The One Thing to Do at the End of Each Day

Is it just me or has it been hard to motivate over the past couple of months?

 

Normally, I’m the kind of guy who gets out of bed at 5am on a Monday morning and claps my hands, “Finally! The weekend’s over so I can get back to work!!”

 

Seriously. I know it’s annoying. Ask my wife, and she’s happy to tell you how annoying it is.

 

When I was Lodging Director at Roche Harbor Resort, we opened the front desk at 6am each day. Several times each month, some poor front desk attendant would come in to a dark lobby, unlock the door to the back office, and be shocked to find me working in front of a glowing computer monitor on some hair-brained idea I’d woken up to at 4am that I couldn’t wait to dive into right away.

 

It’s a different feeling right now

 

But the past couple months have been a struggle to motivate. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what I can do, how I can get back in the groove, why this is all happening. I feel really disoriented with the pandemic, politics, and arrhythmia that’s taken place over the past six months. It’s been hard to create at the pace and depth I’ve done in the past.

 

Most of my clients feel the same. I work with about 25 1:1 clients at any given time, and the supermajority are just trying to make it through what one colleague of mine joked are the “three days of the week: yesterday, today and tomorrow.”

 

Each day for wedding pros is a slog

 

Pros I know are either:

 

• Stressed about rescheduling the last of their 2020 clients
• Stressed about 2021 dates filling in with 2020 postponements
• Stressed about doing more work for clients who are paying the same rates even though they’re rescheduling two or even three times (yes, this is pretty much every wedding planner out there)
• Stressed about dwindling cash flow and lack of new deposits coming in
• Stressed about a) the ethics or b) health risks of working weddings for clients determined to host their events still/right now
• Stressed about the lack of inquiries coming in
• Stressed about the number of couples ghosting them if they do get inquiries

 

It’s a real mess out there. I’m not trying to fear monger, just acknowledge that now is not a normal or fun time for most wedding professionals.

 

What would the boss say?

 

If you’re a solopreneur or lead a small team, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. When you were selling events in the golden age of weddings, like we’ve had over the past decade, it was pretty fun to be your own boss. But now that the world’s stopped spinning on its axis and pigs are flying, it’s not much fun to run a company - even if it’s a company of one.

 

But being the boss means you bask in the joys of success as well as fight your way through uncertain times.

 

And being the boss means you have to lead your team, even it’s only a team of one: you.

 

So, if you’re a solopreneur, ask yourself: Am I holding my team accountable? Am I leading by example? Am I putting in the work that needs to be done for us to succeed in the upswing?

 

It’s a long game

 

About this time five years ago, I got one of those wild, hair-brained ideas to do something big: I decided to run a marathon.

 

The ironic part was how much I hated running.

 

It may surprise you, but I was a jock throughout high school. I lettered nine of 12 possible seasons. And no matter if it was soccer, basketball or baseball, I loathed all the running that was necessary between the acts of skill that I thought truly mattered most in games. And I certainly didn’t like running during practice.

 

In August 2015, I told Katy that I’d registered for the Dallas Marathon in December. She laughed, “But you told me you hate running…”

 

I was 37 and getting older. I didn’t know how much more time I’d have to do something like this before my body wouldn’t allow me to do it. Most of all, I wanted to do something hard. To challenge myself. And to have a clear, defined goal to work toward. So, I figured running 26.2 miles was going to meet all those needs.

 

It’s the training that’s hard

 

What I learned as soon as I started training was that running a marathon wasn’t just about being able to conquer 26.2 miles on race day. It was about all the work I had to put in over 20 weeks to give myself a chance to even finish the course.

 

Chances are you’ve never run a marathon, and I’ve only run one, so I’m no expert. but here’s what I did to train:

• Mondays – Rest
• Tuesdays – 3-4 miles
• Wednesdays – 3-8 miles
• Thursdays – 3-4 miles
• Fridays – Walk/cycle for 60 minutes
• Saturdays – Rest
• Sundays – Long run

 

The long run built up each week, starting with five miles early on, then upping a mile or so each week until I did 22 miles a couple weeks before race day.

 

Oh, and did I mention that I lived in Dallas while I did all this? A place where and when it was 80-100 degrees on most days that I ran?!

 

(Yes, I know, just like Katy, you’re now wondering why I decided to run a marathon.)

 

Over the ~20 weeks, I ran close to 500 miles before the race even started. What I realized – probably too late – is that I hadn’t signed up for a 26-mile race. I’d actually signed up for a 526-mile race!

 

What it means to be a professional

 

Being a wedding pro is no different than running a marathon.

 

You don’t just show up for race day able to run 26.2 miles. You have to put in the time to train and prepare yourself before the Big Day, when no one sees you doing the work. When it’s a lonely grind against yesterday’s self. When there’s no big reward at the end of the day except knowing you did the work you needed to do. The work you promised yourself you’d do and committed to do in front of all your closest friends and family. Friends and family who are looking at you struggling and wondering why in the world you’re doing this to yourself when there’s a much easier way to go about it.

 

Right now, being a wedding pro – especially if you’re the boss of the business – is a lonely trail to run. And you’re probably right there along with your family and closest friends wondering why the hell you signed up for this gig.

 

We’re here with you

 

One thing that helped me five years ago was knowing that others were out doing the same hard work as me.

 

As the summer turned to fall and the mileage I ran each day started stretching further, I did a lot of running in the pre-dawn hours before work. I’d be out on the Katy Trail in Uptown Dallas, with my headlamp on, listening to my favorite rap and hip-hop mix, looking down at the pavement, waiting for the next metal ¼-mile marker to appear…when I’d look up and see another bouncing headlamp coming my way.

 

Here was a fellow masochist, running in the humid morning dusk and trying to put in the miles because we both knew that we’d worked so hard to make it to this point in the training. And if we quit now or took a break for too long, we’d have to start all over. Or worse, we’d have to abandon everything because it’d be too late to catch up to all the others who kept up with their weekly work.

 

It’s okay to feel unmotivated sometimes

 

This morning, I woke up just before 6am to start the day. It was dark outside, like when I was training back in Dallas five years ago, and I didn’t jump out of bed like I used to before the pandemic hit. Because I knew that today would be one of those hard days that I had to slog through - trying to create content that inspires and helps pros find their way in a completely disorienting landscape.

 

To help get me motivated each day, I have a morning routine that includes meditation, journaling, working out, and then deep work on the projects for our business that I know make a difference for each and every client we serve. Seeing that list each morning helps to erase the memory of all the awful things I see on the news the night before. It’s a real motivator.

 

Put on your running shoes

 

When I trained for the marathon, I would set my running shoes at the edge of my bed before I fell asleep the night before a training day. I’d wake up and be reminded of the promise I’d made to myself to do the hard work each and every day. It made it easier to put on my shoes and get out the door.

Now, the to-do list I wake up to every morning is the equivalent of my running shoes at the edge of my bed. It reminds me of the commitment I’ve made to my wife and business partner, to the team of employees I lead, to the clients who’ve entrusted me to guide them through the absolute shitshow we’re all working through. It reminds me I have so much more to learn, so I can share new ideas with all of you when things pick up again in the coming months. 

 

Today’s list included “Create content for blog.” Here I am 1,637 words into this blog post. I hope it’s inspired you in some way. I hope it’s shown you that we’re all feeling a bit lost right now – and that’s okay. I hope it’s reminded you that you chose to take this path, and you did it for a good reason: Because you know your work helps couples get what they want more than any other wedding pro can.

 

And I hope you take some time, before you end your workday, to write down a list of your own to-dos that will help inspire your current clients to feel joy for their own wedding. Because they had an idea of what it would look like, and it’s your job to make that happen. And I hope that to-do list includes some new learning you can do so you can offer even more to your clients when things pick up again in the coming months.