Photo Credit: Hamish Irvine
“Clare has been the best decision I've made for my business and work/life balance.”
Snapshot:
Emily K Weddings – Stylist & Planner
Struggling to balance a busy and successful wedding business with a new family.
Sought out help to get on top of the workload.
How I helped Emily go from Juggling to Balancing:
Emily K Weddings are a personalised wedding planning, styling and design team with a down to earth, elegant touch. They specialise in creating unique wedding days by providing bespoke and tailored services to fit with each couple’s requirements.
As a new mum in the wedding industry after the Covid19 pandemic, Emily found herself struggling to keep up with the demand of all her postponed weddings and the growth of her business with new weddings.
I mean the wedding industry is a juggle at the best of times with a young family, but throw in an international pandemic, lockdowns and restrictions, it’s no wonder many in the industry faced huge challenges to their work:life balance. In the 12-18months following the pandemic, wedding professionals saw a huge increase to their already busy schedules, trying to fit in past bookings and also new and existing ones too.
Emily started working with me in the first instance to help her get on top of her to do list. We had worked together in the past when I worked at a venue in the area, so we were already connected, and she knew just how much experience I had in the industry. She reached out to find out what I could do to help her, as she was feeling overwhelmed with her workload.
We spent the first few months building up a relationship and ensuring I understood her business and her goals. I began sorting out her emails, responding to enquiries and helping finalise proposals and invoices. Upon reviewing Emily’s processes, I made some suggestions for improvements, which Emily openly accepted, and I proceeded to help her create new operating procedures and implement a CRM so that she could manage her bookings more efficiently.
Emily had always used excel documents to manage bookings, along with Canva for proposals and Word for invoicing. She had Calendly set up for her appointments, and used Gmail for her calendar, emails and filing.
Together with Sheryl at GYST we set up and implemented a new CRM (Dubsado), automating her enquiry process so she could rest assured that no one would slip through the net. This now makes certain that enquiries are handled quicker and more effectively, maximising Emily’s bookings. The system also has the added benefit of streamlining her bookings for appointments and gives her clients a portal to view all of their live documents, tips, seating plan templates and invoices. Emily remains completely in control of all of her bookings and appointments, but with just the click of a button she can process so much more than before.
The system has ensured Emily takes regular breaks, doesn’t overbook her calendar and has time for much needed time off with her family.
I mean yes, the summer season is still as crazy as ever, but for the first time in a long time Emily has been able to take summer holidays and spend valuable time with her family.
The industry is renowned for being busy during peak seasons, and all too often many of us feel that if we are not responding with ‘I’m extremely busy, haven’t had any time with my family and my business takes up all of my time’, then we are failing.
It simply can’t be further from the truth.
Success is not about spending all day every day at work, and missing out on milestones and celebrations at home… Success is about balance, living and enjoying life, and prioritising our own self before anything else.
In Emily’s own words:
“Clare has taken so much stress away by offloading tasks so I can focus on different aspects of the business as well as spending more time with my family. Not only has she helped with the workload but also helped me push my business forward by putting systems in place and streamline ways of working. Her knowledge of software is amazing and her approach to emails is professional and friendly. She’s got such a bubbly, positive personality too which makes me and my clients love working with her even more! Clare is my absolute business rock! I can't thank this amazing lady for all that she does for me and my business.”
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