From Wedding Pro to Industry Coach

“You have to sell what they think they want on the front end, and then get them to buy what you know they need.”

Brandee Gaar

Episode 4/4: From Wedding Pro to Industry Coach| So Here’s the Thing Podcast

Hey there, CEOs. Welcome to the Wedding Pro CEO podcast. I’m your host, Brandee Gaar, and as always, my mission is to help you, the wedding industry entrepreneur, to build a profitable wedding business that you’ve always dreamed of. Every year on this show, we like to spend a month where we highlight other industry podcasts that we love and know you will too.

In this final episode of the series, I’m so excited to introduce you to. So Here’s The Thing, podcast with Laylee Emadi. Laylee and I were introduced to each other last summer when a mutual friend realized that we were both hosting our very first in-person summits and thought we could benefit from bouncing ideas off of each other. Let me just tell you, I am a huge Laylee fan. She’s kind, energetic, and full of knowledge. She’s a photographer turned educator who now teaches coaches how to speak on stages and how to build better courses. In this episode, Laylee interviews me on my journey and into becoming a coach.

We talk about the pivot, the pitfalls, and my most unpopular opinion of the wedding industry. You wanna know what it is? Listen in to find out and see if you agree. Let’s get into it.

Some key highlights from the episode:

• Scale back to scale forward as a wedding pro
• Hustle stage of business in the education space is a slow burn
• Sell what they want on the front and get the to buy what they need after
• What is the hardest part and the favorite part of pivoting into the wedding education space?
• How to invest in education as a wedding pro

Scale back to scale forward as a wedding pro

Any great entrepreneur can’t sit and twiddle their thumbs, right? So that’s actually what we talk about a lot in my mastermind is, you really can’t ask what’s next if you’re still in the day-to-day of your business. So learning to become that CEO that can really become a mentor and a coach to your team who’s running the day-to-day gives YOU the ability to then look for what that next revenue stream is or that next branch of your business! How can that either feed into your current business or not? Like mine does not feed into my current business.

I don’t speak directly to brides and grooms, so I, it doesn’t feed into that business, but it does give our business, a lot of notoriety because our clients love that I am an educator. Whether it feeds to that necessarily or not.

The hustle stage of business in the education space is a slow burn

One of the things that’s the hardest about the education space is that it’s a very slow burn. I think because you hear all these stories of like “I did a million dollars my first year in business” and I’m like, okay. That’s awesome. So I’ve had to really talk myself down, because listening to that sometimes I feel like, why haven’t we been able to do more in two years??

It can sometimes be defeating and you’re like, but I already know how to do my other business really well, and you are successful over there, so you don’t remember what it’s like to have to hustle and grind. So it’s helped me a lot to be able to relate some of my CEOs that are in that hustle stage of their business because I’m like, listen, I’m not there with my wedding business anymore, but I am for my coaching business. Like I’m, I have to grassroots, like I have to be in it all the time. So it’s been a really fun journey. But I do think it can be hard to make the time consistently when you don’t see the return right away.

Sell what they want on the front and get them to buy what they need after

You have to sell what they think they want on the front end, and then get them to buy what you know they need. But what you know they need isn’t the sexy thing. Honestly, that’s how I became the Instagram coach for wedding professionals because I was personally learning it myself and because we’d always outsourced it, and then when pandemic came, we had to cut back, right?

So I was like, I’m gonna learn it myself and then once I started realizing how simple it could be, I started teaching other people to do it well that became “what is sexy?” Everyone wants to know how to do Instagram easy. So I was like okay, there’s the sexy, but Instagram’s one very tiny piece of building a
successful business. So then once they’re in, then I can say, do you know your numbers? Are you paying yourself? Do you know how much your cost to run your business all the time? And that’s when the wheels start turning. And they’re like, no, teach me!

What is the hardest part and the favorite part of pivoting into the wedding education space?

I think the hardest thing for me, and I think this probably goes for all coaches, but I need to learn not to take it personally, is when you give somebody all the tools and they think being in your orbit or that they paid for the course, it’s going to change their business. But if you’re not applying any of
the things then it won’t happen! So it’s almost like this constant battle with certain individuals. As soon as I see it starting, I’m like, oh my gosh, and I try to coach them through it, but you have to apply it.

On the flip side, the thing I love the most is watching people with the exact same tools that have literally changed their entire business, and they tell anyone, “my business is a total 180 from where it was a year ago because I’ve applied these things” and it’s not because of me. It’s literally because, I can see their business from the outside.

That’s what a good coach does, you have to hit them with the tough love. You say, these are the things you really need to assess in your business and then they actually go assess those things and they actually start to make the changes that you’re suggesting, but they have to do the work. At the end of the day, you either are a doer or you’re not. That’s just it.

How to invest in education as a wedding pro

Anytime I invest in education, I carve the time out. I set a goal for myself. How long am I giving myself to make this investment back? What do I wanna get from it that’s gonna accelerate? I don’t even go into a networking event without a goal! So I don’t understand why people, why people pay every single month for a course or anything that they’re just gonna let sit in an inbox somewhere. I just don’t. What is the point? Always have a goal!

Listen Now to Episode 196 of the Wedding Pro CEO Podcast, From Wedding Pro to Industry Coach

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