Wedding Pro CEO | Building Profitable Wedding Businesses
Dive deep into the wedding industry and learn actionable tips from host Brandee Gaar and guest wedding pro CEOs that will enable you take your wedding business to new heights!
Uncover the proven strategies, insights, and stories of successful wedding professionals who have built thriving businesses in this dynamic and competitive market.
Each week, Brandee Gaar, a seasoned wedding industry expert and CEO of Blush by Brandee Gaar, brings you exclusive interviews with top wedding industry pros!
This weekly podcast is for wedding pros. Here from planners, venue owners, photographers, florists, caterers, djs, and more!!
You will gain valuable knowledge and practical tips on sales, marketing, branding, client management, and the latest trends shaping the wedding industry and the business leaders that create incredible events for a living.
Whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting out, this podcast is your go-to resource for actionable advice and inspiration.
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You will become motivated to transform your passion into profit, develop incredible processes and create unforgettable experiences for couples on their special day.
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Wedding Pro CEO | Building Profitable Wedding Businesses
282. The #1 Mistake That's KILLING Your Wedding Planning Business
Wedding planners—are you cutting event management from your services? BIG mistake.
If you’ve hit that “fully booked” stage and think the only way to scale is by eliminating event management, I need you to STOP. Cutting it means losing cash flow, vendor referrals, and a built-in training ground for your team.
But here’s the good news: you don’t have to do it yourself. In this episode, I’ll walk you through how to keep event management as a strategic part of your business—so you can scale faster, build a stronger reputation, and create predictable income WITHOUT adding more to your plate.
Let’s make your business a money-printing machine. Apply to work with us inside Wedding Pro CEO at weddingproceo.com/application, and let’s build your dream team!
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I see this all the time with wedding planners who are trying to scale. They hit that point where they're fully booked, they're drowning in weddings, and they think the only way to grow is to cut event management completely. because let's be real. It feels like the entry level service, right? Something you only did when you were first starting out. But here's the thing, dropping event management is one of the biggest mistakes you can make. If you wanna scale faster, build a stronger reputation in your market, and keep cash flowing consistently in your business. Hey there, CEO. You're listening to the Wedding Pro CEO Podcast. The podcast to help you grow and scale your profitable wedding business. I'm your host, Brandee Gaar, and over the last 17 years, I've grown one of the largest planning firms in Orlando, Florida, grossing more than $6 million in revenue. Now I'm one of the industry. Top business coaches and my mission is to break the industry standards and change the way the wedding industry does business. In today's episode, I'm breaking down why Keeping event management in your offers strategically can be the secret to growing your business without overloading yourself. And the best part, you don't have to do it all yourself. Okay, so first things first. Let's talk about how this mistake happens in the first place. You start your business and you do what most planners do. You start with event management. Because it's lower cost, it's easy for clients to buy, and then boom, all of a sudden you're getting experience making money and starting to be referred all over town because you've built this really great reputation. And then success hits. Suddenly you are booked out and full service clients are knocking at your door and you don't have any availability. So what do you do? You cut event management to make room for all of these luxury clients coming your way, and you're like, yeah, Brandee, I just solved that problem. No more event management for me, luxury clients all the way. So you cut it, event management gone, and you start to tell yourself the story. I only wanna work with high-end luxury clients. you justify it by saying, I don't have time to work with budget conscious couples anymore. And before you know it, your pipeline dries up. Because here's the part you didn't realize. One event management was fueling your sales funnel. You were being referred by partner vendors and venues all over town that were consistently driving leads into your sales funnel. Number two, it was a training ground for your team. You could have used those event management weddings to train a team so that you could slowly start to step into those bigger weddings yourself and really own your role as the CEO of your business. And number three, event management weddings we're keeping your cash flow steady. It feels so good when a full service wedding comes along and pays you this large sum of money. But full service weddings are much fewer to be had, and so you go through peaks and valleys of cash flow when you don't have those event management weddings there to consistently fill your cash bucket. And you threw it all away. No shade. CEO. I have seen countless wedding planners that come into Wedding Pro, CEO to work with us, the first thing they say is, I don't offer event management anymore, but I'm not sure why I'm not making any money. And we're like, we know exactly why, let's add it back in. But we're not just gonna tell you to add it back in. We wanna help you do it in a really healthy way that's actually gonna help your business to make more profit and to scale you into that healthy work life balance. So let's talk about how we're gonna fix this mistake. The good news is it's really easy to add event management back into your service offerings. And the even better news is you're never gonna do one again yourself.
The secret:to build a team, Your event management weddings should not be run by you. Once you get to this point. You will never do an event management wedding again. We are gonna build up a strategic team to be able to run these for you create that consistent cash flow. This is how we are going to one train up and coming planners to join your team and really help them to learn how to run the last 60 days of coordination for any of the bigger weddings that they will eventually do. Learning this piece of the puzzle is essential to becoming a great wedding planner, so when you get rid of event management. You have no training ground to be able to bring new planners into your team. We wanna bring new planners in, let them learn on event management, learn how to keep that calm, cool exterior on wedding day even when everything is burning down around them. And we want them to understand the logistics of running day of onsite at a coordination wedding. Keeping event management as part of your service offerings also allows you to keep your brand name front and center with all of those venues and partner vendors in town. Think about it when you're doing 20 or 30 event management weddings every single year, that's that many more opportunities that you have to get your brand at the venues to work with, the teams of vendors that you get to work with every single weekend. And that many more opportunities for five star reviews for your company to receive. And keeping event management as part of your service offerings also allows you to keep predictable income. We talked about those big full service weddings are so fun when you book them, but they are so much fewer that you're gonna get as bookings, and that really causes that peak and valley cash flow that so many wedding planners go through. When you offer event management, that's gonna allow you to have two to three new bookings every single month. And while there're a smaller amount, it's predictable income, it's income that can help cover your break even every single month. It's income that helps cover your fixed expenses, and we really want to allow that for you so that you as the CEO. Can be focused on getting some of those higher end weddings that are gonna be kind of the gravy to your cashflow and are gonna allow you to flex your design muscles while still having your team out every single weekend in these venues. This CEO is how the biggest planning firms scale their business. They don't kill off event management. They delegate it out. If you're listening to this and you're like, Brandee, listen, I hear you, but the math does not. Math I, it just doesn't make sense for me to keep event management. It's so stressful, it's overwhelming. I don't really wanna build a team. Let me reign you back in. I want you to dial in and really listen to me. I'm gonna break down the math for you right now. Let's say that you charge$2,500 for your event management service, and you can book. 30 of those in a year because you stop turning those clients away and you actually take them on, right? So 30 event management weddings times $2,500 is gonna be $75,000 in additional revenue that flows through to your bottom line this year. Now I want you to imagine that you have an associate team that's running those weddings and you pay them 40% of the total package price, which if you haven't heard this in a past episode, that is the goal number that we want to pay our planners that work for us. 40% of what you charge to the customer. That way, 60% is flowing through to the business. So now you've got $75,000 in additional revenue coming through into your business, and $30,000 going out to pay those associates to plan those weddings. So $45,000. In profit that's flowing through to your business, all because you added event management back into your service offerings. You actually were excited to take them because you are not the one going out every single weekend. now your brand has 30 additional weddings this year for Google reviews. For networking with venues and for networking with those vendor teams. Think about the reality of that. That's just not$45,000 in profit. That is a whole pile on of amazing opportunities for you to capitalize on, all because you added event management back into your service offerings. Wedding Pro.. This is what I call scaling like a CEO because you're not just running a business, you are scaling a money printing machine. Here's the thing, CEO. If you want to scale past six figures, you have to stop thinking like a solopreneur and you have to start thinking bigger event management is not a low budget service. It is literally a strategy for scale and growth. So if you're listening to this episode and you're like, okay, Brandee, tell me exactly what I need to do right now because I got rid of event management. Number one, I want you to add it back in, get it back on your website, add it back to your pricing brochure, and make sure you tell the venues and vendor partners in your local network, Hey, we are adding event management back in. We would love to work with you if you have some perfect couples for us. Number two, if you're like, yes, that sounds great. I wanna do this. I believe you. I know it's gonna work, but I am already tapped out, like my availability is at a max. It's time to hire a team. And if that's where you are, I want to chat. Drop into my dms. I'm at Brandee Gaar on Instagram. Let's chat because this is literally what we do inside of Wedding Pro, CEO, and we help you to build out that strategic team inside of our Inner Circle program, and we're gonna help you two x your revenue within a year by building out that strategic team. And number three, if you wanna scale, I want you to start thinking like a CEO. Really take some time this week to think, do I still have a solopreneur mindset or am I starting to think like a CEO? You have to get past that mindset that's keeping you small. And if this episode resonated with you, and you're like, yes, I am in, tell me what to do. I want to understand better about how I can create this money printing machine for my wedding planning business. I want to invite you to apply to work with us inside of Wedding Pro CEO. You can head over to wedding pro ceo.com/application. Fill out a few questions for us, and then book a time to talk with our coaching team about your business. We're gonna work through where the gaps are in your business, where you need the most help, whether that's building a team or with the profit on your packages, or it could be sales or marketing. We're gonna identify those gaps and we're gonna work through what the solutions are for you specifically in your business to really close up those gaps. This is completely free. It's our way to help the industry. We absolutely love doing these. So head over to wedding pro ceo.com/application and I will see you there.
