330. Why Wedding Businesses Plateau (Even When You're Booking Weddings)

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You’re working 80-hour weeks and sacrificing every Saturday to your craft, yet despite a full calendar, you feel like you’re treading water in quicksand rather than building a legacy. 

This episode reveals why a busy schedule is often the very thing masking a broken business model and preventing you from reaching the six and seven-figure milestones you deserve. 

Stop being the bottleneck in your own brand and learn the exact shift from overworked freelancer to confident CEO so you can finally reclaim your time and scale your profit.

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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/why-wedding-businesses-plateau/

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Transcript

1:01

What if I told you the reason your wedding business is stuck is not because you're not booking enough weddings, it's because you are. And the very thing you think is growing your business is actually what's making you plateau. In this episode, I'm going to walk you through exactly why wedding businesses plateau, even when you're fully booked, and what to change if you actually wanna scale. Because I've been there, I've had weddings every single weekend. I had a full calendar, and from the outside it looked like everything was working. But behind the scenes I was overworked, underpaid, and feeling so stuck. And now after helping hundreds of wedding pros scale to six and seven figures, I can confidently tell you that more bookings do not fix a broken business model. In this episode, we're breaking down the exact stage where most wedding businesses plateau. The subtle signs that you're already there, even if you're looking successful. Why being busy is actually masking the real problem and the mindset shift that separates overwhelmed freelancers from true CEOs. When I think about the wedding industry, where most business owners are getting stuck is where they start to hit right around that six figure mark. And at that point, you don't understand how to hire or who to hire. And the reality is you're so busy that the thought of hiring is actually paralyzing as well. This is also the stage where you want more bookings, but the thought of another client coming on board feels so overwhelming because you don't have the time or the energy to actually onboard them well. so in this stage, you feel like you're not even sure where to turn to start to make things actually flow. you start to wonder, is this why I built a business? I feel like I'm. Paralyzed, I'm stuck, I'm not really sure exactly what to do to get to the next stage. In this stage of business, what it feels like is that from the outside looking in, all the vendors in your market think that you're the top dog, the one to beat. They think everything looks so successful and you're raking in the money, but on the inside, you kind of start to feel like an imposter because nothing is actually working correctly. You're up all night long, all hours answering client emails, creating timelines, editing photos, and you're not exactly sure when you're gonna be able to actually get ahead of your to-do list. This stage of business can feel the hardest because you genuinely feel like an imposter. You have no idea how to get to the next stage of business, but everyone thinks that you've already got it figured out, and what you really want most desperately is to actually figure it out. In my business when I hit this stage, I will never forget sitting on our back porch, just crying, trying to figure out how I created the monster, that was our planning business. I looked successful. Everyone thought that we had it made. We were on every vendor list. We were being referred. We had great clients, and I had an incredible team. But what was happening is that every decision had to come up through me. I had to have my hands involved in every single thing that our business did. Every sale, every onboarding, every major client decision, every piece of networking, every relationship that was built, hr, payroll, taxes, all of it had to go through me, and I was exhausted. And the thought of growing anymore in our business felt so overwhelming because I had no more time to give. And the reality is, I also wasn't making nearly enough money for as many hours as I was working. If I wasn't working, I was thinking about work. I was never present with my family, and that felt crushing because that wasn't why I built my business. We build our businesses for the freedom that we're excited to have to be able to say which clients we wanna work with to decide when we wanna work, but most of us end up building something that completely consumes and controls our life, and I couldn't do it anymore. If you think that this sounds at all like you, here's a few signs that you wanna look for to see is my wedding business plateauing? The number one is that you feel like there's never an opportunity to get ahead of your to-do list. It seems like you wake up in the morning, you have 11 things on your to-do list, and when you end the day, there's somehow 30. Never being able to catch up, never get ahead and never be able to look at your business from the top down on how you're gonna grow it. You're just constantly treading water. The second thing to look for is that you actually feel completely paralyzed by the idea of taking on another client. This is a terrible feeling for an entrepreneur because we want to sell. We're excited to sell, we want more business. But when you get to this stage of business you actually feel paralyzed by bringing on another client because the idea of more work feels so overwhelming. The third sign that you're looking for is when you are working 80 hour weeks and somehow there's never enough money left in the bank at the end of the month to pay yourself. And so you wonder, what am I doing all of this for? When I start working with a wedding pro who's in this stage, the most typical thing that I hear is, I know I want to grow, but honestly, I don't think I can do this anymore because they have no idea what that next stage looks like. All they think is, if I take on more, if I grow, if I bring on a team, if I sign more clients, it just feels so crippling, but what they don't understand is the next stage is actually what's gonna relieve all of the pressure they're currently under. This stage of business can feel a little bit like you're walking through quicksand. You know that you just keep moving, keep moving, but you're not actually going anywhere. You're stuck. That is a feeling that can cripple a business and cause you to start backsliding. So you've grown, grown, grown. You've gotten this business to where it is you plateau, and now the next stage, if you don't fix it, is to start backsliding because you simply cannot sustain this amount of workload for much longer. The biggest pattern I see at this stage of business is that the business owner thinks if I just work harder, if I work more, then I'll be able to out grind this stage. But that is so false because working harder, doing the things you've always done is not gonna get you to that next stage. Now you have to start thinking differently about your business. You have to be able to see your business from the top down. You have to be able to see where the holes are in your systems. You have to be able to create automations and onboard team members and have SOPs that they can follow so they know exactly how to create those flawless experiences for your clients. So why do plateaus happen in the first place? A lot of wedding business owners think that if they're booking a full calendar that their business is growing, but that is false because so often your pricing is off and so, you're grinding out and you're working for five or$7 an hour, which is not sustainable. You're taking on more work than you can actually do in a calendar year. So few wedding pros take the time to break down how much they're actually working inside each of their services don't realize that the more they take on is actually overworking their business. What's actually happening when a wedding business is busy but their business isn't growing is because they are taking on bad pieces of business, or they're taking on more work than one person can actually handle because they're afraid to hire and they don't know how to. The three biggest mistakes I see at this stage of business to keep your business from actually scaling is thinking you can just work your way out of the rut that you're in, not creating systems or using automations to actually be able to take some of the human work out of your business. And number three, and this is the biggest one, is not hiring fast enough. And booking more weddings doesn't solve the problem because nine times outta 10 you are not charging enough, which is actually keeping you from being profitable. so you take on more weddings and take on more weddings, and take on more weddings, but you're not actually making enough money to hire, to have a good CRM to systematize to create the automations that your business needs to get to the next stage. So what's the mindset shift that needs to happen in your business for you to get out of this place of stuck and overwhelm start to actually scale your business? The biggest mindset shift you need to have is you need to understand what got you to where you are is not gonna get you to that next stage. Working harder, taking on more bad clients and doing everything yourself is not gonna get you there. You have to start understanding that if you want to grow a business instead of a job. An overwhelming anxiety inducing job. You need to start thinking like a business owner thinking, how can my business make me money even when I'm not involved? That is the mindset shift that's gonna unlock all of this so that you can scale to that next level. The difference here is up until now, you've run your business like a creative, like a freelancer. And that's okay because most of us get into the wedding industry because we love our craft. We're really good at keeping a dance floor packed or taking beautiful pictures or planning a killer timeline. But the reality is at some point you have to start putting on a business owner hat and start looking at your business. As that CEO, understanding the financials, understanding what you need on your team next, who do you need to hire, what qualities do they need to have for you to get to that next level? In my own business. I actually had hired from the very beginning, so I wasn't ever afraid of hiring. But what I realized is that I had hired completely wrong. I had a large team of all freelancers who were really great at the things I asked them to do, but I didn't create a team of people who could think for themselves. So. Everything had to come up through me. And the difficult thing about that is I hadn't created systems or processes or SOPs for them to follow. So I had all these people that were coming to me for every decision, for every single thing that needed to happen in our business. And I couldn't ever take my eyes off of it. I felt like I was a juggler who at any time, if I just looked away for one second, all the balls would fall apart, and that was completely overwhelming. So what actually changes when your business starts to scale and get past this place of plateau? What this looks like is that your business starts to make money when you are not even there. That means you can have a Saturday back and spend the weekend doing things with your kids or doing things with your family, enjoying a Saturday by the pool. You can actually. Go home at night and send your team out to a networking event. You can have a sales team that does your sales consults and sales start to come in when you're not even thinking about it. You start to get the freedom that you wanted when you created this business in the first place. That freedom that we all said, I'm gonna choose my clients. I'm gonna choose how many hours that I work. That's what you're actually starting to create when you build out your team, when you build out the systems, when you build out the automations. And you understand the pricing to be able to create a team like this. What feels different about this stage of business is that you now have a team doing the things, doing the tasks, and you have moved into a place of people, manager. So now instead of you managing day-to-day tasks and operations and client work, you are managing the team who actually executes that. And this is a really fun stage of business because not only do you get to pour into all of these other people, but you get to create careers for other. Industry professionals who've always dreamed of being in the wedding industry, and that's all because of an idea you had years ago and the courage that you now have to understand how to create a true, successful, scalable business that creates careers for other people. If you're a wedding pro listening to this and you know that you're in that stage of stuck and overwhelm, and your business has started to plateau, I would encourage you to do this. Really step back and take a look at what do I want my business to be? What do I want it to look like in three years? What is the biggest thing that I spend my time on every single day that's keeping me from needle moving tasks like sales and marketing. If you're not able to spend at least 50% of your time as a business owner and needle moving tasks, things that actually make your business money, your business is headed for the danger zone. And so I want you to really assess what is it that you spend time on every single day, and then let's get those tasks outsourced, or let's hire somebody onto your team to really start to be able to move the needle. If this is you, if this is your business and you know you're stuck, you know that you want to get out of this stage of business, but you genuinely don't know how and you want help, I'm gonna encourage you to book a GAP assessment with our team. You can head over to wedding pro ceo.com/application, or just click the link in the description below. Book a time with our team. This is a great time for us to dig into your business and see what's actually causing a bottleneck for you and your business, and help you to take your business to the next level. Often our students are two and three times-ing their revenue just because they need somebody from the outside looking in to be able to help them understand what exactly is it that they need to do to get out of this plateau stage and CEO, if you're listening to this episode and you got any value out of it, I would appreciate it so much If you would like and subscribe, and if you're feeling extra generous, take two minutes to leave us a five star review on whatever platform that you're listening on. Thanks so much and I'll see you next time.