7 Lessons I Wish I Knew In My First Wedding Season (I’ve Now Grossed $728,000)

As someone who's grossed over $728,000 as a bridal hairstylist, here's 7 things I wish I knew in wedding season 1. Starting off with undercharging will make your future self super pissed off. Is there anything worse than booking a bride today that you're not servicing for another like year or year and a half? Your pricing is going to change, so you undercharging today so you can get that booking today is going to make your future self who is like, yeah, I know what I'm worth, I know why I charge this rate, I know who my ideal bride is, I know if I say no to this booking, another booking's gonna come. Is gonna be really pissed off when you only charge $1 per mile for travel and now she's traveling 2 hours one way and only getting paid like $15. And she's gonna be really pissed off when that bride is super demanding, sending you hundreds of emails, when in a couple months you raise your rates and those brides are like the best ever. They literally don't even need to hear from you. So be aware of what you're charging and what your future self really wants. Pricing is meant to get you profit over a long time. It's not meant to get you more yeses. Expect the nos. The next thing is to actually get more bookings faster is to understand the real problem that you solve for one specific bride. I used to not want to offend anyone, so I wanted to make sure that my page showed hair and makeup, that I was always showcasing every single look that a bride could ever possibly want from me. So I would showcase like vintage looks, I would showcase natural, super glam, Hollywood glam, clean buns, boho styles, everything under the map. And what that does is that dilutes what you're known for, so then you have no transformation. So the only thing she's going to be able to shop you on is price. Your fear of being different is going to hold you back, and it's going to delay bridal bookings. Niching down is literally one of the most powerful things you can do in your business, and all big businesses understand this. You have to stand out in a saturated market. Everyone and their mother is a bridal hairstylist and makeup artist these days. You gotta stand out, my girl. Niching down and having one ideal bride will generate you more money in your bridal business than you'll ever know what to do with. It took me so long to realize that because I thought it was gonna hold me back. I thought I wasn't gonna make as much money because I'm not gonna be serving as many people when in reality you need to flip that script. You can't service everybody. Lesson number 3 took me way too long to realize. You don't need to service the entire bridal party solo to make more money. Yeah, let that one sink in. You don't need to do the entire bridal party. You don't have to do hair and makeup for bride plus 8 just so you can make more money. You'll be so much happier if you hire help. And I know you might be like, oh, I can't find loyal assistants. You can, they're out there. You have to go through a hiring process. Let's say you take on a bridal party of bride plus 8 and you're doing 8 bridesmaids. So that's a total of 9 hair services. Let me ask you, how happy are you and how good do those services look by the time you get to bridesmaid 8? By the time you get to the bride, you are roasted and toasted. Surviving on one chicken nugget, my girl. Okay, you need to stop. If you had help, you would be able to give such a better client experience and you would have time to stop for a sip of water. Like, stop it. Give yourself a break. The best wedding seasons I worked was when I had help. You can still take larger bridal parties, but you don't need to do them all yourself. You don't. You could still make a lot of money when you have a pricing structure and a payment structure that you charge for an assistant fee and you're still able to pay your assistants really, really well so they stay loyal to you. Trust me, it will literally change your life. The next lesson, speaking of hiring and working with other people, you do not need to have a wedding team doing weddings without you to be successful. This was literally my mantra when I was leaving my 9 to 5. When I quit, I remember sitting in the office and having to tell the CEO of the company what I was doing and where I was going, why I was leaving. He wanted to meet me and I was like, oh my God, what the heck? And one thing he told me really stuck out, which was always make sure you have money to pay your help. Or always make sure you have payroll to pay employees. And I'm like, why is this guy assuming that I'm going to be having employees? Maybe he sees something I don't, but okay. He knew I was going to run my own business. And I think he just assumed that I would have a team doing weddings without me. And everyone always assumes that. And just because somebody else is projecting what success should look like for you doesn't mean that that is what is going to work for you. And it never worked for me. I tried to have a team. So many times, and I flopped and I failed, and it just kept showing me that wasn't meant for me. You can have a six-figure bridal business 100 million different ways. You need to find out the one that works best for you. And again, just because maybe you see other people doing the team thing doesn't necessarily mean that's for you. For me, it felt like I was a manager, and I did not want to be a manager. I don't want to manage all these other people. You likely might be telling yourself like, oh wow, I'm turning away these dates that I'm available for. I should get a team to do those dates that I'm not available for, because this was the lie that I sold myself, that I would tell myself again and again. If I had a team, then I'm making money in commission. What you don't realize is you are then becoming the marketer. You're becoming the administrative assistant. You have 10 times the amount of inbox emails that you need to handle for them. And then you also need to market and sell these team members because people are going to be coming in expecting your hairstyle, your makeup look to work with you. But now you need to sell them on working with somebody else. It's a whole other ball game. And then you gotta create a culture, then you gotta create branding. It's a lot. And again, if that's for you, I love that so much, but it doesn't have to be the only path. If you're constantly turning away inquiries because you're already booked, it's not a sign to start a team. It's a sign to raise your rates. Like, let's fucking go. Lesson number, I don't know, there will always be a bride who tests you. So you need to have solid boundaries, my girl. There's gonna be a bride who's like, I wanna get my deposit back. And you're like, ah, I don't know. There's gonna be a bride who pushes things on what you have inside of your contract. There will be those brides. You're gonna learn through experience, but it's also important in the beginning to know some things that you stand for. Literally take a piece of paper, write out like things that you would love and things that you would hate that a bride would do, so that way you at least have some frame of reference and start getting those boundaries fast. But also, another little side note, every time a bride breaks your boundaries, you can just update your contract with something. But not every little time a bride breaks a boundary or something like that, does it mean you need to update your contract at the same time? Because then your contract's gonna be like this long. And speaking of that, your brides don't read your contract. They don't read those walls of text. They never read anything. Okay? Like, be so for real. Every time a bride pisses you off, if you're updating your contract, let's relax. Okay? Let's relax. Maybe then let's look at who we're letting in. Maybe then let's revise the ideal bride and the kind of bride we're attracting in. Maybe then let's add some qualifications to the inquiry process so we're not bringing that kind of energy in, right? The next lesson, This one I don't believe I ever did, but I see a lot of people doing this on social media and I'm just like, what was happening? Your brides don't need a TED Talk on why your prices are the way they are. They don't need a TED Talk on your expense breakdown. They literally don't care. It doesn't make sense. It goes one ear out the other. They're like, mm, okay, and posting that kind of content doesn't make her want to hire you more. It doesn't. I don't care what Skims is charging for a t-shirt. I don't care what they have to pay to make this t-shirt or what the shipping cost is. It doesn't matter to me. They create a world that I want to belong to. So I'm going to pay whatever it is. So instead of constantly talking about justifying your prices, why things are the way that they are, you're then attracting in the bride who all she's looking at is budget and price. And she's so conscious of that versus you could spend your time, effort, and energy on creating branding, messaging, a world and an experience of how you want your bride to feel when she comes into contact with any part of your brand, right? Next lesson that I wish I did way sooner is just film yourself. Just film yourself. Start small. Start at trials. Start filming yourself so you can start getting the content, okay? Like, work your way up. I know it is so uncomfortable. When I first started out, I would only ever film myself— I would literally hide my phone inside of my hair or makeup kit so that people wouldn't see it, cuz I felt so uncomfortable. But then I decided, you know what, I'm going to become a tripod warrior. And I would just set up my tripod and have it there. I wouldn't pay attention to it, and I would just start filming myself, and that kind of content is what is gonna perform the best. I feel like your bride gets to see the behind-the-scenes experience. You can create all different kinds of content. You get to really showcase your personality of how you are on a wedding day. That kind of content is going to get your brides dying to work with you because she really gets to feel your energy, see your personality, what you're bringing to the wedding day, as well as the transformation literally in real time. Just do it. I didn't start filming myself for like, I want to say like a decade in, and I wish I did it so much sooner. I would have had so much good content. Next lesson: Follow up with your brides. Follow up. You literally have money sitting in your inbox. You literally have brides who inquired with you that you responded. She hasn't responded back. And if you follow up with them, girl, the amount of people who are gonna come back and start paying those deposits, signing those contracts. Look at your inbox as if you have money sitting in there. Literally those inquiries she inquired with you, why wouldn't she wanna hear from you again? Maybe she literally just forgot and went about her day. You got money sitting in your inbox. Don't waste it. Next lesson, do the dang content days. Hire the damn model. Okay? Act like you're booked and profitable before it hits your bank account, before you have the booked out calendar. When I started hiring real models versus constantly getting ghosted from like friends, family members that I wasn't paying to do a content day for me, my content exploded. Start looking at hiring the model as like, okay, maybe I'm paying $500 for this, but how many bookings am I going to get for this? I would hire one model, post the content, and it would book me like $20,000 worth of bookings. I think that was worth it. I think that's a good ROI. But not only that, you're able to then practice your content skill in an environment that's not so time restricted. So if you're somebody who really wants to level up your content skill, like filming yourself, the lighting, the editing, and really hone in on that skill and build that habit to create a process and content strategy, start with content days, hiring the model, getting a studio, creating the branding and environment that you want in a place that's not so chaotic, like a wedding morning. Because if that's the only time you're getting content, practicing your work, practicing your hair or makeup skill, it's kind of a disservice to you. You want to be putting reps in even when you're not working. The next lesson, I actually like think about it and I can't believe how crazy it is that I did this, which is act like you're booked and profitable before you are. So what I mean is there were so many things I would do to act like the version of myself who was booked, who was profitable, who had hundreds of thousands of followers, who was going viral. I stepped into that identity before it was my actual reality. And I know that might sound a little woo, but when I look back on my journey, I'm like, wow, the audacity of that girl. Like, I literally showed up, like I had the followers, like I was viral. And some of the things that I did was I hired models and had content days. I literally didn't have clients. I wasn't able to show up on social media. And I constantly was seeing on my feed people posting, they're working at weddings, they're working with clients, and I didn't have them. So what I did instead was I faked it till I made it. So it's not like I was faking I was working a wedding. I was faking that I had content, or it was kind of like I would hire models, I would be practicing my work, and I was getting content at the same time. So I was able to post my work. It's not like I was like, hey, I'm working a wedding when really it's a model, not like that. But I would hire models and I would get content with them and I would post it and act like I was booked and busy before I was. And the next thing I did was before I had clients, I actually built out my entire Dubsado CRM system, paid hundreds of dollars for it. It, spent like an entire week setting it out, writing emails, getting a workflow, automating things before I had any clients to use it. I built this system before I had the clients. And then within a year I was booked out and made my first 6 figures. I created this system to hold the clients, to manage the clients before I had them. And then with content, I started posting every single day for like 2, 3 years straight. I would post every single day, stories, reels, carousels, and I built those habits of showing up daily and consistent. Consistently creating my content strategy before I hit the 10K followers, before I started going viral every single time I posted. It was all setting me up to hold the visibility, to hold the client experience. So if right now you're like, ah, I don't have the clients, I don't have the followers, and you're stuck in that like, this is what I want, think to yourself, what are those actions that somebody who's a 6-figure earner, that somebody who has a great client experience, somebody who has hundreds of thousands of followers, is going viral? What are the systems, habits, daily actions that they're taking. And why can't you do that now? Show up as a version of you who's already booked and busy, who has brides dying to work with her, and you will become her. I would absolutely love to know your biggest lesson takeaway and what you're currently navigating in your business so I can help support you. Let me know in the comments, and I'll see you guys in the next one. I love you so much. Bye!