Who The Wedding Business Collective Is (And Isn’t) For

Wedding Business Coaching: Who The Wedding Business Collective Is And Isn’t For

Heidi Thompson:

Is the Wedding Business Collective right for you? Or maybe not. Let’s talk about it.

Hey there, and welcome to the podcast. I’m your host, Heidi Thompson, and I am here making marketing easier for wedding professionals so they can book more of the weddings that they want to work on with the people that they love working with. And in this episode, I want to talk to you about who The Wedding Business Collective is right for and is not right for. We’ve covered a lot of ground in this series. This is part four of a four-part series. We talked about why doing all of the right marketing things still isn’t getting you wedding bookings. We talked about the difference between random marketing and an actual booking system. And we talked about why vendors who are booking consistently and easily aren’t actually working harder than you. They’re just working smarter and more strategically. So now I want to talk to you about something people ask me about all the time. Who is the Wedding Business Collective actually for? And just as importantly, who is it not for? Because I would rather be honest up front than have you join and realize this is not what you’re looking for. So first up, who is it for? The Wedding Business Collective is for wedding pros who are tired of guessing all the time. If you feel like you’re throwing just random marketing spaghetti at the wall with no real plan, it’s definitely for you. If you want consistent bookings with clients you actually love working with instead of just taking whoever calls or emails you, you definitely belong here.

And if you’re done chasing marketing trends and you’re ready to build something sustainable that takes up way less of your time and gets you much better results, it’s definitely for you.

Let me give you a more specific picture of who I’m talking about, because I think it helps to hear yourself in this. And there are a few different types of people that it’s a fit for.

There is a vendor who is earlier in their business. They’re skilled at what they do. They’re excited. They’re motivated. And they are also completely overwhelmed by all of the conflicting advice about how to get clients. They’ve tried some things. Maybe they did some marketing on Instagram. Maybe they signed up for The Knot. Maybe they attended some networking events. But nothing is really clicking yet and they don’t know why…

One of our members is a live wedding painter. She’s about six months into her business. She had never gotten an inquiry from a stranger. Every single client that came her way came through someone that she knew personally. She had the skills, she had the passion. What she didn’t have was a system for getting in front of people who didn’t already know she existed. Within a few months of building her own marketing plan, strangers were reaching out on the regular from Google, from mentions from planners on their own without her actually having to chase anyone. Then there’s a wedding vendor who’s been around for a while. They’ve built a solid reputation. They’ve gotten tons of referrals.

Things were working, mostly because they were good at their job and word got around. But somewhere along the way, things started slowing down and getting more unpredictable. The referrals got quieter. The not in WeddingWire stopped delivering the way that they used to.

Maybe you used to be entirely dependent on them and you’re not getting as many leads. Now I hear that from a lot of people who have been in the business for multiple decades. And now they’re looking around wondering what changed and what they’re supposed to do about it. Ray is a member of the Wedding Business Collective and he is a musician and band leader. who has been in the wedding industry long enough to have played the parents’ weddings of some of his current couples.

So freaking cool. He was spending $1,000 a month on The Knot and Weddingwire.

And not because it was just absolutely killing it for him. He was doing decent from it, but because he didn’t really know what else to do, and he was scared to cut that off. Once he stopped renting his leads and started building his own system and being more intentional, things shifted. Now he’s got this amazing asset in his business, a 13 email automated follow-up sequence running in the background, doing the selling for him that he never has to look at.

He outsources his social media and his top planner referral partner recently showed up in his green room with a bottle of champagne to celebrate their 100th wedding they had done together. A hundred weddings from one referral partner. That’s not luck, that’s a system. Both situations, the new vendor trying to get traction and the experienced vendor whose old methods aren’t working as well as they used to are entirely fixable. And that’s exactly what we work on inside the collective. But I want to be straight with you about who this isn’t for, because I genuinely don’t want to waste your money or your time. This isn’t for you if you looking for quick hacks and tricks and shortcuts. Marketing doesn’t work that way. And anyone telling you otherwise is selling you something that won’t last. This isn’t for you if you want someone else to do the work for you.

We give you the step-by-step on how to build your strategy. We give you the resources, is we give you the support, but you have to actually do it. You have to actually implement it. And that’s because I firmly believe that you have to be the captain of your own ship. Nobody can build your business for you. Of course, you can outsource things later on, but you are the one that needs to make these main decisions about who your business is going to attract and how it’s going to communicate with them. This isn’t for you if you are expecting overnight results. Building a sustainable wedding business takes time, and it takes consistency. What we are building inside the Wedding Business Collective is something that keeps working for you year after year after year. It’s not this flash-in-the-pan spike that disappears the next month. It’s not a fluke. This is also not for you if you’re expecting guaranteed bookings or leads.

And I say this because I’ve had a few people over the years ask me if I guarantee bookings or leads. And the answer is no. Nobody can ethically guarantee that. What I can guarantee is that if you follow the roadmap that’s laid out for you, you take the steps, you ask for help when you need it in The Wedding Business Collective, you will have a real marketing plan, a clear strategy and the support to execute it and tweak it if it’s not working as well as we’d hope. I won’t let you fail if you keep working on it with me. We will figure out how to make it work for you. And I’ve done it with every member of the collective that has brought it to me. So I just encourage members not to stay stuck. Your results depend on actually doing the work. If someone is promising you guaranteed bookings in exchange for your money, that’s a red flag. You should run away from that. So if any of that sounds like you, the Wedding Business Collective is not for you. Now here’s what I can tell you about what members experience when they actually do the work. They stop waking up on Monday morning, wondering what they’re supposed to be doing, and how they’re going to bring in bookings, because they have a plan.

And that plan is based on their unique business, not some generic playbook that was built for someone else or something that worked for someone else, because it probably won’t work for you. They start attracting inquiries from couples who are already pre on them before the first conversation ever happens because their messaging is finally speaking to the right people And they stopped doing 17 different things that were draining their time without producing results Elise a stationary designer and live wedding painter in Atlanta, came into the collective feeling like she was juggling 12 different marketing channels all at once. She was posting on Instagram, exhibiting at wedding shows, working on her SEO, attending all sorts of networking events, doing style shoots, all of it, all the time, and feeling like none of it was actually working. When we looked at where her actual bookings were coming from, it turned out that the vast majority were coming from two places, wedding shows and planner relationships. Instagram, the thing she was spending five, 10 hours on a week was barely contributing anything. So we stopped forcing it and started putting that time and energy into the channels that were already producing. We just made her Instagram active enough so that it looks like she’s alive. She’s now on page one of Google for both of her services in Atlanta, and her planner relationships have become one of her most consistent sources of bookings. This is that same person who was doing 12 different things and none of it was working in the same market with less chaos and better results. That’s what changes.

You stop spreading yourself thin across everything and start doing more of what actually works for your specific business. Inside the collective, we work through what I call the six-figure wedding business roadmap. And the first step on that is an audit. It’s a snapshot of where your business is right now. And we measure it across six pillars. And those pillars are business, marketing, time, mindset, money, and sales. And I want to explain why there are six because that’s not a random choice. Most wedding pros focus almost exclusively on marketing and nothing else. And I completely understand why. It feels like that’s what you need to do. And it is. But if your time management is a mess, your marketing is going to suffer because you won’t be consistent. You’ll never have time for it. If your mindset is stuck in this scarcity loop, you’ll undercharge and attract the wrong clients. If you don’t understand your money, you won’t know if what you’re doing is actually working.

These six pillars work together. When one of them is broken, it affects everything else.

Our members get access to training, templates, AI tools, a community of wedding pros who get it, and coaching to help them apply everything to their specific business.

This is not a generic business course. It is built specifically for how the wedding industry works. I want to talk directly to the person who has made it to the end of this series. And it’s still on the fence. Hi, because I know you’re there. Maybe you’re thinking you don’t have time, that your schedule is already maxed out and adding something new sounds impossible. Let me tell you what I’ve seen over and over. The wedding pros who feel the most stretched, the most overwhelmed, are always the ones spending enormous amounts of time on things that aren’t producing results. Not because they’re lazy or unfocused, but because nobody has ever helped them figure out what to stop doing. We get told what to do all the time. Nobody tells us what to stop doing. When you get clarity on that, you don’t keep getting busier. You get time back. And one of the very first things you’ll do when you join the Wedding Business Collective is reclaim between five to eight hours per week. That’s the average we see members be able to reclaim right off the bat. That is 11 full days per year. Or maybe you have bought courses before.

They’re sitting unopened on your hard drive. I get it. You’re not sure you’ll actually follow through this time. The collective is different from a course in a really key way. You’re not going through it alone. You have a community of wedding pros who are in the same situation you’re in, asking the same sorts of questions, working through the same problems.

When you get stuck, you ask. And someone who has been through it already tells you exactly what they did.

That changes the implementation equation completely. Because it’s not just me and they’re helping you. And this is why it’s called The Wedding Business Collective. because I wanted to really focus on tapping into the collective wisdom and experience of our members Or maybe you just not sure it work for your specific business type. Maybe you a musician like Ray or a painter like Heidi or a stationary designer like Elise, or a photographer, a planner, a caterer, or something even more niche.

We have had members who are magicians, health coaches, dance instructors, sketch artists, you name it. The framework works for any type of wedding business because it’s built around your business, not someone else’s. No two members inside the Wedding Business Collective have the same marketing plan, and that’s by design. So if this series has been hitting home for you, if you’ve been nodding along thinking, yeah, that’s exactly the problem I have. This is exactly where I am. I want to invite you to check out the Wedding Business Collective. You have spent a lot of time doing things that haven’t gotten you where you want to be. You don’t have to keep doing that. The plan exists, the system exists, and you don’t have to build it alone. So go over to evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/pod to learn more and see if it’s the right fit for you. And over there, you will also be able to join and get your first 30 days for just a dollar to make sure it’s going to be the perfect fit for you. Totally risk-free. Of course, if you have any questions at all, send me a DM. I’m an open book. Shoot me a DM on Instagram. I am @evolveyourweddingbusiness and I would love to answer any and all of your questions.

I’ll see you there.