Candice (00:00.259)

The end of the year is almost here and that usually spells off season for wedding pros. The winter is primarily where a lot of wedding pros get to reset, recharge and refocus their business. In this episode, I wanted to help you prepare for your upcoming off season so you don't crash and burn. 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 (01:10.05)

Hey there, friend. Welcome back to the Power and Purpose podcast. It's me, your host Candace, and you're in for a treat today because we're talking about how you can prepare best for your off season, whether the upcoming winter season is your off season or you're one of our many listeners in the South and your season tends to pick up this time of year. So your off season is different from your Northern counterparts.

This episode is going to come in handy no matter when your off season begins and ends because I want to walk you through how you can prepare best to make best use of this off season with some really tactical, tangible, and actionable tips and things you probably don't prepare or plan for.

when off season hits. Because most wedding pros that I know, when your weddings are done, you're either in post-wedding production mode, all my photography friends, all my videography friends, season is over, but your work has only just begun. And for my planner friends, I know that you're working on next year's clients for my invitation and stationary friends. I know that you are hitting the ground running for next year's save the dates and invitations. And so there's still a lot of...

fly-in work to be done in the off season. But this is traditionally the time where we get to actually work on our businesses. This is the time of year where you put off all the things. You're like, yeah, I'm going to do that in my off season. when my off season comes, I'll think about that. And then the off season comes and you don't even think about it because you're too tired and exhausted. I want to set you up for success. So let's talk about some things that you can do to prepare yourself in the off season so that you do not crash and burn.

The first thing I want you to do is get really wise about your time. I think it's important that we actually look at your off season and get a lay of the land and even switch up maybe your availability, your scheduling, your calendar. First things first, we're gonna get wise about our time and getting wise about our time starts with scheduling some time off for yourself so that you can rest and recharge and regroup and gather yourself up.

Candice (03:18.198)

and get yourself together. So reduce your hours around holidays and other events. Go pop in your calendar right now. Special holidays that you celebrate, things like Thanksgiving or Hanukkah or Christmas, whatever it is that you celebrate. And if you want to take time off to enjoy the holiday season, please go and make sure you schedule time off. Also thinking about other events, maybe birthdays, anniversaries, other special events.

Of course, if you're going to be traveling or doing any vacations in your off season, this would be a good time to schedule that time off. You do deserve rest. You don't need to earn that rest. I think you've earned it already, but you deserve to have some rest. In the off season, you got to give yourself that because you're no good to anybody if you're just burnt out and exhausted. Second, I want you to review and revise your office hours. Your office hours can change when you're not in full production mode in your business.

You can reduce your office hours. You can adjust your workday schedule. And maybe even use this time to think about an off-season ideal work week, whether it is Tuesday through Friday. Maybe you work 10 to 2 or 10 to 4. Adjust your hours during the season so that you can make different use of your time. I also want you to think about adjusting the rules around your availability. Maybe in season, you take

Client meetings late into the evening and off season, perhaps there are some different roles. Use this as an opportunity to also think about how late you'll meet with clients, how early, what days you'll meet and make any adjustments to suit your lifestyle or your current energy levels. I do this from time to time and it really does help me reset and rebalance my calendar. In the future, I'm gonna be recording an episode all about time management and productivity.

and sharing with you some of my sort of secret strategies around this. I'm very excited to release this episode, so stay tuned. I think we have it scheduled for November, so it's right on time. Finally, in getting wise about your time, I want you to schedule any project. So this is the opportunity for you to review what you want to accomplish in the off season, set some goals for yourself, and you know that it doesn't get done unless it gets scheduled. So make sure that you are scheduling time in your calendar to walk through.

Candice (05:41.884)

processes in your business to revamp a process or an experience your clients might have. The list can be long and there's so many things that you can work on and get better at. Schedule it in your calendar. Next, I want us to focus on financial prep and even thinking about how you can start building your off-season safety net for yourself. Part of not burning out and crashing is being able to sustain yourself financially in the off-season.

especially if bookings have been slower for you, you really need to kind of think through your cash flow. The first thing you need to do is make sure that you're budgeting for your off season. This is the time to set aside any profits from your business that you have made recently to cover any slower months that you might anticipate. Funny enough, we are entering into sale season, which is hopefully lots of really amazing deposits for you, but

We have to sell and market in order to get those deposits. Cover your bases and make sure that you have saved or put aside enough to carry you through any slow months in case they happen. I like to think of this as like the wedding planner's plan B, our rain plan. Every wedding planner knows that if you plan for rain at an event by, you know, renting out all these tents and making your clients spend thousands of dollars, every planner knows that it doesn't rain.

every single time. So the rain plan in your business is to actually budget for off season and for what may be historically slow months or what you anticipate to be slow months. And then boom, they're going to be months where you are living in abundance. And guess what? You have some extra money there that you can either save for another slow season or if you're like me and I don't advise this, you just start buying things because you're like, girl, I deserve it.

An off-season savings plan, really important. You can still invest in your business during the off-season, but this savings plan is just going to be a nest egg in case things get tight. I also want you to think about how you can diversify your revenue streams. And so this might be an opportunity in the off-season for you to explore some other services or some other products to diversify your revenue streams and play.

Candice (08:00.518)

The off season shouldn't just be burning out and working behind your computer trying to do client projects. It should be hopefully about play and trying things out, testing, experimenting. This is a great opportunity for you to explore some passive income ideas, whether it's creating a digital product or doing something that is different than what you're already doing. When I think of passive income, I think of something that doesn't require you to

manage it all the time. So anything that is not necessarily one-to-one, you working as a planner with your clients is one-to-one. How can you remove that and do something that's one-to-many? So thinking about diversifying your revenue streams, it may not be a digital product. It could simply just be that you want to offer planning hours or you want to work on a side project. If you're an imitation designer, maybe you want to do business stationary.

So many options for you there, but it's a good time to start thinking about diversifying your revenue streams. Next up is marketing and networking, and we need to keep your business visible. If you come to me in March of 2025 and you're telling me that you have not booked any business, don't be surprised if I ask you, was your marketing? And don't be surprised if you tell me, well, I didn't really do anything for me to come back to you and tell you, well, that is your problem.

During the off season, you have to keep your business visible. And it can be, for some, more difficult to do because you're not in production mode, so you're not just naturally producing content that you can share. And for others, it could actually be easier where you feel like you have more time and you can spend that time actually marketing your business, wherein in season, it's that much more difficult because you're so busy. But we need to create an engagement season and an off season content strategy for your business.

This is an opportunity for you to really hone in on the marketing that works best for you while inviting some ways to play, experiment, or try something new that you've been wanting to test in your business, preferably things that people tell you work. So if you've been wanting to blog, great. This is the time for you to create a plan for that. If you've been wanting to play around in Pinterest, this is the time for you to play with that.

Candice (10:28.026)

If you've been wanting to run ads or experiment with ads, if you are interested in ads and want to hear how a high end stationer implemented ads into her luxury stationary business and it worked, go and listen to Elizabeth Stuckey's interview on our podcast. But regardless, we need to figure out a content strategy and it needs to be focused on the things that you know work, that work for you, really digging your heels into those different

referral sources that work well for you, plus trying some things new. Now, with that said, this is also the time for you to engage with your industry peers. So I want to see you out and about. I want you photographed at industry events. I need you mixing and mingling with people. Even if you don't have a huge network in your area, create space where people can come together. Be the catalyst to create that space.

And even if you find that you don't get a lot of business from referrals, that should be changing and you should be getting more business from referrals. Get out there and attend in-person, even virtual events, whether you're attending a summit or some kind of online workshop, host some meetups if none are available, be the change you wanna see. And this is a great time too to even collaborate on some styled shoots to uplevel your portfolio.

to attract the next generation of clients, to fill in any gaps visually that exist in your portfolio, and to have fun. So definitely engaging with your industry peers during this time is really important. You need to dust off your dancing shoes. You need to rent something from Rent the Runway and get your ass outside. Please. Hey, friend, hear that noise?

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Candice (12:48.55)

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systems and processes. You knew it was coming because in the off season, this is a chance where you get to go back and fix things that didn't work and to really prepare for a smoother next season. During this time, I want you to audit your business systems. I want you to review your entire business system, both internal systems, things that you and your team touch, and external systems, things that your clients touch. This is a great and perfect time for you to take a look

your tech stack and make sure that everything is legit. It's working for you. Make sure there are no redundancies in tech. Sometimes that happens and we can actually stop a subscription if it's not fulfilling our needs or if something else is now doing that. So you can look at your CRM. You can look at anything you use for marketing. You can look at any other industry specific pieces of tech and ask yourself, do I need this?

Candice (15:11.324)

But outside of that, we need to also think about what systems need to work better in your business. Begin with any current pain points that you're experiencing with your clients, and then you can start to work outward from there. I love to, when I'm evaluating where to start with the system, I look at what I'm currently working on with my clients right now. For you, that might be actually off-boarding. You're doing a lot of off-boarding, and you're also doing a lot of onboarding.

Those are two great processes to examine how does it function in my business and how does it function once the client touches it. It's also a good time for you to create any templates that you might be working from or revisit your templates. If you feel like my email templates aren't really working that great anymore, my marketing templates aren't working that great anymore, it could be a good time to go in and refresh them.

also want you to use this time while you're doing a systems audit to just refine your service packages so that they speak to the 2025 group of clients that are going to hire you. We talked about this a little bit inside my Q4 strategy session episode, which you should definitely go and listen to. was such a great episode and I actually plan on breaking down each of those individual bits into individual episodes.

Just reviewing your pricing, your services, and making sure that everything still meets what your clients need, but also meets where you want your business to go and things that you believe you should be doing for your clients is important. And it's also important for you to take a look and see where you might be missing opportunities to upsell your existing clients.

something that a lot of wedding pros and just a lot of business owners in general, myself included, I'm not perfect, we miss opportunities to upsell our existing customers on next level solutions. You might have an opportunity to upsell post event or even during the process, recommending additional products or services that your client should be investing or could invest in. So this is a great time for you to review these bits and...

Candice (17:29.584)

Revise your processes and systems and really take a look at your services, your pricing, and any opportunities for upselling. Finally, in preparation for a really stellar, productive, holistic, awesome, nurturing, badass money-making off-season, because that's what we're manifesting. That's what I am personally manifesting for you. Okay? When I light my...

Dorinda Medley Prayer Candle. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, shame on you. If you know what I'm talking about though, you know that Dorinda, Housewives of New York, Queen of Making It Nice, I do have a Dorinda Prayer Candle. And when I light it, this is the invocation that I give it, is that is what I want for you in the off season. I want a badass, money-making, awesome, crazy, restful,

productive, creative off season, okay? In order for you to have that, you also wanna think about some personal and professional development for yourself. This is the time. This is the time where you have the time to make for your business and yourself. And if you're looking for things to invest in before the year ends, education, experiences in education are a really good thing to consider.

I definitely suggest taking courses, attending in-person events, even just putting aside some time to read a book you were recommended to by a colleague or something that is going to help your personal or professional development. And that doesn't always look like buying a course on wedding planning or buying a course wedding industry related. It can even mean looking outside your industry and

trying to learn from a different industry, attending a conference that is different from what you would normally go to. It could look like learning from someone in business that just offers a different perspective. It could mean a personal development. So maybe it is hiring a life coach or going to therapy or doing something that helps with your own personal development. doesn't always have to be professional.

Candice (19:49.458)

However, it doesn't hurt to also look within the wedding industry since it's such a weird, wonderful place for a mentor or a business coach that can help you realize your off-season plans and give you just a fresh perspective and fresh insights and fresh strategies for whatever it is that you want to do. I know that hiring a business coach is a game changer, and I actually have something to confess to you.

I have just hired three. I know that seems outrageous and I'm normally not a proponent of having multiple people in your ear, but I have three advisors now on my team that I have hired, that I've invested in, that are gonna help me with different aspects of my business and I've hired them for their expertise in those areas. I believe in coaching and I know it is such a game changer. You don't have time to waste, you have things to do, and it's just nice to get an outside perspective on stuff.

And to also like talk through your ideas rather than wondering if your idea is good or not. Outside of that, really want to reiterate that this is a time where you should be resting and trying to rejuvenate. If you feel more excited versus hiring a business coach to getting a new hobby, to me, that would be such a good investment of your time. Maybe you just feel like all you do is work.

All you do is listen to work podcasts, read work books, and you have a coach, and you have bought all the courses, and you're just like, girl, I am tired. I hear you, because I've actually been there in several seasons of my business. They sort of like dip in and out of that. I have too much, and I need to take a break. And then I take my break, and I come back, and I'm like, I need more coaching. I need more support. If you feel like I want to make space for something besides work, this is a great time to do it. Get yourself a hobby.

Do something that has no monetary value attached to it. Maybe it costs you money rather than you actually make money off of it. Do something that gets you feeling creative or that gets you thinking outside of work, whether it's throwing clay on a wheel or maybe it's knitting, sewing, decorating, whatever it is. mean, there's so many options here. I don't even know where to start or end. Get yourself a hobby.

Candice (22:16.464)

walking, exercising, cooking, taking a cooking class. It's funny because sometimes doing the exact opposite of education and business building yields even better results because it paints a broader picture for you. You actually learn things through the act of enjoyment and having fun and being free spirited and play. Play is such an interesting thing. There's a book on

play. And it talks about how we get to a certain age where play just no longer becomes a part of our day. Children spend a lot of time playing, right? As adults, we don't often spend enough time playing. In your off season, I hope that you do find some time for play and you find some time for hobbies outside your business. I know you love your business. I know you love working as much as you hate it. You also love it. I get it because I'm like you too. I love working.

My coach said to me, how do we get you to not work every weekend? And I'm like, I like it. I like working. I like it. I mean, I have so much stuff to do. I have so many people who need me, and I have so many things to do. It's hard for me not to. But she wants me to play a little bit too, and I want the same for you. So finding time to play in the off season is a good idea. And have that play be something that has absolutely nothing to do with work. I feel like I need to bring in an expert on the art of play.

or I need to finish reading this book and then give you my insights. Maybe that will be an upcoming podcast episode. All right, let's recap how you cannot crash and burn this off season, how to prepare yourself for this season. I also want to thank whomever asked for this episode. This was a suggested topic. If that was you, thank you for suggesting this topic and giving me a chance to share. Also, PS, if you want me to talk about something on here,

I'll if and if I'm knowledgeable enough, you know, I will please tell me and if I don't know shit about it, I will find somebody who does and we can both sit here and learn. Okay, let's recap. How did that crash and burn? First, I want you to get wise about your time schedule time off, review and revise your office hours and make sure that you go and schedule projects in your calendar. If you don't schedule it, you're going to forget it. Next, it's time for financial prep.

Candice (24:41.058)

And this is where we're going to build your off-season safety net. Make sure you're budgeting for the off-season. Create some kind of savings plan and spending plan. And also find ways to diversify your revenue if you need to and if you want to. Marketing and networking is really important this time of year. You have to keep your brand visible and viable. We need an off-season content strategy. We need a marketing plan. I gave you one on this podcast, your six-figure marketing plan. Great place to start.

And I also want you to make sure that you are forging relationships in the off season. You're out and about. I want to see you photographed at least one event, at least one event. I need to see a photo of you living your best life cocktail in hand, mocktail in hand, or Durbin the next. need to see you out and about. It's also a great time for a systems audit and to think through how you're going to prepare for a smooth next season. Audit your business systems, audit your tools and just

refine any service packages, making sure everything is fine tuned. Finally, it's time for personal and professional development. It's time for you to invest in yourself. If you've got more you want to learn and you're eager, go hire yourself a business coach, get a course on something that you want to learn more about, attend an in-person conference, get your head in the game. If you have been doing a lot of that and you are craving just like a little ease, get a hobby.

Do something that has nothing to do with work. And bonus points if you can find time to do both. I mean, it would be nice to balance both, to have a trusted advisor or to learn a new skill related to your business, and then also make time for play, right? I mean, that's perfect. That's also in my Dorinda Medley prayer candle invocation for you. My Instagram reel for this episode will be me lighting my Dorinda Medley make it nice prayer candle and telling you like,

I'm manifesting these things for you. All right, friend. Listen, cheers to a really productive off season. Many of you guys are already here. Some of you guys are almost there. And there's a whole other section of you who are just starting your season. So off season for you will be at some point in the new year. Come back to this episode. It'll be a great refresher when you're ready. All right, friends, I am rooting for you. I will see you next week.

Candice (27:07.914)

on the podcast. And I want to remind you, as always, there is so much power in your purpose until next time.

Candice (27:18.406)

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.