Destroy Your Career in Event and Wedding Planning in 5 Easy Steps
It’s the start of a brand new decade, and you’ve worked really hard to get where you’re at professionally. You’ve started your career in event and wedding planning, you’re beginning to get some clients, and things are on an upward trajectory. Good for you! Now the truly difficult part will be maintaining this respectable work ethic and good business reputation.
But that’s no fun! It’s much easier to tank your business entirely. That requires a lot less effort from you, and hey, you deserve a break! So if you really don’t care much about your event and wedding planning business, feel free to follow these 5 steps for ruining your career. We think you’ll be surprised at how fast you see results!
Step #1: Avoid the Internet entirely
Maybe you’re not a big fan of social media, or maybe you just don’t feel like spending so much time on the internet. Either way, you shouldn’t have to focus so much effort into your online presence… right? So what if the majority of the world relies on it nowadays? Businesses used to do just fine without it!
Nah, you don’t need to spend much time on your main website, or check in with it frequently to make sure nothing’s outdated, no links are broken, etc. Forget about social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter! Who cares that it’s a fact that the more online exposure others have to your content, the better your likelihood is to gain leads, networking opportunities, and potential clients? We’re sure you’ll get all those things simply by throwing up an ad for your business in the local newspaper and then never following up on it again.
Besides, what even is “branding” anyway? Is it really that important to have an online, refined, up-to-date portfolio that best represents you for potential clients? Nope! Word of mouth is all you really need to bring in traffic – and you’ve already told, like, nine people about your business!
Step #2: Don’t bother listening to your client
You’re the professional, so you know what’s best. It’ll make you look better during the initial consultation if you at least pretend to care about your client’s opinion, otherwise you likely won’t get her to sign the contract. You won’t get paid otherwise! But rest assured, once she’s signed and locked in, feel free to disregard her input. So long as the gist of what she’s asking for is there, you can totally change as many smaller details as you want, so they reflect your personal tastes.
Better yet, if you do decide to forego your client’s wishes and switch something around, don’t even give her a head’s up. She’ll be much more surprised when her big event finally arrives and she sees all of the AWESOME executive decisions you’ve made on her behalf. I mean, she hired you, didn’t she? If she wasn’t prepared to trust in your judgment, she should’ve just organized this whole thing herself.
Step #3: Blame literally everyone but yourself
You didn’t provide the right information to the caterer, and now the guests’ meals are incorrect? The vendor must not have understood you correctly!
You’re late to a meeting with your client because you wanted to finish that last episode of The Witcher instead of heading out on time? Well, traffic was just awful – it’s a miracle you even got there at all!
The client’s upset that you went over her budget? She should’ve made it clear that her budget wasn’t flexible!
You forgot to email your client with some important details, and now she’s angry with you? Swear until you’re blue in the face that you did send it. It must’ve just gotten lost. Email sucks.
See? If you try hard enough, anything can be someone else’s fault! The important thing is that you never hold yourself accountable for the mistakes you make, because then you might look bad in front of your clients. Using your shortcomings to help you grow as a person is seriously overrated anyways. You know perfectly well how to run a successful business, and besides, you’re a creature of habit (it’s just one of your quirky character traits!).
Step #4: Always wait until the last minute
They say that in order to have a successful career in event and wedding planning, you have to be organized. Coordinating details, keeping tracks of things, planning ahead, and staying on top of your schedule are the only ways to ensure that you do your job properly. But that’s simply not true! It’s perfectly possible to throw together an event at the last minute. You just need to have the determination, which you have in spades!
All the best vendors may already be booked, and the venue your client was hoping for won’t be an option anymore. But there are still plenty of places and services that’ll eagerly take your client’s money on short notice! For example, businesses with low ratings and bad reviews aren’t typically too busy, so you know you always have those to fall back on.
In general, it’s way easier to push off to tomorrow what you should can do today! Sure, there may be times – especially the closer you get to the big day – where you become completely overwhelmed by all the unfinished tasks that have mounted up, but you’ll deal with that when the time comes. That’s future you’s problem, and right now, you have other things you’d rather be doing!
Step #5: Refuse to continue learning your craft
Once you become a professional planner and start your own business, there’s no longer any need to continue learning more about event and wedding planning. Why should you take classes and pay for education at this point? Schooling is what you do before you break out into the professional world; if anything, it’s just a stepping stone to help you get there.
But you’re already there! You clearly wouldn’t benefit from it. Sure, there are lots of specialization courses out there that could help you learn more about different areas of event planning you’re not familiar with (such as event management, event décor, etc.), business classes, and much more – but you can simply learn all those things through Google anyway.
Bonus Step: Review Steps 1-5, and do some serious reflecting
In all seriousness, though, let’s be real: there’s no way you can do any of the above and hope to have a successful career in event and wedding planning. It’s just not possible. Not only does it demonstrate horrible customer service, but also a terrible work ethic. The fact is, in order to be a prosperous planner, you absolutely need to have the following:
- Organization skills
- Self-discipline and motivation
- Self-awareness, and the ability to own up to and learn from your mistakes
- The ability to not only listen to your client, but do everything you can to try and make their vision come true – not yours
- Resources, and the ability to network
- A strong online presence and business portfolio
- The desire to keep learning and getting better at what you do
So if you’ve read Steps 1-5 and related to any of those bad habits, you may need to take a step back and reevaluate what you’re doing, and where you’re trying to go in your career.
It takes a long time to establish yourself and your business, and solidify a positive reputation. Maintaining it after that is a full-time commitment, and one that will last as long as you want to stay in business. Give up and stop putting in the effort, and you’ll see just how quickly all of that hard work can be undone.
It’s easy to tank your career in event and wedding planning. What’s hard is fighting every day for your business to be the best it can be. But in the end, that’s what will truly be the most rewarding.
