around with all that it had to offer. I became frustrated that I wasn’t 100% thrilled with the online booking system and everyone else seemed to LOVE it. Well why didn’t I love it too?! I wanted to be cool, hip and technologically advanced like all the other cool kids! Well, I started to realize that I needed to organize my business in a way that worked for ME.

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For me, having a ton of automatic emails and online booking strategies didn’t excite me. Now I’m always trying new things and finding what works best and it could be that in the future I do start booking totally online… but for now this is what I have found that works for me. ShootQ is my BEST FRIEND when it comes to clients and their accounts! It manages their packages, it sends reminder emails automatically when payments are due and my clients can view their account to see when checks have been received and view their remaining balance. It’s awesome!  I NEED ShootQ to keep me straight in that area and it does a fantabulous job (that is a new version of “fabulous” that I think everyone should start using).  So! I realized that ShootQ was worth my money because it was keeping my client accounts straight. However, I tried using it for task management/workflow purposes and it was a major fail. I really don’t know why I didn’t like it but it wasn’t doing anything for me and I needed a new system. So I spent a whopping $5 on a hanging dry erase board that hangs on a wall beside my desk.

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When I was planning my wedding and still shooting everyone else’s….I became really overwhelmed and I couldn’t remember whose CD I had mailed, whose gallery I had uploaded…etc. etc. So I made this workflow board that I could glance at constantly and see how well I was doing. It worked like a charm.  I became obsessed with writing those little “check” marks and I was rolling through weddings. Also! I tried outsourcing last summer… hated that I was spending a small fortune on it and wasn’t crazy about the results and so I decided to SPEED up my wedding workflow…. and this charting system helped that! (I’ll blog about the outsourcing dilemma one day!) Anyway! A few people have asked how I blog so quickly and the answer is my “Chart”! I hate falling behind and so I try to have a strict pattern for blogging. If I shoot a wedding on Saturday, it WILL be on the blog that following Thursday ….and if it isn’t… I get a little on-edge. I really don’t like falling behind and even though that happens sometimes… I make it a point to stay on top of my workflows because I promise my clients that they will have their images in two weeks… and they do. When I’m shooting weddings every weekend, I can’t afford to let weddings back up! Has anyone ever had 3 or 4 weddings un-done?! Um.. I have, and it’s a MISERABLE feeling! So this is a way that I keep myself on task and crank those images out in a timely fashion! (ps. I used to have a BIG ugly whiteboard that was falling apart and my husband found this little one for me….he’s a keeper).

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So I hope all of my rambling helped a little bit! Remember to find what works for YOU.  ShootQ works for me in a totally different way than it does for other photographers and I’m realizing more and more that that’s OK! I’m figuring out what works for Katelyn…not the whole photography industry! So happy Monday and here’s to a happy, productive and joyful week!!!!

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Ps. I can now officially say that I have caught up with the “My CD” column… it was struggling there for a little while!