When are you better off staying home?
This was another listener suggestion. Todd wanted me to talk about when it’s better to say no to a piece of business because it might not be worth the effort for the return. Whether it’s too little profit, or would take too much effort, or maybe you just want to have some time off for you and your team, there are several scenarios for this that I discuss in this episode.
Listen to this new, 8-minute episode for some thoughts on when you might be better off keeping the lights off than turning them on for too little return.
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– When are you better off just staying home? Listen to this episode and see what I’m talking about. Hey, it’s Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the “Wedding Business Solutions Podcast.” This was another listener suggestion on there’s certain business that you have to have, your main services, your main products, the main revenue streams, the main profit for your business and then you have other things where that come at you, the other opportunities that come at you and you have to say “Is it worth taking this business or should I just say no?” Right? I’m just going to stay home for this one.
And everybody’s business is different, so let me give you some different scenarios here. I have one of my clients who is a rental company and over the years, they had cut out certain types of things that they had done, certain types of rentals that they had done because it just didn’t make sense. So, somebody coming into their rental place and picking up something over the counter, they raised the minimum of that first to a hundred dollars and then hire and now they just don’t do it at all. Because in order to do that, you have to have a counter person there all the time ready for somebody to walk in and need something and it just didn’t make sense, so they’re only doing the stuff that is pre-ordered or that somebody has placed the order, that they’re going to come and get it. We know that or we’re going to deliver it. We’re going to charge you for delivery.
I was just talking to another another consulting client, and he said, every year, they cut out the bottom 20% of their business, right? That 80:20 rule, right? So, the business is just not as profitable. It’s the small stuff that you don’t necessarily want to do. And I got to say, sometimes it is profitable, but you just don’t want to do it. It’s just not stuff that you enjoy. Other times, it might be that in order to keep that business, you need to have more staff, more equipment, more things or whatever, that it just might not make sense, even though it’s profitable. Do you want to have that extra hassle of those extra employees and the other things that you need to have in order to do that?
So, there are times where you make a choice. I don’t want to do that. I don’t enjoy doing that, even though it makes me money. I have certain things that people come to me about, like yeah, I could do that. It’s not what I enjoy, right? I know what I like, I know what brings me joy. I know where I want to focus my business attention. During COVID, I had to shift to doing virtual stuff. Even though I’ve been doing webinars since 2007, I had to shift to doing virtual workshops and masterclasses and masterminds and things, which I did and we did it and we made it through and it was fine. I could do those now. That’s not what I enjoy. Yeah, if somebody came to me and said, “I’m on the other side of the world, I want you to do a, like, I did five and six-hour workshops on Zoom. Would you do that for me?” Yeah, I would do another one.
I had to do it during COVID. I had to keep the lights on and pay the bills that way. I don’t do that now. That’s not what I want to do. I would rather be on site or do something shorter, do a 90-minute or a two-hour training instead of the five-, six-hour thing. And yes, I’m able to keep people’s attention that long. I know people say you can’t do that. I say, well, you know, don’t lump us all into the same thing. So, what is it with your business? Somebody comes to you in the off season and says, “I want you to do X.” You could do it. It’s not a lot of profit. For some people, they want to do it because they want to keep their people employed 12 months a year, so that even if they’re breaking even on that, they’d rather do it so that it pays the bills, keeps people happy, they got their benefits and stuff. There is a benefit to that to you. I get that. For a lot of other businesses, solopreneurs and smaller businesses where you’d have to bring staff on to do stuff like that, if it’s just not that profitable, you might just say, “Thanks, but no, I can’t handle that. Thanks, but no it, I’m not available for that.” Or you might just tell ’em, “I don’t want to do it.” That’s all it is. I don’t want to do it is a perfectly fine answer. Let’s find you somebody that does want to do it or that can do that or can knock that out of the park.
I remember working with a wedding planner as a consultant, I was working with this planner and their business was all about the day of. Now I know that’s a terrible phrase, day of ’cause it’s not day of, it’s four to six weeks, sometimes eight weeks before that you take over. But that’s what they did in their business. That’s the only thing they did. They didn’t do partial planning, they didn’t do full service planning. They were capable of it. They had done it in the past, and what they decided was we can’t charge enough for the amount of hours we’re going to put in on full service, so let’s focus on this and do this the best we can and be the go-to for this. And we’re being profitable on this, more profitable on this than if we were working with someone for 6, 8, 12 months or more profitable by doing it this way.
So, there are times where you say no to the bigger dollar contract because the other work that’s involved, the other time that’s involved. It’s one thing in our industry, we just don’t really account enough of is the amount of time that people spend before and sometimes after the event, right? Like if you’re a videographer, you’re spending way more time after the event editing than you did actually doing the shooting. Me as a speaker, I spend way more time preparing the speeches and preparing the slides and practicing and all those things than I do at the actual event. You might see that 45 minutes or an hour or a 90 minutes or sometimes even a full day. What you don’t see is the 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 80 hours that went into that hour or that day because you couldn’t, just like I don’t see you preparing the stuff before you bake the cake or before you cook the food.
I don’t see you getting your music ready for your band and your charts and your rehearsal sessions, or the DJ with all the music that you prepare, or the photographer on the engagement shoot and all the preparation you do and then preparing the photos after you’ve taken them, right? We don’t see the florist deciding the designs and then having to do the ordering, then having to do the prep. We just sit down and there’s a centerpiece on the table. So, we’re not valuing that. So, you have to say to yourself when is it better to just stay home? When is it better to just keep the lights off and say, “You know what? Maybe the time with my family is a better time spent with this.” Which by the way, the answer is almost always yes with that. But when is it better to say I have other things I could be doing with my time.
Whether it’s nothing, whether it’s personal time, whether it’s business and preparation. A lot of us, a COVID win, if I could put air quotes on that, is that we had the time to work on our businesses a little bit more because when you’re working in it, you sometimes don’t have time to work on it. So maybe saying no to that not so profitable business would allow you to prepare and be more profitable in the stuff that you really want to do. So, thanks again for the suggestion. I hope this gave you some things to think about and maybe the next time someone comes to you and you’re like, “Huh, I could do that. It’s not a lot of profit.” Even if the dollars are big, sometimes it’s not a lot of profit and you might just say, “Nah, I’m not going to do that.” Thanks for listening.
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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