Lessons Learned: Handling Business Costs

The amount of time and money I’ve spent on sending COIs with additionally insured REALLY got to me one year when I was doing about 40 weddings a year. No getting the certificate doesn’t technically cost money, but when you’re paying your office manager to deal with it over and over for the same venue over and over it just gets super annoying and does cost money. I get it’s necessary for a variety of reasons but it’s probably still the number one thing that annoys me when it pops up on my to do list. That and buying more lens caps because of misplaced lens caps. ANYWAY, one year I just got so fed up with it I decided to (ignorantly, stupidly and naively) assign a fee for getting a venue listed as additionally insured, since that’s what cost me the most money paying my office manager to do the back and forth emails to the insurance company then back to the venue. The venue owner, rightfully so, was so pissed and worse, I knew her personally so I burned a business AND personal bridge there. The emails got unpleasant and unprofessional on both sides so much so that we never really made up. - The lesson here? Things cost time and money in this business that have nothing to do with taking photos, and they can annoy the crap out of you to do them. But for pity’s sake stfu about it and do what has to be done. - Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk. - Sorry Lisa. Like ten years later. -