Candice (00:00.224)

The Power in Purpose podcast turns six years old this week, and I thought we would take a break from all the business advice and do something fun for our six year birthday. Join me this week for a very candid Ask Me Anything, where I'm answering your biggest questions about everything from skincare to how I met my husband, to my advice on building a business that you can sell. Let's go.

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 (01:16.792)

Hey there, friend. Welcome back to the Power and Purpose podcast. It's me, your host Candice. Happy birthday to this amazing show and happy birthday to you, my fantastic listeners, some of you guys who have been with me on this crazy journey over the last six years. When I was preparing to do this episode, actually, dawned on me that we should be celebrating a birthday because I launched the podcast.

in October of 2018. And so I did a little research and I discovered that it is indeed our sixth year anniversary. So I want to thank you, whether this is the very first episode you've ever listened to and you're here to hear me spill the tea, or if you've been here for every episode or somewhere in between those two, I want to thank you for six incredible years. When I had the idea to start this podcast, I was so

terrified, so very terrified to do this. I had never done anything like this before. And believe it or not, I'm a pretty nervous public speaker. And the thought of recording a podcast and putting my voice out there for people to listen to and judge was probably one of my worst nightmares. I couldn't even go live on Instagram. In fact, I had never gone live a day in my life, not Periscope, not Instagram, not Facebook. hadn't actually, funny fact.

The first time I ever went live was inside my mastermind group, my mastermind Facebook group, welcoming all of our members to the group back in 2019. So the thought of doing this podcast was so different and new to me, and I was literally terrified in my first episode, first couple of episodes. I'm still sometimes really nervous to show up here because I know how important your time is, and I want to make sure that everything we deliver feels valuable or feels fun, that you get something out of every conversation.

Over the years, I have learned so much from podcasting. I think I've become a better public speaker. I've also become more confident in my thoughts and ideas. And I've gotten to meet so many incredible guests who've joined us on the show. And of course, you are listener. I've gotten the chance to connect with you. And to me, that's the biggest reward of all. So thank you for being here. Thanks for being here today. And cheers to another six years. I wonder if...

Candice (03:41.582)

we could go 12 years on the show. I mean, I'll try. I'll definitely try. Stranger things would have happened. I'd love another great six years of conversations, of ideation, business growth, strategy, connection. You know what I love so much about showing up here each week is it's a chance for us just to sit down and have a talk about business, talk about strategy. I get to share with you what's working.

out there in the wedding world, what's working for my students and my programs, and also my thoughts and ideas on business. And it's just fantastic to be able to do that every single week. So thank you for letting me into your weekly routine twice now a week since we have two podcast episodes each week. And I just can't wait to see what the next six years brings to the show.

Now with that said, we're doing something really different on the show. I've never done an Ask Me Anything. I don't know why, because these episodes are so fun and I love listening to Ask Me Anythings. I love reading Ask Me Anythings. And so this was really fun to put together, sort of a spur of the moment idea. I had to think quickly about how we could fill this episode date. We had some things shuffled around and it dawned on me that an Ask Me episode

Ask Me Anything episode would be really fun. So I asked you on Instagram to send me some questions that you'd love for me to answer on the show. And I've compiled all of those questions. Some were very similar, so I combined them. And I have a list of really good questions to go through today. Everything from how did I get started to my skincare advice, to how I met my husband, to my own business. You guys were really curious as to how my business runs and

how much time I spend working each week. And so we have a lot to cover. We have a lot to discuss. So let's start with the first question of this Ask Me Anything. This question is, what led you to coach wedding vendors? How long were you a planner for? Thank you to the friend who sent this question. I decided to coach wedding industry pros many years before I sold my business.

Candice (05:59.894)

I was getting so many requests from vendors local to me and then even outside of my location to pick my brain, to talk to me about my business and how I was able to do this or that. And it became a little difficult to keep up with all the mentor requests. So I decided that I was going to create a mentorship program and that I would put a cost behind it to make it worth my time and also make it worth the while of the person who wanted to pick my brain. And that I would offer these coaching sessions and

People would come to Connecticut, they'd come to my office. I had a studio back then with Jubilee Events. We had an amazing studio. And I would sit down with them for half a day. We'd go through their business and I'd give them advice on various aspects. It was fantastic. I really enjoyed doing it. And it was in those moments that I discovered just how much I love teaching and how much I love motivating someone else to hit their goals or to try new things or to...

experiment with a strategy. It was so much fun to share my own experience and knowledge with others. And so that's how I got started coaching wedding pros. And will you guys know that that's evolved so much over the years? I don't have to tell you, but that's how I got my start. And later somebody asked me a question about getting into education. So if you're in the similar boat where you're just getting so many requests for mentorship, I'm going to give you some advice on how to get started. But that's what led me to coaching wedding vendors. And I think what leads most

business owners in our industry who actually have successful businesses into the coaching space. I was a planner for 12 years, but when I started coaching, I was a planner for, I started in 2011. So that would be, my math is not mapping, that would be four years. So was four years into my journey. Did I have any business coaching people at that stage? Yeah, I think so. I mean, I had,

grown a team. had an office space. We were working with amazing clients. was one signature away from landing a book deal. I had been featured in a lot of magazines. I had done a lot of the things that you would want somebody who's coaching you on how to run a business. You would want them to have done. And so, yeah, I mean, think I was qualified. I certainly wasn't perfect though. I was not perfect. I made plenty of mistakes, which I happily passed along and still pass along to you guys.

Candice (08:23.628)

I wasn't perfect, but I definitely think I was qualified. So just to kind of give you an idea. Great questions. The next question is how I got my start as a wedding planner. I tell this story when you join my email list. share my journey. It's one of the first emails you actually get from me. it's a great story. And I'm so glad this question was asked.

because I think most of us get our start in similar situations. So I decided to become a wedding planner back in 2007. I was in what I would consider a pretty dead end job. I was working in a medical practice and I was in the HR department. It just wasn't for me. I had to quit college and get a job because I needed to start making money. And I had just kind of dragged my feet through school. I was like the world's greatest college student. I loved going to college. In fact, I probably still would be in college.

If I could be. loved learning and I loved being a full-time student, but I needed to make money. I needed to pay bills. And so I kind of had this situation where I needed to get a job and this was the first job I interviewed for. I literally had no idea what I was doing. I'd never worked for a business like this before. And I hated the job. The workplace was pretty volatile. It wasn't necessarily great. If you've ever worked for a doctor, maybe you understand that doctors can be difficult to work for. And the whole temperature of the place was just...

difficult to be honest. It was chaotic and toxic. And so I knew it wasn't a place that I could stay in very long. And I got appendicitis, actually drove to work. It was about a 45 minute drive with appendicitis. I was in tremendous pain. I didn't know what was going on. I was the first person in the office. I opened up the office, I sat at my desk, and I literally thought I was going to pass out from the pain. I called my first husband, my husband at the time, and he came and picked me up.

and I left the office before anybody got there, brought me to the hospital, I had appendicitis, I had my appendix removed, and they basically thought I would be back at work on Monday. This was on a Thursday, they basically thought I would be back to work on Monday. And it was that kind of pressure that really got me thinking, how can I escape this job? This job is horrible, this is not what I wanna do. I was 25, 26 at the time.

Candice (10:45.134)

And during my recovery, I was on the couch. I was watching a lot of TV and I was watching the show. Whose wedding is it anyway? Maybe you guys remember the show was on TLC. No, I wasn't married actually. So the, my first husband, we weren't actually married. We weren't even engaged at this stage of her relationship. We were just living together. We had bought a home and we were living together. And so I was watching this show. Whose wedding is it anyway? And I was

It was completely something I had never considered becoming a wedding planner. I binge watched this television show back to back to back. Back in the day, maybe they still do it. I don't have cable, but back in the day where like they would just do reruns back to back of shows, I binge watched the show and I became enamored with wedding planning. And the premise of the show, if you're not familiar is whose wedding is it anyway? Is it the planner's wedding? Is it the client's wedding? I became enamored with it and I just...

sat on the couch and tried to consume as much as I could about weddings. On the internet, I had my boyfriend go out and buy me all these wedding magazines. And before I knew it, like I left my recovery fully. First of all, I took a week off. I was like, screw you guys. I am not coming back to work. I took a week off and I left that week with a date to leave my full-time job. I was gonna leave my full-time job by my birthday. And I worked every single day.

on starting my business. Every day I did something. I wrote a business plan. I remember giving it to my parents to review. They were so impressed with it. I had never done anything like this before, When I tell you I was a late bloomer to being a responsible adult, I was really a late bloomer. When I was in high school, I was the worst student. I stayed back a year in high school. I did a fifth senior year out of 265 kids. I was number 263 in grades. I was so bad. It wasn't because I wasn't smart.

I just, for some reason, didn't have the motivation. So to see me do a complete 180, my parents were like, my God, who is this child? So I worked day and night on my business. I I tried to consume every book I could read and there wasn't a lot back then. We just had Amazon when Amazon was a bookstore. So I was just consuming wedding content, magazines, trying to do my due diligence. I joined an association. It was really...

Candice (13:06.092)

building a website, trying to build a brand, and I got fired from my job. The story goes like this. They demoted me. They were downsizing. They were trying to consolidate and they didn't want to pay me as much. they restricted my hours. Like they demoted me. They cut my pay and I was pissed. Girl, I was pissed. Okay. So I was like in pissed off mode. And you know, when you're

work in a corporate job and you're slamming doors and you're just doing the least. I was so mad and they picked up on it. Well, they called me into the doctor's office to have a chat with me and he's like a big, scary, difficult, narcissistic. You didn't talk back to him. He ruled his own world, right? Everybody just like kowtowed to him all the time. Well, anyway, I let it be known. Screw you guys. This is bullshit.

And so we got into an argument and he's screaming at me and I was like, I quit. He's like, you're fired, which was great. Cause I got a pink slip. So I literally got fired from my job a few weeks or maybe it was a month or two before I was going to quit anyway. So I carried my pink slip out. started collecting unemployment and then it was game on. And from there, well, I mean, the story continues, right? That is how I got started as a wedding planner. And I want you to know, I had no experience. So I mean, zero.

I had never worked a wedding. I had barely attended a wedding. I had never been a bridesmaid at that point in my life. I just didn't really know anything about weddings except what I taught myself. The closest I came to a wedding was being a hostess at a restaurant and a dishwasher at a restaurant. Some of my previous jobs were dishwasher, hostess. I worked at an amusement park selling park tickets. I worked at a law firm doing really nothing.

I mean, I didn't really have a lot of glamorous jobs. worked at Wet Seal. I worked at a head shop selling bongs and piercings and stuff. I really didn't have a lot of work experience, but that job at the medical office taught me a lot about business. It taught me what not to do, but it just also taught me about systems and processes. I carried a lot of what I learned from that, obviously, into growing my business. That is how I started. Zero experience.

Candice (15:27.694)

And look what you can do with zero experience, but a lot of drive and a lot of passion and, of course, purpose. OK, next question is, what's your most treasured possession? my gosh. My most treasured possession. Probably my grandmother's necklace that my mom gave me a few years ago.

This necklace, it has a charm on it. You'll see me wear it sometimes. And the necklace was given to my grandmother and my grandfather on their wedding day in 1957, I think, or 58 when they were married. And my grandfather's family were devout Catholics, and two of his sisters were actually nuns. And one of his aunts was a nun, and it was his aunt.

who had the necklace blessed by the Pope. So the story goes. And so that is a precious family heirloom. And I would say that that is probably my most treasured possession. think about my mom's family. I think about my grandmother, my grandparents. I think about the lives they had, the choices women had during the time that that necklace was blessed and made. I mean, I think about a

I mostly think about my grandma Vera, which you've heard me talk about grandma Vera on this podcast. If you're in any of my coaching programs, you know I'm going to bring up grandma Vera with a grandma Vera story. And so it reminds me of my grandmother. Great question. Okay. Here's a fun one. The question is fuck, marry or kill. Okay. SEO, IG or email marketing. Okay. Well, I think I would marry email marketing because that girl isn't in for the long haul. She is going to keep your bills paid.

Email marketing really is, in my line of work, one of the best ways to market your business. I would never let go of email marketing. That would be the last thing I would ever let go of, so I would have married her. For wedding pros, maybe I wouldn't put it on the same pedestal, but you know I put it on a pedestal because I did a whole freaking series about email marketing, our launcher list series. Screw or F, I would say probably SEO.

Candice (17:44.714)

Love her. She's a lot of fun and she certainly helped me build my planning business, my current business. And then kill. Of course I would kill Instagram. Are you kidding? Bye. I'd kill her for all of us. Okay. Next question. Is there anything you miss about being a wedding planner? This is such a great question. You know, there's a lot of things I miss. I miss

the joy of designing events. I love designing events. love the creative freedom I used to have designing events. I love the idea of taking a blank space and turning it into entertainment that people get to experience. I love doing that. I love curating experiences for people. And I try to do that inside my coaching programs and now within the confines of my current business, but I really miss.

the design aspect and the collaborative aspect of design, like not just me designing and thinking through cool ideas, but the community collaborative effort behind design, the being able to sit down with one of my favorite florists and like talk through ideas or one of my favorite invitation designers is Nicole Michael from Coral Pheasant. And we had such a great working relationship. We actually just had such a great creative synergy. And I miss those, those days of, being able to have creative

connections with people like that. So I definitely miss that. I do miss, you know, that sense of accomplishment during a wedding where, gosh, like everything comes together and you just feel so good about the work that you do. And you get to see the impact you have on the lives of your clients. You know, the wedding industry can get a lot of flack on threads and TikTok, whatever people think it's expensive, but the work we do is really meaningful. I mean, we get to bring people together.

and we get to help people celebrate moments that matter in their lives. And to me, I mean, there's no greater calling. There's really are few jobs that I think are as precious or as important as the jobs of creatives who get to have an impact on the lives of other humans. And I miss that aspect. I get to have an impact in different ways, but not necessarily in the kind of memory making experience, cocktail hour kind of way.

Candice (20:09.022)

Next question is, are the best ways to get published in magazines? Any tips on specific images? Love this question. I've been really fortunate in my career to be published in pretty much every major magazine that there is. I think the only one I haven't been published in is Vogue, but it can still come back to me. So you just wait. You just wait. But I've been featured in pretty much everything, even home decor magazines. so

You know getting published in magazines there's a few things first and foremost it is about the quality of your work and so that obviously plays a large role. And what magazines you would be published in and if a magazine would even look at your work but i think we all understand that there's like a baseline for getting published and featured outside of that baseline you really do need to have connections and those connections can come in the forms of connections you make.

or connections that you purchase through a PR rep or somebody who has those connections. then, you know, by proxy, you get those connections too. But you do need to know someone. You know, the wedding industry is so saturated with really fantastic work, which makes my heart happy. Magazine editors only have so many pages and they only have so much space to feature your work and whether that's, you know, online or even, you know, obviously in print.

So knowing someone and having a relationship, of course, is going to make you more likely to get your work published. From that point, though, let's talk about the work itself. Magazines often run on editorial calendars. There are many months, sometimes even a year in the future, as to what they're looking for.

So getting in and submitting work at the right time with the right content is going to increase your chances of getting featured. I'll also say that you can't get access to their editorial calendar or what they're looking for, but if you have a decent relationship with the Real Weddings editor or whomever the person is making these decisions, they can kind of give you a heads up of what they're looking for. You also want to have a pulse on what they've recently published. You can't understand or know like what...

Candice (22:28.578)

there have coming up. But if you were to go back and look at their most recent publication is what you're submitting very similar to what they've just featured. They like to mix things up and they don't want to have like back to back issues with very similar aesthetics, et cetera. So understanding their editorial calendar and what they're looking for and when their sort of booking season is for content is important. And if you have a connection, you can just ask some of those questions as well. Or your PR rep will be able to tell you.

From the terms of content though, they want details, they want scene setters, they want things that zoom out and take you, let somebody feel like they're at the event. So big sweeping shots they tend to love so that we can see the complexity of the tent or the epic amazing ceremony setup. They love a good scene setter shot and they obviously love great portraits and fashion forward images, editorial style images.

But they are also heavy on the details, especially for internet or online-based publications. They're going to want details. I mean, they like people, but details are what get pinned. Details are what get saved. Details are what people are there to kind of see. details are definitely going to help you get featured.

From there, a really great story of the couple, if it's a real wedding and not a styled shoot, a really great story of the couple can help increase your chances too. If the couple has an interesting job or if they are known in the fashion circles or creative circles, that can certainly help. If they have a prominent last name or if they're a celebrity of some kind or if they have a celebrity adjacent friends, that can also help, but you can't control those variables, right? So there's a lot that goes into getting featured and

You know, nine times out of 10, it's all in who you know. It's all in who you know. They don't want you to know that, but that's just the truth. I was fortunate to be featured many times and it was through the connections that either I had made or other vendors on the team had made. So here's something interesting. If you maybe don't have connections to publications or online publications, one great way to make a connection is to team up with somebody who does.

Candice (24:46.936)

So if there's a local photographer who's been featured and knows the Real Weddings editor, team up with them, recommend them on one of your best upcoming weddings, or do a styled shoot together if you can. That's also a pretty easy way to get featured is to work with somebody who's known to the publication. I could do a whole podcast episode on this and maybe I should. Great question. How do you do it?

all. This is such a sweet question. Shout out to Francis who asked this. You know, some days I'm not really sure when at the time of recording this, it's Sunday, it is 1 45 p.m. and I am up against a wall. I have a lot to do. I just canceled plans with my friends because I have so much work to get done and so many deadlines that I need to hit. And I'm really committed to trying to get ahead of the curve where I feel like I'm a little behind.

I do it the same way you guys do it. I do it sometimes by the skin of my teeth. I do it sometimes on a weekend. I do sometimes on a weeknight. I sometimes don't do it at all. It might look like I do, but I don't. I sometimes fail at meeting deadlines. I sometimes say I'm gonna get something back to somebody at a certain time and I don't. I'm human too and I just try to keep all my balls floating in the air.

as best I can. I don't always keep them there, but I try. I also have some team members who really do help me out in my business. So I have somebody helping me out with marketing. have graphic design. I have podcast editing. So I do have people who assist me and support me. And I can't tell you how grateful I am for their help and support. I know it looks like I do a lot and I actually do. I'm not trying to downplay. I actually do.

But I also don't have kids. And I think this is something that, you know, childless entrepreneurs maybe don't acknowledge often enough. I'll be the first to tell you, I don't have kids. I have two dogs and an amazing husband, but I don't have any kids. And that definitely plays a role in the amount that I'm able to get done. Because if I had a family and I had children, I don't think that I could do as much as I personally do. I just don't think it would be possible.

Candice (27:08.022)

Next question, as a new wedding planner or business owner, what are must invest in? Great question. Glad you asked this. For all my new friends out there who are new to entrepreneurship, it's in your first one or two years of being an entrepreneur, I think there are a few things that you should really focus and invest in. First is obviously education in your field. So whether that's technical education on how to do the work you're doing.

or it is more business focused education teaching you how to be a great business owner. You'll know where maybe your weak spots are. And I definitely suggest education and whether it's with me or not, it is neither here nor there. You want to constantly be learning and you have a lot to learn when you start your business. And the fastest way to grow your business to where you want it to be is to surround yourself with people who are where you want to go.

And that is not only just a business coach, but surrounding yourself with wedding vendor friends and folks in the industry who have built what seems to be really solid brands. Being able to connect and make those relationships is only going to carry you farther. So I definitely recommend education, networking, meeting people, getting out there, getting out from behind your computer and your inbox.

It's so important. You've heard me say probably a hundred million times at this point. It's an exaggeration, but I've said it enough that the wedding industry is a relationship driven industry. It's relationships you have with your clients, relationships you have with vendors in the industry, relationships you create with coaches and mentors and thought leaders whose ideas you respect.

And so you have to be focused on relationships when you just get started. And that's a great place to not only just invest your money, but also your time where there's no money to be exchanged. Outside of that, I think it's important for you to invest in marketing. Marketing is money. No matter what stage of business you're in. And if you want to grow a business, your marketing needs to be good. Clients in the wedding industry are no longer interested in shitty marketing.

Candice (29:26.718)

They have high expectations. They know what looks good. They also know what looks cheap. As a newer business, you should really invest in your marketing, whether that's learning more about marketing, whether it's hiring somebody to help you with having a better website, a better online presence, hiring a social media manager, marketing, marketing, marketing, marketing. That is the key to a successful business. In fact, a lot of the businesses that I see struggle

for leads and struggle to break out with their brand, it often stems from their lack of marketing or the wrong kind of marketing. So marketing is really big. Next question, and gosh, I have been waiting a lifetime for somebody to ask me this question. What's your skincare advice? Thank you, Ashley, who asked this question.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I have been literally waiting for somebody to ask me this. I am just so happy that you asked. I have a lot of skincare advice. I'm not an expert, but I am somebody who's pretty well researched and I've spent a devoted, I should say, a big chunk of my 30s to understanding how to reverse aging or stop aging. I will say that that's my primary concern is aging, all the things that come along with it, wrinkles.

fine lines, age spots, melasma, all those things have been my concerns in my skincare routine. And so I've built a skincare routine for myself that addresses those concerns. You may be in a different boat, and so it's always best to talk to an expert or an esthetician. But with that said, with that disclaimer out there, like when the women in my mastermind asked me for legal advice, I'm like, here's what, I will tell you what I think, but-

I can't legally give you advice and my legalese is like, it only goes to housewives and true crime. That's the disclaimer. So here with skincare, I think the number one tip I would give anybody who's getting started on a skincare journey is to really make sure that you wear sunscreen. I know this sounds so stupid, but sunscreen literally is the single, like single-handedly the biggest flex of anti-aging.

Candice (31:50.038)

The sun is responsible for almost all of the damage and premature aging that you see. And if you want to stop that, if you want to reverse it, if you don't want to have those issues, you have to wear sunscreen. Think about it like this. You know that person from high school who you see on Facebook who aged so poorly? You're like, do I look like that? You're tapping your husband and you're like, babe, do I look like that?

Do I look this old? I guarantee, nine times out of 10, the reason for their rapid aging is probably lack of sun protection and sunscreen. So if you are going to invest in a skincare routine and buy bougie ingredients or use any actives, you need to use sunscreen anyway to protect your skin because your skin will be more susceptible to the sun. Now listen, I don't care if you live in the North Pole, you need to wear sunscreen every single day.

The sun is pretty much the sole reason for premature aging. And if you wear sunscreen, you basically eliminate that. Outside of sunscreen, I think you should keep your routine pretty simple. I love using a vitamin C in the morning. My favorite vitamin C brand is Timeless. They're 20 % ascorbic acid vitamin C. It's amazing. Great product. I also love peptides. Peptides have been researched and

They help your skin to act younger. I love matricle. I also love copper peptides. Timeless and one of my favorite skincare brands, Notarium, make serums for matricle and for copper peptides. Retinol, tretinoin, is probably the most well-researched skincare ingredient that has shown to actually improve skin texture and tone and the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles.

And so what it is is essentially a derivative of vitamin A, tretinoin being your prescription strength. There's never too early of a time to start any of this, by the way. I think you can start it as young as you are and or as old as you are. There's just never a right or wrong time to begin skincare. But retinol has been the most studied and there are different forms of it. So you have your prescription strength, which is tretinoin, and that is

Candice (34:12.61)

prescribed by a doctor, that's gonna be the most potent and probably the one you hear about the most where like people's skin peels in the first six weeks and their skin's very sensitive. It is very strong. If you're pregnant or nursing, you definitely can't use it either because it's a vitamin A. It's vitamin A. Outside of that, there are over-the-counters that you can get started with and are a good place to start before you move on to Tretinoin. And there's different degrees and basically what separates the

your retinols is the number of steps it takes for it to convert in your skin at the cellular level. So hopefully I'm describing this right. And if I'm describing this wrong, please feel free to correct me so I can correct the record. But from my understanding, your over-the-counters retinoldehyde, retin-A, retinol, they're a multi-conversion step process in your skin where tretinoin doesn't need to convert. It just is vitamin A in your skin. Think about it like

somebody just immediately converting into a sale from your Instagram or something like that versus somebody who converts over two emails or three emails. It's a three step conversion process. So just to kind of give a business analogy to that, but I love using, I use a retinol to hide, so I don't use a tretinoin and yeah, those are my skincare secrets.

I love a good moisturizer. think I also love a good expensive serum. You know, I love to play around. I love a mask. I love an exfoliator. Love all those things. But I think a good skincare routine is limited in ingredients so you don't damage your skin barrier. And it focuses on whatever you feel like your major skin issues are, which I mentioned. Mine is definitely reversing the hands of time.

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Candice (36:35.21)

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Now, let's get back to the episode. Okay. Next question. Tip for a wedding planner who's ready to outsource but struggling to identify what? This can be so hard. And without knowing your circumstances, it's hard for me to say what you should outsource. But I would look to the tasks in your business and ask yourself,

do I no longer want to do in my business? What could I easily teach someone or just let someone come in and take over so that I could free up my time doing the things that I enjoy or just not working at all? Everybody's going to have a different answer to that. It could be client communication. It could be vendor follow-up. It could be marketing. Could be Pinterest. Could be, gosh, a host of things.

Candice (38:52.618)

The first place to look is like, what do I no longer enjoy? What do I constantly defer or delay that it's impacting my business? And if I had somebody come in and take this from me, it would positively impact my business because it would get done and I wouldn't have to worry about it anymore. know, sometimes the simplest of tasks are mentally very difficult for us to do. Responding to an email or, you know, posting something on Instagram, it's all very simple.

You just hit reply, reply, or you just pick a photo, write a caption and post. It's really nothing to overthink, but we overthink or we procrastinate for our own reasons. Most of the time it's because we're burnt out on the, on the subject and we don't want to do it. So my advice would be to look there. Outside of that, you can also look into your business and ask yourself, what could I easily just let go of? What would be

an easy lift for somebody to come in and do? Or what am I not knowledgeable about that having somebody come in and do for me with more knowledge would actually be better than me doing it myself? When you start your business, you DIY so much and that's good. You're learning and you have to. Many of us don't have trust funds where we can use it to hire. So we have to figure our shit out. With that said though,

When you reach a stage where you can afford to hire somebody, it feels weird not doing something you can do or that you've done. And also it just, feels weird giving it up, giving it over. Also, if you might not be very good at it. So if you're not good or great at it, what would happen if you brought somebody who was good or great in your business to do it for you? It would probably get done better. It would probably be done with more consistency and you would be happier.

about the task at hand. Most folks bring in hands in their business to help with things like marketing. whether that's Instagram management, Pinterest management, blogging, content writing, those are all pretty easy places to have a third party come in where you can learn how to work with somebody in that capacity and they can take a load off of your plate. It can also be great to have somebody come in and work as a VA on tasks like email management and inbox management.

Candice (41:17.876)

that requires some time and learning how to work together. So it might not be the best to start off with at first if you really are not used to working with somebody in your business like that. So there's lots of different ways we can go. But listen, imagine what life would be like if you could take that thing off your plate and give it to someone who is more equipped to do it for you.

Not only would you save time or create more time, but I bet it would be done so much better than what you're doing. And maybe the results would be so much better than what you could accomplish. The next two questions are kind of connected. So it's how do you ever get work done living in such a beautiful place? And what's the difference between living in the States versus Barbados?

I get work done here very easily. I love my work and I can just look outside and see how beautiful it is and then get back to work. I've been here for over 10 years. So for me, I feel like the luster has worn off a little bit and I definitely don't get distracted by my surroundings anymore. There are some pretty drastic differences living in Barbados versus the States. We don't have access to the same things that

you guys have access to and that's why you see me bring in like barrels or big boxes full of Amazon stuff because it's very expensive to import. And our shopping here is limited. I mean, we live on an island. So what we don't grow or produce, we import and there's lots of duties and there's lots of fees and everything costs double the amount. So just think about any, your regular target run would cost me double here, maybe even more than double.

Cars are expensive, homes are expensive, life is expensive, and so that's one big major difference. But on the flip side, life is slower, it's more community oriented. In the States, I feel like everybody lives so far away from each other, even though you guys might live in the same town or you live in the same state. You could just be an hour drive, but it feels so far that you don't see your friends as often. Here, I mean, you see your friends every week.

Candice (43:29.772)

You see them sometimes every day. There's always something going on. And raising kids and having a family here, there's way more of a community aspect than what I've seen in the States. I like to think of it like growing up in Barbados is now, today, is like what was like growing up in the 80s and the 90s. In the way that kids have access to things or they don't have access to things, the community spirit, the slower lifestyle. It really is the most appealing part to me about the location.

Next question is, how do you structure your time when planning several weddings at once? For all my planners listening or for even my stationary designers or my photographers with heavy editing schedules, I know it feels really difficult when you have a lot of moving projects at different stages. To be honest, when I was a planner, I did this well in some seasons and I did it really poorly in others. I wasn't perfect. I caught my ass on more.

than one occasion. Sometimes I had a client say to me, like, why isn't this done? And they're right, it should have been done. So I was by no stretch of the imagination perfect. But I think as a business owner and as a planner, or just in the wedding industry, you have to get good at multitasking and you have to find ways to get good at being able to juggle multiple projects at multiple stages. It's kind of the name of the game of the job.

Many of us have that skill already and so we just sharpen it. For some of us, we're not necessarily born with that skill and we have to learn it and we have to get better at it. One thing that I think works for a lot of pros, and it works for me too, is to rethink how you structure your weeks and your time so that you can carve out time for certain projects.

and carve out time for certain client tasks and create better rhythms and routines with your schedule. It's important that you have a sense of routine and rhythm throughout the week and that your Mondays are focused on three things and your Tuesdays are focused on these three tasks or these three sort of task buckets. Bringing a sense of consistency to your days and your times will help you plan and manage several projects.

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at once because you'll have your eyes on all different aspects of the event and you'll be able to manage your client projects and feel more connected with them. But listen, time management is one of those things that is elusive for so many of us. I have a podcast episode coming up soon on how I manage my time. And so I plan on answering this question in more depth. And in this episode, I talk about time management versus

energy management. So stay tuned. Next question, and this is a question I get asked a lot. So I thought, okay, I will finally answer this. How did you meet your husband? I get this question a lot. So a little background story. Prior to marrying my husband, Jason, I was married. I was married for three years to my first husband and we decided to get a divorce. It was mutual and we had just grown in

grown in different directions as you do. were in our 20s when we got married and things just changed. And so we decided to get a divorce. And in getting a divorce, I decided to winter in this little island called Barbados. I decided I was going to do something totally outside my comfort zone. And I was going to spend a winter in a little apartment in Barbados. I had started coming to Barbados.

because I had met someone at Engage from Barbados, created a great friendship, and she invited me to come to Barbados. The government of Barbados brought me here to consult with them on their wedding product, and I had met friends and loved the lifestyle, and I just was young, and I wanted to be in a different scene. So I decided that I was going to move to Barbados for the winter. I packed up.

seven suitcases worth of stuff, a lot of beauty products, a lot of curling irons, a lot of clothes. And I made my way to Barbados for the winter. And it was during that time that I met my now husband, Jason, very briefly and almost like it was one of those encounters where he had like followed me on Instagram. So I followed him back and I knew of him because I followed him on Instagram. We were officially introduced by a mutual friend at a nightclub.

Candice (48:18.122)

And he kind of blew me off. He was like, yeah, hi. And he walked away. And I thought, gosh, like he follows me on Instagram. I think he would be a little nicer. You think you'd be like, hey, it's good to meet you officially. He was like, hi, bye. I don't know if he was chasing after another girl or what, but he was just so not interested in me. And it kind of shook me to my core. If I'm being honest, it kind of shook me to my core. So that was our first meeting.

And winter came and left and I went back to the States and kept coming back and forth to Barbados to see my friends. And Barbados has this festival every year. It's called Crop Over. It's a carnival festival. If you're familiar with carnival on the islands like Trinidad or Grenada, Jamaica, and it's a great time. It's a lot of parties, a lot of fun. And I came back for Crop Over and I went to this party.

It is a mud and paint party. You're probably thinking, what the hell is she talking about? It's called Juve or Four Day in Barbados. And basically what the gist of it is, is at like 2 a.m. in the morning, you take to the streets and you celebrate with your friends and with what they call a band, which is just a group of people in a band, so to speak. like, think of it like a parade.

and you have music and drinks and you just go out on the street and you walk in this parade and you have paint and powder and mud and you get dirty and you leave your dignity on the road. I don't know how else to describe it. And so I did this party and come to find out it was his party. Now, when you

The night of this party, you get a package. You get a t-shirt, you get a waterproof backpack, and you get goodies. And inside, there's also instructions on where to meet the band, what time the band is leaving to hit the road, any rules or regulations they want you to know. And in these instructions, it said, if you have an emergency or you need help, just find someone in a yellow shirt. So we get on the road. We're having the best time. I'm with my friend, Sasha, and I dart off to go to

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use the bathroom. I come back and the band had like kind of passed me and I couldn't find Sasha. He was obviously like mixed up in the band in the parade. And this is like 4 a.m. in the morning. And I look off on the corner of the street, standing on the sidewalk is this very tall, handsome guy in a yellow shirt. And I'm like, thank God. Okay. And I walk up and I'm like, I know him. That's the guy I follow on Instagram who blew me off.

And I said, hey, do you know Sasha? Have you seen him? He said, no, I haven't seen him for a little bit. And we just exchanged a few words. And Sasha came, found me, and him and I went off together. And so that's the kind of story of our real first initial interaction. But we both left a pretty big impression on each other. And I don't know why. I looked a mess. I mean, I was covered in paint. I was covered in mud. I probably looked like hell.

but we left a pretty big impression on each other. And so we became friends on Facebook and I was leaving in a few days. So I invited him to my kind of like going away event. He couldn't make it, but we kept in touch. And before I knew it, girl, we were in a full on long distance relationship. I had met my person. Everything about my husband, interestingly enough, is so similar to me. Our personalities, the things we believe in life, our upbringing, two people on two.

basically two ends of the world living very similar lives and believing in similar things. And I just can't, I can't reconcile like how that chance encounter happened besides it just being fate. You know, as a little girl, I used to lay in bed and be like, who's my husband? Like, who's going to be that guy I marry? And I would have never picked some Island boy on an Island I'd never heard of until I was like 29.

I would have never picked an island boy to be my husband, but boy, I am so glad that I picked him. Now, funny story, and I'm going to wrap this up. Funny story is the party that I went to where I met Jason, I had gone to the year prior, and this is where things get a bit scandalous. These are where things get a little scandalous. The tea is getting hot. I had gone the year prior. It happens the same time every year.

Candice (52:53.248)

but I was in Barbados with my husband and we were about to celebrate our three year anniversary. We were here on a work trip. It was me and Beth Chapman. Beth Chapman had her husband, daddy, who we call daddy, his name is Mark, and my ex-husband came as well. Beth and I were here for a shoot and the boys came afterwards and our relationship was really on the rocks when he came. This is the scandalous part.

Our last night in Barbados, my friend from Barbados who had kept bringing me back, who I was here for a styled shoot for, I was talking to her, I was at the hotel, I was isolated in the room, we had been fighting, I had been in a bad mood, I just, I didn't know how to express how I was feeling to him. And she's like, let me come pick you up, tell him we have something to do for work, like a final thing with the shoot, I'll come pick you up, come have a glass of wine and just like decompress.

We were leaving on the first flight in the next morning. So she comes, it's about 6 37. I say, Hey, I got to go a couple of things to wrap up. He was like, yeah, whatever. You know, he was pissed with me and I left. And before I knew it, I was withdrawing money from an ATM machine. I was going to some party in the street that the girls were telling me about. And I was having the time of my life. I did not saunter back.

into a hotel room until like 6 a.m. covered in paint and mud. And I didn't meet Jason that night. I didn't meet any guy that night. I was with my girlfriends. And I snuck into the hotel. He was like pacing back and forth in the living room as you would be when your wife just like fucking disappears. And I jumped in the shower, got clean. I came out of the shower and I said, I want a divorce. And he said, okay.

And so we had to fly back, then we had to drive from JFK to Connecticut. It was pretty torturous. But the scandal of it all is that was the party that was the catalyst for me to decide that I wanted to change things in my life and that I wasn't happy in my marriage. He wasn't happy either. The best thing would be for us to go our separate ways. We did that. And then I came back the next year and met my now husband of 10 years at that.

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What a wild story, right? All right. Hopefully you followed along with all of that. And hopefully you guys don't think I'm like a Jezebel. Okay. Next question. How many hours a week are you working now? This is a great question. I would say probably 40 plus hours a week. I do work quite a bit in this season with a lot of launches coming up. We've got double the podcast episodes we're producing. We have a really heavy work mode season.

So I am working quite a bit, but there are times where I may just work a handful of hours a week, just have some meetings and then I take it easy. But I think I'm a bit of a workaholic. I enjoy working and I enjoy my work. I enjoy building and growing my business. It's more than that. It is almost like my life in a lot of ways. So when I'm not working, I'm still working, if that makes any sense.

The next question is about building a business to sell. And I think I should do a whole podcast episode on this. So they ask, what was the process of building a business to sell? You know, I didn't build a business to sell. I didn't build a business with the intention of selling it. I think I got really lucky. There was the right person to purchase the business and I was at the right time in my career to step aside. the things coalesced for me.

I would love to do a podcast episode on this and I will, but what I'll say for this Ask Me Anything is this, think if you want to build a business that is sellable, you need to build a business that can break away from you. So if your business currently is your name, it's very difficult for you to be able to sell your business if it's attached to your name.

You could sell your roster of clients, the contracts on the books, and maybe some other assets. But when you name your business after yourself, you shine a spotlight on you and nobody wants to buy you. They want to buy your business. So that's something to think about when selecting a business name or changing your business name. Because recently I've seen a lot of planners change their business name to their name. And I don't know if it's the right move for everybody, if I'm going to be honest.

Candice (57:27.378)

Second, you need to build a business that not only operates without you, but that is profitable. And one of the things I want to impart on you is profitability in selling isn't the amount of sales you make a year. It's actually the profit the business is left with. So if you find that you are just right off to your heart's content at the end of every year, you're like, girl, government, don't owe them any money. You are doing yourself a disservice if you ever plan to sell.

because the cost of your business, the price of your business will be evaluated based on the profit it makes, not the amount of sales it generates. So keep that in mind. More to come on this topic though. Next question is, is what do you think the biggest catalyst was in your wedding planning biz? I think what this question is asking is this like, what do I attribute maybe my success when I was a wedding planner, the biggest catalyst to my success? So hopefully I'm gonna answer it correctly.

I think for me, the biggest catalyst to my business success was the relationships I created. I can draw a direct line to some of the biggest clients I booked and also some of the greatest opportunities I had from the relationships I had built. When I started my business and I launched, I had my website out there, I began reaching out to people. And I know this was a different time. It is different. It was different. It was less vendors. It wasn't so saturated, but I reached out to businesses

who I aspired to be like, who were in front of the same clients that I wanted to attract. And I built relationships. And by proxy, I got their clients. They referred people to me. I also learned a lot from them. So I think that was the biggest catalyst in my wedding planning business. If people want to switch to education, what should they know? This is a great question. I'm going to answer this a little differently.

I will say, if you want to switch to education, you should know that it's not as easy as some people may make you think, and that you need a lot of social proof and social credit in order to sell courses or to sell masterminds or coaching programs or mentorships. Meaning you need to be a known figure in the industry. People need to know who you are and trust that your success was real.

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If you are someone who hasn't built that brand yet, you're probably going to find that education and attracting people to you is a bit difficult, if I'm just being honest. So if you want to switch to education, I would really start to solidify yourself as an expert, as an authority, as a taste maker in what you do right now in the wedding industry. It's going to take some time too, but you're planting seeds for the future.

and build the credibility within your current business. Without it, people are not going to flock to you for advice. If they look at your business and they're like, okay, but what have you really done? Like, where are the receipts? And rightfully so, because I mean, there's a lot of people who want to be in education who just haven't had results in their own business. So it's a bit difficult to square up. Consumers and wedding pros are kind of sick of educators, if I'm going to be honest.

They're sick of being talked to and told what and not to do, what they should be doing. And they're sick of people who don't have credibility trying to make credibility for themselves. I know that's not you. So if you want to get into education, build credibility first. Actually make sure that you have in your own business done the thing. Help a few other people do it too. Make sure that your formulas and your methods actually work for others outside yourself. And then you can go gangbusters, girl.

What is your favorite type of client to work with? Personality, not type of wedding pro. Okay. My favorite type of client to work with is probably, I love my Enneagram threes because I'm an Enneagram three. I love all personality types though. I think my favorite type of client to work with is a woman who is ready to go big, who is ready to put in the work, who is ready to show up for her business, for a coaching call.

for whatever we have scheduled on the calendar. She is ready to be a sponge. She's ready to learn. She's ready to have fun and try out new things. She's like ready to claim her space in the wedding industry. I like people who are hungry. I like people who are eager. I like people who are up early empire building, who are going to bed a late empire building because I personally believe

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It takes a lot of work to build and grow a business and a four hour work week. Love that, but it's not been my reality ever in any of my businesses. I can't teach you how to do that. What I can teach you how to do is how to hustle your ass off to make things happen. And I love working with people who love to do that. Okay. Final question. I saved the best for last.

Favorite housewife and favorite housewife franchise. I'm going to be honest. I asked myself this question because none of you bitches asked me about housewives. And I was literally like, I'm offended. Do they not know me? Do they not care about my Bravo opinions? I thought for sure somebody would ask me a Bravo question. They didn't. So I decided to ask myself, favorite housewife. It's hard to say. I will say I.

think my favorite housewife is probably Kyle Richards from Beverly Hills. Don't throw tomatoes at me, but Kyle is a girl's girl. She's a girl's girl. She's a friend. If you look at Kyle's life, she's had the same group of friends almost her entire life. She's somebody who I could actually picture being friends with. Like I could picture her in my life as one of my friends. Not to mention she is rich. She has a Birkin collection.

Like she's got great taste. I don't know what she's doing these days, but I love Kyle. I also love the ladies of Potomac and talk about comic relief. I love Karen. I'm a huge Potomac fan. I love Karen. She's so funny. What I love about that show is it's like, it's like a sitcom meets the-

The comedic value of that show, the timing and delivery, it's not intentional, it just is real. And God, I love watching those ladies. They make me laugh. They're not my favorite Housewife franchise though. I think my favorite Housewife franchise up until the last year or two was always New Jersey. I love New Jersey. I grew up in Connecticut. So that kind of like Italian, you know, family kind of vibe is something that I...

Candice (01:04:26.506)

I wouldn't say I grew up with, but I know of it. Like it reminds me of guys I grew up with in high school. Like it just reminds, it's familiar to me. And I mean, it was always serving the drama, the table flipping, jail. mean, nobody has laid it all out like the ladies of New Jersey. Nobody has laid it all out. But lately I haven't been loving it because it is dark. It is not fun. It is not a fun watch. So it's not on the top of my list.

as of late. I would say as of late, my favorite Housewives franchise is probably Salt Lake. Those ladies, I am living for the first several seasons of that franchise. Absolutely love it. Love. I mean, we have jail on that one too. I mean, Jennifer Shock literally getting arrested by the feds literally on the show was, I mean, you can't script that kind of stuff. You just can't.

All right, friends, this has been such a great episode. It's been a whole hour. can't believe if you've listened to all of this, God bless you. You are a ride or die. You are a pack dog and I so appreciate you. Happy birthday to the power and purpose. Thanks for all these great questions. If I didn't get to yours, sorry. I promise to do this again if you guys want me to. I want to remind you like I've been reminding you for the last six years that there is so much power in your purpose. Until next time,

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.