When I was in Mrs. Walker’s fourth grade class at Mitchell Christian School, a Junior Achievement representative spoke to the class about the business world. My class learned about different jobs in our community including entrepreneurs.

My parents were always interested in my education and how I spent my day at school. After school that day, I can vividly remember talking to my dad about what I had learned. I even remember where we were standing when we had the conversation- on the south side of the Statuary business by the birdbaths. Our conversation went a little something like this:

“What did you learn at school today?

“I learned what you and mommy are.”

“Oh yeah? What are we?”

“Aunt-ep-ra-ners” I definitely couldn’t remember the word perfectly.

He gently corrected me and explained all the different business ventures they had. They owned the concreate statue business (The Statuary), rental properties (commercial, residential and agricultural), two restaurants (a Mexican place called Los Sombreros and an ice cream joint named Sundae’s and More), and rented out large machinery like fork lifts. My parent’s had A LOT going on.

He told me that being a businessman doesn’t mean you make a lot of money- you have to make good decisions & work hard to make lots of money. Sometimes, even when you make good decisions & work hard- things don’t work out. Which means it’s vital to know when to pull out and when to keep going. He’s made wrong decisions before and if I am an entrepreneur one day, I will make wrong decisions too. If I learn from my mistakes, they really aren’t mistakes- they are learning experiences.

When I discovered that entrepreneurs didn’t have bosses, I knew that’s what I was going to do one day. Here I am, a little under two decades later, doing what I said I would do.

Accounting

I didn’t think accounting was that big of a deal when I first started photography. At the time, it was only a part time gig and I wasn’t leaning into it for my main source of income. As long as I made enough money to feed my growing camera gear habit, I didn’t care. Big oof.

When presented with challenges like sales tax, income tax and paying contractors, I turned to my college education at MTI. In school, I earned a Quickbooks Online Certification. I used my textbook and advice from my father to create my chart of accounts.

Quickbooks has loads of features like a mileage tracker, time tracker and expenses tracker. Looking at reports like my profit & loss report, allows me to narrow in on what is and isn’t working in my business from a financial standpoint.

Client & Project Management

Before I had a customer relationship management (CRM) solution, I was using pieces of paper with the client’s project information in an organized filing cabinet to keep track of everything. Although I rarely lost important information, I would often forget to print it out so this system had a flaw in it from the beginning- me!

When my friend and fellow small business owner and photographer, Mercedes mentioned to me that she was using this CRM called HoneyBook, I was ready to listen.

If I remember correctly, HoneyBook offered two months free and half off the first year plan for new accounts. I figured if I didn’t like it, I could always cancel before the two months were up.

That was over a year ago. This year I gladly paid full price for HoneyBook’s service- $40/per month or $34/per month when paying for the full year at once. Here are a few of the tools that HoneyBook offers:

Essentials

• Templates

  • Invoices

  • Contracts

  • Proposals

  • Questionnaires

  • Brochures

  • Gift Cards

  • Packages

  • Contact Forms

  • Emails

  • Email Signatures

• Workflow

• Calendar

Productivity

• Scheduling

• Tasks

• Time Tracker

Finance

• Reports

• Payments

• Expenses

• Profit & Loss

Lead Capture

• Contact Form

• Chrome Extension

• Batch Emails

• Gift Cards

HoneyBook is like hiring a personal assistant with 100% perfect attendance, never lose anything, they always have all the information you need and can keep your calendar straight. It’s certainly been one of the bigger game changing moves for my business.

They have a referral program. If you would like to use my link for a discount for you and a reward for me, click here!