Our home is a HOME first and foremost, and our office second. But it makes things sound super power couple-y to call our house “Abby Grace Headquarters,” so we’ll go with that for today’s blog post, yeah? Yeah!

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a bit of a control freak. It took me several years of Matt offering to help out with my business before I even allowed him a fraction of a piece of the pie, and even now that we’re a husband and wife team, I still often have trouble letting him take over certain tasks. Because I like to sit in that stubborn mindset of “it’ll take me longer to teach you than I think I have time for, so it’s just easier to continue doing it myself.”

That kind short-sighted of thinking is completely counterproductive! Because the fact is, I CAN’T do everything myself- I need his help, and teaching him to do something I don’t even LIKE doing frees up more time for me to concentrate on the area I excel in. And the things I don’t like doing just so happen to be areas in which HE excels!

So for today’s Photog Friday, I wanted to give you guys a look into how our responsibilities break down! Some of these fell into place naturally (like, of course Abby will be responsible for all the photo-taking aspects), and some of them did require a sit-down conversation to divvy up tasks. Here we go:

Abby’s responsibilities:

• Photography-related tasks: aka anything that involved wielding a camera
• Editing- weddings (highlights only- we send the rest to my editor), all anniversaries & engagements
• Client communication: new inquiries, consults, any emails from our couples NOT related to contracts & invoices)
• Blog- writing, uploading photos, scheduling, formatting, etc.
• Social media: Instagram, FB, Twitter, etc.
• Newsletter: writing content
• Education: workshops, APWWLive, speaking engagements
• Website updates: portfolio changes, any verbiage for website, concept discussions with our amazing designer Jeff

Matt’s responsibilities:

• Contracts & invoices: assembly, sending them to our couples, answering questions
• Taxes: filing & paying monthly VA sales tax, filing quartlerly estimates, tallying mileage
• Insurance & business licenses
• Organizing receipts
• Shipping & drop-offs
• Budget: reconciling in QuickBooks, taking things to the bank, and anything else related to monetary tasks)
• Process streamlining: finding new ways to make things run more smoothly!
• Implementation of all of Abby’s insane ideas: making webinars happen, creating the website for APWWLive, implementing new iterations of PDF giveaways, etc.
  • Basically, if I dream it up, no matter how crazy, he manages to make it happen
• Sustenance: Matt makes sure I don’t eat ramen and dill pickles for breakfast & lunch. He makes pretty much all our meals!
• Gear prep: making sure all of my gear is charged and ready to go before a wedding
• Ordering: albums, prints, marketing material, etc.
• Travel booking: flights, hotels, cars, etc.

It’s taken a bit of time to get the kinks worked out, and we’re still learning how to work together in the same general location. For example, Matt’s usually ok if I interrupt him with a question, but because of my ADHD, I need him to give me a few minutes heads up before I drop what I’m doing to answer a question for him. All in all, we’re both loving it so far!