All right, what do we got next? All right, next question is from Nathaniel. He asks, "How do I plan a wedding without drowning in minutia?" He goes on to explain that he's getting married in a month. Partner's amazing, but he's getting overloaded with minor details. Um, all right. Wedding planning.

I was very young when I got married, so I don't remember a lot of this. And our wedding was informal. I think I, based on some of the weddings I've been to recently, I now understand it as a more complicated procedure, uh, than it once was. So here's the, I would say the big point I would deliver here, Nathaniel, is that these vendors work for you.

You're paying them. So you have a lot of flexibility in setting the standards by which your interactions are going to happen. Most vendors are not productivity gurus. Right? So left to their default is going to be like, I don't know. I'm just going to shoot you off a text message or an email.

I have a bunch of clients. I'm just like, all day long. And you could get sucked into that. And then you're all day long. It would be the technical description of what it's like to fall into the hyperactive hive mind. I say, you should figure out, here's how I want to work with you.

Here's how I want to communicate, where we want to store information, how we deal with various types of interactions that will happen common in our relationship. Here's how it's going to work. Okay. I'm paying you. So you kind of have to say yes. And you can engineer these interactions to be much less ad hoc, much less haphazard and require much less on demand attention.

So for example, you might use dedicated email addresses, a dedicated address for the planning itself, or even multiple dedicated addresses for different aspects of the planning, wedding planning, office hours could be a critical idea. I have 30 minutes put aside every day. Maybe it's during your drive home. Right.

I don't know when it is. This is the time that you just keep every time one of these vendors is like, okay, we're not sure about, uh, like the lilies. We have a different type of purple. We're not sure if it's going to work or we need your, your, your, uh, approval and this or that you always just say until they have it.

Seared into their brain. Call me during, you know, four to four to four 30. You can always call me. Don't even bother emailing me about just call me then I'm always here. And you know what? They will love that. Vendors love just like any type of client. They really do love the clarity.

I know exactly how to get an answer. I don't have to send something out there and try to remember it. And is it going to be like all my other jerk clients and forget to respond to this? I can always just call Nathaniel. I always call him at four.

He's always there. There's 50 or 60% of your communication. Uh, agree on processes in advance. If like, this is what we're going to do. Okay. We're picking the flowers. Let's talk this through in our initial meeting. Like what's going to happen here. This'll happen. We'll have to see these samples.

We'll have to give you some approval. You're gonna build a sample thing. You'll have these questions. Figure out the whole process in advance and sit there and write it down. Here's how we're going to do it. By this date, you'll put this here. We have a conversation for a half hour here.

We'll deal with all of these things. Put the photos up here. I will, you figure out the whole process. It all goes onto your calendar. It's all written down. They see it. You see it. Not a single ounce of planning energy has to be further invested in this particular interaction.

You have it all figured out again. Vendors like clients in general want clarity more than they want. Like, oh, I can just reach you at any point. Reaching you at any point is not the big deal. The big deal is getting you to actually do stuff and not them have to not worry about it.

Clarity trumps accessibility. Finally, wedding planning is actually a good situation in which hiring a part-time assistant is worth it. It's a type of work where a part-time assistant is actually quite useful. It's like very specific. It doesn't require domain knowledge about like what you do for a living. You're spending, and this is looking at the official estimate of the average wedding budget of 2022, you're spending "all of your money" anyways.

So the cost of a few hundred dollars a month for the part-time assistant is nothing. And it could make a really big difference. Pay for a good one. It's worth it. And have them be the point of contact, like three or four of these vendors. You talk to them.

So if you can't get your vendors to call you at the same time, you have a half hour conversation every other day with your assistant. We're like, here's all the things going on. You're like, great. Here's my answer to this, my answer to that. For this one, get me a sample.

For this one, get on my calendar, you know, a meeting day. And the very last suggestion I would have, Nathaniel, is have a certain half day where this is when you do the meetings that have to happen. And you just build your work schedule around leaving, whatever, Friday noon to four clear.

So it's really easy when people like, all right, well, we got to call. We got to talk about this. He's like, yeah, just grab a time, use a calendar, have this time open in the same same period. Now, the reason why I'm going into sub steps about wedding planning, I need to qualify this so it doesn't get back to my wife.

And she's like, wait a second, what do you want to? Why are you thinking so much about wedding planning? The reason why I'm getting into this is because what I just went through there applies to many different professional relationships you might have in your life. Big conferences you're trying to organize.

A new client that you're trying to get on board, a new service you're offering, whatever. There's lots of professional situations in which a lot of haphazard ad hoc interactions going to have to happen to make it pull off. Do not in those situations just default to let's just rock and roll, man.

Here's my text message. I have WhatsApp going. I'll check email all the time. And let's just the don't do that. Take the time up front to be like, how are we going to structure these interactions and all the different types of things I just talked about and my suggestions for Nathaniel for wedding planning can apply to any number of other professional situations in which a complicated thing involving many different vendors or clients and peers, colleagues has to come together.

Structure it. Do not just rock and roll. Thank you.