Changes of the Season

What started out as a completely reasonable change to the business side of things turned into an absolute nightmare of rules, regulations, and legalities. Who knew it would be this difficult to exact payment without going through hoops, hurdles, and a mountain of follow-up emails to go right back to the way things were in the beginning? What I mean to say is that things aren't always cut and dry and things with good intentions don't always end up where you want them to be.

In the past, I have had a lot of stress ensuring I have the supplies for each new program I teach, so in eliminating that stress, I changed my billing to a Milestone Billing structure. This allows a business or company to require a prepayment or deposit. I would then use this deposit for all supplies and time to prepare for each program. Essentially, it would be payment for the Director of Education to do her job. For a sole-proprietor, it's giving myself a paycheck for the prep work that I normally do not get paid to do.

With those good intentions, I spent three hours discussing with AI how to legitimately charge for this Milestone Billing structure, how to send an estimate, Phase 1 invoice, and final invoice (minus the required prepayment). I then changed my current program invoices for October, April, and an estimate still not scheduled. And updated my website to alert any new clients of these changes. Five to six hours of work for it to become a waste of my time.

It turns out that legally, by state mandated laws, public schools are not allowed to allocate funds for prepayments, deposits, or anything until AFTER an outreach program has taken place. This is another headache in itself, because I need payment due on the date of my programs, and sometimes I've had to wait two weeks for them to even get the payments sent via mail. This is even more stressful and exacerbated when bills needs to be paid and payment from schools pays those bills.

There are no exceptions to these rules, nothing that I can legally force their hand. So, it's back to the original payment plan and re-doing each estimate, final invoice, website information, and new invoices going forward. I can use some of the new terminology, such as calling it a "Program Customization fee" instead of a base fee, and calling it an "On-site Delivery fee" instead of additional fee per class. Yet, it still feels sticky and not at all what I intended for my business going forward.

The sad reality in all this is that this legal statute prohibiting prepayment makes it harder for schools to have payments available on the day of a program, gives them an added ability to cancel at any time without owing a dime for your time and money, and does not give you adequate billing cycles or a smooth business plan. It also subjects public schools to higher scrutiny for these types of extra-curricular programs and forces them to stay more vigilant with their funding and payments. Basically, it stops a lot of low-income and marginalized schools from taking advantage of the programs that are out there because the government has its eyes on what, where, when, and how they allocate funds.

As I've said many times before, I did not ask for this. When I set out to begin this journey into owning a business, it was with genuine intentions to give back to the teachers, students, and communities that could not otherwise afford really expensive field trips to places outside their school campuses. Some of my biggest competitors are large universities and companies whose funding comes from large-scale donations or high-priced programming. I wanted a way to teach the marine science that I spent years learning about in a fun and engaging way that eliminated the hassle of arranging buses, lunches, and a full day away from other subjects. I had found a niche, but every change I make seems to have its major setbacks and it's getting to a point of being too much.