You Don’t Need to Finish Every Course to Grow Your Wedding Business

In this episode we’ll cover:

• Why finishing every course or certification isn’t necessary to grow your wedding business
• How endless learning can become a form of procrastination that keeps you from taking action
• The key difference between consuming information and applying it strategically
• Simple ways to identify what’s actually worth your time and what you can skip for now
• How to use what you already know to book more weddings and move your business forward today
• What to focus on instead of chasing “more knowledge” so you can see faster results and less overwhelm

The 5 Second Website Rule For Getting More Wedding Inquiries

0:00:00 – Heidi Thompson
You don’t need to finish every course to grow your wedding business. Let’s talk about why.

0:00:06 – Intro
In a world where wedding professionals are struggling to market and grow their businesses, one podcast brings together top experts and actionable strategies to help you build the wedding business of your dreams. This is the Evolve your Wedding Business podcast. Here is your host.

0:00:38 – Heidi Thompson
Heidi Thompson. Hello there, welcome to the podcast. I’m your host, Heidi Thompson, and I help wedding professionals of all different kinds make their marketing easier so they can book more weddings and build a business that gives them freedom and flexibility. And today I wanted to talk to you about something I see that comes up over and over again. Do you ever look at your collection of courses, whether that’s in your inbox or in your bookmarks or in a folder somewhere in a teachable account, and feel a pang of guilt because you haven’t finished them? Yeah, you’re not alone. So many wedding pros feel stuck in learning mode, convinced they need to complete every course or certification before they can really make progress, but that belief is quietly keeping you from growing. If that sounds like you, I want you to know you are definitely not alone. I hear this from running pros all the time, and the shame that comes along with this can feel really heavy. So today I want to break this down and reframe what those courses really mean for you and your business. So why do so many of us feel shame around these courses?

We have been taught, really through school, that finishing something, the completion of something, equals success, and in a school environment, that’s true. The online business world absolutely feeds into this by, you know, showing progress bars and encouraging you to complete things, and they’re coming from a good place. But it’s no wonder so many people think I’m behind. Maybe I’m not cut out for this and let’s be honest, many of us who create businesses were the overachievers in school. We were the ones who did the extra credit, even if we didn’t need it, even if we already had A’s in the class. Anyone else ask their teachers or school librarians for summer reading lists because I did. That habit shows up in business too, and it makes us really feel like we have to finish absolutely everything in order to prove that we’re doing it right. But the truth of growing a business is different.

Running a wedding business requires a lot of different skills. You need to know how to market, how to sell, how to manage money, how to save time, how to create an amazing client experience. There’s so much to it and that’s a lot. Of course, you are going to reach for different resources at different times. That doesn’t mean you’re failing. It means you’re learning what you need when you need it. This is called just-in-time learning. Skill building is not a straight line. It’s not checking off every single lesson in a course. It’s about picking up the exact skill that you need in order to move forward.

I’ve noticed there are people who get stuck in this trap of having to do all the courses and but because they’re not executing on anything that they’ve learned, they don’t make any progress and they wind up feeling frustrated. That’s actually why I don’t have a set new workshop or new course that comes out every month inside the Wedding Business Collective, beyond our usual monthly calls, which are much more focused on problem solving and taking action calls, which are much more focused on problem solving and taking action. I was finding that there were way too many people getting addicted to the learning and the completion and not making any real progress because all they were doing was consuming educational content. Now, when I see a need, I create a tool, a training, a resource, I bring a guest expert into the Wedding Business Collective to solve that specific problem. But I don’t give people new content just for the sake of it, because I don’t want to feed into this tendency.

Now I’ll be honest. I have a ton of courses I’ve never completed. I have many I probably never will. But here’s the thing completing them wasn’t the point. What actually matters to me is reaching my goals and having the skills and tools that I need to do that when I need them. And if a course gave me one strategy I still use or one mindset shift that helped me to push forward, that’s a huge win. The rest of the lessons may be sitting there untouched, and that’s okay, because my focus isn’t on completion, it’s on growth, and that comes from execution. If I’m able to execute without completing all that, I’m totally fine with that. So I want you to think of courses less like a school class and more like a reference library. This is what I tell people to treat The Wedding Business Collective and even the all-access passes from my summits like.

Because you wouldn’t walk into a library and grab an entire shelf of books and just start reading every single reference book just to check them off a list. That wouldn’t make any sense. That wouldn’t do anything for you. Instead, you go in when you need something, when you need to find a solution, when you need to figure out how to do something, and you grab the book or the chapter of that book that helps with the problem that you’re facing right now. Courses actually work the same way, at least in the context of business, and it’s actually really similar to how cookbooks work. You don’t cook a cookbook from cover to cover. That would be kind of weird, right? You just need the one recipe that solves the problem of what are you having for dinner tonight.

And if you walked away from a course with one tool, one framework, one mindset shift that helped you and that you were able to execute on and get results from that course already more than paid for itself? So, instead of measuring the value by completion, I want you to ask yourself this question what problem do I need to solve right now? Then go into your course library and find the exact course lesson resource tool that helps with that, nothing more. You are just digging into the toolbox and getting what you need. You’re not supposed to use every tool at once or master how to use every single tool without actually using them to build anything. You reach for the one that fits for the job that is currently in front of you. So I’ve got a few action steps for you.

Here’s a quick way to reframe how you use courses. First, I want you to look back and I want you to write down one or two things that you’ve already gained from courses that you’ve taken, and I want you to celebrate that progress. Then I want you to look forward and identify one single problem in your business that needs attention. And then I want you to choose intentionally Find the lesson, the resource, the course that helps with that problem, and ignore everything else until it’s relevant. And then you have to execute what you’ve learned. This is where the results happen.

You won’t improve or grow your business simply by learning about it. Just like you can’t learn how to ride a bike by reading about it. You have to actually do it. Just like you can’t learn how to ride a bike by reading about it. You have to actually do it. So what do you need to execute on that you’ve been putting off? Maybe by continuing to learn more about it.

I want you to know that you’re not behind and you don’t have to finish every course. That’s not the point. You don’t have to be a perfect course. That’s not the point. You don’t have to be a perfect student. That’s not your job. You just need to gather the skills that move you forward, and if you’ve done that, you’re not behind. You are right where you need to be.

And if you’re tired of trying to piece everything together on your own. That’s exactly what we do together in the Wedding Business Collective. You’ll get access to the resources you need, but, more importantly, you’ll get a roadmap that walks you through. Okay, what do I need to focus on right now? Not all of the courses that you have access to, but the actual roadmap, the actual steps and the coaching to help you figure out what matters most right now. Sometimes, that is the most game changing light bulb moment that can really change everything in your business. Instead of drowning in courses, you’ll be making steady, focused progress toward booking more of your ideal clients.

So come, join us. Head over to evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/WBC to join the Wedding Business Collective. You can get started for just a dollar for your first 30 days and start making progress, and I would love to hear from you about your tendencies when it comes to courses. Are you a completionist? Do you feel like you have to check every box in order to have done it right? Has this made you realize that maybe that’s not the best approach? Shoot me a DM on Instagram. I’m @evolveyourweddingbusiness, and I can’t wait to hear from you over there. Thanks for taking the time to tune in today and I will speak to you again very soon.

Links & Resources:

The Wedding Business Collective – join for just $1
Episode 155: Why Some Wedding Professionals Don’t Get Results From Courses

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