The System for Staying in the Wedding Industry Long-Term with Heidi Thompson

Julie: Welcome back to the System for Everything podcast. Today’s system tip. To avoid burnout, simply love your job more. If that doesn’t work, try loving it harder. Welcome back everyone. There is a very good chance you have attended a summit, workshop, or webinar that quietly changed the trajectory of your wedding business.

Because of today’s guest, Heidi Thompson is here today. She’s the bestselling author. Of clone your best clients and the wedding business coach and marketing strategist behind Evolve your wedding business where she helps wedding professionals stop throwing everything at the wall and build a focused strategic marketing system that books ideal clients consistently without living on Instagram or working 60 hour weeks.

Her business and marketing expertise has been featured on several wedding and business outlets and events, including Wedding Business Magazine. Wedding Industry Insider, the Wedding Empires Podcast, wedding MBA Aisle Planner, HoneyBook, and Wedding Wire World. She is the creator and host of Book More Wedding Summit and Wedding Business CEO Summit.

Over the past 13 years, she has helped thousands of wedding pros of all kinds across six continents. I’m guessing we’re missing Antarctica, uh, grow their wedding businesses.

Heidi: I’ll get ’em one day.

Julie: Going for you Polar bears. She has helped them grow their wedding businesses without working nonstop. Today’s conversation is not about quick wins, hustle culture, or vague burnout advice.

It is about what allows wedding professionals to stay, grow, evolve, and still recognize themselves years into this work. We are gonna start, as we always do with the quick system, reboot our reset to start our episode with some humor and humanity. Welcome, Heidi.

Heidi: Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Julie: Thank you for being here. All right. Are you a paper planner person, a digital planner person, or like a notes app chaos person?

Heidi: I’m a little bit of all of the above. I tend to use paper. I, I use digital for like nitty gritty, but I use paper for like big picture

Julie: for me. Even if I wrote, even if it is digital, like, I mean, digital’s like appointments and things like that, but even if the to-do list is digital, I love just the tactile feeling of writing it down and crossing it off.

Heidi: Yeah.

Julie: Something. It’s still the about it. The most satisfying thing.

Heidi: Yeah.

Julie: All right. What is something you thought you would never, ever care about in business and now it feels absolutely essential to you?

Heidi: Oh, that’s a really good question. Oh man. Something I thought I would never, ever care about. I, I used to, when I first got started, I was big on like the everything organic train in my own business.

And like now I love ads.

Julie: I love that. All right. What is a minor inconvenience that just fully ruins your mood?

Heidi: Oh my God. Um, there’s so many to choose from. Oh, I, my God.

Julie: Same.

Heidi: I feel like it’s always the little things that get you, like the most bent outta shape. Right.

Julie: I could like move and it’s somehow not a big deal. But when I was with the Dallas Mavericks, um, I worked there for 10 years and. Like I was in there in an office and we got new chairs, and I don’t think I stopped complaining about it for two months.

Like that’s the dumbest thing to complain about.

Heidi: I think for me it’s like delays.

Julie: Yeah.

Heidi: Anything that’s delayed even slightly. I just, I think it’s like, ’cause I have this expectation and it’s like, whether it’s like a delivery or, you

Julie: know, you just, you have it planned out for how it’s gonna go.

Heidi: Yeah.

Julie: It’s like, and then it doesn’t, you, if you order this, you know, brown sugar from Walmart, it’s like, probably ’cause you’re gonna do something with it and then you want it there at a certain time.

So you can do that at the certain time. Yeah, I totally get that.

Heidi: And then they give you too much information, like it’ll be there at this time and then it’s not.

Julie: And then I’m like, come on. And when they complain about it, they always are like, I’m so sorry for this delay. I understand how this can mess up everything.

Please be assured that I’m thinking of you in this. Like, just like it goes outta the way. Like I know it’s their script, but it makes me feel so uncomfortable. All right everyone, you have met the personality. Now meet the powerhouse. Staying power doesn’t happen by accident. It’s built. Intentionally.

Here’s my conversation with Heidi Thompson on the system for staying in the wedding industry long term. All right. We hear so much. I mean, probably not even e even if we don’t include the COVID and the pandemic in all of this. I mean, we still hear a lot about people pivoting. Oh, I’m like pivoting. I’m doing this now, but fewer.

Honest conversations about why wedding pros are actually fully leaving the industry. From your vantage point, what are the most common reasons people are quietly leaving weddings?

Heidi: I see a lot of burnout. That’s huge. And I think. Because people, I think it’s a combination of things like you obviously care deeply about the work you’re doing, and then there’s like this whole societal thing of if you’re lucky enough to get to do something creative and that you love, like you should just shut up and be happy to work 80 hours a week.

Yeah. And then obviously it has a toll on you.

Julie: Mm-hmm. And, and when everyone who’s not in your industry says like. Oh my God, that must be the coolest job. And it’s like, yes, you can like what you do, but you’re also allowed to complain about it.

Heidi: Right? Yeah. And I think there is so much, there can be so much pressure to do all the things, to be everywhere, to show up as this like amazing, flawless business that it’s a lot on people’s shoulders and like weddings are.

They’re a high pressure day. There’s something that happens once, at least, typically once for that couple, and it has to be done right, and I get it, like there’s a lot of pressure there, but there’s also a lot of burnout from like the emotions, from the time, from the stress of all of it.

Julie: When someone is leaving the wedding industry, what is the one system that they almost never had, or like one that they implemented far too late that you kind of see as a common denominator?

Heidi: Oh, that’s so good. Boundaries around your time.

Julie: Yes.

Heidi: Huge, huge, huge, huge. And I get it, people are like, well, I wanna be available, I wanna be helpful. And you know, who can’t be available and helpful, someone who’s burnt out. So your client wants you to be happy and healthy and able to perform at your best, and I just see so many people trying to make themselves so available that, you know, resentment build or they just completely burn themselves out.

Julie: At what stage in someone’s business do those kind of cracks usually start appearing? Are you seeing them like early growth when they’re scaling or when someone is like quote unquote successful on paper?

Heidi: I think it’s different at different stages. So I think the availability to clients issue. Comes in in the scaling stage.

I think in the early growth stage, the place where I see people burning out more is around trying to do. Every possible thing to market, to be visible, to get discovered, and feeling like they’re not doing any one thing successfully. So I think that is like earlier stage and it can continue. Absolutely. If you don’t address it.

But then I see other people being the issue with time and feeling pulled by people, being pulled by your clients, sometimes by other vendors in that more later stage for people,

Julie: I think especially when you start to kind of see those patterns clearly, like it becomes so obvious that leaving isn’t usually just about one bad wedding season.

It’s about what was. Never designed to be sustainable in the first place.

Heidi: Yeah.

Julie: And I know that like longevity requires a really different set of decisions than like, you know, that growth at all costs mindset. So what do businesses that tend that, that, that last tend to prioritize differently?

Heidi: So on the marketing side, I see.

The companies that last do a really good job at prioritizing what gets their time, their attention, and a big focus of how I look at marketing is you know, what works for you, what doesn’t work for you? Because we wanna lean into doing more of what works. And doing less of what doesn’t. So if we can prioritize the things that work and actually give them the time, the attention, the intentionality that they deserve, that can be a huge, huge shift because then you’re not trying to do everything you just know.

Okay. If these are like my three areas in my marketing that work really well, these are the only things I’m focusing on, I can break that down into manageable things that I can take steps on, and I know confidently that I can say. No, I’m not doing this platform. I’m not doing this. There are many things we could do, but I’m not doing those things.

And on like the self-management CEO side, I see people prioritizing there time as the CEO last. So what I mean by that is it’s really strange because we have to function as two different people. In our business, we have to function as the ceo.

Yes,

Heidi: that makes plans and strategizes and sets goals and has like vision for where we’re going.

And then there’s the worker you on like a Thursday afternoon of like, what am I supposed to be doing? So I see a lot of people that stay too much in that worker space and so they’re just like working to work without realizing. Are these the most important things we could be doing right now? Are these the first dominoes we need to knock over in this series of dominoes so that we get to where we’re going to?

And when you actually prioritize, setting aside even a little bit of time just to like functionally create the work, order to hand over to the worker version of yourself, it allows you to. Work on the things that matter and not just work on whatever comes across your desk.

Julie: Is there a business metric that you think wedding pros celebrate, that you believe is actually a red flag for long-term sustainability?

Heidi: I think it’s gotta be the vanity metrics on social.

Julie: I think its the likes.

Heidi: Yeah, the likes, like the, the views, the visibility type metrics, because it’s really easy to get hung up on that, but that’s not actually an indicator of anything other than people like seeing this content. It’s not an indicator that.

Leads you’re getting booked. Like seeing Yeah, leads, like seeing this, that they’re gonna take the next step. So it’s really easy to feel like I’m doing everything right because look at these visibility metrics. Yeah. So many people are seeing it. And you know, I was just talking the other day about like visibility doesn’t equal success.

It’s like having a billboard in Times Square. You know, a lot of people see it, but they don’t know. What you’re all about. They don’t know how you’re different. They don’t know why they should care. We all know that hundreds, thousands of brands exist, but we don’t spend money with most of them because we don’t actually care about, you know, what it is that they have, or we don’t understand why we should care.

So getting hung up on that isn’t just a matter of like. Disappointment. It’s a matter of then you make the wrong choices about what to prioritize because you’re viewing the result as likes, views, when really the result we’re trying to get is bookings.

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Heidi: today@dallasgirlfriday.com. Before life throws a plot twist.

Julie: I think one of the hardest. Parts, or, I mean, it definitely, it was for me back in the day, a million years ago when I was a wedding planner. You know, I think one of the hardest parts was that life keeps happening. While the work stays intense, there’s no way to plan around that.

So are there any systems or decisions that business owners can put in place before life forces a change? Like. Becoming a parent or health shifts or being a caregiver, I mean that actually make that staying in the business possible.

Heidi: I think we need to set a container for this is the amount of space, the amount of time that I am willing to allocate to work.

Right? Mm-hmm. So it doesn’t bleed over because it will bleed over even with a container. Yeah. But if you can go into it with the mindset of, I wanna work 40 hours a week, I wanna work 30 hours a week. I wanna work 25 hours a week. It leads you to make different decisions. It leads you to be more ruthless about what you’re willing to do, and it leads you to be more defensive about what actually gets on your calendar, as opposed to if it doesn’t exist, then it’s like, well, I’ll take anything and everything on my calendar.

Yeah. And then you get into a situation where now what you have committed to requires 50, 60, 70 hours when. It’s the funniest thing, and it’s a weird mindset shift. When I start working with people and they feel pulled in a million different directions and they’re working crazy hours, I tell them like, by the end of this, you’re gonna work less.

And they don’t believe me because of course you gotta do more to get more right. But as we start taking things off of their plate that don’t actually make an impact and streamlining things that do and being really ruthless about what deserves to take up your time, you get down to those hours and you get better results because you’re only doing the things that you know lead to the results you want.

Julie: How do you give yourself that permission to evolve without feeling like you’re failing your past self that designed things this way?

Heidi: Ooh, it’s there. It is such a mindset mess, right? Because we Oh, totally equate hard work. We equate time spent, we equate effort with results.

Julie: Mm-hmm. And.

Heidi: That’s not true in the entrepreneurial space.

It’s very weird because that is how the rest of society seems to function. Although if you really think about it, if every, you know, hardworking person in the world was gonna be successful. We would live in a very different world. Right. True. There are a lot of very true people

Julie: Yeah. That do not get their due.

Heidi: Yeah. And I, I was talking to a client about this, we were doing a quarterly planning session in my membership and. She was talking about this and like the guilt and just the weird feelings that come up around it, and I was like, you need to constantly remind yourself because it doesn’t just change, you know, you have to constantly remind yourself and bring yourself back.

But the thing I told her she had to remind herself of is. I get to choose whether I dig 10 holes with a spoon or I dig two holes with an excavator, and I’m choosing to dig two holes with an excavator. Is it easier? Yes. But it’s also the smarter thing to do. So I was like, yeah, any time you get pulled into this, I’m like, excavators over spoons.

Excavators over spoons, and you just have to bring yourself back because it is this social conditioning of like. I don’t feel like I’m allowed to do this and it will continue to come up. I think people think that it shouldn’t, but it absolutely will. As you see success working less than you did before.

Julie: A hundred percent.

And I mean, burnout usually rarely comes from just one big thing. It’s usually that death by a thousand paper cuts. What do you think are some of the, the sneaky like pressure points that really wear people down over time in this industry?

Heidi: People pleasing behavior. That’s a big

Julie: one. Yes.

Heidi: And a lot of,

Julie: I almost think sometimes wedding planning was hard for me because I’m an Enneagram eight and I didn’t care.

Heidi: I was the same. I think we’re the same Enneagram. I’m an eight wing seven and like.

Julie: We’re

Heidi: exact

Julie: same.

Heidi: Yeah. There were so many times when I was planning and dealing with people and I’m like, this doesn’t matter. Why are you guys getting so hung up on this, this,

Julie: like, I’m not saying to a client like, you talk to a friend about this.

Like, Hey, that doesn’t matter. Just dumb.

Heidi: Just

shut

Julie: up,

Heidi: move on. Why are you so hung up on? Be logical. But, um, yeah, it’s, it’s really funny. Like. There are so many, I think just creatives broadly, but definitely people in the wedding industry that are natural people pleasers and it’s part of what brings you into working closely with people, which I understand, but people pleasing is.

Inherently not just harmful to you, it’s harmful to the people that you work with and yeah, I think sometimes if we can’t prioritize ourself, if you can prioritize your client in a way of like, gee, would my client be happy that they’re paying thousands and thousands of dollars for someone to work on their wedding when they haven’t slept a full night?

Yeah, like no, I’d be pretty annoyed if that is who I was getting. You know, sometimes if we can shift it onto that and realizing that people pleasing it comes from a place of insecurity is really what it is. It’s from, I don’t think what I’m doing is good enough. I don’t think you know what I’m offering is enough, so I’m gonna constantly compensate.

And I think most people aren’t even aware that they do it. And when you become aware of it, that’s when you get to actually make decisions about, okay, do I want to do this or do I want to stick to my boundary, stick to my system, whatever it is. And you have to kind of coach yourself through that and like recognize that it’s okay to.

Be the leader in this relationship. That’s what you’re being hired to do and being told, Hey, this is when I respond to messages, or most people, genuinely, when they email you in the middle of the night, I know this is true of me. They do it to get it off their mind. They don’t do it because they’re expecting you to respond.

Julie: Yes. Yes, a hundred percent. It’s just like, I need to dump this out of my brain and put it onto yours. You can look at it when you’re working.

Heidi: Yeah. Yeah. And like, I just need to get this email out, like I’m not, of course I’m not,

Julie: so I don’t forget you.

Heidi: Yeah, exactly. And I’m not expecting you to come back to me.

I can see actually how that might be a red flag to a client if they are getting responses at all hours. Because it shows that you don’t have healthy boundaries. I would

Julie: assume that you’re. Planning my wedding and running a meth lab if you’re always responding at 3:00 AM That’s just my assumption, guys,

Heidi: when you’re on your meth lab,

Julie: sorry, I just, I just rewatched breaking bad.

My husband watched it for the first time. I have meth on the brain. Guess

Heidi: I love that. Yeah. Like it, it doesn’t send a good signal that we think it does. Yeah. And if you can just be more cognizant of it, be more aware of. I’m doing this because, not because this person actually wants this from me. It’s because I’m trying to make myself feel better about something.

Julie: Yeah.

Heidi: It makes it easier to make decisions from a clearer space.

Julie: I think it’s often, I mean, I not, I think I know that it’s often those, those quiet pressure points and not. Like the big dramatic moments that determine whether someone’s really staying in this are gonna slowly burn out and people need support.

So what is a, a wedding business that’s built to support its owner actually look like behind the scenes? I mean, not aspirationally, but like practically.

Heidi: Yeah. So. That person has time set aside for CEO thinking, planning. They’re taking time to plan out what they’re doing, whether that is in their marketing, whether that is in any facet of the business of like who does their next hire need to be, you know, they’re taking time to do that, and they’re not just reacting.

I think a lot of. Wedding pros get trapped in this reaction mode where they’re reacting to something. A client said, they’re reacting to this notification that came in. Then they’re getting pulled over here by this. So having systems and basically whatever you need in place, systems, boundaries, whatever that looks like for you.

For some of us, it’s just. No, I don’t respond during these times, and I’m fine with that. For some of us, we need to turn off notifications. We need to turn off all these things like, you know how you tend to react, you know how you tend to emotionally respond in certain situations, so you need to kind of build a fortress.

Around yourself in that way to protect yourself from doing that so that it never gets to you. So that it is following a system, a process that like it’s gonna get done. But that thing I know I’m going to emotionally react to. It doesn’t. Even show up on my radar at 9:00 PM on a Tuesday night. I’m not even aware of it.

I don’t allow myself to do that. So a part of it is the systems for, you know, running things. Part of it is the systems for yourself, and I think that’s actually the trickier part is learning to function as the CEO learning to function for you personally, because what you struggle with is gonna be different.

Than what someone else struggles with, you know, with your mindset or what sets you off emotionally or where you tend to derail, where you tend to go into like worst case scenario thinking. We all have different ways. We tend to sabotage ourselves and

Julie: yeah,

Heidi: when I see people that are doing really well, they are focusing on putting things in place to.

Mitigate that as much as possible because like if you’re like me, you know you’re gonna wind up staying up super late and then it’s gonna fall into this rhythm where you’re like completely messed up on your schedule and then you’re gonna be like, oh, I should go to sleep earlier. So if you can put something in the beginning, right, like even if it’s something as simple as like.

Oh yeah. I have a regular alarm that goes off at 10:00 PM to make me aware of the fact that it’s 10:00 PM and I need to start winding down. Like you need to preempt yourself and your natural self sabotaging tendencies.

Julie: Yeah. What advice would you give to somebody who absolutely loves working in weddings but is questioning how long they can keep doing this?

Heidi: Ooh, to prioritize yourself. This business, you are the asset, right? You need to protect the asset at all costs. Yes, you need to build and recognize that you can build a business to give you the life that you want, to allow you to do the work that you want, that you’re just probably going to need to make some changes around.

Your structure around how you’re thinking around the systems that you’re putting in place. If you’re starting to feel that like, oh man, there’s so much. I really encourage people to brain dump everything, put like everything on paper that you’re doing and. I want you to label things. I think about this as like we’re all juggling constantly, but there are some balls that are rubber.

Most of them are rubber. If you drop it, it bounces. Not a big deal. There are some glass balls that if you drop those things kind of fall apart. So if you can sort those and really look at like, okay, these like two things are really. The lifeblood. If you put yourself in a position where it was like you have some chronic illness or you had to have surgery or whatever, and you have five hours to run this business, you tighten that container as much as possible, you’ll, you’ll find a way to make it work, but you have to figure out.

What actually matters? What makes a difference for you? What are the essential pieces When you realize that what’s glass, what’s rubber, what you know moves the needle, what doesn’t? You can let all that stuff go that’s just taking up your time and is making you feel like you’re not doing enough. It’s making you feel pulled in a million different directions and confidently commit to.

No, this is what I’m doing. This is my plan. This is what I know works. This is what I’m sticking with, and you can operate your business from a much more intentional space. So I would say overall it’s. Intentionality. Usually when we start to feel like, I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up, it’s because we’re being worn thin.

We are, yeah, being pulled in too many directions. We’re doing too many things. So clearing as much of it off of your plate is possible and recognizing that not all tasks are created equal. You know, some of them just waste your time. Some of them can be, some of them can be systematized. Some of them you don’t even need to be doing.

All. It allows you to remove a lot of that from your plate entirely.

Julie: Heidi, thank you so much for being here. Can you please tell everyone about your upcoming summit, how they can register, how they can learn?

Heidi: Yeah, absolutely. So Julie is a speaker at the summit. I can’t wait for her to uh, teach you guys.

You’re gonna love it. And she is one of 40 experts that are coming together to really. Help you get out of overwhelm while still being able to book the weddings you want, still being able to grow but not have this constant pull like you’re just hanging in there via thread. And I know Julie’s gonna have to link to sign up for your free ticket because you can join us completely free, uh, over in the show notes, but it’s happening February.

16th through the 20th. And if you want a business that allows you to live the life you want, if you wanna feel less overwhelmed, do you wanna feel less scattered and pulled in a million different directions? This is absolutely an event that you need to attend.

Julie: Yeah, you do not wanna miss it guys. The link is in the show notes.

I’ll be posting about it on social media as well. And in my email list, I’m doing a presentation. It’s called Your Business Deserves a Backup Plan. Start with a Death folder. Um, I’m doing a freebie with. That, that you can get called the Wedding Business Continuity Audit. And then if you upgrade the All Access Pass, I have a template in there that is a plug and play crisis SOPs for Wedding Pros.

So that is gonna be. A really great event. Heidi Summits are always the best. And then Heidi, can you tell me more about your membership and how people can work with you?

Heidi: Yeah, sure thing. So my membership is called The Wedding Business Collective. It really focuses on helping wedding pros create a solid marketing plan that attracts and books the clients they really wanna work with while making their marketing easier.

And building this business in a way that doesn’t, you know, consume their lives whole. So we’re very big on prioritizing, making sure we’re only doing the things that deserve your time. And you can find out more about that at evolve your wedding business.com/. Pod you can actually get your first month for just a dollar and get in there, start reclaiming your time, start building your marketing plan, and have my help as well as the help of the other members.

It’s a very collaborative group of people.

Julie: Awesome. And the link for that and for Heidi’s membership is gonna be in the show notes as well, guys. All right, we are wrapping up. Uh, so it’s time for our system shut down. Today. We’re ending with a fast five that feels extremely on theme because of staying in the wedding industry.

Long term is about systems, boundaries and calm under pressure. It begs the question, who would actually be good at this job? So we’re gonna do a. Fast. Five TV characters who would make incredible wedding vendors. All right. Number one, a TV character who would be an absolutely elite wedding planner. Olivia Pope.

I mean, she’s the definition of crisis proof. She is decisive, unshakeable 10 steps ahead at all times. I mean, there’s plenty of of type A options out there. I could have picked Monica Geller, Leslie Knope, Amy Santiago, but Olivia is the one you want when something goes wrong. And no one else can even acknowledge that it has.

I mean, the wedding will happen. The couple will never know what almost did. All right. Number two, a character who would crush it as a wedding photographer, David Rose. He has taste. He understands aesthetics, mood, vibes, and he will absolutely make sure nothing is cheesy or off brand. I mean, he would deliver a gallery that feels editorial, elevated and cool without trying too hard, and he would never let a bad outfit get documented.

A character you would trust with timelines and logistics. Gotta be Donna Paulson from Suits. She doesn’t need the timeline. Donna is the timeline. She knows what’s happening, what’s about to happen, and what would happen if somebody hadn’t intervened. I mean, she’s proactive, she’s calm, she’s already fixed the problem before you even knew it existed.

Number four, a character who would thrive in client communications. Ted Lasso pure emotional intelligence reassures without dismissing people, sets boundaries without ego, makes clients feel genuinely cared for. They would feel heard, supported, calm, which in weddings is like half the job. I mean, he is the vendor whose emails you actually feel better after reading.

And I know I said it was gonna be five who would excel at this, but I had to throw in one terrible one. A character you would never want anywhere near your wedding day from Seinfeld. George Costanza, absolutely not. George would panic. He would overcorrect, he would lie to cover the panic, and then he would somehow make the entire situation worse while insisting that none of it was his fault.

I mean, he would miss a critical detail. Blame the system. And spiral. Publicly. Entertaining. Yeah. Trustworthy. Under pressure. No. Thank you for spending part of your day with me. Longevity doesn’t come from loving your job harder or squeezing more productivity out of yourself. It comes from building businesses that can hold a real life.

Seasons changes. Pauses and the people behind the work. If today’s episode resonated, it’s probably because you don’t just want a successful wedding business. You want one that stays with you, and when you want to stay in. If this episode felt like a deep exhale, share it with a wedding pro who needs that reminder?

I’ll see you next week.