No matter if you’ve been in the entrepreneurial game for 1 year, 10 years, or even 20 years, there is always something new to learn about the industry that you’re in. As service-based, creative business owners this is especially true! The market is constantly changing, client expectations are evolutionary, and strategies that worked 5 years ago could be obsolete because of new technology. 

Even if you’re an educator like me, it’s always great to look towards other educators because there is always someone who knows more about an aspect of growing a business than you. In fact, I firmly believe the best and most successful entrepreneurs and educators are the ones who are willing to reach out and ask for help!

So with that all being said, I wanted to take a moment to highlight just a few wedding educators who have helped me take my business and CEO mindset to that next level. By the end of this post, I hope you’ll have some fresh ideas on what services and/or coaches you want to invest in in 2022!

Cece Todd of Cece School

Cece Todd, founder and lead designer of Cece Designs is one of the most hysterical wedding professionals I’ve met in the industry! Plus, with nearly 20 years of experience in the wedding and event industry, she has also become a guru at building an incredible brand. Both of these characteristics, Cece’s charming personality and her wisdom about the industry, make her an excellent wedding educator. 

Cece created Cece School, a members-only online community, for floral designers, event designers, and wedding professionals who want to grow their business, improve design techniques, and feel inspired every month to keep persevering as a business owner in this growing industry.

What makes Cece School so valuable, though? She has created an entire program that’s an all-in-one, all-inclusive experience for wedding professionals. That means you get to learn all the elements that go into building a successful business including pricing techniques, creating a cohesive brand, fostering positive vendor relationships, attracting ideal clients through your website, social media strategy, hiring and delegating, crafting a client experience, and so much more.

Not only will you get Cece’s tips and tricks from her two decades of building her wedding floral business but you’ll also get to learn right alongside other wedding professionals! Take a sneak peek into what she teaches by listening to our conversation about the 5 common mistakes creatives make.

Kristin Wilson of Love Lead Excel

Kristin Wilson, the founder and CEO of Our DJ Rocks, is a marketing maven. She has built an empire of fierce female DJs in Orlando as well as a photo booth company called Photo Booths Rock. She’s taken all of her experience and created a podcast, Love Lead Excel and she’s also a pro educator for Wedding Pro! All her educational content will knock your socks off as much as her performances at weddings do! Through her teachings, she discusses useful and easily digestible nuggets of information you need to know to build the business of your dreams. From what to do to push sales to creating an inclusive business to vendor education to branding, she’s got the know-how for it all.

And hey, we all know that building a wedding business is challenging work, to put it in simplest terms. I’m always transparent about the idea of how saying yes to one thing in your business means saying no to another thing, such as spending time with your family. That’s why I love this episode I recorded with Kristin — she talks candidly and eloquently about how she built a successful, female-run wedding DJ company, podcast, and photo booth company while balancing her marriage. If that’s something you’re trying to figure out in this chapter of your journey, I highly recommend taking a listen!

Shannon of Mrs. Vondy

Mrs. Vondy, or Shannon, is a photographer by trade (she owned a full-time wedding photography business for 10 years!), but she’s also an email marketing wizard, business owner and coach, and blogger. After years of trial-and-error, she began making literal thousands from her emails and her email list gets 60% average open rates! I know, it almost sounds like an impossible achievement. But she really has found the “secret formula” for creating fun and engaging emails that people actually want to open. Now, she’s teaching wedding professionals how to make more money through email marketing, so they can add revenue to their existing clientele.

Email inboxes used to be an area where all sorts of ads and emails from corporations would bombard your inbox. But inboxes of today have transitioned into becoming a sacred place — a place we keep lock-tight from any unwanted emails. And for good reason! But that also means us wedding professionals have to be a bit more intentional with our email marketing strategy.

Shannon is my go-to email marketing coach because she provides so many valuable insights into growing your email list as well as creating an engaging community. With her monthly email management, launch support, email intensive strategy meetings, a welcome sequence build, and other email marketing services, you can find the fun in email marketing again! Plus, you’ll be able to provide the value you want to the clients you love to work with.

Renee Dalo of Talk With Renee Dalo

Renee Dalo, the founder and lead planner at Moxie Bright Events, has been called “the no-nonsense Mary Poppins of Wedding Planning.” And it suits her so well! Marrying her background in theater and fine dining (pun intended), she decided to turn her hobby, planning events, into a successful boutique wedding planning company!

Over a decade later, she decided she wanted to pay it forward and help the new generation of wedding professionals by becoming an educational speaker, starting a podcast, and providing online courses. (To get a glimpse into her brilliance, take a listen to our conversation about how to work smarter, not harder in your business.)

But arguably her best piece of educational content? Wedding Management 101, which teaches wedding planners how to step away from day-of-coordination services to provide a higher quality client experience! Though I highly recommend you check out all of the incredibly useful content she produces, Wedding Management 101 is one I feel particularly passionate about since I’m also a wedding planner who recommends new wedding planners to ditch day-of services if they want to earn more profits, establish themselves as an expert in your market, and avoid burnout.

Final thoughts

So there you have it — that’s my list of the four educators I’ve found the most value from this year. Of course, there are so many more amazing, talented, and brilliant wedding and creative educators out there, but the four educators we talked about today guided me through this past year and helped me grow and scale my wedding business. I know they’ll help you take your business to the next level in 2022 just as much as they helped me!

If you liked this blog post and you’ve decided what service or which coach you’re going to invest in next year to grow your business, I would love for you to screenshot this blog post and share it on your Instagram stories. I love cheering all of you on!