just hustle harder, if they could just get more time, they could get to where they wanna be. I hear this a lot. And what I want to talk to you about today is that if you think not having enough time is your problem, I want you to think again because that’s not actually the real problem that you’re experiencing.

If you feel like you don’t have enough time, like many wedding professionals do, it’s actually a symptom of the problem. And just like when you get sick, if you don’t know what the real root cause of the illness is and you only know the symptoms, you can’t treat it effectively. So we have to get down to the actual root cause of this problem.

So what is the real problem as opposed to the symptom of feeling like you don’t have enough time? And by the way, if you feel this way, I don’t want you to feel bad about yourself. The vast majority, I’m saying like 90% plus of wedding professionals are feeling this way.

I want you to know that because what we see of everybody else is not actually what’s going on behind the scenes. You know, we see their beautifully curated Instagram, but chances are they are feeling the same way too, unless they have gone through the process of figuring out, okay, how do I treat this actual problem, and what even is the actual problem?

If you’re feeling like you don’t have enough time it’s not because you need more time. It’s because of the way that you’re working. The problem is just you need more time, but you actually don’t.

The problem is, what you are doing with your time. The real problem that we need to treat is getting more intentional about how you spend your time because most wedding professionals are just trying to hustle harder.

Trying to hustle more is actually costing you clients. You are spending all of your time on hustling and trying to get yourself out there, and you’re not spending your time intentionally where it is most likely to result in bookings.

If you’re doing this, do not feel bad about yourself. This is just the way we approach things because we’re told if we know we work harder, things will work out. This is one of those times when that’s not actually true.

Think about it: if you had to dig a ditch in your backyard and you decided that you were going to dig it with a teaspoon, Yeah, it’s gonna be hard. You’re gonna be hustling, you’re gonna be working harder, you’re gonna be spending more time on it.

Is that the best approach? Is that the most intentional approach to get you the best results? No, of course not. You could use a shovel or a backhoe. There are lots of different tools that you could use, but this is what people are doing with their time, and if you’re one of them, you are absolutely in the right place.

I do want you to know that trying to hustle more and trying to jam more into the time that you have is costing you clients because time is a limited resource and we have to look at how we’re spending it and if we’re intentionally spending it on things that are most likely to get us the results we want like bookings with our ideal clients.

Too often, we optimize for the hustle, we optimize for the working hard, the doing more and I want you to know that you don’t actually have to. You don’t have to work harder. You don’t have to hustle harder. You don’t need more time.

You just have to get more intentional about what you’re spending your time on so that the time that you do put into your business is spent just in the most optimized way to do the things that you need to do to book more of your ideal clients.

In almost a hundred percent of the cases where someone comes into The Wedding Business Collective and they start working on their marketing plan, they realize they actually need to be doing less.

That may sound counterintuitive, and of course it is. I get it. But it’s the kind of situation where they’re trying to do so much that they’re not doing any of it well, they’re not doing any of it intentionally so they’re spinning their wheels.

They’re working really hard doing the thing. They’re working really hard, digging that ditch with a teaspoon, but they’re not getting anywhere because there’s no intentionality behind it. There’s no thought behind it. There’s no strategy behind “what am I actually spending my time on?”

It’s a weird thing that we have to learn how to do as business owners because when you’re being paid by ass in seat time at an office job and you’re working 40 hours a week, a lot of times you’re just paid for the amount of time that you’re there, not the results that you get.

I want you to think more about the results and how you can get really intentional and get that work done in less time, and you can actually do less in the process, which I absolutely love. Because hey, who doesn’t wanna do less?

A lot of wedding professionals have also been telling me that they feel like they just need to get themselves out there more.

They’re not being seen by their ideal clients. They’re not being found by their ideal clients.

I want you to know that you don’t actually have to get yourself out there more to get more weddings booked. Visibility does not equal more clients.

Let’s talk about why that is. It doesn’t matter how many people see you and know that you exist, if they do not believe that you are the go-to person for them. If they don’t believe that you are the go-to planner, photographer, florist, DJ, for them.

So you’re spending all of this time just spinning your wheels, getting yourself out there, getting in front of people and that’s all it is. Getting in front of people. It’s not setting you apart. It’s not helping you be seen as the go-to person for your ideal client, and it’s taking up a ton of your time.

And what I actually see all the time in The Wedding Business Collective, is when people set aside time to create an actual strategy behind their marketing (I walk them through this step by step by the way, and I make it very simple to follow) they actually wind up doing fewer things. They wind up taking things off their plate, and that is what I love to see because we’re not in business to be busy.

We’re not in business to just fill our days. If you could, spend an hour or two a day and get everything you need to get done, why would you work the rest of those hours? Right?

You wouldn’t, and that’s why being really intentional with your marketing is so important because it’s easy to spend 10 hours a week jumping from this thing to that thing, trying to be everywhere, trying to hustle, and trying to be as visible as possible. But if it’s not getting you the results that you want, well then we need to change something. And that thing that you need to change is the strategy behind it, doing the things that are most likely to result in bookings.

I just had a conversation with two of my clients in The Wedding Business Collective the other day, and we were talking about what makes the most sense for them to focus on right now in their marketing. Immediately you go to, all right, I could advertise. I could spend some money here.

I could get back into Instagram, I could get back into Pinterest. I could do all these things. But when we actually talked about like, okay, what’s the most direct path? We found that there were two things that made the most sense for them to focus on for one of these people.

Those things were turning up their ad spend on Google Sds because they’re getting a phenomenal return on it. So if something’s working, let’s do more of it. That sounds great. And the other thing was to take a really analog approach to relationships in her business. She’s a dress designer and her quickest path to more bookings was actually through some of these bridal shops that she has developed relationships with, and it is going to require so much less time.

If she were to sit down and be like, okay, I need to really get out there on TikTok. I need to really get out there on Instagram, which again was the first thought, and it would’ve been my first thought too. If your organic marketing has fallen off, that can be helpful.

But if we actually look at it strategically, if we look at what is your fastest path to more bookings and more bookings of the right people it’s so much easier.

Another one of my clients, she actually did a workshop that you may have attended about ghosting and it was phenomenal and she does an amazing job with what she teaches. Her fastest path was going to people like me. who have an audience of wedding professionals and ask, “Can we do a workshop together? Can we do a podcast together?”

Now, could she have just thrown herself into churning out videos for TikTok and Instagram and posting a bunch of stuff on Pinterest and doing all these things? Yeah, absolutely. But it’s not the easy way and I am a big fan of the easy way, so you don’t have to hustle to get more clients.

It’s actually costing you clients and you don’t have to get yourself out there more to get more weddings booked. What you have to do is change your approach to what you are actually spending your time on. Are the things that you are spending your time on intentional or are you in reactive mode? And that gets into from time to time, myself included.

But some people are acting solely in reactive mode because they don’t know what else to do. And that’s something I heard a lot when I talked to a large group of wedding professionals recently, “I don’t know what to do. I’m just trying to fill time, and do stuff that I think might result in more bookings” and what I want you to know is doing that is going to make you feel like you don’t have enough time.

If instead, you get really intentional about what you’re spending your time on so that you have the time to attract and book more of your ideal clients, you’re gonna find you’re way less stressed and you actually have less to do. Most people actually need to be doing less.

Now, if you’re like most wedding pros and you don’t have time to create an intentional strategy to book more weddings right now, you are on the struggle bus and you are out back digging that ditch with a teaspoon, that’s the problem. The time isn’t the problem. The use of your time is the problem.

It’s just like if you were like, “oh, I need to make more money”, and then we looked at your outgoings and you were just spending money on all sorts of insane things then we would restructure your budget so that we can control how the money’s going out. It’s the same thing with time. We have to make sure that you are only doing the things that are intentional.

Just like you are not going to the grocery store hungry and buying a bunch of stuff, that’s not intentional either. It’s the same problem.

Well, if that is a problem that you’re facing, if you feel like you don’t have the time to create the intentional strategy to book more weddings, I have got a solution for you. It’s called The Out of Overwhelm Challenge: Reclaim 5+ Hours Per Week.

I’m gonna show you exactly how to do this in really small bite-size pieces that you can do quickly and get five hours or more back each week. It’s going to run for two weeks to give you lots of time to participate and to have that accountability.

It’s running from June 19th-30th and each day during that first week, you’re gonna go through one short lesson and have one short task to complete. During the second week, you’re gonna get access to an all-new short training & task to complete on protecting your time and setting boundaries because sometimes that’s the thing that takes our time away.

I will be posting in the group to encourage you and nudge you and hold you accountable and make sure you reclaim this time because it can be hard to make this shift on your own and just make the time magically to be able to work on creating a marketing strategy that actually gets you the bookings you want. So we’re doing it together.

Then we’re gonna have a live coaching call on June 28th where you can bring any questions, any struggles, any concerns, and you will leave the challenge knowing exactly what you need to do to free up more time and get out of this overwhelm. You’ll also be able to submit questions if you can’t make that live. I will answer them for you and you can watch the recording.

You will wrap up the week by submitting your challenge assignments for a chance to win a prize. This challenge is exclusively available for members of the Wedding Business Collective, and that is the case because we are using content from The Wedding Business Collective to give you this time back.

So all you need to do to be a part of this is come join us at www.theweddingbusinesscollective.com. Start your membership and you can start digging into things in there now and getting results, but this challenge starts on June 19th, so you definitely wanna make sure that you are a member by then because, by the end of this challenge, you will have freed up at least five hours per week.

That is 260 hours per year. That’s nearly 11 full days. Imagine getting that kind of time back and what you could do for yourself in 11 full days!

Then you will have the time to create the strategy that you need to attract and book your ideal clients consistently. So if that sounds like something you need, come and join us at www.theweddingbusinesscollective.com, and we’ll kick off the challenge on June 19th so make sure that you are a member by then.

If you have any questions about the challenge or if you wanna share anything you realized in this episode shoot me a DM on Instagram. I love talking to podcast listeners.

I am @evolveyourweddingbusiness and I can’t wait to hear from you. I will speak to you again very soon.

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Links & Resources:

The Wedding Business Collective – Become a member and get access to the challenge for just $1!
Episode 244: The #1 Reason You Aren’t Booking More Weddings (it’s not what you think)
Episode 227: What 4 Wedding Pros Have Gotten Out Of The Wedding Business Collective

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