The Wedding Pro CEO Podcast: Episode 197 With Brandee Gaar

Hey there, CEOs. Welcome to the Wedding Pro CEO podcast. I’m your host, Brandee Gaar, and my mission with this podcast is to help you, the wedding industry entrepreneur, to build a profitable wedding business that you actually love.

On today’s show, we are gonna talk all about what I really think about the “Engagement Gap”, and I’m gonna give you three very practical, tangible strategies that you can implement today to not only help you to overcome the engagement gap, but I’m gonna go so far as to say that I believe by using these strategies that you can double the revenue in your wedding business.

I feel confident about saying that because I teach these strategies inside the Wedding Pro CEO accelerator, and I have seen success story after success story with my students that are implementing these strategies and are putting in the time and doing the work in their businesses and they are completely flourishing. And I wanna see that happen for you too.

What is the “Engagement Gap”?

The first thing I wanna talk about is this “Engagement Gap” that everybody seems to be talking about in our industry, and rightfully so, right? 2020 we all know was a complete train wreck. I don’t even know how else to describe 2020, but then 2021 towards the end and all of 2022 were what a lot of people were calling the wedding boom, right? So we had all of these weddings that had been put off in 2020. So now they were happening in 2022. There were so many weddings, I dare to say there were more weddings than there were pros to go around!

In 2022, there were so many businesses that popped up in the wedding industry because there were so many weddings that engaged couples were just literally picking people who were available at that point, it wasn’t even about your skill. So now here in 2023 and what’s coming in 2024 is we are starting to have kind of a reckoning, right? We had 2020 where it was just a complete mess, then we had this huge boom of so many weddings, and now here in 2023 and 2024, it’s all starting to settle out. I would like to say we’re getting back to normal, but I don’t even know if anyone knows what normal is beyond 2019.

So we’re gonna say that we’re just reckoning and we’re settling out. What that looks like is that we will have less weddings this year and in 2024 than we had in 2022, and even a little bit fewer weddings than we even had prior to the pandemic in a given year.

“In the wedding industry, the ‘Engagement Gap’ is not a pitfall but an opportunity to double your revenue. The key is to implement practical strategies and put in the time and effort.“

What are the 3 elements of the 6 figure wedding business trifecta?

Blush is having a banner year, like the best year we’ve ever had, and that’s because we are focused on these three strategies that I like to call the Six Figure Wedding Business Trifecta. Three strategies that you really need to focus on in your business.

The three things that make up the six figure wedding business trifecta are gonna be:

1. Great follow up emails for your sales
2. Profitable packages
3. Focus on one social media platform

#1 Great Follow Up Emails

Here is where I see 90% of the breakdown in the wedding industry. We get busy and we don’t follow up with our leads, and this is a massive problem in the market that we’re in right now. This is where we’re separating the good from the great, right? So back in 2022, you would get an inquiry, you would respond to it, and people were so afraid to lose wedding pros that they would book almost immediately. That’s not happening anymore. Okay? That is not happening. They have plenty of people to choose from, and so you need to stay top of mind in their inbox.

This is so, so important. You can’t just say, oh, I got busy and I stopped following up my leads, or I don’t really know what to write to them, and I feel awkward so I don’t follow up, or I only follow up once. That is not okay in this climate. You must be following up for 30 days. 30 days is the goal to follow up and here’s what I want you to remember, they reached out to you. I want you to hear that one more time. They reached out to you. You are not cold calling them at work. You’re not interrupting their dinner.

They asked you for more information. They said, “you’re on the short list of wedding pros that we’re considering for our wedding” and guess what? Then they got busy with life because planning a
wedding is not their full-time job, and so it is your job to stay top of mind. It’s your job to keep showing up in their inbox.

You’re not just gonna pop into their inbox annoyingly day after day saying, “Hey, you just wanted to see if you made a decision yet?” No, that’s annoying. What you wanna do is you wanna provide value and show yourself as an expert in what you do, and give them something to cling to help them to understand that this person really understands what I need for my wedding, and so I really like them. You just wanna stay top of mind. So how do you do that? You deliver value in each of those follow up emails you can give them. It can be tips on something that you do well, five first dance songs, or three photos that you should make sure you get on your wedding day, what to pack on your wedding. There’s lots of different things that you can give them in these follow-up emails.

But I’m gonna make it even easier for you. I’m actually gonna give you my emails that I use and all of my accelerator students use. This is part of the accelerator program. These, emails that everybody gets. This workbook is gonna be focused on very specifically the emails I use in my business to have sold over a million dollars in weddings. It’s called the Six Figure Wedding Business Sales Funnel, and it’s not only my emails, but it also is gonna give you some tips and strategies into how to implement these follow-up emails into your own business. I’m telling you, you guys, these emails work so well because you’re delivering value!

Download the 6 Figure Sales Funnel Emails

#2 Offer profitable packages

I can’t tell you how often the problem that I see in a Wedding Pros business when I work with them to coach them or they join the Accelerator, is that they’re actually selling a ton of revenue, right? They’re making great sales, but there’s no money. There’s no money left to pay themselves for sure. But honestly, they’re even tight month to month paying their bills. The reason for that is because they haven’t focused on profit. It’s one thing to be able to sell. That’s great. That’s actually a huge hurdle, right? But now you have to focus on profit so that for that $100,000, $200,000, $300,000 you’re making in revenue, there’s a significant amount of profit for you to pay yourself as the CEO of your business.

To be able to start building a team and to make sure that there’s plenty of money to pay your bills and your tax bills every single month. Wouldn’t that be such a freeing feeling to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that if you hit this number in revenue, you’re gonna be able to pay yourself this much and this is how much you can have in expenses? I love that for the CEO’s that are inside the accelerator because we focus so much on profit. Profit and cashflow is the lifeblood of any business if you do not have enough profit and cash to manage your business every single month, then there’s no business to have. There’s no business at all. I always like to say if there’s no profit, there’s no purpose, and that’s because if you don’t have profit in your business, you can’t continue to have a business. So I want you to really think about that. What I want you to really focus on in this six figure business trifecta is profit!

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#3 Focus on ONE social media platform

Number three in the six figure business trifecta is, ONE social media platform. You guys, I know this is probably the hardest one because there are so many places that you can show up for your wedding business and now in the last four weeks, we’ve even gotten a new one called Threads where no one knows whether it’s even gonna be around in six months or not. It might be like Clubhouse, where it was like really popular for a second, and then, died. Or it could be the next big thing, right? Like TikTok. But we have LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram Threads, Snapchat. I don’t even know who’s on Snapchat, but there’s so many places that you can show up.

What I really want you to focus on is going all in on one of those platforms that absolutely moves the needle and brings leads into your business because if you focus on one and two, which is great, follow-up emails and actually selling profitable packages, then number three is just gonna fill that funnel. So now you know that you know how to close them. If you can get those leads in, you’re gonna close them because you have great follow-up emails, and if you close them, you know you’re gonna make money because you focused on profit. So this number three is just filling that funnel.

Now I have an opinion on which platform you should go all in on, but let’s talk about it! I want you to be thoughtful of is where you’re actually converting followers into leads, because follower count is a vanity metric. I don’t care how many followers you have, I care about how many of those followers are actually becoming warm leads and turning into paying clients. And there’s very few platforms that you can actually do that on. TikTok is an amazing platform for getting discovered. However, very few people are converting on TikTok. Very few people are buying from service providers on TikTok. So I want you to be thoughtful of that. If TikTok is gonna be the app you go all in on, I just want you to be mindful that you need to have a way to convert all of those followers into buying clients.

Another one that people love to go all in on is, Pinterest, and I actually think Pinterest is a phenomenal strategy for getting more people to your website. Okay? So you can put your blog content there, which is evergreen and people can click on older blogs forever, and so I’m a huge fan of Pinterest. However, if I was only gonna go in on one platform, the reason I don’t like Pinterest is because there’s no two-way communication.

Instagram is where I believe all wedding pros should be. All in! A hundred percent of your marketing organic social media marketing strategy should be on Instagram. When you’re ready to add a
second or a third platform, that’s when you can add in Pinterest or TikTok. Now Instagram is THAT platform. Why do I feel that way? Instagram is the only app that allows people to not only learn more about you through your feed, your reels, your stories, all the things, but they can also click
on the link in your bio to go to your website. To book a consult with you. They can shop right there within the app, and chat right there within the app with you. They can get to know you. They can inquire right through your DM’s. I know some of you are bristling at the idea of them being able to inquire with you through your DM’s, but if you’ve listened to me for more than five minutes, you know that I am passionate about that!

Download the Makeover My Instagram Profile Workbook

So what I want you to do for this episode is I want you to download my makeover, my Instagram profile, freebie. Completely free workbook that I created just for Wedding Pros. That workbook is gonna help you to optimize your Instagram profile so that as you start to create these reels and you start to create great feed posts and stories, and you start to create DM conversations, your profile is optimized to ensure that you are taking people from being a follower to becoming a paid client.

“Instagram is the platform where all wedding pros should be all in. It’s the only app that allows people to learn more about you, click on the link in your bio to go to your website, shop within the app, and start a conversation.”

Episode Takeaways

The three things that make up the six figure wedding business trifecta are gonna be:

1. Great follow up emails for your sales
2. Profitable packages
3. Focus on one social media platform

Watch the full episode on Youtube!!

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