If I had $0 here’s what I’d do (as a bridal hair stylist or makeup artist)

If I had $0 as a bridal hairstylist or bridal makeup artist, here's exactly what I would do to stop being broke. And if you watch this video right here, yes, I used to be broke. And here's how I went from only generating $20,000 a year in my bridal business to in just three years generating over half a million dollars with just bridal hair alone. First, if you have $0, here's why not enough people know about your services and nobody really knows you exist. I say that laughingly because it took me so long to realize not enough people knew I exist. Yes, if you feel like you are posting on Instagram, if you're like I have a wedding wire not account, I have some brides booked, I do get referrals, I do get inquiries here and there. What you don't have is a consistent stream of lead generation. What is lead generation? Lead generation is inquiries coming into your inbox. So it's brides who know about you who are actually inquiring about your services. That is lead generation. And if you have $0 right now, like I did when I was starting out, I didn't have a system in place to consistently get people to know about me, which is marketing and a consistent way to have lead generation inside of my bridal business. Also, when I had $0 in my bridal business, I didn't have enough social proof and I didn't know the skill of sales yet or marketing yet. So I didn't have that lead generation system. I didn't have the SK sales, AKA how to get brides to book with me once they are in my inbox. So the heck do you convert somebody who's inquiring about your services to now them signing contracts, paying a deposit with you? I didn't have that skill of sales and I also didn't have enough social proof so I didn't have enough testimonials, enough reviews from brides that I worked with in order to use that as leverage for other people. Because it is one of the easiest and fastest ways to get more brides to trust you faster. AKA it's going to be a really easier, it's going to be a lot easier for somebody who has dozens upon dozens of real life reviews from real life brides to get booked for bridal hair and makeup versus somebody who only has one or two or not that many. So first thing I would want to do to stop being broke as a bridal hair stylist and these are all things that I've Actually done and where I started, step by step. So first thing you want to do is get more brides to know about you and to know that you exist. Like, want everyone to know that you exist. You want to shout it from the rooftop so Taylor Swift isn't like, oh my God, let me not let people know that I have a new album coming out. Let me not let people know that I'm touring, right? No, she wants everyone to know and she's going to blast it everywhere. That is what is called marketing. That took me a while to learn what marketing actually was. There are a thousand different ways that you can market your bridal services. However, the fastest one that's going to get you more of an instant, maybe not instant, okay, that's the wrong word to use. We're not immediate results here. Actually, instant about social media marketing is you're able to see if it's working instantly, meaning you can go in and see how many people clicked your link. You can go in and see how many people are viewing this piece of content, AKA your advertisement, AKA if you were to post your services in a wedding magazine, you might not see a return on that investment for months, sometimes years, or not even know if it's working, versus if you post a piece of content on social media, you're able to see like, okay, I have so many new people who obviously are finding out about me on social media. And you can see where they're coming from, their locations. It's more targeted, it's more direct, and it's easier for you to see, like, okay, this is actually working, right? So the first thing I would do is double down on people finding out about you. And the easiest, quickest way to do that is through social media. So use Instagram to your advantage. Instagram is a way that you can post on your feed, have dozens upon dozens of brides in your local area find you. And what you're going to want to do is when you're posting, you want to direct them to have conversations with you in the DMs. You want to start having conversations because right now, guess what, when I was broke, I had a crap tonight of time on my hands. I had so much extra time. So with that extra time, what you should be doing right now is telling everybody about your services and getting it out there for everybody to know through Instagram content. All of your time right now should be going into making Instagram content, getting more people to get in your DMs to have conversations. And in these conversations, you want to be talking about, okay, the hair concern that you have, what is the makeup concern that you have? And doing almost like a consult, having a mini conversation with before you hand over that inquiry form. Next, we're going to double down on social media even more. And I want you to be promoting your services all the time. Talk about your services so more people know you exist. And one of the easiest ways on Instagram to start promoting your services daily is through Instagram stories. When somebody is your follower on Instagram Stories, they're a follower. That is a sign that they are somebody who is interested in you. Meaning they went from liking your stuff on Instagram. Sorry, somebody just walked by and they're staring at me and I feel awkward. Okay, we're going to do that again. Okay. So somebody finds you on Instagram and if they take the action to follow you and now they're actually viewing your stories, that's what we like to call a hot lead. And what a hot lead is is, AKA it's a bride who's interested in learning more about you. She's interested in maybe filling out an inquired form and she's interested in hearing about how you can help her. Right. So how we can speed that up is talking and promoting our services on Instagram stories daily. Now, if you're like, oh, my God, Marissa, I don't know what to say when it comes to Instagram stories. What do you mean, promote my services? I got you covered in a free guy that has prompts for you to sell on stories, your bridal services, without actually selling. Because we're not overloading them and being like, salesy, no, we're going to do it cute. We're going to do it very mindful, very demure. Okay? If you want those prompts, they're linked down below for you, 100% free. Duh. I love you. So after you started posting on Instagram feed and you're getting more awareness out there about your brand, next you're going to be going on stories and you're going to be getting more awareness about your services to people who are following. Now, what I want you to do is reach out to every single bride you've ever worked with who hasn't left you a review. So if you don't have any reviews, you don't have enough social proof. So if you're like, I'm not getting any reviews, I want you to double down on reaching out to every single bride you've ever worked with. Get reviews, get them to your Google page, get them to your wedding Wire, you're not wherever you host your reviews or even just say, hey, can you simply reply to this email and let me know how your services work with me? What I can improve on what you love so much. It would be so helpful for me and I would really appreciate it. You can screenshot that and you're going to post it on your stories, you're going to post it on your website, you're going to post it on your feed, you're going to post them everywhere. Okay? Start infusing your social proof everywhere on your Instagram profile and on your website. Then I want you to go into your DMs, I want you to go into your requests, I want you to go into the general, I want you to go into all of your DMs, and I promise you probably have some brides lurking in there who have inquired for services with you. How I like to view my inbox for my emails and my DM inbox on Instagram. I like to view it as there is money sitting in there, there are bookings sitting in there. And you just have to take that opportunity and run with it. So what do I mean? Stop hiding from your DMs because brides who are in your DMs are people who, again, are interested in services with you. They are somebody who is showing interest. They are somebody who is like, hey, I might be interested now. Don't be totally discrediting them if they're like, what are your prices? Yeah, we hate that. We don't love that. But guess what? That's just somebody who's more of an analytical buyer, who talks more with like dry, direct, straight to the point. Not everybody is an expressive buyer who talks expressively who's like, oh my God, I love you. Now, if you want to learn more about the buyer types and how to attract an expressive buyer versus analytical buyers, that's all going to be infused inside of Bridalpreneur. So socials, where I walk you through my content conversion strategy, but we also get deep into sales psychology and we create content for every single buyer type. Because if you're attracting a lot of people, when you go into your DMs and you're like, oh my God, why do they keep just saying, what are my rates? They don't even care about me. It's because what you post, you attract. And everything that you have right now, you're attracting an analytical buyer. But that's okay. We can attract the expressive buyer who is the one who's going to be dying to work with you. Now, when you're in your DMs, I want you to respond and have conversations with every single one of those people as if it's a console, as if they're here in person. And if they're trial have a conversation. You're going to be warming them up and building more trust. And that is something that you can do right now. Next, I want you to go on to wedding vendors, Instagram, so planners, photographers, videographers, makeup artists if you're a hairstylist, or hairstylist if you're a makeup artist. And I want you to just love on them. I want you to go onto their posts and just genuinely leave comments on their posts. Even wedding venues is a good one. Why? Because potential brides and future brides are already checking those people out. Why not put a little bit of your footprint on their Instagrams? This is how I like to call social media networking. So imagine if you're like at an event and you're networking in person. How you can do that online is by leaving comments so somebody can see one of your comments and then the hope is that they go over to your page. Because I would hope that something inside of your Instagram name has something like hairstylist or makeup artist. So then they're going to be like, oh, I need one of those and tap into you. So it's a little way to leave a little digital footprint on other wedding vendors who are local to your area for potential brides to see you. Now that you're getting that awareness out there, these are steps that you've taken throughout the day. So you're getting more awareness by posting on your feed, you're talking about your services on your Instagram story, you're going on other wedding vendors and you're commenting and you're networking socially. You're gaining more testimonials because you're reaching out to all your past brides and you're having more conversations about bookings inside of your DMs. Now what I want you to do is think about your client experience right now. I want you to put everything into the clients that you have right now. This is something I did that when I tell you it was able to 10x my referrals because I showed my rides how much I love them and gave them such a great experience. It not only gave me better reviews, but it gave me more referrals. And referrals are going to be a big piece of getting more bookings for you. Is it something that's going to be immediate. Are you immediately going to be getting referrals today? No. But what I want you to think of is if you have a wedding tomorrow, if you have one a week from now, next week, I want you to do everything in your power to wow and love on that bride. I want you to give her the most unforgettable, incredible experience. So some of the things that I used to do really wow my brides is to give them extra love and attention that they didn't even expect. So things like staying an extra hour and a half after I was done touching everybody up and making sure that she was so perfect for her photos or even hanging around a little bit extra. And yes, this was free. I would do this all the time to put her veil in, to take photos of her. And then the next day, what I would do is I would send her the photos and videos that I took and she would send me the most glowing review. Brides love the photos and videos that we take. And have you ever noticed that sometimes they'll change their profile pictures on Instagram to the ones that you took because they love them so much? So how can you really wow your brides right now, even if you don't have any wedding set up, but you have some bookings right now and they're maybe not for a couple months? What I would do is I would get in your inbox and I would just shoot them emails. I would shoot them an email right now and be like, hey, how are you? I've been thinking about you. I can't wait for your wedding to come up. I was just curious if there's anything I can help you out with right now and just really be of service to those brides. If you are lacking in financials but you have a lot of extra time on your hands, that is just the little piece, the little detail that can make all of the difference is just going and giving so much extra love and attention to the brides who are booked with you now. Another thing you can do to start getting cash in the door right now that I used to love to do all the time is even if you're a bride, their wedding isn't for like six months from now, maybe it's like eight months and you have like five wedding bookings. I would reach out to them right now and be like, hey, I am so excited for your wedding. Would you want to come in for a trial? You know, getting this wedding day planning going? I would be so excited. Let me know. I have these dates available. So by saying something like that, by saying, like, I have these dates available, they might be like, yeah, there's such a lull in the wedding planning process, like hire all their vendors, they're on such a high. And then there's like 8 to 9 months lull where they're not really doing anything. So I think they would honestly love the opportunity to come in and do a trial early. And I used to do this all the time and I never had somebody tell me no. The only time that somebody might tell you no is it like they don't have their dress yet or something like that, or they don't have an idea of it. And the best thing is nine times out of ten, if you do a trial early, they come back for a second trial when it's closer to their date. So that's double the amount that you're able to get. But it's a way that you can bring in some cash flow right now simply by saying, hey, you want to do your trial earlier? Another thing to double down on what you already have is to go in your inbox and every single bride that inquired with you, even if it was three months ago, I want you to follow up with her. I want you to send out an email and I want you to follow up with them. Yes, some might still ghost you, but some might be like, oh, my God, I'm so happy that you actually did follow up. Because somebody that I thought I was going to go with, it actually didn't pan out. So this is going to push you. Top of mind pushing you up in their inbox and it's letting them know I was thinking about you. So something you could say is like, hey, I was just thinking about you. Curious if you were able to secure a bridal hairstylist yet or a bridal makeup artist yet. And literally something just as simple as that. I would literally send out every single person in your inbox. Again, I know you got a lot of time on your hands, so I want you to start doing that. So again, those are some things that you can start doing today if you have all that extra time. And you're like, I need to bring in more bridal bookings. What I would personally do is do that every single day. Single day. I would be in my DM conversations, posting all my stories and posting on my Instagram feed to get more awareness about you, because I highly doubt that if more brides knew you existed, you will be getting less inquiries and less bookings things. Now, if you are somebody who, like, Me, at the beginning of my journey, I was like, literally dead broke. And I really needed to make big changes in my life in order to see big action. Here's some ways, some mindsets that I had to overcome, some things that I did in my business in those early days. So that way I was able to change my routine, build new habits, and get out of that broke mindset that I had so I could start seeing big successes. Because, yes, you could be doing every single thing that I just said previously to start getting more bookings. However, if your mindset isn't right, if you have a block in your mindset, you might still not be seeing bookings because you simply might just not believe it. So here's some brutally honest advice that I would give to my younger self. Take what resonates, take what doesn't. Know that it said with so much love, because I genuinely wish somebody told me this when I was at the Berg time. What I first need you to understand is you are in the building phase of your business. If you are somebody who is not getting enough inquiries, you're not getting those bookings, you're still seeing really low revenue and you're not really seeing any profit. You are still in the building phase. And I had to realize this when I was five years into my business, I was still in the building phase because I wasn't working on my business. I was too busy working in my business. So I was too busy working behind the chair. And I didn't have those systems in place like lead generation, lead nurture, conversion, retention, and upsell, which are the five core business functions that you need for your business to flow. So inside of the building phase, this is where you're going to need to dedicate a lot of your time without getting any immediate results. So what do I mean? You're going to be putting in a lot of work behind the scenes on your business, and you're not going to be seeing any profit coming in for a little bit. I know this is the grunt work. This is the hustle phase. This is is where you're going to be putting in all of those hours behind the scenes. And you're like, I'm not getting paid for this. What is happening? Yes, currently, right now, I'm in another building phase of my business because I'm building my bridal business education. So I am putting in so many hours behind the scenes and I'm not getting paid for it. And believe me, it sucks sometimes. But I want you to be so willing to stick it out because the building phase of your business is crucial. And if I told you that 12 months from now you would be sitting at your first 100k year, would you think that building it out for 3 months and not seeing that immediate result would be worth it? If you say yes, you're my kind of gal. Let's do this together. Please stick it out and keep going. In this phase now I'm going to rip off a couple band aids. So if you are somebody who is in those low income months and you want to start changing your mindset around, what I need you to start doing. What I started doing was I had to cut my costs, I had to to cut my expenses and I had to stop spending money. So I had to think of my future self and I had to work with what I had. So because I wasn't making a lot of money, I needed to cut my expenses. So I stopped going to Target, I stopped buying clothes all the time. I was literally wearing the same clothes all of the time. I was just washing everything. I wasn't going on fancy vacations. I had to cut all of that out of my life and it was a sacrifice for the immediate so that way later on I could get a return on my investment. So no new car. I was still driving my beat up Toyota that was paid off a couple years earlier. The front end was smashed in but it was paid off. So yes, I was showing up to weddings in a beat up old Toyota. I was not getting a new car. I had to live in the crappy house. So that way I had a low mortgage for years because I didn't want to be stressing those things that you need to live. But I didn't have the income to buy the newer, nicer things. I had to live below my means. So that way what I was earning, I was able to invest back into my business. Next, I want you to start auditing your time. Think about your time of where you have extra time throughout the day that you can start working on your business instead of in your business. It is the number one resource you have right now because you don't have an abundance of money, AKA you can't hire out freelancers or other people like a virtual assistant to help you at this moment. But what you do have is a lot of time to work on your business. So what I actually did was I switched up my entire morning routine because I used to be waking up at 8am and I was turning on the news first thing and I was doom scrolling on Instagram for about two hours. Then I would go to the gym and that would be like a whole four hour thing. We would drive to the gym, then I would come home and eat. But while I was out I would do errands. So I was really eating up my entire day and I want to start working on my business until like 2 or 3pm and by then I was so damn tired that I didn't even want to put anything into my business. I was like, I could do that later, do that tomorrow. So instead I totally reworked my entire morning routine. I started waking up at 5am, started doing meditation, journaling, walking in the morning and getting right into working on my business. So what helped me the most was I reduced the amount of time of me wanting to do my business work and just do it. So it wasn't like this crazy morning routine of like I need to go work out, I need to watch the news, I need to catch up on this. All that did was distract me. So instead I just eliminated the amount of time it took for me to start sitting behind my desk and getting to work and emptying out that to do list that I had to do. And for me, I'm a morning person. Waking up at 5am is something that really helps helped me to just stay laser focused, to get into the flow of work. Because if you're not in that creative flow and you have distractions coming at you all the time of people texting you, you being in your emails, responding to things like that, it's going to distract you from what you need to actually be working on your business, like creating content for Instagram, showing up on your stories. So it was really easier for me to do when nobody else is awake at 5am and it's still something that I do to this day. I actually, actually time block my days. So from 6am to 11 is my deep work time. So anything that I'm working on inside of my business, creating content, lead generation, lead nurture, conversion, booking processes, doing new systems, that all gets done in the deep work. And then I, from about 11 to 12 I get ready to go to the gym. Then I take a me break. So this is like me block. So I take a gym break. I do any errands that I need, need to do while I'm in the area of my gym because there's like my target. So if I need to run to the grocery store or something like that, I do that in my me time. Then when I come home, that's my social block. So I'll go back into my inbox I'll finish off any tasks that I have to do. If I have any one on one calls or anything to do with clients like answering emails or posting on social media or responding to comments going in my DMs, I do that all from about 2 to 5pm the next thing I want you to do is to start replacing what you're feeding your brain. So right now, if you are somebody who maybe in your inner circle or the people that you're around in your daily life haven't done what you want to do, it's going to be really hard for them to wrap their minds around it because they're so used to working at a secure job where you get a paycheck every two weeks. So they might be telling you, oh, you need to be adding on more services. You need to be lowering your rate and offering discounts. You need to be giving away XYZ for free because they're somebody who doesn't understand building a business. And if you've noticed as I'm talking about what I would do if I was broke, I didn't say to lower your rates, I didn't say to offer more services, I didn't say to give away things for free or to do discounts. You are just, just baby, in the industry, you're just starting out. Yes, I would offer services for free. Not forever, but for a little bit. But what happens is when you start offering more services, it's very confusing as to why people should book with you. And confusion is the number one killer of conversions. But getting back to the people in your inner circle, if they don't understand what it is that you're doing, they never build a business themselves. They're going to be giving you all this conflicting advice and I just don't want you to feel that you need to act on it. So instead what I want you to do is replace what you're feeding your brain and, and start going into more podcasts, get mentorship courses, look at people who have done what you want to do and follow what they're saying because they've taken that path and they've done it versus somebody who has never even started a business. They're coming at it with love. They love you, they want the best for you, but they just don't know the best way to build a business. And that's okay. If you are in a very serious state where like you do need to get a second job, that's okay. Maybe, maybe you do right now need that cash flow that you don't have coming in. That's okay. But what I would hate for you to do is you take the second job and it takes all of your time and attention away from still continuing to build and grow and scale your bridal business. So if you were to take a second job, I would do something that is like minimal, that doesn't take a lot of brain power and that you don't need to work at all of the time. So it's not like seven days a week, five days a week, or 40 hours a week. I would do something that you can do this at the beginning of the day or I can work on my bridal business in the beginning of the day and work at my second job or whatever it is at night or something like that. And make sure that you are still every single day putting in the effort to build your bridal business. Because again, we're in the building phase. We're not going to be getting an immediate result right away, but we're putting in the foundational blocks to do so. And along the way you're going to have all of these like sexy opportunities maybe come to to you. But what I want you to know is to stay on task of building a bridal business, you have to turn away these sexy opportunities. You have to turn away those shiny new objects, those shiny new things such as like adding more services or doing what Joe Schmo told you that never build a bridal business. The easiest way to scale your bridal business and to grow it is to focus on one service. Simple sales confusion fails. So here's a recap. We're going to eliminate all the costs that you don't need to live. We're going to reduce the amount of time that you spend thinking about what you have to do. And we're just gonna do it. Start time blocking your day. So in the beginning of your day when everyone else is asleep, can you start to get more work done? Find out where you are the most active, the most awake, where the most alert. Okay. You have the most energy. For me it's in the morning. Maybe for you it's at night when everybody else is is asleep. But for me it's in the morning when everybody else is asleep and there's no distractions. This is when you should be working on those income generating activities that we talked about in the beginning. So getting more people to find out about your services. So creating the social media content, posting on social media, going on your stories. Focus your time right now on practicing those skills that you don't know. So practicing your hair skill, your makeup skill knowledge where you have weaknesses inside of your skill set so you can make it get better. Maybe that's marketing, maybe that's sales. Hair, makeup, whatever that skill is, practice it daily, weekly so that way you can get 1% better every single day versus 1% better every single year. Eliminate as many distractions throughout your day as you can. Remember, you're going to have maybe some opportunities come to you. Have the discipline to say no because you're already building something. You don't need to add to it. And just so you know, I did all these things when I was already in my bridal business for five years. So please don't feel like you're restarting or you're a failure because I already felt all of those things and it didn't help me get my goals any faster. And I don't want you to beat up your own self. Don't talk to my friend like that because you're rebuilding and that's okay. Your future self is thanking you. You're stepping into 2.0 version of you and she can't wait to to see you in 12 months. If this helped you, please leave a comment down below. I would love to know and I'll see you guys in the next one. Bye.