Overcoming Overwhelm in Your Wedding Business: Managing People vs Tasks

The Wedding Pro CEO Podcast: Episode 184

With Brandee Gaar

Are you tired of being overwhelmed in your wedding business?? Do you feel like your capacity is almost maxed out? Are you managing tasks or managing people in your business?

In today’s episode, I delve into the #1 reason why you are still overwhelmed in your wedding business and two strategies to overcome the overwhelm!

Six to eight years ago I felt like I was at the pinnacle of my success! We were being referred by so many wedding venues, we had a large team of contractors, and I for sure thought that I was on top of the world. How could my business my business get any better right? Boy was I so wrong!

As I continued to grind it out, I started to notice that the bigger the company got and the bigger the team got, the more overwhelmed I was getting! That’s when I really started asking myself, how long will this be sustainable for?

We build our businesses to take on more, but we rarely stop to systematize that, to remove us as the business owners from the day-to-day. The reason that you stay overwhelmed is because you are managing tasks instead of managing people.

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As you start to build a team and grow your business, you start to delegate but you still feel like the to-do list gets longer and you still feel all the anxiety of what’s going to happen next! But the problem is that those tasks that you delegated are still rolling up on you! There’s things in every single task that you still have to deal with!

But I want to let you in on a little secret, we are the #1 problem in our business! As a wedding pro, there is so much on your plate that often times you have to shift priorities around to get EVERYTHING done! So, when you don’t delegate a full project to your team and they have to keep coming back to you, theres going to be even more shifting around and so much more overwhelm.

So what does this mean right? How can you apply this to your business? Let’s dive in!

Strategy #1: Delegate roles not tasks

First thing is first, you need to start delegating roles to your team instead of delegating tasks. In order for your team to be able to fully complete the tasks that have been delegated, you have to create a process that will allow them to do that.

For example, most of the time, in the wedding industry, we hire social media managers first because that is one part of our business that is SO overwhelming! So, in order to set your social media managers up for success, make sure they have everything that they need.

Whether that be making sure that they have all the pictures they need or the vendors that were at each wedding so they can include them in the post they are going to make, etc. You have to make sure that they have what they need because if not you are just delegating tasks not roles.

Delegating roles is when someone on your team has a problem or needs something and you help create the idea to fix it and you can help create the solution, but you’re not gonna actually go put it into action, they are gonna go put that into action. So whatever that looks like, you’re gonna delegate that to them to go figure out.

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Strategy #2: Have very clear communication guidelines and touch points!

Another thing that is really going to help you eliminate the overwhelm in your business is setting very clear communication guidelines and touch points. What do I mean by that? So often I hear from the CEOs that I work with that they don’t really know how often they should talk to their team? What should they talk about? Should it be on a daily basis?

The end goal is to create regular touch points and in between those regular touch points you also want them to have a way to communicate with you. The first thing I would encourage you to do is have a way for them to communicate easily with you on a daily basis! My company uses Slack and that is where the entire team goes to ask any questions or to get in contact with anyone. Instead of emailing or texting its is easier for everyone to be in one spot and everyone can go there for whatever they need. So, make sure create a very easy way for them to communicate with you on a daily basis!

The next thing I would encourage you to do is to stay VERY consistent with your team communication. That’s where staff meetings come in! Even if you only have one staff member, you still want to have a set time to meet with them every week and that is a non-negotiable (unless someone is on vacay)! This is a great way for your team to just get that regular time and to understand that that time needs to be protected.

Now, what are some of the things that you talk about at staff meeting? The worst thing that you could do is be the one talking the whole time. In all reality, you should actually talk the least of anybody in the group. You are really the facilitator there, but you are not the one just talking at everybody! You want people to come and be involved.

So even if you only have one staff person, this is where you really can shine as a leader in involving them in everything that the business is doing. So, always talk about:

• What weddings have happened since the last staff meeting? Was the wedding great? Was the couple happy? Were there any learning moments? Were there any vendors that were amazing that we would love to work with again? And any follow up that needs to happen from that wedding?
• What weddings are coming up in the next two weeks? Do you feel good about it? Is your timeline gonna go out on time? Do you have all the information you need from your couple? Do you feel like your assistant isn’t strong enough?
• Go around the room and everybody gives an update on their area of expertise.
• If there’s any major topics you need to discuss, this is the best time to discuss it as a team.

Make sure that overall, all of your team is as involved in their area of expertise as they need to be.

Remember, you want to manage roles not tasks so let’s make it happen!

Listen Now to Episode 184 of the Wedding Pro CEO Podcast, The #1 Reason You’re Still Overwhelmed in Your Wedding Business (and what to do instead)!

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Bye for now!!! 😊

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