338. How AI Will Change the Wedding Industry (And Why Most Pros Are Not Ready)

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In this episode, I'm breaking down the biggest shift I've seen in our industry in 20 years. 

Right now AI is optional for wedding pros. In two years it'll be the floor. 

I'm sharing exactly what that shift looks like, why most wedding pros aren't ready, and the one high-ROI task you can start today to get hours back in your week. 

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/ai-wedding-industry-pros-not-ready/

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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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Transcript

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Right now, AI is optional for wedding pros, but in two years it won't be. It'll be the floor. Every major shift in this industry has followed the same arc: optional, then expected, then table stakes. Websites, Instagram, online booking. AI is next. I'm Brandee Gaar, and I've helped hundreds of wedding pros build profitable businesses, and this is the biggest shift I've seen in our industry in 20 years. In this episode, I'm breaking down exactly what that shift looks like, why most wedding pros aren't ready, and what you can do starting today. Technology has moved so fast over the last 40 years. I, this is gonna make me sound so old, but actually remember the internet coming on to the market. And I was a kid at the time, but I remember hearing about the internet and people being so afraid of how the internet was gonna change business or change people, and how scary it was at the time. Think about that now. People were afraid of the internet then. It's the same thing that we're hearing today about AI. Fast-forward to 2007 when I first started my wedding business, and there was no such thing as social media. And I created a website when I very first started my business, but that wasn't super common. Back in 2007, the way most wedding businesses got business was to put an ad in a paper magazine with their phone number so people could call them. They didn't have email addresses. They didn't have website addresses. So I was ahead of the curve when I started my business and had a website with music on it. Okay? So exciting. I thought I was the top dog here. And then all of a sudden, we start to see Facebook and Instagram, and I remember people saying, "I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna get an Instagram. I'm not getting on there. I'm not getting on Facebook. I've always done business the same way, and so why do I need to change now?" And I have to wonder, where are those businesses now? Because if they didn't adapt, they became extinct. You have to adapt to what the world is doing, to what the generations want, to the way technology is moving. And by saying, "I'm not gonna be part of AI. I'm not gonna do it. I don't need it. It's not gonna affect my business," you're kidding yourself. Exactly where we are right now is where we were back in the '90s when the internet came onto the market, and back in the early 2000s when Instagram and Facebook hit the market. Okay, So let's clear one thing up right off the bat. AI is not here to replace you as a Wedding pro. And I think one of the really cool things about our industry is we are a service-based industry. So until they come up with the robots that are gonna go on site and do all the things that a coordinator, a photographer, a DJ does, you're not gonna be replaced. But what AI can do is make you so much better at the job you already do. It can help you on the back end of your business to create all of the work that either gets pushed off to the side and becomes a project on a list that you never look at again, or it can actually help you to become more profitable because AI employees are free. You don't necessarily need to have a full-blown social media team. You don't need to have a team of assistants that are helping you do all of the back-end work. Things like automating your inquiry process, not just with a standard automation that everyone gets, but with an AI agent that can actually talk like you in texts and emails. Other things like content creation, taking your consultation calls and understanding what are the things that your couples are struggling with, what are the things they wanna hear from you, and turning that into content that will actually resonate with the people that are looking for you. One of my favorites, as you guys know, I love financials, is profit analysis. Understanding your financials and explaining them to you like you're a fifth grader. I know so many of us say we're not numbers people, and so we get overwhelmed by it, but it can now break your numbers down and help you to see where you're bleeding cash flow and where you're actually making a ton of profit. The thing you need to know about where we are today with AI is that the pros who are using it aren't working harder. They're not having to sit there for hours coding and doing all of these things. They're actually working smarter and saving so much time and money in their business. Most of you listening to this are probably thinking, "Brandee, I already use AI," and you're right. We did a poll inside of our Wedding Pro CEO community, and over 90% of the students said, "Yeah, I already use AI," and that was really exciting to see. But when we dug a little bit deeper, what we found is using AI means playing with Chat GPT. It means sitting in front of your computer and you as a human still having to ask it to do each individual thing." Write me an email response to this. Help me to create a content plan for next week, and you're getting back okay results. But we are moving into the new era of AI, where we're creating AI employees that can work for you when you're not working or if you're at a wedding. So you could be gone on a Saturday, and you can have an AI employee that's literally doing things inside your business for you so that when you come back on Monday, your inbox has drafted responses for you. You have a week of content creation sitting drafted ready for you to approve. You have Slack messages answered. Your inquiries have been answered. And dare I even say, it went ahead and sent a contract to that consult you did last week and got it back and onboarded them for you. The possibilities are literally endless as to what you can do. The difference is knowing a tool exists and knowing how to deploy them strategically, and this is where I am so excited to dig in with the wedding industry and help you to understand that it's not just about, using the AI tools like Google. No. We are using them like little employees that work inside our business and help us to become more profitable, more strategic, more scalable every single day. So what are the wedding pros who are already using AI as employees doing differently? Number one, they're doing it before they feel 100% ready. In small ways, they're looking for places in their business where they can add an AI agent, add skills behind the scenes so that they can just take one piece of work off their plate. If an AI agent could save you two hours a week, that's two hours you have to

focus on something else: 6:00

better customer service, better sales, increasing your marketing, or honestly, sometimes just relaxing with your family. Who has thought about that in busy season, getting two hours back in your week? But as you learn more, you are going to implement more, and that's what's really exciting, is just being open to saying, " I'm a little bit afraid of this," and that's okay because it's new for everybody. But I'm willing to take one step and learn a little bit, and then take another step and learn a little bit more because I want to be ahead of the curve. I want to understand how my business is going to be better in three years instead of being in the same place it already is. One thing they are not doing, though, is they're not looking at how to completely replace themselves because AI is, at least not in the foreseeable future, going to completely be able to replace you as a human being. You still have so much expertise, and it needs your knowledge of how you do things, what works for your company, the way you want your content written, the way you want to respond to your inquiries, the way you want to move people through your client journey, and also just what you want from your business. I think one of the really cool things that I've loved about using AI is being able to future cast what I want my business to look like and tell it, " This is where I see my business in three years. Help me to get there. What are the things that are gaps in my business that I may not see? What are things I could be doing better? What are some of the metrics that we should be hitting to get to this place?" And so what I want you to know is we're not looking for AI to replace the human expertise that you've built. We're looking for it to make you so much better at what you're already great at. So if you're listening to this and you're like, "Okay, I fall into one of the two buckets you talked about. I either have not even dabbled with AI yet and I'm completely afraid of it, or I use it on a daily basis, but I'm still using it as sort of like I use Google," right? If you're in either of those camps and you know, " I want to start using it," the first thing I would say is just pick one thing in your business that you do every single day, you do every single week. It's a repetitive task. Or something that you know you should be doing, but you actually never get to. Marketing, we all know we should be doing more of it and we don't do nearly enough. These are the things that you can step one toe in and say, "Okay, this is one task I'm gonna have it do, and I'm gonna have it help me." Pick one area and go all in on that area until you get it systematized. Get those two hours back a week, and then we move on to the next one. I would pick something high ROI for you. That would either be your inquiry process or client communication. This is a great way to get back time and let your AI work for you and your client communication. Or, like I said, marketing, because we all know that we should be doing a better job at our marketing. Those are gonna be the highest leverage tasks that it can get you back time and make you more money. You don't need to overhaul everything today. Trust me, when you get into it, you're gonna want to, because it's so exciting, all the things that it can do. What I would say is stay super focused. Just pick one thing, systematize that, get it into AI, and then we'll move on to the next. And if you're listening to this and you're like, "I love it. I'm, I want to do this. I'm all in, but I'm still just afraid to do it myself. I don't actually know where to start. I don't even know which system is best, Claude, Gemini, Chat GPT, all the things," I wanna invite you to join us for a three-day boot camp that we're doing June 23rd through 25th. This is gonna be an AI boot camp for wedding pros specifically, called the Beyond Prompts Bootcamp. In these three days, we're gonna teach you so much more than just how to prompt your AI. We want you to understand how to actually use it to work inside your business while you're not working. So head over to WeddingProCEO.com/bootcamp to grab your spot. We are gonna have so much fun in this boot camp, and I cannot wait to show you all the ways that AI can save you time and money, and even make you more money. So again, head over to WeddingProCEO.com/bootcamp and grab your spot. It will fill up. This is gonna be a great three days together. And we cannot wait to see you there.