Transcript of Short 34

Hey there CEOs!!! Welcome back to today’s Thursday short of the wedding pro CEO podcast.

I’m your host, Brandee Gaar. And my mission is to help you the wedding industry, entrepreneur, to build a profitable business that you love.

On today’s short, it’s kind of a juicy one. Okay? So I have really been turning my attention towards TikTok and YouTube shorts.

I’m really wanting to take the effort that I’ve put into Reels, really learning and mastering Reels, short form video and apply that to TikTok and YouTube shorts.

I’m now starting to understand how to repurpose that well onto other platforms.

So I’ve also been watching a lot more TikTok.

Before, maybe a week ago, I could care less about TikTok.

I never went on it.

I barely scrolled it.

Now… I’m kind of addicted.

Anyway, that’s a different conversation for a different time. 🙂

But I have been following this one event planner who I actually really enjoy watching. She’s got a really specific niche.

Her tips are very short and practical.

She teaches engaged couples, tips, tricks, things to do, things not to do when planning a wedding.

And I really enjoy her!!

There’s several people that I’ve been following, but I find her to be very interesting.

I actually saw a TikTok that she made a couple weeks ago.

She said, that she would never trust anyone on her team to be lead on a wedding. That only she, as the owner, should ever plan a wedding as a lead.

She continued by saying, She has a team of people that help, but she would never trust any of them to actually execute as a lead planner. She promised to never have other planners under her, and that couples should never book an associate planner as your wedding planner, you should only ever book the owner.

And she even went on further to say that she would rather book the owner of a company that had only been in business for less than a year than to book an associate planner with an established company.

Now you know I about fell outta my chair. Right? I was like, what?!

And I don’t love social media debate. I would literally never comment on someone’s posts like that because it just never gets taken the right way. Right?

I could, call her up and say, “Hey, I’d love to debate you on this.”

But for sure I’m never gonna do that on social media. And honestly, I’m also not gonna call her up because it is her business and she can run it however she wants to.

What I did do was put it in my handy little notes app on my phone called, topic ideas. And here I am making a short for you all about this topic.

And the reason that I really felt passionate about creating this topic is because I actually hear this from a lot of students. Students will come to me, different people in the wedding industry, and they’ll say, “Hey, Brandee, I want to scale my business! I wanna grow it! I wanna scale it! I don’t wanna work every single day!”

I’m like, great. Tell me about your team.

And they’re like, “Oh, I have a couple of assistants, but I never wanna have a team. I don’t want to have to be responsible for other people doing their own weddings.”

“Here’s the thing, when you’re a solo entrepreneur, your income is capped with your time.”

And I’m. Okay, well, first we need to start there because here’s the thing, when you’re a solo entrepreneur, your income is capped with your time.

You actually do have a cap on how much money, how much revenue you can make, and it all hinges on you showing up.

The wedding industry, is for the majority, a service based business.

So when you have a product like a widget, right? If you sell a widget, whatever your widget is, it’s a product, you can scale that by yourself because you’re just selling it, right?

At some point you might need to bring on assistance or whatever, but that doesn’t involve your time.

To actually show up in a service based business, we have to show up and provide the service.

So you are capped at the number of times you can show up and provide that service.

If you only wanna do 40 weddings a year, your max capacity IS 40 weddings a year. That’s the maximum amount of revenue that you can make.

To be honest, it’s exhausting!!

If you’re still young in the industry, you’re probably thinking, oh, Brandee, I don’t mind. I love working. I love doing weddings. I wanna be there every single weekend. And that’s great!

But as you have kids, have a family, as you just want to have a life, you get burnt out in the industry or you realize, you want way more than you make now, but you want to work less weddings, that’s not possible as a solo entrepreneur.

You absolutely need to build a team so that you can expand the amount of money that you’re able to make.

So here’s what I find odd about this TikTok. As somebody who’s had a team for, as long as I’ve had a wedding business, I find it odd to think that only the owner should plan weddings.

I think my associate planners are almost better than me at this point because I’ve trained them at events, they are experienced.

Now that I don’t do weddings every weekend, I have the capacity to step back and mentor, coach and teach them even better from a distance. So most of the planners on my team are as good, or even better of a planner than I am.

And having somebody that is the business owner, just because they can run a business or start a business and throw up a website in a logo, doesn’t actually make them very good at their craft.

There’s lots of reasons that I would debate this TikTok. But the one reason I really wanted to emphasize is that if you are a solopreneur, please understand that you have a cap on the amount of income that you can make.

When you decide that you want to start scaling back on the number of the, of events that you’re doing, you only have two options:

1. Raise your Prices
   You could end up in a place where yes, you could charge $20,000, $30,000 per event and just take six events a year. But what happens if those six events don’t come? What happens if you get hospitalized or you have a family emergency and then you can’t execute that event? Who is executing it for you?
2. Build a team
   Multiply yourself, multiply your capacity. You become a mentor and can start focusing on other revenue areas for your business, other areas where you can create revenue streams while your team is out kicking butt and executing events!

So this is what I really want you to think about Solo entrepreneur.

I’m just gonna tell you, I’m gonna take a stance on this. You probably already know what my stance is, but I try to tread lightly so that I don’t hurt anybody’s feelings… but if you are still a solo entrepreneur, all you have done is created a really high anxiety job for yourself.

“If you are still a solo entrepreneur, all you have done is created a really high anxiety job for yourself.”

And there’s nothing wrong with that if that’s what you were looking for.

If you left your nine to five to be able to create yet another job for yourself that is extremely demanding and requires an incredible amount of your time, probably more than your nine to five, and also only pays you sporadically because you, probably, pay yourself what’s left over. That’s great!

BUT if you left your corporate job thinking I’m going to create a business and I’m going to be the boss and I’m going to grow it and I’m going to scale it and I’m going to dominate this industry, then you absolutely must build your business, like a business.

I was listening to the Business Made Simple podcast with Donald Miller

He was coaching someone and he said, “Even if you’re not planning to sell your business, you still have to grow it like you’re going to sell it one day because you never know when you’re gonna want out or when you’re gonna be ready for the next phase of life.”

And if you build your business and it completely hinges around you, you haven’t grown a business.

You’ve grown a job.

I can’t even begin to tell you how important this is to realize, especially in the wedding industry.

If you are staying small, if you are a solo entrepreneur, or if any part of your business still requires your oversight, you have created a job you have not created a business.

There is a huge difference.

“Your business isn’t your baby, it’s not your child! It’s not your first born. Your business is a business.”

I want you guys to have freedom from your business I want you to understand that.

Your business isn’t your baby, it’s not your child! It’s not your first born.

Your business is a business.

It won’t care when you leave. It won’t!

The industry will mourn you for a second and then it will move on.

But your life won’t!

So treating your business like a business and not like the thing your identity is, so, so important.

You need to grow, you need to create a business that is sustainable and has an exit plan, whether you plan to exit it or not. Your business needs to have an exit plan.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to grow a business that’s scalable and has an exit plan I would love to invite you to come over and learn more about the Wedding Pro CEO Mastermind.

The CEO Mastermind is our small intimate group of like-minded CEOs who are building profitable businesses that they love.

They’re businesses that they can really enjoy and have downtime from.

They’re building up teams, they’re building up multiple six figures.

They’re building up profit. This is a huge, huge piece of the puzzle list to make sure you’re profitable.

They are learning how to create additional revenue streams for their business and really learning how to become the CEO of their business.

If you’re interested in learning more about that, I would love to invite you to just book a discovery call with me.

Let’s talk more about your business and whether the CEO mastermind is a great fit for you.

We are so excited to invite new members into the group!!

I’m going to go play around a little bit more on TikTok and we’re gonna see what we can do over there.

If you are on TikTok, I’m at @BrandeeGaar please say hello and I can’t wait to see you there.

Thanks so much, I’ll see you next time!

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