Episode #255: Why You Shouldn’t Wait Until You’re “Successful” To Build Your Wedding Business Around Your Life

“I can’t wait to get to that point.”

That’s what one wedding pro said upon learning that the wedding pros on The Wedding Business Collective panel during Book More Weddings Summit were no longer working crazy 60+ hour weeks.

But here’s the thing, you shouldn’t wait until you’re “successful” to build your business around your life.

You should start making sustainability, flexibility, and freedom a priority now. Otherwise, it’ll never happen or it’ll be a huge struggle to totally restructure the time-hungry business you’ve built.

How does that work? Listen to this episode to find out!

In this episode we’ll cover:

• Why you shouldn’t wait to make your business sustainable
• Why the key to creating a successful business isn’t working hard and hustling
• The common traps wedding pros fall for that lead to burnout
• A different way to think about creating a sustainable business that gives you freedom
• How to stop thinking about time freedom through a classic corporate lens
• How to start putting boundaries and structures in place to give you more freedom now

Why You Shouldn’t Wait Until You’re “Successful” To Build Your Wedding Business Around Your Life

I am your host. Heidi Thompson, and my entire focus in my business is helping wedding professionals find a simple roadmap to follow to book more of the weddings that they want to be booking and to build businesses that give them freedom and flexibility.

Part of that is time freedom we were talking about this a lot during the Book More Wedding Summit, which happened the week of the 21st through the 25th. I absolutely love running these events. They are some of my favorite things that I get to do in my business.

And we had some members from The Wedding Business Collective on a panel talking about you know, their journey, what things have been like for them, because attendees were able to grab a coupon for their first 30 days for $1.

Inside The Wedding Business Collective, and if you’re not familiar with The Wedding Business Collective, that is my membership where I teach this very step-by-step, straightforward roadmap to booking more of the clients that you want and building the business that lets you have a life and lets you have freedom and flexibility.

So naturally we were talking about that with the members that we had and their experiences and you know, they were saying, they had gone from very chaotic situations where they were working just insane hours. They were just working super, super hard. And that’s actually most wedding professionals I meet.

And there was someone on that livestream who unknowingly triggered me into this tirade that we’re going to talk about here. She said, And I know why she said this, and we’ll talk about that, but she said, I can’t wait until I get to that point. And she was referring to the point that these people were at where they are, yes, attracting and booking clients, but what she was more specifically referring to is having a business that doesn’t kill them.

That doesn’t take up all of their waking hours. She couldn’t wait to get to that point and that set us up to completely switch gears in the conversation because I wanted to call to attention how important it is that you don’t wait until you deem yourself successful to actually build your wedding business around your life.

And I really want to highlight the fact that sustainability in your business is not something that’s like. earned once you put in, you know, a certain amount of hours, once you make your life a living hell for three years, then you get the right to create a sustainable business. It’s not earned, it’s created.

And you can create that in your business from the beginning. And if you do, you will be a much, much happier person. I have to do a lot of rescue when people come to me and they’re just working these crazy hours and we have to dig them out of it. You can choose to just not to get into that situation, to begin with, to learn how to build a business in a sustainable way to where you never dig yourself into that hole of, you know, 60, 80 hour weeks.

You’ve got all this on your shoulders. You’ve got no one that can help you. You’ve got all of these things just riding on you and you’re burning yourself out. A lot of us get to that point, but I want you to know that you don’t have to get to that point to finally create a sustainable business.

It’s like when you injure yourself, so then you decide to start taking care of your joints, taking care of your body. You can skip the injury part you know, you can just take care of yourself. You don’t have to wait for something bad to happen.

And I think this comes from the whole work mindset of, you know, you just got to hustle, you got to put in your due. And I’m not saying you’re not going to have to work.

You absolutely are. You just don’t have to do this insane self-sacrificing thing that a lot of people do. I think this really comes from our entire work culture being focused on being miserable.

You don’t have to just work hard and do all this for some company for 30, or 40 years, and then you will have somehow magically earned the right to enjoy your life. That is utter bullshit. It is ridiculous. You don’t have to do that, especially when you’re the boss.

You can start implementing things right off the bat. You can have hours that you work and not work beyond those hours. You can have, you know, boundaries that you put up. You can build systems and things that support you so it doesn’t take up as much of your time.

But what I’m saying is you don’t have to do that old thing that doesn’t even really exist anymore where, oh, I’ll just put in my 30 years and I’ll get my gold watch and I’ll just be like, you know, head down and miserable until then.

Which, I mean, anyone, anyone Gen X and younger knows that that doesn’t even exist anymore. That’s not even an option. I won’t get into that.

But sustainability isn’t going to happen if you don’t create it and you get to choose when you create it. You can create it at the beginning of your business. And yeah, are you going to slip up? Are things going to happen? Are you going to feel burned out from time to time? Sure.

But it’s a hell of a lot better than building a business that runs you into the ground and now you have to completely restructure your business and your life when you could have just done that from the start.

So if you are in the early stages of starting your business, if you are even under five years of starting your business, I don’t want you to fall into this way of thinking that sustainability, that having a life, that having a business that provides for you financially and also gives you time off is something that you have to earn.

Because who are you earning that from? You’re earning that from yourself. You can just create this container for yourself, this structure of your business, to not burn you out.

And of course, you know, sometimes we have to burn out to learn, Oh, okay, that’s it for me. That’s my capacity. That’s what I can do. But we can start off by implementing boundaries in our business. We can start off by deciding that we’re only going to work a certain number of hours a week, or we’re only going to work within certain time constraints.

Maybe your kids get off work at three, actually, get off work at school. Same thing. And then you want to spend time with them. Okay, so all your work has to be done by then. That’s a constraint. That is just what needs to happen. So you have to fit whatever you want or need to do within that time.

That’s something we do in The Wedding Business Collective a lot. We look at, okay, what can we take off your plate? What can you streamline? What can you systematize? What can you automate? What can you make more efficient?

What doesn’t even need to get done? Because we’re all doing things that don’t need to get done. If we stopped doing them, there would be literally no impact on the business or minimal impact, and we’re working extra hours to get these things done that don’t actually matter.

So I want you to realize that this isn’t something you have to, like, earn your stripes and, like, put in your work to, you know, after you’re in there for five years, ten years, thirty years, then you can finally start structuring a business that’s more sustainable.

It’s actually harder at that point because you have to undo all of the things that you did and build all these new structures. I’m not saying it’s impossible. I do it with wedding professionals all the time in The Wedding Business Collective, but it is absolutely more work to dig yourself out of absolute overwhelm, of spending way too much time in the business, of having no life, of jeopardizing your relationships.

Some of that stuff can’t be undone. So I don’t want you to think like that’s what you should go do for 10, 20, 30 years and then you’ll be able to shape the business the way that you want. Yeah, you’ll make changes later in the business, but that does not mean that you cannot build sustainability as a core foundation of your business right now.

That is what is going to influence the decisions that you make. It’s going to influence the clients you take on. It’s going to influence your capacity. It’s going to influence the things that you do and you do not do in your business. That’s different for everyone. That’s something really interesting in The Wedding Business Collective.

One of the first steps is Creating Your Overwhelm Squashing Marketing Plan and every single one of those is different. Because every business is different. Every business owner is different. Every market is different. Every ideal client is different. And you are building a marketing plan that is very specific to you.

So the things that you decide to do, and the things that you decide not to do are going to be different than someone else and that’s totally fine. That’s kind of the point. And if you need help with that, come and join us in The Wedding Business Collective. You can join us and start making your business sustainable now.

And even if you don’t join us, I want you to know that this is possible and no one is going to come and give you the gold watch. Like, you know, that old-timey corporate retirement and tell you that, okay, you now earn time for yourself. No.

Your clients, everyone in the world quite frankly, will take and take and take and take and take from you if you do not put up boundaries, if you do not put up guardrails, if you don’t put up structures. You’ll take from yourself too much if you don’t really create that kind of structure for yourself. How much do you want to work? How much can you work? And then you fit it into the container, not the other way around.

Which is what I see a lot of people do. It’s, well, there’s all these things I could do. There are all these things I feel like I should do. So I guess I’ll just spend 10 hours a day doing this. That is not sustainable. And again, I’m not saying that there aren’t certain periods where you’re going to have to work more.

Yeah, that’s going to happen, but we should be building our businesses on the foundation of sustainability. That we go into this saying, this is how this is going to work. These are my boundaries. This is the maximum I’m willing to do. And then we figure out. Okay, what can we do with that time? Because the time you put into your business is not directly proportionate to the result you get out.

I think, especially in the beginning, we all seem to think that’s the case. It’s not. I have worked with wedding professionals who have two hours a day to work on their business between client work and marketing, and they still manage to grow in those two hours. There are people I know who work 10 hours and they’re not growing.

So it’s not a matter of the hours that you’re putting in. It’s a matter of whether you are taking the intentional steps that you need to take in order to book more of the clients that you want to book and in order to create a business that is sustainable, that will support your life, and that won’t run you into the ground or not.

If you have ever thought this thought of, oh, well, later. Later, when I earn it, then I can have a business that gives me time off.

Nuh-uh. You don’t even know if you’re gonna be here later. You have to do this now.

I want to hear from you. I want to hear, is this something that has crossed your mind? Is this a belief that you’ve been holding? Is this a belief that maybe you previously held? Shoot me a DM on Instagram. I am @evolveyourweddingbusiness.

I can’t wait to hear from you and I hope that you take some steps today to make our business more sustainable for yourself.

Links & Resources:

The Wedding Business Collective
Episode 233: Why It’s Time To Stop Trying To Be Fully Booked & Create Your Own Version Of Success! with Laura Canham
Episode 245: Think Not Having Enough Time Is Your Problem? Think Again.

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