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!!
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Get ready to elevate your business skills, learn from industry leaders, and discover innovative ideas that will set you apart in the wedding industry.
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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
304. The Math That's Bankrupting the Wedding Industry
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
Too many wedding pros are bringing in high revenue but still living paycheck to paycheck. In this episode, I’m walking you through the real numbers behind your burnout—why 70% payouts are tanking your profit, and what sustainable, CEO-level pay structures actually look like. If you're working every weekend but still can’t pay yourself, it’s time to change the math.
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
A favorite book of mine: Profit First by Mike Michalowicz
Another favorite book of mine: Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell
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EPISODE SHOW NOTES BLOG & MORE:
https://weddingproceo.com/math-bankrupting-wedding-industry/
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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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Heads up, CEO! Some of the links I share may be affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you decide to purchase—at no extra cost to you. I only recommend tools and resources I actually use and love, and that I believe will help you grow a profitable, sustainable business you’re obsessed with.
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Way too many wedding business owners who are high revenue earners are stuck in a cycle of low profit and constant burnout. And this episode is gonna show you exactly why I learned this the hard way. In the early years of my business, I did not understand profit margin. I thought growing a business and building a team meant success, but instead I was losing money exhausted and ready to quit. since then, I've worked with over 1100 business owners in the wedding industry, and I see this same mistake again and again. Today I'm breaking down the math line by line to show you the profit benchmarks you need to hit to keep more of the money you make. This all came up again recently when one of my wedding pro students sent me a reel by another educator telling beauty artists in the wedding industry that they must be paying their artists 70% at least. Otherwise, their artists are gonna feel undervalued and they deserve more. and at first, this sounds fair, right? The comments were like, yes, girl. Scream it. Yes. But I guarantee you that those comments were all from artists, not from business owners, because the fact is, while this sounds generous, it doesn't leave you nearly enough profit in your business to actually make money. The math simply doesn't. Math. When you actually break it down, this is why so many business owners look successful from the outside, but actually have zero left in the bank account at the end of every single month. here's the thing, this is not about shaming anyone. This episode is not to say that there's shame in it. This episode is simply to show you the math because this is not a subjective statement. This is not like I prefer dogs over cats. This is a completely objective take, and math doesn't lie. The numbers don't lie, which is why I love so much making business decisions from actual numbers, from actual data. Let's run the numbers on that 70% example from this reel in particular. So let's say that the client is paying a thousand dollars for easy math. So that means that the artist right off the top gets $700. Okay? So that leaves you as the business owner with 300. Now, if you, as the business owner, were taking that money and stuffing it straight into your pocket, like that was flowing through to you as the business owner just simply for booking that great. That would, that would sound fair, right? You're like, yeah, that makes sense. But that's not what happens. And this is where the biggest miss comes in On top of that $700 that you paid to the artist, you also have the processing fee for the credit card. So there's another $30, 3% ish. If you pay any assistance, like assistance that go on site and help with hair pinning, curling prepping faces, all of that kinda stuff, you have those fees as well. And then fixed expenses just to run your business. Software subscriptions, marketing, insurance, licensing, taxes, all of these things have to be paid out of that small $300 that you're keeping from that piece of business. And once you add in seasonal fluctuations, admin time. Just general overhead, you're left with usually less than 10% of the total price that you charge to that client. So out of that a thousand dollars that you charge to the client, you maybe are profiting a hundred dollars from that piece of business. Now, I don't know about you, but my time is worth way more than a hundred dollars. That's pennies for the risk that you carry as the business. you're managing clients, building systems, marketing your business, and at the end of the day, you are making almost nothing. That is why you feel exhausted and broke even when you're fully booked. The reason this miss is so prevalent in the wedding industry is because you, as the business owner, do not consider your time to be valuable. Now, I know we can all say in hyperbole, yes, you're worth it. Your time is so valuable, but the reality is you don't actually value it when you run your business this way because you as the business owner, have so much time that it takes you to. Build your reputation to build the partnerships, to network, to be on social media, to book the client, to deal with the client, to schedule their trial, to handle all of the things that you handle, to just make the business run. so when we give that 70%, the bulk of that client fee to the artist, and all they have to do is literally show up, do the service, and go. Y'all. It's wrong. It's flipped. It's backwards. And this is why so many business owners in the wedding industry go under so quickly. If it sounds like I'm getting a little bit spicy, I am. And I told my community, y'all, I'm coming for this one. Because while I never wanted degrade another educator, it's simply. Untrue that you can possibly keep a business running if you're paying your team members 70%. And while we're talking about the beauty industry here in this episode, because it's so prevalent in the beauty industry, so many artists think that they should be paid 70, 75% of the client fee. It also happens in every other pro as well. I have helped so many DJs, planners, photographers, Untangle situations where they come to me and they're like, I don't understand how I could possibly stop taking weddings or even slow down taking weddings because there's no money left in the business as it is. so when we start to untangle it, we realize they're paying their staff 70, 75%. The only way for them to make a livable wage is to. Also have a full load of clients. And I can tell you right now, and you've heard me say on this podcast a hundred times, if you, as the business owner have a full load of clients, your business will cease to grow because your focus isn't on marketing, sales, and team development. It's just you in the weeds all the time. And so your business starts to stagnate because you're not focused on its growth. Your business has to pay you as the CEO to run the business. There has to be enough leftover from every single client to pay part of your salary as the CEO because you spend a significant amount of your time running your business. This method of running your business also creates a false sense of success. And you guys, this one almost brings me to tears because of the number of business owners who have come to me. Desperate for help they're like, I do a million dollars in revenue. I do 1.5, I do a half a million dollars in revenue, but I still don't take a salary, and I'm like, one, I've been there. That's why I'm so passionate about this myself. I am so passionate about stopping this in the wedding industry and helping business owners to actually build successful, sustainable, profitable businesses. But two, it's all a mindset issue. It's all about thinking, well, if I don't give them the bulk of the fee, they're gonna think that I'm a bad boss. And I'm like, no, they're not. Because if you keep giving them the bulk of the fee, you won't have a business in three years. So what are they gonna think then when you have no business to give them? So what does a sustainable, profitable business look like in terms of pay structure? Now, don't fall out of your chair, but if you're doing something else right now, I want you to stop what you're doing and tune in and listen. If you are running a business, your direct labor cost should not be more than 40% of the total fee that you're charging that client. So in this same example of a thousand dollars being charged to the client, you should be paying 40% at maximum to your team. and I say at maximum legitimately, because you should be starting team members out based on experience at 30%, slowly growing them into 35% and your most senior people being somewhere closer to 40% now. We work this out, whether you're paying them on commission, whether you're paying them hourly, or whether you're paying them salary. Inside of our program, we work with our business owners to calculate what that 40% would be, no matter how you're paying them, because we do not want your labor costs to creep up to be more than 40% at this margin. With a labor being 40%, that leaves you after all of your other costs, about 20 to 30% in net. Profit to be able to pay yourself for running the business and to reinvest in the growth of your business. That's the key here. We don't want a business that looks successful but is driving you into the ground, like the one I owned 10 years ago that I wanted to burn down with a set of matches. We're not building that. We're building a business that looks like you taking a livable wage, you taking a handful of weddings. You investing in your team, you investing in your marketing, you investing in your sales. That's what a sustainable business looks like. That's what a healthy business looks like, and that's when you become the market leader in your industry. That's how you become part of the 1% that's successful in this industry when you understand profit margin and you understand your role in the business is better served, growing and scaling the business than having a full client load. So what do you do if you're stuck in this situation? And I'll tell you exactly what we do with our students. So obviously you're not gonna just go to your team members and be like, Hey, I know you. I pay you 70% now, but I'm dropping that down to 40. You can't do that. They're gonna leave. They should leave. You shouldn't do that. what I walk through with my students when they come in with this situation, the first thing we do is say. Let's take an assessment of your team. Who on your team are you like, I have to keep them. They're worth every penny. I pay them. They are like my right hand. The person who's gonna help me grow. I love them. I have to keep them right. So we mark them and we say they're untouchable. We're leaving their percentage at what it is. And then I guarantee you there are people on your team that you're. If they left, I honestly wouldn't care. Like they're fine and they do a fine job, but I could replace them easily. Right. Those are the people we're gonna go to and we are going to say, Hey, We're restructuring the way that we're handling our payments just tell them it's a reset. I've been a business owner for a couple years, but as I'm learning, I'm understanding that our profit margins aren't what they need to be to sustain the business long term. And I hate to do this, but I do have to make an adjustment to the payouts that we're doing in our business. And so from now on, starting on whatever date you choose, payouts are gonna be. 40% instead of the 70% that you've been paid Now. Nine times out of 10 they're gonna leave. And that's why we only present this to the people who were okay losing, right? Then what we can do now is we can replace them with someone who we can bring in at that 40%. Instead, So we keep our A players. If you have a players on your team that you do not wanna lose, we keep them at the 70%. then we bring new players in. Now I said 40%, but remember that's the max. So if I'm bringing a new player in, I'm gonna try to get them closer to. 30 or 35% so that I've got room to grow and also so that they can balance out the people that I kept at the 70%. Right. So I have people that are now coming in at 30, 35, and I still have a few people at 70. The the likeliness though is that you're only keeping. Depending on how big your team is, a very small percentage of people that you're just like, I don't care. I will continue to pay them the 70% till they wanna leave because they're worth it. Right? then everyone else you're gonna bring in at the lower amount, and it'll start to even out so that you're getting somewhere closer to like a total 50% payout, which is at least better than the 70% that you're running right now. Right? So when we're working with business owners inside of our program and we can walk step by step through this with them, that's exactly how we do it. Now, there's a couple other ways. If you're like, this freaks me out, like I don't wanna lose half of my team, I will tell you it's worth it in the end. It always is painful, right when you do it because you're like, this is what I did in my business, by the way, I blew up my business and I was like, I have to restructure the entire thing. And I decided who was like a non-negotiable. I needed to keep them. And then everyone else we presented it to, and there was, I think one that actually did end up staying and was like, I still wanna be here. And she grew with the company, but everyone else was like, eh. No, I'm good. And we made an exit plan and it was great. Like there was no hard feelings at all. They understood I needed to do something different for my business. It wasn't a them thing. It wasn't like, you suck at your job, so I'm dropping your pay. It was just, Hey, I have understood that I haven't been running my business correctly, and so I need to make this change. I would love for you to stay, but I understand if you can't. If you can't, let's make an exit plan. Right? so Obviously I lost a large portion of my team, but that's kind of what I wanted as well. Like I wanted that, so that I had these two really high salary people that I kept on, then we were able to bring in a decent number of new people at the lower rate. If this completely freaks you out and you're just like, yeah, I, I cannot do that right now. If you need help with it, if you want help with it, come apply to be part of Wedding Pro CEO O. This is what we do, our coaches do inside the program all the time, is walk with our students through this kind of thing so that we can help you do it. Don't do it alone. We're here to help you. Head over to wedding pro ceo.com/ application, tell us a few things about your business and then book a free call with our team so that we can understand more about your business how we can best help you to grow it into a profitable business. Again, that's wedding pro ceo.com/application and book a free call with our team and we will get on that gap assessment with you and really help you to figure out how you can best move forward to drive up that profit. Okay, what are two other things that you can do if you're just like, yeah, that's not me. I can't do that. one, increasing your pricing so that you can keep their fee at what they already are at. So let's say for instance, you are charging a thousand dollars. We'll use the same example. You've been paying them $700, instead of paying them 70%, just let them know that they're still gonna get paid $700 for every service. So you're not changing anything for them. Nothing is different for them, but you are gonna be increasing your pricing. Now, you don't necessarily have to tell them that unless you have an agreement with them in writing that they're getting 70%. You're not changing anything for them, but you're gonna increase your pricing. So if you feel like you could get $1,200. For the same services, then you can increase your pricing, leave them at the 700, and now you're getting closer to that better profit margin, right? So if you think that your market can sustain increased pricing, take the amount they were already making, make it a flat fee, that doesn't change, and then increase that pricing so that you increase your profit margin. So that's another way that you can do this. then the last way is to add upsells just to simply increase the profitability or the average ticket of each of your clients. So especially in the beauty industry, you can add upsells, like lashes, airbrush, you know, there's lots of different things that you can. Add on, and I would encourage you to really consider that maybe you're gonna give your artist a much smaller percentage of those add-ons, because obviously we're doing those add-ons to increase the profitability. Right? So this one I think is a little bit trickier because. Every add-on you make, the artist has to do more work, so they're going to expect their same percentage. So rarely in the beauty industry does this actually help? It's usually, I see that this is something that can be done a little bit easier in the DJ industry, the planning industry, because let's say for instance, DJ can add on uplighting around the room or add on a photo booth, really thinks it doesn't affect the DJ that much, but they can increase the average ticket of that client and. Really help to offset the profit margin there. also with planners, there's different things that you can add on that really like rentals, right? You can add on, stationary, you can add on chargers, you can add on votives. There's lots of different things that you could add on to drive up the profitability of that client, but without having to increase the amount that you'd pay to your team member. Here's what I want you to know. Your team deserves to be paid fairly. They do. I don't want you to hear this episode and go, oh my gosh, Brandee just pays her team pennies and like expects 'em to work all night long. That's not the case at all. What I want you to understand is I want you to reframe your mindset and understand that you. Also deserve to be paid for the things that you do for your business that no one actually sees. Right? But the business would cease to exist if you stopped doing them. You have to be paid for those things. You carry the risk, the overhead, the marketing, the client acquisition, and the leadership. If the math doesn't work for you, the whole business fails for everyone. The reality is if your business can't pay you unless you physically attend an event, you don't have a business, you have a job. a very stressful job that doesn't pay you nearly enough. with extra mouths to feed. That's not why you started your business, Let me give you a super tangible takeaway from this episode. Number one, run your numbers. If your net profit after all of your expenses is less than 20%, you have a numbers problem, not a marketing problem. And number two, if you don't know these numbers yet, that's step one. You need to figure them out. Awareness is the first fix. After you do that, send me a DM over on Instagram. I'm at Brandee. Gaar. Drop your profit margin and your payout percentage, and I'll give you real time feedback on how to fix it. it's time to change the way that we do business in the wedding industry, CEO, and I cannot wait to see you thrive. I'll see you next time.
