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.
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
308. What NOT to Do in Your Wedding Business This Engagement Season
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
Hey wedding pro—listen up! Engagement season is NOT the time to hide behind a website refresh or a shiny new logo.
In this episode, I am laying down the 5 things you absolutely should NOT do during the busiest booking season of the year—and what to do instead to cash in while couples are ready to sign.
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/what-not-to-do-engagement-season/
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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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I think you'll book way more weddings and make way more money if you stop obsessing over the back end of your business start obsessing over how to get visible and sell this engagement season. I see it every year. Well-meaning wedding pros over here, rebuilding their website, rebranding their logo, tweaking packages, changing CRMs, basically rearranging the deck chairs While the biggest sales opportunity of the year is sailing right past engagement season is not the time to work on your business. It's the time to close, sell contract, stack revenue, period. So how do you build a wedding business that actually profits during engagement season and doesn't just look busy online? Well, first you need to stop Welcome back to The Wedding Pro CEO podcast. I'm Brandee Gaar, and I help you every single week to ditch the overwhelm and build a profitable wedding business that you actually love. So here's the truth that nobody wants to say out loud. You're not booking because you're hiding. You're refining your brand, You're updating your CRM. You're waiting until your new packages are done. But no, you're procrastinating, you're avoiding the one thing that actually grows your business. Sales couples don't care if you're on HoneyBook or Dubsado. They care if you can solve their problem, if you can show up confidently and make it easy for them to sign the contract. If you spend quarter four obsessing over operations instead of conversions, you lose. Engagement season is like our Black Friday, our prime time, our Super Bowl. It starts around Thanksgiving and runs through early March, and this is when over. 40% of engagements happen, and couples are looking to book your services immediately, but instead of showing up in their feed, their inboxes or their Google searches, you are updating your fonts. This is like skipping the biggest trade show of your career because you wanted to repaint your booth. Okay. Okay. So you get the picture right? Like I'm. Passionate about this. I feel like every fall I'm screaming from the rooftops. Please stop doing all the backend stuff during engagement season and go sell. Like sell the contracts, get'em all signed up, right? All you should be focused on during engagement season is. Sales and marketing activities, but what does that actually mean? So the first thing I wanna talk about are the things that you should stop doing. The things that you should absolutely not be doing Between November and March, save it, tattoo it, etch it on your soul. Whatever you need to do to make sure that you do not do these things, this engagement season. Number one, do not rebrand. Now, before all of the website developers and brand designers come for me. I'm not telling you to never do a rebrand because I definitely think that there's a time in every business when you need to freshen things up, but I can tell you right now that between November and March is not that time. because it's the beginning of a new year, so many wedding pros are like, I'm working on my rebrand right now. No, absolutely not. It takes your attention away from marketing and sales, which is the only thing you should be focused on. So no rebrand during this time. Okay? Wait until slow season. Number two, do not change your CRM. This is not the time. You can do a little bit of research before November. You can implement after March, but you cannot. Be switching your CRM and all your workflows and all the backend during engagement season. Number three. Do not build new packages from scratch in November, December, January. I see this all the time when we have new pros coming to wedding Pro CEO. It's December or January, and they're like, I'm working on rebuilding all of my packages. Why are you doing that right now? The only thing you should be focused on is actually selling the packages that you have. Okay, here's the next one. And this one. You guys, this one is so often overlooked, but way too many wedding pros do this and this one is, do not wait to release your 2027 dates and pricing. I see this so many times with Wedding Pros and they're like, well, I don't know what my 2027 pricing will be, or I'm not sure if I'm ready to release those dates. And I'm like, what? So many couples get engaged and then they're plan, they wanna spring wedding, but. Spring of 2026 is too soon. So they go to spring of 2027 you're like, no, come back in a couple months. What? Absolutely not. We personally released dates 18 months in advance, which means that we have the opportunity to book all the way through summer of the following year. So this year we will be booking all the way into summer of 2027, which means I need to have my pricing on point for any of those available dates. But holding your pricing is absolutely gonna kill your engagement season. And the last, Don't, for this engagement season is do not go dark, on social media while you're working behind the scenes, I think that this one's fairly obvious, but it's shocking how many wedding pros do this, which is why I don't want you doing the first four donts that I talked about. Because so often when you're working on something really big behind the scenes, like a rebrand or changing CRMs, you're actually fairly dark on social media, and this is the time when you need to be going all in, not pulling away from visibility. Okay? Okay. Brandee, we heard you. We understand there's all these things that we shouldn't be doing this engagement season, but any tips for what we should be doing? I got you. Yes, absolutely. Here's a list of the things that you should be doing right now to prepare for this engagement season. Number one, get your pricing dialed in. We want it locked and loaded, not changing at all during engagement season, so make sure that all of your pricing is updated. If you need to update your investment guide, if you need to rework your math on your packages to make sure that they're profitable, if you need to have a 2026 pricing guide and a 2027 pricing guide, all of the things that you need to do to ensure that your pricing is locked in, that's what you should be doing right now. The second thing you need to do to prepare for a killer engagement season is to make sure that your sales funnel is airtight, you've plugged the holes, you've tightened your follow up, and your contracts are ready to send at a moment's notice. And if you need help with this one, I have a free six figure inquiry guide. It's gonna give you all of the scripts we use and give to our students To hit that first six figures in your wedding business. It not only has all of the email scripts that we use, but I also give you tips and strategies and scripts on exactly how to text as part of your sales funnel. You can grab that by going over to wedding pro ceo.com/emails and grab that entire file so that you can have k!ller follow up. This engagement season. Again, that's wedding pro ceo.com/emails. The next one, your marketing is visible. And dare I say, relentless. Reels, blog posts, newsletters, vendor collabs. You're literally everywhere. You know that meme where they say, prepare to be s sick of me? That's un engagement season. You need to make sure that people can see you literally in every single app that they open, every email everywhere. We wanna make sure that you're not forgotten By all of those engaged couples who are looking for exactly what you do. And the last one, your dms, your inbox, and your calendar are friction free. You're easy to buy from, you're fast to respond, and you're ready to close. this one goes back to why you should not be filling your calendar and filling your time with backend work because your calendar and your response time need to be ready for sales and follow up so you can lock those new couples in. Engagement season is not about everything being pretty, it's about being ready visible. Stop thinking of quarter four as your cleanup time, the time to get everything wrapped up for the end of the year. Think of it as your Olympic trial, your Super Bowl, your high stake sales sprint. The wedding pros who book the most clients from November to March. They are not the ones with the trendiest branding. They're the ones who are obsessed, with showing up, connecting and converting, because the real currency isn't branding. It's attention attention that leads to intention is when all of the contracts get signed. If you're ready to finally capitalize on this 2026 engagement season, here's what I want you to do. Number one, stop hiding behind your backend. Number two, start showing up like the CEO of a profitable brand. number three, focus every ounce of energy on getting seen, trusted and booked because you don't need more features in your packages. You need more booked dates on your calendar. If you know your sales funnel needs work, Go grab our free six figure email funnel over at weddingproceo.com slash emails because this is the way that you are gonna close up all of those contracts, this engagement season. And hey, CEO, if you're feeling super generous, take a few minutes and leave a review on whatever platform that you're listening to so that other wedding pros know this is where I wanna go for my business education on how to grow and scale my wedding business. Thanks so much for being here, and I'll see you next time.
