288. Why You Feel Broke—Even If You're Fully Booked

You didn’t start your business to stay stuck. If you're ready to finally hit 6 or 7 figures WITHOUT burning out — book a call with our team → https://weddingproceo.com/application

If you’ve ever had a fully booked calendar but still felt broke at the end of the month, this episode is for you. 

I’m breaking down the difference between sales (booked contracts) and revenue (cash in the bank), and why tracking both is the key to building a profitable wedding business that actually pays you consistently. 

Don’t let feast-or-famine cycles control your finances—learn how to forecast like a real CEO.

The (FREE!)ASSUME Sales Training: 2x your wedding bookings in 30 days—step by step. Thousands of wedding pros have already used it to land more clients immediately! http://weddingproceo.com/freetrainingorg

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EPISODE SHOW NOTES BLOG & MORE:

https://weddingproceo.com/why-you-feel-broke-even-if-youre-fully-booked/

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Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Wedding Pro CEO Podcast. If you find these strategies helpful, make sure to share this episode with your fellow wedding pros. And remember, in the world of weddings, it's all about building genuine relationships and showcasing your best work. Until next time, keep shining, CEOs!

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Chapters

• 0:00 Broke or Tracking the Wrong Numbers?
• 0:50 Sales and Revenue
• 1:41 Sales
• 2:04 Revenue
• 4:16 Cash in the Bank
• 5:46 Forecasting
• 8:33 Break Even Number
• 11:30 Try This Next

Transcript

Brandee Gaar: 0:00

So you're having your first six figure year, which is so exciting, but somehow your bank account keeps bouncing between feast or famine. What gives, here's the thing, you're not broke, but you're just tracking the wrong numbers. today I'm breaking down the difference between sales and revenue and why knowing the difference is critical to your business success. I'm Brandee Gaar. I built one of the top wedding planning firms in Orlando, Florida, scaled it to a team run business, and now I coach wedding pros from all over the world, how to build a profitable, scalable business that doesn't burn them into the ground. If you're only tracking booked weddings every single month, you're probably overestimating how healthy your business actually is, and that's why so many wedding pros hit total burnout with nothing to show for it. So the first thing we wanna talk about is the difference between sales and revenue. So many wedding business owners get this confused, and I get it because we weren't taught how to track these things. And so the fact that you're tracking either one of them, if you are. Give yourself a clap, a high five for that because a lot of times we tend to bury our head in the sand and not want to track this at all. So you really don't have any idea what the financial health of your business is. So if you're tracking one of them, kudos to you. What I want you to do from here is to be able to understand the difference between sales and revenue and to track both. Because together they're gonna give you a really good picture of the financial health of your business. But not only that, they're gonna help you to. Forecast when you're gonna have some of those famine months so that you can prepare in advance for, and not get caught, not being able to take a salary for yourself. So sales is the total value of an event. let's say that you book a wedding today that's worth $6,000. It's a $6,000 wedding. You book it today, it's not happening until sometime next year. The sales value is still that $6,000 because that's how much you booked. This month that you sold it for, right? So it's the total value of that booking. Now the difference with revenue is revenue is the amount of cash that actually hit your bank account this month. let's say that you take payments in equal thirds. So given this same example of a $6,000 booking, the revenue on that booking in this month is only the initial payment that you took of $2,000. sales numbers show your potential, but revenue shows the truth, right? And the reason that we say it like that is because sales is so exciting. You definitely wanna have big sales months because that's obviously gonna grow your business. But the revenue that hits your bank account each month is the truth. It's what's actually gonna be able to cover your expenses, including that salary that you've built in for yourself as the CEO. So let's talk about why tracking only sales is actually dangerous for your business. Okay, so let's say that you've hit your first $30,000 in bookings in one month. This is so exciting. We wanna celebrate that. That's a great number. So excited for you. However, only $10,000 of that 30,000 is actually gonna hit the bank account this month. Right now, if your expenses are $12,000, including that salary for yourself as the CEO. If your expenses are $12,000 every month, then you don't have enough to cover your expenses for the month. So here we are celebrating this.$30,000 sales, but we actually are still negative in our bank account. And that's why you are not taking a salary this month because you're like, well, I guess there's not enough leftover for me to pay myself. Right? then that happens again next month, and then that happens again next month. And all of a sudden you start to feel this burnout feeling where you're like. I don't understand. I keep selling and I keep selling, but why is there never enough in the bank account for me to actually be able to take that salary that I built into my budget? The reason is because you can't spend the booked income. You can only spend what actually comes in in cash collected. So understanding that $30,000 was your sales, but $10,000 was your revenue is imperative to understanding the financial health of your bank account. So now let's talk cash in the bank. So this is where we get our hands dirty when we're working with wedding Pros inside of Wedding Pro CEO. I absolutely love helping business owners to understand the difference and to really see how much money is coming into their bank account every single month. The coolest part about tracking revenue and sales separately, but tracking them both is because they can give you the full financial picture when you lay them over each other of not only what's happening in current time, but what's coming up in your business. this is something I see so often in the wedding industry, is that we don't understand how to forecast what's coming in our business. So every month you're kind of just like. Hoping enough money hits your bank account to cover, you're kind of always waiting for that shoe to drop, right? I don't know if you've ever felt that way, but you're waiting for that shoe to drop of like. Is there gonna be enough this month? Can I actually pay myself this month? Is there gonna be enough leftover? that's really not a good way to run your business. It's not a healthy way, and it's not a sustainable way to run a business because at some point you have to know how much you're gonna personally be able to take from your business every single month to pay your personal expenses like a mortgage, vacations, internet bill, whatever it is that you're contributing to your household. You kind of wanna know what that money is gonna be consistently in your business. So this is why we track both revenue and sales separately, but then lay them over each other to be able to understand what's coming up in our business. So what do I mean by that? Inside of Wedding Pro CEO, we work with our students on exactly how to understand and forecast what's coming up in their business financially. So that means what we do is we go into your business we pull out the numbers of all of the expected income month by month in your business. If you wanna do this exercise yourself, what I would encourage you to do is go into your CRM wherever you keep payments, and I want you to go month by month. And I want you to see how many payments you're expected to receive that month. Already from booked weddings, so this would be second and final payments or however you take your payments. You're gonna wanna go May. Okay. How many payments are coming in for May if I didn't sell anything else? How many payments are coming in for May? How many for June? How many for July? And I want you to write that down. Right. That's telling you how much revenue is coming in if you don't sell a single additional wedding for the entire rest of the year. Okay? that's gonna be the first number that we're tracking. That's your revenue. Now the second number that we're tracking is we want to go in and say, how much do I think I'm gonna sell? Each month for the rest of the year based on history that I have in my business. Now, if you're less than two years in business, this is gonna be a little bit harder for you to come up with. So you're gonna have to just kind of estimate based on your lead flow so far. But if you've been in business for more than two years, you should be able to go back and prior years and pull sales history month. Over month, how much were the value of the bookings that you sold in each month? that's what I want you to do. I want you to go for the rest of the year, and I want you to, based on history or lead flow, if you're newer, I want you to estimate how much you're gonna sell in each month for the remaining months of the year. now you've got your revenue that's already on the books, you've got your sales, and the final piece of this is you're gonna take one third. Of your sales number for each month, you're gonna add that to your revenue. Now, I'm using one third as an example because in my company and what we teach inside of Wedding Pro, CEO is to do a three payment plan for most clients. If you do a different payment plan, that's totally fine. Just make sure that you're putting that accurate number in. So if you do. Four payments for your clients, make sure you're only putting that 25% retainer into the revenue bucket, right? So we've got our revenue of weddings that are already booked. Payments that are coming in if you don't sell anything else, then we've got our sales number, how much we're actually gonna sell each month, then we've got the retainers from that being added to the revenue. This is gonna give us a really accurate forecast of how much we can expect to make. Every single month for the rest of the year. Now, the only step left to doing this, if you're like, okay, Brandee, this is all really great, but like, how does this tell me if I'm actually gonna be able to cover my bills every month? The last step of this is to just compare that to what your break even number is. So your break even number is what it costs you to run your business every single month with. All of your expenses, including a salary for yourself. So whatever that break even number is, if it's 5,000, 6,000, $10,000 per month to pay all of those expenses, you wanna just compare every single month is the revenue that's expected to come in for that month, more or less. Then your break even number, if it's more. Great. That's exciting. That's a bonus. If it's less, that's okay. We just need to know either one. We need to actually sell more than we're expecting to that month. We need to figure out can I increase my lead flow? Can I run some sort of a promo that's gonna get me more sales that month? Or can I reduce expenses somehow? can I look and see if there's any expenses that I can reduce for that month or the, my favorite is if you have a few months that are over and a few months that are under now, you know, in those months. That are over. That's not extra money. That's not you taking an extra distribution or going out and buying a new camera or computer. You need to store up that extra in those bigger months, like a little squirrel with their acorns so that you can keep it in your bank account for those months that are gonna be slightly lower so that you don't ever have to skip a payroll. You don't ever have to skip paying yourself. You've now flattened out your revenue, which is. So exciting to not feel like one month I'm eating filet. The next month I'm eating ramen right now you, by knowing these numbers and being able to take from the big months and put into the lower months, you can see it coming. You know you're not gonna have skip payroll and it makes running your business so much. Easier. You guys trust me that I know this pain many, many, many years. We ran our business in this feast or famine cycle, and I can vividly picture my husband and I standing in our living room together. Honestly, me in tears. One summer, 'cause summer's our slow season here in Florida. honestly, desperately wondering how, one, we were gonna cover payroll, but two, how we were gonna possibly pay our mortgage because both of us work full-time for our business. And that was the last time that ever happened to us because my husband was like, I can't continue like this. Like, businesses don't run like this. Like this can't be right. There has to be a way that we can figure out how to flatten this out like so we don't have to skip payroll every summer because there's no way that business owners just skip payrolls for months on end. so that was the last summer that ever happened because that was the summer, that was the year that I kind of hit total burnout in my business and I went and I just. Said, I've gotta figure this out. I went outside the wedding industry. I learned a ton about how to run a profitable, sustainable business, I brought that back into the wedding industry. And now that's what I love to teach Wedding Pros. How to do is to learn how to understand revenue, understand profit, understand sales, to build a profitable, sustainable business that you actually love to run. If this episode hit you in the gut a little bit, CEO, good. That means you're ready to start running your business like a real business. If you wanna do this exercise yourself, we've included a link to my free budget tracker. This is the same tracker that we use with our students inside of Wedding Pro, CEO. It's in the description below. Grab that and if you wanna learn more about how we help wedding businesses scale to six and seven figures, click the link in the description to book a free call with our team. Remember CEOs, you can't scale what you don't track, so stop measuring hype and start measuring what matters. I see you in the next episode.