Today we are with Candace Coppola talking all about business. She is the most knowledgeable person about business in the wedding industry being able to build multiple six-figure businesses. She’s also an author and a podcast host. She helped people plan their dream weddings all around the world. While building her brand and planning weddings, a lot of the people would come to her and ask her how she got there, what they can do to build their business and make a living, and so on. Little by little, her passion for planning weddings started to fade, and her passion for helping others get to where she was started to rise. Now, she’s able to help her audience with group coaching programs that transform her students in a radical way. 

Have a Business Plan

One of the biggest reasons why Candace was able to succeed and do all the things that she was able to do was because she wrote two books and one of them was about creating a business plan. 

A lot of people think that a business plan is about putting together what the product is like, how much it is going to be, and how many they want to sell. But, a business plan is really there to give you a clear vision of where you want your business to go, what that destination really looks like for you. 

Vision Casting in your Business Plan

So,  one of the most important strategies inside a business plan that people often don't pay enough attention to is Vision Casting. 

In order for us to build any kind of strategy, we have to know where the heck we're going. Writing one little paragraph of your vision for your business isn't enough. We really need to sit with this question of what kind of business do you want, if you could fast forward to two years or five years in the future, we're like, you hit the pinnacle of your success. But whatever it looks like for you, we need to really think about that, we need to write that down. 

The first thing that you can do is sit down and cast a vision for their business. Pick a date in the future, and be descriptive, write down what things look like, how things feel, what kind of work your business does, who it serves, how much money it makes every single year. Don't be afraid to describe that office or create a vision board so you can have a visual component of this inspiration, and this vision for yourself. You really want to look into the future and describe in great detail how your business operates and what it looks like. 

But there's also another caveat to this, and that is you are the owner of the business. So your business will never get to where you want it to go. Until you really start to see yourself as the owner of that future business today. And that's really hard to do. Go back to that business that you vision cast it for, and talk about who you've become to be the owner of that business.

What was required of you to get to that point of who you are?

What mindsets did you have to fix?

What kind of routines did you have to adopt?

Did you have to learn how to be a better leader? or learn how to manage money better? or learn how to delegate to team members better?

Who did you have to become in order to be the owner of that business?

And when you do that, you can really bridge the gap from where you are right at this second, and the things that you need to focus on to start being that business owner today.

Pricing is a formula, not a guesstimation action

Pricing is always the number one thing that everybody struggles with. Most of the time, people approach it from just a guesstimation standpoint making it over-complicated about how to come to a price. So often, because we feel like it's so over our head to figure out these financial components, we just try to come to a price being blindfolded. So, we pick a price that feels right or that we think is right, or that what our competitor is charging, or what we see Candice or Kayla charging. 

But, pricing is actually a really simple formula. Think about how much profit you want to make in your business every year. Come up with a number that would be exciting for you. Let's say it's $100,000 in profit. Next, I want you to calculate how much money you're going to have to spend in order to make that money. Alright, how much money will you have to spend in order for you to make $100,000? And that's your that's how much money you have to spend in a calendar year on all your expenses to reach that number. Let’s say it would a total of $50,000 between software, business coaches, taxes, team members, and so on. That's $150,000, you need a year in sales. So, how are you going to do that? 

Look at your product and service suite, and start to map out different pathways that will get you to the $150,000 mark. And for most entrepreneurs, it's not just one straight pathway, there are a lot of different options, such as a template shop where you sell inexpensive products or one on one one on one coaching at a higher level price point. 

When you start to map out your product suite and the price points, then you can start to see how many templates from your shop you need to sell a year, how many of your one on one coaching you need to sell a year, in order to get to that magical 150,000 goals. 

And you understand the simplicity here, between the profit you want to make, the money you have to spend to make it, and how your product suite can get you there and a bunch of different ways.

Overcome your Feelings about Money 

It's true your money mindset creeps into every single thing you do in your business, especially in how you price and position your pricing, and also how you sell your services to other people. One thing I want you to realize is that pricing is just where math and marketing meet. Pricing is essentially marketing. 

When you enter into pricing your services, you're bringing in your own money mindset “people aren't going to be able to pay for this, or it needs to be affordable”. But here's the deal. affordability is subjective to whoever is buying something.

You have to really examine your money mindset, it creeps into your pricing. But it also creeps into your sales. 

For example, let's say you have a multi-tiered product where somebody can invest in at different levels. You get on the phone with somebody, and you're talking to them, and you're making assumptions about what they can afford. Instead of pitching the package that you think would best serve them, that would give them the biggest transformation, you bring them down to that mid-tier or that lower price package based on an assumption and a belief that they can’t afford the highest price thing that you're selling. As a result, you end up doing yourself a disservice. 

Seth Godin has said that “when you make everything about the price in your business, your customers will too”. So, stop making every single conversation about the price of something. And instead, start showing up with the value in the transformation that your product or service will provide. The customer is reached out to you for a reason. You are a business. You are here to solve problems. So do yourself a favor and spend the majority of your time trying to figure out if you're the solution to your customer’s problem, offer them value, and then deliver your price.

Stop trying to be everything for everyone. 

When you niche down (part of writing a business plan and creating a strategy will help you do this) and really recognize that you're not here to serve everyone, but you are here to serve someone and get really specific about who you're here to serve, and you understand that customer inside and out their problems, their values, and how your business will help to transform their lives, then you can put a price tag on something. 

Things will change in your business as it grows. And your business plan is always something you refer back to an update. Whenever you get time or twice a year really check-in and make sure that you're on the right path. 

Listen to the Full Episode on Spotify & Apple Podcasts.