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Episode Creating Revenue On Demand - Heidi Thompson
163 Plays1 year ago
Happy Woo Wednesday! I have the one and only Heidi Thompson in in the Get a Heck YES house.
Wedding pros, do you want more money in the bank now? You are going to love this episode because it's going to change your mindset from waiting and praying to let's get the ball rolling. You don't have to sit around twiddling your thumbs and quietly panicking while you wait for clients to find & book you.
But because this is the prevailing wisdom in our industry, you don’t realize just how much power you have as a wedding business owner to generate revenue on demand.
Topic: Creating Revenue On Demand
What it means to create revenue on demand on the wedding industry and how NO ONE is talking about it!
When things are slow, you can sell to people in other ways.
You can sell to potential clients, past clients, and fellow vendors.
You can use promotions to make what you're selling irresistible without discounting.
Heidi Thompson is the best-selling author of Clone Your Best Clients and the founder of Evolve Your Wedding Business where she helps wedding professionals grow 6 figure and multi-6 figure businesses without working all the time.
Her business & marketing expertise has been featured on several wedding and business outlets and events including The Huffington Post, Wedding Business Magazine, Sprouting Photographer, WeddingMBA, Aisle Planner, Honeybook, and WeddingWire World.
She is the creator and host of Book More Weddings Summit & Wedding Business CEO Summit. Over the past 10+ years, Heidi has helped thousands of wedding pros of all kinds across 6 continents grow their businesses without working 60+ hour weeks.
Connect with Heidi
https://www.instagram.com/evolveyourweddingbusiness/ and https://www.facebook.com/groups/bookmoreweddingssummit
https://evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/revenue-on-demand
Connect with Carissa
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Transcript
Introduction and Call to Action
00:00:00
Speaker
Happy Woo Wednesdays. If you're loving my podcast, please leave me a review. I'm doing the Begging Face. Please, please, please. It's going to push this podcast out to more wedding pros. A rising tide lifts all ships. So me and my biz partner are doing free website audits. My biz partner, Cindy Suzuki, she's amazing. It's so nice to get fresh eyes on your brand. And we've been catching some interesting things. I'm not gonna mention exactly what they are, but
00:00:28
Speaker
Very interesting and wedding pros are very thankful for it.
Addressing Slow Inquiries: A Common Challenge
00:00:32
Speaker
All right, so are you guys feeling like inquiries are coming in slow, not hot? Today, Heidi Thompson from Evolve Your Wedding Business is going to completely shift your mindset and help you create revenue on demand. That means making money today. Enjoy.
Meet Heidi Thompson: Strategies for Revenue Growth
00:00:55
Speaker
Welcome to Get a Heck Yes with Carissa Wu. I'm your host, Carissa, and I've been a Los Angeles wedding photographer for over a decade. I've traveled the world, built my team, and seen it all. I now coach wedding photographers hit 10K a month and build a thriving business. In this podcast, we are going to deep dive into how top wedding creatives get that heck yes from their dream clients. We are not holding back on the struggles of the business and how to push through the noise. Some healthy hustle, mindset shifts, up-leveling your money story,
00:01:24
Speaker
Time hacks because I'm a mom of two, a little bit of woo-woo, and most importantly, self-love and confidence are just a few of the many things we will talk about. I want to give you a genuine thank you for following along my journey. I hope to inspire you every Woo Wednesday so that you say heck yes to listening to this podcast. See you guys soon!
00:01:47
Speaker
Hey, everyone. You know me. I'm Carissa Wu. Welcome back to Get a Heck Yes. I have a repeat guest. Her name is Heidi Thompson, and she's the bestselling author of Clone Your Best Clients and the founder of Evolve Your Wedding Business, where she helps wedding professionals grow six-figure and multi six-figure businesses without working all the time.
00:02:08
Speaker
She is a creator and host of Book More Wedding Summit and Wedding Business CEO Summit, which I've been a part of, which is amazing. And over the past 10 years plus, Heidi has helped thousands of wedding pros of all kinds across six continents grow their businesses without working 60 plus hour weeks.
00:02:29
Speaker
Welcome, Heidi. Thank you for having me back. It's great to be here. Yeah, you are powerhouse in our industry. But how have you been? What's new?
Generating Immediate Revenue: Techniques and Tips
00:02:39
Speaker
Oh, that's sweet of you to say thank you.
00:02:42
Speaker
I mean, in my world, I've been working toward my next summit and working on just recently, I launched a new program about creating revenue on demand, which really came out of some conversations I was having with people in our industry that was particularly interesting and made me realize that I had a good solution for it.
00:03:08
Speaker
Ooh, okay, I guess we can start talking about it. Like I know I was on your IG today, so it's a really cool topic. This is the hot topic guys today is creating revenue on demand. So what exactly was that conversation Heidi?
00:03:23
Speaker
So I had a member of my membership the Wedding Business Collective. She completed her marketing plan which is like the first big milestone in the membership and she submitted it for review. I went through it and I saw that she had mentioned she was particularly
00:03:44
Speaker
anxious because yes she has this marketing plan done and now she can start working it but it takes time for marketing to work so she was saying like I don't have anything you know booked in the next few months I'm not really sure what I'm going to do and I was like
00:04:03
Speaker
You know, you could just run a promotion. You know, you could just sell to your past clients. You know, you could just, you know, break off a piece of what you offer and sell it in a different way to bring in revenue right now to serve you. And she was like, no, I did not know that.
00:04:23
Speaker
That's really where this came from because that for me and my business has been really instrumental and it's not something that anyone in our industry is really talking about. Yeah, this is so random but I went on a long hike with my sister on Mother's Day and I was telling her like after all these podcasts and really all these books and all these crazy coaching like I've hired coaches and master classes I was like I think I got like stupid
00:04:52
Speaker
I used to like back in the day before I learned all this or knew all this stuff, I would just make offers or like, you know, ask past clients or post on Facebook, like a Mother's Day promotion or Valentine's Day promotion. And then I learned all these systems and then I like forgot, like you could just ask people to sell to people or like even small offers or anytime you want. So it's interesting. So talk more.
00:05:18
Speaker
about this conversation. So when you said that, what did you say? What did she say? Was she enlightened? And like, where did you take her next? Yeah, she was like, wait, what?
Promotional Strategies: Insights and Testing
00:05:29
Speaker
Like, what? Like, yeah, so you could, you know, create something and sell it to previous clients.
00:05:37
Speaker
You could create something and sell it to your peers. I see that happen quite a bit. You could run some sort of promotion. And by the way, promotion doesn't have to be a discount. There's a lot of different ways to do promotions. But you can run some sort of promotion to get people to take action now as opposed to later. So those people that you have sitting on the fence. And then I started having these conversations with more people. So I was like, OK, I need to test to make sure that
00:06:07
Speaker
This really isn't something that anyone is talking about because it doesn't seem like it is. And I talk to people in my membership about it. I talked to people on social media about it, uh, in my Facebook group. And yeah, people were like, what, what do you mean? How does this work? So that really encouraged me to put together
00:06:31
Speaker
a training that shows you, first of all, how to create another revenue stream if you want to. If you want to offer something to past clients, if you want to offer something different to new clients, if you want to
00:06:48
Speaker
offer something to your peers and then we did another workshop on running a promotion so that could be a promotion for the new thing people created or it could just be a promotion for what you already offer but I think we get into this
00:07:06
Speaker
Hobbit in the wedding industry of like, okay, I'm going to do what I feel like I'm supposed to do for my marketing. And then I'm going to sit and wait. And to an extent, that's how it works.
00:07:21
Speaker
but I think a lot of people don't realize the way I talk about it is like you're sitting in front of this machine with all of these like knobs and dials and levers and you don't realize that you can just start pulling these and doing things and actually taking control of what's happening with the revenue that's coming into your business. Like I know it sounds ridiculous but
00:07:45
Speaker
You can decide that you want to make more money and then engineer a way to just do that. It's crazy. We work so hard on our content, on our style shoots, at the weddings, shooting, and then we're hoping and praying for that inquiry. And then when it doesn't come, then we kind of freak out and we start talking to our other friends and they're not getting inquiries and we freak out more. And we're like, are we going into recession again? Like, um, tell me.
00:08:13
Speaker
What ways do you think people should start promoting? Should they start promoting mini sessions, marathons, print sales, talk a little bit about that? Yeah, I think it depends. So it really depends, you know, what you want to do, because there's an infinite amount of things that you can do. And I think it's really helpful to go through that and brainstorm that. And I take people through that and
00:08:38
Speaker
the on-demand workshop of like, okay, what are all the ways that you could offer something to somebody?
00:08:49
Speaker
Big caveat, I would say, you wanna make sure you're offering it to people that you have access to. So if you were like, oh, I could offer this thing that's completely different, that really is like a completely different business, or you don't have access to those people, that is gonna be way more work than it's actually worth. So you wanna make sure you're focusing on either past clients,
00:09:16
Speaker
people who could be current clients, not yet clients or your peers.
Understanding Customer Needs: Emotional Drivers
00:09:22
Speaker
And then looking at the way I talk about it a lot is this problem solution way of thinking about it. You know, what problems do those people have and what solutions can I provide?
00:09:36
Speaker
So past clients, print sale is great. That is a great opportunity. Album sales could be a great opportunity. Um, doing, you know, mini shoots, doing, you know, a dedicated type of shoot. Like you can get really creative with it, but it's thinking about, because when we sell anything, we have to understand like,
00:10:00
Speaker
Why would somebody buy this? What is the solution that they're buying? And it doesn't have to be, you know, groundbreaking. Usually it's something more related to like what you want or emotions. And those are important drivers. You know, it's not like we're solving world hunger or anything. And that's fine. We don't have to do that.
00:10:24
Speaker
But, you know, you want to make sure that what you are thinking of offering does provide that solution because something I noticed people start to do is they start to go down the road of just looking at what can I offer? And then they don't think about the person that they would be offering it to. And it's like, do they want that?
00:10:45
Speaker
are they actually interested in that? Because if you don't have any indication that they would be interested in it, that it would solve a problem for them, it's going to be a much, much, much harder sell. Yeah. It is kind of like you have to test the market or the offer of firms and all these things are coming in my head because problems like, yeah, it's not hunger or we're not solving world peace, but
00:11:14
Speaker
people do, a lot of people don't purchase albums. Maybe they couldn't afford it at this time. And now they really want to album and you can make, I don't know, 600 to $700 per album. They buy like a 10 by 10 30, 30 side album. And also maybe they want to do a little bourgeois shoot or anniversary shoot for their hubby or
00:11:42
Speaker
Um, family shoe. So how would one get started? Would they just send out like a newsletter? They would, would they text old clients? Um, I know you and your questionnaire, you, you talk a lot about urgency.
00:11:53
Speaker
Yeah, so you want to make sure that whatever you decide to offer has some structure to it.
Creating Urgency in Promotions
00:11:58
Speaker
And we go through like actually structuring a promotion. So promotions are just something that simply give people a reason to buy now. A discount is probably the one we're most familiar with, but it's not the only one. We go through 15 different types.
00:12:15
Speaker
And there are a lot of different things that you can do. Maybe you do want to offer a discount or maybe you want to offer a targeted discount. Like if you're doing a print sale, maybe just to a segment of your audience you're offering, you know, a particular discount of past people that you've worked with.
00:12:34
Speaker
So it doesn't have to be an across the board kind of thing if you're going to use a discount. But you can utilize other things like bonuses, like bundling things together to make an offer more enticing. The other component that you have to have with any promotion is structure.
00:12:56
Speaker
So promotions start and end on a certain date, whatever is being offered, whatever you're promoting, there usually is going to be something that goes away. So whether it's a discount that's going away, whether it's a bonus that's going away, whether it's like VIP pricing that's going away, whether you have just
00:13:18
Speaker
three spots that you're offering and you're using that but you have to have like okay these are my dates this is how I'm running it and this is the urgency and the scarcity constraint you know we're offering this if you sign up within these dates this is how it works this is what you get you sign up after that or if you purchase after that you're not going to get whatever this thing is that you're including
00:13:45
Speaker
in the promotion. So that structure piece is really, really helpful because it informs what you're saying in your marketing, you know, and it really depends what assets you have. If you have, you know, if we're talking past customers, you have an email list of past customers, awesome, that's perfect. You may not want to promote it elsewhere. If you're only promoting something to past customers, you just wanna go direct to them.
00:14:13
Speaker
if you're doing something on a wider scale in terms of the audience that you want to reach, you know, you can absolutely pull in your social media accounts and how you want to use that, but you're going into it with the understanding of this is the structure, this is the offer, these are the, you know, requirements, you know, it has to be purchased during this period, there are excellent spots,
00:14:39
Speaker
It's this price for this period of time, whatever that thing is, so that when you go into your marketing, you can say, okay, I'm offering this for a week.
Direct Marketing vs. Social Media: A Tactical Approach
00:14:51
Speaker
And that means that on the Friday, when it's about to expire, I'm going to want to remind them. And then you can work backwards of like, what are you talking about in your marketing and why this offer is important to them during that? So I like to start with that structural component because it just gives like, like guardrails, you know, to. No, but it also makes marketing much easier. Yeah.
00:15:21
Speaker
when you think of it as maybe like a three-part series of emails or five-part series or when you're speaking to their problems like hey like
00:15:30
Speaker
Did you get enough prints for your wedding day? Is it all over your house for people to enjoy and love? Is it on your coffee table? Stuff like that. Is your structure, I mean, I don't want you to give it all away, of course, but is it more like emails, series-based, or do you have any systems or softwares that you would recommend?
00:15:53
Speaker
So I'm a big fan of email. I'm a huge fan of email because it's so it's the most direct and it's the most intimate. You don't have an algorithm getting in your way.
00:16:04
Speaker
and you know that you're actually reaching people, whether they read it, whether they click on it, you know, that's a completely different story, but you know that it's getting there, getting into their inbox. So I am a huge fan of email marketing. And even if you aren't, you know, using email marketing a lot as a strategy, if you're selling something to past clients,
00:16:27
Speaker
You have their emails. You can do kind of a simplistic and dirty version of putting this together if you need to. You don't have to use some super sophisticated system. It can be just sending out individual emails.
00:16:46
Speaker
I love email marketing. I think it's massively underutilized, but it is the most direct and it allows you to take people where you want to take people because on social media, obviously the goal of any social media platform is to keep people on that platform and keep them engaging with content on there. So they don't love you taking people off the platform.
00:17:17
Speaker
That's really why I love email marketing, but I would say this can very easily plug into whatever you're doing in your normal marketing. If you are really going hard on Instagram right now and that fits the audience you're running this promotion to, like I said, if it's just for past clients, I mean, you could post it on Instagram and just cite that it's just for past clients. It's a special thing that you're doing.
00:17:46
Speaker
but it makes a lot more sense to reach them directly. But if you are already established in TikTok or Instagram or Facebook or whatever, use it. Lean into what you already have and the different ways that you have to connect with your people.
00:18:08
Speaker
whether that's direct email, email marketing, social media, it could be that if you're creating something for your peers, I could see having conversations with them directly over email, over DMs. And when I say creating something for your peers, to give you an example of what I mean by that, a great one that I saw was a videographer who
00:18:36
Speaker
People kept asking her for, you know, like, how do I basically do better when it comes to video? Like I'm trying to make short form video. It's taking me forever. I don't understand this. How do I do this better?
Leveraging Expertise for Additional Revenue
00:18:51
Speaker
And she was like, Oh, I can use y'all to do that. Yeah. I can teach you how to, you know, make Instagram reels quickly and easily. And then there are people who were like, can you just do it for me? Yeah. Oh, I just, sure.
00:19:05
Speaker
Yeah, why not? We can open up like an agency side of the business. And I know someone who that happened to with Pinterest as well. She was teaching people Pinterest and they were like, can I just pay you to like run my Pinterest marketing?
00:19:22
Speaker
And she's a planner so she had all of these connections with people and they saw that she was doing well and they were asking her questions. So that's what I mean by creating something for your peers. Typically something that you are good at that you can offer. And as a photographer like I could completely see something along the lines of like
00:19:43
Speaker
offering mini shoots to give your fellow vendors social media content. That could be a really easy thing to offer. You could do it on a regular basis. It could be a subscription where you have, whether it's some sort of styled shoot that you're doing to get photos for them, or you're doing like individual small branding sessions.
00:20:12
Speaker
That's what I mean when I mean like going to your peers because yes, we have our wedding clients and our past wedding clients. But I think we often forget that we all look at other people that we know in the industry and we're like, what are they doing now? I want that.
00:20:30
Speaker
Pardon this short interruption, but me and the Get A Heck As team have some exciting news. If you haven't heard, I have a free mini-masterclass how to get on your first preferred venue vendor list, the Holy Grail of Bliss. Hot leads and these couples don't really care about price. It's 20 minutes and packed with goodness. The link is in the show notes.
00:20:51
Speaker
Also, we are offering website copy writing for all wedding professionals. With my digging and coaching skills and my team member Cindy with 15 years of copywriting experience, we will create your perfect website copy.
00:21:06
Speaker
We want you to cry of happiness when you get it back and say, wow, I'm so proud of myself as a business owner. Get a free audit of your current site. Go from meh to heck yes. Just DM me your website and I will send you a loom audit back. My Instagram is at Carissa Woo. Back to the conversation. Interesting. No, you're just getting my wheels spinning too.
00:21:30
Speaker
Yeah, peer-to-peer, that's more, you know, educating people. Like a lot of people ask me how to start a podcast. So we're just going to make a little mini course and sell it for like $1.99, you know, different offers. And I'm thinking of also like other wedding professionals, like Florist, they could maybe do like a floral making class.
00:21:50
Speaker
DJs, they could offer services be like, I'll do your birthday party and make it like, you know, 90s party or hip hop or jazz or whatever they want. Planners maybe, or maybe DJs have like, they sell photo booth too, they could offer some sort of promotion. I think this episode is really going to help people kind of get out of that stuck mode, or that also like,
00:22:20
Speaker
that space of nothing's happening for me or I'm not getting inquiries and just getting out of their heads and being like, hey, like the ball is in my hand now. Yeah. And the thing I've seen a lot lately is a lot of people saying they aren't getting as many inquiries as normal, freaking out a little bit.
00:22:43
Speaker
And the thing I've seen in other areas of business, so I spend a lot of time in like the online business space and a trend I'm definitely seeing
Experimentation and Customer Feedback
00:22:52
Speaker
there is moving towards things that are smaller, things that are easy to just say yes to and do something with. So I could totally see, you know, offering like as a photographer, standalone,
00:23:08
Speaker
proposal or engagement shoots and then you could apply that to the cost of the package if you wanted to later on if they decided to book you. But it's a great way for people to be able to engage with you, to work with you, to see what you're like. Yeah. And I see this with people all the time that have like
00:23:30
Speaker
a smaller, like splintered off part of what they do as a standalone service. There's a planner I'm working with currently that has a venue finding service and she gets people that come to her and they're like, you know, this whole destination wedding thing, it's a lot. Can you help me find a venue that fits this? Sure. A certain percent of those people are going to go.
00:23:56
Speaker
Yeah, I actually don't want to do this. Yeah. Like I would love to hire you because you provided such a great service in the small component. So it allows people to dip their toe in to start taking some sort of action, especially now when we're seeing people who are just like slower to take action on. Yeah.
00:24:20
Speaker
Yeah, I know like I've been in a coaching world for a while and I have a friend and he he kind of mentors me because he's been in the game for for longer than me but he's like you need to be putting out new offers all the time at different price points like even the top top top coaches in the you know like Jay Shetty and
00:24:40
Speaker
ever meet Samir, like they have different offers, like some are $9, some are $4.95, some are $10,000, you know, like different offers and kind of seeing how they are received by people. So that was a huge mind shift for me in my coaching world.
00:24:59
Speaker
Yeah, I think we get into this like, okay, this is what I offer. This is what I have. This is all I can offer. And it's totally cool. Like I get if you don't want to expand and do a million things because it, you know, covers your focus, I totally get that. Don't do that.
00:25:15
Speaker
you know, add one thing in that allows you to do something that you want to do, whether it's give people a way to dip their toe in, whether it's, okay, how can I sell to these people I worked with over the last year? Or it's how can I sell to my peers? You know, you can have that. It doesn't have to be, you know, front and center on your website. It can be on a hidden page that is only available, you know, when you're promoting it.
00:25:45
Speaker
Nice. Tell me some wins of your students right now. Oh, okay. So we had one person start offering planning consulting, like virtual planning consulting. It was like, this is the easiest thing in the world for me to offer. Like we can give people
00:26:04
Speaker
a box basically a container like two hours we can work through whatever you need and then if you decide you need a full planner you can hire me if not you know that's cool you can go on your merry way or you can book another session later on i love that and we can deal with that later i love that
00:26:25
Speaker
We had another duo, a officiant and a photographer team up because they realized they could both really do more with elopements. So they created like a joint elopement package that they offer. And then they just go really hard promoting it during this. Wow. That's so, oh my God, that's so cool. What I've been thinking or hearing
00:26:55
Speaker
Recently, I don't know if it's a post-pandemic thing, but some couples in my situation, a particular grooms, they have a little bit of commitment issues from the big packages, even maybe like five, six packages. And they want to hire my team, but then they get cold feet. And then one of them, they did eventually book, but it took a while.
00:27:20
Speaker
But I was thinking the whole thing that you said about the wedding planning thing, which, you know, the two hour console, it's kind of like getting your feet wet and then they get more comfortable and they spend that much time with you. Come on. Like, I think they'll probably book a higher package or you're like, okay, like I don't want to look for all these venues myself. Like do the work for me. Like you're doing a great job. So I think that's something that we.
00:27:44
Speaker
I don't know, don't think about too often. I think the way I buy, someone recommended someone to do accounting for me and I was kind of scared too, but then I saw on their website that they charged $4.95 for like to set up your zero account.
00:28:01
Speaker
And it was just so easy to like click by, you know, and then now she's running all my counting, you know, and just getting your feet wet. So yeah, it's a thing of like, yeah, if it was like a 12 month package, her only option to hire her, you would have been more apprehensive. But it's like, okay, we can do this piece first. Exactly. And then I can book you for the rest of it. Yeah, that's so my god, I love it. Okay, what is your biggest heck? Yes.
00:28:30
Speaker
Heck yes, technique. My thing is heck yes, technique. Let's see. I think it's to listen to what people are telling you because I think we all hear problems that we could solve and they go in one ear and out the other all day long.
Specialized Services: Meeting Industry Needs
00:28:51
Speaker
And once you start actually paying attention to like someone complaining about something or someone complaining about the way something is done or they wish they had this, they wish it worked like this and you realize like ding, ding, ding, that's something I can do. That's something I can sell. That's a way I can bring in more revenue into my business and people are literally already asking for it. Wow. And we're talking to wedding pros all the time. Yeah.
00:29:20
Speaker
Yeah, and that's the thing, you hear the complaints. You hear all of these things. I imagine photographers hear all the time how particular wedding pros hate their headshots, hate their photos. Know they need to be using more photos of themselves in their social media posts, but they feel a way about it. They feel shy, they feel apprehensive, they feel weird about it.
00:29:48
Speaker
What if you could solve that problem? Yeah, you're right. It's right there. It's like money on the ground, ready for you to pick up. You're right. I'll try to do, um, you know, I would always try to photograph my friends going to a networking party. Um, and I'm just like, Hey, let's take some steps. And they're just like, Oh, they're like, they like slam up. And I'm like, are you serious? You're like,
00:30:17
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I know like with a gun or something. Yeah. Yeah, I get it. Like I get feeling awkward. And you know, there's lots of different ways to solve that. There's, you know, creating different shoots. There's, I know a photographer who put together a
00:30:39
Speaker
whole thing about plus size posing, because she saw that was lacking. It was something that other photographers were asking her about. And she told a ton of these guys, it was like, Oh, I just thought we were all doing this stuff. It turns out it was just me. That's so good. Okay, so I guess, just to wrap up this hot topic, and I'll ask you more fun questions. But say someone is just feeling really stuck today. What's the first thing? I mean, this whole topic is about creating revenue on demand, like
00:31:13
Speaker
get themselves unstuck and start making money or make money today. Yeah, I would say just brain dump. Brain dump, everything you feel like you could offer that solves a problem for somebody that you already have access to. So really just like sit down, give yourself 15 minutes, just brain dump. What are all the things you could offer to past clients? What are all the things you could offer to people who haven't booked you yet? What are all the things you could offer
00:31:36
Speaker
what's the one thing they should do today to just kind of
00:31:43
Speaker
to your peers and then you get to just pick one and run with it. You can always come back to the rest of them and you have years and years of worth of things that you can do whenever you have a slow month on your calendar. Yeah, good job. What is your biggest accomplishment because you've accomplished so much in your career?
00:32:06
Speaker
That's a tough question. I'm giving it to you because it's you. My biggest accomplishment. I mean, it sounds
Heidi's Achievements and Industry Insights
00:32:19
Speaker
vague, but I feel like it's creating my business on my terms in the way that I like to work and the way that I like to help people.
00:32:30
Speaker
So doing it the way that I do it and not necessarily the way that someone else does it, not saying that's wrong or anything, but just having built up this business that supports me, supports my family, supports my students and my clients that I work with and doing it in a way that feels really good to me and that gives me a lot of freedom because that is a really important value of mine of something like
00:32:59
Speaker
It pins me down too much. I'm not interested. Yeah. I like my freedom to pick up my kids at like two. So I need like to not be super busy. Yeah. Cool. Okay. So this is backwards. I should have asked you like in the beginning, but tell everyone about like your marketing background. This is kind of your secret sauce on why you're so special in the industry today.
00:33:25
Speaker
I think I think differently than a lot of the other people in our industry because I've worked in so many spaces. I haven't worked exclusively in the wedding industry. I mean, I've certainly worked in the wedding industry, but like I worked in higher education. I've worked in healthcare. I've worked in software.
00:33:50
Speaker
I worked for a fecal transplant company like I remember that one. I've been around a block to a lot of different types of businesses and been able to see like what works and what doesn't work and like especially with this.
00:34:06
Speaker
revenue on demand product that I put together, it was really pulling something out of another one of those worlds. It was pulling it out of the online business space where this kind of thing is very common and being able to bring it into the wedding industry where we don't have conversations like this.
00:34:29
Speaker
Yeah, interesting. Where do you see, I would only ask you this because you're beyond, where do you see like the industry like this year and next year? Like, do you see, I don't know, the newbies like taking over a little bit of the market? Do you see, who do you think are the people that are really just going to
00:34:52
Speaker
Outshine everyone is the people that are really focusing on like real short-term content, YouTube, being educators. Where do you see this industry going in the next year or two?
00:35:02
Speaker
I think we're gonna see more and more differentiation because we have to. You know, if you try to compete on the basis of I'm a photographer and I can provide photography services, you're just gonna blend in and you already do, but like even more so with more and more people coming into the space, it's just getting more and more saturated. So I think we'll definitely see more
00:35:29
Speaker
more focus, I think. I would say specialization, but like that kind of implies that you're not doing the other things. I don't think that's necessarily the case, but I think making yourself known for something in particular is going to be increasingly important. And I think figuring out ways to meet people where they are
00:35:54
Speaker
With I, you know, right now we're in a weird spot where I think, you know, like you said, the commitment thing, I think a lot of people are like, they saw people get burnt bad during the pandemic. And it's like, well, I don't want to book this until I have to, because what if the world falls apart? Which is apparently an option. Interesting.
Post-Pandemic Industry Trends and Personal Touches
00:36:20
Speaker
Yeah. I totally.
00:36:21
Speaker
didn't see that till post pandemic or say, oh, they got like whole feet for photography or even planning or venue. And they had this like fear. Yeah. Something, you know, the world going to shut down because it did. So you're absolutely right. Um, people, I'm just getting to know you more and more, you know, through the summit, through the second podcast, but tell me one, like some cool fun things about you, maybe two or three. Okay.
00:36:51
Speaker
Um, I am a huge fan of pinball. I love playing. Oh, that's interesting. I got into it a couple of years ago. Um, my like local regular bar I go to is an arcade bar and I got into it and my husband and I are like super into it now. It's like, I want to buy one. They're huge, but you know, once I have space, uh, I would love to own a machine and they are.
00:37:20
Speaker
They're complex. They're fun. They're frustrating. They're hard. Where do you live again? I live in San Diego. Okay. I live in LA, kind of Torrance, but we have arcades. Do you guys have them? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Very similar. Okay. Heidi Swanson is pinball and then one more thing.
00:37:43
Speaker
I am also a big nerd for personal finance and I know that's a weird thing to be into but like
00:37:54
Speaker
It's the freedom thing. It's the freedom component for me. So I am big into personal finance. I'm working toward like being able to invest in real estate and things, but I love nerding out about that kind of stuff. Like if you can play with numbers and make them work and make them benefit your life, it's like my favorite thing ever. And I've become the begrudging go-to of like,
00:38:18
Speaker
siblings and in-laws. You do watch How to Get Rich with Vermeet and Samir on the phone. I have not watched that, have you?
00:38:26
Speaker
Oh, yeah. So I have the book and I've been getting into personal finance. Um, I'm in a program called Dow Jane. So we're trying to like learn how to invest and I dunno, retire earlier than not be, you know, struggle played or can I afford this? Can I not, you know, just be empowered. So I love that you said that. So.
00:38:53
Speaker
I mean, you got to know your number, right? Yeah, absolutely. And it's like, I am, I'm not a big fan of math, just like everybody else, but like the, what it gets you, you know, being able to focus on like, huh, if I do this now, you know, 20 years from now, it puts me in this position. That is exciting to me. Do you have a favorite app for personal finance or a hat?
00:39:17
Speaker
Um, I mean, in my business, I use profit first, which has been incredibly helpful with being able to allocate money in different ways. Um, I used to use mint for my, uh, my personal side of things. I don't know why I don't use it anymore. I just fell off of using it. But then, um,
00:39:42
Speaker
I read a lot, I read a lot of personal finance stuff and it's just, it is really empowering to realize like all this stuff that exists in our economy, in our world that feels like this bizarre world that nobody seems to know anything about. Like we actually get into it and it's like, okay, like I can take small steps for this to be an attainable thing.
00:40:07
Speaker
Is profit first? I know it's a book, but is there some sort of like system that you use or? No, I use, so basically the way he teaches it is like you figure out your percentages, you figure out your allocations, and then two times a month I go in to my business account and I go through and I calculate like, okay, what came in? What do I need to put over and
00:40:30
Speaker
taxes based on the percentage. What do I pay myself? What goes here? What goes there? What's expenses? So it really takes a lot of the guesswork out of it because it's just like, well, that's what I pay. That's just the way it is. We got to have another episode of personal finance, but now I'm all like,
00:40:49
Speaker
Cool, tell them everyone about your summit, your revenue on demand course, a program, and then where to find you. Yeah, so I'll set up a link for your people if they want to go to revenue on demand. It's at evolveyourweddingbusiness.com slash woo. And you can grab it there. It's 37 bucks. I wanted to make it like super duper duper irresistible and affordable for people.
00:41:16
Speaker
So you can dive right into that. The next summit that I have coming up is Book More Wedding Summit at the end of August. So that will be coming up very soon at BookMoreWeddingSummit.com. Time flies, man. It's crazy. Wow. Well, yeah, it was honored to be on one of your summits before. And I wish you the best of luck. I know you have thousands of people that you help. So you are a powerhouse, like I said, in the industry. Thank you for
00:41:45
Speaker
all that you do for everyone and making us not have that struggle plate on the top of our foreheads and be empowered. So thank you so much, Heidi. It was a pleasure talking to you. Thank you for having me back.
00:42:02
Speaker
Thanks for joining me this week on Get a Heck Yes with Carissa Wu. Make sure to follow, subscribe, leave a review, or tell a friend about the show. Take a screenshot and post to IG. Tag me! Also, don't forget to download my free guide on how to become a lead generating machine. See you next time, wedding pros!