Wedding Pro CEO | Building Profitable Wedding Businesses

297. This is Why 99% of Wedding Pros Don't Make a Profit

• Brandee Gaar • Season 6

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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’re booked solid but still wondering where the profit is… this one’s for you. In this episode, I’m breaking down the three real reasons 99% of wedding pros never turn a profit—and how to stop being one of them. Whether you’re a planner, photographer, DJ, or caterer, if you're ready to stop treating your business like a hobby and finally get paid what you're worth, hit play now.

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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https://weddingproceo.com/wedding-pros-profitability-problems/

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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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Let me guess. You're booked out busy every single weekend, and yet your bank account doesn't reflect that hustle. reality is 99% of wedding businesses aren't profitable. Not because they're not talented, but because they're running their business like a passion project. I know because I've been there,. I built one of the largest planning firms in Orlando, Florida, and still wasn't making real money until I learned how to start running my business like a business instead of a hobby. Today I'm breaking down the three brutal reasons why most wedding pros never turn a profit and what you need to do to join the 1% that actually does. And yes, I'm giving you real tactical that you can do today to make that shift. Let's get into it. Okay, so number one is that you don't know your numbers, and this was something that I did for way too long in my business. I kind of was just like every month I would start the month and. Say a prayer that enough money came in to pay for everything going out. And it was one of the biggest stresses in my business for so long because I never actually knew if we were gonna be able to pay all the bills. I kind of had a general idea of how much was going out, but I rarely had an idea of how much was coming in And how I would rationalize that was I would say, well, I don't know how many people are gonna book us this month, so how am I supposed to be able to forecast? The reality is that's false because one, you should have a really good idea of how much is going out in expenses every single month. So you should understand your overhead, your break even number of how much is going out every single month, and fixed expenses, then a general idea of how much is gonna go out in terms of labor to work the weddings that you have. But the piece of this that I think is missing for so many is being able to forecast. How much is gonna come in? So there's two parts to this. One is how much is already on the books? If you sold nothing this month, how much would come in from second or third payments or recurring payments that you have in your business from existing clients? that's the first piece of the puzzle. The second piece is being able to forecast how much you think you're gonna sell. Now, that has a little bit of nuance to it. If you're new to your business, maybe less than two years into your business, this is gonna be a harder number for you to forecast because you don't have as much history. if you have been in business for more than two years, you should be able to look back at your history and see about how many leads come in every single month. And you should know your conversion rate. So if you get five leads that come in every single month and your conversion rate is 20%, you know that you're gonna book about one client for every five leads that comes in. These are numbers that are critical to being able to scale your business and what's gonna make you part of that 1% that actually turns a profit in your business. what gets measured gets managed, and when you just put your head in the sand and hope and pray that enough money comes in every month to cover the bills, you're actually not running a business. You're not able to scale it because you have no idea what's coming. a grip on these numbers empowers you to take charge and to really understand where the money is coming from, where the leads are coming from, and how to do more of that so that you can scale. Okay. The second thing that I see all the time with wedding business owners who are not turning a profit or not paying themself enough is that you're charging or you're pricing emotionally instead of strategically. I was working with a student recently who came to me and said, I feel like our revenue is flatlined now. They do a significant amount of revenue into the seven figures, and they. Are basically doing the same revenue every single year. I was like, that's interesting. Let's see why that's happening. do you feel like you're not doing as many events? Do you feel like you're not getting as many leads? And he was like, no, I actually feel like we're doing more events. So we started digging into the numbers over the last three years because data tells us everything, right? You can feel all you want, we want to go back to the data and see what's actually happening. So what we realized was that they actually are doing more events. Every single year, over the last three years, they've had an increase in the number of events that they're doing, but their revenue is staying the same. when we started looking through their average ticket of how much their average client spends, it's going down each year. when I presented that to him, he said. That makes sense because I feel like the only way for us to win right now in this market is to lower our prices. So every year we've lowered prices and that isn't an emotional response to a broken sales process. this is something that's so important as a business owner for you to know. Because if you're only tracking revenue you're not tracking average ticket, it can take you a long time to realize that this is a problem. The exciting thing for this Wedding Pro is that. We are now really starting to dig into this sales process because we're realizing. they're actually booking more events every single year, which is exciting. They're getting more leads year over year. We've tracked that as well, but they need to refine their sales process so that they can start to really present that value and drive that higher ticket instead of just racing to the bottom, which is actually causing his team to be completely burnt out because they have more events and they're making less money. And this happens to so many wedding pros because you just start to charge emotionally. You just wanna see those sales numbers go up. You wanna be excited and say, I did 300 or 400 or 500 events this year. But But the reality is that's simply a vanity metric. At the end of the day, as a business owner, what you should care about is how much of the revenue you actually got to keep, which is what we call profit. And if you're not profitable on your packages, it doesn't matter if you do a thousand events a year, if you're not profitable, you're not gonna be in business much longer. So we, I wanna make sure that you understand to be part of the 1%, To be part of the group of wedding business owners that are profitable and paying themselves and living a great lifestyle from their business, you have to learn how to charge strategically and sell your value instead of racing to the bottom and pricing based on emotion. Okay. And the last thing that the 1% Club does the 1% of business owners in the wedding industry who are killing it, who are actually making a profit, paying themself a livable wage, being able to take vacation, support their family. last thing that they do is they actually operate their business from a CEO perspective. let me dig into what that means, because you might just be listening to that and being like, what the heck does a CEO perspective mean? What that means is that they understand that the most important things that they personally can be doing in their business is marketing, sales, and team development. You as the business owner, as you start to grow, have to start outsourcing tasks, and I like to tell my high level students this as they're starting to really step into that CEO role. They're starting to run into multiple six figures. Scaling into that seven figures. I'm it is time for you to start. Acting like a CEO or sometimes I also say you need to start acting like a coach instead of a player. the way that you can tell if you're doing this or not is when you look at the things that you have to do every single day. I want you to look at how many of the things are managing tasks how many of the things are managing people, what we wanna do is we wanna manage the people who do the tasks right? As a CEO of your business, need to start outsourcing, getting the tasks off of your plate. And that could mean a va, it could mean outsourcing. A marketing team could also mean hiring part-time and full-time people. It looks different for every business and what stage that you're in, the reality is. As a CEO, as that person who's scaling profit and really starting to make a living from your business and pay yourself a healthy salary, you have to understand that the only three things that live on your plate are marketing, sales, and team development. If it does not fall into one of those buckets, It needs to not exist in your head space because those are the things that are actually moving the needle in your business, and that's where your team needs you to live and thrive. Because if you are not focused on marketing, sales, and team development, business will slowly start to. Backslide, you will start to slip on marketing. You won't have as many leads. Your sales will start to slip. Your team is gonna start to crack and not necessarily know what they're doing. possibly you could start to lose team members. You really need to thrive here in these three sections of your business. That's That's what moves the needle. That's what drives sales. That's what drives growth. And then all of the tasks that you did when you first started your business are being outsourced and moved onto other people's plates who are actually likely better at doing it than you were in the first place. Because you are the visionary. You the one that sets. The goals. You're the one driving the bus and taking the team along with you. So really the CEO mentality, being the coach, not a player, is something that is so essential to scaling your business into that profitable wedding business. Here's the truth. You started your wedding business because you love it, but love alone doesn't pay your mortgage and it doesn't give you the freedom that you're craving if you wanna be part of the 1% who actually profit from their business. Know your numbers charge like a strategist and lead like a CEO. This is the shift that changed everything for my business. And if you want help making that shift, head over to wedding pro ceo.com/application. Tell us a little bit about your business and book a free gap assessment with our team. We'll go through your marketing, your sales, your team, and we'll. For where there's gaps in your business that we can help you to eliminate so that you can start to scale your business and start to really turn that profit. if you found this episode helpful, make sure to subscribe or follow on whatever platform that you're listening on, and I will see you guys next time.

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Brandee Gaar

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