Why Simplient?

What better way to begin a blog than to both introduce and explain why we decided to create this thing we call Simplient? For years my wife, who is a photographer, struggled to cross all of her Ts and dot all of her Is when it came to managing her photography business. She literally tried everything from keeping track of her clients and sessions on sticky notes, clipboards and loose sheets of paper, online spreadsheets in Google Drive and finally just writing them down in a notebook. Well, one day she lost her notebook which had basically become one of the most important assets of her business, next to her camera and well, herself.

When she finally gave up looking for that notebook, I can remember telling her, "Someday I'm going to build you some software where you can keep track of everything and never have to worry about forgetting something about a client or one of your sessions." Yes, I'm aware that such systems already existed at the time, but when I tried to encourage her to pick one of them up, it just didn't fit her workflow or processes. Like many small business owners, you don't have time to learn an entire system, you just need something that simply works. She expressed to me that she would love a simple system that basically did what she was already doing within her notebook. Of course, I had 1 million other ideas of features, bells, and whistles, but all she wanted was a simple solution. So that's what I set out to build.

port·man·teau
/ˌpôrtˈmantō/
definition: a word blending the sounds and combining the meanings of two others, for example, motel (from ‘motor’ and ‘hotel’) or brunch (from ‘breakfast’ and ‘lunch’)

Creating something that seems "Simple to use" really is anything but simple. This project has become a labor of love, and speed bumps, and identifying frustrating obstacles that seemed like there was no simple solution to overcome! However, I am very happy and proud to say that through it all, we have kept it Simple! Obviously, that's what helped us create the name "Simplient", a portmanteau created by blending the words "Simple" and "Client".

I'll be providing more updates soon. For now, I feel confident that we are very quickly approaching a milestone that I have been both anxious and excited about... I'm nearly ready to open Simplient to outsiders that may be interested in participating in what we have created. So stay tuned!