Wedo Planner’s Journey: Learnings So Far
I would like to reintroduce myself to the world….
Hi, I’m Laurine Magaye and I am the founder of Wedo Planner, which is a CRM designed specifically for wedding professionals to boost their productivity and streamline the way they manage their business.
Wedo Planner is my baby, and I have spent 1 year and 4 months working on her. It has taken me 2+ years of steady development to get to this point with Wedo Planner’s journey. The journey has seen two name changes and a pivot, all while juggling being a founder with personal and family responsibilities. I will go into more detail in future blog posts (please look out for that!)
Since the beginning of the year, I truly desired to show up to the world authentically. “What does that look like?” Is the question I’ve been asking myself since.
When we speak of having a personal brand, I always hear:
“Be authentic”.
“Show your personality”.
“Be yourself”.
“Stop hiding yourself”.
“We want to see your face”.
But then I’ve also been met with people saying:
“Stop being so cringe”.
“Why is she doing that?”
“She doesn’t know what she is talking about”.
“Why her?”
I have heard it all.
But this is part of the journey of building something new. Being questioned, challenged or even laughed at is part of the deal when daring to do something new and out of the box.
Having said that, I am looking forward to the next stage of product development for Wedo Planner.
wedo planner’s journey Lesson #1: Showing Up
Before I turned 30, I understood that showing up authentically really means being courageous enough to align your words with your actions. No matter the rooms you find yourself in.
It is more about showing up as you instead of moulding yourself to who people expect you to be. In theory, this sounds easy. But in reality, this is uncomfortable, unnerving and at times scary.
By aligning the type of person I am (ambivert) with Wedo Planner, I thought it would be “on brand” to move forward with Wedo Planner as a faceless brand, and to some extent, this worked for some time. This worked particularly well, especially when selling my initial products on Etsy and Tiktok.
It was somewhat easier to have a faceless brand when selling digital products, but it is a completely different ball game if you are trying to build and sell software as a service. As I have learnt!
The difficulty is the juxtaposition of showing up as who you are now, whilst trying to embody who you want to be known as in the future.
Sometimes these are two different people. Whilst I always allow room for personal growth, I can confidently say that the person I show up as today is the person I want to be known as in the next 5 years.
wedo planner’s journey Lesson #2: Knowing When To Act Now And When To Act Later
On the journey of entrepreneurship, we are inundated with advice from well-seasoned business people, which is a privilege. But, I think the true beauty of entrepreneurship is discerning the advice to action NOW, with the advice to action at a later time along your journey.
What Is Next For Wedo Planner?
CRM is such an amazing and powerful tool for businesses that are ready to work as efficiently as possible for their current and future clients.
Nonetheless, we are moving forward with the next product development phase for Wedo Planner. This is an exciting time, as it means new features and a better user experience. All while being prepared to adjust should there be any unforeseen changes to the market or shift in consumer preferences.
Please look out for the next blog post, ‘What Would A Recession Mean For The Wedding Industry?’, where I will take a deep dive into what would happen should the UK enter a recession. What would that mean for Wedo Planner?
Conclusion
Ultimately, there is no blueprint to being successful, and the journey is all but linear, but showing up authentically definitely has a positive ripple effect, because if you do not show up to tell your story correctly, others will do this for you incorrectly!
So, please follow me on my personal journey to build the best CRM for wedding and event professionals. Please follow and subscribe to me on my new social media channels Tiktok and YouTube.
