As a wedding business owner, you wear a lot of hats. Beyond doing the work you’re paid to do by your clients you have to find time to be the CEO of your business and it can be overwhelming. Planning and networking and marketing, oh my!

Many wedding professionals I meet struggle to find the time to work on growing and marketing their businesses, and I get it, it’s a juggling act. You’re never going to get more than 24 hours in a day (sorry to be the bearer of bad news), but there are things you can do to make time to work on your business.
 

Focus

 
There is no shortage of things you can do to promote and grow your business, but you don’t have to do everything. Not everything matters. You just need to choose the best ways to reach your ideal client and focus on those. The 80/20 rule tells us that 80% of our results come from 20% of our efforts. Focus on that 20%.

If you’re not sure how to best reach your ideal client, you’re going to LOVE the book I wrote all about this called Clone Your Best Clients. It will take you through the process I take my clients through in order to figure out what they should spend their time on. In the meantime, look at how your clients have found you and if you don’t know how they found you, ask them. These are the things that make sense to focus on.

The other places that deserve your focus are the biggest gaps in your business because those gaps keep you from reaching your goals. What is the biggest problem you’re facing right now? Whether it’s generating leads, closing sales or getting everything done in the time you have, that tells you what needs your focus most right now.
 

Automate

 
We live in a time of endless distractions but we also live in a time of endless tools to make our lives easier. There are tools that can help automate nearly everything for you.

I use SmarterQueue to automate my social media posting and that alone easily saves me 5 hours per week. I use Calendly to automate the way people schedule appointments with me. Many wedding pros are big fans of Aisle Planner for managing their clients and for getting contracts signed & accepting payments. Doing all of these tasks manually would seriously slow anyone down and waste a lot of precious time. Let the technology do the legwork for you.
 

Systematize

 
A system is simply a process that you use to complete a task and can be as simple as a checklist. Your systems are what keeps your business running smoothly. If you have streamlined systems, your business runs like a well-oiled machine. If you don’t have streamlined systems set up, it can really slow you down.

For example, how do you schedule initial consultations with potential clients?

Do you rewrite that email or use a template?

Do you send them to a tool like Calendly to choose a date & time or do you go back and forth over and over via email?

Do you only do consultations on certain days so you can batch them or is it all over the place?

You already have systems in your business even if they aren’t optimized or streamlined. That means you have a lot of opportunities to take your time back! Systems may not seem sexy but they give you your time back, and that my friend, is super sexy.

This topic is so important that I’ve teamed up with Aisle Planner to create a free webinar for you all about how you can define your processes and streamline your systems! You can register for the webinar by filling out the form below.

Delegate

 
You are not the only person that can do the tasks that need to be done in your business. You can’t do everything and you don’t have to. If you hate doing your bookkeeping and put it off until it becomes a massive burden, just delegate it to someone who enjoys it. Instead of wasting your time doing this task, you can delegate it to a bookkeeper for a very reasonable cost. This frees up your time to generate more business which is what really matters. Honestly, I am SO happy to hand over money to my accountant. Every year she saves me money by finding deductions that I wasn’t aware of and she saves me time by doing my taxes which I HATE and would put off until the last minute creating even more stress.

People often look at the most successful people in the world and see that they don’t spend their time doing tasks they hate but they assume this is a perk of being successful. In actuality, this is how you become successful. By building a team and training them properly you can essentially clone yourself. There are some things that only you can do, but most things can be done by someone who is particularly good at that specific task.

You don’t even have to hire an employee, you can hire a virtual assistant to help you. Take some time and look through sites like Upwork and Fiverr to find out what sorts of tasks other people are delegating. I delegate my podcast editing to an awesome audio editor that I found on Fiverr and he saves me time and money. What takes him just 20 minutes takes me 2 hours, and by getting that 2 hours back, I have time to work on revenue-generating activities like working on my marketing strategy and generating leads.
 

Breathe

 
You don’t have to do it all right now. There are an unlimited amount of things you can do to grow your business and it can get overwhelming. I sometimes have to remind myself that I don’t have to do it all right now and it is such a relief. When I get into I NEED TO DO ALL THE THINGS mode that reminder relaxes me. The next time you have shiny object syndrome, remind yourself that it may be best to put that on the back burner until you’re ready to focus on it.

We’re all playing the long game. Yes, there are things that matter right now more than others and yes, those things need your focus. But if you’re feeling overwhelmed by all of the things you could/”should” do, take a deep breath. Focus on what matters most for your business right now and once you’ve completed that, then add more on. When you add on more before you’ve determined your focus it can be incredibly overwhelming, as I’m sure you know.

The good news is you’ll never be bored because you have a to-do list for your business that I’m sure will span years. 🙂 And that’s great because you’ll continue to grow over time instead of fizzling out. It doesn’t all need to happen this week, month, quarter or year.