Mel is struggling with mapping out her pricing as a celebrant, and when she mentioned it to me I went straight to a conversation I had with my brother earlier today. He’s looking at starting a new business based on professional skills he holds, and he was looking for some guidance walking into the project. So I’ll tell you what I told him, then give you ten good reasons why you should charge more.
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Krystal asks: “I seek perhaps some advice on how I continue to be “out there” without sailing into the boring seas or moving into sharing content on social media that isn’t relevant. Maybe I need to be patient with the process, once my first wedding is over and I’ll feed my future marketing off that.”
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After a six month break from podcasting because our world’s got crazy and busy, we talk...
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To my fellow celebrants, I have a proposal regarding the one month notice period, and I’d like to run it up your flagpole, so to speak, and then take it to the Australian parliament: that the one month notice period required by the Marriage Act, be reduce to one week.
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One year ago today Sarah Aird took over the reins of Life Skills Training, and this year we relaunched as the Celebrant Institute RTO with the contract to provide ongoing professional development for Australian civil celebrants, alongside the Certificate IV in Celebrancy, the cornerstone qualification required to become a celebrant.
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After posting a guide on making sure you and your business is prepared if and when the Facebook ban hammer falls on you, the Facebook ban hammer fell on us.
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Your Facebook page, Instagram page, Google My Business account, your LinkedIn, and god forbid any of you have a Parler account, but they’re all not your property. Running your business on the back of those properties is like going to your local cafe and setting up shop at a table. Putting up a little sign with Married By John Citizen on it, and accepting meetings and enquiries there. It might be ok for the longest period of time (thanks for hosting me, Sisterhood Coffee), but at any time that business owner can ask you to leave and not come back.
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If you’ve read your emails from the AGD recently, or heard rumours around the ol’ celebrancy water cooler, you might be a little confused about what is happening with ongoing professional development in 2021.
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A friend asks me today what the quickest way is to complete the Cert IV in Celebrancy, the qualification needed to become a celebrant in Australia. Friends of my friend reckon she’d be a great celebrant and they’d like her to marry them.
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You've reached one of our members-only articles. Celebrant Institute members get access to read...
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A celebrant has written in to the Celebrant Institute asking the question: “How can I, and should I, accept crypto currency for celebrancy?”
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I recently spoke via video at the Wedding Business CEO Summit and spoke on the process of creating a customer journey. My talk was called There’s A Fraction Too Much Friction: Automation For Your Customer Journey. I believe this is an important and valuable topic for all wedding business people to get in their life, and I’m so glad I get to share it with Celebrant Institute members.
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First Australians have been marrying for thousands of years on the land we now call Australia. Terra Australis, the southern land, was home to people well before the Dutch or the British “discovered” it, so as much as Australian law requires us to identify that we the celebrants are authorised to marry people according to Australian law, common decency would see us acknowledge the truth of the land we stand on to create ceremony.
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“I’ve a question about that first meeting – I’ve met a few couples, tried coming from different angles ie. Asking what they have in mind for their ceremony, how they met, build rapport, let them talk or I do most of the talking – introducing myself and how I help them with my process and system. Have not sealed the deal. What do you recommend as discussion points for the first meeting, for high chances of booking soon after?”
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Google, in light of legislation being introduced in Australia, has threatened to pull out of the Australian market. I’m sure they won’t, if only because they won’t walk away and leave $59 billion of income on the table and destroy the trust in their brand over a couple of dollars being paid to news organisations.
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Social media, and humanity in general, can become a little bit self-indulgent at times. It’s our tribal, animalistic nature, to look after one’s self first. But something beautiful happens when you turn the camera away from yourself, when you shift the spotlight onto someone else.
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Your challenge today is to create an entertaining meme. Not an educational meme, or an instructional meme, or a demonstratable meme. Today we meme for fun.
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Today’s challenge is a little more casual after some intense training days, and it’s about Quora.
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Today your challenge is to write non-stop for five minutes.
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In the beginning there was the text, and the text was good. It was all we knew. We called it ASCII, ASCII codes represent text in computers. When I first used a personal computer in 1991 “computer graphics” were mostly just text in the shape of graphics, like this was a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. And despite us inventing all of the great technologies that allow us to view videos, blogs, photos, and the rest online, in today’s challenge, we’re sticking with the original: text.
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For almost the past three years an iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil has been my computer that left the home. I’d always loved a Mac but I predominantly left that at my desk and if I left the office for a marriage ceremony, a meeting, a photoshoot or for travel, I would take my iPad Pro.
I’ve written the story of how that’s no longer the case on my personal blog. It’s a two parter, the first part is introducing a new Apple Silicon Macbook Air which replaces my previous MacBook in speed and power, along with replacing my iPad Pro’s portability, responsiveness, and ability to run iOS apps.
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Here’s a chart that tells a story about my business. Before you read on or scroll, what story do you think it’s telling?
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Today you get a rare and direct peek into my brain. This next diagram explains how I think about content.
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David Placek is the branding genius behind some of the biggest names in the technology world. The words Sonos, Intel Pentium, Apple PowerBook, Blackberry, Gimlet podcasts (home of Reply All), and the Impossible burger, all came from David’s branding company, Lexicon Branding. In 2014 Placek released a book which I’d love to read – but can’t find for purchase. Luckily for me, and for you, Om Malik recapped the book in his blog recently.
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We’re on the home stretch in this social media challenge, and you guys are absolutely nailing the challenge to the wall, good work!
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Many governments are requiring people running events to collect data about who attends the event using QR codes and web forms. Your legal responsibilities regarding COVID and COVIDSafe plans are your responsibility and this article in no way communicates what you must do regarding COVID and any safety plans. But if you need to collect data about people attending a wedding or funeral you are attending, this is a quick and easy way of doing it safely and responsibly.
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I started this little streak of content prompts highlighting the fact that there five different kinds of good content. This is the fifth: demonstratable content.
Read MoreToday’s challenge, once more without stipulation of network or medium, is to entertain us.
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Today’s challenge is to mentally stimulate us, to make us feel something, something creative,...
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Good morning students! Today you’re all teachers and we’re taking your audience back to school.
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