The L.O.V.E. Club With Meg Keene

Let’s paint a picture for a minute: you are an incredibly talented business owner (turn that impostor syndrome off, it’s OK to own it). You’re finally doing the creative work you were born to do. Maybe you’re in the early stages of launching your business, maybe you’ve been in this for a few years. But you are DOING it. And by doing it, we mean you’re doing it every damn day. And you’re at the point where you need business mentors. You need professional consulting. But all of that is expensive (and you don’t want to sign up for another online course you’re not going to complete). You need clear eyed advice to help you figure out your way forward. Well that’s where Meg Keene comes in. She’s the founder of A Practical Wedding, and has been a successful entrepreneur for twelve years, and a passionate teacher for ten. She does the work every single day, and loves using her hard earned expertise to help womxn and underrepresented small business owners figure out their goals, and chart their own path.

Start Working On Your Business

We know how it goes: It’s very likely that you’re spending your day-to-day working in your business, and you’re rarely carving out time to work on it. That means all that big picture stuff is getting pushed to the bottom of your list. You know what we’re talking about—growth-oriented social media, narrowing in on exactly the right brand image, setting up systems…. and just getting really clear on what you want to do next. You know you want to do this work. You know you need to do this. But you craving some really clear advice on how to do it. (And how to clear time for it.)

It’s 2020, and you’re ready to level up. It’s time to get those hugely important items checked off your list (finally). You’re ready to to bring it. You can feel it in your bones. You can feel it in the air. It’s just… how? Well, we feel that energy too, and we decided to create the next step that we all so desperately need. It’s The L.O.V.E. Club with Meg Keene, now taking applications from small businesses in every industry.

we get it, being aN ENTREPRENEUR is hard.

There are so many people trying to hustle in a saturated market. How do you compete with someone who’s been in the biz for 10 years and has 100K followers on Instagram plus the budget for Facebook ads when you’re just trying to remember to get a daily post up, while still getting new clients on-boarded?

And more often than not, it’s a game you’re playing alone. Because running a small business doesn’t exactly come with built-in coworkers, or high-powered consultants. (Business coaches are pricey, and you can’t afford that yet.)

Getting The Info and Support YOU NEED (For A Price You Can Afford)

Meg Keene and Keriann Kohler are here to lead you through five months of leveling up. Meg isn’t just a business coach. She’s a business owner, who does the work everyday. And Keriann is our resident small business expert. She’s spent the past decade plus working with small business owners, the last six years of which have been spent helping literally thousands of wedding vendors level up through APW coaching and advertising.

We’re pair all that with a crew of likeminded business owners, so you can walk through the process together. Being an entrepreneur often means that you’re the only person you know who’s brain functions the way yours does. You wake up in the middle of the night with ten new ideas, or can’t focus on your night of Netflix and Chill because you’re trying to solve a budget crisis in your head. It’s tough, it’s sometimes overwhelming, but you don’t know how to have it any other way. The TLC gives you a cohort of people who get it, and are building their businesses right alongside you. You’ll build meaningful connections, but also just experience the joy of growing together, and having folks to talk to when you’re having a middle of the night crisis. (Well, maybe, in the morning.)

And you can do that without ten thousand dollars of business development dollars that you don’t have. The L.O.V.E. Club is coming at you for a one-time-only (and we mean it, we don’t plan to ever do a course this hands-on for this price again) price of $1,100 or 5-monthly payments of $250. (Apply here.)

What’s Included In The L.O.V.E. Club

Our new mentorship program (think of it like an incubator for entrepreneurs that you don’t have to quit your job to participate in) launched in Fall 2019 for wedding vendors. But in 2020 we realized that the information we were teaching was too valuable to limit to just one industry.  So we expanded it. We brought on our favorite experts as business mentors and guest speakers teaching your most-requested topics. (Final speaker list to be announced soon).

The L.O.V.E Club includes:

• Five months of an intensive (but not too intensive) program, with a cohort of like-minded business owners. (We like them a lot. You’ll like them too.)
• A monthly group class via Zoom, led by the APW team and expert guest speakers, each one focusing on a different aspect of turbo-charging your business.
• One 1-hour 1:1 business coaching call, giving you specific, personalized insight on your business, with clear next steps.

This is specifically designed for entrepreneurs who are looking to take their business to the next level—people who are talented, and hungry, and ready to put in the work.

The next round of the program will run from FEBRUARY 15TH TO JULY 15th for a small group of business owners. The program will covers topics like:

• Creating a Vision for Your Business
• Defining Your Brand
• Stop Struggling over Social Media
• Creating Systems and Processes To Create More Time
• Crafting a Personalized Plan to Implement What You’ve Learn

Plus, as a member of the club you get a very cool keychain.  And who doesn’t love a cool keychain that says they’re at the (we build cool stuff) kids table.

Scroll on to learn more and apply!

Full disclosure: This program isn’t for everyone. We’re looking for folx who have been in business for a handful of years and are ready to level up… or are coming hot out the gate with a new idea. You may work for yourself, or have a small team, but you haven’t made the jump to a bigger business yet. You’re hungry, you want clear eyed impactful advice, and you’re ready to joyfully do the work.

WHO IS GOING TO BE ON YOUR TEAM?

Meg Keene is the founder and CEO of A Practical Wedding. She started APW 12 years ago as a Blogspot on her kitchen table, with no access to capital. She has grown it to be the largest independently held wedding publication in the English Language, and the company remains entirely self funded. She manages a team of six (almost all) women from the APW offices in West Oakland.

Meg is passionate about small businesses run by womxn and folx in other marginalized groups. She is passionate about paying it forward by advising other entrepreneurs who are working to build something that matters, without any funding (or much funding) on hand. She is a well known speaker on womxn’s business issues. She’s spoken at Alt Summit for the last ten years, and has spoken at other conferences like Mom 2.0 and The Love Union.

She has two books creatively named A Practical Wedding and A Practical Wedding Planner. Both are consistent wedding bestsellers. She became a national wedding expert without any formal media training (unless you count her BFA in Experimental Theatre, which she obviously does). She’s regularly quoted by the New York Times, and has appeared numerous times on NPR. Her work has also been cited by publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Refinery 29, and The Cut. In 2017 she wrote a viral article for Buzzfeed on wedding prices that garnered well over a million views. She works as the Creative Director for APW Studio—A Practical Wedding’s advertising arm—and her work has been featured in AdWeek.

Meg’s first business was, well, either the backyard plays she sold tickets to, or the off-off Broadway theatre company she co-founded and was managing director of in 2003. Either way it was show biz. In the years since, she’s run a few side hustles while running A Practical Wedding.  In 2018 she helped design a plus sized wedding dress collaboration that was featured in Vogue Business. During the same year, she also launched a feminist summer camp that sold out in under an hour. (Lives were changed.) While serial entrepreneurship is not her gig, her various side projects have given her a wide array of management experience—and plenty of tips on what do to, and what really not to do.

Meg has spent many years doing informal one on one business consulting with everyone from her friends over drinks, to her local restaurant owner, to her Uber drivers. She’s recently moved towards doing more formal business consulting (the kind that doesn’t happen during Q&A after a keynote). She is a business mentor at The Huddle, and offers private business coaching to people she really adores. The L.O.V.E. Club is the first time she’s offering business consulting to the general public, and she’s so excited to get to know you, and your plans for changing the world (and making some money.)

 

Keriann Kohler is APW’s Director of Partnerships, where she has been connecting rad wedding vendors with what she has been told are “the coolest, kindest, and most creative clients” around for the past six years. This has included coaching them on branding and marketing, portfolio reviews, website critiques, drafting marketing copy, and singing their praises in hundreds of sponsored posts. (Emails from vendors telling her that her words perfectly represented their businesses and made them feel seen are her absolute favorite to receive.) In addition to working with wedding vendors, she has fifteen years of experience working closely with entrepreneurs and managing small businesses in a variety of industries from dance, to film and TV, non-profits, publishing, and interior design in both NY and LA, and loves to pass on what she’s learned in the trenches to TLC members. She’s done this through speaking and one-on-one brand critiques at The Love Union and Rebelution Resurge.

THE L.O.V.E. CLUB MEMBERSHIP: THE DETAILS

The L.O.V.E. Club is a five-month program during which you’ll receive:

MASTERCLASSES with the APW team AND GUEST SPEAKERS	Five live, interactive small group masterclasses with our team and expert guest speakers (more to be confirmed soon!) that cover topics like: Creating a Vision for Your Business, with Rachel Dorsey Defining Your Brand, with Najva Sol Stop Struggling over Social Media, with Hannah Chester Creating Systems and Processes To Create More Time Now What? Together we’ll craft a personal step-by-step plan of what to do (and what not to do) to implement everything you’ve learned going forward. Our goal is for you to finish TLC feeling equipped to actually implement what you’ve learned and what you need to do, with Yolanda Christopher All classes are via live video calls on Zoom, and recordings will be sent out after each one.
ONE PRIVATE coaching session	One 1-hour 1:1 business coaching call with one of our business mentors, giving you specific, personalized insight on your business, with clear next steps.
a SMALL cohort of like-minded business owners	We’re giving you a group of like minded folx who get it. They are building businesses that mean something… but also, building businesses is in their blood. They want to hear your five new ideas for a project, they’re here to tell you what business software they’re using, and they know what it’s like to be responsible for (your own) payroll). You can’t do it alone, and now you don’t have to.

Price: $1,100

or $250/month 5-month PAYMENT PLAN