Almost Nobody, wants you to be their celebrant and that is really good news.

Everybody, wants a celebrant that is nothing like you.

Everybody, is almost offended by the fact you even exist, let alone that you think they would even consider you for their wedding.

But Almost Nobody is over the moon that you would even consider taking their call. Almost Nobody will change their wedding date just so you can be their celebrant!

Everybody is a pain in the ass

Everybody is quite the picky person when it comes to choosing a marriage celebrant. If you’re male, Everybody wants a female. If you’re a female, they want a transgender person. If you’re a transgender person, Everybody is transphobic. If you provide a PA system Everybody doesn’t want you to supply one. If you don’t supply a PA system they want you to. You might write a custom ceremony for every single couple, but Everybody just wants the ceremony they found on Google. Everybody is quite painful as a customer aren’t they?

Synecdoche

A recent episode of Seth Godin’s podcast, Akimbo, titled Synecdoche, details this amazing word. Pronounced sin-ek-deck-eee, it is an important concept about using the part to describe the whole. It’s about the fact that Everybody barely exists outside of our imagination. Synecdoche is when we refer to the United States making a decision when it was actually the White House. But it wasn’t even the White House, it was a Presidential staffer just doing her job, but the rest of the world uses synecdoche in saying that the USA has made a decision.

Synecdoche is a fiction, but it helps us tell a story. Everybody is a synecdoche.

Everybody

If Everybody wanted you to be their celebrant you would find yourself in such a pickle. All of the emails, phone calls, and meetings. So many expectations, and even more than you could ever meet.

Everybody wanting you to be their celebrant would be an exercise in fatigue, depression, unhappiness in the work you are creating, and you’d lose that five star Google rating pretty quickly. Everybody will view you, your systems, your work, differently, some will think its a one star performance, some three, some five. You’ll be the world’s best three star celebrant before you know it and Everybody will be referring you to all their friends!

Coming to terms with Almost Nobody wanting you to be their celebrant is going to be the most soul fulfilling thing you do all week.

0.05% of the population is getting married this year

Realising that there are about 3.5 million weddings happening across the globe very year, and almost none of those people want you to marry them, is quite relieving. It’s like a weight being taken off your shoulders. 3.5 million couples is a pretty accurate description of Everybody, but each one of those couples has a different worldview, a different taste, different culture, beliefs, and families.

Everybody is 3.5 million couples but each one of those couples is Almost Nobody on the search for the wedding suppliers that suit their tastes perfectly. In Australia it’s about 130,000 couples. You don’t want Everybody. You desperately want Almost Nobody to book you.

Who is Almost Nobody

Airplane food

Writing this article I’m sitting on an international flight where I’ve just been handed a complimentary meat pie that would have to be the worst meat pie I’ve ever tasted. Seriously bad pie. The stale cold service station meat pie in the warmer at your local BP is better. The good news for Jetstar is that Everybody is ok with meat pies of this vintage. Everybody wants to fly internationally for less. Almost Nobody is willing to pay to fly business class on a full service airline, that’s why on a flight of more than one hundred people there are only twelve or so business class seats. Almost Nobody values the Qantas Business Class service, but that’s all Qantas needs to provide it. Business Class is quite inconvenient for Qantas to provide, but Almost Nobody will fly Qantas for the rest of their life because of it. Almost Nobody is evangelical about how good Qantas is because of the hard work Qantas puts into providing that service.

Coffee

If you’re a barista you have to realise that everybody will buy the $1 7-Eleven coffee, the coffee everybody is buying, but if everybody was in line at your coffee machine every morning you’d be in a wold of pain. Your work is to make not just ok coffee, not good coffee, not even great coffee, but exceptional coffee. Coffee that people will talk about. Coffee that people will bring other people to try. Coffee that people will blog about. Coffee that Almost Nobody wants to wait for, pay for, and drink. Almost Nobody will probably even pay more than you’re currently charging. That’s how much they want your coffee.

Pizza

The same applies to pizza. Dominos has the Everybody pizza market cornered. If you’re a pizza shop that is not Dominos Pizza then if you’re also pumping out average pizza, why would anyone else go to you? Dominos has better service, I can order online or in the app. I can pay with credit card and track the delivery driver. If you’re not Dominos, and I need to get cash out at an ATM, and I can’t track the driver in an app, why would I order average pizza from you?

If it’s going to be inconvenient for me, this pizza better be amazing. Pizza worth sharing on my instagram stories. Almost Nobody is looking for pizza this exceptional that they will put on pants and leave the house to go and pick it up.

Photographers

Everybody can, does, and will make photos on their smartphones. Maybe Everybody even has a DSLR camera. The truth is that Everybody is making photos that quite often capture the truth of the moment, but maybe not the beauty.

Another thing Everybody cannot provide on their phone camera is the ability to be present. That’s something I’m forever grateful for from Luna’s birth – the freedom to be present. I didn’t even think about my phone for hours that night.

But when Everybody has a camera in their phone, why would Everybody hire an ok photographer? Some People might even hire an average photographer. But no photographers are trying to reach front page on Google for “average Brisbane wedding photographer.” Almost nobody is looking for an exceptionally talented and creative photographer and when Almost Nobody finds that photographer, they don’t care what they cost.

Celebrants

This also applies a to celebrants.Your work is firstly to make exceptional ceremonies, then secondly to find the almost nobody, the handful of people who value you and what you do. The main advice I give to new and aspirational celebrants is that we already have enough bad celebrants, there’s enough average celebrants, more than enough above average celebrants, and there’s almost too many good celebrants. Australia is desperate for more exceptionally great celebrants. Please be an exceptionally great celebrant.

Please be a celebrant that Almost Nobody is desperately trying to find.

How do we find Almost Nobody?

I hope Sarah and I, here at the Celebrant Institute, can help you be exceptional and to find Almost Nobody. When Almost Nobody sends you an enquiry that’s a win for you and a win for us, we’re so excited for you.

Let’s work on making exceptional marriage ceremonies and funerals together. Let’s ask questions and attend conferences. Let’s dedicate ourselves to making exceptional ceremonies.

Then let’s work on telling your story to Almost Nobody. Let’s refine and amplify your story. Then let’s hit the streets and do the hard work. The non-scalable work of finding Almost Nobody.

Everybody is reading wedding blogs, wedding magazines and looking at wedding directories. But where is Almost Nobody?

When Almost Nobody wants you to be their celebrant your business will become sustainable, enjoyable, profitable, fun, and most of all, you get to sleep well at night knowing you are doing work that matters.