You Didn’t Start Your Wedding Business to Burn Out — So Why Does It Feel Like That’s the Only Option?

Transcript: You Didn’t Start Your Wedding Business to Burn Out — So Why Does It Feel Like That’s the Only Option?

Heidi Thompson:
You didn’t start your wedding business to burn out. So why does that feel like that’s the only option?

Hey there friend. Welcome to the podcast. I am Heidi Thompson and I am here to help you build a wedding business that lets you book weddings with clients you love by making your marketing easy, while also actually having the freedom and flexibility that you started this whole thing for. Because somewhere along the way, the business you dreamed of turned into a full time job and then another part time one, and then maybe even another full time one stacked on top of that.

So today we’re diving into the number one issue I see over and over again with my clients in my community and across the wedding industry. And it’s the thing that’s quietly burning you out. It’s keeping you stuck and making you question if this is even worth it anymore. Let me remind you of something. You didn’t start your business to burn out. You started it to have freedom to do meaningful, creative work that you love. To have a business that lets you live the life you want to live, whether that’s being able to travel more or be done working by 3pm so you can do school pickup and hang out with your kids or something else entirely. But along the way, hustle culture convinced us that working 60 hours or more is just part of the deal.

That if we love what we do, we should be grateful, even if we’re exhausted, underpaid and overwhelmed. We bought into the lie that more hours equals better results. That if we just push harder and grind longer and hustle more, we’ll finally make it. Well, that, my friend, is total bs. Now, I’ve been in this industry for well over a decade now, and here’s what I’ve seen. Wedding pros from every niche, florals, planners, DJs, cake designers, live wedding painters, photographers, you name it, are all stuck in a toxic cycle of overwork. And we tell ourselves it’s normal. We tell ourselves, oh, it’s just for busy season.

We tell ourselves it’ll be better next year. But the data that I’ve collected from my audience says otherwise. Over half of the wedding pros that I surveyed are working more than 40 hours per week during wedding season. 12% are regularly clocking somewhere between 60 to 70 hours per week. And even in the so called off season, a lot of people are still working 50 to 60 hours a week. That’s not flexibility. That’s not success. That’s a recipe for resentment and burnout. And here’s the kicker. Almost no one wants to work that much. Only 13% of people that I surveyed said they want to be working over 40 hours per week. The largest chunk of wedding pros said that they want to be working somewhere between 20 to 30 hours per week. But some want to work even less than that. And when it comes to taking time off, having a vacation, nearly 20% take no time off at all. All over 36% want to take a full month off each year.

But only 2% actually do it. We are building businesses with none of the freedom we signed up for. We’re building our own personal prisons. And it’s no wonder that 42% of wedding pros said they feel overwhelmed often. Another 50% said they’re always overwhelmed. And here’s what we don’t talk about enough. What all this overwork actually costs us. It’s not just feeling tired and overworked and stressed. It’s your health. Deteriorating. Missing important moments with the people you love. The constant anxiety that keeps you up at night, Having to always feel like you need to be tethered to your laptop or your phone. The resentment that builds every time you have to cancel plans again to work. It’s waking up one day and realizing that you’ve built a prison, not a business.

And if you keep going like this, you are looking at serious burnout. The kind that makes you hate the work that you once loved. The kind that just damages all of your relationships. And the kind that takes a real toll on your physical and mental health. I know. I’ve been there. I believed the do more lie at one point. I worked ridiculous hours thinking that’s just how entrepreneurship works. And then it caught up with me in a way I couldn’t ignore. The overwork completely threw off my bipolar disorder and sent me into a depressed spiral.

My health crashed, and I had to face a hard truth. The business I had built to give me freedom was actually destroying me. That was my wake up call. And I realized that working longer hours wasn’t the answer. Doing more was. Wasn’t the solution. In fact, when I really got down to it, most of what I was doing was just busy work that didn’t actually drive results in the business. So I started cutting ruthlessly. I created what I now call the machete method, a process for identifying what’s actually working in your business and slicing away everything that isn’t. Because here’s what I discovered in this process. You don’t need to do more. You need to do less of what doesn’t work and more of what does.

And over the years, working with thousands of wedding pros, I’ve watched this approach completely transform businesses. People go from working over 60 hours per week on the regular to working under 40. They start taking real time off, they feel proud of their businesses, and they finally get their evenings and sanity back. But let me paint a picture of what’s actually possible when you make this shift. Imagine this. It is a sunny spring day. You’re sitting outside with the rays of sun warming your face, enjoying a coffee and a chat with your favorite person. You’ve got this calm, serene peace of mind because you know exactly what to do next in your business, when it gets done and how to do it. It’s under control. And because of that, you also know that you absolutely have time to step away from your business for this coffee date. Everything is under control. No more confusion. No more using hope as a strategy. No more throwing spaghetti at the wall. Just that calm, certain feeling of knowing exactly what steps you need to take to reach your goals. That’s what happens when you stop doing everything and start doing the right things.

Intentionally, strategically, and in a way that gives you your life back. Your business should provide you with the life you want. You want to build a business, not a job with the worst boss ever breathing down your neck. Now, here’s the thing. I’m an expert in certain areas of running a wedding business. But I wanted to bring you experts in other areas too. Because the path of reclaiming your time isn’t just about marketing strategy or efficiency hacks. It’s about systems and boundaries, pricing, operations, mindset. All those pieces work together to create a sustainable business. And that’s why I created the Wedding Business CEO Summit.

I didn’t just create another course or program. I brought together 40 experts from across the wedding industry. People who specialize in everything from workflow automation to pricing psychology to client experience. Because I wanted to give you a full buffet of options to choose from. It’s not just another summit about growing your business. It’s about reclaiming your time so your business doesn’t eat your life. It’s about working smarter, not harder or longer. About cutting through the noise and focusing only on on what gets results. About building a business that finally gives you that calm, serene peace of mind feeling instead of the constant overwhelm and panic attack feeling.

So if you’ve been feeling like your business is perpetually on fire, if you’re constantly overwhelmed, you constantly feel behind and you’re secretly wondering if all of this is sustained sustainable, I want you to know that you’re not alone. This is actually the default mode that we slip into. But it doesn’t have to be this way. From February 16th through the 20th, these 40 experts and I are going to show you exactly how to run your business with more ease, more time and more clarity without giving up the bookings or income you want. Tickets are free. You can sign up or over at weddingbusinessceosummit.com.

Let’s stop normalizing burnout and start building businesses that give us the lives we actually want. Thanks so much for hanging out with me today. I would love to hear your story.

Have you been through burnout too? Send me a DM on Instagram. I’m @evolveyourweddingbusiness and tell me what your time work reality looks like right now and you’d like it to look like we’re in this together and I am so glad you’re here.

Speak to you soon!