Meet Your Host
Welcome - I'm so happy you're here!
Hey! I’m Heidi Thompson and I'm the host of Book More Weddings Summit, Wedding Business CEO Summit, and The Wedding Business Collective. I help wedding professionals build 6 figure businesses without working all the time.
I’m a business strategist and marketing geek as well as the host of The Evolve Your Wedding Business Podcast and best-selling author of Clone Your Best Clients but you won’t find any overcomplicated marketing gobbledygook around here. I don’t know about you but I love making things easier and more effective. That’s what you can expect from the Book More Weddings Summit.
Growing a wedding business can be overwhelming, stressful and it can swallow your social life whole…BUT it doesn’t have to be that way and I’m on a mission to help wedding pros like you grow their businesses without killing themselves. Your business should give you the freedom to do what you love and the freedom to have a life doing the other things that matter to you.
I created this summit to help you to book more weddings so that you can grow your business, become more profitable, and know exactly what you need to do to attract your ideal clients to you instead of chasing after them.
Amanda Shuman
Make Your Website Stand Out And Book
Amanda Shuman is a brand designer and marketing strategist specializing in the wedding & creative industries. As the founder of Carrylove Designs, she's helped hundreds of creative service-based businesses reach six figures and beyond through intentional branding. Her marketing efforts have helped her clients change their lives by quitting their full-time jobs to pursue their passions, buying the homes of their dreams, and scaling their teams.
She is passionate about design and believes pairing a beautiful brand aesthetic with an intentional website strategy is the cornerstone for success and booking clients effortlessly.
As a native Texan, she enjoys warm days with a cold drink in hand while exploring new places with her husband and their two kids.
Amber Anderson
The Power Of Working With A Wedding Planner
After a decade in weddings and events, Amber Anderson, founder of Heavenly Day Events in Austin, Texas, pivoted her career into coaching others. As the host of Refine for Wedding Planners, Amber desires to coach and mentor planners via the largest Facebook group exclusively for wedding planners by offering a course, retreat, membership, podcast, and templates!
Amber is known for having radical honesty, often saying what most people are thinking but won’t say, striving to elevate the industry one conversation at a time.
Anja Winikka
How Gen-Z Is Shaping The Future Wedding World
After spending 15 years as director of marketing and education for The Knot, Anja Winikka co-founded Maroo, a free payments platform that helps wedding businesses simply and seamlessly request payments from clients and get paid within one business day.
During her professional career in the wedding industry, Anja has shared her insights and expertise with readers and viewers of The New York Times, The Today Show, Good Morning America, The Washington Post, CNN, and more. While serving as a marketer, content creator, PR strategist, and spokesperson for The Knot, Anja gave numerous presentations on Millennial and Gen Z consumer insights and trends, social media strategies, and brand-building blocks for wedding business owners, regularly appearing as a speaker on stages across the country and internationally. In 2019, Anja was named “The Knot’s Chief Innovator” by AdWeek for her work with small business professionals.
Ashley Ebert
Booking Weddings And Selling Your Team
When Ashley started her wedding planning company, The Simply Elegant Group, she was a one-woman operation. She never dreamed that years later, she would grow the business to one of the largest planning companies in the country with a team of over 40 employees and over 4 million dollars in sales.
As a natural-born connector, she now gets to share what she has learned about leadership and team development through her company The Abundance Group.
Her mission is to help over 15,000 creative entrepreneurs to build their dream businesses by building their teams!
Becca Pountney
How To Convert At A Wedding Expo!
Becca Pountney is one of the UK's leading wedding industry experts as well as an international speaker and podcaster. Using her experience from owning her own wedding business combined with her previous career in media working for Endemol, BBC and Heart Radio, Becca now teaches business owners how to go from feeling invisible to totally irresistible in their business in her clear, down to earth, practical style.
Becca is no stranger to the events industry having built an award winning wedding blog and consultancy business from the ground up in 2016.
Becca is known for transforming the fortunes of businesses within the highly competitive events sector and has worked with over 1000 businesses through her courses, membership and speaking.
Becca’s mission is to inspire events professionals that it is possible to turn their passion into a profitable business doing what they love.
Bethel Nathan
Love Them Or Hate Them: How To Make Reviews Work For You
Bethel Nathan is an award-winning officiant and knows how to build and run a successful wedding industry business, having married over 1100 couples and accrued over 450 5-star reviews over the past 13 years. Combining her background in large Wall Street investment banks and in small business, along with her passion and skillset, Bethel focused on her ideal couple and having a rave-worthy customer experience. Bethel also enjoys helping other wedding industry businesses grow and prosper as a business coach, speaker, and WeddingPro Educator.
Bethel has a BA degree in Political Science and Japanese from UC Berkeley, and an MBA in International Business from Thunderbird. She is a former board member of the San Diego Women’s Foundation and Komen for the Cure San Diego. Bethel has lived in Japan (three times), London, and New York, and traveled extensively around the world. She now lives in San Diego with her husband, Jason, and they enjoy traveling scuba diving, and wildlife.
Bianca Nichole
How To Repurpose Content For Instagram
Bianca is a full-time business owner and Wedding Planner in Austin, TX. While building her wedding business, she quickly realized how little information there was for marketing your wedding business and specifically how to use Instagram for your wedding business. But in her first year of business, she booked over $18,000 from Instagram leads. As Instagram has continually been the second-highest referral source in her wedding business, she has found a passion for helping other wedding pros do the same.
Bianca is a self-proclaimed workaholic but she is also a wife, dog mom, and new mom to a one-year-old daughter. When she's not working, she enjoys a glass of wine or a good margarita, binging Netflix, or spending a night in with friends playing board games.
Bobbi Brinkman
Why A Bet On Yourself Mindset Is A Powerful Strategy For Your Business Growth
Storytelling photographer, speaker, Diet Mt. Dew addict & coach for industry go-getters, Bobbi Brinkman has spent 40 years capturing authentic moments for fabbo couples & is equally passionate about working with creative entrepreneurs empowering them to shift their mindset, step into their purpose & build a profitable, purposeful + inclusive business they deserve while living their most authentic life.
Whether motivating on a stage or 1:1 Fabbo-Chats, Bobbi's ""you're meant for this"" approach inspires wedding pros to serve with intention, build a CEO mindset, crush their fears & lead confidently.
She believes every wedding pro deserves a seat at the table for who they are & the fabbo they bring.
Her mantra is BE FABBO, meaning to use your why + gifts to serve with kindness + authenticity + heart forward encompasses her overall BE MORE philosophy …be more curious, caring & braver than you think.
Bobbi & her wife, Tina share space in their Sassy Shorkiepoo Ellie Joy's world with a Diet Mt. Dew
Carissa Kruse
Packages And Pricing Built For Profit + An Alternative To Offering Discounts
Carissa Kruse is a Wedding Business Strategist and serial entrepreneur who has been in the wedding industry for over 10 years and has built multiple businesses + founder of Weddings By Carue (a multi-state and multi-service wedding business). She has coached hundreds of entrepreneurs through launching and scaling their business with strategy and funnels.
She is firmly anti-hustle and teaches her clients to build sustainable wedding businesses with a long-term vision that doesn't rely on 24/7 posting or flash in the pan strategies.
When she's not shooting a wedding or crafting her latest marketing funnel, you'll find her chasing after her three Irish setters and eighteen chickens, tackling her next baking project, or watching Shark Tank or Hallmark Movie.
Carissa Woo
Mastering The Dreaded Sales Call
Carissa Woo, founder of Carissa Woo Photography and Heck Yes Media, is a business and sales coach who helps wedding photographers grow their business to six figures. As an award-winning wedding photographer with over 13 years under her belt, Carissa has developed and is ready to share her signature framework which guarantees constant leads while her proprietary sales call formula is proven to close the client within 24 hours. She is a hopeless romantic and is excited to work with those who share the same sentiment about weddings and love stories.
Carissa has a podcast for wedding pros called Get a Heck Yes with Carissa Woo. It's all about getting a heck yes from your dream clients and much more.
Halima Hanemann
Networking Doesn't Have To Be Scary
Halima has been a wedding planner for over 10 years. She is a Honeybook educator, wedding business coach, and the founder of Lively Wed Academy. During her years as a wedding business owner, she took her business from zero weddings booked to a fully booked business in less than 12 months. During that same time, she created a proven sales framework that became the foundation of her business. She uses that framework to help wedding planners make 6 figures in their business without slimy sales tactics, or spending a ton of money on advertising.
When she’s not planning weddings or teaching wedding planners, you can find her sipping a margarita, at the river with her 7 and 4 year olds, or binge-watching the latest Netflix series.
Jody-Ann Rowe
YouTube For Wedding Pros: How To Book More Couples Using Video
Jody-Ann is the Founder & CEO of The Event Certificate and EventPlanningTemplates.com. She is an Online Marketing Strategist, who specializes in lead generation for event pros.
An Event Planner, Educator, and new mom, she understands the importance of being able to build a business without having to put your life on hold.
After 15 years as a Corporate Event Planner for one of Canada's largest universities, and operating her own event planning business, Jody-Ann now helps small business owners effectively market their business online, so they can make a living doing what they love, without feeling overwhelmed by their marketing.
A Jamaican-born, Canadian-packaged, YouTuber and mango lover, her happiest days are spent behind the computer screen sharing her secrets for creating an efficient and profitable event planning business.
Jordan Kentris
Key Strategies To Reach Today’s Couples On Any Device
Jordan is a user experience designer, stationery designer, and brand architect. He brings over 15 years of experience from the advertising industry to his business, supporting both couples and brands to create meaningful and impactful events. His love of colour, pattern, and texture is woven throughout all creative outputs and can often be seen listening to music while jumping between client and personal projects. Jordan has been married for 12 years to his amazing husband and together they share 2 dogs, Buddha and Raven.
Julie Roth Novack & Pamela Rothbard
Accelerating Your Event Brand’s Digital Growth With SEO
Julie:
Julie is the CEO and Co-Founder of PartySlate, a photo-rich website that connects people who are planning events of all kinds with leading event planners, venues, and vendors. With over 20 years of digital marketing experience with some of the biggest brands in the world, Julie has brought all of her expertise to the events industry.
Since founding PartySlate in 2016, over 20,000 of the country’s top event professionals and venues have uploaded over 1 million event photos to best-in-class beautiful content-rich profiles. PartySlate has become a driving force in the industry allowing event professionals to share not only weddings but also corporate events, mitzvahs, galas, and milestone events.
Julie is committed to helping event professionals become better digital marketers and hosted over 50 free webinars during the pandemic on topics from SEO to website best practices, Instagram to email marketing.
Pamela:
As PartySlate’s Director of Editorial, Pamela oversees the direction, elevated tone, and production of PartySlate’s content. Her extensive experience using search engine optimization (SEO) to plan features that attract consumer attention as well as increase traffic and conversion position her as a leader in the content space.
Pamela loves predicting and sharing event ideas and trends for weddings, corporate events, milestone celebrations, and galas.
Karen Gordon
Helpers v Hustlers: Shifting Your Mindset Around "Selling" To Book More Business
Karen Gordon has spent her career growing both event and technology companies through consultative sales and strategic growth strategies. She’s developed client and brand experiences for companies such as LivingSocial and Surprise Ride (as seen on Shark Tank). Now, as the Senior Vice President at Goodshuffle Pro, she combines her love of both events and technology to drive the company’s growth in revolutionizing the event rental, design, and production industries with modern technology.
She was the NACE National Business Development Committee Chair for 2019 and 2020 and speaks nationally about events, event tech, and business strategy.
When she isn't speaking professionally, though, her favorite topics are travel plans, cult documentaries, and cheese board tips (currently taking recommendations for all 3!)
Kelly Mortimer
The Easy Way To Attract Higher Budget Couples Right Now!
Kelly Mortimer is the UK's #1 Wedding Industry Trainer. Creator of the Easy to Buy Method, The Next Level, The Wedding Sales Success program, and more.
Helping Wedding Businesses to book more weddings and serve more of the couples they love. While growing their revenue and attracting higher budget weddings.
With 20 years in Events & Weddings. Working on events for The Queen, and celebrities and having worked all over the world from Asia to the Caribbean and Europe. Kelly spent 10 years in destination weddings followed by an incredible career in the luxury market in London which included: Mandarin Oriental, Claridge’s, and being on the opening team at Rosewood London.
Before starting her company Kelly was Group Wedding Sales Director for 45 UK hotels and was responsible for a team of 50 wedding planners. The result of her strategy? Increasing wedding revenue across the group by £multi-millions.
Today Kelly works all over the world with global household brands
Laura Canham
How To Use Instagram Stories To Make More Sales
Laura is a wedding officiant, wedding business coach, and founder of the Love Biz Academy.
A self-confessed lover of bad 90’s music, trash TV, coffee, and cocktails, she is originally from the UK and now lives in Perth, Australia with her hubby and two kiddos under 2!!
After building her business as a wedding officiant alongside her corporate day job back in 2018, she chose to ditch the 9-5 when she became a momma for the first time and instead, went all in creating a thriving 6-figure business.
After facing the struggles of starting and growing a business alone, Laura created the Love Biz Academy to support other wedding pros to pursue their passion and build the business of their dreams (with far less stress, wasted time, money, and WTF moments than she had!)
The Love Biz Academy is now Australia's fastest growing community of wedding creatives and home to a consistently sold out business course and mastermind program.
Maria Bayer
Advanced Selling Strategies: Take Your Sales To Multi 6-Figures
Maria Bayer is a sales & mindset strategist, coach, speaker & wealth builder with $25M in sales under her belt. She is the creator of Irresistible Selling – a transformational program that helps wedding business owners 2-10x their sales, book high-end clients and become respected industry leaders.
Maria teaches strategic sales and mindset strategies that helped her triple her income in less than a year, and go on to book over $25 Million in sales from companies like Target, Best Buy, Ulta, Office Max and Hyatt. Maria hosts a private Facebook Mastermind group of talented wedding business owners called Learn Collaborate Flourish. She is a national speaker, author, and her articles and podcast interviews have been featured throughout the creative industry. Maria holds a Bachelor’s degree in Finance from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and currently resides in Phoenix with her husband, Tim, and fur-baby, Jessie.
Mark Chapman
Use Google Ads To Reach & Convert The Right Couples
Mark Chapman is the wedding industry's leader in paid advertising on Google, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
He is a total data nerd and has managed over $20 million in advertising for all types of businesses in the wedding industry - venues, bridal stores, wedding shows, etc.
He also loves the outdoors. On his lunch breaks, evenings, and weekends you can find him snowboarding, hiking, or enjoying one of the many adventurous activities in his hometown of Mammoth Lakes, CA where he lives with his partner, Jaime, and their rescue cat, Magellan.
Nina Addeo
How To Establish Experience When You're Just Getting Started
Nina Addeo is a Social Media Specialist for the Wedding Industry. As the owner of I Do Wedding Marketing, a Social Media Marketing agency for Wedding Professionals, Nina has mastered digital marketing techniques specific for the Wedding Industry.
When Nina is not posting about Weddings, thinking about Weddings or attending Weddings, she is reading, on YouTube or spending time with her husband and their tuxedo cat.
Nina is also the host of the I Do Wedding Marketing Podcast, offering free tips, direction and interviews for wedding professionals.
Nora Sheils
Balancing Multiple Brands With Ease
With over 20 years running award-winning planning firm, Bridal Bliss, founder Nora Sheils possesses an intimate grasp on the ins and outs of the wedding industry. In her time working with countless couples and leading a team of 30+ women, she recognized a need for a more effective, streamlined approach to the often-daunting contract and invoice process. Thus, in 2018, Rock Paper Coin was born in partnership with her sister-in-law, Elizabeth, and the two have been committed to bringing together event professionals and couples ever since.
Nora’s industry experience has led her to become a thought leader in the way of project management, operational efficiency, business expansion, and team dynamics. Her expertise extends to event professionals who discover increased productivity through Rock Paper Coin, as well as those who hear her speak onstage.
Sara Dunn
Strategic Blogging To Drive Sales
Sara Dunn is a Wedding SEO Specialist for wedding planners, photographers, venues, and other wedding professionals who want their websites to rank higher on Google.
With a knack for making SEO easy to understand, she’s created a unique Wedding SEO Framework that simplifies what it takes to get your wedding business in front of your dream clients.
Sara has been featured by Honeybook, Special Events, and NACE. She was named a WeddingPro educator for 2022 and has presented to audiences including WeddingPro, WIPA, Wedding MBA, and Two Bright Lights.
Each year, her framework helps over 200,000 searchers find the wedding pros and advice they’re looking for. If you’re ready to reach rockstar status on Google, Sara’s ready to be your geeky best friend that shows you how it’s done.
Go to SaraDoesSEO.com to learn more.
Shannon Vondy
How To Use Email To Enhance Your Client Experience
Shannon Vondy is a 12 year wedding photographer who sent one email to her list and made $2600! Realizing the power of email, she decided to start helping other business owners use email to make more money with done for you email services, email strategy and email templates!
Shannon also offers coaching for wedding vendors who want to book better clients and run more successful, profitable wedding businesses!
When she's not emailing or coaching you can usually find her binging Netflix with her cute hubby while snuggled up with their rescue huskies, Jon Snow and Betty White.
Heidi Thompson
4 Keys To A Money-Making Marketing Plan
Why You're Getting Ghosted
3 Big Website Mistakes That Are Costing You Bookings
How Doing Less In Your Marketing Will Help You Book More Weddings
Heidi Thompson is the best-selling author of Clone Your Best Clients and the founder of Evolve Your Wedding Business where she specializes in business and marketing strategy for wedding professionals. She helps wedding professionals build 6 figure businesses without working all the time.
Her business & marketing expertise has been featured on several wedding and business outlets including The Huffington Post, Social Media Examiner, Wedding Business Magazine, Sprouting Photographer, Photo Biz Xposed, Honeybook, WeddingWire World & she’s an advisory board member for the UK Academy Of Wedding & Event Planning.
