Good afternoon 🙂
Regulars may recall that back in November last year, I published this blog post in the search for an Intern. The appointment of an Intern was always going to be very much a two-way process for me; I didn't just want my Intern to come on board to help support and assist me, it was and always will be vitally important to me that they learned something of real value during their experience, that they are exposed to a part of this industry that might otherwise be unreachable, that they ended their Internship {sob, the thought!} feeling they have really gained something of value in terms of personal and, well, hopefully career development! So, before I go on and yak about how much I didn't realise just how important the role of an Intern was going to turn out to be, I'd like to actually introduce you to my rather fabulous new team member.
I think some of you may recognise her.
Say hello to Franky…
Love My Dress Wedding Blog – Photography Copyright (c) 2012, Eliza Claire
**Please excuse me whilst I have a moment to literally explode with excitement!**
Franky has been with me almost from the start, checking in to Love My Dress on a daily basis to gather inspiration for her nuptials which featured on my blog last month. Indeed, due to a rather fortunate turn of events following this call out to professional wedding photographers, I ended up actually being present at Franky's wedding, shadowing Photographer Eliza Claire as she did her thing with an expensive Nikon.
And I cried. No, I mean I really blarted like a baby – ask The Wedding Reporter, she was there too.
Franky is everything I could ever have hoped for in an Intern. She is smart {just graduated only last month with an MA in English}, dedicated {she writes her own fabulous blog and achieved said MA in English whilst raising two beautiful children}, sweet, kind funny and she is the epitome of a 'Love My Dress' type of bride; a sassy lady with a penchant for all things glamorous. That includes red lipstick and ridiculously high heels – sparkly ones…
An extract from Franky's Intern application…..
"My reasons for applying for the role of intern are simple really. First, I adore writing. It's my dream to be able to one day make a living from it. I am happiest when I'm putting sentences together and finding the right vocabulary to express what's in my head. That's why blogging has been my favourite hobby for almost 3 years.
Second, I love immersing myself in everything wedding! Of course, I had no idea this was the case until I found myself planning my own! Stumbling across Love My Dress as a newly engaged woman was like a lightbulb moment for me. The brand you have created on the pages of this blog spoke to me in a way that no other website or wedding magazine had. Among the words and pictures on the screen, I suddenly found the wedding I didn't know I wanted. I went from a bride-to-be without a clue to a woman with a fairly clear image of how I could turn our wedding into something that reflected us as a couple.
Love My Dress has played such a defining role in our wedding plans, and I would love to be able to play some part, however small, in the plans of other couples…"
And lovely Franky's response to her new appointment…
"I feel very, very honoured, and incredibly excited, to have been appointed as the new Love My Dress intern. Annabel's blog played an enormous role in the planning of our own wedding that took place in January this year, so much so that I suspect we should have credited her on the order of service! Not only did my daily visits to the pages of Love My Dress aid us in selecting many of our key wedding suppliers, they also provided me with a wealth of stunning inspiration that helped give me the confidence to be the sort of bride I envisaged, and create the sort of wedding we really wanted.
Almost two months have passed since our own nuptials, and my obsession for weddings, and all the love and beauty they involve, shows no sign of dissipating! I hope that in my role as the Love My Dress intern, I can use this new-found passion to help other fledgling brides, and perhaps even play a small part in inspiring their day as much as Annabel did mine…"
To be honest, the term 'Intern' is rather a misnomer on this occasion. Franky is going to be rather a lot more than that…
Some of you may be aware that towards the end of last year, I took on administrative support in the form of the rather marvellous Emma Woodhouse, aka, The Wedding Reporter. Emma has been an utter god-send, like a great big comfortable life boat with sparkly bits and cushions and a cozy duvet, in amidst a sea of emails and submissions within which I was treading water. Only I was seriously beginning to flag.
But Emma's genius 'The Wedding Reporter' business is taking off to such an extent, that she needs to go and nurture her brilliant business idea and focus on taking her services on to the next level of business development. Rather than leave a gaping hole in my customer service and administrative needs, Emma happened to suggest it might be a good idea to ask if Franky would like to also become my 'Admin Angel'.
And what do you know? Several emails and chats later, I have myself a brand new Intern and Admin Angel all round into one, and I really couldn't be more delighted with this.
Franky will be fielding all my submissions {more on those in a bit} from here on and helping me keep on top of my inbox. She will be contributing features to Love My Dress and helping 'behind-the-scenes' too. She will also be representing me at events I'm unable to attend and assisting me with a number of projects I have on the go, including the Oxfam Photoshoot taking place in London next Friday {you can follow the hashtag #OxfamWeddingShoot on Twitter to keep up with all the excitement!}.
Franky, I am so completely delighted that you are coming on board and working with you on taking Love My Dress on to the next level.
Just a quick note to all the wonderful ladies who applied for an Internship. I've managed to find time to email around half of you back already, but everyone else, I'm very sorry I've not been able to make contact with you yet – I hope to have done so by the end of tommorrow. You are all so very wonderful and I cannot thank you enough for having expressed such a big interest in working with me.
So I mentioned earlier that what I didn't realise at the time of advertising for an Intern was quite how much support I actually needed in managing the daily demands of my business, and seeing to the requirements of managing my blog. Or actually, may be I did.
I need to do some contextualising here…
After a few weeks of blogging, I recall getting really super excited when, by 4pm, my blog stats hit the dizzy heights of 400 page hits. WOW! 400 pages hits by 4pm. It had a kind of wonderful symmetry to it. I'd fantasise about getting 800 hits by 8pm and 900 hits by 9pm. Times were exciting. Never in a month of Sundays did I ever imagine that two years later, I'd be averaging at 15,000 to 17,000 page hits a day. Real busy days can attract nearer to 20,000 page hits {one day I had almost 21,000 hits}. My stats are rising *all* the time. More page hits = more visitors coming to Love My Dress for inspiration; photographers, industry representatives, but more importantly, real brides seeking inspiration for their own wedding day.
I know this for a fact; I have a special email folder within which I pop the email messages I receive on a weekly basis from brides who have got married and wanted to thank me for providing them with inspiration, for changing their perceptions about weddings and for encouraging them to have the kind of wedding they really want. Some of them ask for my postal address to send a card. It's confirmation that what I'm doing really is making a difference, and it's a wonderful endorsement for my business.
To further contextualise…
Love My Dress isn't just a wedding blog anymore, it's a brand, and a brand growing in size, reputation and influence across the UK wedding industry. There are things happening {which will all come clear in due course} outside the realms of these interweb pages that will extend the reach and appeal of brand Love My Dress too. Times are incredibly exciting and I couldn't be happier or more proud of what I, and all those people who have supported me and who contribute content to these pages have achieved in such a short space of time.
But here's the glitch. Love My Dress is now way beyond what I can ever hope to manage by myself, sat at home, blogging away to my hearts content. There is a whole new customer service' behemoth that I have created that I will openly admit I've struggled with over the past twelve months. Not that I've not delivered and always aimed to deliver the very best customer service that I can – it's just almost killed me in the process. I simply cannot manage the number of emails I receive on a daily basis, nor manage, by myself, the number of submissions that land in my inbox.
My reputation is absolutely everything to me. I know that the brides that read and draw inspiration from Love My Dress adore these pages – I have quite a following of smart, intelligent, style savvy brides and that really fills my heart with happiness and pride. But I also have a whole lotta customers, sponsors, and industry colleagues that I want to consider my blog, and indeed me as a business person, in as glowing a light as my bride readers do too. And on the whole, dare I say, I think they do, but I'm very aware that there are some areas of the way I manage my business that due to sheer human limitation, I've not quite nailed yet. My submissions process for example.
You have 132 new submissions to review. Today.
Ahhh, wedding submissions. I receive hundreds in a week. Literally. All manner and style and type of weddings. And thank goodness that I do. Without these brides and photographers submitting details of these wonderful weddings for me to consider featuring on Love My Dress, Love My Dress would absolutely not exist at all. Wedding submissions are a vital cog in the big wheel of success that is the Love My Dress wedding blog. So why haven't I established a truly robust submissions process yet that works for everyone – keeps no one waiting and means everyone involved in 'the process', from the bride, to the photographer and indeed myself is happy?
I guess the answer to that is that, well, I'm human. I've been trying to adjust to the amazing and entirely unexpected achievements of Love My Dress {whilst also trying to spare time for the odd nano-second of affection with my husband and children – and dogs!}, but there are only so many emails and submissions one can respond to on a timely basis before they actually need to get some sleep. And, I have to admit, some of the submissions I've received have not been managed entirely brilliantly.
For the record, I would like to make a very BIG public apology for this. There aren't many of you, I know that for an absolute fact. And I also know for a fact that since Emma came on board to support me with admin around November 2011, absolutely every single submission has received a response, be it yes or no, within 2-3 days. Every single one.
What I'm trying to get across here is that I'm not rude. I'm not ill mannered and it is definitely not my style to ignore people or keep photographers and brides waiting forever for their feature to appear, but I do admit on a few occasions this has happened, and I am very, very sorry for that. I'd hate for anyone to think badly of me because of the struggle I've had managing my submission numbers, so please, if you have been waiting more than 2 weeks for either a response to your submission, or, if you have been waiting for your submission to be blogged, please drop me a line with the subject header 'Outstanding Submission Query' to [email protected] and I give you my word I will look into this immediately.
On the plus side, this has happened because Love My Dress is so popular and has become such a big success. And that can't be a bad thing.
I am spending next Wednesday with Franky to go over a number of things and top of the agenda is my submissions process. I'd like Franky to have the opportunity to share her ideas on how I can improve the process as a whole and once we have established new systems, I will alert you all via the blog. I do intend on having new systems to streamline my submissions and publications process in place within the next two weeks.
Oh Franky, darling, do you know what you've let yourself in for?
'She's always on Twitter but never replies to my emails!'
I wanted to add a note to this post about Twitter. I tweet a lot. I enjoy tweeting and it's a vitally important part of my role to engage socially via a platform that drives swarms of traffic to my blog.
Twitter is often very much a passive-engagement thing for me – of course I'll really knuckle in at times and love the banter and the amazing new contacts and opportunities that arise out of me delving in to tweetdeck and observing social commentary from those I follow. But a lot of the time, I am simply dipping in and out, tweeting betwixt the millions of emails I'm sending out, or blog post I'm editing, or photoshoot I'm trying to help organise. This means:-
♥ Sometimes I miss stuff. Please don't be offended if I don't respond to your tweet. It's not me being rude or ignorant! Twitter is the most awful paranoia inducer at times…
♥ Just because you see lots of tweets, I'm not being rude and ignoring your email. If I've not replied, it will be because I've not seen it yet.
With Franky coming on board as Intern, my response times to emails will no doubt vastly improve and reduce my inbox to something of a more acceptable view first thing in the morning. If you've ever thought to yourself 'she's always on Twitter and never replies to my emails!', please hang in there. I promise you things are going to get much better. I am going to nail this inbox situation with Franky's support, and nothing is going to get in my way!
By the way, you can follow Love My Dress on Twitter here.
Time To Outsource & Delegate!
Anyone who has ever experienced rapid growth of their own small business will possibly know the place I'm at right now….
Hoooooooollld on a minute? It's invoice time? Sh*t! They should have gone out two weeks ago {curse those manual spreadsheet invoices}!! … but I've been too wrapped up in this photoshoot and trying to schedule a few blog posts in advance so that I can actually have a day off with the family and not feel like a total failure of a wife and Mother. Now the bank Manager is going to go nuts and I won't have the money to pay the bills and there are STILL 356 unread emails to get through and my sponsors are going to think I'm total rubbish……. I'M A WEDDING BLOGGER WITH A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS THAT HAS GROWN TOO FAST – GET. ME. OUTTA HERE!!!!
Looking back, I think I started to reach 'tipping point' {that point you recognise your business is growing and that you desperately need help taking it forward} was probably around August last year. I should have acted then. But I am a life-long loyal member of The Royal Society of Procrastinators. And a right royal mess I almost got myself into too, and would have done, had Emma of Wedding Reporter fame not come on board when she did.
I have another confession. When it comes to my blog, my baby, I am an absolute and utter control freak. The idea of passing passing over the responsibility of editing content made me feel sick.
Then January hit and my blog hits took a hike, and remained er, hiked, and I realised I no longer had a choice. It was time to outsource, save my customer service' reputation going right down the pan.
It's a scary thing, outsourcing. You're having to trust someone 100% that they'll do a great job and that they'll do it right (not really any opportunity to do it wrong here, with an audience of thousands!}. But sometimes, you must be brave, and take a god damn leap of faith in to the unknown. It's a bit like that moment before I picked up the phone to call my old boss and tell him I was leaving, or the time my finger was hovering over the send button with an email containing my very first media pack and invitation to sponsor Love My Dress. And I have learned from these past occasions that I can go with my heart, that I believe in myself, that more often than not, things just work out, but handing over some of the responsibility for running your own business really is a biggy. Please bear with me during the next couple of weeks as I deal with the 'transitional period' of handing over as best I can and focus on bringing Franky on board.
Business Lessons Learned…
It was an incredible 2011 for me. It's been an incredible 2012 so far. Each day brings something new and I never, ever stop learning.
The lastest big business lessons I've learned of late, and that I'd like to share, are:-
♥ If you're going to be a wedding blogger, set up an efficient submissions process and at the very first sign that you are not managing the volume of submissions being received – pay to get some help! Refine your submission procedure and make it water tight excellent. Ask your sponsors/photographers for feedback if it's not working out and use their suggestions to create something more efficient and effective that will streamline the entire process, from receipt of the submission to publication of a feature.
Two bright lights' is BRILLIANT. I wish more photographers would use it. I'm turning to it more and more to help me manage my submissions...
♥ Don't be upset if you receive some negative feedback about how you manage any aspect of your business. Use that feedback and do something positive with it. Ask yourself, did the person having a moan actually have a bit of a point? If so, do something about it! Share your issue with friends, brainstorm a solution. But whatever you do, use the feedback to make things better. Be honest with yourself and your situation, even if it feels a little painful and you'd rather not. It's the first BIG step you will achieve towards amending things – for good. And don't worry about how amazingly well other bloggers seem to be doing. Right now, the spotlight is on you, so prepare to shine bright.
♥ Form the moment you have even the slightest inkling things are getting too much to manage by yourself in day-to-day business management terms, seek support.
♥ Get a system up and running for issuing invoices in a timely fashion. Leaving it too late each month causes stress and doesn't reflect well from your clients point of view. My bank Manager told me this week that the biggest reason small business fail in their first year is due to cash flow issues caused more often by the rapid growth of the business and lack of time to issue invoices in a timely fashion. AVOID falling in to this trap at all costs. If you don't have time to invoice/see to that level of administration – pay someone else to do it. On that note, Franky, please add invoices to our agenda for next week!!
♥ Give yourself a break. Do as much as you can, as best as you can, but don't forget to have a bit of fun. Work hard, play hard, that's my motto.
♥ ♥ ♥
From the bottom of my blog-lovin' heart, I would like to thank everyone who has supported me and Love My Dress so far. I really hope that this post reassures any 'doubters' and any critics about my ability and commitment to run my business as efficiently as possibly {hopefully you guys are few in number!} and my absolute dedication to my readers and my clients/sponsors.
When I take a step back to reflect on everything that's happening in my world right now, it feels like I'm on the cusp of something really big. Something really exciting. Something wonderful. I can't wait to start working with Franky and develop Love My Dress into an even more inspirational resource than it already is. You aint seen nothin' yet 😉
If it takes your fancy, you can read more from my series on 'being self-employed' here. And you can read more about Franky via her wonderful 'LoveAudrey' blog.
I'd welcome all and any feedback on this post, and would also love to hear from fellow business owners on how they have handled rapid business growth and dealt with outsourcing etc.
Have a lovely afternoon folks 🙂
Annabel
♥
