Alan Katz – Scaling from 1 wedding to thousands!
I’ve known Alan Katz for years and I love the story of how he got started doing a friend’s wedding, and has parlayed that to a company that does almost 2,000 ceremonies each year! You’ll also hear how he’s deepened his niche with other related services and how he’s been able to get thousands of reviews. Oh, and Alan Katz is the one who told me to end every email with a question… something that I credit him in my book “Why don’t they call me?”
Listen to our conversation for some inspiration on how you can expand your niche, become more useful and invaluable in your market, and the go-to when someone needs what you do.
About Alan Katz
Alan Katz is the owner of Great Officiants. In business 20 years his company is the largest supplier of Wedding Officiants in SoCal and probably the US. With 37 Professional Officiants including Ministers, Priests, Rabbis, Non-denominational, Bilingual, Cosplay and more on the team they do almost 2000 weddings a year. In addition to the Ceremonies on locations. He has a 30 seat Indoor and Outdoor Wedding Chapel, a Beach Wedding Design company that sets-up weddings on the beach, he issues marriage licenses for the county clerks office, he has an elopement division for quicky weddings, a memorial business for funerals, and a singing telegram company just for fun.
His company has over 3000 online reviews. More than any officiant in the nation.
Alan has won many top awards in the industry. ABC Trendsetter Award, WIPA Top Officiant in the Nation, Best Officiant in LA and Orange County from California Wedding Day and Best of Wedding Wire and The Knot and more.
He is a nationally request public speaker on wedding success and marketing.
Alan is also featured on TV. He is a regular on local news stations on wedding-related issues and a reality show star on such shows as 90-day fiancé and Spouse House. He was a special guest on the Kelly Clarkson show and most recently he and his wife are on the hit show Prank Panel on HULU (episode 1).
He lives weddings every day.
All social media is @greatofficiants
If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at [email protected] or visit my website Podcast.AlanBerg.com
Please be sure to subscribe to this podcast and leave a review (thanks, it really does make a difference). If you want to get notifications of new episodes and upcoming workshops and webinars, you can sign up at www.ConnectWithAlanBerg.com
Alan Katz – Scaling from 1 wedding to thousands!
How do you go from one wedding to almost 2000 a year? Listen to my next guest. You’re going to want to hear this. Hi, it’s Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions Podcast. I am so happy to have my friend Alan Katz on from Great Officiants. Alan, welcome.
Welcome. It’s great to be here with you.
I’ve been excited and looking forward to being on your show. Well, you and I have been friends for a very long time and we’ve talked about so many different things and I know you’re the review king and stuff, but I want to start off talking about today is your company, Great Officiants. Does almost 2000 wedding ceremonies a year, correct?
That’s correct. Okay. So how did you close my mind? I’m sure. So how did you get started? And then we’ll talk about how you’re not personally doing 2000 wedding ceremonies here. How did you get started with this?
Well, you know it’s the way I tell people not to do it. A friend of mine came up to me and said, Hey, you know, you’re the actor of all of our friends.
Will you officiate our wedding? And I’m like, all right. So I looked into it. I got ordained and I did my research. And at the end of the wedding, everybody came up to me and go, Alan, you need to quit your job and do this for a living. You’ve, you’ve found your calling. I’m like, okay. So I put up a website and all of a sudden I started getting calls.
And I didn’t know what I was doing. I’d never advertised before. I’m a business that never should have succeeded in the first place, but because I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, I just went on pure guts and stamina and I’m not going to let this fail. But I go, you know what? I’m going to do everything I can to make this work.
So the phone call started coming in. And I remember I had a website review done a long time ago wasn’t by you is by somebody else. And I had all these blinking flashing lights and they’re going, who would ever, you know, want to book through your website. And the person who’s moderating goes, you don’t understand this guy gets.
a crapload of business. You know, after I heard that, then I kind of toned down my website, but I started off by just offering me and my different version and different view of doing, doing weddings, which is weddings for all these years have been that same old dude. You take her to be your wife. You know, that old dude that you’ve seen at every freaking wedding.
All right. When I started doing this, I said, I don’t want to be that guy. I want to take it from the list. Whoa, they’re getting married. Let’s hear it for this happy couple, be making it fun and romantic. And that’s what caught on. And so the people started calling, they got that idea. They looked at my website and they got that feeling that that’s what I wanted to portray.
And they’re like, Oh my God, we can have that type of wedding. And so that’s how I started. How long ago was this? 20 years ago, my first wedding, I celebrated 20 years this year.
Wow. Congratulations.
So 20 years ago, it was just you at one point. At what point did you bring other people into this? I got to the point where I started getting leads and leads that I couldn’t do because I was already booked.
And then this one guy just reaches out to me out of the blue, Hey do you have any overage, you know, things you can’t do? I’m like, yeah. Hey, can you help this couple? And then he was working for me for a while. And then I brought a friend in and then I started getting more people and it started to kind of snowball.
And then I would reach out to people who had met in the field. I remember my famous favorite recruit to finding an officiant. was at a urinal.
Okay.
All right. I had just finished a wedding. This guy had just finished a wedding at the same venue. And we’re like, Hey, how you doing? Oh, how you doing? Yeah, I just finished with Amy too.
And and we just started talking and, and I liked the way he, his, his attitude was, and I knew he had the fun and romantic field to him. So I brought him on
And he washed his hands. So, there you go. He did, yeah. And then about two years later, I washed my hands again. But that’s a whole nother story.
Oh, there you go.
So, tell us about your business now. Obviously doing almost 2, 000 ceremonies a year is not possible for just you. So how many different officiants work with Great Officiants? So I have 37 independent contractors who work for me. Okay. I’m made up of priests, rabbis, ministers, non denominational. I have five languages Chinese, two dialects.
Vietnamese, Filipino, Japanese Spanish. So pretty much any type of couple who wants to get married in any type, we have the person to take care of them.
And then you also, I loved your social media and stuff you put out, but you also do themes, right? If people are having a special theme. Oh yeah. But one of our specialties is the cosplay weddings.
Okay. Where our couples come in and they want to do something weird. Hey, I’ve done Elvis weddings. This is one of my favorite Star Wars weddings, Doctor Who weddings or just any weird Game of Thrones. I’m up with.
Right. Yes. Game of Thrones weddings. There’s a sword right here. Okay. For my Game of Thrones wedding, I have it ready at any moment.
There you go. Those of you that are listening and not watching, there is an actual sword hanging on his wall over there. Now, if I’m not mistaken from our previous conversations, you used to do singing telegrams. Did I get that? Is that true?
Absolutely. I’m still doing singing telegrams. I got one coming up this this weekend.
What’s cool about it is that’s kind of what led me into this is I’m a performer and I set down a goal that I wanted to be a performer for the rest of my life. And I found a way of doing it. I started by doing singing telegrams. It wasn’t quite enough, you know, I still had to have another job. So I had other jobs on the side.
And then when I started doing weddings, I got to the point where, hey, I I’m too busy for this. I need to quit my job. And I always akin it to what made the decision for me was I was watching Indiana Jones and the last crusade. And there’s a moment in there where he has to take this leap of faith to get over this canyon and he just closes his eyes and steps forward and I go, I got to do that.
I got to take this leap of faith to know that with the weddings, with the telegrams, with the other stuff that I do, I can quit my job. And I took that leap. Right. And I’ve never looked back.
Okay. What was your job that you quit?
I was a chauffeur to the stars. Okay. Chauffeur to the stars. I was a limo driver for a big limo company, and I had a big A list clientele, and, Another thing we have in common, besides having the same first name and the same number of letters in our names I also drove a limousine, although it wasn’t to the stars.
It was mostly funerals. Oh. That’s what I was doing. So it was a little different end of that. So 20 years ago, just you.
At a certain point, you brought on another person. How long was it? How many years until you brought on That other, the first other person actually probably less than a year because I started getting enough leads where I was already booked and then I had, and then I had to do something.
And then when did it really ramp up to not, you know, I mean, 37 people now, besides you and your wife started,
sorry, I’m having audio problems. It really started building in probably the third year. When I started really starting to advertise more and having been to more places, you know, if you’re a good business, it starts to snowball more than mouse, you know, starts to spread.
And then you also do some unique things, which besides you’re at every networking event. I mean, if you’re in Southern California, And you don’t know Alan. If you’re in the wedding industry, you don’t know Alan Katz. I mean, you’re not showing up at these networking events because you’re at everything.
And I, you, you’ve brought me to so many different ones when I’m out in Southern California. There, and then some cool places too, like the magic castle, you brought me there as well. And we went to a comedy show together last time I was out there. So something that you, you did is the venues you have gone and ordained.
People at the venues, people that work at the venue. So talk about how did that come about? And, and what is that?
Well, I want a way I wanted to figure out a way a, where I can get into these big corporate meetings that have all the different venues and a way to get to be able to, you know, process myself in front of them, show everybody, Oh, this is Alan and he’s going to ordain you, you know, don’t use this in case of an emergency, but in case the minister doesn’t show up, you can do the wedding.
You can at least sign their paperwork. The genius of it is, is they’ll always remember that no matter where they go in the industry, they’ll have this little plaque and they know that it was for me. Right. So that I help them get ordained. But the other thing it did, it enabled me to get up in front of an entire company of 10, 15 venues, whatever, whatever company it was, and be able to give a presentation to all those.
I’m actually have an email out to now to another big group out here having me come in and do that for them in January.
Right. So if for whatever reason, right, if for whatever reason their officiant can’t make it, the wedding goes on. You can do that. And I know there are other people that have done that, DJs that have done that, and also that they have, but some wedding planners might have done that as well.
But I love the, the, the business thinking, which is I’m going to do this. You’re, you’re the backup. You shouldn’t have to do this. And the undertone there is, and if you choose great officiants, you’re not going to have to do that because we have backup. Exactly.
And you know, almost, I’d say at least once or twice a month, we get a call from a venue saying, Alan, I need your help.
I know I’m ordained, but I don’t want to do this wedding. Do you have anybody in this area? The wedding is in 20 minutes. The minister called in sick and nine times out of 10, I’m able to help them. Right. And I’ll have somebody there in a half hour, ready to go, not knowing anything about the couple, but ready to just find out a little bit of information and bam.
And there you go. Do it on the fly. But again, you’re an actor and you’re improvisation. You can do that, but you also found in my team, the people who I hire, I hire a lot of people who have performance backgrounds. Okay. Because they get it that we’re not just clergy. We’re for lack of better words, clowns do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do we juggle the balls?
We do the same, you know, poop to do, and we get it done.
Now you also have a chapel and when did that, right? When did that start? When did you first decide that you needed your own space?
So in fact, I was talking about this last night. I used to live in this apartment right by the, right by the ocean and from my patio, you could see the water.
So I was doing weddings on my patio. I would issue them the license, and I would do the wedding right on my patio. Well, I had this neighbor dog. This neighbor dog would bark all day long, and I could not get work done because he was just constantly ARF ARF ARF. So one of the venues that I was working at that I was their exclusive guy, had this space in the front of their building.
And I’m like, Hey, is anything going in that space? And they can, I go, how about if I rent it and make it a wedding chapel? They’re like, yeah, that sounds good. So all of a sudden now I have an office and a wedding chapel and no barking dog, constantly 12 hours a day. Now that’s not where you are now. That, that was the first, the first place I think you brought me to.
And I was there for eight years. Okay. And then the place where I was at was turning the building into a drug rehab center. And I’m like, I don’t think I want to run a wedding chapel in front of a drug rehab center. So I started an extensive search and I found this awesome place, twice the size. an indoor and outdoor chapel.
We can accommodate 30 guests indoor and outdoor, and it became the perfect spot. It gave me a couple of things, gave me a big office credibility. It also gave me a place where, you know, everything could happen. So people are coming to you and saying, We want to get married. We don’t have a space. We’re not having a big reception or anything like that.
And they’re just coming to your chapel. It’s already set up that, that’s, that’s what this is. Yep, yep. One hour to one year in advance. Okay.
And then license 24 hours a day. 24. 24 hours a day. Okay. We issue the marriage license, so we’re a special agent for the county. In fact, I have five of our officiant who are special agents for the county.
Okay. What does that mean? In other words we’re like AAA for the DMV. Okay. So we can issue the marriage license on behalf of the County Clerk’s office that if a couple’s getting married anywhere in the state of California, they can get the license from us, whether we’re doing the ceremony or not, and they can take that license and take it and get married anywhere in the state.
Anywhere in the state. Anywhere in the state. And a lot of my wedding planners use our service for couples who aren’t using their service. Aren’t using our service to take care of their clients because either they’re out of town, they don’t want to spend time doing it. So we’ve provided another avenue for wedding planners to reach out to us.
So what I’ve tried to do throughout my entire career is find different points of light for people to be able to shine down into the company. Come from here, come from advertising, come from networking, come from us, our ability to do this, our ability to do that. And that brings everything right into focus.
Right. And all of this is just building upon this in, in your niche, right? So my, my guests for the podcast tend to fall into a few groups, you know, one is scaling your business, which is obviously you, but one is also niching your business, which is also obviously you, because you’ve done that. And when people think about when I narrow my niche.
I’m limiting my audience, but you’ve narrowed your niche. And it’s kind of the same as somebody said about me. Your niche is an inch wide, but it’s a mile deep. And adding on the chapel, adding on the licensing services, adding on these things just adds on to that. And ordaining these other people at these venues, it does that as well.
So let’s what’s next?
And then I figured out another, another income source, which is we were doing weddings on the beach. So we figured, well, Why don’t we figure out what the rules are for doing setups on the beach that way I can keep my people busier because people I see these beach weddings going on all the time.
So I’m like, let me do the research. So I researched it for months to find out permits, insurance, this and that. And I bought all the stuff, chairs, arches, and we created another beach division or a beach division. And we do those. And that’s one of our biggest moneymakers.
So it’s not you, you don’t own that beach, but you know where you can go from the city.
Okay. I get permits from the city. We take care of the, we’re now basically the wedding planners.
And then our latest niche is the cruise ship weddings. Okay. So again, I wanted to find out another way of generating income. The cruise ships do weddings in the ports before they go out to sea. And so I’ve reached out to them and finally one of them finally reached back and they go, okay, we’re lost our other people.
We want you to take over the planning and the And the ceremonies on the ship.
So they do the wedding and then they cruise. That’s that’s what it is. Okay. Right. So instead of the captain doing it, that’s like a, that’s not a thing anymore.
If it is, if they have like, if they’re legally married and just like do a renewal, let’s see the captain can do that.
Okay. But to do the legal part, we do an import and then they go off, off to sea.
Go off and do that again. There’s doing that niche. All right. So let’s shift gears a little bit. Cause now I know what’s next cause you told us what’s next there. Let’s talk about reviews. Well, actually I want to talk about one thing first.
I credit you in the front of one of my books because the whole idea of. Ending your emails with a question was you and I driving along. I think we’re in a Toyota Prius or something We’re driving along and in Southern California just having a conversation like we do and you just drop this little nugget Yeah, I always have my people end every email with a question because people respond better and I’m like, duh You ask the question, of course, they’re gonna respond better and it was just this casual conversation which turned into a lot of things and that’s why I credit you in the book because it I didn’t say to you, Hey, give me an idea that I can tell people about.
It was just us talking about, you know, getting response and stuff like that. So again, thank you. That’s the great thing about people coming to your seminars is they get these nuggets. Again, I’ve taken a lot of your nuggets and put them into action and it is, it has enhanced my business tenfold in many areas because of that one little nugget.
Right. And, and, and this is the idea of what’s what I love to do on the podcast is bring on smart people like you, but just this casual conversation we had, which is why I tell people, you know, there’s virtual conversations, but then there’s in person and there’s, this was not us sitting in a business setting.
It was literally driving in the car, going to dinner, you know, and that, that’s what it happened. So but something else you’re really, really good at. is reviews, right? Mm-Hmm, . Now you have more reviews than any officiant company probably in the country. I, I, yes. Imagine How many, how many reviews do you have?
Probably around 4,000. Three or 4,000. I mean, it’s, oh, is that all okay, ? Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s that, it, I mean, I have a thousand on the, not thousand on wedding wire. Several hundred here, several hundred there.
So. What’s your process for asking for reviews?
Actually, the first part of it is before asking for the review, you have to actually not suck at what you do.
Yes. Okay. You can’t ask for a review if you suck at what you do. Correct. Otherwise you’re going to get a review and it’s not going to be the review that you want.
Right. So let’s assume, let’s assume that everybody listening here is honest business people, do a great job, you know, do go above and beyond for their couples and things like that.
And yet there’s a lot of people that are still not getting reviews despite some of them asking. I know there’s a lot of people that just don’t ask. It’s just not a regular part of their process. You are very process oriented. You have your office there and things. So what is your process for asking for reviews so that you get.
So many.
So the best part of it is asking for reviews. I wait two weeks. Okay. Now why do I wait two weeks? The first week after the wedding, they’re going to be on their honeymoon. The next week they’re getting their life back together. The third week is when we send it to them. It’s now they’re back into their life together.
They’ve caught up on their emails and now, Oh, you know what? Let’s do this. And so I send them an email saying, Hey, basically, you know, thanks for choosing us. Let other couples know the amazing experience that you had. So that they can be able to find somebody to do their ceremony and have the results that you did.
Now, rather than just asking them to do that, I give them a link to my website. Well, actually it’s a thumbs up. If we did a good job, click on the thumbs up. The thumbs up will take them to a page on my website. If we didn’t do a good job, I don’t want them going to those things. So I say, click thumbs down, and it’ll open up an email so they can tell me what happened.
Okay. And that way I can figure out what issues happened, what things happen so we can avoid it. But also we don’t send emails out to couples who we’ve called do not sends. So if an officiant calls me up, you know, our bride was really weird and she gave me this weird look, do not send, we won’t send a request to them.
So we only send it to couples who we know have done an amazing job. And I mean, this wedding was an amazing job. So we asked them to do that. Click on the thumbs up. The thumbs up will take them to a web page on my website with places where they can click saying, you know, please review us. Here’s the places that you can go.
And then push the button. It’ll take us right to anyone. Push the button. It’ll take them to the not to, to Google, to Yelp. Now with Yelp, you don’t want to link directly to your Yelp site because Yelp will know that you’ve given them a direct link. Okay. So what I tell them is to go to yelp. com, type in my company name and my city, and that will take you to great efficiency.
So the link, so Yelp is not getting a lot of inbound links just from your website because that’ll look phony then, right? Right.
If I give them the direct link, they will know that it’s a direct link, right? But if I do it through us, if it’s done through a search, then that means that somebody actually had to take time.
And more like the other way, they will make, make it a, a bad, bad review. Right. Well, they won’t show it, but they won’t show it. Yeah. They’ll show up, but it’ll be in the hidden.
We’ll be hidden. They’re showing it hidden. That’s an oxymoron. Well, they’ll actually show in reviews. Okay. It’s really weird.
They’ll show these reviews. Have been hidden and are not in your main feed, right?
So I have, I have on Google that sometimes where somebody, I had somebody who said I posted a review and it’s not showing up. I said, well, I didn’t get it. I never got notification of it. They sent me a screenshot here. Here’s what I typed and I didn’t get it.
So it’s still happening there and there’s whatever the algorithms and stuff are in there. All right. So what happens?
The algorithms are is maybe they haven’t reviewed a lot of people already, right? Maybe it’s their first review. Maybe it’s a review for out of the area. Maybe They, you know, they don’t like it.
So what I tell my couples to do if that happens is I go, Hey, do a couple other reviews review some restaurants, review that like other reviews. So Yelp realizes that you’re an actual person, right? Because so many people create fake Yelp. Personas, profiles, right? Yeah, see, I’m a Yelp elite. So anything that I type as a review is going to show up because they know me.
I have 250 more reviews. Same thing with TripAdvisor. I have over 650 reviews I’ve posted. So anything I put is going to go because they know, they know it’s me. Right. There’s real stuff. But Yelp doesn’t know about these ones. So you have to friend them. You have to tell them to like other things. You have to tell them to post more reviews that will make that.
Review now visible. Yeah. I see more legitimate. I tell people, if you ask your couples, Hey, are you guys active on Yelp? Do you post reviews? If they are, those are the ones you want to ask to do it. Cause they’re the known quantity or they’re the known commodity over there. All right. So. Two weeks after the wedding, you’re sending them this, right?
That say in that third week, if they don’t reply, what do you do?
You know, I have enough reviews personally at this point that I don’t have to worry about getting more. I’m just, for me, I’m just putting out one, Hey, review us. I used to have this software where I would put in the couple’s name and their email address and their texts, and it would automatically send them a text in the email until they reviewed.
And you’re sending it, you’re sending an email now at the, at the, in that third week, correct? And the third week, yes, it’ll not, it’s not a text, not a text. Okay. Cause one of my other clients was getting better response with texting. And interestingly, two days after the wedding, two weeks after the wedding, and then two weeks after that.
And they’re actually getting people two days after I said like. Toast in the sand, drink in the hand, you know, post the review about great officiants. And yeah, they said they’re getting that. So it’s just an interesting how different people do at different times. Again, I think you get enough reviews that recency being the most important thing, you have recency because you’re going to have recent reviews, you know, and if you’re get this week, is 12 going to make a difference?
No, I think it’s more if you, if you got no reviews this week, one makes a big difference. I think that’s where, where, where it comes in for the people that don’t do the volume that you do, you know, somebody, when we’re doing that, you know, 30, 40 wedding week. Right. We send out to get reviews. Maybe we’ll get two, three, five, right.
You know, and, and, and that’s fine. Believe me, five or five reviews in one week who gets five reviews in one week. Well, exactly. And I think that’s the thing. So, so if you’re listening and you do 50 weddings a year or 20 weddings a year or a hundred weddings a year, recency, you need, I think you need to have a different process where you’d follow up more because.
I think if you get one new one a month, any business, right? One new one a month, you look online or whatever site it is on Google, on WeddingWire, The Knot, on Yelp, whatever. And you see a new review and a new review from last month, the new, that’s plenty to say this business is doing good stuff now, right now, consistently, right?
The fact that you get five this week or eight this week is even better, but your business is bigger for the small businesses. Or even like I, I got four reviews. Yesterday on Google, I never get four in a day, right? But for whatever reason, these four people did one of them in Spanish, which was kind of cool.
Cause you had to get the review in Spanish. Yeah. Muy, muy buen. So you know, I have 116 reviews if I get a new one a month. And, and the reason I ask, cause 116 is certainly plenty to say, okay, he probably does a pretty good job. The reason I ask is recency. I want to have that recency. Are your people responding to the good reviews?mean, am I replying to them? Yeah.
Yes. Okay. Yeah. Because, because again, that, that the volume works against you there, right? When you get a lot of reviews and it’s more,
it’s hard to keep up with actually one of my tasks this week, since it’s slow is I’m assigning one of my people to actually go through each site and respond to every review for the last.
However long we can do. Right. According to The Knot couples read five to seven reviews for every category, except venues and photographers. They read seven to nine on average. So, realistically, you want to go. Now, Google will tell people that you responded. So, you do want to respond to them because you want to thank them.
For the review, even though you and I know that you’re really responding to the next person who’s reading it. Right. But you do want to say, Hey, thank you for that. I believe wedding wearing the knot, they don’t notify the couple. So if you go back to months ago, they’re not going to get notified that you did it, but it really is for the next person reading it.
Cause it also helps you for your SEO too, because I put those keywords, your name, SEO review. And it always comes back to you. Right. So again, you know, asking for reviews, you don’t ask, you don’t get responding to them, but like you said in the beginning, you know, start by doing a really good job, right?
That’s the, but if you get that bad review, then there’s a magic to getting it done. To responding to if, if you’ve tried to get him to review it, remove it, and they won’t remove it. You’ve tried everything, you know, offering them refunds or whatever, and they still won’t do it. How do you respond to it then?
Okay. What I tell people is to write the nastiest letter, write the meanest, nastiest thing about that couple. You’re ugly. Your mom’s ugly. And then delete that. And then after you’ve got that out of your system, cause it’s the worst feeling in the world is actually thank the couple. And I say, thank you for posting this review after review of the situation.
I realized that there was some things I could have done better. And by your pointing this out to us, you have made me and my company so much stronger and, and you have contributed to the next couple having a much better experience than you had, and you are directly responsible for that. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Nice. So what’s that going to do? That’s a, people who are looking at that saying, wow, they realized they screwed up and they’re not going to make that mistake again. But also the person who made that, they’re like, well, now this looks like it’s, I did something good. I’m going to remove that review. So it’s worked both ways.
Right. And if they don’t, they have your response there. And you know, the best defense of course, is. do a great job for all the other ones because it just pushes it down. Just get reviews and push it down and push it down.
But also having a bad review isn’t always a bad thing. It actually makes you look human.
If every way of view you had was a five star review. When I look at reviews, I’m like every star is a five star review. Something’s got to be wrong here. So if there’s one that’s three stars or two stars. It makes you look real.
Well, you right, it legitimizes that. I, I and, and again, not that you want to get a less than five star, if you can only get fives, that, that’s great.
Right? And I see that with my client and I, I have 160 and five star reviews on Google. Do I want somebody to post a, a bad one, you know, to legitimize. Would you like me to post a four star review for you?
You know what’s funny? On, on, on Amazon . Shut Up and Sell More, my most popular book so far, Shut Up and Sell More, has a four star review that somebody wrote something to the effect of best book I’ve ever read.
And I’m thinking, really? And four, like, like you said, best, right? And four, most of them are five. There’s a three who didn’t write any comments. And there’s a one who wrote seven paragraphs of what they didn’t like, which really wasn’t about me. It was about something else. Did they did read the book and it was related to that, but it was really kind of I was the proxy for this other company that they hated and that they were taking it out on me through the book there.
But like you said. It legitimized it because you look and say, okay, first of all, on Amazon, it just looks like five anyway, when you have, you know, all fives of four and a one, and that’s the same thing if you’re on the not wedding wire, yelp, whatever. And you have 4. 8 or 4. 9 people like, okay, they do a good job, right?
They do a good job. I remember somebody telling me, oh, I only got a four. I’m like, Only like, that’s, that’s, that’s not a bad review. Some people can’t give you five. Now I will say this as an avid reviewer on TripAdvisor in Yelp. I don’t give a lot of fives there. Cause it’s not a wedding. It’s not a one time thing that I’m having dinner or I’m staying at a hotel.
And if. If you’re going to it, then maybe if I was going to the knot or wedding wire or whatever for a wedding five is cannot be better, right? Like I’m saying this cannot be better. Some people just might say, Hey, wow, it was really great. Here’s a four, right? So read what they wrote. I remember one of my clients, he got a 4.5 and the response that he wrote was like he was defending himself. I’m like, well, what was wrong with this? This is nothing, nothing wrong with that. I said, you look worse. You actually look worse right now because you’re, you’re complaining about a 4. 5, right? Don’t complain about that. So, so what is.
Let’s just do a fun story here within the, within the last month, what was the most unique wedding ceremony that you personally were part of?
I had this couple who Disney is one of my big accounts and I had this one couple who was big Winnie the Pooh fans. And so I dressed up for their wedding and my yellow suit.
I had my poo ears on and a red shirt so I looked like a human version of poo. I had to wear pants, unfortunately, because it was Disney. But but I did their ceremony and did stories about their relationship using poo analogies. Nice. Nice. And they loved it because they were huge Pooh fans and to have, you know, Rabbit and Eeyore mentioned in their ceremony was just something that they totally loved.
So that’s the thing is finding out what people love, finding out what they’re into and working on that.
Yeah. I was having this conversation with a client yesterday about gifting. with, you know, people that refer business to you and stuff and not doing generic gifting, but finding out who they are, finding out what they’re into.
And it’s not about how much you spent, but the thought process and saying, Hey, this is what you would like. I use the example. I went on Etsy for a friend of mine that had referred me some business. And they’re into whiskey and cigars and I found a glass that had kind of a cutout in it that holds your cigar so you could hold with one hand your whiskey and your cigar with one hand and have your other hand free and had the, has name put on it or whatever.
That’s awesome. Right. And again, it not expensive. I forget what it was, 15, 20, whatever it is, but because it’s so specific to them, it means more than if I bought them, you know, a bottle of whiskey that was five times as much. And this is perpetual, right? They’re not getting rid of this. Well, that bottle is going to get emptied, right?
They’re not getting rid of this. Right.
Yeah. So I love It all comes down to listening. You know, that’s when, when I was going through sales training in my early years of life, that’s one of the things is like, listen to what people say, you know, your ears are the most important organ of your body. Yeah. If you listen, you’ll pick up gems and nuggets.
Right. Like ending with a question like you and I driving in the car and not letting that just pass as a comment. It’s like, hold on a second. Wait, wait, wait. Make, write that down. This is something important over here. So, and just think from that, from that one little moment, think of all the thousands and thousands of dollars it’s helped people make.
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
So you never know where inspiration is going to come from. No. And my inspiration comes from you, my friend, as always. So thank you so much for joining. Thanks for sharing your stories here. You have so many more stories to share. Absolutely. Keep doing a great job, or as you said, keep not sucking and you know, it helps.
It helps. And getting those reviews. And watch me on TV. Oh yeah. So we have to talk about that. So you were just, what was the, what was the show you were on?
So it’s called the prank panel. Okay. It’s on Hulu. It’s episode one on Hulu. It’s called the prank panel with Johnny Knoxville and my wife also does weddings.
So Johnny Knoxville and I pranked her, set up a fake wedding for her. And she finds out in the middle of the ceremony that she’s just married a brother and sister. And then the hilarity ensues. People are catching on fire. The cake gets knocked over. I come in in handcuffs. She loses her. You know what?
Yes. Oh my gosh. It’s hilarious.
Okay. So, so what is it? The prank panel, the prank panel, Hulu episode one,
episode one. There you go. All right. Well, thank you again. Thanks for joining me. Thanks for sharing your story. Always great talking to my friend. All right. Cheers.
I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is [email protected]. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.
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