All in Relationships

Playing Well With Others: Your Growing Team's Guide to Cultivating Great Vendor Relationships

Playing Well With Others: Your Growing Team's Guide to Cultivating Great Vendor Relationships

Guest Contributor
Relationships

(Editor's Note: Here's part two of our three-part training series on event day management topics! Check back next Monday for the final installment!)

As I'm working with my business coaching clients on strategically growing their teams, one of the most common concerns I hear is that business owners are afraid of sacrificing their professional reputation - specifically, that the larger their team grows, the weaker their relationships with other vendors will become.

It's not an unfounded fear. After all, plenty of bridges have been burned by a boneheaded contractor flagrantly violating a venue's regulations or acting like a jerk to the rest of the vendor team. Fortunately, though, this kind of issue is entirely avoidable through good training. With a little effort and communication, you can grow your team as large as you want it, without giving up that solid "friendor" foundation you worked so hard to build.

Flashback Friday: Wedding Pros' Event Day Irritants & Vendor Pet Peeves, Revealed

Flashback Friday: Wedding Pros' Event Day Irritants & Vendor Pet Peeves, Revealed

Guest Contributor
Relationships, Wedding Industry

As our loyal WeddingIQ readers know, we eagerly solicit anonymous rants from our colleagues in the wedding industry, with the purpose of bringing other professionals' real feelings into the spotlight. Let's face it: sharing our real thoughts can be hard, especially when we don't want to jeopardize our referral relationships or make our next networking event even more awkward.

Collecting anonymous submissions from our readers enables us to bring up problematic issues and actions for discussion here on the site, and to determine what's important to the people who follow our blog. (With that in mind, we invite you to submit your own anonymous rant, or, if anonymity isn't your thing, email us directly with what matters most to you!)

WeddingIQ Retrospective: Just Gimme the Photos, Revisited

WeddingIQ Retrospective: Just Gimme the Photos, Revisited

Guest Contributor
Marketing, Ethics, Relationships

(Editor's Note: We're making steady progress toward completing a major project we'll be rolling out at the beginning of May, and we can't wait for you all to see it! In the meantime, we're continuing to look back at popular and thought-provoking posts from our history. Today, it's Kyle's March 2015 post, "Just Gimme the Photos!")

I firmly stand behind everything I wrote here 100%. Jennifer and I even created a speaking presentation "The Internet is a Thieve's Paradise: How to Properly Use Professional Images & Protect Your Website" for The Planners Suite Conference this past January because we have such strong beliefs on this topic. That presentation was derived from this post and from Jennifer's 2012 post, "How to Protect Your Website From Thieves."

Tempering Expectations: Being Realistic With Employees and Their Limitations

Tempering Expectations: Being Realistic With Employees and Their Limitations

Guest Contributor
Guest Posts, Relationships

(Editor's note: We're always so grateful to have Michelle Loretta of Sage Wedding Pros share her extensive experience and knowledge with our readers, and today's guest post is no exception! Read more about Michelle at the end of the post!)

So often we hire employees when we are at our breaking point. We have so much work that we can’t produce single-handedly and need some relief. It takes discipline, courage, and restraint to start delegating responsibilities to a new individual. After all – this company is YOUR BABY. You’ve poured blood, sweat, and tears into it.

Hire Character, Train Skill

Hire Character, Train Skill

Guest Contributor
Wedding Industry, Relationships

We’ve all heard the business adage "Hire character, train skill."  But what does it mean? How do you do it? And, finally, how important is it when it comes to your wedding and event business?  In this post, I’m going to be speaking entirely about independent contractors as opposed to employees, as the process is a little different when hiring for short-term gigs rather than full-time work with a company. So, let’s get started!