Styled Shoots: Is it worth it? 

Introduction

When starting a business, it is almost like naming your baby.  After all too many of us, our business is like a baby to us. We birth this idea, create it, and care for it.  So, the name is important. We imagine and even practice how it sounds, write it so we can see what it looks like, and even talk to our family and friends to see what they think.

I get asked the question often, how should I go about finding a name for my business? I have put a lot of thought into my answer and did a lot of research to see what others have to say about the topic because, to be honest, I think the answer changes depending on the business. 

I have a passion for "business" itself. I have started many businesses in life and still do.  I even have the intention of opening several more in the near future and with it, comes finding a name for them.  I have given many hours of thought to the name of each of the businesses.  Some of them I think are...

Using the Synergy Of Inspiration and Focus 

One of the most exciting things about being in the Event Industry is how things are ever-evolving.  Not just trends but the way people need to plan, shifts in society, family dynamics, priorities, changes in technology, how we communicate, and the influx of diverse religious beliefs and cultures. We are so busy just trying to keep up, how do we stay inspired to keep going?

 Through the years, I needed to develop ways to avoid burnout and keep a positive, enthusiastic, winning attitude to keep the endurance I needed for my clients, peers, and team members. In this post, I will share with you my top tips on getting and staying inspired. Hopefully, you can adapt some of these same principles or ideas to fuel your routine! 

How Do We Look At Inspiration?

Okay, so by now, I am sure you know I like to break things down to their simplest form and then build on that.  Let's talk about...

Setting Healthy Customer Service Boundaries

by Victoria Lewis

Have you ever felt like the more you give the more people take or no matter how much you give, it is never enough?  Being in the customer service industry can often leave us feeling underappreciated and wondering if it is really worth all the stress. If that resonates with you, I want to share with you some of my top tips to restore your faith in humanity. 

What is reasonable for the customer to expect?

When you are looking for the answer to that question the answer will not only depend on who you ask, I believe it will change depending on the circumstance. What I really mean by that is, are you the one who is providing customer service or wanting to get good customer service from someone else. Far too often we ourselves can seem hypocritical when it comes to this topic. This may be difficult, but can you take an honest look at yourself and say if you have ever expected a company to go against their...

Turning The Nightmare Into A Dream

Anyone who has attended a wedding rehearsal can tell you, it can be a chaotic nightmare.  Groomsmen and Bridesmaids can behave like elementary school children on a playground. Being silly and teasing each other, 3/4th of them are really not listening or paying attention, there are always one or two who want to add their "jr professional" opinion. Someone is always running late and if you don't have your act together, the Bridal Party will rule over you!  This happens far too often. 

At the beginning of my career, I didn't want to seem like the stereotypical planners who, for lack of a better word, are not very nice and appear to be super demanding. I wanted to be liked, be sweet, and well like I was one of their friends too.

When I was overly focused on wanting them to view me in a different light, and not be overbearing, our rehearsals would last 2-3 hours depending on when they all showed up. Of course, they wanted...

Excellent Customer Service is something we all want to provide. We want our clients to be happy with us.  We want them to recommend us and ultimately, it does say we are doing "it" right. In this post, we will explore how to lay out some ground rules to follow to help you be consistent in your goal to provide excellent customer service.

Developing a Winning Customer Service Policy

Sounds like a great idea right? Well, what if, it isn't as easy as it seems?  In fact, in this business, it often feels impossible to apply the same principles of excellent customer service to each client. Some of my clients are so busy they don't want to be bothered and on the other hand, I have some clients who now see me as their best friend and want to text me at midnight when they are searching through ideas they find on Pinterest.  The truth is, I love creating systems, policies, and streamlining the way we run our business.  I would love nothing more than to...

In our member's program, we invest a lot of time, money, and resources to help our members stay on top of their game and gain market share.  For us here at WSU, it is important to help them stand out from the crowd and know how to get the clients they want and in the current climate marketing is a very confusing process.  Branding, marketing, sales, social media, google ads, website, magazine ads, networking, expos, I could go on and on listing the keywords that are mentioned when talking about marketing. This is what is confusing, each of these items is separate and different from one another. So then, where do you start and where do you put your time? 

Developing A Strategy

That is a good question to ask, what are you currently doing to market your business? Or are you advertising your business? You may be asking yourself, how are they different? Oh, now you've asked the right question.  They are very different.  Marketing is your...

How do you help a client that thinks they know more than you? This has been a major frustration in my career.  They may literally tell me how to plan, that they don't think they aren't going to pay certain fees vendors are charging, they don't think vendor or venue policies are fair, and they were under the impression...

I wish I was the person who could say, I told you so.  I guess I am the type that would rather steep quietly inside instead of making them feel the embarrassment. 

Even I have created policies and processes to reduce or limit these problems and some of my clients don't even want to follow them.  They feel their way of planning is better, then sure enough a few months later, they are frustrated and it feels like they blame me for it. 

Recently this happened and I guess, I had just had enough. I had a 1-hour Zoom meeting where the client and I went back and forth with their frustration about the budget being more than they wanted to...

I started in the Wedding Industry when I was just a little girl.  I am 3rd generation in the business so, it may seem obvious that this would be my career of choice, but actually, I think like many children, I did not want to follow in the footsteps of my mother. And yet, here I am 3 decades later, still in the business that has helped make me who I am today, and I couldn't be more grateful! Let's examine the life of a Wedding Planner. 

Living The Glamours Life

The hottest career choice out there right now is that of a Wedding Planner. For many, it is easy to see its appeal. You get to be the star of the day or the hero if you will. Solving problems, bossing people around, and making a ton of cash. It does sound amazingly glamourous. I mean, we've all seen the movie "The Wedding Planner".

Although you may be able to sense my sarcasm, I have, to be honest, for me, it is a pretty amazing blessing. When I first started, Wedding and Event Planners were few and far...