How To Book More Weddings As A Live Wedding Painter

How To Book More Weddings As A Live Wedding Painter

Heidi Thompson:
Today’s guest never had a single stranger reach out to her business, not once. But 6 months later, she’s got a dream client asking her to create an even bigger package than her top package because what she was publicly offering wasn’t enough.

Heidi Thompson:
Hey there, welcome to the podcast. I am your host, Heidi Thompson, and I’m here to help wedding professionals of all different kinds, make their marketing work so they can book more clients that they love and have businesses that give them freedom and flexibility. And that’s exactly what we’re talking about today. Today’s guest is Heidi Nielsen. She is a member of the Wedding Business Collective. She’s a live wedding painter and muralist, super talented artist, and she spent 2.5 years trying to get work. In the wedding industry. Cold emails that she was sending out to bridal shops were going nowhere. Even the ones that did respond, which was only about 2%, didn’t really have a ton of interest. And Heidi, a Los Angeles-based live event painter, was doing all of the things that she thought you were supposed to do to get clients. She just wasn’t getting any of them. 6 months later, she’s turning away work. Today, Heidi is sharing exactly what has changed, how she went from playing at business to booking her dream client who asked her to create an even bigger and better package because what she publicly offered wasn’t enough for this client. They wanted even more of Heidi’s incredible artwork. This one is really good, so let’s dive into the interview with Heidi.

Heidi Thompson:
Today I’m joined by Heidi Nielsen. She is a Los Angeles-based interactive event painter and artist, and she is a member of the Wedding Business Collective. And I have watched and helped Heidi grow so much over the past several months. I wanted to bring her on so she can share a bit of her story. I think it’s gonna be really inspiring for you. So Heidi, thank you so much for being here.

Heidi Neilson:
Holy macaroni, the last 6 months indeed. I am so excited to be here with you and kind of debrief about it.

Heidi Thompson:
Yeah, so I know you joined the Wedding Business Collective about 6 months ago when you had attended a summit. We really met and got talking there, but tell me a little bit, like, where were you? Where was your business at that time?

Heidi Neilson:
Yeah, you bet. So I had been attempting to get myself work in the events space for 2 and a half years at that point. Um, and I can go into more detail about what attempting to get work looked like. Um, and I had been running kind of the mural arm of my business for 6 years before that. No, a little longer. Um, a number of years. Um, but what I was, what I was starting to learn was what I thought was marketing was just kind of going where people already knew me and saying things that I already knew were safe to say. I’m like telling myself that I was showing up without really risking anything. Um, so I wasn’t I wasn’t working with strangers at all. Any work that came in was referrals directly from friends or working for the friends themselves. I was kind of starting to try to do like cold email outreach when we met.

I had been putting some work into that to start to just be like, okay, I’m going to reach out to some strangers. I’m not really getting any traction there, having maybe— think at that time I had sent maybe 100 emails. And I started with bridal shops because it felt low risk. I was like, okay, like bridal shops are somebody it could be valuable to have a partnership with, but if I screw it up and say something terrible and they hate me, it’s not going to ruin my whole career if one bridal shop hates me. That’s fair. So I had sent a whole bunch of emails there, and I think I’d had maybe 2 lukewarm responses. So I was looking at like a 2% response rate, um, and those lukewarm responses were kind of just people being kind. It didn’t really seem like they were gonna go very far. Um, yeah, and it was like I Oh, I’ve heard this phrase before that I think is a good way to sum it up. As I’ve been meandering around the topic, I was kind of playing at business. Oh, okay.

Heidi Thompson:
Yeah. And that makes a lot of sense. I think it’s, it’s one of those things like we don’t really know what we’re supposed to be doing. We know we’re supposed to be finding ways to get business, but that can be very amorphous when you don’t have any direction or any sort of guidance to follow on that. I totally get that. Like, you are one of most wedding professionals who do that, right?

Heidi Neilson:
Because there’s 8 million possibilities about ways to get ourselves in front of people. And it’s like, well, everybody knows somebody, somebody who’s getting married, so like, just try to get yourself in front of all the people, right? But that doesn’t really work.

Heidi Thompson:
Yeah. So then you came to the summit and you actually won the scholarship for 6 months in the Wedding Business Collective, which is so awesome. Tell me like what happened next for you, because I know you during that summit, I saw like light bulbs going off with you.

Heidi Neilson:
Yes. So I did the thing that you said not to do, and I attended as many of those talks, or, you know, they are recorded and replayed. So I watched as many of those presentations as I possibly could during the week. And yes, it was drinking from the fire hose, but it was like my first look at the onion skin of the world of marketing, you know, like I hadn’t even started to peel the layers of the onion. I was just like, oh, there is an onion here. Wow, this onion is really cool.

Heidi Thompson:
So there was so many— that was really fun.

Heidi Neilson:
That was the Book More Weddings Summit.

Heidi Thompson:
So it was really, really messaging and marketing focused, which was perfect for where I was. And I think maybe the— there were so many takeaways, but I think the one that landed most deeply because many of the speakers said it in slightly different ways, was get really, really, really specific.

Heidi Neilson:
The more you can get specific about who you are, what you do, and who you do it for, uh, the better it’s gonna go. And that was such a scary concept, right?

Heidi Thompson:
Because it feels like excluding people.

Heidi Neilson:
It feels like, well, I want to help everybody, so I’m just going to say I can help everybody.

But I think it was you who said that when you get really specific, there’s like a magnetism that happens there and you become attractive. And even if it’s not exactly the person that you say that you’re serving, a whole bunch of people around that person are also like magnetized to you by the act of that specificity. And like, that’s what I think I’ve really started to get over the last 6 months.

It’s so interesting because I 100% understand people’s hesitation to get specific. It does feel like, wait, wouldn’t I be shutting people out? But when you do get specific, the people who are right for you see that like loud and clear. And then it also, I describe it like a dartboard. So you have, you know, like your bullseye, your absolute perfect ideal clients, but then there are the rings and those people are attracted to you as well because they can see themselves, they can see what they want in you. Whereas what most people do in our industry is stay very general, stay very broad, stay very vague. And that results in everybody sounding exactly the same, and literally the only point of differentiation is price, and that’s not where any of us want to be.

Heidi Thompson:
Yes, yes.

Heidi Neilson:
And Heidi, I’ve been having this experience kind of like on the other side of it as I’ve been, um, doing showcases. Um, so like a venue showcase where they bring in a bunch of vendors, and as I’m making friends with the other vendors there, I’m asking them like, okay, who’s the right client for you? Who should I be thinking if they come, if I come across them? Oh, I know, I know exactly where to send that person. And so few vendors are able to articulate that for me. And it would be so much easier for me to know where to catalog them in my brain.

Heidi Thompson:
Then they would have a place.

Heidi Neilson:
They’d be like permanently locked in there. But because so many of them say to me, just a vendor friend who’s trying to be helpful, Oh, we can help everybody with everything. Basically, they, they all get lost in the noise.

Heidi Thompson:
And I’m not somebody who’s looking to try to filter through people.

Heidi Neilson:
I’m trying to find opportunities to help them. And it’s making it hard for me because they’re not giving me any specificity.

Heidi Thompson:
Yeah, the broadness makes it very, very difficult to refer someone.

Because you can’t explain why this person should go work with them.

Heidi Neilson:
It’s just, I don’t know, they’re a photographer, you know?

Heidi Thompson:
That’s so interesting that you’ve noticed that talking to other wedding vendors at these showcases.

Heidi Neilson:
Yeah.

Heidi Thompson:
Most people do not have a clear understanding and that’s why their marketing really struggles because it’s not speaking to anybody. It’s just kind of. Adding to the general noise. So what did that look like for you? How did you start to get more specific in your business?

Heidi Neilson:
Uh, I posted a question pretty early on in the Wedding Business Collective community chats, and I said, um, oh wait, let me step back because I was working down— I was working through the roadmap process when I asked that question. And in the Wedding Business Collective, there is a roadmap to guide us through the, what seems like a bazillion courses that are available in there.

I am such a Capricorn in the sense of I like a structured road. I like formalized class pathways.

So I loved the roadmap and I dived into the early sections about creating the marketing plan.

Um, sidebar, we can come back to this piece, but first there was the Free Up Your Time module.

Whoa, okay, lightning bolts with that one.

Heidi Neilson:
So that’s kind of a separate topic. So just like, I’ll bookmark that. Um, but then in the Getting Specific in the Marketing, there is so much beautiful guidance there about interviewing people that you’ve worked with who are your ideal clients And the questions that you provided to guide those interviews are so great and dive into so many different areas of how they speak, how they articulate the problem that I’m helping them solve. What are the things that they’re looking for?

Heidi Thompson:
What are the hesitations they’re running up against?

Heidi Neilson:
And the question that I asked was, I haven’t worked with my ideal client yet. How How do I start this when I don’t have somebody to talk to? And the answer was something along the lines of talk to the people that you have worked with, get as close as you can. And then it’s okay to start with some guesses off the bat as to what it might be for that person that you’re thinking of and know that as you start to work with those people, You can refine that and you’ll always be refining and dialing it in. And I think that permission to just run an experiment and try was so crucial for me because, because of that, like Capricorn, I want to learn the thing from the book and do it right.

I’m somebody who has a lot of tendency to feel like I’m not going to take the action until I know the right way to do it and the right answer. So like, try and iterate was super valuable to get me actually started doing the things.

Heidi Thompson:
I’m so glad to hear that. And my goal with that is to take the pressure off because this is like version 1. You know, you’re going to hopefully be in business for a very long time. You’re going to have multiple versions of who you want to work with at any given time, like whether it’s the market changes, your client changes, you change, your preferences change.

Heidi Thompson:
You get to make that decision. And I’m curious, like, as you started to go down that path and you started to be like, okay, this is my, you know, 1.0 version of who I’m targeting, take me through that. What happened from there?

Heidi Neilson:
So as I was coming up with answers, working through my marketing worksheet, I would just immediately go pop them into the copy in my website. I’d be like, ooh, I love that phrase. Go plug that in somewhere. I knew that I didn’t want the integrating to be a separate step, so I was just working those things into my website little by little as I went. And, you know, as I would go do an event for free to get some more media for my portfolio, I’d be thinking about like, okay, what, what pictures look like they go with these words that I’m starting to come up with, and just starting to kind of craft that message little by little. And I loved the permission to not overhaul. I didn’t feel like I needed to like take my website down and restart it. I think that was so crucial, the like, I can take a single bite towards getting closer to my ultimate messaging today. And that will be a single step and that will be great. So I was doing that. I was also integrating, um, Sarah Dunn’s just free teachings on SEO and making little, little SEO practices. And I think she has a course inside Wedding Business Collective too, right?

Heidi Thompson:
Yeah, she does. We’ve done 2 trainings with her.

Heidi Neilson:
Awesome. Awesome. So at that time, I hadn’t done any of her paid material. I was just doing the free SEO stuff and working on cleaning up my messaging. And then there was this, like, the clouds parted, angels were singing, wild moment where— so I mentioned I’d been running mural business. I should put running a mural business in air quotes because I painted murals from time to time. But it was not consistent. It was not regular.

I was often hiding from painting murals, but I do love painting murals and I wanted to be painting more of them.

And I got an inquiry in my email inbox that had come from my contact form on my website for a mural.

And once I got on the phone and spoke to this person, I learned that she had been looking for a muralist and not able to find what she was looking for at all.

And she thought, you know, I went to a wedding one time and I saw a painter paint a really beautiful picture really quickly. And when I worked with a muralist one time in the past, they painted really beautiful pictures really quickly. So maybe I should look at wedding painters. And she found— she had no idea I painted murals. She found me as a wedding painter because I’d started optimizing my messaging for that.

Heidi Neilson:
And I actually got my first mural gig that came in from somebody from the outside who found me on the internet and we had no personal connection to each other whatsoever for a mural because she was searching for wedding painters.

Heidi Thompson:
That is so awesome.

Heidi Neilson:
What? How is it I’m working on messaging for one area of my business and it’s feeding the other area of my business.

Heidi Thompson:
How does that even work?

Heidi Neilson:
I don’t know.

Heidi Thompson:
Hey, don’t question it.

Heidi Thompson:
Something’s working. I’ll take it. Yeah.

Heidi Thompson:
Oh my God, that is so cool to hear. And then I know you had said you started getting more inquiries from— well, you got your first inquiry from a complete stranger, but then started to get more. Tell me a bit about that experience.

So a lot of the early inquiries were coming in on the platforms. I did not invest in Knot or WeddingWire.

I knew that as a, like, side category, you know, I’m not a photographer or an officiant or one of the big categories that they have menus for on those kinds of sites. I knew that those sites wouldn’t be any good for me, but I did get myself free accounts, even if only just for the backlinks, on Zola and GigSalad and Book an Artist.

And it was exciting to see leads starting to come in there. There was, I remember I’d gone out of town for a little trip to New York with some friends in September last year, I think it was. And I had never had—

this was before that mural inquiry— I had never had somebody cold reach out to my business ever. Any work that I had ever had, it had come from me doing outreach to generate that business.

And I was away in New York and I believe I had 4 inquiries come in in one week, and like one was from my website, a couple were from the platforms, and it was like, oh my goodness, what— something just shifted.

Okay. And now after a little more time, I’m starting to see that the leads that come in from those platforms generally aren’t great fits.

I haven’t had a booking from them yet, um, but I’m so grateful for them, especially in those early days, which is so weird to say, right? I talk about it like it was years ago. The early, early days of 6 months ago, um, they were so useful for me practicing how do I respond to inquiries. Because when you’ve never had any inquiries, you don’t have a process for responding to inquiries.

Heidi Thompson:
And you get one and it’s like, oh my God, what do I do now?

Heidi Neilson:
I didn’t think this far in advance.

Heidi Thompson:
Yes.

Heidi Neilson:
And of course my first one was like, let me send the giant wall of text of every anything that they might possibly want to know.

Heidi Thompson:
We’ve all done it.

Heidi Thompson:
That’s not the way to go. But, um, yeah, it was— it was so nice to have those. A little bit like, I think, doing the emails to the bridal shops, the leads coming in on, on those platforms that weren’t great fits anyway, um, felt like a low-stakes place to start developing my um, I guess it’s my sales funnel, you know, the, the sequence of messages that goes out to people after an inquiry.

Now, I love your take on this, that it was like, okay, these are great practice people, this is a great opportunity. I’m not gonna get overly attached to whether they book or not. The goal is to figure out what is my sales funnel, what is my What’s my follow-up process going to look like so that I have this system that will work for everyone that comes in going forward?

Exactly. You made it really clear from the beginning that those systems were gonna be like the lifeblood of being able to have a sustainable business that didn’t have me feeling like I was dying trying to run it every day.

Heidi Thompson:
Yeah, that’s huge. And I think allowing yourself to experiment with that and see What felt good to you? What got responses?

Heidi Neilson:
What didn’t get responses is a really good mindset to have just in general, like not getting so overly attached, not putting so much pressure on yourself that like, if I don’t book this exact, you know, lead, you know, the whole thing’s gonna fall apart. That is not the mindset you are approaching this with at all. And I think that is.

Heidi Thompson:
Really overlooked but incredibly, incredibly helpful.

Heidi Neilson:
I think maybe I was able to get into that mindset because of the community of the collective, you know, where it’s like, okay, I don’t have a lot of leads coming in yet, and they sound— they feel really precious when they first come in. And it does— my instinct says I need to do everything right and not blow this. But just being in the company of other professionals for whom having inquiries come in is a very regular, normal thing, allowed me to be in like, almost absorb some of that cool by osmosis. Like, okay, the inquiries are just starting and I’m only learning how to do this better. So I can have faith that there will be more inquiries coming in as I go. It’s only going to get to be more.

Heidi Thompson:
That’s such a healthy way to look at business in general, because it’s very easy to slip into getting really scarcity-minded about it, and then you put so much pressure on it, like, you know, you hold it so tightly you crush it.

Heidi Neilson:
Oh, totally. Yeah, you just get too precious about it and it messes everything up. And I think that’s really helpful to hear your take on that because, yeah, the experimentation and Figuring out what worked and what didn’t work was super helpful for you, but the only way you were able to do that is to have that mindset of, okay, this is how I’m going to approach it, as opposed to trying to just like squeeze the life out of every single lead that came through.

Yeah. I think in my past attempts at business, I have tried to like do them in a silo, and I think that that’s, that’s the part that like Um, maybe somebody with a whole lot of inner fortitude could hold that kind of mindset, just plugging along with belief in themselves, but that’s not the place that I’ve been in. Yeah. Um, and so, so the community support made that possible.

Heidi Thompson:
Thank you for sharing that.

Heidi Thompson:
So as you’re putting your marketing plan together, you know, as you know, we figure out, okay, what are going to be the best ways for you to market?

Heidi Thompson:
And this is unfortunately different for everybody. You know, not every tactic, not every platform works for everyone. So what did you land on for yourself?

Heidi Neilson:
I love your— I love your ongoing encouragement to experiment, but to make sure that the experiments are like the side experiments, and we’re putting most of our energies into the things that are demonstrating to us that they’re working. And, and now I know how to track things, so I know what’s, what’s working and what’s not, which is amazing. Never had that before. Um, but on the subject of experiments, I, I went and helped a a planner friend with an expo for my first time, one of the big, like, uh, convention center, you know, like Southern California level expos. Um, we talked to hundreds of people together that day, um, and I had like a little painting thing set up there in her booth, but we were mostly talking about her planning, which was also nice, made that a little bit lower stakes. But for this sensitive artist soul nervous system, holy cow, like that knocked me out for a week afterwards. So it was like, okay, all right, great. My experiment with expos, that’s probably not gonna be my thing, but I tried it out because there’s another live painter in the collective for whom wedding shows, expos, they are totally her bag. And she’s like, oh yeah, you’ve gotta get on my game.

So that just came to mind ’cause you’re like, unfortunately it’s different for everybody. Yeah, and it’s different even in the same like sub-niche of the industry, right? I was like, surely what works for another live painter is gonna work for me. Nope, turns out we’re different. So to answer your question, the things that are working best for me right now are those SEO efforts that I mentioned. There’s a lot coming in from my, website. And then now, um, I am at this point 9 months into my networking journey. I went to my very first industry event whatsoever, which coincidentally was also an expo, and I went just as an attendee and said, hello, I’m a live painter, to some of the other vendors there. That was about 9 months ago. Um, And this has been— I know networking is kind of a longer game, and I’m just hitting the point now where that is becoming one of my biggest sources of inquiries of future potentials.

Also just a fun— like, the wedding industry is really cool. The mural industry, my experience was there was a lot of scarcity mentality. And so there was a lot of like safeguarding against other people getting in what our space, blah, blah, blah, whatever kind of stuff. And in the wedding industry, my experience with joining WIPA and becoming part of— that’s one of the big like national— it’s wedding industry professionals Association, for anybody who’s not familiar with them. They’re one of many groups, and my experience there has been such a focus on collaboration and lifting each other up. And it’s been— I know I’m going a little bit off of your topic of what are my big lead generators, but those associations, in addition to being one of my top 2 lead generators, have been so wonderful for having it modeled for me what abundance mentality looks like, what it’s like to show up believing there are more than enough weddings for all of us. And let’s figure out how to elevate all of us together as we go through this process and look for opportunities for each other and come from a mindset of giving and serving first before I ask somebody if I can be on their venue list. Or, you know, I didn’t know any of these things. 9 months ago and getting them modeled for me every time I interact with the community has been like such valuable personal growth learning in addition to just professional growth.

Heidi Thompson:
Yeah, that’s so cool. There’s so many ways you can apply that, like just to life in general.

Heidi Neilson:
Yeah.

Heidi Thompson:
Okay, so SEO is working for you. Is that just making changes to your main pages? Are you writing blog posts at all?

Heidi Neilson:
So I did end up doing the SEO bootcamp that Sarah offers this year. And so in that course, we talk about on-page SEO and off-page SEO. So the on-page SEO is the optimizations on the website and

Heidi Neilson:
I’ve been doing a bunch of those, of course, like all marketing things is an ongoing, forever iterating process. And then I’ve been having a lot of fun kind of playing the game of how many backlinks can I get? Oh, and also how many Google reviews can I get? So that’s the—

Heidi Thompson:
Oh, I love that.

Heidi Neilson:
SEO. And I’m sending out an email right now to not just clients, but also because Anybody can review you who’s experienced your work. When I do, when I do like an industry event and I get to interact with a whole lot of different people who come through, I’m sending out emails, maybe not to everybody. I don’t want to spam everybody, but anybody who I had a meaningful personal connection with and saying, hey, I have the wild goal of hitting 100 glowing Google reviews this year. Will you help me hit my goal? And just making it a practice to like send out those emails after any event like that that I do and kind of making it part of the regular rhythm to ask for Google reviews and not limiting myself to thinking it just has to be clients.

Heidi Thompson:
I love the way you frame that too. It’s like, hey, I’m doing this crazy thing. You wanna help me do it? As opposed to like, oh my God, like please, I, I need, like, you’re coming at this from the right mindset, the right perspective for sure.

Heidi Neilson:
I definitely sent a lot of emails that had the other tone in the past. Of course.

Heidi Thompson:
I don’t need to talk about those.

Heidi Neilson:
I’m happy to send this. I don’t like sending this email. I had to figure out like what is going to actually feel fun to send.

Heidi Thompson:
Yeah. And so that you’ll actually do it, right? It’s so easy to just not do things when we’re like, oh, this feels gross.

Heidi Neilson:
Yes. So true.

Heidi Thompson:
So you’ve been working on SEO, making getting reviews and backlinks a game, which I absolutely love. That’s such a fun way to look at it. How about with networking? So you’re going to WIPA events. What sorts of other things are you doing to build and nurture relationships?

Heidi Neilson:
Mm, this one is really fun. And it’s in my happy place. So because I’m a live painter, creating paintings for people is a very direct way to market my business and also something that is appreciated and doesn’t feel spammy when people receive it. So another one of the things that I’m tracking, because I am finding that this— my particular flavor of ADD brain get so much good dopamine from gamifying things for myself and saying like, okay, how many X can I do? So one of the things that I’m focusing on this quarter is— and actually it’ll be throughout the year. This will probably be ongoing through many years because it’s a big project, but I am seeking to get paintings of mine hanging in as many local venue sales offices as possible. And that there’s a whole process that leads up to that. And every step of the process is fun. It’s like, okay, how do I get connected with the venue in the first place? Who do I know that might put in a good word for me? Or, oh great, we’ve met at this event and then I’m not just going to come out and ask them to do something for me. Like, hey, will you display this painting?

No, it’s like, okay, look for an opportunity to support them in some way. Is there a particular kind of clientele that they’re looking for? Is there a way that I can highlight them on my social media? Is there, um, are they doing a venue showcase? And that’s, that’s been where I do a lot of the paintings. I’ll go participate in a venue showcase once I’ve gotten close enough with a venue to be trusted with that opportunity. And then use that opportunity to make a painting there and then gift the painting to them. And they’re excited to have a painting of their venue. They’re excited to have a live painter because we’re still a little bit rare in the industry. You don’t see live painters around every corner, which is an incredibly privileged position to be in. Super grateful for that. And then it’s cool to have the painting hanging there. And if clients are going and sitting in that sales office and they’re like, wow, that’s a neat painting. Can I have one of those? And it makes an easy conversation starter. So kind of created this whole little workflow that’s very specifically tailored to my particular line of work and the way I like doing it.

Heidi Thompson:
I love that you found an opportunity to give in order to build and nurture the relationships. And I think that’s something a lot of people miss because they’re of course coming at it thinking like, well, I want referrals, I want this out of the relationship.

Heidi Thompson:
Nobody’s going to want to talk to someone who’s just talking about what they want all the time. Like, that’s not interesting to anybody but you. So finding a way that you are adding value to them and you’re adding value to them in a way that stands out, in a way that gives them something unique. I feel like people who are painters, photographers, illustrators, you have this unique opportunity to create some sort of a piece for a venue that could be a fantastic way to nurture that relationship and have an ongoing presence in that venue. I think that’s brilliant.

Heidi Neilson:
Thank you. Thank you so much. I was thinking after I came back from that exhausting day at the expo and I was like, okay, we talked to a couple hundred people. But like, that was a single touchpoint. And then you have to go do another expo to catch the next wave of newly engaged people, right? And I was like, but I make one painting. If it’s there hanging on the wall, that could continue being an interest generator for years. And that’s really exciting. Yeah.

Heidi Thompson:
Have you seen that paying off for you either through people who have seen it and have come to you and said as much or just through getting more referrals from those venues because of the relationship?

Heidi Neilson:
It’s still early. I am not saying— I wouldn’t say I’m getting referrals directly yet, but there’s a palpable sense of goodwill, which I think is a very important precursor to referrals.

Heidi Thompson:
Oh yeah.

Heidi Neilson:
And it’s, it’s also just makes my work life more enjoyable, right? Because I don’t, I don’t work in an office, I don’t have co-workers in that sense. So all of these potential referral partners and other vendors and venues in my network are my co-workers, and it’s, it’s fun to feel like they’re friends. And it’s been surprising to me. I think it’s it’s really easy for us to take our own offerings for granted. It’s been really surprising to see how touched people have been by receiving a painting. And that’s just, that’s been so validating in itself. You know, any times where I might have been feeling like, oh gosh, there aren’t enough leads coming in yet, or I wish I was doing more work, which by the way is not how I’m feeling right now. I’m actually at a point of like, oh, I’m having to turn down work. This is new. And we can talk about that continued movement of the journey. But in the unconfident feeling times, just feeling like these folks at these venues are my friends has been really encouraging. And seeing how much the painting means to them makes me remember like, oh, Right, okay, paintings are gonna mean a lot to clients too. Like, they just don’t know about it yet.

Heidi Thompson:
Yeah, and I love your long-term mindset with this because what you’re doing with this is— it’s so smart on so many levels. But I think one of the coolest things about it is it is a long-term physical piece that will be kept for years. Like, there’s no reason for a venue to get rid of this piece that showcases their venue beautifully. So it just inserts you into the conversation for years and years and years. And like, okay, if that takes 6 months, a year to really get a ton of traction doing this for different venues, but it’s gonna pay off in the long term. Like, oh my God, that is so worth it. And you are able to, you know, record ourself painting behind the scenes, use that as content. Hey, I just created this for this venue. Like, there, there’s just so many brilliant pieces of this, and I love it.

Heidi Neilson:
Thank you, thank you, thank you. It’s such a fun journey to be on, and I, I love that right now while I’m, I’m kind of at this inflection point where I am just starting to like book solidly So I figure this may be one of the lightest periods of client work that I will have moving forward in my career. So this is a great time for me to front-load heavier marketing work that won’t take so much ongoing maintenance when I do become busier with client work.

Heidi Thompson:
Yeah, it makes

Heidi Thompson:
Makes perfect sense. So tell me a bit about where you are now. I know you said you’re getting to a point where it’s like, oh, I’m, I’m having to turn people away. This is new.

Heidi Neilson:
Yeah, yeah. The inquiries are coming in steady now. I think I’m averaging like 12 a month, which is lovely. I mean, my goal— I, I am not somebody who wants to do triple weekends. That’s not the lifestyle I’m looking for. Um, ultimately 18 events, which could be weddings or corporate events. I work both. And 12 murals, I think, is kind of the ideal life balance as I’m seeing it. Um, and we’re in Q1 right now, and I think I’m ahead of target to hit that for this year, um, if I’m remembering all my numbers correctly. Yeah, I’m— I am getting asked to do more venue showcases than I can physically do, um, and it’s— I’ve been, I’ve been telling friends for a couple weeks like, okay, wow, I’m starting to feel like I’m running at capacity. I need to start saying no to things, but just the feeling of starting to get traction and having these bookings and having increased leads and having venues come to me and say, we heard about you, will you come do this showcase with us? Um, like, all of that is just so exciting that it’s like, it’s addicting. It’s really hard to say no. It is.

Heidi Thompson:
I feel the same way about stuff. It’s like, oh no, I get really fired up about this, let’s do more of it.

Heidi Neilson:
Yes, yes. And like the point I was saying earlier about the, or that we talked about with the dartboard and the clients who are not the ideal client that you set out to target, but are still great to work with in those surrounding rings. I got an inquiry from Zillow this week to paint some big corporate event that they’re throwing at a high-profile venue nearby. And I think that that’s actually not a great fit for me. What they’re looking for isn’t exactly what I’m doing. And so I will be, I’ve already found other artists to refer them to, which feels like huge growth, right? Because it feels like just yesterday, I was like, I’m not having any inquiries coming in. I better figure out how to do whatever people are asking for. I’ve gotta just figure it out and make it happen. And I think I heard that advice a lot along the way in past years.

It’s really great to be heeding the advice of like, no, inside my head it’s like, you do you, boo. Do the thing you do. Um, yeah, so I had that inquiry from Zillow and I have a piece that I’m working on developing. This was absolutely mind-blowing. A couple weeks ago I booked, um, I could not have written a better imagining of an ideal client for me. My My sales conversation with her was just so, you know those conversations you have where it just feels like your heart is just humming the whole time and you’re like, who is this person, this new friend? I just love them and want to spend all my time with them. Like having that feeling through like a sales call, it didn’t feel sales call at all. It was just like, okay, what are we going to do here? What’s this magic we’re making? And that’s a wedding that’s booked. At a venue that like vendors around here clamor to get into. And I mean, the financial piece is like a side piece for me. Like the heart alignment is, and the excitement about the project is way more exciting, but kind of freaking cool from a business growth perspective is this ideal client booked my highest package in order to save the date. While I’m creating a custom package with more for her because she wants more from me than I’ve been offering publicly.

Heidi Thompson:
Oh my God, that’s amazing, right?

Heidi Neilson:
Like, what planet am I on? This is so cool.

Heidi Thompson:
That is so cool. Oh my God, that’s incredible. Like, no, we want everything that you can do.

Heidi Neilson:
Yeah, yeah. Oh, you want this size? I want bigger. Will you pay bigger for me? Yeah. Yes, sweet, wonderful dream client who makes my listing. Yes, I will.

Heidi Thompson:
The really cool thing when you start booking people like that is now you get to loop back around. Now you get to make them the ideal client you’re marketing to. Go ask them some questions, tighten it up even more so that your messaging speaks even more to this person

Heidi Thompson:
and you bring in more of those people.

Heidi Neilson:
That’s gonna be so fun.

Heidi Thompson:
You just get to keep doing like little victory laps and making it tighter and tighter and better and better.

Heidi Neilson:
I love that you call that little victory laps. That’s such a sweet image.

Heidi Thompson:
Oh my God, this is so cool. So you are more than on track to hit your goal for this year, which is amazing. And I know like you mentioned lifestyle-wise, you were like, this is what I wanna do. I wanna do 18 events. And I think you said 12 murals. Yeah. So talk to me a little bit about that because that’s a huge priority for me too. And it’s why, you know, one of the first things I have members do in the Wedding Business Collective is go through that short course about reclaiming your time because we are spending so much time doing things that don’t work and don’t actually do anything for us. And it’s funny, like I really think people don’t believe me when I say this, but it’s the absolute truth that Members of the Wedding Business Collective book more and work fewer hours than before they joined.

Heidi Neilson:
Oh, team.

Heidi Thompson:
And it’s like, that doesn’t sound like it should be possible, but it’s because you’re no longer doing all of this other stuff for the sake of just trying to like flail at, you know, accomplishing something.

Heidi Neilson:
Yes. Yes. And knowing what’s. Steps to take that will actually move the needle forward and knowing where to focus so that we’re not doing all of that stuff. Like when I did that free up your time exercise challenge with you at the beginning, I was shocked, kind of not like shocked but not surprised. You know that experience where you’re like, oh God, this is uncomfortable, but I kind of already knew it. So much of what I thought was being productive on my business was just scrolling on Instagram and seeing what was going on in the wedding industry. And it was like, yes, I am working. I am figuring out what other vendors are out there, what other venues are out there. I am seeing what trends are and like, okay, brain. But the number of hours, because I would just use scrolling Instagram as like the in-between activity. When my ADD brain wasn’t exactly sure what to tackle next. And then that would end up being hours of my day and it felt like productive business research work. I mean, I’m sure I gained some fundamental knowledge out of it, but oh my goodness, cutting back on that and being intentional about my social media time. Huge step. Yeah.

Heidi Thompson:
What does your time look like now and like the way you are integrating your business and your life?

Heidi Neilson:
Work in progress.

Heidi Thompson:
Always. Always.

Heidi Neilson:
So one thing, I don’t know if people listening will know this, one thing that Heidi does that’s really cool is, I actually don’t know if you do it every quarter, it was a special thing you did this quarter, but after our quarter one planning call, she invited us to submit our plan for the year and then recorded a video with feedback. Going through every single little point of the plan. It was such a beautiful gift to receive all of this feedback. And one of the things that came up in that that was so useful that I’m still in the herky-jerky implementing stage of figuring out is kind of creating two different time blocks for me of when, when I’m working on a large painting project, be it a mural or I have a lot of studio refinement to do on a live painting, like during the work week.

Versus when my work week is a little more administrative and my client work is just happening on the weekends, or, you know, I don’t wanna have that many events, so it’s a few weeks between events, then I’ve got a little more administrative time in between, and I set up a time blocking system in the beginning, and it’s being iterated now because one thing I found was when I would get on a Mural, it would just go completely out the window. It’s like, well, those, those blocks aren’t going to fit with this time. So the stuff that I’m currently working on is figuring out what’s that Plan A time block versus that Plan B time block. What I can say that I’m doing and how my lifestyle looks around time is another thing that you said from that video. Which, by the way, I, I hope I sent a thank you note, but if I didn’t, that was so valuable for me. I so appreciated your feedback on that plan, and I’ve been reflecting on it daily as I work to integrate and continue iterating around all of this stuff. But what you said there was, don’t wait until you hit your booking targets and your financial goals to have these things that you’re saying you want your lifestyle to be about. You know, and for me, the lifestyle that I crave is one that has a lot of spaciousness, a lot of expansiveness.

And I feel like that’s necessary for me to be creatively optimal. And it’s really tempting to feel like I need to hustle all the time to build the business. But I’ve been really focusing this quarter on, no, let me start the lifestyle pieces first, and build the business around the lifestyle pieces.

So one tiny example of that is my current experiment is taking Friday afternoons and making that my day for silly projects around my own house. I love doing weird decorative things in my house and building things out in the garden. And it doesn’t do anything to move my business forward.

And I’m choosing to make it a priority so that I’m building that balanced work life balance from the beginning as this business starts to take off. And I was so happy to hear that. Oh, thank you.

It is completely because of your advice. I would not have had the courage to try that without you. Yeah, I think we get into this idea that like, we have to earn it.

Yes. And it’s like, what the hell? No, I don’t have to earn three hours to work on stuff in my house. That’s ludicrous.

I’m just gonna go do it. Yes. Yeah.

Heidi Thompson:
It’s so funny. Like we just get in this. And that doesn’t mean you won’t have that feeling.

I get that itch sometimes when I’m doing things I want to do. And I just have to remind myself like, no, I the thing I always say to myself is like, this is part of the work, like me, taking time being outside reading books, like that’s part of the work. It keeps my brain healthy.

And if I don’t have that, I don’t have this business. Well said. So it has to be part of it.

It’s not optional to like run myself into the ground every single day. Yes. Yes.

It’s just not gonna work. And it’s so easy to build yourself into a business that then doesn’t allow for that. So I think when you start to introduce that stuff, early, it’s easier to build the business that you actually want, because you realize what you actually want.

And it’s not infinite growth. It’s growth to a certain point, or maybe growth for you and a team, like you see where you want to go to it. But it’s not like, you know, corporations maximizing shareholder value, like, okay, we’re not trying to go insane with this every single quarter of every single year.

We want to build you a business that also gives you the life that you want. Because if you don’t have that, what’s the point? Yes. Yes.

Heidi Neilson:
I’ve been thinking about this phrase in my head lately, that as an artist, one of the things that I go and do is I go collect stardust. And to me, collecting stardust is like taking little few day getaways into nature by myself. So the time that is explicitly non productive, you know, even puttering around doing the projects on my own house, that’s the kind of collecting stardust.

And I feel like I need to gather that stardust to put it into the paintings that I’m painting. There’s been some play with that language this week. And like that, you just blew my mind a little bit right now with this.

I’d never thought about the consequence of hustling, hustling, hustling, working my tail off, not creating a lifestyle as I go building a business. And then, like, I kind of always imagined that, okay, well, well, then I’d be able to carve out whatever time I wanted. But what I just got from what you said was, no, if I build a business based on me showing up x way, it’s going to require me continuing to show up x way.

Or I’m going to have to do a whole lot of work to figure out how to replace myself and back myself out of that. Like, why not just build it the way I want from the beginning? I didn’t even think about like the consequence part of it. I’m just like, whoa, that would suck.

So much easier that way, like, build the house you want, don’t like build this house, and then you have to rip down part of it. And then you have to build an extension. And then like, all these like, that’s so much more work.

Yes. Oh, can I share with you one of the other fun lifestyle things I’m doing this spring? Please. So as the weather is heating up here, I don’t know when this is airing, or if y’all are in the same kind of heat wave we’re experiencing here in California.

We have a little like sunny roof deck. And every couple years they have to be replaced. But I like buying a little kiddie pool.

And I put a little kiddie pool out on the roof. And I call it my rooftop pool. And this spring I am I work really well in like a two focus session workday.

So I have like a morning session. And I’m finding I do really well to just stop trying midday and early afternoon and let myself shut off and then come back for a good focus session. Late afternoon until dinner time.

I’m finding that rhythm works really well for me. And in that middle afternoon time, there’s going to be daily rooftop pool floating around being nothingness. I’m so looking forward to it.

That sounds like so much fun. Yeah. It’s like what a beautiful way to live.

Like I have to take my pool break, everybody. Sorry, I can’t take any calls during this time. I’m on my pool break.

It sounds so ridiculously indulgent. And I love that about it. That’s fantastic.

Heidi Thompson:
I love that so much. Thank you for sharing all of this. I’m curious.

What would you say to someone who’s like, I don’t know, maybe I should check out the Wedding Business Collective?

Heidi Neilson:
Maybe I should see if it can do something similar for me. Oh, I would want to acknowledge that, like, as with an ongoing membership with anything, there, there’s a cost associated with that, right.

And I think you may get super affordable. But it’s always scary to invest in supporting ourselves as business owners. And I think that we don’t talk about that a lot when we talk about all the different things that we can do.

Like acknowledging like, oh, yeah, a membership thing like is an ongoing cost. And I feel like somehow, acknowledging the reality of that. And like, yeah, that can seem scary.

It was really, really scary for me and my particular personality. I’m so flippin grateful that you offer that scholarship. Um, because it got me over that fear, you know, and now I’m a happily paying member.

But I think it’s valuable to like, acknowledge that it takes something to invest in supporting ourselves. And to consider what might be possible if that paid off. You know, like I, I could not have imagined that I’d be at this inflection point that I am now.

Six months ago, I couldn’t have even imagined it for myself. So I guess maybe that’s what I would have want somebody say to me, like, imagine if it’s possible that this works for you. I love that because that opens up so much opportunity and spaciousness.

And I like that you acknowledge that like it can be absolutely scary to invest in ourselves, to invest in learning what we need in order to move forward. But it’s the choice you have to make sometimes if you do want what’s on the other side of that return on the investment that happens to me all the time in my business. I’m thinking about like, okay, I’m gonna spend this money, like, I got to make this worth it.

And yeah, I can absolutely feel scary. But oh my god, has it paid off every single time when I have really made a solid decision about okay, this is where I want to go. This is who has the path.

I’m just going to pay them to help me get there. Yeah, it’s my favorite shortcut. Yes.

Heidi Thompson:
Love that. I also feel like it brings me back to that feeling of the abundance mindset that I was talking about having others in the community model for me, like abundance around yes, there’s plenty of work for all of us. But also yes, abundance that, okay, maybe I haven’t been generating income, really to speak of in the past, but I’m starting to, and I will be generating more in the future.

And I think that allows all of that mindset stuff that we’ve been talking about too. So maybe the practice of investing in ourselves is a practice of that abundance mentality. I like that.

That’s a good way of looking at it. And having faith in yourself and your ability to show up, don’t stay stuck, get the help you need and actually move forward. Yeah.

Heidi Neilson:
Yeah. And somebody to give you permission to not be so rigid with yourself. Like I think it’s come up a few times in this conversation of like the permission to experiment, the permission to change, the permission to refine, the permission to maybe not take it all so seriously.

Like for me, that’s so valuable because inside my own head, it is stressful and pressure filled and noisy, unless I have other people getting me out of that. Oh yeah. I know how that feels.

It’s so easy to slide into that. And you’re a hundred percent right about that. Like being surrounded by people that can help pull you out of it, that can model something different that can show you what’s possible is like game changer in my business too.

That’s so neat to hear that. It’s so fun that the same principles apply further down the road and in different aspects of things. It’s like, oh wow, that stays that way.

That’s neat to hear. Yeah. It’s just the different rooms you’re getting in change.

That’s it. Yeah. I can imagine that.

That’s going to be so fun to feel that as the years go on. Yeah. And I can’t wait to see where you go from here.

Heidi Thompson:
Heidi, if someone wants to reach out to you or learn more about you and what you do, what is the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Heidi Neilson:
Oh, thank you so much for asking. I am still very active on Instagram at with love from Heidi, and I love inquiries and exploration coming in through my website with lovefromheidi.com.

Heidi Thompson:
Thank you so much. This has been an amazing conversation and everyone, I will have those linked up in the show notes for you.

Heidi, thank you so much for being here.

Heidi Neilson:
Oh my goodness. Thank you so much for having me.

This has been such a fun chance to look back over the last six months with you. And I am just absolutely buzzing with gratitude and excitement. Thank you.

Heidi Thompson:
If you heard Heidi’s story and thought, yeah, I want that. I just want to say she was exactly where you are six months ago. She didn’t have a magic niche or a huge following.

She just got clear, got specific and stopped winging it. As she said, she stopped playing business. That’s what we do in the Wedding Business Collective.

And if you’re ready to stop playing a business and actually build one that brings in the clients you want to work with, so you can do the work that you love and still have a business that gives you freedom and flexibility like Heidi to fund projects and have pool time on her deck, check it out at evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/pod. You will find Heidi at withlovefromheidi.com. That is also her Instagram handle. I’m going to include links to all of that in the show notes over at evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/356.

But if you are thinking, this is exactly where I want to be, come join us in the Wedding Business Collective. You can get your first 30 days for just a dollar. That link again is at evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/pod.

I’ll see you inside and I’ll speak to you again very soon. Bye.