This week we were going to share with you ways to support small businesses during the pandemic and ways that we’ve supported literally 17 small businesses ($2 to $20 food & plants bought off of small tables in peoples’ yards, small items sold by INDIVIDUALS online and shipped by our beloved also drowning Postal Service USPS) instead of supporting massive corporations (and how kind the small businesses have been to each other).
Instead… we have to let you in our our harsh reality right now. as we sit here speechless and spiraling. We are essentially a Seasonal Small Business. Though we work our asses off 12 months a year, we’re mainly photographing weddings most heavily for 7 months of the year: April through October. In the “low season” we edit & design full-time, print/ package/ ship literally thousands upon thousands of printed photo products, take in-person Wedding Consultations, and photograph smaller things such as Family Portraits, Engagement Sessions, Headshots, or Infant Sessions, but are generally spending money on client products, shipping, marketing, etc. instead of making money. Sometimes in those months we happily get to work 5 days a week instead of 7 days a week which is a welcomed relief! Most of our client payments come in between April and October, so we work calmly as we bide our time waiting for our lovely annual Wedding Season.
Imagine the majority of your ENTIRE year’s pay disappearing in (seemingly) an instant (i.e. over a month of emails, texts, calls, etc).. This virus can potentially wreck our entire 2020/ 12 months’ worth of income (that the 2020 contracts show was set to be the most record-breaking year in our past 10+ years in business) if not at least the next crucial 4 to 5 months. We photograph 250 person massive weddings for our amazing couples full-time. This is our only job. We have our physical office, studio, & consultation office that we luckily OWN, so we’re at least thankful that we don’t have to pay rent on that, but we literally use our pay to exist as a business and LIVE i.e. pay about $2,700 for insurance (property, vehicles, gear) that was all just due (luckily some is being paid monthly, some we had to pay half of today, etc), $1,700 for property tax (also paid today), utilities, food, etc. (We don’t live lavishly, but food seems to be a necessity for humans…?)
The U.S. Government’s Response
1) Individual Stimulus Payments (Missing?)
Potentially because we run a small business and our taxes are done a bit differently (though we both have direct deposit and paid 2018 and 2019 already for both our business and us as 2 individuals) we have NOT gotten our $1,200 apiece. Don’t you worry, though! Folks who work are still working full time either physically at their workplace or at a desk at home have gotten their $1,200 apiece as a gift on TOP of their regular full-time pay! We’re still hoping that some form of stimulus comes, but at this point aren’t too hopeful.
2) EIDL for Small Business $10,000 Grants… Demolished
Even though we were LITERALLY SOME OF THE FIRST to ever even stress fill out the forms for the EIDL on March 26th AND THEN ANOTHER set of forms ASAP when they completely changed the forms again on March 31st (again being one of the first), we’ve been waiting for 3 full weeks with NO INCOME to hear anything about this “safety net for small businesses.” Last night we finally got an email. That $10,000…? Nope. Now it’s now at most $2,000 because we have only 2 employees. If only we’d hired 8 more people and paid them literally $2.13 an hour like restaurants in Indiana do-! Receiving the small business stimulus grant (80% diminished to a mere $2,000) may completely allude us altogether as the funds that were initially allocated for the grants have been all but depleted having only made headway through a small percentage of much, much larger businesses asking for and gaining literally hundreds of thousands of dollars.
3) Paycheck Protection Program Loan (Depleted Tomorrow)
A whopping 3 weeks ago the government said that we had to choose ONE: Either the EIDL OR the Paycheck Protection Program. Since the EIDL said it was a guaranteed $10,000 grant to small businesses who signed up first, we clearly stuck with that. Last night in the email saying that we will definitely NOT get 80% of that grant since we only have the two of us who work for our company, thus the government told us to download MORE FORMS, fill them out, and take them to OUR BUSINESS BANK to get a forgivable loan from OUR BANK today. We did everything we were told… only to have our bank tell us that they aren’t giving them out. We were sitting in the parking lot there today on the phone (interior of banks closed) extremely lost. They told us to go to a different big bank… also closed & said they only cater to THEIR business clients and THAT bank told us to go to ANOTHER big bank…. who told us the SAME thing. Basically the breakdown is that our bank said that the loans will be depleted by TOMORROW. Wonderful. We then had a brief conversation with our accountant who informed us that the PPP loans would not be available to us due to the structure of our business partnership even if our credit union decides to start processing them.
Where Does this Leave Small Businesses….?
Most like us are left on our knees begging for our $1,200 personal relief deposit that at minimum (that full-time working folks got as a fun GIFT in addition to their full-time pay today). Like many, we still have not gotten anything. Others that are small like us (like our favorite brick-and-mortar businesses that cannot sell their service/ products online) that only have 2 employees AND who filled out the EIDL on March 26th or 31st a whopping 3 weeks ago MAY see potentially $2,000 someday in help for their small business….. and that is supposed to last us 6 months to a year. With our wedding packages mainly being around $5,000 apiece, this barely puts a dent into helping us & our business AND we’re not even sure we’ll ever see that (80% decreased) help.
Being left with $0 of governmental help so far over about a month doesn’t leave us optimistic about the next 6 months before our next low season. This has left us hurt and feeling betrayed by a system that we’ve paid taxes heftily into as a small business. This isn’t about restaurants who are deemed as “essential.” This is about all of us who worked our asses off over 10 years for our clients and run legal businesses working as hard as we can day in and day out- some of us with the literal highest educational degrees in our field. This is about those of us who are told (rightfully so) that we CAN’T DO OUR JOBS. Why should those who are working full-time get $1,200 in addition to their full-time pay…? Why do we get screwed because folks greedily dipped into the Grants fund to take out literally hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of additional EIDL LOANS from that same big account…? When only 4% of those who apply get it, then there’s SOMETHING WRONG WITH IT.
While we’ve seen a huge push in communities to stand by restaurants and “order out” to help support them there hasn’t been a huge focus on the MAJORITY of other small retail businesses- especially those of us in the service industry. We know that we aren’t the only one to two employee business trying to tread water, but we hope that everyone out there recognizes that everything from small clothing shops, to hair stylists, and everything in between deemed “non-essential” is patiently waiting for your business and really hoping to get back to work for you.
A Business We’re Not Allowed to Run and $0 from the Government/ $0 from Clients with Contracts
We’re exhausted. We’re being kind and extremely helpful & flexible to all of our clients, but we’re not being helped at all (except by family members who’ve literally sent us food and such). One way to not let folks like us be literally crushed by this is if you’re still afloat as one article put it in regards to those you have a contract with and may have owed money to on a certain date (though they couldn’t perform their job yet):
“If you have financial means (i.e. haven’t both lost a JOB because of this), the ethical thing to do is pay them anyway.”
We know that it may seem harsh asking for full or partial payments on their originally requested date, but the payments’ retainers, final payments, and session fees that we regularly receive during this period of the year help us to recover from the winter lull. This virus has been effecting us all for over a month of what would have been the start of the Wedding Season and our biggest year in literally 10+ years, yet we have had to cancel well paying sessions, in person consultations, and have had events cancelled all together. Part of our personal quarterly financial plans take these significant sources of income heavily into account. In Person consultations and bridal events have come to a sudden screeching halt which really makes us worry about what the remainder of the year as well as what the 2021- 2022 seasons will look like.
March-May are generally our biggest months of bookings for future weddings and being sequestered to the office alone, attempting a few remote consultations has been less than fruitful. We like to meet with every client in person prior to photographing their wedding because it’s both an investment and a close relationship that we’ll have following people around for 11 hours on their wedding day From a financial standpoint, wedding and event photography runs a risk of relying on a few larger payments as opposed to several smaller sessions to pool income (quality over quantity). Just a few cancelled or very postponed dates can be devastating, but right now we’re looking at the majority of our weddings being postponed a year. We’re still working closely right now being “on call” with several couples as they are forced to reschedule (so that we can help avoid the very possible risk of a scheduling issue). We know this is all unprecedented and none of us have any experience dealing with a situation even vaguely similar to this, but some of us are taking the worst financial hit of our lives as well as dealing with the mental/ physical repercussions of this virus.
Cannot Get Physical Items Needed to Create Our Print Products
Another issue currently being faced is a lack of availability in supplies due to supply chain issues. Many of the outside vendors that we rely on for providing necessary materials for printing and producing the many different products that we offer are also at a veritable standstill. While we strive to create many of our products “in house,” we have had to temporarily cease production on these items as we cannot get the supplies we need for creating final products. This leaves us frozen for production. This is not to say that we cannot take orders or work with you on prints and products remotely, but we may not be able to fulfill items until April 24th or later. We are still more than willing to assist taking orders for fulfillment when possible (hopefully sooner than later).
We apologize if this comes off as negative and for not just posting some beautiful photos of various small 1 person businesses that we’ve monetarily supported over the past month… but we thought it necessary this one time to post some behind-the-scenes reality, frustrations, and disappointment as it truly feels all-encompassing after such a steep uphill battle over the past month & a half. We are real people that exist behind all of the smiling faces and happy moments that we share online and on this blog, so it’s only fair to show the reality that so many are facing with fear and silent strength.
Here’s to the health and safety of everyone out there and to all the other small business owners who are fearful of what the coming year has in store for us. We’re all in this together and we’ve just gotta keep trying… as hard as it might seem.
Until Next Time.