When I first started my wedding planning business, I defined success as making enough money so that I could quit my corporate job and plan weddings full time. After about 2 years in business, I was able to do just that. Then I redefined success for myself in terms of freedom, being passionate about my work, and being able to pick and choose only the events I was inspired to plan. Those have been my guiding terms of success for a number of years now. It is important to define success for yourself and continually evaluate that definition each year in your business.
How do you define success for your wedding and event planning business? There is no right or wrong answer but it is important to know what YOUR answer is.
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I find this topic very interesting because I struggle with this daily despite being in the event planning industry for 5 years of which the last 2 years specializing in weddings. In the height of my season I feel confident and fairly well seasoned. I enjoy working with my clients and cherish the fact that I made a couples dream come to life. However, during my slow season, January through April, I second guess my level of success and ask myself if this is the career for me. I try to determine the average number of events one produces to qualify as successful and question the notion that the higher fee you charge the larger budget clients you will attract, etc. I discovered all of these doubts, questions and concerns do nothing but interfere with what I love to do and adds pressure to what is truly a fulfilled life. As you mention in your post Debbie, it may take a title time, but we eventually figure out what level of success works best for our personal lifestyle and I am quite happy to have the opportunity to even have a wedding planning business that is productive, despite its size and allows me the freedom to spend time with my husband and family because at the end of the day the definition of success is in the eye of the beholder. 🙂
Madalene, thank you for sharing your thoughts and experience. In the beginning, success was about booking a certain number of events and making a certain amount of money. As time went on, I had to redefine my version of success which has nothing to do with the number of events I book or how much money I can make.