EP 114: Your Biz Bestie Is Your Backup Plan

[00:00:00]
Melissa Arlena: All right, guys. This week we are getting a little dramatic, a little,
Alison: Little bit. Like
Melissa Arlena: A little…
Alison: Tough but necessary

Melissa Arlena: Yes, yes. in fact, as we were brainstorming ideas, I’m not sure what this is gonna end up called, but one of the ideas was if you died tomorrow, who delivers the photos? And that is the topic for today

Alison: It’s concise and direct, that’s for sure. It’s necessary. y’all, we, husband and I were at the JAG office a couple weeks ago. We were doing some of our own preparations for our family, ’cause honestly, We’re military, we’ve been around this, we think a lot about this. but we haven’t actually updated our own will since 2011, so we’re changing that. but in the process we were, you know, talking about like my business has grown and changed a ton since 2011. And so their advice was, you know, the base legal was like, “Yeah, that’s more than we can handle. You need to go out and hire somebody to create a trust specifically for your business assets.” and so that’s what I will be doing, and so that’s what

[00:01:00]
Melissa Arlena: But that’s, we’re, well, we’re not talking exactly about that, because yeah, we’re not gonna talk about trust.
Alison: It’s
Melissa Arlena: Yeah, we’re g- we’re gonna talk about the stuff that, you know, the trust figures out all the legal things. We’re not getting into all that. We’re getting into the what happens next. Like,

Alison: Yeah
Melissa Arlena: I I was driving the other night, and literally, y’all, I almost hit a baby bear that ran across the road in front of us.

Melissa Arlena: He’s fine. Yeah, a bear. He’s fine, we’re fine, but you know, we’d made the joke that, I don’t know where mama was, but if I took out her baby, she probably woulda taken me out. And it kinda comes to that thing of like, a- as much as no one wants to think about this, it’s the random accidents like that where you could no longer be here, and my husband would be sitting here going, “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to log into.” My inbox would be filling up. Yeah.

Alison: Use? Yeah

[00:02:00]
Melissa Arlena: Exactly. So that’s the kinda stuff that we wanna talk about, and Alison and I actually kinda have done this previously. We thought, I think when I set up the trust for our family and stuff, like I thought about it then, so it was a couple years ago, but we wanna talk about like what are some things that are no cost for you, easy to do right now, just for that, you know, just in case. Like, because here’s the thing. If you’re having surgery, if you’re going in to have a baby, you know, or if there’s something that’s going on, you know, you can still communicate, and we’re not talking about that. Like you obviously will get everything sorted out ahead of time, that kinda thing. You could be emailing clients. Like I’m in, I mean, I’ve done that. I’ve literally like spent four days in the hospital with Grace when she swallowed a button battery, and it was me and my phone and my laptop, and I was just messaging clients.

Melissa Arlena: Like, “I’m at the hospital. I don’t know how long we’re gonna be here.” Rescheduling sessions, editing, you know, putting things off. That’s not this. This is Melissa’s no longer here, and we gotta figure this out. So-
Alison: Like worst-case scenario
Melissa Arlena: Yeah, yeah.

[00:03:00]
Melissa Arlena: And so here’s the thing, you know, obviously there’s financial matters and stuff, but before you even get to that, like I’ve pointed out, like my husband would have no idea where to even start. So the big thing, like I say, is you guys need a biz bestie. So Alison and I always refer to Alison as my biz bestie, have for years and stuff, because she’s in it with me. At this point, because we’re biz besties, we use a lot of the same software. I think we both use PicTime, we both use, Visco, we both use ThriveCart, we both use Flowdesk. This is what happens. Your biz bestie is probably very similar. but you really… I will say that, I do think you want someone who uses the same systems that you use, ’cause it’s just gonna make it easier for them. So even if it’s not your like, number one biz bestie, if there’s like a number two who maybe, maybe you’re both on HoneyBook, and like they understand it, and your normal biz bestie’s on Dubsado, like, you know.

[00:04:00]
Melissa Arlena: The idea is that you wanna have somebody who is your backup. So, like I’m hoping that after this episode, you guys email someone who’s your friend, and be like, “Hey, by the way, can we be each other’s backup in case something were to happen?” ‘Cause I always look at it this way. If you plan ahead, it never happens. That’s my Like, if I don’t plan, it’s gonna happen. If I do plan it out, I don’t have to worry. Like, I always plan for worst case scenario, and it, you know, that’s, it luckily it hasn’t happened.

Alison: Is against every fiber of my Enneagram 7, where I like to focus on the good things and the not about negative things. But for whatever reason, this has been a constant theme for the last year that this needs to be squared away for my

Melissa Arlena: Yes. Yeah. So I would say the first thing you need to do is identify the right person, like somebody who understands your business, somebody you talk to pretty often, who knows what the software systems you have are, and then you need to give them access to some of those systems. I’m not saying I’m giving Allison my bank account information, no.

Alison: It. I
Melissa Arlena: Yeah.
Alison: It.
Melissa Arlena: It’s not that. Yeah. It’s thinking about like, okay, if something were to happen, what needs to happen? And you know,

[00:05:00]
Melissa Arlena: Thing is somebody needs to be able to email your clients. Also, I’m not giving Allison my email a- access right now kind of thing, but that’s the beauty of a CRM, guys. If you guys have a CRM, I can give her access to that, and a lot of CRMs will allow you to have another login for like an assistant or things like that. So with your CRM. See if they allow you to add another person. Like even if you were to get locked out, like that would be great that I could message Allison and be like, “I need you to log back in and unlock me. I don’t know what I did.”

Alison: Right? Like, and like right now my VA has a non-administrator access to VSCO. Not a sponsor, but accepting applications. You can do that. You- she has access, but she can’t do everything, but she can get to my email

Melissa Arlena: Yeah, so she can get to your email. I would say for your biz bestie, you probably wanna give them a little bit more access than just the email, just because, you know, right now with Alison remind me, with Visco, like she would be able to log in, and she would be able to see like what payments are coming up, what payments have already been made.

[00:06:00]
Melissa Arlena: But she can’t, yeah, she can’t actually like refund it within there. That would have to go to Stripe. But what she could do is at least log in, look at my current clients, and just start sending emails that say, “Hey,
Alison: That’s what’s
Melissa Arlena: Some- something horrible has happened. We’re going to get, you know, we’re gonna figure this out. I need you to bear with me right now just so you know what’s going on.” So she can start that first round of things. But then she can
Alison: thing for your spouse, right?
Melissa Arlena: Yes. Yeah.
Alison: Your spouse to have to do,

Melissa Arlena: Yeah, ’cause your spouse should not be worrying about any of this. Like, you need somebody who can come in and he- they’re taking care of whatever else is going on. This person just comes into your business, looks at your current client roster, and if you don’t have this organized, I highly recommend. Like, organize it for yourself, man. Like,

Alison: What are you doing? What are you

Melissa Arlena: Not just for worst-case scenario. Organize it for yourself so you know who’s coming up. She could log in and just immediately start letting people know this, like, “Here’s the first round. I’m just gonna email you what happened. I will be in touch in the next two days to figure out the next steps. Just give us some, some space and time.” And then you can start going through, and she could look and see like, “Okay, Melissa’s got a session booked two months from now. Obviously she’s not shooting it.

[00:07:00]
Melissa Arlena: Could we refund it? If she’s local, could she just take it on?” Like, that’s another thing. If you have somebody who’s local, it could be something like that where those sessions would transition over. You could give that option

Alison: If you have an associate program, that would be my fir- that would be what I did, right? Like, it would first go to can the associate take it? Cool. Carry on as normal. If not, what’s the next step?

Melissa Arlena: Exactly, yeah. So then she could at that point figure out, “Okay, we’re not doing these sessions. They have to get refunded.” Now she could put together a list of, like, here’s the names, here’s the amounts, here’s the email addresses, yeah, any transaction IDs, stuff like that then she could turn over to my husband and say, “You’re gonna have to log into her Stripe, and you’re gonna have to go find these and refund them from there.” Yeah.

Alison: Yep

Melissa Arlena: Yes, and then, you know, at that point you could start shutting down, like, just have an a- you could set up an autoresponder probably on some things there that just let, if there’s new inquiries coming in, just like, “Hey, we’re not taking sessions right now.” Like, you don’t have to be like, “She died. Sorry.”

[00:08:00]
Alison: Right. And like the website, like that’s… We haven’t even thought about that. You gotta put
Melissa Arlena: Yeah
Alison: That’s coming up on search engines. You need a notifica- notification bar, or even just to be able to go in to show it and say like, “Under construction.” Like,
Melissa Arlena: Yes
Alison: Like a very easy button that says, “

Melissa Arlena: Yeah, just a banner up at the top or something. yeah, and that’s another thing with Showit, that I do like is you can… Like, I could give Allison contributor access, so then she could log into my website at any time at that point and make those changes. Like, obviously, protect your relationship with your friend if you’re gonna do that, because she could take down my life.

Alison: Had, you’ve had contributor access to my website for a long time.

Melissa Arlena: I have, and I think I’ve logged in before and been like, “I fixed this for you. I couldn’t take it anymore.” Yeah, there you go. So I think it definitely starts with identify who that person is, then give them access to your CRM, like something, you know, so that that way they can take care of things if need be.

[00:09:00]
Melissa Arlena: If you’re like, “Oh, I don’t wanna give access to all of that stuff,” I understand that. You could also have something set up that like, hey, I’ve got a folder, and someone needs to know that that folder’s there that has passwords and logins and stuff like that that is in case of death. Like, I mean, my grandparents, they lived to be like 100 or whatever, but I remember some points in time they would tell us when we came to visit when they were getting up there, they were like, “There’s a safe in the closet, and there’s an envelope in there that has everything you need.” That’s basically what we’re trying to do here is like prep all of that stuff.

Alison: There’s, there’s a place I keep for my own sanity. I keep all of my passwords for my business, for credit card things, for, Apple ID, all the big things that you have to have and I continually forget or I have to, create an, “Oh, your password expired and you have to have a new one every six months, and it’s really important, and you always have to type it in.” I actually keep those written down in a single place. I’m not gonna tell you what that place is, but I keep it written down for my own sanity, and it’s pretty well updated at least annually because,

Melissa Arlena: Right

[00:10:00]
Alison: Because the format of what it is. So I would suggest you guys do that. Like, have that place, have these thingss printed, written out with your will, with your family documents so when this stuff goes down, it’s just in a neat and tidy bundle

Melissa Arlena: Yeah. I will say for me, I use LastPass, and so all I would need to do is provide my husband my email and then the master password, and then he can log into LastPass

Alison: Are you having to pay for that? That’s what drives me crazy. It’s

Melissa Arlena: Oh my God, seriously, the amount of times I don’t have to remember a password, I would pay 10 times the amount I’m paying right now to not have to… I don’t even know. I literally don’t even know what it is because I’ve been paying for it for years. It’s not that much, though.

Alison: Oh, I just hate paying for… I
Melissa Arlena: I think I just paid for McAfee the other day, and I don’t use, I don’t care about that at all, but
Alison: That would, okay, episode idea, what does Melissa pay for? all,
Melissa Arlena: no. I don’t think you wanna get into all that. Right, yeah. I’m like that commercial where they’re like, “If you can guess how many subscriptions you have,” like
Alison: Money. Okay, Rocket Money can sponsor. Guys, if you’re interested, let me know. We’ll DM, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll persuade Melissa to do that. Okay.

[00:11:00]
Melissa Arlena: Whether you wanna handwrite it or you wanna electronically keep it, those are two of the options. so we talked about the CRM website, which is a good one. your, your gallery delivery system, like,

Alison: Pick time

Melissa Arlena: Yeah, if you’ve got Pic-Time or Pixieset or something like that, your gallery delivery system, because you could have a client who has a question, or you could also, like, be at a point where you’re emailing clients in the gallery or something and saying, “You’re gonna need to download this stuff because this stuff’s all getting shut down in a certain amount of time.”

Alison: Yep

Melissa Arlena: And I mean, just even having a plan in place of, like, what’s gonna happen, you know, how long is stuff gonna stay online for, because your spouse isn’t gonna wanna be thinking about the Pic-Time bill for three years from now because you promised clients, like, there’s a, “Hey, I’m out. You’re, it’s over,” kind of thing. But yeah, having that… And I love, too, like, with that CRM, you’re, you should be able to see kind of, like, what the progress is, you know, especially if you have it really dialed in. But, you know, there could be something, too, where if, if there’s stuff for, like, Lightroom, like maybe I’ve got the photos on my computer or something.

[00:12:00]
Melissa Arlena: Like, my husband may have to figure out how to give Allison some kind of access to that or send a file, but, like, you could start figuring that stuff out there. And if it’s And obviously for this it’s harder ’cause she’s in Hawaii and I’m in Virginia, so

Alison: To be that geographically spread out.
Melissa Arlena: Right

Alison: Scenario, I’m literally thinking about this as we, as we speak. Okay, I get on a Google Meet and he shares a screen and I say, “Okay, go here, go here, do that, export that, share it. Lightroom, export his catalog, send it to me. Let me take care.” You know what I mean? That kind of

Melissa Arlena: Yes. Yeah, it’s easy, and if somebody’s local, then you just, you pop over to your friend’s house and you get on the computer, you start doing that stuff. But I mean, it’s those things that, you know, nobody wants to think about, but, like, what do you, where do you go with that? What do you do, you know? ‘Cause here’s the deal, clients, they are, they are They’re gonna feel bad, you know, but if, I mean, at least we’re not wedding photographers anymore, but, like, dude,

[00:13:00]
Melissa Arlena: it’s one of those, like, you get some grace, but eventually they want their wedding photos.
Alison: Right? Yeah

Melissa Arlena: have all that kind of stuff. So, so with portraits and stuff like that, you know, you need to also look ahead. If somebody… Like, I have clients who are on baby plans, you They’re, they could have a session that’s not coming up for, like, six months, so I keep, I make sure that if somebody’s in a membership, they stay active in my VSCO for a year. Like, that job stays open the whole time so that that way it’s a reminder for me, too, to be like, “Oh, I need to remind them about their upcoming session,” kind of thing. But keeping, keeping all of that in there. And the way we kinda talked about it, too, was, like, splitting it up, and I know we’ve covered this a little bit, but, like, your spouse handles the money side. Alison is gonna put together the plan. She is gonna figure out all the things.

Alison: Client-facing work.
Melissa Arlena: yeah, all the client-facing work
Alison: Deliverables, anything that’s in progress. Like, for me, having artwork, right? Like, I may have shot and have all the content. I may even have the designs and just waiting for approvals or, or, or
Melissa Arlena: Right
Alison: To place orders. Like, I could still do that. Somebody could still do that for me, right?

[00:14:00]
Melissa Arlena: Yes
Alison: Melissa will go in there and figure all this stuff out,
Melissa Arlena: I would contact your VA. I would be like, “What is going on?”

Alison: There’s another reason for a VA. Oof. Okay, Wedding Workflows, we need you to sponsor. I’m just on a sponsor kick today. but, but still, like, so there’s a process for me as an IPS artwork deliverable, right, be done so that you could still get paid, right? And that, but would, would still have to be done by somebody. And again, your, don’t… There’s enough that goes on in worst case scenarios for family members to have to wrap up and deal with, that your business should not be one of them

Melissa Arlena: Yes. Now I will say probably the most important thing out of all of this is that my husband knows how to get ahold of Allison.

Alison: God, isn’t that the truth? He’s gonna have your
Melissa Arlena: Fact… I-
Alison: Right? He can Marco Polo me
Melissa Arlena: I, well, that, exactly. That’s the thing. Like, you may wanna make sure that you have it written down somewhere, phone number, email, name, like maybe that also goes in there. This is…
Alison: That you’ve handwritten and put in
Melissa Arlena: Yeah.
Alison: Right?

[00:15:00]
Melissa Arlena: And I mean, honestly, think about it too, so, like, with a when my husband and I set up our trust, our trust is all set up in the sense of if we both die, then, like, my sister gets the kids. My sister, I, like, I really do need to put that information with the trust to say, like, Alison’s phone number, her email address, her name, and tell my sister, “When it comes to the business, you gotta reach out to Alison. She will handle everything, and she’ll help you walk you through it.” Because, yeah, my sister’s not gonna know, like, “I don’t know what to do. Who do I contact? What’s going on?” kind of thing. So I I, yeah, I do love that idea too of like, you know, we gotta have some information in there. And really, it needs to happen quickly too, like, because if it’s two weeks later and suddenly, you know, your email box is blowing up, people are pissed off, but nobody’s monitoring your inbox at that point. So

Alison: What’s going on. And then it just makes a lot more work. So I would want something to start happening within a few days to a week minimum

Melissa Arlena: And most likely, like, I will probably have a conversation with my sister now thinking about this of like, the way,
Alison: Yeah.
Melissa Arlena: Something were to happen to me, this is…”
Alison: Real time brainstorming. You guys

[00:16:00]
Melissa Arlena: Yeah. I mean, honestly, it’s funny because, we have, like, the whole thing for the kids, you know, that she would get immediate, guardianship of the kids. But she I didn’t know this. This is a whole sidebar, guys, but she literally has to come to our house after we have died, get the paperwork from our safe, the original copy, the original version, ’cause she has the copy, and then she has to take the original version to wherever the kids are to get the kids. She can’t do it with her copy. She has to have the original. Yeah. So I could just put that piece of paper in with the, like, most important document of my life, which is guardianship of my children.

Alison: Originals?

Melissa Arlena: For this they say that she has to come get the original, ’cause it could change I guess or something. I don’t know. There’s probably lawyers listening. They’re like, “Oh, you could do this.” But that’s what I was told, so I’m thinking about that. I’m like, that’s where the paper goes in, because she’s gonna have that very important envelope that she knows she has to get, and then I’ll have the slip of paper in there that says, “Oh, by the way, as you go to pick up the kids, go ahead and give Allison a call. Let her know what happened.”

Alison: Yeah. Good grief. Oh my gosh

[00:17:00]
Melissa Arlena: Your contract. This was another thing that Allison and I were like, “Oh, that’s a good point.” You know, making sure your contract has some kind of death incapacity clause, whether it’s a substitute photographer, it’s a refund. But just something in there that that way, you know, if a client decides to be a jerk, like, you’re push- your spouse can push back and be like, “Hey, like, this, you couldn’t guarantee she would live forever. Wish I could,

Alison: Would this
Melissa Arlena: But
Alison: Majeure, like act of God?
Melissa Arlena: Act of Go- I don’t know, is it the act of God or the act of the bear the other day? I’m not sure.
Alison: Oh my

Melissa Arlena: And then, a thing that I hadn’t really even thought about is copyright. and that’s a big thing I feel like usually you hear about, with,.. Well, like, Dolly Parton, Alice and I were talking about this. Like, where do- Dolly’s got all that music and stuff. That copyright has to have transferred over to somebody, I would assume, and that’s not something I necessarily thought about

Alison: Copyright goes directly to your heirs, and I think it’s like 75, it’s for 75 years postmortem of the original artist it stays with that artist’s family, heirs, and estate, I guess,
Melissa Arlena: Yeah, and that,
Alison: Domain

[00:18:00]
Melissa Arlena: Right, and that may not be something for most family photographers that’s, like, a thing, but if you license your photos and, like, do stock photography, if you make money off of them in that kind of aspect, commercial work, you may, like, that may be something that you really do need to think about in having that information out there. So I know this is, like, a dark and sad thing,

Alison: I mean,
Melissa Arlena: And I’m probably laughing too much about it, but it’s like, I mean, that’s all you can do. Yeah.
Alison: Lining, I

Melissa Arlena: But, you know, I mean, I will say, Allison and I were talking about this, there was a photographer in the wedding photography community that I super looked up to, loved, loved, loved her work, and a few years ago she passed away from cancer, and no one knew. Like, it was, it wasn’t like, oh, we knew she was sick. You know, there wasn’t, like, GoFundMes going on or anything like that. It was just an announcement that she had passed away, that she had been battling cancer, and I remember on the announcement it said, “If you are a client, this is who you contact.”

[00:19:00]
Melissa Arlena: And I was like, “Oh, wow, luckily she had already thought about, like, where that, you know, where that needed to happen and stuff like that.” So as much as… That was the one that, like, hit me, that I was like, “Oh gosh, I need to make sure I ha-” And I think that’s when I set Allison up was when that happened, and I was like, “Okay, I’m gonna give you access to this,” and now I’ll probably need to resend the password to her.

Alison: Yeah, so how do you take all of this and, like, what should your next steps be? Well, let’s, let’s review. need, you need a person. You need to find and identify that person, have those awkward conversations with your spouse about who this person would be and if they’d be willing to tag-team this with you, right? start collecting those passwords, whether it’s digital through LastPass or writing things down in a place that you keep, keep close to you. Start collecting all of those. I tell Colin, I was like, “You’re gonna need to cut off my right finger. My… I’ve got an Apple, the, with the finger biometric. Like, just, just cut it off. Just keep it. You’re gonna need it for everything.” that’s gross, sorry. Oh. so collect your passwords. Stripe, Visco, I mean everything, Adobe. Like, all the subscriptions. You’re gonna have to, like, cancel them eventually. and

[00:20:00]
Melissa Arlena: I will say you could probably just cancel the credit card on those and, like,
Alison: Smart.
Melissa Arlena: That would just get your spouse out of that. Like, worry about clients and then…
Alison: Credit card?
Melissa Arlena: Yes.

Alison: Where is that coming from? and this was actually, this happened this summer when I was, in Charleston. I have a business credit card. It’s with Hawaiian Airlines, but it’s through Barclays Bank, and I was telling Colin it had been a fraud alert on it, and so we had to cancel it and get a new one, and Colin was gonna, fly the new one over to me. Well, he wasn’t… He didn’t know. He… All he knew was he was looking for Hawaiian, but it was coming from Barclays. So it had been in the house for a week, and he didn’t realize it. and I was like, “Hey, look, it said it it said it was delivered, like, five days ago.” And he was like, “Oh, yeah, I have…” So that kind of thing, right?

Melissa Arlena: Yeah. Knowing what they’re looking for

Alison: Yeah, and then connect your spouse with contact information to your business turnover buddy. Like, if it, you can do all the work in the world, and if they don’t connect, it’s not gonna

[00:21:00]
Melissa Arlena: Yeah. Yeah. And then just, you know, letting them know, and obviously have that conversation with your biz bestie of like, “This is just what I expect. I expect you to clean up what’s going on with my clients, help shut down the business, or help transition it over to somebody else, clients, stuff like that. and then make things as easy as possible for your spouse to finalize everything and get it, out,” kind of thing. I mean, you’re not gonna hit everything, guys. There’s gonna be things that you forget about. There’s gonna be messages your husband gets. There’s gonna be things in the mail where it’s like, oh, it’s been a year and now the the, you know, the state filing is requesting, and it’s like wait, we gotta deal with this. I mean, that’s just gonna happen. But at the very least, if you can protect that time right away from the spouse of having to deal with all the business and jerk clients that sometimes are around, and protect their space to grieve, like that to me is, like, the most important thing.

[00:22:00]
Alison: Yeah, and I think that’s also a great perspective to have is, I know when I start thinking about these thingss, I can get really overwhelmed and bogged down to decisions if I think about everything. And some of the great advice that we got from our lawyer was, just think about the next two years. You need to be updating this more than every, I don’t… How long has it been since 2011? 20 years.

Melissa Arlena: Right.
Alison: So, and you can’t, you can’t plan for every kind of scenario every which way for the next five to 10 years. But think about the next two years. What could, what could happen? How can we do exactly like Melissa said, protect the immediate time after, stay in that lane.
Melissa Arlena: Yeah

Alison: Stay in that lane and not get overwhelmed because this can very easily spiral and cause anxiety and all kinds of stuff that we’re not trying to induce in you. We just want you to be prepared, for your sake and your spouse’s sake. So all right, guys, thanks for bearing with us on this very heavy episode. Hopefully it wasn’t too terribly depressing. as always, reach out to us if you have any questions on Instagram

Melissa Arlena: Bye