- When is it time to go full-time? Listen to this episode for some ideas. Hi, it's Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions Podcast. This is another listener's suggestion and it actually comes from the experience that I've had just recently with a few of my clients, when is it time to go from being part-time, maybe a weekend warrior, or just part-time business, to full-time? Now, for some of you, or some of us, because this includes me, we were kind of forced into it because we were asked not to be at our former employer anymore, for whatever reason. In my case, it was a downsizing for some people, other different reasons there. But for some people, my friends down under, I have a couple of clients down there, they were made redundant. That's the phrasing that they use in Australia, actually in a lot of other parts of the world, and so you've been kind of a little pushed, right? Instead of standing there and saying, hey, when is it time to take the leap, you were actually kind of pushed a little bit and now you have to learn how to fly.

So for some people, that's it. Although I should say you do have a choice. At that point you have a choice to go look for another job or you can start your own business. And I actually saw a post today. I forget the name, I apologize, on LinkedIn, of someone who said that, well, the country celebrates July 4th, she celebrates July 5th, because that's the day that she decided to start her own business and not work for somebody else and become her own boss. So that's her Independence Day, she calls it. So kudos to you. But for some people you have a full-time job and obviously if you liked it a lot, you're probably still doing it, but maybe you don't love it or maybe it's not as much fun anymore, or maybe there's some stresses or challenges there, and when do you decide to go full-time? Now, the truth is if you did what the books say, which is saving up a year's worth of income, so that you have enough money to pay all of your bills and things like that during the year, if you could do that, that would be great. For a lot of people, you didn't do that. For me, I didn't know that it was happening, so I didn't have that saved up. The pandemic, that changed things a little bit. I did have more of a rainy day fund for that, which certainly helped. But at the time that I went full-time in my business, I think I had 11 weeks of a runway, 11 weeks of severance, and that was it. Then I was on my own.

And I remember having this conversation with my mother-in-law. She wanted me to go collect unemployment and I said, "No, I'm not going to do that." And she said, "Well, you've been paying in "all your life, why not?" I said, "Well, that's for people that aren't working "and I am working, I'm just working in my own business," and she didn't understand that. And I said, "Well, the other reason is, "I have to go fill out the paperwork and do all that, and I'm not going to do that for them to pay me to not work, "because if you make a certain amount of money or more, "you don't qualify, and I'm going to be "making too much too soon to qualify." That was my attitude. My attitude was that my business was going to be successful and I was going to be making enough money too soon that I wouldn't even qualify for the unemployment, so why bother going through the paperwork? And the truth is, it was. It was. In a very short amount of time, within the first month or two, I wouldn't have qualified for the unemployment anyway.

So when is it time for you to take the leap? Well, there's a few signs for that. The one is that you're turning away business now because your full-time job is interfering with your ability to do this other thing in the events industry and the weddings industry, whatever it is that you do. And this same concept applies no matter what you do. This is not about weddings and events. This is about leaving one full-time job to start your own business. If you've been running this as the side hustle, and you've been able to get yourself to a price point, this is important too, get yourself to a price point where you're profiting enough on the events that if you would fill in more events, if you had the time to fill in more events, because you didn't have the other gig, then there is a good sign that, okay, I can make this a go. But you really want to lean into this with a head start if possible, which is increasing your marketing, increasing your advertising, being able to turn away business and being able to raise your rates, which I've spoken about on other episodes. Being able to raise your rates because the demand exceeds the supply, and now you can say listen, I'm charging enough that if I would add x number of more events, I can make a go of this as a full-timer.

That's the way to think about it. A lot of people just run into this with their eyes closed and say, okay, well, I'm going to leave the other thing and I'm going to start this, or like I said, me, the lot of you, your other job went away, and if your other job went away, you just have to make a go of this. And again, profitability is the key. I've spoken about that a lot on the podcast. And I want you to think about that. To do more events is easy. Just lower your prices and more people will hire you. I did that. When I first started my business, I didn't know what to charge. I didn't have any good benchmarks for that. I've also spoken about the fact that I've written about this, that you shouldn't set your prices based upon what other people charge. You should know what they charge, but don't set your prices based upon what they charge, because they're charging theoretically based upon their needs, their overhead, the results that they're providing, et cetera.

You should be charging based upon the results that you're providing, and of course, based upon your needs and your overhead and your expenses, which are not theirs, right? What if their building is paid off and you're paying rent, right? What if their car or truck is paid off and you're paying for yours, right? Their expenses are different. Maybe they can afford to charge less. I know a lot of people that don't charge more just because they haven't thought about raising their rates. They're happy that everybody says yes, so they just keep charging what they do and they don't think about raising them. The recession that we're in or the quasi-recession that we're in, depending upon where we are when you're listening to this, has shown us, yeah, expenses go up and maybe we need to raise our rates. I know my airfare has gone up a lot for the places that I'm going to. Hotels are up, rental cars, crazy, crazy after the pandemic, because the rental car companies, a lot of them got rid of cars, and that meant the supply of cars was lower. The demand comes back, now the prices are higher.

So when is it time for you to go full-time? It's for you to think about. I would really talk to a consultant about this. Talk to an accountant about this. Maybe an attorney and start looking at, is the demand there for you already? Look in your market, look at what other people are charging. Remember, I want you to know what they're charging. I don't want you to charge what they charge. When I started my pricing, when I first left The Knot full-time, I came into it and I'm like, I don't know what to charge. I've been speaking for free. I've been helping people with their businesses for free, because that was part of my job. I don't know what to charge. So I looked around to what other people were charging and I charged more, and in some cases significantly more and in some cases a little bit more, but always more, because I said, "I think I'm doing this at a high enough level "that these are kind of results that I'll provide." And I had what I thought was a good top-line year my first full year. But the bottom line was terrible. No, I shouldn't say terrible. The bottom line was not what I thought it should be based upon the top line, because of all the expenses that were involved that I didn't anticipate. And what I realized is I wasn't charging enough, not nearly enough. I mean, now I charge probably four times, yeah, four times, maybe close to five times. Yeah, it could be five times what I was charging back in 2011, because I believe the results are there. But I also say my inventory's low.

I spoke about this on another episode recently. My inventory is low, because it's just me, so I need to balance that, so I don't overbook myself, which I did in 2019. I was away 178 nights that year. And I don't want to do that again. And yes, my wife came in with me for some of those and she picked up a couple of good ones like Maui & London. She picked some good ones. But I don't want to be away from home that much. And I've reduced my inventory. I've reduced my inventory, raised my prices, so now that I can get to the gross and net that I'm looking for. Do you understand your numbers? You're trying to get to a certain point. Know that before you take the leap, so you can see if it makes sense? And then what do you have to do leaning into that? Increase your advertising, increase your marketing, maybe a new website or a better website, maybe better branding, right? Things like that, so you can charge the kind of prices you need to profit the way you need to, so you can take that leap and be profitable from day one. Hope it gives you something to think about. Thanks. 

I'm Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you'd like to suggest other topics for "The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast" please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.