Candice (00:00.216)

Do you feel like you're constantly underwater in your business? In today's episode, we're talking all about the five key systems every wedding pro needs to run their business like a well oiled machine. 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 (01:02.914)

Hey there friends, welcome back to the Power and Purpose podcast. It's me, your host Candice, and I'm sharing with you five systems that every wedding professional needs in their business to run their business like clockwork. These are systems that you can actually work on in your off season or in the winter months when you might not be that busy. And if you've ever felt like you're drowning in literally endless tasks or that you're constantly reinventing the wheel,

for each new client who comes into your business. You're going to love this episode because I've packed it with lots of information that's going to help you figure out how you can run your business smarter and like clockwork. Plus, if you know your systems need a revamp or maybe they need an entire overhaul, like I mentioned, this is the time. It's the time of year where you usually have the bandwidth

to think through systems and you're actively walking new clients through the journey of working with you, which means that you're starting from the very beginning stages of sales and onboarding and moving them through your client process. And it's always nice to work on these systems when you're actually physically in them with your customer and you're able to see how they work when you get a real customer through them and what needs to be changed or what needs to be modified.

And with engagement season right around the corner, I do want to let you know that everything inside my shop, which are tools and templates for wedding planners, everything inside my shop right now is 35 % off for our annual Black Friday sale. This is the biggest sale that I run in the shop every year. And it's the only time that I put items in the shop at this discount, 35 % off. You can get

Templates that you can use, email swipe files, client guides, systems to implement in your business, some of the various systems that we're talking about today. You'll get my planning processes, swipe files, Canva templates, everything in the shop is 35 % off. And I do want to share that we've bundled some products together to give you even better savings and you get 35 % off.

Candice (03:27.586)

bundles to really saving you a ton of money. So if you are ready to get your systems together and you're a planner, because these are just for planners and you want to do it with a little savings and a serious discount, I want you to go to shop.candiscopla.com. You'll see all the details there. Please load up your cart with all the tools that you need. Take my shortcuts.

Take my processes, steal my process and implement it in your business. Your clients are going to love you and you're going to love you because it's going to save you so much time. So that's shop.candicekopla.com. Now let's talk about the five systems that you need in your business in order for your business to run like clockwork. The first system, and I have talked about the system on the podcast before. I've written an entire playbook on it. It's one of my favorite processes to help wedding pros map out and it's your onboarding.

process. Onboarding is so important, no matter what you do in the industry, because it is really the first glimpse at what it's going to be like working with you as a client. They've gone through your sales process and now you need to onboard them into your business. And that process needs to be good. And I mean, good, good. You want to affirm their purchase. You want to make them feel like they made the right decision.

They're going to want to hit the ground running on something. You need to give them something to do. You need to keep them busy or keep them occupied or keep them satiated. And I find that onboarding is when too many wedding pros take their foot off the gas and things start to fall apart already in the client journey. And that's because you love bomb them.

throughout the entire sales process. They can hear from you at all hours of the day or night. You're texting back furiously. You're trying to land that sale. You're emailing them back. You're checking in. You're constantly on top of it. And then when they pay, it's like three days before they hear back from you on literally anything, which three days is an eternity when you've been hot and heavy.

Candice (05:39.82)

All my single folks out there who have been ghosted by a date or who have been hot and heavy with somebody and then suddenly it takes days to hear back from them knows this all too well. Three days is an eternity. And I think that you are absolutely already sowing mistrust and discomfort and people maybe might even be second guessing booking you. So you can see pretty quickly how important your onboarding process needs to be.

And I think a lot of times we think of onboarding systems, we only think about the logistics of it. Like we only think about like, okay, I need to send them this file. need to, you know, counter sign the contract, you know, start this process here, set up a software or onboard them into something. But we don't really think about the emotional.

and the mental onboarding that we need to do with our clients, mostly emotional. This goes back to wanting to reaffirm their purchase and make them happy that they chose your proposal over your competitors. The last thing you want them to do is have dress regret, which is something a lot of brides and those who are wearing a gown for their wedding, they have dress regret because they go with the dress early on and then their style evolves and they're like, I don't love my dress anymore. This happens constantly.

You don't want them to have dress regret about you. You want them to feel so good about booking your services and to also get something immediately after they book you. They need to do something. They need to have something that makes them feel like progress is being made. You want to give them some type of quick win where they're making progress. I love to have them fill out a form.

or maybe it's starting a Pinterest board or it's sharing some type of details with you. You can even send them a Starbucks gift card and it's like, we're working together, relax. You found your photographer, you found your invitation designer, go get yourself a Starbees treat on me. Something that makes them feel great about working with you.

Candice (07:46.73)

And this needs to be the same for every single client, really no matter the level of service or what they book you for. And if you can nail down what your onboarding journey looks like, this helps to bring quality control into your business. It also means that you could hire a VA or some type of assistant or office manager to onboard your clients for you, which is really an underrated perk of having a system that works like clockwork.

It's that somebody else can do it for you on your behalf. You don't have to be doing all the things. So I have an entire playbook on onboarding. There are eight stages in the onboarding process. And the onboarding process tends to take anywhere between seven to 30 days, believe it or not. It's not just that one day where you've countersigned the contract and you're like, all right, cool. It takes time to ingratiate someone in your business and you should take your time getting them up to speed.

and helping them be an amazing customer. Onboarding helps your client be a good customer. It shows them your boundaries, how they can get in touch with you, where they can find things, how they can get started, how they can communicate, and what they can expect from you. And I love seven to 30 days. It's a big range. I love the 30 because it means we're not overwhelming people. We're taking our time.

and we're giving them information and letting them get onboarded in stages so that they don't get overwhelmed and they don't feel just that sense of overwhelm, which is not good. I love a slower but intentional onboarding phase with a touch point and a milestone at every turn. If you want to steal my onboarding process, go grab it in the shop. It's 35 % off.

But there's also a great episode that we did recently with Alexandra Puccini from Lavender and Pine, my gifting concierge. It's episode 161, so just a few back. And we talk about onboarding gifting and the gifting experience in the onboarding process. This is definitely where you wanna send a gift to your client as well to affirm that purchase and make them feel great.

Candice (09:57.462)

So this is a system you need in your business in order for it to run like clockwork and in order for somebody to also come in and support you in this so you don't have to be doing everything yourself. The next system is off-boarding. So we put a lot of intention behind onboarding, but we often fall off when it comes to saying goodbye to our customers. And I don't want that to happen to you for another wedding season. I want you to actually develop an off-boarding

process that nurtures and affirms your customers as you say goodbye, potentially planting the seeds to work with them again in the future on another project. If you're a photographer and you want legacy clients, this is especially going to be important. If you're an invitation designer and you do different types of paper suites outside of weddings, this is going to be important to you. Floral designers, mean, literally even planners, everybody.

who wants to work with a client again, your offboarding process is gonna be really important. And I want you to put as much care and intention in how you say goodbye to your clients, just like how you say hello to them. Now, offboarding shouldn't be just the day after the wedding where you like slam their file shed and say goodbye, unless they were a client that you don't want returning to you. But what I found in myself included in my own journey as a planner was,

doing a lot of it's easy just to move on to the next wedding and forget about the relationship that you established with that client. And this is why having an intentional off boarding process, even one that lasts the same amount of time as onboarding is so important because we don't want our clients to feel just like pushed aside, you we're on to the next one. We want them to feel valued and appreciated. And sometimes just

Sending an email saying I value and appreciate you is enough. mean, there's not much more maybe you need to do. But there are opportunities for you, little slivers, little moments where you can make the offboarding process amazing, spectacular, and leave people with a final impression of you, one that really lasts and one where they want to recommend you to their friends.

Candice (12:06.818)

I find that we often measure relationships and experiences in some of the final moments that we have together. You want to leave a good taste, not a bad taste. So there are some things that you can do in the offboarding process that I think will help you. Things like considering a debrief meeting and scheduling one for every client. A handwritten thank you card was one of our signatures when I was a planner. We sent a handwritten thank you card. We also sent one to all the vendors on the team. A post wedding gift.

even an anniversary gift or touch point on their first anniversary is just a great extension of the off-boarding process. But you do want to have a few touch points after the wedding day when emotions are high to really solidify that relationship and that great experience with you. And on the flip side of things, you also are able with an intentional off-boarding experience, kind of figure out if there were

any issues that you missed that you have the opportunity to make right. Because it's not about the mistakes we make or the mistakes others make. It's more about how we fix those mistakes, how we provide solutions to them and how we make a mistake right. If by chance there was an issue that you weren't aware of and the client had a bad taste in their mouth or they just had this thing that was nagging them that they were upset about, you want your offboarding process to leave no stone unturned and to let the client have the final say about their experience.

so that you can smooth over any ruffled feathers and leave on a high note. This isn't easy to do. Can we just acknowledge that? Like nobody wants critical feedback, myself included. It's not fun to have somebody say, I didn't love that, or I didn't like how this was handled, or I didn't like this. But it's in that feedback that you can improve and make right

the situation with the person, but also avoid that happening again. And your off-boarding process also needs to do that. So while it needs to, similarly to your onboarding, nurture and affirm, leave a lasting, great positive impression, you also want to make sure you're getting feedback and that your client feels comfortable and open to share with you any critical feedback, even suggestive feedback of things that you could have done better.

Candice (14:27.532)

So on the business side, that's really important for you to grow as a business owner and to just refine your process and make it better. But there's also on the positive side, you might be able to get a testimonial or a review, which should be part of your offboarding process, and referrals for them to recommend you to their friends. You might even be able to upsell them if there's something that you can offer post wedding. Now these are things that we just naturally think will happen.

as the relationship ends and you're also usually disappointed when you don't get referrals, you don't get testimonials, you don't get reviews, you don't get repeat clients and you're wondering why? Well, maybe, just maybe it's because you didn't have a process that explains some of these things to them and nurtures them to do these things or to know that there's opportunities to work together again that do exist.

You've got to be strategic about it. If you ever figured that out by now by listening to this podcast, let me tell you, I'm all about the strategy. You have to be strategic about it. If you want referrals, if you want reviews, if you want positive client experiences, if you want repeat clients, you have to build a strategic strategy that invites that possibility. And that's what your offboarding is going to do. And just like onboarding, when this runs like clockwork and this process is the same for every client,

It provides a similar experience, which is a bonus. And it means somebody else can do it for you, which makes your business run even more like clockwork. The next system you need is a system related to your team. And you need to have repeatable processes and systems that your team can adhere to. And that also helped to foster a great team environment in your business. So these aren't just processes that they follow with clients.

or processes that they follow in your business, but there are also processes that your team follows as a team in order to work in unison. You cannot do this business alone and not for very long. In the beginning, sure, but as your business grows, you need help. And you're going to hit a breaking point where you really probably should have hired somebody months or years ago. And you're going to need a process for your business to onboard team members,

Candice (16:45.688)

to support them and to give them all the tools to do their job. So whether your team is virtual assistants or maybe admin tasks that you're throwing to a day of assistant or an intern, if you want to grow your wedding empire with a team, you need to have a system for that and you need to be able to support your team. So a team system could look like a few different things, having an Asana training portal for your team.

We have this inside my business. We have an onboarding system. I love following Michael Hyatt's free to focus team building system. It's a book he wrote and he talks about onboarding team members in 90 day windows with 30 day intervals of onboarding. I'll let him explain it in his book, but pick it up. It's really great.

and it helps you bring new team members into your business and train them and onboard them in a way that helps them get up to speed and gives them a lot of autonomy along the way, which is really important. So having an Asana training portal or having something that you can go back to that you can onboard additional team members to will be really important. A company guidebook, you need an SOP. You need to start building SOPs if you don't have them. And you don't need SOPs before you hire your first team member. They can help you write your SOPs.

but you need to be able to communicate standard operating procedures, whether it's in writing, it's in a meeting, it's in a loom video, which is one of my personal favorites, and then the team member can then take that and start building out an SOP manual for you. We often hire our first team member and just have them shadow us, which honestly, it's great in the short, but it's not good in the long term. You're gonna need to be able to build systems.

where even team members can train new team members. And this is like a level of entrepreneurship that you unlock and suddenly you're like, this is the best thing ever. Because you've built the framework and the foundation to support your team. And having that allows team members on your team to then train people who they might supervise or manage or just to do that on your behalf. Now for day of team members, you also need to have a system here too.

Candice (19:02.478)

You need to not just think about people who are helping you do administrative tasks, but also the people who are going to second shoot for you, who are going to be the people who put together your invitations or go out and mail them for you. Your day of assistance, you need to be able to have a training process for these folks. Quality control, giving them the tools they need to do a great job, all really important. And you also need a system to onboard and off-board team members too. So...

we're gonna carry this over to our onboarding and offboarding system. You need something that's going to help onboard new team members and offboard them. Something that tells them exactly what the expectations are and how to do them. And then on the back end, like what they should be focused on and what happens when maybe they decide they don't wanna work with you anymore or their time with your company comes to an end, how that looks and what the offboarding process is like, okay?

So this is really important. the best thing about this though that I will say is you don't have to do this and then hire somebody. You want to invite a team member, you want to hire somebody and then develop this alongside that hire. That's the good news. And in fact, if you were to wait until you had all of this perfect before you brought in your first hire, you would never hire anybody because you would spend endless time trying to perfect a system that has not even been implemented on a human being yet.

And you would get discouraged and I just don't want you to do that. So instead, what I want you to do is I want you to go spend some damn money, hire somebody to help you in your business, and then together develop this system. And what's beautiful is that if by chance it's not the right fit or their time working with your company comes to an end, you're going to have all this work that you've done together ready for the next person who comes into your business. I feel like I need to create a whole training on this.

Let me know this is something that you would like to see. I feel like I could talk about all of this ad nauseum. But anyway, this is a system that you definitely need for your business to run like clockwork. The fourth system is client delivery. And this is valuable for every single type of wedding pro, no matter what you do. We've talked about onboarding and offboarding, which is what happens in your CRM, something like HoneyBook. You onboard your clients, you offboard them. These are the two bookmarks or bookends.

Candice (21:26.104)

to your relationship, but we also need to talk about how you actually do the job they paid you to do and what it looks like to deliver on that job. And this often means that you need some type of project management tool. For the women I coach in the Planner's Playbook, I usually recommend Asana, partly because just it works so well with Google Drive and really integrates with all things Google business, which a lot of planners love to run their business on that.

I think it's the best, superior. think Google Business, Google Drive is the easiest way to run your planning business and the most cost effective. Asana works so well with that. But also it just is a great project management tool and it can do so much for you. Not only working directly with your clients in it, but also working with your team members. Now this is obviously going to look different for every wedding pro. So I can't tell you what this system is going to look exactly like.

to deliver the work your client paid for, what it's gonna look like for you. But the goal is to have it not so detailed that you feel overwhelmed just looking at it, because then you're not gonna do it. But to have enough detail in it where you offer a consistent experience every single time. And you'll have to establish this for yourself based on what works best for you and how you like to map out a project workflow.

The point of this is to make sure that you understand the different touch points and milestones you'll have with your client and the deadlines you need to meet and how you're going to meet your client expectations. So for instance, if you're a photographer and you have a six week guaranteed delivery date post wedding of your images, you need a workflow that's going to help you deliver those images to the client.

and anything else associated with delivering those images. And it's best if you sit down and map this out for yourself and see how it flows and also assign different touch points, different checkpoints and milestones throughout the gallery delivery process so that you can never again have to tell a client that you're gonna be late delivering their photos, knowing that you're disappointing them, knowing that deep down they're disappointed, maybe even pissed.

Candice (23:46.282)

And having that stress is just so not worth it. Am I right? It's so not. So being able to map this out for yourself and understand how you're going to deliver is so important. If you're an invitation designer, you especially need a client flow. You need to understand what happens when somebody signs your contract for invitations. What does that client flow look like to get those invitations to delivered? What are the different

windows of time? What are the different touch points, checkpoints, milestones? What are the deadlines that the client has to meet? How many check-ins do you need to have in order to remind them to fill things out or to get certain things to you by a deadline? And what are the consequences for the client if they don't meet those deadlines? There's so much to unpack here. This is where a system strategist can absolutely help you, by the way.

So if you're instantly feeling overwhelmed, maybe your first hire is a system strategist. Somebody who's proficient in the tools that you use or the tools you want to adopt. If you're not an Asana user, get an Asana expert, have them teach you. But this is perfect for hiring a system strategist to help you map out these workflows. Also, a coach can also help you do this as well. Now, last but certainly not least, the final system you need in your business for your business to run like clockwork is a marketing system.

I bet you didn't expect that one, or maybe you did. But running a business is not just about booking people, and it's not just about serving your clients and doing the work, although that would be nice if we didn't have to worry about marketing. But when you choose to start a business, you signed up to market it. Let me repeat that. When you chose to become a business owner, you also chose all the shitty parts that come along with running a business. You chose the hard things too.

You have to make space and time and have a system that helps you move through the hard things. think systems are those things that they help us even on our hardest days. One of my former guests, a system strategist, Sandra Henderson, she's a system strategist for photographers. So if you're a photographer, go and talk to Sandra. But she talked in her episode about building systems for your worst days and not your best days.

Candice (26:12.466)

And your marketing system, this is the perfect example of why you need one because on your worst days, your business still needs to be visible because it still needs to be making money. Because one thing I know for sure is on your worst days, you're still spending money. So that means your business needs to be making it. And you need to be able to have a system for your business that helps to market it. But not just that, that helps to build your brand, that helps you set goals, helps you pay yourself, pay your taxes you need.

business systems. Now, like I've mentioned, marketing is a big one. And if you want to start understanding marketing a little bit more, I've got tons of episodes on marketing. 162, a recent episode, I talked about building an omnichannel marketing plan. In a recent episode, I also gave you your 90 day marketing strategy.

walking you through a whole system for creating a 90 day marketing strategy. Don't sleep. If you have not listened to that episode, go and listen to it. And in fact, bookmark it, go back to that episode every 90 days and re-listen to it until it is literally written and written on the fabric of your brain and you remember how to do this for yourself every quarter.

But marketing is a huge part of this. And when marketing isn't planned, I think we can all agree when it's not planned or organized, it does not get done. And unfortunately, it needs to get done. Now Asana helps me so much with my marketing. I use Asana for basically it is the backbone of my business and it's the backbone of my marketing strategy. And this is because I do have an omni-channel marketing strategy. I need to think about what do we have coming up for the podcast? What do we have coming up for YouTube? What do we have coming up for Instagram?

What do we have coming up for our blog? What do we have coming up for promotions? It is a beast. Fortunately for you, I don't think that your business has that many bells and whistles just yet. I love Engie for wedding pros, especially if you're marketing in two to three different channels. I think Engie is the perfect platform to help you make sense of your marketing and to build your marketing strategy. Now I'll link to Asana and Engie in the show notes.

Candice (28:24.014)

so that you can go and check them both out. But Engie is kind of a little, it's a one-stop shop for creating your marketing strategy, measuring it, and also scheduling it out. But you also need systems for your business that aren't just marketing. And again, I run my whole business in Asana, which is why I love it so much, because I can do so many things that aren't just related to one.

fabric of my business or like one pillar of my business. I'm able to focus on marketing, operations, client management, task management. I mean, I have everything stored in there. It's how I communicate with my team, although we are adopting Slack. It's how I keep track of my marketing efforts. It's where I store a lot of information and data like affiliate links and my mission, vision, purpose, my core values, our product ladder.

our ideal customers. I mean, there's so much in there, including my master task list for the week and the month, which is how this episode, by the way, is getting recorded right now, because I opened up Asana and I was like, okay, it's time to record our systems episode. Now, the bigger your business is, I think the more necessary this is to have something like Asana that will help you keep track of multiple projects, including client work in your business backend.

I also want to say that I don't want you to wait until your business needs this to set something up for yourself. Something, just some type of project management that allows you to track multiple things in one place that you have to log into. Really important. Now, building these systems that we've talked about today doesn't happen overnight. It happens, the best way that it happens is over time and through practical application.

So take a, you know, a breath. You likely have some of these things already implemented. What I'd love is, moving into the new year if you found ways to make them better for your clients and for you. And if you found ways to systematize things so that anybody in your business can do it and the client experience is always top notch. And while systems might not sound sexy right now, you're gonna feel their impact when you're burnt out.

Candice (30:42.936)

tired, can't manage it all, and you have clients who are not happy. On the opposite side, you'll feel their impact when your business is running like clockwork. When it is running smoothly, not perfectly, but it's smooth, and you can honestly shut your laptop down and know that there are automations in the background working for you, there are systems in place to catch mistakes or issues, and then for the most part, your clients are happy.

And the payoff is worth it every single time. The payoff for how much money you might invest in your systems, learning new softwares for your business, all of that pays off in the long run. You just got to get it up and running. So start with one system and then work your way through. And I would think it would be a great idea for you to start with your onboarding system since most wedding pros right now.

are onboarding in their business. This is a great place to begin as you're working with your clients naturally and see where it takes you. All right, friends, I want to remind you that we have an amazing Black Friday Week sale happening inside my shop. Everything is 35 % off. I'm literally opening up my little black book of tools and resources and templates for you to go and purchase at a steep discount. And I've actually taken care of a lot of these systems for you inside my shop if you're a wedding planner.

So much goodness there for you. Just steal my system. It's very easy to implement. And you can also understand the strategy, the how, the what, the why behind all of what we talked about today. So go to shop.kandiscopla.com to learn more and grab your tools for the best price. We love saving money. All right, friends, thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I want to remind you there's so much power in your purpose.

Candice (32:37.774)

Thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode of the Power in 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.