21. Assess 2023 before 2024 for Important Business Growth

The end of busy season is a magical time when you get to think about all of the exciting things that you’d love to see incorporated into your business dream clients. More or less bookings, higher prices. All of this is what will become available to you when you first look back at this year, and then really use that information to intentionally build out next year. This is exactly what we're about to get into.

2023 Audit Workbook

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• 0:00 2023 Audit Workbook

Transcript

The end of busy season is a magical time when you get to think about all of the exciting things that you’d love to see incorporated into your business dream clients. More or less bookings, higher prices. All of this is what will become available to you when you first look back at this year, and then really use that information to intentionally build out next year. This is exactly what we're about to get into. 

Let's face it, most of us would rather be creating art than running a successful business, but we can 100% do both. My name is Erica Ewing. I'm a wedding photographer in sales and marketing expert for creative entrepreneurs. I'm here to help you define the life of your dreams and create a business that supports just that. Welcome to the Successful Creatives podcast. 

I'm so hesitant to even name what we're doing here, but we're about to run your business through a 2023 audit. Now, audits can be fun, I love a good audit. This is something where it just means we take a look at your past year. We really take time to evaluate the good and the bad, and we weave all of that data into our plan for 2024 audits. Looking back on the past and discovering what we want more of, discovering what we want less of, and weaving that into the vision for our future. This is how big change becomes reality. This is how visions go from just being a pipe dream to being what your life actually looks like. So we're going to evaluate 3 major pieces of your business in this audit. We're going to look at your clients, your volume of bookings, and we're also going to look at your prices and your finances. 

Let's talk about your clients 1st. This is like my my most favorite topic because I love my clients. I know that that's not always the case with people's businesses, but it can be when you start to be really intentional about who you’re attracting into your business. This has so much to do with your messaging. The positioning of your work and your messaging is what attracts your particular clients to your business. Think back on your clients from 2023. Think about your most favorite client and your least favorite client. Because sometimes learnings are in the extremes. Then think about overall, do you feel like you were attracting clients that your personality is really aligned with? Do you value the same things? Are your styles aligned and do they appreciate you, value you, your time, and your work? These are really important questions for you to dig into, and each of the questions and the answers that come from them can really lead you down a different path that you want to explore as part of your audit.

So, for example, things like personality alignment, value alignment, style alignment. These are things that really you want to lean into your messaging on. If you're not consistently attracting your ideal client okay. Probably the most common question that I get asked by people outside of the wedding industry is they want to know about stories about bridezillas. Everybody wants to know about the difficult clients that gave me a run for my money. The truth is that I don't have them, and it's because my messaging is really all about attracting those kind hearted couples who are here for the same reasons that I'm here. Really all about capturing their love and sharing and celebrating in these magical experiences. Someone who’s a bridezilla is going to get to my brand, whether it’s on Instagram, on my website, or Pinterest… anywhere. It's not going to resonate with them because my messaging is so dialed in to really be focused on these heart centered, kind hearted people. So if you feel like personalities are not aligned, tap into that. Spend some time on your messaging if you feel like style isn't aligned. This also circles back to your positioning and your messaging. I recently helped a photographer reshape her entire clientele. She's been in business for many years and she just felt a little uninspired by her clients. 

Now for me, I 100% find I need inspiration. I need to be inspired by my clients, I need to be inspired by their venues. Venue is something that’s really built into my brand as being an important pillar that I will always talk about having a unique venue, a really uniquely defined special day. In the case of this particular photographer that I helped, she was feeling uninspired by her clientele and she comes from an art history background. This woman is an artist, and she also really loves weddings that are elegant at venues with historic architectural components. Right? Like, she's really looking for a lot of visual interest on the day. So on my days, my ideal clients, I am looking for connection. I'm looking for love and celebration and that's what's important to my brand. This photographer is looking for real visual interest, style, elegance and she wasn't getting these clients consistently because it wasn't folded into her messaging. So if you're feeling like your personality is aligned with your clients, you get along with your clients. But something’s missing from the work that you're creating with them, you're not feeling inspired by them, and you're not feeling inspired by the work that you’re creating alongside them. This is an area for you to dig into the messaging on the types of bookings that you're getting and really, when you get clear, you can start to really shape those bookings. Now, I created a worksheet for my Marketing Mastery students, we’re doing this audit together in the mastery, but I'm sharing it with you here as a bonus, because it's such important work.

I've dropped it in the show notes. Go grab that from the show notes and really carve out the time to do this. If you have the opportunity to do it right now, amazing. I'm going to walk you through this. You can pause, fill out the work as we go, and really take this into your planning and all of the work that you're going to do in 2024. This worksheet will help you define who you want to be working with, help you figure out the clients that you didn't enjoy working with, and then take that information so that you can really craft your messaging and your portfolio to speak to the client that you want to be booking more of. The results for the photographer that I helped with this were nearly immediate. She completely up leveled her clients in her weddings. She's now getting love notes from them like things that she sent me a screenshot and it said “You totally get me. I'm even more excited for my wedding day”. If you're not on that level, then this audit and really getting clear on who your clients are now and who you want them to be, is so much of the work. 

Now that clients are done, let's talk about your bookings in the worksheet. There’s a space for you to write down the # of bookings you had this year. Pause and take a minute to reflect on that. How does that # feel? How have you felt, particularly as we're getting into the end of off season? When you're thinking about the volume that you had this year and want you to separate that from your finances for a second. So don't consider the amount of money you made. Don't consider what's in your bank account right now when you're thinking about the # of bookings that you had, because that's going to really trigger you to start to feel like if it was enough or it wasn't enough based on something that's completely different. I want you to think about the # of bookings based on really how that felt. Were you burnt out? Are you still like fully go, go, go right now and feeling like there's not enough hours in the day and feeling just stressed and maybe chaos and. You know, some days loving what you're doing and other days just feeling entirely exhausted and overworked. Or do you feel like you had the capacity to take on more? You really wish you had more bookings, and you're kind of wondering how you can increase bookings for 2024. Now, I asked you to separate out your finances from your # of bookings, but the 2 are very interconnected. 

Okay, prricing is going to be the thing that we talk about next, your finances. We'll talk about that next. But it’s a bit like if you think of an old fashioned scale with sand in the 2 sides, you do want to find some balance. This is going to be easier for some people than others, and it really depends on where your business is right now. If you have too many bookings and a ton of money, you're looking at your bank account and it feels amazing. But you're exhausted and burnt out and feeling like, well, shoot, there's obviously a reason that my bank account is booming. It's because my business is draining me. You're out of balance there. So what you have to do, it's a really simple fix in your case, you have to discipline yourself to cap your bookings. Limit the bookings to the place where everything feels really good. That's easy. Now, if you have too many bookings and you're looking at your bank account and feeling like, what the heck, I have so many bookings. Why is my bank account still looking so sad? It's time for you to give yourself a raise. That is the God's honest truth. And you know it too. You know that you deserve a raise. You know you can't keep going this way, where you're so completely extended and you're still not making really what you need to be making to live your life.

Right? Creatives are so afraid to increase prices, but if you're already overbooked and overextended, it's honestly part of how you control demand. You want bookings to go down, but you need your revenue to increase. So again, think of it like that scale that I was mentioning, that old school scale when bookings are too high but you're still not really profitable. You're highly out of balance. If you keep going this way, you're going to put yourself out of business really quick, to be honest, either by your own choosing, just being burnt out and not wanting to continue anymore, or because your business is just simply unsustainable. Your goal is to balance the scale, raise those prices, get one side of the scale higher, and lower the # of bookings. Bring the other side of the scale down and make that your mission for 2024. Really strive to get those 2 sides, bookings and prices balanced and balance it at the revenue goal that supports you. If you bring your bookings down but you're still not making enough money, then you're still out of balance. Okay, the # of bookings might feel better. Maybe you've increased your prices a little bit, but if you're still falling short, that's not balanced. 

Let me tell you a little story of how this looked in my own business. Balance has always been extremely important to me. When I year that I really catapulted our business because I was supporting the goal of retiring Ben from his engineering job and bringing him on full time, I had to more than double our revenue that year. So the goal was huge. The bookings were high and I did it. I made it happen! But my scales were out of balance. I was booking too much at a price point that was slightly too low, so I had to make some shifts there. That was back in 2013 and balance from that point on always became a huge priority in our brand. Our work life balance is really, really important because I'm a mom of 2 kids, because I love to travel, because I love to spend time with my family and my friends. There's so much more that serves me in creating just a fulfilled life outside of my work. As much as I love my clients, as much as I love my business, they also love to see me thriving in other ways too. This is what your ideal clients want for you as well. So don't feel like you're trading work for life, it’s not. You can build a life that is balanced. I heard recently someone say that balance is a farce and that's not true. But it is up to you to build the balance that works for you, because balance is different for everybody.

Now I was going to talk about 2022 here. So in the post pandemic world life right getting through the pandemic, I had a ton of postponed weddings from 2020 into 2021, like so many of us in the wedding industry did. Then the demand on the industry was just really overwhelming into 2022. Now we all felt the squeeze of the pandemic in 2020, and really that fear that a global pandemic will put into your business when you work in an in-person, event based business, right. So 2022 had way too many bookings from postponements, from the increased demand of all of the couples that had waited the extra time, the extra year to get married, and by the end of the year I was burnt out. This was the first time in 9 years that my scale was highly out of balance. I was even contemplating whether or not I wanted to continue shooting weddings, and this is what I'm talking about. When your scale is out of whack, is that you? Your business isn’t going to sustain itself, whether it's because you decide to close up shop or because it's unsustainable financially. This is what I was looking at in 2022. Business was phenomenal when I looked at my bank account, but I was not loving my weddings. I was starting to feel resentful that I had missed so many weekends, weekends with my kids.

I was starting to feel uninspired because it was burnout. I wanted better for myself and for my clients. I want to show up so entirely inspired and excited for every single 1 of our couple's wedding days. I feel like that's what I owe them when they choose me, and I owe it to myself to be able to take a the volume that just feels really good for me, where I know that I’m able to fully enjoy myself outside of work and show up so fully committed and inspired on their wedding day. I also really love weddings, I love my job, I love what I do, I love my clients, so it wasn't fair to me to be in a place where I just felt tired of it all. So what did I need to do here? I'm sure you're probably. You know the answer. I had to lower the # of weddings that I was booking, so I was looking at a price adjustment, and I did it. I went, made tweaks to my pricing, made tweaks to my packages, readjusted my revenue plan on how I was going to, you know, get to the profits that I needed with a lower number of weddings. So 2023 was a total change, a total vibe. I got back that excitement that I was missing. I got back that balance and it was really, really beautiful. And so 2024, in terms of # of bookings is going to be the same for me.

I'm going to carry over the # that I did in 2023 into 2024. If you're thinking, Erica, I want more bookings. I want more when I run this audit, when I think about the volume of business that I had, I feel like I had so much capacity to show up and to do more. Then your main focus for 2024 should be marketing. How can you get more of your ideal clients into your world? How can you fill up more spots? Increase bookings. If you want help on this, jump into the mastery and I’ll literally teach you how. It's got all of my systems and it's helping students, helping people just like you right now. 

Okay. The last thing that we're going to talk about is pricing and your finances. I feel like I have to put the little asterisk in here that I am not a financial advisor. I am not a CPA, but I am a photographer who has had a very profitable business for over a decade, and I've helped many other wedding creatives build a profitable business for themselves as well. So what I can do is give you some guidelines on pricing and really help you think about whether or not your finances are where they should be in. Your prices are where they should be. When it comes to defining your pricing and deciding what to charge, this isn't charge your worth.

I see this a lot in the industry where people are like, you have to charge your worth, but who even really knows what that means? The easiest thing to know is when you're not charging your work right? Because you're broke. But how are you supposed to know what to charge if you're if someone's telling you to charge your worth? Well, your worth is equal to financially supporting the life that you want to live. This is your bills, this is your family, anyone. If you support anybody else. It's also like financially supporting your goals too. So your personal goals outside of work, you're in business to make money. You may feel like you're in business to make pictures, to capture love if you're a wedding photographer like me. But ultimately, anyone who's in business is in business to make money. Your business should support your life. The fact that we get to control the amount of money that we make is huge. This is something that’s such a powerful opportunity for entrepreneurs, and I think so many people think about it on the flip side. We have to constantly hustle and grind in order to make a paycheck where our friends who are in the 9 to 5 get a paycheck handed to them every week or every other week. But I want you to shift. If you're if you're thinking that way. Start to shift your thoughts to the fact that you get to decide what your paycheck is.

You get to control the amount of money that you make. If you decide that you have big financial goals, you can very easily give yourself a raise. I'm not going to say very easily, but you can you can give yourself a raise. You can decide, like I did back in 2013, where I was part time and I wasn't making much money at this, really. My money was just to support my habit of camera gear at that point, like basically recycling it right back into the business. But we decided that we had a really big financial goal to more than double our studio's revenue. I had to add $150,000 to a business that wasn't even making six figures at that point, and I did it. It’s because we get to control what our paychecks look like, the amount of money that you're bringing in. So when you when you think about charging your worth, really think about it in terms of your worth is equal to financially supporting the life that you want to live. If your prices and your bookings don't equal this financial support, if you're not able to comfortably pay your bills and you're not able to pursue the dreams that are on your heart, then you're not charging your worth. Your worth is whatever you say it is. Now your price must be aligned with your service. You have to make sure that you're structuring your prices in a way that reflects the price point that you choose to operate your business.

You can't provide a budget service and expect luxury prices, in the same way that you can't run a luxury business and charge budget prices. Thinking of it as a scale. Again, that scale is off balance, your prices must be aligned with your service. This is why businesses are able to run successfully at both ends of the spectrum. So when you compare like Ikea or Walmart selling a throw blanket. I think I bought a blanket at Ikea 1 time for $5 versus Serena and Lily, who is selling a linen throw for $248. Hypothetically, it's the same product, but it's a very different everything. The quality is different, the purchase experience is different. The brand and the feeling that you get from purchasing that throw at Serena and Lily or Pottery Barn versus Ikea or Walmart is very different. Pottery barn would not exist if they sold their throws for $5, just like Walmart would not exist if it sold its throws for $250 or $450. Either way, it just would not work. And so when when we're talking about balancing your pricing with your business, this is something that you really should be thinking about is how is your business structured? And if you're having trouble booking at the prices that you're charging right now, then there's likely either you want to you want to be focused on either the service that you're providing.

Maybe your service is not up to par to providing excellent client experience or probably more realistically, you're just not showing your value in your messaging. Again, loop it back to messaging, loop it back to branding, and really showcase the value that you offer. Pottery barn is so different from Walmart, and it's very clear when you land on either website what you're getting. So here, evaluate your prices. And let's be honest, you know if your prices are off or not, you owe it to yourself and anyone you support to be fiscally responsible. That honestly starts with your volume of bookings and your pricing. Make getting your finances sorted a priority and DM me if you want help with this. I have an incredible plug and play system that will tell you exactly what you need to charge to support the life that you want. It's pricing designed for your business and designed for your life. And not only will it help you get clear on your pricing, but the system provides unshakable confidence. It's legit. The thing that many creatives have said has completely changed their business. 

We just covered a lot. We talked about clients. Evaluating the clients that you've had this year and how that translates into the ones that you want for next year. We talked about bookings. Did you have too many, too little. And do you need to be focusing on your messaging or your pricing or your marketing. We also talked about pricing. So these are the big 3 that you really want to evaluate. If you just did it here with me, amazing! You should have a really clear idea of what you have to build into your 2024 plans. If you're listening on the go, I can't encourage you enough to really just carve out 30 minutes into your schedule this week to do this work. It's going to provide so much clarity because really, the # 1 way to understand where you're headed is to get clear on where you're coming from. Vision becomes reality. With a plan in your audit is a big part of planning. This is why I love audits, because it really puts us in the driver's seat and gives us a ton of control on what our business and our life can look like. 

Now, all of these things that we covered here pricing, strategy, messaging, client experience, they're all covered in the magnetic marketing mastery. This is a unique experience that gives wedding pros the marketing systems and strategies that I've used in my own business, and that I've taught one on one to help you create a business that is irresistible to your ideal clients, so that you can attract more of the clients that you want and ultimately increase your profits. I'm all about making dreams come true over here. If this is something that you are interested in, head to Magneticweddingpro.com.