Wedding Business Solutions

Will Hegarty - The origin of Wedding MBA

August 05, 2024 • Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

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Will Hegarty - The origin of Wedding MBA

Attending conferences can transform the way you approach your business. Are you leveraging conferences for unexpected benefits? Are you open to learning from different markets? In this episode, we delve into the incredible opportunities that conferences like the Wedding MBA offer for growth, networking, and staying current in an ever-evolving industry. Is it time you registered early and saved with a special coupon? Explore how industry leaders maintain their passion and adapt to changing trends, and discover how you can do the same.

Listen to this new episode for insights on maximizing the value of attending conferences and the unique opportunities they present for burgeoning and established professionals alike.

Will Hegarty is a seasoned entrepreneur and a pioneer in the wedding industry. With a degree in Business Management, Will founded seven businesses, including Rockford Fosgate Autosound, which went public. He began photographing weddings at 15 while still in high school, and his boss thought he was in college.

 

Will has documented over 2,000 weddings and met his wife, Patti, at one of them. Last year, he collaborated with his daughter Shannon and granddaughter Paige to create a children’s theater musical, "All Dolled Up," writing the lyrics and music.

 

Realizing the need for business education in the wedding industry, Will and Patti founded Wedding MBA, the Wedding Merchants Business Academy, in 2007, to help talented wedding professionals excel in the business side of their craft. Their motto is "The Business Side of the Wedding Business.

 

To find out more about Wedding MBA visit www.WeddingMBA.com and use the coupon code – Alan – to save $20 off your tickets.


If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or visit my website Podcast.AlanBerg.com 


Please be sure to subscribe to this podcast and leave a review (thanks, it really does make a difference). If you want to get notifications of new episodes and upcoming workshops and webinars, you can sign up at www.ConnectWithAlanBerg.com  


Want to see about having me come for private sales training, or a mastermind (bring together some industry friends to have me spend a day with you all)? Reach out to me at Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or text or call +1.732.422.6362

I'm Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you'd like to suggest other topics for "The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast" please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.

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©2024 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com

Do you ever wonder how some of these big conferences get started? Well, listen to this episode and find out. Hi, it's Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast. I am so excited to have my friend Will Hegarty on who founded wedding MBA to talk about conferences. Will, how you doing?


I'm doing great. Thanks for having me, Alan.


Oh, it's a pleasure to have you on. I want to give people a little bit of a history here. So, wedding MBA started 2007, correct?


Yes.


Now, you and I did not know each other. I was vice president of sales at the knot. You were producing the largest bridal shows in the country. I had no idea who you were. You called me up one day and say, I'm putting this thing on called the wedding MBA in Phoenix, and I'd love you to come and speak. And I had no idea who you were. And I'm thinking, okay, but what timing was great is that I had been wanting to give a presentation on websites just to show people that no matter how good your ads are, no matter how good you do your promotion, if your website isn't up to speed, you're losing business. There.


I said, well, all right, if I can come and give this presentation called ten ways, your website may be hurting your business. I will come and speak, and you're like, done. Well, what I didn't know is you were making me your headline speaker. You changed the title to ten ways. Your website's killing your business. Much better, by the way. Thank you. And that's how we met, was just that.


Yes. Very first. And actually, I want to thank you, because you are the only speaker who has been at every single wedding. MBA.


Wow. So this is 17 years. 17 years. Oh, my gosh. And you look the same. So there you go.


So do you.


Yeah, my. My hair hasn't. Hairstyle hasn't changed in 17 years. There you go. Um, so, first year, we're in Phoenix, but let's. Let's step back to that. You called me and said, I'm putting this thing on. So this thought happened before this.


So, prior to this, you were putting on the largest bridal shows in the country in Phoenix? Yes, but that's for couples. So, where did you get the idea to do something for the vendors?


Well, I've been in the industry forever. I started when I was 15 as a wedding photographer, put myself through high school, college, and got my business degree, all with the photography side. And throughout the years that I had been in the business, I saw people go out of business and they were really good florists and caterers and disc jockeys and they were great at what they did, but they weren't very great at business. And so that sort of, you know, that sort of planted the seed.


And that's how I started speaking was I was publishing wedding magazines and saw the same thing. People who are creatively talented but didn't know business and they'd go out of business. So it's kind of selfish for you and I because here you have, you know, exhibitors at a bridal show, and if they go out of business, you lose an exhibitor. And here I have an advertiser and if they go out of business, I lose an advertiser. So it was, it was self serving at the same time as being helpful, you know, doing it in the, in the effort to serve, but it also serves us at the same time. So, but why 2007? I mean, you were doing, you know, wedding expos for years and years and years. So why, why did you say, okay, now we're going to do that.


We, we've been doing some one off educational events where we would have a speaker come in. We did, we did a couple of those and the reaction was very, very good. And it's sort of like, okay, let's go ahead and do this. And hey, we're going to have our bridal show, our big show in january. And so let's just go ahead and put Woody and beyond on the back of that and, you know, just extend it, but extend it by a day. And so we had this massive show. We had over 600 exhibitors, you know, huge show takes a lot of energy, of course. And then that finishes up on the Sunday, Monday morning, you know, I'm wiped, you know, and I go in and I open the show.


I open the convention. I actually give the first seminar I open for you, essentially, and then I go to the back, I go back back of the room and I'm just cook. And honestly, I've been in the industry for such a long time and I didn't think I was going to get that much out of things. And I'm sitting there sort of half conscious and you start talking and I'm like, wait a minute, I can use that. Well, I can use that. All of a sudden I'm making notes at my own conference. And I guess the point is no matter how long you've been in the industry, you can always learn something, right?


And what do they say, Henry Ford, right. Whether you think you can or whether you think you cannot, you're right.


Yes.


If you don't think you're going to learn anything, you're right because you're not open to it. I think my favorite quote is about education, Malcolm Forbes, who founded Forbes magazine and all education's purpose is to change an empty mind into an open one. So we have to be open to learn. I mean, I'm going to attend four speaker conferences this year. And people are like, well, why? Because they're way more expensive than your conference, by the way. I mean, way, way more expensive besides the travel, because one of them's in the UK and there are different parts of the country. And it's because there's that one idea, there's that one thing. So I think that's why we align so well, because my purpose of education.


Your purpose of education is we want to bring this year now, how many people did we have that first year?


Only 250.


Yeah, I remember it wasn't that much then. But then the next year we did it again.


Had more.


What do you have, like 500 or so?


It was like 400, 450. Yep.


Right. I think we had an overflow room, didn't we? We had, we did.


We had an overflow room. Yes.


Right. So I was presenting in one room, but then you were broadcasting it into the, into this next room because whatever, the room wasn't big enough. It's actually where I first meth, the founders of Weddingwire was at. I don't know if that was 2007 or 2008 that they came to speak. And I actually remember their MacBook wouldn't work with the technology. And I lent them my PC laptop. I hadn't bitten the Apple yet, so I lent them my PC laptop and that's how I met Sonny. And Tim was lending them my computer.


People were like, why are you lending a competitor your computer? I said, I'm not doing it for them. I'm doing it for Will, I'm doing it for Patty. I'm doing it for these 250 people who came to hear them. That's why I'm doing it. And that's how I met them, you know, back then. So again, relationships get started at conferences and things like that. So we did Phoenix again. Phoenix in January.


Nice time of the year. Thank you for not making it July and then Phoenix again the next year in the winter. But then you went, then you went to Vegas. So then we did. Why did you decide to split it from not being next to your wedding expo and also not in the same city?


Well, the second year we split it from the expo, from the wedding expo just so we wouldn't have a heart attack and everything because it was tough, that first one in 2007, doing those things back to back, that was the longest weekend of my life. So they did allow us to, to go ahead and split things up and I think we did March of 2008, but we got really, really good response. But I wanted more people. I wanted to get the word out, get this out to more people. And most of the big conferences that I had been to personally had been in Vegas. They've been in Chicago or Atlanta or Vegas. And Vegas is closer. So we're like, let's, let's give this a shot.


And we did it and, you know, it jumped to a thousand people coming. And then, you know, the years went on. We sold our bridal shows, our January and June bridal shows, we sold those. And then it allowed us, after we did the transition to go full time. So instead of doing three events a year, two bridal shows and the wedding MBA, one convention, we were just working on the convention. And that is what allowed us to grow it to the 5000 person attendance that we have now.


So what has really changed over the years, going from 300, 400, 600, 900, whatever, growing. What have you changed and what do you think has changed about the industry?


Well, the thing has changed the most about the industry, Alan, is competition. And there's just more of it. And it's more challenging, I think, for any wedding professional out there because you have all your existing competitors and the wedding industry is very dynamic. There's new people coming in all the time and so you've got new challenges all the time. And even though weddings are a very traditional thing, you have a ceremony, you have a reception, you know, and that's very traditional and that's somewhat predictable. The people themselves change. How you reach them has changed. And if you're not willing to keep up with that, you're going to be left behind.


And that's one of the things that's kind of cool about what you do and what happens at wedding NBA is helping people stay up with that moving target, which is those wedding couples, right?


Yeah. I actually just recorded another podcast today that'll come out, I think, after this. But it was one of the suggestions I have this, ask me anything and it was actually a DJ in the UK who asked what you do as a consultant, what's different now versus years ago? What are DJ's asking you now versus what they're asking you years ago? And the truth is it hasn't changed. What's changed is the technology. But what hasn't changed is the need to have better business, the need to be more profitable, the need to get people to respond more, and things like that. What I've seen over the years, again, I was publishing wedding magazines. Well, selling for wedding magazines, then publishing. I was competing against the yellow Pages, and I was competing against newspaper supplements and things like that.


And what are you competing against now? You're competing against Instagram and TikTok and all those other things there. So the technology changes, but the need is still the same. You just have to be able to keep up with it. What I see at wedding MBA is this cross section of people that are branded brand new, relatively new, not so new, been around for a while, been around for a long while. And I love seeing all of that, because if you've been around for a long while and you're there, it's because you understand you need to keep current. You need to have your finger on the pulse and stuff like that. And if you're brand new and you're there, it means you realize you have to invest in your business, which a lot of new businesses don't understand.


That's one of the things that surprised me about what an MBA, because we assumed that it would be mainly new people. And actually, it's still majority. I mean, there are a lot of new people, and as a matter of fact, 70% of our attendees every year are new and which is kind of cool. But the thing is that a lot of them are established people that are, again, they're responding to the changing situations, and they're trying to keep up with the upstarts, the new competition.


So are you trying to get more people to come back year after year, or. This is just the way it is.


We did, and as a matter of fact, we had initially a relatively small percentage of people that would come every year, small base. And we strive to come in there and bring fresh content, have fresh speakers, and, I mean, you're a longtime speaker, but we have a lot of new speakers this year and new viewpoints. And by the way, that's one of the other things that's kind of interesting about wedding MBA is the people say, well, why do you have more than one seminar on this topic? It's SEO or something like that. And the answer is that not every speaker has the same approach, and it may not register with you as an attendee. That. Okay, I'm not getting. I'm not getting it. Go to the second one.


Oh, okay, now I'm starting to get what they're at, or if you've got two different ways or three different ways of approaching it, you can adapt that for your own situation. But anyway, what we do see a lot of, Alan, to answer the actual question is we see a lot of people that come every two years. That is, it's like they love coming and everything and we see them coming every two years or so and we see a lot of that. But, you know, but it is a tremendous experience and people really, they just give us great feedback. I mean, we do this, we do the survey afterwards, we survey about the speakers, we survey about the overall experience and everything. And we've got something like a 94% approval rating. Like, would you recommend this to a friend? And it's like, I don't get a 94% approval rating from Patty, you know, my wife.


Those of you who don't know Patty is his wife. Yes, yes.


You know, I don't. So it's, you know, it's very satisfying, you know, when that happens, you know.


For I attend conferences as well as an attendee, not just as a speaker. I don't tend to go to industry conferences unless I'm speaking just because I'm busy speaking at other conferences. But there's always going to be some people there that it isn't content that's relevant to you or that you don't connect with that speaker. And that's just part of it. Unless you're going to see just one person. It's like going to see the headline band and then the opening band. You might like the opening band, you might not, you may never have heard of them or whatever, but it's there. It's added content.


I know that it's got to be difficult as you've grown year after year when you go from 1000 people to 5000 people, you need to have more speakers, you need to have more rooms going on. It also provides that same challenge, which is if you have too much good content at the same time, people are like, ah, I can't be in two places at once. Right.


Well, there's an answer for that. And the thing is, we have over the years for wedding mba, as we have added the, you know, multiple things at the same time frame because it used to be all general sessions. But as we added more content, more choices, more options and people said, oh yeah, there's a couple of things in this hour. I can't be in two places at one time and they bring another person with them.


Yeah.


And then they just split and then they compare notes later.


Yeah, divide and conquer. Or even if you don't have anybody else in your business, you have a friend, you say you go to that and we'll learn there. It's, there's always going to be more. You know, me as a speaker. I remember early in my career if somebody walked out of a room where I was speaking I'd be like, I would notice that, oh, gosh, somebody's walking out of the room. You know, half the time they went to the bathroom, they came back and you're like, oh, okay. I guess that wasn't so bad, right? I remember being on the main stage and like you said, it was all general sessions. Everybody was in the one room now called Cottonwood and everybody saw there and, you know, there, there were 600 people, 700 people.


And what was it I was keynoting? Was it two years ago was 3500 people all of a sudden in the room and people standing around the outsides and going, okay, there's a few more people over here. My home page, it does. I like seeing people's faces and that's a hard thing when you have 3500 people because the room is obviously so big, the lights are so bright. It's a beautiful thing that, that many people want to hear and they don't get up and walk out in the middle. That's a nice, thank you very much for doing that. It's also a different skill, as you know, to be able to speak to 3500 people. So I like it. I like the idea of it.


I do like seeing people's faces. For those of you that have been to my website that my homepage picture is me on stage at wedding NBA but always shot from behind me. Morgan always shoots that from behind. And I remember the first year I asked her to do that and she's like, why? I said, because I'm here because of the audience. I want you to show the audience, right? You'll see it's me, there's a bald head and whatever, you'll see that it's me. But this is, I think, the third iteration of that picture which is a lot of speakers want to say, hey, look at me in this big room. So, yes, you give me a very big stage. I appreciate that, but I want to show the audience because they came, because you invited them.


They came and they came to hear me. I want you to see their faces. They're engaged in watching me. Very much like, I want a band or a dj to show the packed dance floor, not the dj or the band, right? Show me what you made happen. And this is what I'm looking for. There is that feedback. And it's also one of the reasons you said people come every other year. That's why I try to have a new book every other year.


So there's something for you to buy. Right.


By the way, coming back to the whole thing about why go to a conference at all. And I've got to go back to, you know, when I was doing wedding photography, you know, and I would go to the photography conferences. When I was doing wedding video, go to the wedding video conferences. And as an attendee, the thing that always struck me is no matter which conference I went to, I always came back with one idea that was, that brought me thousands of dollars, either got me thousands of dollars more at the top and, or it saved me money. And so, you know, I've never been to a conference that I end up paying for. It pays, it just paid for itself, I guess.


Well, the thing is, people would go to photography conferences. Some people would go to the trade show and they're looking at the new equipment and all that kind of stuff.


Yes.


And really interesting thing with photography conferences, I have never been asked to speak at the major photography conferences in the 20 plus years that I've been speaking. And years ago, I finally got somebody to tell me why I, and they said, well, you're not a photographer.


Yeah.


I said, you do know I'm not there to talk about photography. I'm there to talk about the business of photography. And then the irony is I spoke in Bangalore, India, at a wedding photography conference, and they invited me. You know why? Because I wasn't, because I wasn't the photographer.


That's excellent.


The reason they won't, they don't ask me here, and photographers all the time see me at wedding mba, and they say, how come you never speak at fill in the blank? I won't name the other conferences. I say, because they never invite me because they think for whatever reason, I must not know your business. And they're like, you know my business. You and I do one on one consulting with photographers, and it's, again, that, that kind of blinders thing of if you've not walked in my shoes, you can't know my business. Well, you know, you think about the people in the Rock and roll hall of fame that are not musicians because they're producers. Right. Or things like that. And it's the coaches that are in the hall of fame for football, baseball, basketball, whatever, who may have been a player, may not have been a player, may not have been the best player, but they're a great coach.


It's the same thing. I'm there to help you have a better business.


Well, you, by the way, you're in our hall of fame.


Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. And where is it? On my shelf here.


Lifetime achievement award.


Yes. And I have the mobile entertainment expo hall of fame. I was the first non DJ inducted in the mobile entertainment experience hall of fame. So the whole idea of education, one thing that I love about wedding mba is it's not about the new speakers, the new camera, the new lights, the new ovens, the new food, whatever. You have conferences for that. I go to caters every year, and I go to the dj and the photo booth conferences and stuff. There's a place for that. Your conference is wedding business.


That's, it's in the name of it there. The wedding business academy. Thats what its for. And thats, I think what attracted me to it is youre not distracted by the shiny objects there. Another trade show has grown leaps and bounds, but its business stuff in the trade show, its the virtual assistants, its the software. Its these things to help your business. And youre not distracted by that stuff, which you need, people need in their business. You need to have those other tools.


But this is the focus on it.


Well, the bottom line on that, of course, Alan, is for people to stay in business doing what they love to do.


Yeah.


You know, and that's really it, you know, I mean, weddings, weddings are something I've loved, you know, since the beginning. You know, you go out there as a photographer, as I did in the beginning, you know, every weekend, it's a different, it's a different church, it's a different reception facility, it's a different set of people on the bride side, a different set of people on the groom side, you know, so it's all new people every, you know, every weekend. And, you know, it's, and it's energy. It's, you know, everybody brings their, everybody brings their best game, so to speak, to, to a wedding, and people are just having a good time. And so weddings are, they're just so much fun. And for creatives to be able to get the tools they need to keep doing what they love doing, I mean, that's really what it's all about.


Yeah. And the advantages of conferences. I love the hallways. Right? It's funny. Anytime I'm wedding NBA, you know this. If I'm not on stage, I'm in my booth, assuming that the trade show is open and I can't leave the booth. I mean, I have literally line of people wanting to talk to me, wanting to buy a book, wanting to get, have me sign their book or whatever, wanting to ask me a question, but then just trying to get from my booth to my next session to speak and I have to go out of the trade show into the hallway. I can't go 20ft without somebody else stopping me and asking me.


And my brand, my personal brand is about approachability. I want you to be able to walk up and ask me a question. I want you to be able to catch me in the hallway or sometimes I have dinner plans, sometimes I don't because I know I'm always going to have, and we're going to have people and say, okay, come on, let's go to the bar over at the renaissance where I always stay. And next thing you know, there's 15 people standing around talking over there, which is the extension, right. Well, but it's the extension of that. It's where I learn as a speaker. Right. Because you talk about the energy of a wedding.


Well think about me, the energy as a speaker. I come to the room and there's, you know, these days, 800 people, 1000 people, whatever, in my rooms, 3000 people. Right. And it's that energy that you're giving back to me. That's how I know I'm making a connection. That's why I said I love seeing the faces. Because people wear their emotions and things right there on your face. So when you laugh, it's because it was funny organically.


When a point hit home, you can just see the introspection. You can see people doing that. That's what's the beauty of this versus let's say a webinar. I just did a webinar this afternoon and I think there were 1700 people registered or whatever, couldn't see a single face, right? Couldn't see a single face. Have to assume that I'm making a connection. Right. I can see the questions coming in or whatever, but I can't see those faces. That's what I love about live.


My books are an extension of what people ask my topics or what that. One of the most difficult things for me is after 17 years is bringing something new again. Again. And what you and Shannon are so good with is just coming up, teeing up some ideas and saying, okay, what about this? This is what people are asking about. But because what I speak about is evergreen, it cant be all new. Plus 70% of the people havent been there before, so they havent heard this or at least havent heard it there. So I have to balance that. Giving you something that is new feels new.


Yet if youve heard it before, its not a repeat. And if youve never heard it, you didnt miss out because you didnt hear the last one the time before. So that, that's always for me, it's a good challenge. I like challenges like that. But I have to say that there are some times where Shannon comes to me early and says, okay, so what do you want to speak about next year? I'm like, I don't know. I don't know. Those are some good ones. Where are we going to go from here now?


Well, the thing is, too, when you get buttonholed at your booth and the hallways at the hotel, the questions that they ask you give you ideas for what you're going to talk about next.


Right. My latest book. So stop selling and help them buy weddings and events, which, fun fact, launched today in French on Amazon. So my new book's in French. I think I said it with a spanish accent, but there you go. Maybe a mexican accent, I'm not sure. But that book is, I called it the next one because I started writing down things that people would ask me and say, hey, you just spoke about this at wedding mba. Which book is that in? And if it was in one of my books, I'd say, here it is.


And if it wasn't, I'd say it's in the next one.


Next.


And at first it was a joke. And then it happened so often that I actually started making a list. And I made a list of 40 something things, bullet points. I went into it and said, some of these are pretty similar. And I cut it down to 35. And that book is 35 chapters that all stand on their own. They're all separate topics that are things that people ask me very often at wedding mba and other places where I be live some small events around the country. And they would say, which of your books talks about how to respond to reviews or which of your books talks about this? And I said, this is the one because you helped me write it.


Literally, this is the next one because you helped me. And I have a new list going now of things that people are asking that aren't in any of the books, which are pretty comprehensive by now. But that's this exact thing that you're talking about in the hallways and all that. Those are the ideas. And I say I want to give it back to the audience. How do I do that? Well, I just spoke about it on stage. Okay. I can talk about it on the podcast.


And here it is in a book because we know that people like to have it. That's why they're in print, in Kindle, in audio, in, and now in Spanish. Well, they're all in Spanish, but also now this one in French, and we'll see about that one.


Excellent.


And it actually came out of a conference that I went to. So you talked about, get the one idea. I went to a speaker conference earlier this year that I wasn't going to go to because I didn't need anything. That's what I had said to myself. I don't, I can't think of anything specific I need. And I said to myself, you know what, go. You haven't been to Albuquerque in a while. You have some friends there.


You know, Scott and Stacy put, put on. I said, if nothing else, you get to see Scott and Stacey. There you go. Okay. I played around the golf, one of my best rounds ever, in the rain, snow, sleet and hail, by the way. So that was interesting. And what I got out of it is ways to use AI with my content because I shunned AI because Im a content creator, and now I found ways to use it. And one of the ways is if you guys go to the show notes for this podcast with will and I will sent me some information.


I asked you for a bio and you sent me for information which wasnt formatted like a traditional bio. There were some bullet points. There were some other stuff in there. I took it and put it into chat GPT and said, could you make this into a 250 word bio for the podcast where I will have will on as my guest? And then it was a little bit too long and I said, hey, that's good. Could you make that 150 words? And it did. So if you go, you'll see the benefits of me having gone to a conference earlier this year using AI with content that you gave me that I'm now able to take and do that. Why? Because I showed up at the conference and I think everybody that's been to wedding MBA has a moment like that, which is, I didn't expect to learn this, yes, because I didn't know that I even needed to learn this, but because I was there, I was able to learn that. It's because I showed up.


The serendipity is magnificent, too, because, you know, people, you know, people get, of course, primarily from the speakers such as yourselves and, and from buttonholing them, you know, not on stage, you know, because a lot of times there's so much content, there's not no time for question and answer after coming to your booth. And they also get the ideas from the exhibitors who may not be speakers, you know, the software and the different things. And also just as valuable in a live situation. You're talking about how doing things live just really makes such a difference. And that is talking to other people in their specialty from all around the US and Canada and Mexico and around the world who are there. And it's like, oh, I've got this issue. And they go, oh yeah, we had that. I had that same thing and this is how I did it.


And so you're talking to other people who've solved things. So not only are you getting fresh ideas, you're doing problem solving and avoiding other, you know, other potholes that are out there.


And that's again, you don't know who's going to be sitting next to you. They're probably in a different market, in some cases a different category, and you can still learn something from them. You could be someone in the business for ten or 20 years sitting next to somebody new, but they're really good at something that you're not good at. And that's why I love showing up at conferences as an attendee, because I'm good at some stuff, but I'm not good at everything. And there are people that like this, like AI, I was not good at, I'm getting better. I would not even try to teach it to anybody at this point because I'm still learning. But the idea is that if I didn't show up, I wouldn't have learned this. And I was learning from people that this is what they do, this is what they know.


And now I'm able to use these tools. I also got an email today from somebody that I met at a speaker conference who's actually asking me about wedding MBA and how she can apply to speak. So, well, I'll get that. I told her, you're already done for this year, but here's somebody that I met at a conference and she chose to reach out to me and say, hey, could you help me out here? And the answer is yes. The answer is yes. And that's why I'm going to do four speaker conferences and one in the UK. Why the UK? Completely different approach, completely different idea. That's the antithesis of wedding MBA because it'll be 250 people instead of 5000.


My speaker conference is well over 1000 people. My main one that I go to, National Speakers association, it's great. But you can only talk to so many people at that smaller conference. I can talk to everybody. So there's a benefit of doing your local conference. So if you're in Louisville or if, if you're in San Diego, there's a benefit of that in addition to going to something like this, which now expands your horizon to people that are not in your market, non competitive.


And you've hit on a really, you hit on a really good point earlier, which is, you know, you're sitting next to somebody and, you know, if you're, if you were at a local educational event, for example, and you might be sitting next to a competitor and you're not going to have the same interaction, you're, you know, you're not going to share the problem that you're having a, or even, or even they're not going to, they're not going to give you good ideas necessarily. But you come here and, you know, you're sitting next to somebody who's from a thousand miles away, they're completely different market and they open up, you know, you open up to them, they open up to you and you get a much, much more of a flee, a free flowing exchange of ideas that you don't get any other way.


And you, you expand your network. I have a call on Thursday, this week, somebody from the UK that I met at the conference said, hey, I have a friend and they're having a question. They were launching their book and they had a question. And you're so good at this and you have your ten books. Would you be willing to have a conversation with them? Right? Yeah. And this is the whole, you don't know who you know until somebody asks, right? Well, he asked her and she's like, I know a guy. He might be across the pond, but I know a guy. Right.


And you're from your new jersey, right? I know a guy.


I know a guy. That's it. Well, it's by law, if you live in New Jersey, by law you have to have a guy or you have to know a guy who's got a guy. You know, either way, what goes there. So we are at a time over here. So if you have not gotten your tickets for wedding NBA yet, will, if I'm not mistaken, the tickets get more expensive as you get closer.


They do. Well, they go up as we get closer to the convention.


Right. If you go to weddingmba.com, you can get your ticket. If you use my name as your coupon code Alan a l A N, you will save $20 off of the current price. So the sooner you do it, the more you save on the ticket. And then still dollar 20 off of that 17 years now that I will be there. I thank you so much for reaching out the first time. And this goes to the same thing. If you don't ask, the answer is always no, right? You reached out and said, well, I'm going to ask Alan if he'll come.


And that's it. People ask me, how come you never spoken at this conference? I said they never asked. Right. You got to get to start.


Well, I'm glad. I'm glad I did ask.


I am glad as well. And I'm glad to call you a friend. And Shannon, I know Shannon's there listening. And Patti, it's great to see you guys. Every year when we do, occasionally we get to sit down when we're not crazy and you're riding around on your scooter and we get down, sit down. When I was in Phoenix, we got to sit down and, you know, and have a little drink. That, that's wonderful as well.


That whiskey. Yep. Gotta do that.


Got absolutely have to do that one. That's part of that. And I'll have more to talk about whiskey after this. I don't want to. It will have happened before this comes out, but I'm not going to talk about it yet. I'll talk about it in another podcast. So weddingmba.com, the schedule is there. Probably the best thing to do.


Go to the PDF if you want to see the actual schedule. You do have category specific sessions now, so there are some just for venues and just for DJ's and so forth. There. You'll see it all there. Get your ticket now. Use the coupon code, Alan. I look forward to seeing you guys there as well. Thanks so much for joining me today.


Hey, thanks so much, Alan.

I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or you can  text, use the short form on this page, or call +1.732.422.6362, international 001 732 422 6362. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.


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