Doing It All Is Killing Your Wedding Business

Most wedding professionals believe that if they want to book more weddings, they need to do more in their marketing.

And I get why people think that. It’s logical. It’s just a fallacy.

And it leads to feeling like you have to be everywhere and doing all the things. Not only is that not possible for a small wedding business, but it’s making your marketing more difficult and less effective.

Doing it all doesn’t get you better results. Instead, it’s killing your wedding business and leaving you feeling completely overwhelmed and burned out.

The good news is there is a better way and I’m breaking that down in this podcast episode!

In this episode we’ll cover:

• Why so many wedding pros feel like they have to do more to book more weddings
• The logical fallacy of trying to do it all
• Why you can’t do it all and you shouldn’t try to
• An example of a wedding pro who decided to stop doing it all and the amazing results she got
• How to identify the things you’re doing that get the best return on investment
• The common trap almost every wedding pro falls into at some point that leads to feeling overwhelmed and way too busy
• How being more intentional and strategic about how you spend your time
• Why thinking like an award-winning rose grower will help you reclaim your time

Doing It All Is Killing Your Wedding Business

Hello there, my friend. Welcome to the podcast. I’m your host, Heidi Thompson, and I help wedding professionals of all different kinds book more of the clients they want to book and build wedding businesses that give them the freedom and flexibility they are after. And today I want to talk to you about how doing it all is killing your business.

I can’t tell you how often I hear from people, “maybe I should create daily videos on TikTok, or maybe I should create more Instagram reels, or maybe I should spend a few hours per week on Pinterest so couples can find me there, or maybe I should redesign my whole website.”

I hear these ideas all the time from wedding pros, because a lot of people in our industry believe that if they want to book more weddings, they need to do more in their marketing.

And I get why people think that. It’s logical. It’s just a fallacy.

And it leads to feeling like you have to be everywhere and doing all the things.

But you can’t, because you can’t be, you know, a one-person mega-corporation marketing department in your small wedding business. It’s a huge problem too, because on top of taking more time than it needs to take, it actually makes your marketing harder than it needs to be.

So let me give you an example. One member of The Wedding Business Collective, floral designer Carolyn Kulb, is one of the many members to submit their marketing plan for feedback. So after they go through and create their marketing plan, and everybody’s marketing plan is going to be different because we’re all running different businesses with different ideal clients.

They can submit it for review and one question I always ask members in this review period about their marketing is what will you stop doing? The truth is, most people are doing way too much and they think they need to do more.

Most people are trying to be everywhere. They’re trying to do everything. And the frustrating thing is they’re finding that that doesn’t actually get them better results.

That is so annoying, right? Because you think, Okay, if I want more bookings, I’ll just do more marketing. You think the more you do, the better results you get. That’s not actually how it works.

Because not everything you’re doing is equal.

So Carolyn actually stopped posting content to Facebook altogether and she just allowed some auto-posting to happen occasionally from Instagram. And this was really interesting. She was doing the bare minimum to keep things going.

She also decided to completely stop the marketing experiment she was running on Pinterest, where she was trying to see, if could she get leads and bookings from Pinterest. That wasn’t working. She completely stopped doing it.

And instead of spending her time on Pinterest and Facebook, she shifted her focus to SEO and referrals. Not because those things are inherently better. I mean, all these things are equal, but those are the things that were already working well for her.

And she knew that she had some huge opportunities in each of those areas if she could make the time to spend in them. So in doing this, she was able to get her marketing time down to just 2 hours a week.

And as a result of doing this, of doing less, of doing fewer things, she booked her biggest wedding ever. They had a $35,000 floral spend because she created marketing. that made her stand out to them. She created marketing that brought in that client who wanted to spend that much on her florals. That’s exactly who she wanted to work with.

And I wanted to highlight her story, and there are so many others to show you that it is not about being everywhere.

It’s not about doing all the things.

It’s not about doing more.

That’s actually a trap that’s very easy to fall into.

It’s more about the kind of approach that award-winning rose growers take. They strategically prune and they get very intentional about what they’re cutting and what they’re leaving on that plant.

And those are the decisions that either result in an award-winning rose or they don’t. Those are the same decisions that result in you being able to reach your goals in your business, as well as have time to spend with family, to travel, to do the things you want to do.

It’s all about strategically pruning and being very, very intentional about what you’re cutting and what you’re leaving.

And again, that is going to be different for everybody. I cannot tell you exactly what that is for you until I know your business and I have an understanding but we have a process for this in The Wedding Business Collective where all sorts of wedding professionals, you know, DJs, floral designers, stationers, planners, officiants have gone through it and found out, okay, this is what I need to be focusing on and this is what I need to cut.

And I really think making those cuts is at least as important as the things that you keep doing, if not more important. Because if you are trying to do all the things, if you’re trying to be everywhere, you aren’t going to do anything particularly well. Or without any sort of strategy or intention, it’s all going to be half-assed.

So instead of doing that by getting really specific about what you’re cutting, what you’re letting go of, what just isn’t working for you and what’s taking up your time and what you can spend more time on, or maybe, you know, ramp up slightly to where you’re getting better results, but you’re actually spending less time.

And I know that sounds counterintuitive, but I see it time and time again, both with members of The Wedding Business Collective that I work with and in my own business. When I cut certain things out that are time-consuming in favor of spending that time somewhere else, I am probably going to get a better return on investment for that time.

And we can think about it in terms of return on investment. If it’s easier for you to think about it in terms of, you know, say money. If you put your money in a savings account versus if you invest your money in an index fund, the returns you will get on those will be very different. Yes, you’re doing two different things, but the return is going to be different.

And it’s the same thing with the tasks that we put on our plate. Most people. are doing too much and they’re doing too much because they believe, understandably so, that if you want more, you have to do more, you have to work harder, but that’s really just not how it works.

If instead, you can focus and get specific on the things that you’re doing and cut away everything else that’s not working for you, you allow yourself to actually have time. Time to relax, time to take away from the business, time to work on things you’ve been wanting to be working on, maybe expanding into another service or another product or another region or hiring someone you just didn’t have the time to work on that.

This is how you free up that time by taking the approach of that award-winning rose grower.

And this is a theme that you will hear more about during Wedding Business CEO Summit, which is coming up from February 12th through 16th. The entire focus of this event is to help you reclaim your time. Stop feeling overwhelmed. Stop feeling pulled in a million different directions. And stop feeling like your business is just on fire.

Like, you’re that GIF and you’re just sitting at the table and saying, “Yep, everything is fine” even though everything around you is in flames.

This event is not to show you all the things you could be doing. We are very much about how to clear things off your plate, how to make things easier, and less time-consuming.

So if that is something you’d like more of in your life, if you would love to be able to reclaim some time back, be sure to get on the waitlist for free tickets.

We are going to start making those available on January 22nd. You can do that at www.WeddingBusinessCEOSummit.com.

So, if you want to reclaim your time, if you want to stop feeling overwhelmed, if you want to stop saying, I’m too busy for that, and you feel pulled in a million different directions, you do not want to miss this free event.

Because it is all about that strategic approach of strategically pruning. Cutting things and making sure the things that you’re keeping actually make the most sense. They’re actually the things that get you the best return on investment. And we have over 25 different experts to help you do that in a variety of different ways.

So I hope you will join us. Be sure to get on the wait list over at www.WeddingBusinessCEOSummit.com and remember more is not necessarily better. More is just more. It doesn’t mean you’re going to get better results.

And if you’re anything like the hundreds and hundreds of wedding pros that I’ve worked with in The Wedding Business Collective, more usually means you get worse results because you’re half-assing because you have to. And doing less means that you get better results because you’re doing it strategically.

Thanks for taking the time to listen in today, and I will speak to you again very soon.

Links & Resources:

Get your FREE ticket to Wedding Business CEO Summit
The Wedding Business Collective
The #1 Struggle Wedding Pros Face
How To Stop Feeling So Busy & Overwhelmed

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