Fake It ‘Til You Make It!

Transcript of Short 56 – Fake It ‘Til You Make It.

The Wedding Pro CEO SHORTS are quick, bite-sized episodes are meant to inspire you as you build the business you’re dreaming of! 

[00:00:00] Brandee Gaar: Hey, they’re CEOs. Welcome 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 wedding business that you actually love. Today I wanna talk about. faking it until you make it. Now, listen, I know that this term gets a really bad rap in a lot of industries, right?

Fake it till you make it can sometimes make it seem like it’s saying you should lie about your expertise, or you should lie about what you have and haven’t done. And I would never condone that. I definitely do not think you should ever lie about what your experience is or what your expertise is. or where you have worked or where you haven’t lying is never appropriate.

Let’s just clear that off the table. Okay? However, yesterday on our accelerator call, in my mastermind group, we were talking about, how to attract your ideal client

[00:01:00] when you’re not currently working with your ideal clients. So an example would be that maybe you are, let’s say in year three of business, right?

And for the first two years we’re figuring it out. Like, I totally get it, you guys, we’re just figuring it out, right? And so you were taking weddings, in a barn on a private estate on a tennis court at a community center, like you’ve got things all over the place. But you start to realize that where your sweet spot is, is really ballroom weddings.

Like you want to do more ballroom weddings, and you really, really don’t wanna work on any more farms or barns or any of that. Right. But that’s what you have. That’s the imagery you have. And so what are you supposed to do? Plus maybe you’ve only done like one ballroom wedding, but you’re like, that was amazing and I wanna do more of those.

Here’s the thing, this is where the fake it till you make it. Comes in because you really have to put out what you want to attract back. If you continue to put barn

[00:02:00] weddings on your social media, if you continue to put burlap and lace and mason jars and you know, a bride and cowboy boots. on your social media because that’s what you’ve been doing.

You’re gonna continue to attract that kind of client because that’s what you’re putting out there. That’s what you’re making it seem like you do. Now, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that type of wedding. I wanna be super clear about this. But if that’s not who you’re trying to attract and you’re trying to now shift gears and you wanna do more ballroom events, you need to put out more ballroom style events.

Now the next question would be, well, how do I do that if I’m not working those kind of events now? Right. Well, if you know that this is your ideal client, my guess is that you’ve done maybe at least one wedding in that category. So I would say, , use the heck out of that wedding. What’s really interesting about Instagram in particular, and this goes for really TikTok and Facebook as well, is that people don’t typically scroll back more than the last nine posts that you’ve made. And honestly,

[00:03:00] nine is even a lot. on, on Facebook, especially nine is a ton. But on Instagram, if you look at your grid, you’ll notice that the grid goes three across. So for them to scroll down more than nine images, they have to really be invested. Most people are only gonna look at your last nine images, so you really wanna focus on making sure that those nine images that they’re gonna see are really indicative of the type of client you want to be bringing in.

So I would post the heck out of that one wedding that you did in the ballroom, that you can show different angles. You can show family, you can show dancing, you can show the cake. All these different things that were in a ballroom, right? 

The other thing I would really think about is what are the pain points of this new ideal client that you want to attract?

This is where you really wanna think about your reels for your education, right? What kind of reels do I wanna make that would attract this ideal client? For instance,

[00:04:00] an ideal client that is wanting to have a hotel ballroom wedding, one of their pain points might be, I know I wanna be inside a hotel ballroom because I’m having a destination wedding and I want everything in one place.

Like I want the guests to be able to stay at the hotel, and I don’t wanna have to worry about weather, so I wanna be inside the ballroom. But let’s face it, most ballrooms aren’t super attractive for weddings. So helping them to realize that they may need to add lighting draping, they could do textures on the walls.

They can really do some really cool different tables and linens to really attract your eye more towards the table versus the walls, right? You can also talk about things like how the carpet ends up blending in, because you guys all know that couples ask all the time, I hate the carpet in this ballroom.

“And what I want you to know is that for every second that you spend looking back at what they’re doing, you’re taking your eyes and your time and your energy away from your own journey. You’re taking that away from what you are focused on.”

Brandee Gaar

What can we do to disguise it? Most of the time, no one’s even gonna notice the carpet, right? So you wanna speak to those pain points of that ideal couple. Another thing that I wanna encourage you to do is think outside the box of actual weddings. So you don’t always

[00:05:00] have to put on social media, actual weddings, you could put inspiration up as long as you are incredibly, incredibly clear, that it is inspiration and not your work.

You can showcase, um, different ballroom style events and say what you like about those events or break them down. You could do a reel with the green screen behind you of the ballroom, as inspiration and you can show them what you love about it. You can say, oh, see how this wedding had lighting added to the walls?

They also did a little bit of draping behind the band, point out what about the photo is stuff that a couple may not know is in the photo. Lighting’s one of those big things, right? Where it’s like they say, oh my gosh, I love this photo so much. They don’t realize there’s $10,000 of lighting to make that room look like that, right?

So that’s education that you can, you can do on your Instagram as well. 

Another thing I want you to think about is going to some of these venues that you really want to work in, like you haven’t been able to work there yet, but there’s this

[00:06:00] hotel down the street that you’re like, I wanna work here so bad.

So what I would encourage you to do is I would set aside a couple of hours. I would one, reach out to them and say, I would love to take a tour of your venue because I would love to know what makes you unique and what is the perfect client that we can bring to you, right? And so you always wanna be serving them, like, how can I serve you?

So I would first see if you can set up a tour of their space. Sometimes they’re gonna get back to you, sometimes they’re not. They’re busy. I totally get it. Either way, what you wanna do at that point is you want to, go to the venue and you want to do lots of social media about why you love this property.

So if they were able to give you a tour, make sure that you do some videos while you’re going to run the property with them. If they didn’t answer, or they’re not able to give you a tour, you can still go there on your own and you can showcase the beautiful lawns where they’re gonna be able to do ceremony, right?

You can showcase the ballroom and how you would use the ballroom and how you would lay out the space. You could showcase their bridal suite, their grooms getting ready rooms.

[00:07:00] You could showcase their restaurants and why it would be make for a great venue for a destination wedding. There’s so much that you can do to.

Not only showcase that you know what you’re talking about when it comes to ballroom weddings or hotel weddings, but this is also a great way to network because as you post about this venue, you can ask for a collaboration with them. You can do a collab on Instagram. You can just tag them and they’re gonna start to see that like, who’s this person that keeps tagging us?

And we love this social media that they’re doing about us. You’re serving them now. Does that make sense? And so there’s so many ways that. Fake it till you make it, and I want you to really think about that. Again, I’m not telling you to, to say that you’ve worked in a venue that you haven’t or to falsify your expertise, but what I do want you to do is I want you to portray, or dress for the job that you wanna have. You’ve heard that before, right? when I was young, I remember starting at my

[00:08:00] career, our professors would always say, dress for the career that you wanna have. If you want to be a a conference services manager at a big hotel. Make sure you’re wearing what that big hotel expects their conference services managers to wear.

If they’re supposed to be in full suits and pantyhose, you should be in full suit and pantyhose, right? Like dress for that position. That’s so important. That’s what you’re doing here. You’re dressing for the position you want. You are portraying the image to your ideal clients that you already know what you’re doing.

So educate them. Think about their pain points, write down their pain points, and speak right to them. Let them know that you know what you’re doing and that you are the service provider. Them. This is so, so important. All right, you guys. Thank you so much for being here every single week, and I will see you next time.

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