6 things I have learnt over the summer break!

If you are an ambitious wedding business owner that wants to take your passion and use it to build a profitable, sustainable business, doing what you love, then you're in the right place. Let's get going with today's episode. I actually cannot believe we are in September already. Where has the summer gone? I trust that you've had a good summer, whether you've been working really hard, at lots of weddings, or going on holiday, or just like me, juggling your children.

I hope you've had a good time. I also hope you've enjoyed our summer series here on the podcast. Over the month of August, I was sharing with you some of the behind the scenes content from my Wedding Pro Members Lounge. The content that's normally available for members only, But this summer I opened it up for the podcast. If you haven't listened to all those episodes yet, do go back and listen to them. There's some really great stuff in there and I hope you enjoyed it.

And if you want more of where that came from, then why not consider joining the Wedding Pro Members Lounge? We've got some amazing trainees coming up this season as well as some social events and lots and lots of accountability too. So if you want more information about the Wedding Pro Members Lounge, go to the show notes. There is not a better time to join than the autumn.

Okay. In today's episode, I'm going to be talking about six things that I learned over the summer break and how I think they can help you move your wedding business forward. So the first one is going to be an obvious one, but I think it's something that I'm not very good at doing and you're probably not doing very good at doing either. And that is taking a break. I mean, a proper break.

I went on a couple of little holidays and trips away over the summer but quite frankly when you're self employed it's really really hard to take an actual break and if you're anything like me you end up working and doing bits and pieces all the time and honestly it just leads to being burnt out and you're not fresh and you're not thinking of your best ideas. So I want to encourage you, as I encourage myself, that sometimes you do need to take a break, even if it's just for two or three days.

And what I actually ended up doing over the summer, I went away just me and the husband without any children. And for three nights we went away and in the end I was like, I need to take a proper break. I'm burning out. I need time to think. I need time to reset. And what I did in the end was put on my out of office. That's always a good step. Tell people that you're away. I always make my out of office useful to people.

So don't just write, I'm out of the office, but actually put some links on there or a link to your podcast. If you've got one or a link to your pricing page or a link to your contact page or your diary or whatever it is, use it for something useful so that people will, you know, Enjoy getting your out of office rather than just getting a I'm not here email. So I put my office on and then while I was away, I actually locked my phone most days in the safe.

And the reason is because if I have my phone in my hand, quite frankly, I'm not taking a break. I don't know if you're like me. Either I'm getting notifications, Facebook posts, I'm seeing things on Instagram, I'm seeing all sorts of stuff going on in my phone, WhatsApp messages, phone calls, emails. And once I've seen it, I find it really hard to ignore it. So the best way for me to deal with that is to just lock it away. So that's what I did this summer.

Over those few days, I locked my phone in the safe and I cannot tell you how beneficial just that few days away from everything was. Just lying there without a phone. I actually read a book and just lying there thinking, resting, sleeping, enjoying. the company of the person that I'm with was amazing. And it does make you feel fresher. It does help you come back with a fresh perspective. I came up with some great ideas because my head was clear and it wasn't full of the business. And guess what?

Nothing fell apart in my absence. Sometimes I think we think if we take a break away, that we'll lose work or everything will fall apart. But actually sometimes our own break is worth it. So that's my first learning is an obvious one, but it definitely needs to happen for all of us more. And that is take a break. And if you cannot remember the last time you took a break, or you can't imagine how long it is till the next time you take a break, that's probably a sign that you need to do it.

Get some self control, lock away your phone, put your out of office on and just go enjoy life. Be in the moment for a few days. Okay, the second thing that I learned, and it's on a similar track really, is that outsourcing is an incredible opportunity, especially when you're busy. Now there's things in our business that we have to do, but there are things in our business that at times we can outsource.

And I am also a little bit reluctant sometimes to outsource things that I know I can do myself. But sometimes when we're time poor, we can actually outsource things that we know that we could do ourselves. But. actually, someone else has a little bit more time to do for us. Now, you may have seen over the summer on Instagram and on email, I've been talking about my Kickstarter campaign. So for a while, I've been talking about bringing out my book.

We are so close to bring out the book, but I realized at the start of the summer that the costs of the book were escalating. And I was worried about having the finances to pay for it. And so I came up with this idea of launching a Kickstarter so that people could pre order the book and get various rewards. And in return, I was guaranteed to see that I was getting some money into the bank account to pay for some of the costs, like the editing and the printing costs, that kind of thing.

But it was almost the start of the summer holidays. I was drowning and there was absolutely no way I had time to set up this Kickstarter. So I relented and I thought, actually, I do need to outsource this to someone. And so I outsourced it to one of my team. And it was probably the best thing I've done because they built my Kickstarter for me. They helped me come up with the rewards. They helped me come up with some social media content to talk about the Kickstarter.

They made sure everything was effective and running. And then all they did was send me the link so that I could share it with people. And It was amazing and it was very little work for me. They did a great job. Yes, I could have set it up myself, but I just didn't have time to do it over the summer. And actually I managed to launch the Kickstarter and hit the Kickstarter target all during the summer holidays when I haven't been able to do very much work.

And that's all down to the fact that I outsourced it. Now, if I'd have been stubborn, I could have said, no, I'm going to do that when I get back in September, I will do it myself. I will not pay someone else to do it, but now I would be having to do it and I wouldn't be closer to that goal. Whereas now, because I outsourced it, it's more than paid for itself. I've got the goal. I'm still selling books and I'm in a much better place.

So sometimes we do need to outsource things, even if we know we can do them ourselves. Sometimes you can just outsource things for a short amount of time at the wedding. agency. One of the reasons I set it up in the way that I did is that we can offer short term support for people because sometimes you don't need support all year round, but there may be a couple of months in the year, or maybe you've got something special going on.

Perhaps you've got a really busy season or you just need a bit of ad hoc help just at a certain time with something like building a page or updating something on your website. And that's where we can help you. So if you do find yourself needing some help outsourcing, I cannot recommend my team enough. They did an amazing job for me and they can do an amazing job for you as well. So do get in touch, but don't hold off on outsourcing.

Sometimes it's better to outsource, even though you could do it yourself. It just frees you up to be doing other things or to be present with your family, which is what I was doing over the summer. Okay, number three on the things I learned over the summer. This one's a little bit embarrassing for me, but I'm going to share this story anyway because I think it's a really good reminder to us all that people do not read emails.

Sometimes as wedding business owners or wedding venue owners, we send out emails to our clients or prospective clients and it feels like they're ignoring us. Perhaps we need a certain piece of information. Perhaps we need an answer to a question.

Maybe we're waiting for something from them and yet it feels like they're ignoring us, they're ghosting us, maybe they've disappeared off the planet, maybe they're just rude because they're not replying to our email or they haven't answered our question. And I want to reiterate that maybe actually they just haven't read the email because often people skim read emails, don't read all of the details.

How often I've read an email, thought I'd actually everything in it but there was actually something buried in the middle of it that I clearly skimmed across and people do that to me all of the time as well. I'll ask them, I'll send a follow up email saying I just wondered if you saw my new So we're not very good at reading, our attention spans are poor. Now the reason this came to my attention over the summer particularly is because I am quite an organized person.

I do often go on my emails and I feel like I'm the person who does read all of the emails, but it turns out maybe I'm not. So with my friends over the summer, we booked to go and do a Disney. Brunch. A bottomless brunch with Disney songs sung by live performers. It was incredible for any Disney lover like me. We went out for a night out and I was the one who planned it because I absolutely love Disney.

I booked the tickets, paid for the tickets, everyone paid me back, and then the day of the event came and one of my lovely friends messaged me and said, Were we supposed to pre order food? Because I've been looking at the details about today and I noticed on the website it said that food will need to be pre ordered and you haven't asked us to pre order anything. So I replied straight back and said, oh that's strange because I definitely haven't had an email about pre ordering food.

Maybe we just do it when we get there. So then I went on the website and read the same thing and I thought to myself, have I missed something here? So I went back through my emails and searched for the email name of the people that were organising the event. And it turned out I actually had four.

Five emails asking me to pre order the food that I had clearly overlooked, ignored, not read, and it was totally my fault, but it absolutely backed up the fact that people don't read emails because they're busy because they've got things going on. Maybe I'd read it and thought it was spam and hadn't realized it was an email that I actually need to do something about. Anyway, crisis averted. I rang them up. I said, sorry, that hadn't pre ordered.

They let me pre order over the phone and all was well, but it didn't work. It served as a good reminder that people don't always read emails, even when they have the best intentions. I had the best intentions. I was planning a night out. I obviously wanted to order my food and I still hadn't seen the reminder. And I was shocked myself when I looked back and realized they'd emailed me five times. Now they hadn't ever picked up the phone.

And sometimes we do need to look at other ways of communicating with people. If you haven't heard back or you've got an urgent thing you need to know, just pick up the phone and ask the question. Because if they'd have rung me, I'd have Sorted it out straight away. However, it doesn't excuse my poor behavior. I should read my emails, but this day and age, remember lots of people don't. Okay. That brings me then onto number four.

The fourth thing I've learned this summer is that it's okay to be authentically us. And it's okay to be honest. These are things that I talk about a lot, but you know, I need to practice what I preach. As I mentioned earlier in the summer, Kickstarter campaign for my book. And I had one person, I had a lot of people actually comment. Positively, but you know, there's always one negative Nelly.

I had one person say really odd comments to me and it was something along the lines of, Oh, don't you think that's weird marketing to do that? Don't you think you look like you haven't got it all together or don't you want to show a different perspective? Like you've got everything perfectly. If you're trying to help people run a business. And I thought about that. I reflected on it and I thought actually.

No, because I teach people to be authentically themselves and business isn't plain sailing. And I don't think it's true that most of us are standing waiting to get on a private jet. Yes, I live a great life. Yes, sometimes good things happen, but we are living in the real world and sometimes, It's harder than other times. And when I planned to write a book, I hadn't really estimated how much it was going to cost. I hadn't realized it was going to cost as much as it was. And it is a large outlay.

And so to me, it did make sense to pre order it for people so that I could get that money up front. And by sharing my story, I've been sharing the story all the way along with this book. book. I've been doing a real series about helping me to write a book, explaining how hard it is, explaining the process and getting people alongside me. And so for me, launching the Kickstarter was just a follow on from that. And I think people appreciate sometimes when you're just honest and you're yourself.

I think if we try to pretend that we're perfect, like we've got it all together, like our wedding business is thriving 100 percent of the time, we're thriving 100 percent of the time, but nothing ever goes wrong. That's not really reality. That's the Instagram version of perfection. Maybe that's marketing. But actually, if we want people to connect with us and to understand what life's like and to work with us, then sometimes it's okay to just be ourselves.

So I have no regrets about my Kickstarter campaign. It's a great way for people to get rewards and you can get some great stuff by, by joining in with it. And no, to the person that thinks it was a bad move, I personally don't believe it was a bad move because now I can help me bring the book into the world. And my debut book, Done Is Better Than Perfect, will be ready in November, which is incredibly exciting. And I know I've mentioned it on the podcast a few times. It was a pipe dream.

It's now fast becoming a reality. And I'd love you to pre order a copy as well. So I will put the link to that in the show notes. Okay, moving on to the fifth thing that I've learned over the summer break, and it's this. Owning a business is not an easy ride. If you started your wedding business because you wanted life to be easy, then I've got news for you. Owning a business is not an easy ride. Yes, it's very rewarding.

Yes, there are some perks and benefits, but I promise you it's not an easy ride at all. I've actually found this summer really difficult. It's probably the hardest summer that I've had since owning my business. And I think that's for a couple of different reasons. So I've always taken the summer off. I love being with the kids over the summer. It's why I went self employed in the first place.

But as my business has grown and developed and I've got team members and I've got an agency and I've got a podcast, you know, it's not so easy to just take the summer off. And I think this summer was the first time that I've really struggled to find that good balance. Because I did have lots of work, and I didn't want to let anyone down, and I have been incredibly busy, but I also still wanted to keep that time with my family.

It's precious to me, that's why I went self employed in the first place. So it's been a real struggle, and I've been reflecting over why that is, and I think I've suffered really with a lot of guilt over the summer, so. I've had work to do so I felt guilty for not getting my work done or for not helping my team enough or for not getting things done as quickly as I could or replying to people as quickly as I could.

But then also I felt guilty if I spend time working during the day because I'm self employed so I can have fun with the kids and do stuff with them over the summer. And then I felt guilty working in the evening because my husband comes home and I want to spend time with him as well. And so it's Basically resulted in a summer being all over the place. And I think it has been a struggle. I definitely need something I need to address next year. I need to think through how to do the summer better.

I don't think there's an easy answer at all to that. However. Good to remember that it's not easy for any of us. None of us have this perfect life. People who are employed find it incredibly difficult over the summer to find child care. People who are self employed, we find it incredibly difficult over the summer as well. And being self employed is not an easy ride. There will be months when you think you're not sure where your money's going to come from.

There'll be months where you feel burnout. There'll be months where your creative juices don't feel like they're flowing and you can't think about anything to put on social media. There'll be months where you feel like just jacking it all in and going to work at Tesco's and it's not easy, but rest assured, everyone has times like that. I do my accountability calls every single month. with my members. They're called the lounge calls.

And every month we get together and we go through goal setting targets and we reflect back on the previous months. And what I find really interesting is that different people show up on the call and sometimes people come up and they're having a really tough month. And then a few months later, they're on the same call and they're talking about how great everything is. And it shows that everyone goes through troughs because when someone's having a good month, someone else is having a struggle.

And when someone else is having a struggle, someone else is having a good month. And if you are in that period of struggle, Just know it's not forever. There are ways forward. There are ways to deal with it. And sometimes we do have to make difficult decisions in business. Sometimes we do have to stop paying for something. Sometimes we do need to look at other ways to market ourselves. Sometimes we do need to look at whether we do part time work alongside building our business.

And sometimes we do have to come to a decision The business isn't quite right for us and all of those things are okay. It's not easy. And if you come to one of these decisions, it doesn't mean you failed. It just means you've made the right decision for you and where you're at. So I hope that's encouraging for you. It's not been easy for me over the summer. Am I about to give up? No. Do I need to look at how things are different next summer? Probably. Am I excited about the autumn? Absolutely.

And. Are we going to have different times of year which are difficult for each of us? Yes, we are. And that's perfectly normal and a perfectly normal way of being self employed. And anyone who tells you anything different, well, I don't believe them. Okay, then that brings me then on to number six. My final learning over the summer, and that is that you are a business owner, so you need to take back control of your business.

Now, this really is about some of my members rather than about me, but over the summer, I've noticed a bit of a theme in some of the posts that have been coming in from my members. about clients trying to take control of the situation.

And each time I've had to remind my members about boundaries and about the fact that we went self employed so that we can make our own decisions, so that we could say no to things we didn't want to do, so that we could do things in our own way and build our own life, not have that nine to five job where we have to go to lunch at a certain time and be in work at a certain time. But sometimes our clients like to push those boundaries.

Sometimes they might ask us for something that doesn't quite feel right or is a little bit outside of our remit of what we offer. Sometimes someone might ask us for a massive discount that we just know that we can't say yes to. Sometimes people might take advantage of contacting us really late at night or asking for us to do something really last minute. And it's just a reminder really that all of us We're, we're able to say no. We are entitled to say no. You don't have to say yes to things.

We need to set boundaries. You can go back and say, I don't reply to emails at this time of night, or unfortunately it's too late notice for me to do that. However, if you want to pay an additional fee, I might be able to make something happen. You are in control of your business. Remember that don't let your customers control you. You set the boundaries, you set the rules and the more you let people. Push those boundaries and break those boundaries.

The more they'll take advantage of you and the more you'll find yourself running into the ground. Perhaps there's a supplier that you don't really enjoy working with or a venue that you find difficult. Well, it's okay to say no to weddings at that venue. If you want to, it's your business. You do not have to take on any work. It's okay.

Absolutely fine for you to say, sorry, I can't make that because you know, you don't want to work at that venue or I'm not prepared to work at that wedding because of X person being involved. Now you might not say it like that. You might find a different reason, but you know, your reason, and it's absolutely okay to say no. So it's just a reminder, really, that. It's your business. At the end of the day, you don't have to say yes to anything. That's why you went self employed in the first place.

And maybe it's time as we go into September and into the autumn, winter season for you to reevaluate those boundaries. I think setting clear boundaries right at the start of your onboarding process is a great idea. We've had some great episodes here on the podcast. All about setting boundaries as well that you can go back and listen to. But just a reminder, have you pushed the boundaries too far?

Do you need to rein people back in again, or do you need to make it clearer in your onboarding process? What you will and won't tolerate and what the system is. Okay, so to recap, it has been a juggle for me this summer, but I've had a lot of good times. I've been to Legoland, I've been to Bournemouth, I've had fun, I've laughed, I've joked, I've seen friends and I've absolutely loved spending time with my kids, but I have learned some lessons as well.

So to recap, these are the lessons learned over the summer. Number one, take that break, lock your phone away, put it in the safe, get an out of office on and just take some time for you. Secondly, don't be afraid to outsource Tasks, even if you know you can do them yourself, sometimes you just need someone else to take it off you because they've got more time than you do. Thirdly, remember people don't read emails. I didn't read five emails about a brunch.

I know it's ridiculous, but your clients are probably ridiculous too. So send another email, ask in a different way, pick up the phone if you need an answer. And remember, not everyone reads their emails properly. Next up is, it's okay to be honest. Don't pretend everything's perfect all of the time. If you need help with something, if you're struggling with something or something's not going well. It's absolutely fine to ask for help and be authentically you.

Number five is to remember that being in business is not an easy ride. If you think it is, then you're clearly not sure what's going on with you, because I want some of what you've got, because for most of us, it's not an easy ride. There are some months that are going to be better than others. There'll be some months when you want to give it all up. There'll be some months where you think it's the best thing ever, and it's totally normal. That's why having a great day.

Membership that like the Wedding Pro Members lounge, a community of people where you can share those ups and downs is so helpful because they will put you back on the straight and narrow. When you're feeling rubbish, they'll encourage you when you're feeling great, they'll celebrate you. And honestly, it's the best thing ever. And the final thing is take back control. Don't let your customers rule you. It's your business. At the end of the day, you don't have to say yes to anything.

You're absolutely fine to set the boundaries and do the things you want. It's great to be back. I hope you have a great week. And I'll see you all next time.