Candice (00:00.258)

You're smart, you're talented, and you're resourceful. You've built a successful wedding business on your own grit, but the truth is the very thing that made you successful might actually be the very thing holding you back. Today, we're talking about why you're stuck, even when you're doing everything right. You're here to grow a business, but not just any kind of business. You want to grow a profitable business with purpose.

A business where you wake up every single day driven to serve your customers and make a difference in your own life. I'm Candace Coppola, published author, business coach, and your guide to building a profitable business with purpose. Join me here every single week as we explore how to build and grow your business with purpose. Get ready to dig in and have meaningful conversations about the strategies and techniques

that will help you build your dream business. This is the power in purpose.

Candice (01:07.138)

Hey there friends, welcome back to the Power and Purpose podcast. It's me, your host Candace. And today we're talking about being stuck even when you're doing everything right. This is a pattern that I have seen across hundreds of coaching calls with clients in my mastermind, Wedding Pro Insiders, which is for high level women in the wedding industry. Also the Planner's Playbook, my coaching program for planners and just students in general.

Also, my peers and my own experience. We could be doing everything right in our business. Marketing right, pricing right, services right, branding right. And it doesn't matter if you're a planner, if you're a stationer, if you're a photographer, the ceilings always look the same when we are stuck. And today, I'm hoping to help you see things a little bit differently, maybe reposition

how you're looking at things and give you a little bit of momentum, a little jumpstart to get over the hump that you're currently facing and get you back into creating and getting you out of whatever sticky funk you might be finding yourselves in. It's been coming up quite a bit in my coaching calls with the women in my mastermind. And usually this time of year, September is a time where everyone gets really busy.

Whether it's wedding, school, you name it, September's always a busy month and it can feel especially difficult over the last couple of months if you had a slow sales summer or just a slow summer. Fall can feel especially hard and you can feel especially stuck. I think that there's a little bit of anxious anticipation for sales season as well.

I'm feeling that throughout my students and also the women in my mastermind. Just this kind of anxiety around will this be a positive sales season? How's it going to shake out? Summer sales were pretty slow across the board for most wedding pros. And of course, that means we ratchet up the need for our sales to perform and for us to be able to make up.

Candice (03:26.516)

anything that we might've lost financially over the summer. And so there's this anxiety there for that. And then also just, you know, the year is short, but it's also long. And the ninth month of the year, we can start to feel those hints of burnout and overwhelm. And so this is especially feeling stuck. We can feel this in the month of September, which is why I'm calling this topic forward for anybody out there, especially you.

if you're feeling stuck right now and yet you're doing everything right. And there's a little bit of a truth here that is ironic. It's very ironic. And it's that you're so capable that you can justify almost anything. Why your pricing is fine, why you can't delegate, why a client you had this season wasn't that bad. And this all boils down to a little bit of ego. Ego is sneaky. Ego is the enemy. If you haven't read that book by Ryan Holiday,

recommend that you do. I think everybody needs to read it, but especially a business owner. Ego is a sneaky enemy and it often gets in the way of a lot of things that we try to do. And I know you're thinking, but I don't have an ego. Everybody has an ego. And sometimes, just sometimes, being smart is actually the very thing that keeps you stuck. It's like you're doing everything right. You know what to do.

So why are you still stuck? And there are some things that I see most often in high performing, highly intelligent, hardworking, extremely self-aware people. Four ceilings actually that I see very often. The first is you're raising your price, but you're still over delivering.

You thought that if you raised your price, that would help to elevate your brand, business, call in better clients, and that you would finally be able to sit in the tastemaker chair, the master chair, the CEO chair, and deliver a great experience to your clients, but also free up time to work on your business and do the things that you always say you don't have time to do. And unfortunately, just raising your price isn't going to call in the most best clients.

Candice (05:40.694)

And unfortunately, the pattern of over delivering is something that you have to break and just raising your price isn't going to break that pattern for you. The next ceiling that I often see where you're doing everything right is hiring. You're hiring team members, but unfortunately you're not delegating to them or you're not delegating well. Very common when you go from solo entrepreneur to hiring a team where you have this VA, you have this eager intern, you have somebody who's waiting for you.

to tell them what to do or to give them something, but you are still holding on with a death grip to tasks, client work, business work, and you're not letting go. You're in protective mode of your business. The third is your marketing. You are marketing consistently. You're showing up on Instagram. You're showing up in all the right places, but unfortunately you're just blending in. So you've got the consistency down.

You're doing it, you're showing up, you're ticking off that box, check, marketed my business, but your marketing is just noise. People aren't really seeing it. It's not resonating. You might be getting one or two likes on things. It's just not doing what it's supposed to be doing, but yet you show up, you do it. And I want to say that that's such a big part.

And I don't want to diminish that. So I want you to feel encouraged by it. Imagine if you could keep doing what you're doing, but you actually standing out rather than blending in. And the fourth ceiling is just creative stagnation. And I see this a lot with wedding pros who've been in business for a while, especially photographers, invitation designers, planners, floral designers, where

You're just like, you feel like you're producing the same year over and over again. You don't feel that creative surge where you get to work on something for the first time, get to experience something for the first time, get to work with a client whose vision is so different than what you've been working on. And you feel stagnant. You feel stuck. So these ceilings, pricing, team, marketing, creativity,

Candice (07:55.22)

You're doing the same year on repeat. You're doing all the things right, but yet you don't feel like you're making progress. And every wedding season, every client, it feels like you are just repeating the year, getting the same or worse results. Same results would be nice. Worse results are usually what happens. And by worse results, mean financially you're not growing.

Client-wise, you're not growing. Opportunity-wise, you're not growing. And personally, you're not feeling personally challenged, excited, ready to climb the mountain. You're just like, another wedding this weekend. you know. It's just not exciting anymore. That happens when you've hit ceilings in your business and when you're stuck. And for some of you guys, this isn't just a ceiling, it's your entire business model.

And if we're honest, you haven't had like seven years in business. You've had one year over and over again. You just keep repeating the same year and anybody would feel burnt out, underwhelmed, not excited about repeating the same year over and over and over again. I mean, look at Bill Murray and Groundhog Day. I mean, you the first day was like, okay, we repeat this, but you know, after doing it 800 times, you get frustrated.

and you want to break out of the cycle. Now there is a cost to staying stuck here. There's always a cost to the things that we allow to continue that are not serving us. And the cost, I'm sure you can clearly see, it's burnout and also boredom. We talk about burnout a lot in business and burnout has a huge cost. It has a cost to your personal life, a cost to your business, your clients, how you show up. So many people are burnt out and they don't realize it.

They're just chucking along and I can see it clearly that they're burnt out. So many people are burnt out and maybe they don't even want to admit it because admitting it means that something's wrong and that you have to fix it and you don't have the energy to. But boredom is something that we don't talk about a lot in business and boredom is it's a silent business killer when you're just bored with the work you're doing. You're bored with the clients you're serving. You don't feel challenged. You don't feel excited.

Candice (10:16.206)

frustration really kicks in. And unfortunately, if you don't deal with burnout and boredom and the other ceilings that you've hit, another year is going to slip by and you're going to end up with the same bookings, the same clients, the same frustrations, the same bullshit until one day you're like, girl, I don't even like this business anymore. is not why I started my photography business. This is not why I got into what I'm doing. And I don't want that for you.

This is a normal cycle of business. So before we get into a reframe and before we get into how we can solve this or how we can change this, I want you to know that this is a normal cycle of business. And I think people who are really smart and really capable and work really hard often think that they just need to be really smart

more capable and work harder to get themselves out of this situation. When in reality, that's actually not what you need to do. In reality, you have outgrown the way that you're operating your business. You've outgrown the way you're doing things and you need to disrupt the pattern. And unfortunately, patterns don't break themselves. If they did, none of us would be addicted to our phones. None of us would have vices. None of us would...

None of us would skip the gym. All of us would eat healthy. We'd do all the right things. And our smartness and our drive would always kick in and we would never find ourselves here. What you need actually in this moment is to disrupt the pattern. And often doing that starts with somebody holding up a mirror to you and saying, is not working. The way you're thinking about doing this, the way that you have been approaching this,

logically makes sense, but unfortunately, it's not what you need to do in order to break the pattern. And this is something that I help women inside my mastermind, wedding pro insiders dig through, work through, figure out, understand what the patterns are, understand what's holding them back, have a safe place to talk about what is going well, but also what isn't going well and where they're feeling called to make shifts and changes in their business for a new era because

Candice (12:38.752)

A lot of times you start a business, you are a certain type of person, and then throughout the evolution of your business, things change, especially you. Maybe you've had lifestyle changes, you've had kids, you've gotten married, maybe you've gone through a divorce or you've moved or you've just changed. You've grown older, wiser, smarter. You realize that there's certain things that you no longer want, things that you do want.

And this is exactly what we work on inside my mastermind, Wedding Pro Insiders. And after hundreds of calls, hundreds of calls, hundreds of conversations of voice notes, voxer messages, one-on-one calls, group calls, I can promise you that you are not alone in these ceilings. And ceilings do not crack unless we apply some pressure to them. And sometimes the pressure has to come from support.

that we receive in order to break through those ceilings and really crack them. So the first step in getting these ceilings cracked for you and getting unstuck is to get some support to move through this, to work with someone like myself who's been through it, to surround yourself with people, to get in the room with people, with other women who can see what you can't see, who've maybe

already cracked that ceiling for themselves and can show you exactly what pressure point to push so that you can break through. think growth happens in rooms where we're feeling challenged and where we can be elevated by others. I've seen it happen inside WPI for the last five years. And I imagine it's going to happen there for another five years, as long as we can keep it growing. But the first step in order to move through a block that you're experiencing is

to get some support. I recommend getting targeted support from somebody who has been where you've been or that can help you work through something specifically in your business. That is always helpful. It's also helpful to have somebody who can take a look at your business and see it from different angles. In fact, I just got an inquiry today from a planner who I won't name.

Candice (14:51.118)

who said, I'm experiencing these problems, can you help me shift these areas? And I'm, we'll respond to her today, looked at her website, I looked around and I was like, okay, I can tell that the problems she's experiencing, which is getting ghosted and not getting clients as quickly as she used to, there's more here than what she thinks is the problem. And I could instantly tell several problems just by looking at her website.

And so I think it's important when you work on any aspects of your business that you also work with somebody who has well-rounded approach. And yes, that is me. I can see things from multiple angles. Working with an outsider who can specialize in your business can help you fast track through these ceilings a lot quicker. If you're going to choose to do this on your own without the support of someone like myself or a qualified coach to help you break through pricing,

hiring, marketing, creative stagnation. I would tell you that it's overwhelming to try and solve all the problems that you're experiencing right now in your business at once. And so the best thing that you can do is look at the most immediate pain point of where you are stuck and try to find some kind of pattern, interruption, some kind of industry interruption there.

and see if it doesn't cascade and have a ripple effect or a domino effect into other aspects of your business. I'll say outside of hiring, marketing is a really great place to start to kind of create a domino effect. Visibility marketing is often what people, might be doing it consistently.

They're not doing it well and it leads to lack of sales, lack of leads, unqualified leads, repelling the right people, attracting the wrong. And then that has a domino effect throughout your business. And it has a domino effect on what you price. It has a domino effect on your services. It has a domino effect on your portfolio, which then has a domino effect on how you attract. And so it is a ripple effect. It's really, it's multi-pronged.

Candice (17:09.058)

So if you can start in one place, marketing is usually a good place to ask, what can I be doing differently here? And what do I need to shake up? What do I need to change? What do I need to do differently? Get outside of my comfort zone. We get really comfortable in marketing. We schedule out the posts. We let it do the work and eventually it fizzles out. It stops working. I think about Facebook ads are such a great example of this. My ads team

We put new ads out there. Maybe you see our ads. If you do, hello. Maybe you see our ads. We put ads out and when we put a new ad out, they instantly bring in sales leads, email addresses, depending on the ad. And then after about two weeks, maybe even a week, depending on how much we're spending on the ad, everything drops down. And so what do we have to do? We have to refresh. We have to try a new angle. We have to come in with new content.

And that is a pattern disrupt that I want you to start adding to your marketing, which is a good place to start. If hiring and delegating is something that is a ceiling that you are facing right now, that's a little bit different. What you need to do is stop thinking that only you can do everything in your business. And you need to delegate one small thing off your plate.

that would save you five minutes today. Just one small thing off your plate to the person that you've hired and give them the opportunity to figure out how to do it and learn how to do it for you. When we're hiring people in our business, it's overwhelming because we often lack systems, processes, standard operating procedures, the tools needed in order to train somebody.

And so what we end up doing in we feel guilty and we feel self-conscious about that, what we end up doing is as we end up hoarding all of our work and giving them really non-critical tasks to do. And we don't allow them to grow in their role. We don't give them real responsibility. We don't give them autonomy. And so we end up presenting them and feeling like we're paying for something that we're not using. You need a pattern disrupt. You might even need to give them the most

Candice (19:28.75)

complicated thing on your to-do list and ask them to do it for you just to prove to yourself that you can delegate something, trust somebody with something, and that your business isn't going to fall apart, that they're going to at least figure something out, and that they can prove to you that they can handle something beyond the miniscule tasks that you're giving them. But you, my friend, need a pattern disrupt.

I do think that in your off season this year, hiring a coach, hiring somebody to see the outside of the jar for you, to help you understand and help you diagnose what's going on in your business so that you, a smart, capable, able-bodied person, can do what you do best, which is once you know what the cause of your issues are, you're going to attack it and be that type A

doer that you are and get it solved. But you likely need somebody to help you. So my advice would be to start researching where you can get that support. Whether it's a course that trains you on how to do something or see something differently, but more often than not, I really want you to work with someone so they can get into your business and help you figure it out and then give you the tools to disrupt the pattern to help you get out.

of wherever you are stuck. And like I mentioned, this is exactly what we do inside Wedding Pro Insiders. I'd love to welcome you inside of our mastermind. I work with women every single day to grow their business. You get one-on-one coaching with me plus the greater experience of being in the room with women who are phenomenal, who are disrupting patterns, who are

going outside their comfort zone, who are growing businesses that are recognized, many of them you've heard inside the Behind the Brands series, you need to be in rooms like that, that are going to challenge you, that are going to make you feel like A, you can do it too, but B, also show you what's possible, that the pattern you're in doesn't have to be the pattern that you stay in. And this ceiling that you can't seem to crack, you can get 10 women behind you

Candice (21:52.11)

who are going to crack it for you. And then, you know, it's just so simple. You just play out through that ceiling. No, that's where the real work begins, but we'll help you do that too. So if you heard yourself in today's podcast episode, I would love for you to see it as a sign that you're ready for a pattern disruption, that you're ready to do something different. And that because you're so smart, because you're so driven, because you do everything right, that is likely the reason why you are stuck. You cannot see

what you don't know. And instead of repeating your season over in 2026, disrupt the pattern. Do something different in your marketing, in your business, with your team, with your pricing, with your creative stagnation that you're experiencing. Get out there and do a styled shoot that stretches you creatively. And yes, hire somebody to come in and help you.

see this as a sign that you are ready for something different. And I do believe that gets, that starts with getting in the right room, whether it's with me inside WPI, a conference that you've been eyeing, a place where you feel like maybe I don't belong here, but you know that you do. And if WPI or my support is something that you're interested in, I want you to go to the link inside the show notes and apply to join Wedding Pro Insiders. We are accepting applications for new members. have

super limited spots. only accept 40 people inside the mastermind at any given time. And we have a few available spots as members have graduated. And I'd love for one of those spots to be yours. So all the details about that experience and how we can help you disrupt the pattern, get you unstuck and get you back on track. All the details are at weddingproinsiders.com. And I'd love to see

you apply. you have questions about the experience, questions in working with me, please reach out to me. I answer emails. I love having conversations. We could even jump on a call and talk about your business and what you're experiencing. Reach out to me. Let me know what's happening. Let me know what ceiling you feel like you're up against, what you've been trying that's not working. And let me help. Let me tell you how we can work together and how I can help you. All right, friends, to getting unstuck.

Candice (24:12.536)

to asking for support, which we don't do often enough, and to allowing somebody into our business to see the blind spots so that we can break through those ceilings, disrupt the things that are not working for us, and invite in our new business era. I will see you in next week's episode, but I want to remind you there is so much power in your purpose.

Candice (24:38.53)

Thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode of the Power and Purpose Podcast. If you enjoyed the show, be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode and consider leaving a review. Head over to powerinpurposepodcast.com to access all of the resources and links mentioned in today's episode. That's powerinpurposepodcast.com. I'll see you next time.