So you’ve started your wedding planning business and things are going great. You have a steady stream of clients, you’ve become an established professional in your niche, and you feel like you’ve really got the entrepreneur role down to a T. But… maybe you’re starting to feel a little overwhelmed with your tasks and you’re feeling ready to bring a little oomph to your business. In other words, you’re ready to level up your wedding planning business, services, and experience for your clients.

Having been in the wedding industry for over 14 years growing several of my own businesses as well as my clients’ businesses, I’ve learned how to level up a business without too much overwhelm. It’s now my passion to help other wedding entrepreneurs expand their businesses and reach their goals. So, with that being said, I gathered everything I learned over the years and narrowed them down to what I believe are the top three tips to grow your wedding business to meet its growing demand!

Automate everything!

OK, you don’t have to literally automate everything, but pretty darn close to everything! The less time you can spend doing repetitive tasks such as scheduling consults, sending reminder emails, posting on social media, sending your newsletter, etc., the more time you’ll have to work on growing your business!

A common misconception when someone hears the word “automation” is that your interaction with your clients becomes less personal. This is actually far from the truth! There are many ways you can customize your content and stay true to your personality so your content still feels relatable and human. For example, in your emails, you can customize name fields to automatically populate the recipient’s first name. On social media, you can still write captions that speak to your heart. The only thing that automation does for you is take the time-consuming task of pressing “send” or “upload” — you still have full control of the copy and content.

Some of my favorite tools to use are Acuity Online Scheduler for appointments, Active Campaign for newsletters, Tailwind and Later for social media posts and insights, and Planning Pod for event management.

Build a team.

This one can seem daunting, but building a team is imperative for building a sustainable and profitable business. As a one-man (or woman) team, you’ll hit a limit on the number of tasks you can handle and therefore, the amount of money you can make, leading to revenue halts. For example, if you get into an accident (knock on wood) or even just want to take a vacation (for a less morbid example), you won’t be able to make revenue because you’re the beginning, middle, and end of your business as a solopreneur.

Though this blog post won’t focus specifically on how to build your wedding business team, there’s still a lot to consider when hiring people. So, for more information on how to grow a team, check out this blog post on How to Build a Team that Never Wants to Leave You. Or, if you’re looking to outsource tasks that you don’t have the time for anymore, or there are certain tasks that drain your joy, check out this blog post on Three Roles You Can Outsource to Elevate Your Wedding Business.

Create processes and document them.

You might be thinking, “Brandee, I ain’t got time for that!” But hear me out. As you grow, you’ll need help — unfortunately, there’s no workaround for that! So to set your new staff up for success, you’ll need to train them. Your first step for doing this is creating SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) for everything you do. It might seem tedious and almost silly at first but remember: you know your business from the inside out already because you’ve been doing this for a long time, and a new employee can’t read your mind.

If you’re dreading the idea of creating documents filled with procedures, don’t fret — I’m not a fan either and that’s why at Brandee Gaar and Blush, we create Loom videos for our new team members! Loom lets you record your screen while you talk and do a simple task like posting a blog, scheduling social media posts, replying to client emails, etc. so you can describe the steps in real-time. Then we simply save these videos to a Google Drive folder or Dropbox labeled training videos and pass it along to the appropriate team member!

You’re ready to grow your wedding business!

Those are my top three tips to grow your business to meet its growing demand! I hope you found this blog post helpful and you feel ready to take charge and level up your wedding business. I’d love to know what your biggest takeaway was and what you’re going to implement right away because we’re not just forever students here — I like to encourage you to take action too!

If you’re feeling like you need some personalized guidance, let’s chat! I’d love to know how I can help you and your wedding and creative business succeed.