Wedding Pro CEO | Building Profitable Wedding Businesses

320. This Will Break Your Wedding Business

• Brandee Gaar • Season 7

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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

I have a question for you: if your bookings doubled tomorrow, would your business soar or would it completely snap? 

Most of us are stuck in the "hustle" trap of undervaluing our time, but more bookings won't fix a broken system—they’ll only expose it.

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 

https://amzn.to/4lbqZFw

Another favorite book of mine: Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell 

https://amzn.to/3ITKLb4

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EPISODE SHOW NOTES BLOG & MORE:

https://weddingproceo.com/break-your-wedding-business-scaling/

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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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Have a question you’d like Brandee to answer? Ask here: http://bit.ly/3ZoqPmz

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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Let me ask you a question. Most wedding business owners avoid answering, honestly. If your bookings doubled next month, could your business actually handle it? Now, I don't mean emotionally, but I mean operationally, because wanting more bookings and being ready for more bookings are two very different things, and most businesses break not because they grow too fast, but because they grow before they're built to support it. Here's the lie, the wedding industry keeps selling. If I could just book more clients, everything would get easier. How many times have you said that in your career? Here's the thing, it doesn't. More bookings don't fix broken pricing. they don't fix messy systems. They don't fix unclear roles. They expose them. Growth doesn't create the problems. It reveals what was already there. I'm Brandee Gaar, and I've built and scaled a half a million dollar real wedding company while still serving clients, real venues, real teams, real timelines. And now through Wedding Pro CEO, I coach hundreds of wedding professionals across every category. And pattern is always the same. Bookings increase and revenue looks better on paper, but stress mistakes and burnout skyrocket and somehow there's never enough money left in the bank at the end of the month to pay yourself. So when I ask if your business could survive double the bookings. This isn't a hypothetical question. It's actually exactly where most businesses crack. So here's the CEO question. I want you to think through as you're listening to this episode. If your bookings doubled in the next 30 days, what in your business would break first? let's walk through the four places that it typically happens. First capacity. Most wedding business owners have no idea what their true capacity actually is. They just book until they feel overwhelmed, and then they assume that feeling is normal. But it's not. Our industry has glorified, burnt out, and overwhelmed and underpaid as a badge of honor. But the truth is, capacity isn't how many events could I technically squeeze in before I fall over and die? It's how many events can I serve at a high level without sacrificing my profit, margins, my sleep, or my sanity? If bookings doubled, would you need to work nights and weekends? Would timelines get rushed? Would details start slipping through the cracks?, If yes, then your issue isn't your marketing. It's that your pricing and your capacity are misaligned. The second place where we typically see cracks when we double wedding bookings for our students is the client experience. if your bookings doubled tomorrow, would your client experience stay consistent? So here's what I want you to ask yourself. Do you have a documented onboarding process? And this is so important because right now when you're sitting in your business where you are, you likely have your hands in a lot of the pieces of the puzzle, right? A new client inquires, a new client sale, a new client gets their contract, their payments, and now all of the work has to start. But if you doubled your bookings right now in the next 30 days and you had to hire somebody to help you, is your process for onboarding your clients already documented? Could somebody else step into that process to help you continue that client experience? Do clients know exactly what happens at every stage of working with you? Are response time expectations clear, or are you just always available? Many businesses only feel high touch because the owner is over functioning, but if growth requires you to be everywhere all times. That model will break. High level businesses protect the client experience by designing it, not winging it. So if this is you and you're sitting here and you're thinking, I definitely want to double my bookings. I want to double my revenue, but you know that your client experience would crack if that did in fact happen. Let's start documenting that process now so that as we scale this business here in 2026, you will already have everything in place to take on that much higher demand. The third place that we typically see these cracks start to happen when we start doubling the bookings for our students is systems. And this is where things fall apart fast. So I want you to ask yourself if bookings doubled in the next 30 days, could you actually get contracts out on time? Would invoices be sent and followed up on? Would timelines stay accurate? If your answer is probably, but only as long as I stay on top of it, there's your red flag. Systems are supposed to run without your constant vigilance. If your business only works because you, the CEO, remember everything late at night

at 3:

00 AM when your head is spinning, Growth will expose that immediately. And the fourth place that we see businesses crack when we start pouring those leads and bookings into your business is team and decision making. So let's ask this again, if bookings doubled in the next 30 days. Who would take over client communication? Who would manage the logistics of your bookings? Who would make decisions when you are not available? If every answer still leads back to you, then you are the ceiling. You are the bottleneck in your own business. That doesn't mean you failed. Don't hear me say that. But it does mean that the business, hasn't been structured to scale yet. I remember this stage in my own business so well, we were thriving. We had so many contracts. We had multiple hotel contracts, so we had hundreds of weddings every year. And we were asked to take on completely managing a brand new wedding venue in town, their marketing, their social media, their bookings, their everything. And so my attention quickly got diverted to getting this venue up and running. What I realized was I was literally working 80 to a hundred hour weeks. I am telling you guys, I did not sleep. Like all I did was answer texts, be on phone calls, be somewhere. I would wake up, go immediately, and just keep going until I literally couldn't stand up anymore. That was because my wedding business, my planning business, was not structured to run without me. I thought it was. I genuinely did. And so then when we took on this venue and I started realizing. All the cracks in my business. I didn't realize that so many things in my business still had to filter through me. So while I had a huge team, an amazing, incredible team that was good at their job, my hands were still in a lot of pieces of every puzzle. And that meant that there were things that weren't getting done because I was the bottleneck. I was the one who everything stopped at, and so while my attention was over here growing another piece of the business doubling our bookings, everything was starting to crack on the inside. So learn from me. I want you to really listen to this episode and evaluate. Yes, I know you say you want more bookings. I know you want to double your revenue, but should that happen, are you going to be able to keep up with the demand? What is gonna break inside your business? This is all fixable, but it's only fixable if you're honest about it. So here's the shift that I want you to walk away with. The goal isn't necessarily more bookings. The goal is building a business that can absorb the demand without creating total chaos. The market does not reward hustle. It rewards stability. So before you chase growth, you need to pressure test your business. Honestly, ask yourself and really evaluate. What would break, where would the quality drop? What would create resentment or burnout for your own business? I know we've all felt that, and then I want you to fix those things first. If this episode made you pause, that's a good thing, CEO, because awareness is the first step to true leadership, and that's exactly what we do inside of Wedding Pro CEO, is we help you identify the cracks. To rebuild the structure and then to scale with confidence. If you wanna clear outside perspective, looking in your business to spot those gaps, I want you to book a gap assessment with our team. you can head over to wedding pro ceo.com/application, and grab a time to speak with my team where we can really dig into your business with you and help you to spot those gaps. See where your business is gonna crack And the exact next steps you need to take to really create a scalable, sustainable business. Doubling your bookings should feel strategic, not terrifying. CEO, If you got anything from this episode, do me a favor, take two minutes and leave a five star review for us on whatever platform you're listening on. It helps so much for other wedding pros to see those reviews and know that this is something that would be valuable to helping them scale their business. And if you're feeling extra generous, I would love it if you would share this episode with a friend. It helps us to get this into more ears as we change the way that the wedding industry does business. Thank you so much for being here, and I'll see you next time.

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Brandee Gaar

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