Your calendar is pretty full. Inquiries come in regularly. Your close rate is solid, and you’re well past the “should I be on Pinterest?” stage of things because your marketing actually works!
So why does every marketing decision still feel like a coin flip?
Should you raise your prices? Add a new offer? Stop spending hours creating content for TikTok? Jump on the thing everyone in your Facebook groups won’t stop talking about? You make all of those calls yourself. And you usually make them from your gut.
And your gut (aka your intuition) rarely does you dirty. But once you want more from your marketing, your gut alone won’t cut it. Getting more usually means doing something that scares you a little. And when you’re scared, “just trust your gut” is pretty shaky advice.
After working with 182 clients and supporting the small business owners in the Enji community for the past three years, I’ve watched this play out over and over. Once your marketing works, how to do it stops being the hard part. The hard part becomes what to do and why. And that’s a whole different skill.
So let’s talk about what’s next for you. Cuz your marketing is working, and you’re ready for more.
The real marketing goal: learn to take calculated risks
The moves that push a business forward are usually the scary ones (at the very least, uncomfortable). Raising your prices when you’re easily closing sales at the price point you’re at. Investing in SEO when it won’t help you get more leads for months. Trying something new where people can see it (and maybe watch it flop).
It’s a messy soup of emotions. Trust me. But there are two ways to get risk wrong—there is, in fact, a sweet spot.
Taking too much risk. Also known as being reckless. This is going all in without research. Dropping a few thousand dollars on ads because a podcast guest swore they work. Launching a new offer before you know anyone wants it. Ditching something that’s working for the shiny new thing.
Taking too little risk. Also known as playing it safe. This one’s sneakier, because it feels responsible. You keep doing what’s always worked, right up until it doesn’t (sometimes past the point). You tweak, tweak, tweak when you should fully pivot. You stay at the same revenue for three years and don’t make any changes because it’s comfortable.
Confession: risking too little is the one I know best.
Which is a little ironic, coming from someone who heli skis and downhill mountain bikes for fun. But it’s the truth. For all the lessons I’ve learned on the mountain, I still play it safe a lot of the time, because I really don’t want to get hurt. I’ll scope a line from every angle, watch three people do it, and sometimes take the chicken-shit route anyway (control issues). It’s so on brand that my business coach literally told me to say “fuck it, let’s try it” more often. And on my last heli trip, a friend called me out for scoping everything to death instead of just skiing it. (That is why I don’t fall much and the guys around me do.)
But the “taking too little” risk with my body is one thing. And ironically, it’s made it easy for me to take risks in business—broken bones and concussions are not the consequence here!
Case in point. A while back, we repositioned Enji to lead with marketing project management. We hired an agency for the project. Spent a lot of time and money on it. It was a risk, and it didn’t pay off. Looking back, we hedged. We didn’t go far enough to really find out what would work.
So now we’re doing something much scarier. We’re niching down to wedding pros and repositioning Enji as an AI marketing assistant. Is there risk? Oh, absolutely. But this time we’re going big enough to actually learn something, and we know exactly why we’re making the call.
That’s what a calculated risk looks like. You know what you’re betting, what it could get you, and what you’ll do if it doesn’t work out.
I think about this a lot on the mountain and it’s why my business brain is now wired this way. I don’t ski the scariest line just because it’s there. And I don’t stay on the groomers forever either. Before I drop into something steep, I look at the line, watch someone go first, and remind myself I have the skills. Then I dig deep and commit.
Brave, with a plan. That’s the sweet spot for your business too.
How to think like a CMO so you can take risks with confidence
A CMO, or Chief Marketing Officer for my alphabet-soup haters, decides which marketing matters most right now, what gets cut, and how every move ties back to revenue. Most wedding businesses will never hire one. Honestly, you don’t need to. But you do need to learn how to think like one.
And to start helping you do that, I’ve boiled that way of thinking down into seven CMO Rules. Here are my favorite three, plus the habits that make them stick.
Rule: Know what a client costs
Every marketing decision is a money decision, even when it’s “just” your time. Once you know what it costs you to get a lead or book a client, risks stop feeling like a coin flip. You can see what you’re actually betting.
Track where every booking came from. Then add up what you spend on marketing (yes, your hours count) and divide it by the number of bookings it brought in. Check in on it every month and have a goal for what that number should be.
Rule: Need beats want
Your ideas are endless. Your time is not. A CMO doesn’t chase every good idea. She picks the ones that move the business forward.
Before you do anything really, ask yourself one question: does this get me closer to my goal(s)? Keep two or three marketing priorities per quarter. Save everything else on an idea list. (Saved, not deleted. Future you might love it and have the time.)
Rule: F*ck it, let’s try it
Once the numbers say a risk is worth it, commit. Half-hearted experiments give you half-baked answers and incremental results, and then you’re right back to guessing.
Before you try something new, decide what success looks like and how long you’ll give it. Then actually give it that long. When time’s up, look at the results and decide: keep it, tweak it, or cut it.
The habits that hold all of your marketing together
Start with the goal. Decide what you want your business to do and/or bring in, then work backward to how many bookings and inquiries that takes. Now your marketing has a concrete job to do.
Review on a schedule. A monthly check-in on what’s working beats a once-a-year panic every time. (We celebrate KPI Day on the first of every month in the Enji community.)
Not thinking alone. Real CMOs don’t make calls in a vacuum. They have a CEO, a team, and a board pushing back on their thinking. You deserve that too.
Let’s make the brave calls together
Thinking like a CMO is a skill. And like any skill, it gets a whole lot easier with someone in your corner who’s done it before.
That’s why I’m opening a mentorship for wedding pros whose marketing already works. You get a monthly 1:1 strategy session with me, two group calls a month with wedding pros at your level, and Slack access to me between calls so you’re never stuck making a big decision alone.
We’ll start by looking at your business through a CMO’s eyes, setting your goals and the marketing math behind them, and building a plan you actually believe in. Then you do the work, with me right beside you.
It starts in January. It’s capped at 10 wedding pros because this will be a hands-on experience. And you can apply here through December 11th.
