Aspiring Wedding Planners – Workshops for Your Business

I wanted to share some great workshops for aspiring Wedding Planners.  These are great opportunities to learn and educate yourself.  If you are new to the industry and are thinking of starting a wedding planning business, I highly recommend the following workshops taking place in the next few months:

Go2Girl – Event Planning Bootcamp

August 2 – 7 to 9:30pm
Seattle, WA
Cost: $89 – Buy Tickets Here

Topics covered will include:

• How to determine if event planning is a good fit
• Day in the life of an event planner
• Determining your unique selling position
• Developing a targeted customer base
• Action plan: specific steps to take next

Sweet Pea Events – Sweet Success Workshop

August 22 – 9am-4:30pm
Dallas, TX
Cost $200 (includes lunch and templates) – Buy Tickets Here

Topics covered will include:

• Wedding Industry Statistics and Trends
• Basics of Owning a Wedding Planning Business
• Day in the Life of a Wedding Planner
• Marketing Tips
• Establishing Vendor Relationships
• Pricing & Sales

Aspire to Plan – Business Building Workshop for Planners

October 6-7 – 9am-4pm each day
Phoenix, AZ
Cost: $395 thru 9/12; $495 thru 9/28 – Buy Tickets Here

Topics covered will include:

• Defining the various titles of a Wedding Planner; Consultant, Coordinator
• How to determine if wedding planning is really the career for you
• The importance of creating a business plan and marketing plan
• The importance of developing an administrative/bookkeeping system
• Ways to market your business
• Getting and Closing the Sale

Pricing and Selling for Profit – Photography

Michael Rosenberg Photography

I’m sharing this information for Photographers in Seattle…

Michael Rosenberg is having a seminar on Monday
regarding Pricing and Selling for Profit

Pricing and Selling for Profit
Monday, June 29th, 2009
9:30 AM to 4:30 PM
Only 5 spaces left!

Here is some more info from Michael…

The profession of wedding and portrait photography is in crisis. Things are changing rapidly. We are responding to market pressures by dropping prices without understanding the imperative relationship between what it costs us to be in business and a price list that will sustain us.We have to price our work for profit and we have to be able to sell our work at those prices.

The one day workshop we have created is designed to help you increase your bottom line, plain and simple. We will discuss pricing for profit and how to create a realistic and profitable price list. We will discuss how to present your price structures without pressure and without apologies. We will cover pre-qualifying your clients, preparing them to buy from you and the use of scripts to manage objections.

We will be covering the sales session through in-depth discussions and demonstrations as well as the use of projection to increase both the size of the images you sell as well as the size of the orders your clients will purchase. In addition we will talk about the importance of branding in today’s market. We also will explore your resistance to asking your clients for what you are worth.

This workshop is for any professional portrait or wedding photographer who wants to increase their profits, increase their bottom line and tackle the art and science of pricing and selling.

This workshop is open to the first ten people who sign up. The cost of the workshop is $250 and includes lunch. In addition, I will be available for 30 days following the workshop for brief phone consults or by email to assist you in implementing what you have learned. The workshop fee is due at the time of registration and is non-refundable.

To register please call my studio at 206-224-9828 or email me at Michael@michaelrosenberg.com .

I am really excited and looking forward to sharing with you the experience and knowledge I have acquired over the years and have found to work successfully.

I look forward to seeing you and collaborating on getting successful.

via Michael Rosenberg | Pricing and Selling for Profit, Seattle, WA.

Excel for the Wedding Professional ~ The One-to-One Custom Series

ASK and ye shall receive…

I’ve had several requests for some one-to-one coaching in Microsoft Excel.  People have been asking me to sit down with them and teach them the ins and outs of Excel… how to build spreadsheets that are specific to their business needs.  So here we go!

I am offering FOUR 1-hour sessions of
personal coaching on Microsoft Excel for $199.

Here are some of the details…

• 4 sessions tailored to your business needs and level of experience
• Introduction or Brush-up on Excel
• Integration of Excel with Google Spreadsheets
• Here are some things we can do (or anything you have in mind):
  • Set up of spreadsheet(s) to track client inquiries and follow-up
  • Set up of spreadsheet(s) to determine the return on your advertising investment
  • Set up of spreadsheet(s) to manage client budgets
  • Creating expense budgets and sales forecasts for your business in Excel
  • Basic accounting and bookkeeping
  • Overview of which “numbers” are good to know

A little bit about me… and why I’m doing this…

I’m a super Excel nerd.  Braced with a Bachelors Degree in Accounting and experience working at Deloitte, you can say I’m pretty saavy with numbers and spreadsheets.  And, I love it.  I think every wedding professional should hire an accountant to do the nitty gritty work.  But, to be successful, you really need to know the ins and outs of the numbers.  And, if you are using Word for many of your functions, you’re making a lot of work for yourself.  I value this industry and want to see the people in it have stronger and smarter businesses!

If you’re interested in this service, please sign up here: Excel for the Wedding Professional.

For now, I’m only offering this in the Seattle area.  I do travel quite a bit (particularly to Miami, Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco), so let me know if you are interested in doing something like this in your market… you never know when I’ll be in your town!

Why Small Businesses Fail

Courtesy of Barbie Hull Photography

Before we continue with steps 9-12 in the writing of our business plans (which involve financial statements) I thought it would be good to reflect on why it’s important to know your business’s financial details.  Writing the financial portion of the business plan is usually the most challenging.

The wedding industry is made up of the most creative and artistic individuals.  Individuals in the industry can be wildly successful without any business background.  Unfortunately, many people are told “hire an accountant and let him or her do the dirty work.”  While you MUST indeed hire an accountant, you MUST also understand the numbers of your business.  And, I’m here to tell you: DO NOT BE SCARED.

I have an accounting degree and worked for an accounting firm right out of college.  This makes me no different from you in running a successful business.  None of what I learned is a mystery.  None of what I learned is rocket science.  I might have a little more practice, but that’s all.  You practice at yoga, you practice at photography, you practice at design, you practice at baking.  With practice, you can understand all of the numbers of your business.  And, you can become even better. I’m not an expert.  (Here’s a secret: no one is an expert.)  But I practice a lot and I am constantly learning.

Fortune Small Business recently had a great article on “Why Businesses Fail“.  I recommend you read the entire article here.  (It’s simple, to the point, and so true.)  In it Jay Goltz gives a real life example of a business that has had had strong revenues and loyal customer following, but has LOST MONEY for the last 8 years.  Jay believes that 70% of small businesses go broke by their 10th anniversary because they don’t know their numbers.  He highlights the following:

• Entrepreneurs tend to concentrate on what they love, whether it’s the artist who paints but doesn’t spend any time marketing or the chef who lives in the kitchen and ignores her financials.
• Every business owner needs to be his or her own CFO.
• Delegating that task to a bookkeeper or an outside accounting firm means putting your life into their hands.
• [The accountants] generally don’t know the ins and outs of your business well enough to make critical decisions.

So, before we embark on the financial elements on our business plan take the day to reflect on the things you want to practice.  It is dangerous to strive for perfection.  Strive instead for excellence.  Excellence is achieved by practice.  Practice is the journey, not the destination.  Practice is something we DO.

I’ll see you back here tomorrow… ready to practice with your calculator! 😉

Excel for the Wedding Professional – Seattle, WA

Wooohooo!

We are offering our first class to Seattle area professionals!

Wanna know more about MS-Excel? Maybe you’re a little rusty? Maybe you only know the basics? Maybe you never have used it professionally? Wanna learn all the nitty-gritty to become a smarter wedding business?

MS-Excel for the Wedding Professional

Join us for an MS-Excel Training and learn how to track client inquiries and sales using MS Excel:

Tuesday – June 9, 2009 – 5-8pm
$75 / attendee ; $125 / attendee + guest
1605 Boylston Ave #305 (Capitol Hill)
Seattle, WA 98122

In this seminar you will walk away with:
– knowledge of how to use Excel
– working experience in setting up a spreadsheet (relevant to tracking customer inquiries and sales)
– An Excel tutorial guide
– An Excel quick-key guide
– A TEMPLATE for use in tracking inquiries and sales

Ticket purchasing and information here:

https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/63634

If you have questions… click the “Contact Us” tab above.