By Ciara Daykin
Very early on in my journey as a wedding planner I realized that this was what I wanted to do full time. Of course at the time I had a full time job and I was getting paid very well but it wasn’t my passion and I wasn’t happy.
One day I got so frustrated that I couldn’t spend more time planning weddings that I up and quit my job out of the blue and registered for a course to get my real estate license. I thought, I’ll sell BIG houses, make BIG commissions and that will pay the bills. And since no one will be telling me what to do I can work on my wedding planning business anytime I like.
Ha!
Let me say that again…. Ha!
Wow… was I ever naïve. I quickly and I mean quickly was completely overwhelmed, broke, begging for my old job back and then working 3 jobs (wedding planning, real estate and an oil and gas software marketing) because I’d made so many commitments that weren’t aligned with my passion and my purpose.
I didn’t think that I could have a full time, well paying wedding planning career until I realized that I couldn’t have anything BUT just that.
God didn’t want me to be an oil and gas software marketer. He didn’t put me on the Earth to be a real estate agent. I am and from an early age with Bridal Barbie, have always been, a Wedding Planner.
I shifted the way I was thinking and took the following steps to align my life with my passion and my purpose:
- I Created an Exit Strategy- What you focus on grows and I was so overwhelmed I couldn’t focus on anything but being overwhelmed so guess what? I just kept getting more and more overwhelmed. When I shifted my focus to my exit plan it sped up and I was able to exit both jobs quicker than I’d originally planned.
I Invested in Myself- I knew that in order to be a full time wedding planner I would need to figure out why I wasn’t attracting more brides or the high end ones? I took the marketing skills and experience I already had and gave them a boost by investing in sales, marketing and mindset courses and mastermind groups that completely changed my life. My path became so clear and I was able to create systems and implement them into my business and soon I had my first $10,000 full service wedding planning client.- I Believed That I Could Do It & That I Was Worth It- I would be nowhere without the shift that occurred in my mindset. I was actually an incredibly negative person and I pushed away a lot of opportunities because I didn’t feel worthy. But I realized that the only person I was hurting was myself, and with the help of my mentor I shifted my mindset to be one of complete faith in my abilities. I am a person who takes leaps of faith knowing that the net will appear and it always does because I am following my true path.
Ciara’s Rockstar Wedding Planner Advice
If you want to be a Rockstar Wedding Planner then you need to look at the way you’re living your life. Are you aligned with your true passion and purpose? Because whatever you put your attention toward grows. If you’re constantly focusing on how much debt you have, that will grow. If you’re obsessing over how nothing ever goes your way, well guess what, that isn’t going to change anytime soon. If you’re frustrated and angry that your competition is making changes in their business that you’d already thought of but didn’t do yet, then that will keep happening and the anger and frustration will grow but your business won’t.
If you have dreams of being a great wedding planner then it is time to step into your greatness and live a life filled with your passion and purpose by aligning your life with your true goals.
Ciara Daykin is the Rockstar Wedding Planner. She is an award-winning event planner and CEO of Firefly Occasions Inc. with offices in both Canada and the United States.
Ciara has devised a system for creating and maintaining a successful event planning business. She shares her knowledge with other planners through her Rockstar Wedding Planner coaching programs and various speaking engagements.
