When you run a small business, you know you need more than just YOU behind the scenes. Unlike a big company, which might have departments to handle each aspect of what they do on a regular basis, employees who complete necessary tasks, and managers who delegate responsibilities, small business owners have to find our own solutions to keep everything running smoothly!
One truth about business that’s been resonating with me a lot lately is how important it is to speed up and simplify the repetitive, necessary tasks for maintaining our business. Doing so frees us up to do focus on expanding our business. That’s what today’s post is all about: the programs that allow us to streamline the day to day tasks so that we can be off shooting, meeting new precious brides and grooms, and growing our little company even more!
We firmly believe that we couldn’t do what we do without these following programs, and we utilize them super regularly!!
PASS
PASS is our incredible gallery system! I’ve been using it since my first few years of being a baby business owner, and I’ve never even considered another gallery system. PASS allows us to upload each session and wedding into its own gallery, organize the photos within the gallery, style the gallery in a way that fits our brand, and showcase the final photos with our clients in a gorgeous way! We love that the galleries are simply shareable links, and that the photos are backed up in the cloud for 10 years. We also love that our clients can print, download and share their photos on social media straight from the gallery, and that PASS credits us as the photographers whenever we share the images!
Squarespace
Squarespace is what we used to create our website and this blog! I head up most of the design work for our business, and I adore the usability of Squarespace, the ease of blogging within the platform, and the drag-and-drop nature of the program. All their starting points for designs are gorgeous, clean and photo-focused, and making quick updates and design changes is a piece of cake!
Honeybook
I’ve talked about Honeybook before, and as I said then, we have a whole post dedicated to Honeybook coming soon!!! But for now, it’ll suffice to say that Honeybook is truly my work brain. Ha! ???? Each of our sweet couples has their own workspace within the program, and it’s where all of our contracts, invoices, questionnaires and timelines stay organized and up to date! Plus, Honeybook allows us to see where our business is at financially at any point, which we love.
Gmail
I’ve also talked about Gmail before, which is what we use for our work email! We love Gmail because it’s easy to organize, and the app for our phones is super easy to work on the go with if need be. Gmail also has some amazing plug-ins and add-ons that make our life easier. Our favorite is Boomerang… it saves us SO much time on email! ????
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is the application we use to schedule all our social media posts! You can literally connect all your accounts for your business in one place, and it saves us a ton of time. Our Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook are all connected to our Hootsuite account, and this makes it so simple to share about a new blog post or a sneak peek from an engagement session!
Dropbox
We use Dropbox to organize a lot of our records, particularly receipts for tax purposes! You know how much we love our folders, and we have folders for each month of each year to keep track of the content we upload and organize!
Lightroom
We edit 99% of our work in Lightroom! Occasionally, we pull a photo into Photoshop for a quick bit of retouching, but the vast majority of our editing is done in Lightroom. We LOVE being able to sync settings on similar photos and only adjust minor levels when needed… plus, it’s organized and quick to use!
What programs allow you to run your business? We’d love to hear and learn from you!! Xo!
