258. 5 Strategies to 10X Your Wedding Business (Step-by-Step Guide)

And today we're going to get into the five strategies that you need to be doing today to make this goal a reality. Hey there, CEOs, welcome to the Wedding Pro CEO podcast, the podcast that helps you grow and scale your profitable wedding business. I'm your host Brandee Gaar, and on today's show, we are Ditching the small goals. We are saying no more to thinking small and just adding a 10 or 20 percent growth on our business for next year. I want you to think big picture.

I want you to think what would push me completely out of my comfort zone and help me to really rethink the way that I'm doing business. Today we're talking about 10X. So let's put a number to that CEO. I want you to really think about what is the revenue that my business does this year. It doesn't have to be an exact number, but I want you to have a pretty good idea Now I want you to multiply that by 10. How does that feel? What does it look like? Does it make you feel anxious?

Does it make you feel excited? Does it make you feel overwhelmed, lost, or, completely on fire? Any of these feelings are valid and you might be having multiple of them all at the same time. Trust me. I get it. But when you stop thinking small and you start pushing yourself to really achieve this massive goal, I promise you that you're going to start to really rethink the way that you're doing business today. So let's get into the strategies you need to be implementing.

Okay, so number one is to dominate your niche. Now, you may be thinking, hello, what are you talking about? I'm a wedding planner or I'm a wedding photographer. That's my niche. But I want to encourage you to think deeper. Exactly who is it that you serve? Who are your favorite clients? What about them did you love? What are their specific pain points? What are some clients that you've had in the past that you didn't love working with? And why?

What were the specific things about working with them that made them really not an ideal client for you? focus specifically very, very niche on who is in the market. What types of couples do you love to serve? why did those couples book you, or what are they looking for in what you do? Do they think about time? Do they think about money? Are they overwhelmed by all the details? do you cater to a specific culture or type of wedding?

All of these things we want to make sure is through every single piece of your marketing, your website, your sales. Everything needs to live and breathe speaking to this ideal client. The reason this is important is because there are tons of wedding pros in the marketplace. if you continue to be vanilla, you aren't going to stand out. It's going to become more and more difficult for you to create content, for you to create marketing, for you to close sales because you're just not ready.

Any old photographer or any old DJ. What about working with you makes you unique? What about working with you makes your experience something that that ideal client wants to have as part of their wedding? What I really want you to hear in this section, CEO, is that there's no right answer. It's not wrong to want to be luxury. It's not wrong to want to service a budget couple. It's not wrong to only do Indian weddings. It's not wrong to only do traditional weddings.

there's lots of different ways that you can niche down and really know who it is that you serve. But until you do that and you feel comfortable with it, feel bold in it. And know that because you've really niched down to serve that specific type of couple, that you can serve them so well, like you are the best in your market to serve that couple. You will be so much more confident in your sales. your marketing and your website copy. All of it will start to just work like a well oiled machine.

Okay, number two is increase your prices. Now I know some of you are like, yeah, Brandee, that's easy for you to say. the market is a complete train wreck right now and just increasing my pricing. I won't get any bookings. And here's what I'd say. You might be right. You might absolutely be right in our programs. We work with all of our CEOs inside to really help make sure that they're charging a profitable rate.

And nine times out of 10, when a new CEO comes into our program, we start working through the financial module. They aren't charging enough for their packages. Now this isn't subjective. We're not just like, Hey, you could totally get 6,000 for that thing. You're only charging 3,000 for. It's not subjective at all. It's actually very objective and we take it back to the data and we work through.

How many hours they're putting into the package, what their hard costs are, and any variable costs as well. So that we can really understand, are you making money on this? Are you making enough money on this to reach your goals? The other thing I want you to really consider is that a lot of times what we see is that a wedding pro has fallen into what we call this pricing black hole or a pricing void. sometimes you are too high priced.

for a budget conscious couple, but you're too low priced for a high end couple, a luxury couple. And what that means is that nobody is booking you, right? And that is the worst possible place to be. So if you're starting to feel like that might be something that is happening to you, I really want you to look at your pricing. And I want you to say, you know, if I were to go significantly higher, could I book A third of the clients and make the same amount of money.

And can I really start to market to them and go all in on my luxury marketing? the opposite might be true as well. You might look at your pricing and be like, yeah, I'm in this pricing black hole, but where I feel most comfortable and the clients I love serving the most are in a little bit lower price bracket. Like every sales call that I get onto, I hear your pricing is too high. You're out of budget. Well, that's because you're attracting that budget couple.

And if you want to serve that budget couple, if that feels really good to you and that's your niche, we might need to look at adjusting your pricing down. Now I know the topic of this section is like increase your pricing, but really in reality, what I want you to do is I want you to increase your revenue. And so if that means coming down on your pricing slightly to be able to serve those ideal clients in that budget category, then I want you to do that.

Nine times out of 10 what we see is that pros are charging too little for the market they're servicing. therefore we need to push them into a higher pricing bracket to sell in that higher pricing bracket. So much of that comes just simply for being confident in your services, knowing who you serve, going back to number one, and really being confident in that pricing. The way to become confident in your pricing is to do that data analysis to really understand, am I charging enough?

Am I profitable? Once you know how much you have to charge to be profitable, you don't get excited about discounting anymore. You're not nervous about selling because you're like, yeah, this is literally my price. I'm amazing and take it or leave it. And you start to sell from a much more confident place. So I really want you to look at your pricing Do I need to increase my pricing? Am I falling into this pricing black hole?

And once you do step one, which is to really figure out who your ideal customer is, that's going to help you to serve this second section of, is my pricing correct?

Okay. Number three is to build a scalable system now, to be able to 10X your revenue, I want you to think about that for a second. Go back to when I asked you at the beginning of the episode, what were your feelings when I said we're going to 10X your revenue? Were you immediately like an elephant is sitting on my chest because if I were to 10X my revenue, I would be running around even more crazy than I already am.

That's the feeling that I hear a lot when I'm working with CEOs inside of our programs and I push them to really increase their goal. Immediately, they think. I already work 80 hours a week. How could I possibly work anymore? And I'm like, that's actually the opposite of what we're going to do. You're going to work less. And that's because we're going to build a scalable system Look at everything that you're doing in your business.

And I want you to look at whether one, you need to still be doing it. A lot of times we have busy work as part of our process that honestly doesn't serve. Any needle movers. It doesn't serve the client, doesn't serve you. It's just kind of one of those things you started doing and now it's part of your process and doesn't honestly make any sense. Right?

And so you really want to look at what are the things we do on a daily or weekly basis that honestly don't move the needle for anyone in the company. And let's stop doing those things. Okay. So there's a few things that you could just delete. Like I don't need to do this anymore. And sometimes that's even like running certain reports for your company We run this report every month, but no one looks at it. it doesn't serve any purpose. Let's just stop doing it.

Another thing to look at is what are things that you do manually that could possibly be automated? One of my favorite ones is your email funnel. And I know some of you are like, yeah, Brandee, it's not that easy to set up an email funnel. And I totally hear you. I get it. It's not that easy to set up an email funnel. I think it's simpler than you think.

And we actually work with a lot of our pros inside our programs to really automate this entire process so that when a lead comes in, you do not automatically have to run to your computer or run to your phone to answer that lead. here's a really simple first step that requires almost no setup because you likely already have part of this done. when a lead contacts you through your contact form on your website, there's an automatic first email that goes out.

99. 9 percent of all contact forms on every platform have the ability to send one email back to the client. And they typically call this a thank you page, to say, Hey, thanks for inquiring. And the problem is a lot of us use this as a Throwaway email. it'll say something like, thank you so much for inquiring with XYZ photography company. We will get back to you within 24 to 72 hours and we can't wait to chat with you.

In the meantime, please check out, our pretty little details over on Instagram. Now you've got an email in their inbox, basically telling them, Hey, thanks for inquiring. And we'll get back to you when we feel like it. what is the purpose of that?

Instead, what I want you to do is I want you to think about how can that first automated email move this lead through the funnel without me actually having to do anything. I want that first email to have three things in it. I want it to basically say, thanks so much for inquiring. Right. But I want it to have an FAQ. a linkable FAQ, just some things about your company that people typically ask, Like how many lenses do you bring or do you bring backup equipment?

How many staff do you have on site? How many hours are you there on my wedding day? Like, All these questions that you get asked during an initial consultation make that part of an FAQ. The second thing I want you to always link is all of your pricing. So you know that here on this podcast and all of my platforms, I encourage you to make sure that you have some range of pricing or starting price on your website. But we don't have like the McDonald's menu on our website, right?

Like we don't have every price listed out. We just kind of have a range or a starting price. But now that they've inquired, we really want them to have a better detail of our pricing. So this is where you're going to give them that pricing brochure. You're going to link it. Right there in that email. So you're going to now have an FAQ. You're going to have your pricing so that they've got all of your pricing.

And the third thing that you're going to include in that email is a link to book a consultation with you. You're just going to put your scheduling link right there. Why are you doing that? Because without you even touching this lead, they can inquire, get this first email back, get all of their questions answered see a better detail of your pricing and decide, yes, I want to go ahead and book a consult with them. And you've never even touched it. And they can go ahead and book a consult.

Like so simple, So when I, when I tell you, you need to have a scalable system I want you to think about your automations. What are things like that you can automate in your business? That's going to take that manual labor out of your business. that's just one tip, but I want you to think about all of the things that you can automate in your business that someone on your team or yourself manually does every single time.

And the last thing and building a scalable system is to look at what things you do all the time. You as the owner that can be delegated. Now, you might not have a team yet, so you might be like, Brandee, I can't delegate anything because I don't have a team, but I still want you to make a list of all of those things that you do all the time that could be delegated to someone else.

The reason I want you to do this is because that's going to help us to really figure out who is it that we need to hire on our team, because now we can see all the tasks that they would do. And what's the job description for that? So for number three, we're building a scalable system. And the first way to do that is we are going to look at what things we do every single day that we don't need to do anymore. what things we can automate and what things we can delegate.

And this is a step you do not want to skip. Don't hear this and be like, Oh my gosh, that's not a fun one. I'm not doing it. This is how we're going to 10X your wedding business. And if you're here for the ride, let's go.

Okay. So number four is to invest in marketing that actually converts for you. And this is really, really important. I want you to hear that, that actually converts for you. Now, the reason that so few of us know how to do this is because we don't track the data of where our leads are coming from, right? So you kind of are like, Throwing a video here or there on TikTok. You might throw up a Pinterest pin every once in a while.

You show your face on Instagram once a week or so, but you really don't know what's actually converting in your business. And so you're constantly like, should I run Facebook ads? Should I run Instagram ads? Should I do more TikToks? Should I hire somebody to make a bunch of TikToks for me? Like you don't know where the leads are coming from. So it's a constant throwing of spaghetti, which feels overwhelming. Like, hello, I've been there.

It feels so overwhelming and you don't know what's converting. So what I want you to think about is. What is the marketing in your company that's actually converting for you? Now, one of those things could look like I get a ton of leads from Instagram. Okay, well then why are we going over to TikTok and starting to try to figure out TikTok or Pinterest? I'm not telling you not to do those things at some point. Once we've got Instagram completely dialed in.

But if I know I'm getting a lead a week from Instagram, how can I make that 10 leads a week from Instagram? I know how you can do it. You can show up every day. Every single day you can create a content marketing machine, which actually will feel so much more fun when you start to see results from it. You can't see results from spaghetti. It doesn't work that way. So when you're looking at your leads, I really want you to understand where are they coming from?

Are they coming from the right people? Venues, right? So that's a possibility that you're just on a ton of venue preferred lists. And so you're getting all these referrals from venues. If that's the case, I want you to think about how can I 10 X that? if I'm already getting, let's say five leads a week from Venues that are referrals. Well, how can I 10 X that?

Maybe I can start going onto all of their Instagram pages comment and engage very strategically on their posts so that even more of those couples will start to see me. They'll get to know, like, and trust me right from that social media. I really want you to think about that. It could mean that you go to those venues set up tours and you just pop in, maybe you bring a treat and you're just like, Hey, I just want to thank you so much for the referrals. how can we be an even better partner to you.

There's lots of ways that leads can be coming into your business, but until you understand what's working best you can't really pour fuel where it's going to make the biggest flame. So in this number four, I really want you to think about. Where do our leads come from? How can we really 10 X the number of leads we're getting from that lead source? And for the time being, it might mean that you quit being on so many platforms It might mean that you triple down on your content.

On Instagram or TikTok is your biggest lead source. Like there's a videographer on threads who was like, my TikTok leads are blowing up. Now that came with him posting consistently for two years before he saw the first lead come in But now he's seeing leads start to really consistently come in. So he's like, I'm going to triple down on my content over there because he's seeing that it's working. So that's what I really want you to look at is where the leads come from.

How can I triple down on it so that I can 10 X. My lead flow.

Okay, guys, number five might be my favorite because this one is about scaling your team the right way. Now, if you're anything like me, I built my company the wrong way in the beginning, A lot of the reason why I became a coach was because I was like, no one taught us how to scale correctly. I was a really good planner of events. I'm a very good wedding planner. I know that about myself. I loved it.

That's why I got into the business many of you listening to this are probably like, yeah, I'm freaking good photographer. Like I know I am. That's why I got into the business, but you were never taught how to scale. Scale that business. You were never taught that. we're just really good at our craft. And so what happens is you start to grow and grow. Cause you're like, yeah, I'm good at what I do. I'm good at selling. So now you have all this business and your business is starting to run you.

So you hear people like me say, you need to hire, you need to build a team. And so you just start hiring a bunch of contractors. Now, all of a sudden you're like, Brandee timeout. I now have like a hundred weddings. I have 50 of them myself. I have a team who have weddings and they need my attention. The clients see my attention. There's editing to be done or song lists to be made or timelines to be created and it's all falling on me and I feel psychotic. I don't want any of this.

I just want to go back to being a solopreneur. That happened to me about 10 years ago and honestly that was the point in my business where I almost lit a match and threw it on the whole pile because from the outside looking in. It looked like we were so successful because we had a huge team. I think I had 11 contractors at the time. We were doing 200 weddings a year. We were being referred by literally everyone in town. the challenge was that I felt like a psychopath.

if I wasn't working, I was thinking about working. I was dreaming about working. I was sleeping about working. Like it. consumed my every thought. I always have had this vision of like, I'm juggling a bunch of balls. And at any point, if I even just like looked away for a second, they would all come crashing down around me. And that's not a fun way to run a business. It feels very maniacal. So then when you hear me say something like, Okay, I'm going to teach you to 10X your wedding business.

You're like, what the heck girl? No way. the reason that we've done it wrong when you do it that way is that you're not building your team strategically. And what I mean by that is that as you scale, you have to have people in place that take your place, right? In our programs, we teach how to build a four pronged executive team,

Now, when you first come into the accelerator, which is our program to teach you how to hit your first six figures. We're obviously not having you build out a four pronged executive team, right? No, we're teaching you how to hire strategically so that those people that you're hiring at that level can start to become part of your strategic team. But obviously in that first six figures, you're not building out an executive team now in that second tier of business where you're going from.

100, 000 to about three to 500, 000 in revenue. That's where we're really putting this strategic team into place. So that four pronged executive team looks like an operations manager, a marketing manager, a sales manager, and a team culture manager.

And the reason that it's important to have all four of those as you grow and scale your business is because right now, you as a solopreneur are likely doing all of those things, And so each hire is going to strategically replace you in one of those roles. So we've got you and we've got these four roles. You're currently doing all of them. How do we replace you in each one with each strategic hire?

So that once you've got that full four piece team built out, now you could really focus on Even further growth. And that's how we work with our pros in our next level program, which is where we're scaling to seven figures because we've now replaced the CEO, the owner with all four of these roles. now you, as the owner, go back to that place of where your job is vision casting creating additional revenue streams and mentoring that executive team so that they can pour in to the rest of your team.

So when you think, how would I possibly 10 X it's because we're building a strategic team and you are only going to pour into four people and then they're going to pour into the rest of your team, when you start to do it, you're like, no way. Is this possible? It's not just possible. It's probable. It's how it's going to happen. It's how you hit that seven figure mark. It's how you 10 X your revenue. If you're listening to this.

And at the beginning I said to you, tell me, like think about what your revenue is now and what that 10 X goal is. Does it now feel more attainable at the end of this episode when you're listening and you're like, yeah, okay, wait a second. I think I actually can 10 X my revenue. And if that's you, if you're at the end of this episode and you're like, let's go. I'm all in. I am so ready. I would love to chat with you more about really how you are going to reach that 10 X goal.

I love helping wedding pros to see this possibility. It's so exciting to me. And I would love to invite you into one of our programs. We have three levels of programs depending on where you are in your business journey. all of those programs lead you toward really scaling and hitting that 10 X seven figures in your wedding business, because y'all, we are done playing small in the wedding industry.

We are here to help you grow and scale in a sustainable way so that you are working less and you're making more and you're building careers for people in our industry to work as part of your brand and really help you to scale that successful brand. thank you so much for being here. I absolutely love coming into your ears every single week. if you're interested in learning more about our Wedding Pro CEO programs, pop over into my DMs.

I'm at Brandee Gaar over on Instagram Let's talk about your business where you are and how we can help you to hit that 10 X goal. I'll see you next time.