Building Boundaries with Standard Operating Procedures with Becca Mai

Ever feel like your wedding business is running you instead of the other way around? You're not alone. 

Meet Becca Mai, the unapologetic "SOP Queen" who transformed her decade-long wedding planning career after an MS diagnosis forced her to create boundaries in her business. What emerged was a revelation that would benefit every creative entrepreneur: standard operating procedures aren't just for corporate teams—they're the secret weapon for wedding pros who want to scale without sacrificing their sanity.

"Standard operating procedures are the black and white lines of your business, and hospitality lives in the gray," Becca explains. Without clear boundaries, you're navigating an undefined space that makes growth nearly impossible. The fear that systems will create robotic client experiences keeps many wedding professionals from implementing them, but Becca dispels this myth with practical wisdom: optimize, don't just automate.

From separating your workflows into sales and operations categories to knowing which touchpoints require a personal approach versus which can be automated, this episode provides a roadmap for creating systems that serve both you and your clients. Discover why couples actually crave structure during their planning journey and how providing it elevates their confidence in your abilities.

Whether you're struggling with burnout, looking to scale, or simply want to reclaim the joy that brought you to this industry in the first place, Becca's approach to business systems offers a refreshing perspective. Ready to transform your wedding business from consuming your life to supporting it? This episode is your first step.

Chapters

• 0:50 Welcome to Wedding Empires
• 2:33 From Restaurant GM to Wedding Planner
• 5:07 MS Diagnosis and Business Transformation
• 7:02 SOPs: The Backbone of Your Business
• 12:41 Where to Start With SOPs
• 15:00 Optimizing vs Automating in Weddings
• 17:01 Essential Tools for Wedding Businesses
• 21:33 SOPs as Boundaries and Client Experience
• 25:12 Coaching and Implementation Services

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:27

Welcome back to Wedding Empires. Today's guest is someone very impressive from the United States. Her name is Becca Mai. She's an inclusive wedding planner, system strategist, an unapologetic SOP evangelist, and she's got a decade in the wedding industry. With a background in hospitality, becca knows firsthand that burnout isn't a badge of honor. After being diagnosed with MS and walking away from her traditional nine to five job, she has built a business that was designed to support her life, not consume it. In this episode, we're going to dive deep into why standard operating procedures aren't just for corporate teams. They're the secret weapon for creatives who want to scale, breathe and actually enjoy their business. So, from inquiry workflows to client onboarding, becca's going to break down exactly how structure is actually going to set you free. I love this. Thank you, becca, for joining us.

Speaker 2: 1:22

Yes, thank you so much for having me. I'm super pumped to dive into all this with you and, yeah, I'm ready to get started, are you? Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 1:31

Fun fact for you prior to being, like you, a wedding planner, I skirted in and out of the aviation industry, so I love a good SOP because that's ingrained into me, even as far back as being an Air Force cadet back in the day. So I definitely applied that in my business. But I think a lot of people don't. I think a lot of people can really do with this episode and think about those sort of repeating operating tasks. Yeah, I think let's start with you first about your journey and I know that you went from restaurant GM to wedding planner and business coach. So tell me about that journey first.

Speaker 2: 2:10

Yeah. So I started in the industry at a relatively kind of young age. The hospitality industry kind of took me. I was in restaurants for many years and I actually became. I kind of did essentially everything that you could think of in the restaurant and built all the way up to being a GM. And I just really realized that that wasn't really the path that I wanted to go, because the trajectory from there is, like you know, being a director of operations and then getting into the executive world, and it just didn't feel right for me and so I decided to actually take a step back and start in events, which was a pretty decent pay cut, but I knew that in the end it was going to be the right path for me.

Speaker 2: 2:55

And shortly into my event career I started doing weddings and I just fell head over heels in love with it and have been doing it for over a dozen years since then and literally just love essentially everything about it. Everyone's like, oh my gosh, you must love love and you must. You know like it must be such a really fun job to be, you know, a wedding planner. And I'm like, yes, I do love love. I mean, who doesn't? Especially, you know, being in the industry, but for me it was actually more about the constant go, go, go and like every single second is timed out to a T, and it really involves this, you know, very elaborate team that all work together for one main goal, and so to me that's what really like got me really into it and into weddings was that it was just this constant go, and I really love that.

Speaker 1: 3:52

It's definitely fast paced and it's different every day, isn't it?

Speaker 2: 3:55

Oh for sure. I literally say that, like being in the wedding industry, you either love it or hate it. There's no in between the weddings. It's like a drug, because like we are full of adrenaline and like leading up to it, and like there's this big buildup leading up to it, and then all of a sudden, the day of it's like this go, go, go, mentality for big high that we're on, and then at the tail end of it we get this drop, you know afterwards, which is our wedding hangovers, and then we're like scratching at our necks like okay, when's the next one? We're like, we're like, know, wedding crack addicts.

Speaker 1: 4:30

Yeah, I agree. I agree. I'd like to know. I know that you were diagnosed with MS. Could you sort of talk me through like how that's kind of played a part in shaping how you approach business today?

Speaker 2: 4:44

Yeah for sure. So I was diagnosed in the summer of 2019 while I was still working as a director of event operations at a pretty renowned wedding venue in DC and in the States, and so it was definitely a whirlwind and it really opened up my eyes to, you know, life in general and that life is too short and we really need to kind of live it, you know, up to the fullest. And it also made me realize, too, that I needed to put in stricter boundaries for myself, and I've always been known as kind of this SOP queen. Throughout my entire career, every venue that I worked with or catering company that I worked with, I was always the one that was implementing standard operating procedures into their business. So I was like, okay, well, what are ways that I can modify my life to still do what I love to do just a little bit differently? And so that's actually how I started.

Speaker 2: 5:41

My business was one I loved actually SOPs. I really love them because I need to know my barriers and my lines in order to operate. That's just how my brain works, and so I also realized, too in the industry that a lot of wedding professionals they don't get into the business that they have because of actually running a business. They get into it to be creatives, and so a lot of times the business side kind of doesn't always line up and they're amazing at what they do. It just may not be the smoothest from a client experience, and so I really wanted to bring that to the table while still doing wedding planning, because I can't let it go. I just I love it so much. I just modify my life around it. I love that.

Speaker 1: 6:28

I guess, for anyone who doesn't know saying SOPs, standard operating procedures can you explain in your own words what they are and I guess, why do us creatives tend to resist them?

Speaker 2: 6:40

Yeah. So standard operating procedures, I like to say, are the black and white lines of your business, and then hospitality lives in the gray. Okay, so if we don't have those boundaries or those lines, those black and white lines, then we're just in this gray abyss of just like trying to move along with hospitality but not knowing where to go. So these standard operating procedures really become the foundation and the backbone of your business. It's literally what you do every single day, day in and day out, just with structure and it's having these lines so that you can either build your team or build your client experience, or both. And it enables you to actually be able to grow and to really realize where maybe certain gaps might be in your business that you didn't realize before, and trying to elevate that client journey with, you know, hospitality in mind.

Speaker 2: 7:33

I really feel that, like a lot of wedding creatives, they seem to shy away from it because they're like, oh, it's going to take away from my client experience or, you know, I don't have time for that, or all those you know kind of excuses. In my opinion, but for me it's the way that you need to know how to operate and like how to know where you're at at any point in time, because how can you get through your business if it's all in your head and be able to explain that and build out a team if it is all in your head? That just doesn't really work. So that's why standard operating procedures are clutch.

Speaker 1: 8:11

I think that is a big hold up for people is that, when do I have time to sit and do these things? I was lucky I had COVID. Covid was like the perfect excuse for me, where it was like let's redo the copy on the website, let's redo our contracts. You know let's templatize however we want to word it the things that we do and you know our procedures. But but yeah, I think that that's definitely something that people need to start reframing and prioritizing in that, yeah, it may take up some time this week or this month, but you know, in the long run, it's going to save you and streamline your business so much.

Speaker 2: 10:03

Oh my gosh, yeah, cause it's always one of the things where everyone's like when am I going to have time to do this? And it's like, in reality, you can carve out time. And it doesn't have to be this like overwhelming thing. Like with any project and with anything, you break it into smaller chunks. I mean, think of us, as when we're wedding planning, we don't just do all the things at once. No, we break it up into phases and then, within those phases, we have sections and processes of like okay, before we, you know, can reach out to vendors, we need a budget. Okay, and before we do that, you know, reaching out to vendors, we need to know, kind of, what style and what vision they're going for. So it's the same way that you would go about the standard operating procedures too.

Speaker 1: 10:46

So we're both wedding planners by trade, but I'm sure this, you know this will apply to most kinds of wedding vendors. What do you think are the key things to kind of get started? What are the first things that you need to implement if you have no SOPs in place?

Speaker 2: 11:00

Yeah, yeah, where do you start? Definitely want to first break it up into sales versus ops. So sales is anything from inquiry all the way up to the client booked, and then ops is anything from your onboarding to offboarding your couple. So first you want to break those two SOPs into two separate buckets and then from there, then you need to create a workflow. So this workflow is literally what you do day in, day out, getting through the client journey and the client process. Just go ahead and write down your sales process. Just be like boom, boom, boom. This is what I do when an inquiry comes in. This is what I do.

Speaker 2: 11:40

So take it section by section and I would say literally carve out 30 minutes of your day, 30 to 45 minutes of your day when you first start. Don't leave it to the end, because then you won't do it, but 30 to 45 minutes at the beginning of your day. Just dedicate it to just writing it down. It's really pulling from whatever's in your brain and putting it down on it's really pulling from whatever's in your brain, and putting it down on virtual paper is what I like to say. So either put it in a Google Doc or a Word doc and just start there, and then you'll really find that it's just a snowball effect after that, because then you think, oh, I need now a template for this, and now, with this workflow, you know, I need to add this piece of collateral and like keeping things going. And that's really what it's about, and I think having that, having that set in your mind.

Speaker 1: 12:34

I know with the Wedding Academy, quite often, like most of my crew, we're all all over the world and remote workers and on different times, and so we lean on Loom a lot to sort of create a video training and share that with the person, knowing that like, okay, that's actually going to be really useful for someone else. Let's record that in a way that we can put it in our SOPs and share that as a resource for people down the track. Just having that you know I'm going to the bother of training this person in this. I'm sure I'm going to have to do it again, so just having that thought, I think, is really helpful as well.

Speaker 2: 13:06

Yeah, exactly, and I say like these workflows that you create, then become like your training manuals. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 13:13

Yeah, so can you explain the difference between a process that's automated versus one that's optimized?

Speaker 2: 13:19

Yeah, so here's the difference, and I use my terminology just a little bit different than anyone else. So really I would say you should optimize your wedding business, not automate it. There are certain things that do need to get automated, but then there are a majority of things in your workflows with your wedding couples that should not be automated because they require a personal touch. So I always say that anything that are like reminders or things that you've already previously communicated, like when the invoices do, and those types of things, those can be automated, which are literally you put on a schedule date and it'll automatically send that out. That makes sense. But all of those human touch points of when to connect for the final details, meeting, you know when to talk about, you know the design deck and those types of things, those are human touch points and those need to be optimized, not automated, because you shouldn't just hit a hit a button and expect it just to go, because that's not the way the wedding industry is.

Speaker 2: 14:26

The wedding industry is very personal. These couples, these clients, they're spending thousands and thousands of dollars on the day that's the most joyous for them and to celebrate their love, and so you can't go about it robotic-like and everyone knows, when they get an automated message or anything like that, they know that that's a robot talking to them. So it should never be that way or should feel that way. But there are ways that you can streamline things and optimize things to quicken the day-to-day tasks. So that way it's not, you know, like flying by the seat of your pants all the time you know and you really feel that your clients, your pants all the time you know and you really feel that your clients are being taken care of, but you're still staying on target and on task with everything. Okay.

Speaker 1: 15:11

So for. So, for the tasks that we can kind of get help with, you know, by a software, what kind of tools would you recommend, like what are your favorite at the moment?

Speaker 2: 15:20

Yeah, I mean. Here's. The thing is that there's not a one size fits all when it comes to these platforms and these programs. You know, I always say that if a platform or program can fulfill 80% of your needs, then that's the right one for you, because then you're able to actually get you know what you need out of it. So some of my favorite tools, though, are actually optimizing your inbox and your cloud storage. Believe it or not, If you actually organize those based things, it'll make your life a lot easier. I always say treat your inbox as like real mail. You're not just going to throw mail everywhere. Any important notes that you get, you're going to keep those aside. You're going to keep those aside. You're going to file those away. You're going to store them that way. If they're physical, Then for your cloud storage, think of that as like a virtual filing cabinet. You're not just going to throw things in there.

Speaker 2: 16:15

You're going to organize it, you're going to create folders and tabs, and that should be the same way. So optimizing that, because a lot of people neglect their inbox and their cloud storage. But that's actually what we use the most, to be honest, out of all of the tools that we use, so that one should be your top one that you optimize. Then moving into scheduling tools, so like Calendly, acuity, those types of things to be able to keep that back and forth at a very, very minimum than CRMs or PMs. So CRMs are client relationship management software and then PMs are project management software. So CRMs have the ability to automate, so send out those auto reminders. They have the ability to have workflows and portals and those types of things.

Speaker 2: 17:05

And then project management tools. Those are more taskless, focused in getting the client through a journey. There's really not a lot of automation in there. So those are like the two different aspects that you can go with. So examples of those CRM is like HoneyBook and Dubsado. Project management tool is like, for us as wedding planners, ioplanner or Trello or Notion Basecamp. Those are PMs. So having one or both of those tools become helpful. But if you don't have the pieces to add to those tools, then the CRM. You're working for the CRM rather than the CRM working for you. So just keep that in mind when you do go to that one. Those will be kind of the things that you kind of can't really have your business without.

Speaker 1: 17:55

So how have some of these systems help you manage your health while running a business? They help you when it comes to balancing that well?

Speaker 2: 18:03

Yeah, for sure. I mean I have really modified kind of my life so that way, you know, I'm able to operate my business and maintain my health boundaries. So the biggest things is by keeping you know my clients on target and on task has been extremely helpful because if they fall behind then that puts out a pressure on me which puts undue stress on me, which means that could potentially cause a flare up and it's just not worth that. So having these systems in play have really kept my clients on target and me on target from getting behind and then adding to that stress. Great.

Speaker 1: 18:42

And I think everyone needs to learn about boundaries and making. You know I'm trying to think of the words, but you know like for me there's probably a certain day of the week where I'm well-suited to admin and getting that stuff done and I seem to achieve more if I group it all together than you know. Spread it out over the week, so figuring out boundaries like that, that sort of work with your body, and you know. Spread it out over the week, so figuring out boundaries like that, that sort of work with your body, and you know what I mean with. You know what's the words I'm looking for.

Speaker 2: 19:11

Yeah, I mean here's. The thing is. You know, sops are boundaries if you really think about it, like boundaries are literally just a rule that you place into things. So that's literally standard operating procedures is boundaries and it's setting you up for success and your clients up for success. So one of the boundaries that I like to say is communication. You know what I mean For me. I always tell all of my couples I'm like look, email is for work, texting is for fun. I literally have that on like my welcome guide to them and letting them know. My communication process is that here are the tools that we're going to be using. Oh, here's when you can actually get me, here's when I'm available, here's links to schedule calls, all of that. Those are literally standard operating procedures, but that's a communication operating procedure you know, and that's not just what channels, it's also, you know exactly you.

Speaker 1: 20:12

You know I will get back to you as soon as I can. Like I put in sleep mode, for example, on my phones. I would set up a WhatsApp group for my clients. Usually and if there's something there that went in there at 10 past nine and I went to bed, then you just set up those realistic expectations.

Speaker 2: 20:30

Exactly.

Speaker 1: 20:32

Exactly so. I think this is pretty straightforward, but how can these SOPs actually improve the client experience and not feel robotic?

Speaker 2: 20:40

Oh yeah, I think that's one of the biggest fears is that you know wedding pros, when they get into certain aspects of the business they're like you know, I really don't want to automate or optimize because then it's going to feel super robotic and that's one of the big fears. But there's a way to automate and there's a way to optimize with keeping hospitality 100% in mind. So if you have that mindset where, as I mentioned before, reminders and things that you've already communicated can be auto-sent but any human touch points cannot, so that needs personalization and kind of keeping that. But it elevates your client journey significantly. Because I'm going to tell you what, when you have SOPs in place and structure, people love structure, they crave it.

Speaker 2: 21:29

Look at us. We crave authority, we crave knowing our boundaries and our rules and like think of school or social life too. I mean, that's that's why we have you know, police officers, that's why we have you know politicians. We love having somebody kind of let us know how we're supposed to operate as a society, as a human. Even our wedding couples, you know, they even crave it. They're like what am I supposed to do? You know what's normal, and so they are the ones that are like okay, I want to know what's happening.

Speaker 2: 22:05

And the way that you do that is by having clear, concise, standard operating procedures to elevate your client journey, because they're going to crave it and they're going to like, applaud you for it. They're going to be like this process, this planning journey, was so easy. They had everything right away. Before I even had to reach out, they were already on it and sending me things and questionnaires and getting things all together and then they had, you know, a portal for me to go to that had everything there. So if you can implement these SOPs into your business, then your clients will definitely respect it, they'll love it and it'll literally take them to a place where they feel like you can then handle their day. If your business isn't feeling like it feels bumpy and clunky and their client journey feels clunky, they're gonna be like how's our wedding day gonna go?

Speaker 1: 22:58

yeah, they're gonna be like I also too it's. It's creating consistency with that process, like if they're all, if you can be at an event and just know in the back of your mind they're getting their reminders, they're getting their welcome pack, contracts gone, you know what I mean. There's so many of those things that you can just kind of it's not taking up that bandwidth in your head anymore exactly everybody's getting the same experience right for the onboard, exactly.

Speaker 1: 23:24

It is so um. I love that. It's okay, so good. So, becca, do you work with people to help build these things like what, what do you? What do you do? Now, I know you do some sort of coaching, right yes.

Speaker 2: 23:35

So I like to say that it's, you know, business coaching on steroids, because I also help them with the kind of implementation of it you know as well. So, yes, so I actually help wedding professionals implement SOPs into their business. Um, and I have you kind of two paths for my clients to take. We can either have it like done for you, which is kind of like the five star concierge experience, to where you literally can pull up this training manual and it literally says exactly how you go through everything to a T, or you know, there's the guided implementation, which actually a lot of my clients actually do, because us, as wedding creatives, we like our hands in it, and so this is coaching and mentoring them and really guiding them through how to set up their SOPs and then they're responsible for building it out. So that's kind of the processes that I kind of help them implement is both sales and operations and really elevating their client journey as well. I love it.

Speaker 1: 24:38

So, guys, if you're needing help writing these SOPs, building them, mapping out what platforms, save yourself the heartache and the time, go and speak to Becca. Her website is wed2uco and you can also find her on Instagram, facebook, tiktok and LinkedIn. Thanks so much, becca. It's been a pleasure getting to know you, and I wish I'd had you about 10 years ago for my wedding planning business. I think it would have been very helpful and saved me a lot of time and heartache searching for all these different platforms.

Speaker 2: 25:13

Yeah, thank you so much. It was such an honor and a joy. We'll get you back sometime. Thanks, darling, okay.