Show notes:

WOW I can’t believe that it’s one year since the launch of Wedding Pro’s Who are Ready to Grow! Thank you for being part of the journey. Today we celebrate our first birthday with a special episode. I’m going to be talking about my favourite episodes from the last year and sharing all the best tips from my wedding pro members. So whichever stage your wedding business is at – celebrate with me today!

Top 5 Podcast episodes mentioned today:

5. Episode 48 – Using AI in your wedding business

4. Episode 14 – Do you have a leaky sales funnel?

3. Episode 18 – Growing your wedding business with Instagram

2. Episode 44 – Instagram Reels – How to make the most of them

1. Episode 05 – Why Disney never discount

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Timestamps:

Celebrating One Year [00:00:00] Becca celebrates the one-year anniversary of her podcast and reflects on the past year.

Learnings from the Podcast [00:02:34] Becca shares how the podcast has allowed her to help more wedding professionals and revisits her mission to help them grow successful businesses.

Making Connections [00:04:09] Becca talks about the incredible contacts she has made through the podcast and how it has allowed her to collaborate with people on new levels.

Appreciation from Listeners [00:05:47] Becca expresses her gratitude for the listeners who have made the podcast a part of their daily routine and shares how their success stories have been rewarding.

Top Five Favorite Episodes [00:07:17] Becca shares her top five favorite episodes from the past year, including an episode about AI and its impact on business.

Top 5 Episodes [00:08:11] Becca shares her top 5 favorite podcast episodes from the past year, including topics such as AI, sales funnels, Instagram reels, and Disney’s business strategies.

Client Advice [00:15:34] Becca shares advice from her clients on what they wish they had known sooner in their own businesses, including the importance of bookkeeping and investing in learning.

Tips for Growing a Successful Business [00:17:08] Various tips from different speakers, including targeting the right clients, making connections, finding your niche, not comparing yourself to others, monitoring bounce rates, and prioritizing done over perfect.

Reflection on the Past Year [00:21:45] Becca reflects on the great advice shared by her clients over the past year and expresses her gratitude for the podcast’s success.

Transcript:

54

Becca: Whenever you achieve something in your business, I always encourage you to take a moment to pause and to celebrate. And that’s exactly what I’m doing today because today Marks one year since I launched the Wedding Pros. Were ready to grow podcasts. Over the last 54 episodes, I’ve helped over two and a half thousand wedding pros and venues just like you.

Get inspired and take action through these podcast episodes. So why don’t you go grab a drink and let’s celebrate the last year together in this special first birthday podcast episode. I am Becca Pountney, wedding business marketing expert, speaker and blogger, and you are listening to The Wedding Pros who are Ready to Grow podcast.

I’m here to share with you actionable tips, strategies, and real life examples to help you take your wedding business to the next level. If you are an ambitious wedding business owner that wants to take your passion and use it to build a profitable, sustainable business doing what you love, then you’re in the right place.

Let’s get going with today’s episode. One year ago this week an idea that I’d had brewing for a while. Finally came to life and I launched the Wedding Pros, who are Ready to Grow Podcast. Looking back it was incredibly scary and I remember as I hit publish on those first episodes, my mind monkeys getting going, thinking, is anyone going to listen?

I’ve put in so much hard work. Is anyone going to be interested? Would people even be interested in what I had to say and would any guests agree to be on the show? One of the big thing that was on my mind is would I be able to keep up with the workload in order to publish a new episode each and every Thursday?

I didn’t wanna be one of these people that launched onto the podcast scene and then within a few weeks got busy and stopped producing episodes. I know it’s important to be consistent, so if I launched a podcast, I wanted to do it right, but that was one of my biggest. But it was a success. I’m so thankful that I did it.

I’m so thankful I got out of my own way on those worries. And here we are one year later and I’ve published a brand new episode each and every Thursday for the last year. Now, in this special episode, when we are gonna celebrate, I’m gonna be sharing some of my learnings with you from the last year.

We’re gonna be revisiting some of my favorite episodes, whether you’ve listened to them before or whether you need some inspiration of what to go and listen to. And we’re gonna be hearing some advice from some of my previous guests. Now, before we get into all of that, I would love for you to go and leave a review on whatever podcast platform you are listening on, you know, in the wedding industry, how important it’s to get reviews and how frustrating it is when we feel like people don’t have the time to leave them for us.

So I’m asking you whether you’ve been listening to this podcast for the whole year, or whether you’ve only just discovered it. If you’ve benefited in any way, shape, or form, please take two minutes out of your day and leave a review for this podcast. It helps more people find the episode so it can help them grow their business, and it also helps me to know that what I’m doing is helpful to you.

So if you’ve got two minutes, go leave a review now and then come back and let’s dive into this first birthday episode. So first up, I wanna share some of the learnings that I’ve taken from the last. The first thing is how much the podcast has allowed me to help more of you in a really targeted way. My mission has always been to help you grow a successful wedding business, doing what you love.

Nothing drives me crazier than people feeling like they’re not good enough or that they don’t understand what they need to do to get success. I never want finance to be a barrier, and although I do need to earn money, otherwise this business wouldn’t be able to keep going. The podcast has been a great way for me to get some of my tips, advice, and guest experts in front of more wedding pros, whether or not they’ve got the budget to pay for it or not.

Helping more of you really has been the best thing about starting this podcast, and I absolutely love it when people drop me a message or post onto their Instagram stories to say how something’s resonated with them from that episode or from the episodes that they’ve been listening to recently.

Whether you listen to every episode each week, or whether you pick and choose from the subject titles that interest you, I know that I’ve been able to bring you some really great training over the last year, and for that I’m incredibly. I’d love to know which of the episodes over the last year has been your favorite, so why not take a photo, screenshot that episode and post it on your Instagram stories and tag me so that I can see which episodes have been helping you to grow your business.

I’m hoping to help even more of you over the coming years with this podcast. I’ve got loads of great guests coming up over the next few months, as well as business training from me. So do share this podcast with an industry friend. Tell ’em about it, because I wanna reach more people and show them how they can be successful in growing their wedding business too.

The second thing that I’ve really enjoyed about having this podcast is the incredible contact that I’ve met Through it, I’ve been able to bring you some incredible guest experts from around the world, and I just don’t think I’d have come across them or worked with them in the same way if it hadn’t been for this podcast.

I’ve collaborated with people on new levels. I’ve met new industry friends, some of which haven’t met in person yet, but I hope to soon, and I’ve been able to bring even more value to you. And your community. I’m always a fan of networking and building connections, and it’s something that I love to teach about and something that I love you doing as well.

And that’s definitely been one of the benefits of this podcast because I’ve been able to give people a platform. I’ve been able to reach out to people and invite them to be part of my community, which has allowed me to get onto a call with them, chat with them, and build that relationship. And there’s been some great things come out of that, and I’m sure there’s more good things to come.

Well, so I’m thankful for the connections that I’ve made and by you listening to the podcast, and the more people that listen, the more interest I have from different guests for coming on the show. So do me a favor, keep listening, subscribe to the show so I can keep bringing you the best wedding industry experts from around the world to help you grow your wedding business.

The third thing that I’ve learned from recording this podcast is how much some of you appreciate having this podcast and having me in your ears as part of your daily routine, and I absolutely love to hear about it. Some of you listen to this when you’re on dog walks. I know some of you listen in the car, some of you listen while you’re doing other pieces of work or in the gym, wherever you listen.

I just wanna say thank you for taking your. Each Thursday or whenever you choose to listen to have me in your ear and to pay attention to the wedding business advice that I have to. When I sit in my office alone recording these episodes or sit on a Zoom call with a guest, I never know who’s going to be listening or who this is going to help.

So when I hear stories about how something that I’ve said or something one of my guests has said, has really helped you solve a problem in your wedding business that’s more rewarding than you can understand. So do please keep sharing your success stories. Tell me when you implement things so that I know that what I’m saying when I’m sat alone in my office is benefiting you out there in the real world.

This first year of the podcast has been an incredible journey, and I’m so thankful to each and every one of you. That’s been part of it. Now, I wanted to share with you some of my favorite episodes from the last year, so it’s been a difficult job, but I’ve put together my top five favorite episodes out of the last 53 episodes.

Now, there are so many episodes I could have added into this list. We’ve had some incredible guests over the last year, and I’ve enjoyed sharing some tips as. But I could only pick five. So I’m gonna share my top five episodes with you. I’m gonna tell you the episode number, so if you haven’t listened to them, you can go and find the episodes that I’m talking about later on in your podcast player.

So in at number five is actually a more recent episode, episode number 48. In episode 48, I interviewed the two Lauras who are social media experts and a part of a mastermind group that I’m in, and we had a fabulous discussion all about AI and whether or not it’s gonna impact us in business. It’s definitely been something that a lot of people have talking about this year.

With the introduction of chat, G P T and other artificial intelligence tools, it feels like the robots are taking over and people have been panicking about whether they’re going to lose their. But in episode 48, we had a great discussion about how you can use these tools to help you save time in your wedding business.

Why you don’t need to be afraid of them, and how you can actually implement things that will really save you time and help you, especially when it comes to social media posting and things like that. Did you know I’ve actually started using artificial intelligence to write my show notes for this podcast to give me the timings of what’s happening in this podcast when, and I can do it all very quickly at the click of a button.

So if you are interested in artificial intelligence chat, G P T and all of those good things, then go listen to episode 48 where I chat with the two Lauras about all things. In at number four is actually one of my own episodes, episode 14, which is all about a leaky sales funnel. This episode has actually become one of my keynote presentations because I enjoyed recording it so much, and I know it’s been helpful to so many of you.

In this episode, I write out for you the whole sales funnel sequence. I talk to you about how you walk your customers through the customer journey from finding you on social media all the way through to being at their wedding day. In this episode, I help you identify the leaks in your wedding business.

Because ultimately, unless you have a diagnosis, how can I help you fix it? I help you to understand where the problems are in your wedding business. In this episode, are you struggling to get leads? Are you struggling to get the right leads, or are you getting the leads but you’re struggling to convert them?

Or perhaps you’re getting people on calls and then they’re ghosting you and never signing your contract. This episode is gonna help you diagnose the problem and then I can help you to fix it. So if you’ve not yet listened to episode 14, all about the leaky sales funnel, then do go and do that. But I promise you, you will want to have a pen and paper to take notes during this episode.

In at number three is one of my highlights of the last year when it comes to the podcast, and that is episode 18, where the Instagram expert herself, Sue b Zimmerman, came onto the podcast as a guest. This was a huge moment for me in realizing the power of the podcast to make new connections. I could not believe that such a high level.

Instagram expert with hundreds of thousands of followers would be prepared to come into my world, onto my podcast, and to talk to you all about Instagram for your business. But she said yes, and it’s such a good episode if you’ve never come across Sue before. She is so high energy. And full of amazing piece of advice when it comes to growing your Instagram.

We know Instagram is huge in the wedding industry, so if you haven’t listened to episode 18 yet with Sue B Zimmerman, the Instagram expert herself do make that a priority. She even talks through some of my clients Instagram accounts and tells them what’s working and what’s not, and she gives you great tips about how to improve your Instagram bio.

For me, it was a huge moment to have someone so great on the podcast, so do make the most of her being here and go and listen to that episode. Okay, we’re getting closer to the top, which brings me to number two of my top five episodes from the last year, and that is again, a slightly more recent episode, episode 44 with Brandy.

I love Brandy. I really enjoyed talking with her. One reason is just the fact she lives in Florida and can watch the Disney fireworks every single night, which I think is just so, so cool. But the main reason I love this episode is cuz Brandy talks all things Instagram reels. Now I’ve attended and run many training sessions with guest experts on Instagram reel.

Brandy’s session on the podcast was one of my favorites to date. She makes it sound so simple and she breaks it down into really simple, easy to understand steps. I love the fact that Brandy works in the wedding industry, so all of her advice is geared towards us as wedding professionals, and she talks about how important it’s to make sure our reels are part of the sales process rather than just a way to get vanity statistics.

The reason I love this episode so much as well is because I’ve actually taken action on it myself, and we talk about that in the episode. I’ve started doing some of the things that Brandy talks about, and I’ve implemented reels more regularly into my own business and seen some really great success from doing it.

So if reels are something you still wanna get your head around, or maybe you want a more consistent strategy, or maybe you just need to stop putting it off, then go listen to episode 44 where I talk to Brandi Gar all about Instagram reels for your wedding. Well, that brings us to number one. So what is the number one episode from the last year on the Wedding Pros who are ready to Grow podcast?

Well, I might be a little bit biased, but my favorite episode from the last year is episode five, which is all about why Disney never discount. If you know anything about me, you will know. I’m a massive Disney fan. I love the Disney movies and I love going to Disney World, but I also love learning about how they do business.

I always talk to my clients about how we should be looking to the bigger brands to learn because although we don’t have their marketing budgets, we can see what they’re doing and we can replicate it. Disney is so good at business and they never discount. They’re not trying to be at the bottom of the market.

They’re trying to be at the premium end of the market, and that’s where most of you should be sitting. So go back and listen to episode five. It’s one of the very early episodes on the podcast, so you may not have gone back that far. But in that episode, I break down why Disney never discount, and the things that Disney do that we can implement into our own business.

I’m sure there’ll be more episodes all about Disney in the future. But do go back and listen to episode five, my favorite episode from the last year. I wonder what my favorite episodes will be in year two of this podcast. If you’ve got ideas for guests you’d like to see and hear from on the podcast, drop me a message and let me know, and perhaps I could get them on and into your ears.

Very, very. One of my favorite things about having this podcast over the last year is having the opportunity to invite some of my own clients onto the platform and to interview them about their own wedding business stories. It’s great hearing from industry experts and educators, or hearing from me, but there’s something really powerful about hearing people’s stories about how they’ve become a wedding photographer, a wedding florist, and some of the obstacles and challenges they’ve.

I’ve loved chatting with my members and my clients on the podcast, and I know that you’ve loved hearing from them as well. Most of them aren’t used to public speaking, so it was a big deal for them to come and share their stories with you. At the end of every episode that I do with a guest on this podcast, you will have noticed I always ask the same question, which is this, what’s one thing you wish you’d known sooner in your own business?

To conclude this episode, I’m gonna share some of my clients’ answers to that question. You’re gonna hear from all sorts of people, including Jesse, Rachel, Sophie, Kelly, and so many more great people. They’re going to be sharing with you the one thing they wish they’d known sooner in their business to help you stop making the same mistakes.

Enjoy.

Sophie: At the end of the day, running a business is all about making. So for me, it’s when you start your business, don’t be scared to make sure you’ve got that spreadsheet and everything’s coming in and out, or make sure you have yourself. Bookkeeping, bit of software, and don’t be afraid to go and talk to an accountant.

Quite often, accountants will have free meetings and stuff like that and get that advice. I think one of the fears is actually being self-employed is really complicated. It’s really not. It’s actually quite simple. I think definitely keeping on top of all of that is really, really important and don’t be afraid to get started with.

Because that is what will show you your growth as well. That’s the biggest thing that you can look on a piece of paper and go, oh, look how much money I’ve made. And that, that to me is actually one of my big motivators is that I can look at graph and go, oh, look how much money I’ve made . I must be doing it right.

So a hundred percent. Don’t be afraid when you start, start your business is just be really clever with your money and just make sure you are keeping in touch and knowing sort of what’s coming in and.

Hannah: I’d say that my biggest thing would be, yeah, to learn all areas exactly. Like I touched on when I first went self-employed, there was so much stuff I didn’t know.

And always remember that you’re always learning every day’s a learning day. So yeah, make sure that you’re just investing in yourself, investing in learning, and yeah, keep going, keep going because just visualize where you wanna be and you’ve gotta work hard to get there. I’m not where I wanna be at.

I’m still fighting the good fight to get there. So just keep going, just keep going.

Rachel: Definitely who my ideal client is. I think my ideal client are people who know from the very beginning that they want a video. And so I wish I’d known about ideal client and, and again, not trying to target everyone much earlier on so that I could target the right people and be a bit more streamlined.

In marketing from the very beginning.

Maria: I think making connections, if I’d kind of realized sooner that connecting with people would’ve pushed me forward a lot quicker than I would’ve done that.

Jesse: I probably wish that I had known that it’s okay to be whatever I want to be as a business rather than trying to be what, whatever is the generic view of what a business should be.

Just go, go, go your own way with it and it’s okay. Find your niche.

Kelly: I think it goes back to that not comparing yourself with everybody else or anybody else. I really did make that mistake, and I know I was following a celebrant, right? In the early days. I thought, oh my. Goodness, she’s amazing. And, and you know, I was, I loved watching her.

Every day I’d be watching her stories and then I just felt really inferior all of a sudden because there she was being all wonderful and I hadn’t even got a booking. And then, I dunno, there was one, I watched something and there was just a way about her. I thought, oh, but I’m not like that. And then, I dunno, the penny clicked.

I thought, no, I’m not like that. So actually, . The couples that are looking to book her are not couples that are going to be looking for me. So I took myself off the stories , I’m not gonna keep following this, this. I mean, she’s wonderful celebrant. I dunno what she’s doing these days. She’s not in my area.

Yeah. I just took myself out of that situation and then focused on just being myself and realizing. That I am enough, . And there’s, you know, it’s about matching now couples to celebrate. And I think that’s really important just to be who you are and that your right people will find you

Amy: for ages. I didn’t realize the importance of the bounce rate, so how many people leave your website?

And I think from that for investigating that you can, you can learn so much about. The patterns of behavior of how people are finding you and also what they’re not liking about you. And so for example, I remember years ago I had a Google Ads campaign set up and. It was running and it was running and I wasn’t unhappy with it.

But I went to, I basically went to a training session to learn a bit about seo and the bounce rate was, was explained to me. Of course, I went, went home, looked at my Google analytics, looked at all these things, looked at my bounce rate, and I was absolutely horrified to see that I’d actually been paying for a campaign that had a massive, massive bounce rate, such a waste of money.

And that would work, you know, with all different sorts of campaigns or any kind of marketing that you do. Unless you keep an eye on that balance rate, you could put all your efforts into something that just isn’t working for you. Cuz people are looking at that and going, Nope, I don’t like that. I’m just jumping off straight away.

So now that I understand that, that’s made a big difference to what I do. Knowing to put my efforts into what I know people will stay on my website for, which is a better use of my time as well.

Becky: I think the mantra, or is it a mantra, I dunno. Done is better than perfect and I think. I, you just have, sometimes you just have to say, right, this is good enough for now.

Doing something now and then perfecting it later if you have to or if you need to, is much better than faffing about and tweaking this and tweaking that cause it’s not quite perfect and you can waste a lot of time. And so since I’ve started trying to apply that to my myself, to my things I’m doing or things I’m getting out, like, you know, this Instagram post, or maybe I should just reword that or maybe I should reword.

Actually done and out there is better than perfect, like tweaked to within an inch of its life and fiddled around with for hours and hours. It’s wasting time when you could be doing other things. So yeah, I think my , my dad also said J F d I just. Do it. I think that’s quite an important thing that I sometimes think, right?

If I’m, if I’m faffing around with something, you know, you just need to get it done. Just get it out there and then move on to the next thing that’s gonna help you and your business and move you forward.

Becca: Isn’t. There’s so much great advice in there from all of the different clients of mine that I’ve interviewed over the past year, and hearing them all in a row together makes us realize how many great pieces of information we’ve been told over the last year throughout all of the different podcast episodes, and that is just a handful.

It’s been such a pleasure to share this Birthday Celebration podcast with you. I hope you continue to enjoy listening to the podcast for the months and years to come. I’ll see you next week.