0-80 WEDDINGS LESSONS I LEARNED

Hey guys, welcome back to my channel. The perfect place for bridal hair and makeup professionals to build their books using Instagram. If you guys are new here, welcome. Some of you guys may already know me from over on Instagram, so you might be familiar with my journey into bridal hair. If you are not. I started my bridal hair journey with my business back in 2016. I actually started when I was working for a team at the time. So I started working for that team around the end of 2012, beginning of 2013. Then in the year of 2016 I decided I loved it to much. So I wanted to do it on my own. And in that year I only had booked for myself nine weddings for my own business not being on the team. And then fast forward 5 years later in 2021 I have 86 weddings booked for this year alone. In today's video I'm going to be going over the lessons I learned going from only having nine weddings, basically zero weddings to 80 weddings, the mistakes that I made so that you can avoid if you're looking to book out your year or next year. So let's dive in. The first lesson I want to share with you guys that I learned when I was just start out is your logo doesn't matter. A business plan does. In the first couple months of my business of building up my business, I focus so much on having a fancy website, having a fancy logo, a pretty business name, having really cool business cards and all of the things like vanity wise instead of focusing on what really matters, which is having an actual business plan. A business plan is something that is essentially going to guide you, get your goals on paper so that you're able to see the long term vision you have for your business. You'll give yourself an actual vision and you can build out a roadmap of how you can achieve those things. However, if you're someone who's new to this industry and maybe you're just starting out and maybe this is just like a side hustle for you how it was for me in the beginning it was honestly just my side hustle that turned into the biggest passion in my life. But you may feel the need to want to go out and spend thousands of dollars having someone build a website for you, or thousands of dollars having a really pretty logo or different things like that. Let's pump the brakes. Instead I want you to ask yourself what where do you see yourself and your business in a year? Where do you see yourself and Your business in five years? In 10 years? What's the Long term goal and plan for your business. Start asking yourself things like what locations do I love working at? Do I want to have a team in the future? Do I feel that I see myself being solo right now for at least the next year? These types of questions are going to start getting your mind thinking in the long term instead of the short term of right now. I need a pretty logo so that I can show up online or I need to have a fancy website because that's how clients are going to find me and that's how they're going to want to book with me. Because I have a fancy website and I have a pretty logo. No clients are going to want to book with you. You solve their specific problem. At the end of the day, having a really cool logo and the vanity metric of having a really pretty website is great. However, in the beginning I spent way too much time and energy focusing on those things when I should have been asking myself business plan questions and actually getting a roadmap to I was looking to achieve with my business. Figure out the vision, the go that you have for your business before diving into throwing a ton of cash on your website, your logo and different things like that. It's totally something I wish I would have done sooner. Really feel having that vision and having that exact roadmap of what I want to do with my business, whether it's do you want to do hair and makeup? Do you want to have a team? Do you want to stay solo? Are these the locations that you like going to? Just those simple things. Start getting that working in your mind to set yourself up for success. Second lesson that I learned that I feel really helped me able to take my business from only booking nine weddings in the first year to 86 in this year, is coming from a place of scarcity really holds you back from a place of abundance, propels you forward. Let me explain having a scarcity mindset. Always thinking things like I'm not good enough, my hair and makeup skills aren't good enough, no one will trust my technical skills, no one will believe that I can do their makeup or no one will even pay my rates or I have to offer more discounts, I have to offer more services, I have to include freebies in order to book these clients. In 2016, I was nowhere good with any of my hair or makeup, technical skills wise. And also at that time there was no educational online platforms like there is today. Just something I totally wish I had back in the day where you can just go online and you can take a course to learn new hairstyling, you could take a course to learn makeup. Back in the day I had to wait for someone to come to my area in order to take class with them. Not being able to have that opportunity really made me not so great and confident within my skills because I never thought that I could advance and be better because I had this lack of confidence within my skills and I I didn't feel I was able to advance. It really led to a scarcity mindset, especially when I was creating rates for my clients. So what this led to was me doing discount rates for my clients, not not charging for travel, including a lot of freebies such as lashes for free or adding on additional assistance without a fee making cash day of to be convenient for my client. Anything that was convenient for my client I would do because I was coming from such a place of stuff scarcity within myself. This led to me creating boundary list habits within my own business that I didn't even know I was doing and in the end I wound up losing out on thousands of dollars because I wasn't charging accordingly. When coming from a scarcity mindset, you're going to take on anything that comes your way and your clients will be able to pick up on this mindset and this behavior because it's almost like they can smell it on you and they'll push your boundaries. So let's go over the differences between a scarcity mindset and an abundant mindset. A scarcity mindset is thinking in the short term. You're only thinking of the right now in I need to book this client right now because I need to pay X bill or I need to take on this booking that just came in last minute because I need to fill up my books right now. Scarcity mindset is also believing you have to take on this booking, this last minute booking that came in your inbox because you believe nobody else is going to email you to book for that day or taking on jobs that are too big for you to handle like hair and makeup for 15 people. When you know it's only yourself and you don't have a huge team, you take it on because you believe nobody else is going to email you. A scarcity mindset is also feeling like you need to add discount or feeling like you need to include something for your client because what if they question your rates? Or what if you feel like you're charging too much? Or what if the client emails me something nasty back? Oftentimes with a scarcity mindset, you wind up becoming resentful because you're taking on too much work than you can handle and you wind up being burnt out. You can't say no to clients, you can create boundaries with clients and you also wind up being resentful because these clients that you're taking on end up being the nightmare clients. Right now, let's look at the Abundant Mindset and an abundant mindset isn't thinking in the short term, we're thinking in the long term. We're thinking of the long term. Goal Seeing the Bigger Picture so an abundant mindset is seeing a job that is out of your travel comfort zone and maybe it's four hours away. You have a wedding the next day, or another job the next day, or maybe it's your kid's birthday or maybe you want to go on vacation. Whatever it is, it's just too far of travel. So instead of feeling scarcity like I'm never going to book that date, I'm never going to find another wedding, instead you take a step back, you see the bigger picture, that this is a year in advance and you probably will get another booking request for that day. So you wind up referring them to someone else who is closer in that area. Abundant Mindset wouldn't be taking on any booking that comes in your inbox. And let's just say for the year ahead that you're booking for. Maybe instead of doing hair and makeup now you only want to focus on makeup. So you get an inquiry in your inbox for hair styling and for makeup. Instead of thinking and believing you're never going to get another inquiry for that date. An Abundant mindset would say, I'm only doing makeup for this year. I can refer them to someone else. An abundant mindset knows that there is endless opportunities around the corner as boundaries set in place for email hours, for the places that you want to travel to, and for the clients that you want to take on. But this way we all have that one friend who always winds up finding the worst boyfriends or girlfriends to date. It's almost like they will literally take the first person who comes their way. They never weed out the bad guys or the good guys, bad girls or the good girls. They literally just take on whatever first person comes their way, whoever is willing to date them. And oftentimes these people are always finding themselves in situations in bad relationships with lazy partners who push their boundaries, who don't value them in a lazy relationship because the person is taking advantage of their boundaries. This is the same when you are in a scarcity mindset within your business and you want to take on any client that comes your way because you believe there's no other opportunities out there for you. My scarcity mindset led me to only be able to book Nine Weddings in that first year of 2016, 1634 in 2017, and 30 in 2018. And it wasn't until 2019 when I finally started making that shift to become more abundant. See those opportunities, set boundaries in place for myself. Then I started seeing that increase. In 2019, I was able to book 41 weddings. In 2020, I was able to book 67 weddings. And then year to date in 2021, I was able to book 86 weddings. All from that simple mindset shift. Instead of looking at it in a scarcity mindset, shifting over to the abundant mindset, instead of saying to yourself, doing no one will pay my rate, say to yourself, my ideal client sees my value and will pay my rate and I will wait for her. Instead of thinking I need to take this last minute booking or I won't make any money this week, say to yourself, my ideal clients is the value my services bring to her and I'm going to wait for her. The third lesson that I learned in order to go from zero weddings to 80 weddings, you're going to need systems in place to run your business efficiently for so long. In the beginning of my business, probably like the first three years, I truly believe that I didn't need a client management system that I could DIY everything, everything myself. And I really went that manual route for contracts, invoicing, booking, taking deposits, all of that, I really went manual ever. Once you start scaling up, going from nine weddings a year to 34 a year to 60 a year, you have 60 clients to manage in one year. This year I have 86 clients to manage. That is a lot of trials that I'm going to need to book and a lot of clients that I need to manage. Oh, when you get to say like 40 plus a year and you're managing all those clients, you really need to have a system in place to run it efficiently and keep everything organized, organized so you're not lost in the sauce. Let's imagine this example. Let's imagine you want to remodel your kitchen. You find the best contractor online, you love their portfolio, have amazing reviews, you love all their kitchen designs. You're like, sign me up. So you go to email them and you're so excited. You're like, I'm ready to get this project started. And you email them and you hear cricket for days and then they finally get back to you and it's like some short little email. And to book with them, they say, okay, you need to print out the contract, you need to mail it in. We only take cash, so you need to mail that into. Or you can maybe give it to us day of. And they really have no systems in place for booking or anything like that. You feel like this process is so inconvenient, you can't even. You keep going back and forth trying to find a date or a time to get them into your house to start this kitchen remodel. You wind up feeling annoyed. There's no process in place. You're like, I just want to book with them. I want to get my kitchen remodeled, right? But you wind up going with them anyway. So then you wind up in the weeks to come within the process, you start thinking of all these questions. You start emailing them about the cabinets, about the hardware, different things like that. And you're going back and forth, taking so long to email you back, sometimes it's like three weeks at a time. You honestly feel like they're kind of annoyed in the emails just going back and forth with you. Things get lost. If you don't have a proper system in place, you don't have proper prep instructions for your client on what they can expect next are hiring you, they're going to feel lost. Spending that extra $260 a year signing up for a client management system called Dubsado was probably the best thing that I ever did. None of my emails get lost. Everything is automate it for emails, for the booking process, for invoicing contract, all of that. And it gives my clients a better experience so that they know and they feel taken care of. Because again, the more clients you take on, the harder it is to organize and make them all feel taken care of, make them hang out manual contracts, invoicing. Taking weeks to respond to your clients is not the kind of experience that you want to set up for your business for success. At some point, you're going to need to start taking your business and creating systems in place for bookings, and you're going to need automation at some point. I honestly just started using Dubsado in the middle of 2020, and that is when I really, truly saw a huge leap of increase of not only a great client experience. A lot of people will comment on how great the booking experience is with me, how organized they feel I am, which also leads to not only a great client experience, but better reviews for my business as well. The Fourth lesson I learned when taking my business from only having nine weddings in the beginning to now 8, 86, is you need to have a social media Strategy. Back in 2016, the only way to let people know that I was open for business, that I was doing bridal hair and makeup on location at the time, was to in person network doing like a ton of styled shoots in hopes that they might refer me to like one of their clients, if they even had any clients. Or I could pay $1,500 for like a small print on a local wedding magazine or I could spend 200amonth and be advertiser in the knot or wedding wire. All of these options are basically hoping and praying in terms of a marketing strategy to bring clients into my business and let people know like, hey, I'm open for business. Whereas today you guys are so lucky. Be sure you take advantage of social media and the power that it can supercharge your business. I finally decided to come up with a marketing plan, especially a social media Instagram marketing plan. That was when I truly started to see my ideal clients plug my inbox every single day. Back in 2015 was when I started my business Instagram account and I was posting maybe three to four times a week blurry, outdated photos. I wasn't utilizing videos, I wasn't utilizing stories. None of that was from 2015 to 2019. Then in 2019 I finally started to show up on stories. I finally started to finally started to really build my brand online and take my content seriously, especially my hair photos and makeup photos. At the time 2019 to 2020 to 2021 is when I really started to see the biggest increase in bookings and I started that social media strategy. Now imagine if back in 2016 I had a social media strategy and I actually started showing up online. I would have been able to triple my first year's bookings just by using social media because it is such a powerful tool at your fingertips and you're able to use it for free. In 2019 I finally started batching my content which I have a video right here where I talk through how I do my content batch matching days. So make sure you guys check that out. Also started only utilizing and showing my signature style, which I have another video that you guys can check out right here if you don't know how to find your signature hair look by doing just those two things and showing up on social media with a strategy. When I saw that increase going from 30 weddings to 86 weddings. That said, make sure you guys are subscribed for next week's video because I'm going to be recapping the 30 days of reels challenge that I've been doing over on Instagram. Also, make sure you guys are following me over on Instagram. Instagram. So you can see the 30 days of reels. I'll be covering all the data and analytics, and you guys will be shocked when I go over some of this data with you guys. I hope you guys enjoyed this video, and I hope you guys create something beautiful today. Bye, guys.