Overcoming Procrastination and Adapting to Changes in the Wedding Industry

[00:00:00] Kristina Stubblefield: Thank you for tuning in to Wed Pro Business Solutions. I'm your host, Kristina Stubblefield. I actually have a guest on this episode and I've got to give you her actual title, but she is my good friend, Dr. Christine Li. I've had her on as a guest in the past, but we got paired up in a group together and my husband thought it was hilarious that I was paired up with a procrastination coach.

[00:00:29] So to say that I can relate to today's topic is an understatement. Christine, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it. 

[00:00:38] Dr. Christine Li: It's always a pleasure to be with you, Christina. I'm so happy to be back on this show. And you just brought me back to when Josh was thinking it was hysterical that we were paired together and I'm so glad that fate brought us together and we've worked so well together and had so much fun together too.

[00:00:54] Kristina Stubblefield: We have, and this year we're actually gonna get to even travel together. 

[00:00:58] Dr. Christine Li: Yes. 

[00:00:59] Kristina Stubblefield: I'm so excited about it. So you've probably figured out today's topic is gonna have a little something to do with procrastination. Christine, for my audience who may not be familiar with you, would you just share a little bit about your background?

[00:01:14] Dr. Christine Li: Sure. I am a psychologist. I live in New York. I've been doing this kind of work for more than 20 years. I feel very lucky to call myself a mental health professional, psychologist coach, and this work is just, I think, natural to me. It comes very naturally and I feel like I can help so many people with very simple techniques, particularly in the area of procrastination, work avoidance, work block anxiety, A D D, A D H D, and just anything having to do with getting out of your own way.

[00:01:54] I think it's fascinating how each of us can be our own worst enemy when it comes to moving forward. Just when we really wanting to ramp it up or make progress or make improvements. All of a sudden the distractions seem to come and our self-doubt seems to increase, and I just find that whole scenario really interesting.

[00:02:19] But I've also been able over the years to find really logical ways to teach people how to step down from the anxiety and to step into their real power. I really believe each of us is so magnificently talented and so clear when it comes down to it. When you allow yourself to see what you want and need, everything becomes easier, and who wouldn't want productivity to be easier?

[00:02:49] Kristina Stubblefield: Gosh, you've got me pegged. I'm not sure how many things you mentioned in there as things that you've helped me with along the way for the few years that we've been friends. It almost seems natural, every time we're on the phone, a Zoom, chat, text, there's always these little golden nuggets that you drop in.

[00:03:08] That's why I love having you on as a guest to share with my audience. Because a lot of the things you've mentioned, I've struggled with myself over the years, and even though I've been doing this, what I do for a long time, it still happens to people with experience, with expertise. And you say to me so often, you're gifted.

[00:03:32] You have something to say, share it with the world, but it's the ways that you talk through that and it's the ways that you give feedback and just those gentle nudges that don't even appear as nudges, how much you've helped me. A lot of my audience are wedding professionals, and I don't need to mention the word pandemic.

[00:03:54] , Although we still are all feeling some types of effects from it. It was very hard on the event industry and I still have multiple conversations, it seems like weekly with people about trying to get their bearings. They went from no events to trying to play catch up. Now, just trying to balance it out a little bit, and I'm gonna share with you a little bit about what I'm hearing.

[00:04:19] They're so used to the busy wedding season really being from mid-spring through the fall. And now it started way earlier, and that's because there's maybe not as many dates available. Maybe people have still pushed their wedding days back, or just the industry as a whole being affected, and now let's just be real.

[00:04:43] It's easy to kind of procrastinate a week and then two weeks and then a month, and now bam. We're smack picking up speed in the event industry and where they had such great intentions of working on their business on the off season, I need to do air quotes off season. Now we're headed right into event mode, and I know you're gonna have some good nuggets to share along the way.

[00:05:12] And I think it's so important because you've mentioned procrastination, not only personally, professionally, it can wear on you and it can really cause, a lot more things to be affected than just putting off updating your website or putting off making a social media post. And I'm gonna turn it over to you because I've just given you a lot of information.

[00:05:37] Dr. Christine Li: Okay. First of all, thank you so much for those beautiful words that you said about our relationship and how I've helped you gentle ways to look at productivity and time management and those issues. And that actually comes as a great relief to me because I feel like I turned to you for everything, all things, all things technical, all things marketing, all things in your genius area.

[00:06:01] So I feel like grateful that you feel like it's more of an exchange than I have felt it has been. So thank you so much for that. And I want to say to everyone who's listening, everyone who is a wedding professional, that I really feel this empathy for what I know happened because I've been connected with Kristina throughout the pandemic and just hearing her talk about all the total upheaval in the industry and how people work so creatively and so beautifully to be in this industry in the first place, and then having to go through the pandemic, having to worry about finances, having to figure out what is next and how to communicate with clients, how to get clients, how to keep clients, how to manage their contracts, and all the things that Kristina helps people with.

[00:06:53] I really have this empathy for your industry because of my connection with Kristina. So I'll just say that. I also wanna say that listening to Kristina say that the timeline for the wedding industry has kind of been turned on its head. The optimistic person in me, that optimistic part I should say, is now saying, well, maybe this is everyone saying let's just do this. Right!

[00:07:25] When we have the opportunity, let's take that opportunity. I know for myself, I got married 13 weeks after I was engaged, and that is kind of my spirit in doing things that if you have the time and you know the place, let's go do this. So it may be a little bit of a shift in the industry in terms of timeframes and turnover times and ways you're gonna have to be present and how often you're gonna need to be present.

[00:07:55] That's just a thought that maybe we need in the wedding industry to begin saying Okay, what I'm offering as a service, this is more time limited. It's more quick and dirty rather than extended and we have a luxurious eight or nine months to do this together. That's just a thought. But I also wanna suggest that I would love to have each of you listening, thinking of yourself as a flexible person, instead of thinking, well, I've done this for 10 years, 15 years the same way. How can I possibly do it another way? How can I possibly be more flexible? I'm going to say try it because you'll likely benefit from it. You'll likely be able to drop a lot of things you used to think we're essential that you find are actually more irritants or distracting to you and completely not necessary to the core of what you wanna deliver to your clients and the core of your genius area of delivery.

[00:09:04] So that might be another tip. Figure out, sit down maybe with Kristina, maybe with someone else, maybe with your partner, maybe with your clients, what is your unique zone of genius? What is your thing that you wanna deliver to people that you would be so crushed if you couldn't do it anymore.

[00:09:23] People would wonder, where do I get this from? If you stepped out of doing this. Figure out what you're known for and what you can do best. And I think when you know that it ends up saving you a lot of time because you're not promising too much, you're not attracting the people who aren't really a great fit for you, and then you wanna sharpen your way of reaching out to those ideal clients for you. The clients that really need you, will love working with you, that you will love working with. I know Kristina talks a lot about this kind of matching and doing things that are in alignment with what you deliver. I think it really is worth the time to sit down and hammer that out.

[00:10:07] It's not maybe our favorite stuff to do in business, but I think it can be the most important work to do in business. 

[00:10:17] Kristina Stubblefield: I have a question, have you been listening to my last few podcast episodes?

[00:10:20] Dr. Christine Li: I, unfortunately I am not. 

[00:10:21] Kristina Stubblefield: I know you're not in the wedding industry at all, but you have hit on so many things that I have multiple conversations with people really trying to drill down more of their niche. What they've been through not only has affected them professionally, but also personally. What in the world do they want to spend their time doing? Does it really make them happy? And what you mentioned about the timelines, I think it's been a frustrating part for a lot of wedding professionals because they've been in their rut of the way they've done things.

[00:10:57] It's always worked. This is how it is. They don't necessarily get back to clients within 24 to 48 hours. And now you have the other side of that with engaged couples, who I'm fortunate to talk to both sides with my other podcast. Engage Couples, they've heard from others, friends and family members who may have been getting married through the pandemic.

[00:11:20] Don't wait on your vendors. Make sure you stay on them to get a response. If you know you wanna use certain vendors, get them booked. And there's that urgency, that sense of urgency. And where I have played a role in a lot of that is helping people with automations, with systems and processes where it's not all manual work you are doing. But that's been a big adjustment. For us, that are familiar in the tech world and have used some type of even autoresponder on an email. It's not foreign, but for a lot of wedding professionals that still did handwritten contracts, met in person, this was a very big shift and it has taken a little bit for them to adjust.

[00:12:07] But they have no choice. That's the situation is if you are not getting back to a lead, someone else is. They may not be as qualified. They might not be exactly what that potential client wants, but they're no longer waiting four or five days. They either A, think you're too busy or are you even in business anymore?

[00:12:30] And that can be very scary. 

[00:12:33] Dr. Christine Li: Yeah. And I would say, why wouldn't you want to have an automated system for that kind of work, because if you were left to do that yourself, it's just a drain on your own energy. So that's something that I really teach both my psychotherapy clients and my coaching clients.

[00:12:51] Our energy is so precious. It is limited, as much as it is powerful, and we have to respect both, right? We wanna do the things that are most creative. We wanna make the best use of our energy, while also saying, I'm not giving it away just to anyone or just for anything, because then I'm gonna feel depleted and I won't be at my best creatively.

[00:13:15] So anything that helps you to conserve your energy, especially on an ongoing, continuous basis worth an investment, worth your attention, worth your signing on to that. 

[00:13:28] Kristina Stubblefield: Absolutely. A couple things I'll just add into what you say. I think people have, they don't know enough about automations. They think it's very almost like stick like. They don't realize how much it can be personalized.

[00:13:42] Heck, a lot of that stuff can even have videos included in it. It doesn't just have to be your typical autoresponder. Thanks, I'll be in touch. Do not use those because people now know that's an automated message that is not personalized, and this is definitely something that I would share.

[00:14:00] Don't procrastinate on. It's your voice, it's your brand, it is your reputation. All a lot of these leads or potential clients have to go off of is the perception. They're making buying decisions or narrowing down their vendors based on the perception of what's online, social media, Google, and communication that they may have with you that's not over the phone.

[00:14:31] And so thank you for touching on that because it is really important. We've been, Christine and I are fortunate to be in the same, coaching group and automation and delegation is high on that list, and we would pass that message on to anyone that's listening. 

[00:14:49] Dr. Christine Li: And I wanna add, yes, we are fortunate to be in that group and we're both learning these things as we go too.

[00:14:55] Even though Kristina is the automation genius. We're also just before pressing record today, we were talking about ChatGPT, which is brand new to everyone, so. So we need to always have our eyes and ears open because we're in business and because we're interested in new things and new toys, but also things that can really save us time and energy. Yeah, and make us look better. 

[00:15:21] Kristina Stubblefield: And you're right, artificial intelligence, people hear that word and all they've seen is maybe what's on the news, what's on the internet that comes up when they open their browser. They don't realize the opportunities that lie there. And I deal with this a lot in technology.

[00:15:38] People are scared of technology and honestly, I think that's sometimes where procrastination sneaks in. Because you're just a little, you don't fully understand it. You don't know exactly how it could benefit you. You see it. Wow. It'd be nice if I could use it. And then the next thing you know, a month is gone.

[00:15:56] Oh, I'm not gonna look at that, maybe down the road, maybe when weddings slow down, I'll look at it and unfortunately when you allow mindset and you allow things that scare you to really start to put blocks in there. Unfortunately, you could be missing out on wonderful opportunities to save yourself time and money. And what you said, energy, which is so valuable. 

[00:16:22] Dr. Christine Li: Yes, yes, yes, yes. Always keep your eyes open, but don't assume that everything is going to be energy depleting. You know you're gonna basically buying your time back with your attention, right? When you pay attention and you start to incorporate smart things in your business.

[00:16:42] Those smart things are gonna generate you clients and revenue and opportunity and prestige status, higher level brands, this all works together. So, I would say avoid counting the minutes and start thinking bigger for your business so that you can take on these new things and make yourself a little bit more flexible than you thought you were. 

[00:17:08] Kristina Stubblefield: I value your time so much, and just in this brief conversation that we have had today, I know that you always have some type of class course or bootcamp, and you have one coming up very soon that I would love to share with my audience. Would you tell them a little bit about that and maybe what solutions that this could help open up for them.

[00:17:31] Dr. Christine Li: Yes. Thank you so much for inviting me back on the show and inviting me to talk about the upcoming Power Productivity Bootcamp. It is, I would say, my signature live event. It is free and I really invite all of our friends to join in and register. It is a week long event and I will be delivering three live trainings, all on the topics of how to build a success mindset, how to protect your productivity.

[00:18:03] How to ramp up your productivity and how to make room for the things that really matter in your life. So it's great for people in business, but you don't have to be in business to benefit from this kind of training. I will also offer a live coaching call as part of the bootcamp, so you get a sense of what it would be like to just get my brain in your business or in your life, or just to get my ideas on what might be helpful for you.

[00:18:31] So I welcome you to join just for that piece. And then I always wrap up with a celebration party and it will really feel like a real party because by the end of this week, you're gonna feel like a different productivity person, you're gonna feel like you've got so many more tools and that you've been through a bootcamp, but it won't be exhausting.

[00:18:50] It'll be more enlivening than tough, and you'll meet people from around the world, and I'm so excited to invite you to the bootcamp. It starts March 21st and it will run through to March 26th. There'll be recordings and workbooks and lots and lots of fun. 

[00:19:10] Kristina Stubblefield: And I'll say, you call it a bootcamp, you come from such a different approach really than a bootcamp. It is really encouraging and inspiring and how you deliver on it is, I've been fortunate to take part in many things that Christine's done. You come off of one of these calls or zooms or live trainings and you are so amped up, ready to just dive in.

[00:19:40] And I think that's the beautiful part about it is no matter how small a step you take, you can really build on that and I'm gonna be there. So for my audience, yes, I'm gonna take part in this. And you know, this comes from someone that I'm fortunate to have access really to Christine, at midnight. We've definitely had texts and calls at those hours. 

[00:20:04] Dr. Christine Li: That's our hour.

[00:20:05] Kristina Stubblefield: But I still find these very beneficial because we all know that it sometimes takes hearing it more than once. It is a work in progress and I'm a work in progress. Christine shared with you. Yes, although we're part of a coaching program and I specialize in systems and processes, I still too work on myself because there's always ways to improve.

[00:20:28] I love to be a sponge and try to absorb as much because not only can you utilize this in your own personal and professional life, but for the wedding professionals out there, you'll find that you'll be able to put this to use with your clients. And to me, that's invaluable. So I'm gonna be there, I will be sharing out information on my social media. I'll put the link in the show notes, but you're gonna be able to go to procrastinationcoach.com/Kristina. Christine, you couldn't have made that any easier on my audience. So you'll be able to get in there and join. She also has a free Facebook group that I will put in the show notes. Whether you're watching this on YouTube or on your favorite podcast platform, you will be able to get the link to her free Facebook group. 

[00:21:15] Dr. Christine Li: I actually have that link too. It's procrastinationcoach.com/facebook.

[00:21:20] Everything should be easy. 

[00:21:21] Kristina Stubblefield: Don't worry, Christine, I'm gonna implement those myself. See, she's not even really the tech whiz, but we're always sharing stuff back and forth. I tell her all the time, she helps me too. Christine, I will also share this in my free Facebook group. And for listeners out there, if you're not in my free Facebook group, please join.

[00:21:38] Christine, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it, and I'm so glad that this worked out that I could share with my audience about your upcoming bootcamp. For those listeners that may hear this episode after the fact, you can always get in Christine's Facebook group to find out about upcoming bootcamps, classes, courses, trainings, all the amazing things that she does. Christine, is there anything else you would like to share? 

[00:22:04] Dr. Christine Li: First of all, thank you again, Kristina, for your kindness and your friendship, and for inviting me back. I'm really grateful for this opportunity, and I just wanna give a note of encouragement to all of listeners that I really feel we're in this somewhat awkward period post covid, where we're not quite done with it, but everybody's trying to get their legs and businesses back up to speed. So really always be kind to yourself. I really do feel that is a core piece of doing well. In general, whether it be about your business or running your family or being in your community or being yourself without that kindness to yourself, everything's just a little bit harder and we don't need any of that.

[00:22:50] Kristina Stubblefield: Very good point. We all seem to always put clients first, but without your own wellbeing, how good can you show up for your clients, whether you're a wedding professional or another type of business? Absolutely Christine, I couldn't have said it any better. So thank you very much for joining. Thanks everyone for listening. Christine knows she always has a standing opening to be a guest anytime on my podcast. So thanks, Christine. 

[00:23:20] Dr. Christine Li: Thanks Kristina. 

[00:23:21] Kristina Stubblefield: And for everyone out there, take care and keep working on your business.