Six brands, one accounting platform: How Evelyn Chick manages it all

Evelyn Chick is a woman who wears—and has worn—many hats. “My focus has always been on the beverage realm. But I also operated a lot of bars and restaurants,” she explains. Like many others,  her role as a beverage director for a large hospitality group was impacted during the pandemic—the catalyst, it turned out, to leaving 17 years of working for others and jumping headlong into entrepreneurship. She decided to start her own consultancy and hospitality agency called Evelyn Chick Projects (ECP).

“Entrepreneurship came very quickly and almost out of necessity for me,” says Chick. “I feel like I've always had a mind for business. Just how I think about operations and the different learned experiences I've had throughout the industry.”

Initially, Chick leaned into her experience as a certified beverage expert, focusing on services like consulting. She helped other businesses get their beverage programming in line with the restrictions that were required during the pandemic. “From there, I started doing virtual cocktail experiences, and then it grew into Love of Cocktails, which is my cocktail kit company.”

But Chick didn’t stop there. “So under the ECP umbrella, there's Ahma, a pop-up and event space. There's Simpl Things, which is an all-day cocktail and snack bar. Love of Cocktails, which is the cocktail kit and gifting e-commerce company, and then Story Glass Co., which is a glassware line.” Chick continues, “There’s also Feastie, which is a food festival, and NODE studios, which is a content creator studio.”

With so many businesses to oversee, Chick needed an accounting software that could manage them all. She asked her accountant for a recommendation, and after considering a variety of options, landed on QuickBooks. “I use different functions in QuickBooks for each individual entity,” she explains. Despite the fact every business Chick owns is different, her accounting software serves them all. 

Multiple businesses—one accounting platform

Chick started using QuickBooks in 2020 and has since applied it to each of her business entities. “Before QuickBooks, I was manually keeping track of my expenses, invoicing people through PDF templates, and getting them to E-transfer. It was just getting a little bit chaotic.”

Now, Chick says invoicing with QuickBooks is much more streamlined. “The invoicing process is really great in QuickBooks, especially the recurring ones,” she says. “Everything is just click and go.” Chick appreciates how easy it is to edit invoices—from categories to prices. “I definitely enjoy the user-friendly aspect of QuickBooks, whether that’s being able to invoice people on the fly, or shoot a photo of an employee’s expense receipts,” she explains.

But better, easier invoicing wasn’t the only feature that led Chick to choose QuickBooks over the competition. From paying her team of 15 employees, to seeing where her businesses stand with insights and reports, it’s all centralized in one place. “QuickBooks was the one I landed with because of the payroll capabilities, and because it integrated with my bank account.” Chick also liked how easy it made keeping track of taxes. 

“There was a lot in QuickBooks that I knew would help me streamline my day-to-day operations and not spend as much time doing it manually,” she says. And once the decision was made, setup was simple. “The onboarding process for me was really just poking around the back end of QuickBooks and then calling my accountant when I had questions,” explains Chick. “She walked me through a few things, but most of it was self-taught and learned.” She adds, “I think it's pretty user-friendly. But if you really want to utilize the full functionality of QuickBooks, you’ve got to spend some time digging into it.”

Once she had QuickBooks configured to meet the complex needs of her many entities, Chick could reinvest time she’d been previously spending managing business tasks hands-on. With tedious processes now automated, she can focus on the bigger picture and grow her businesses in new directions.

Evelyn Chick, a serial entrepreneur, juggles it all

If running one successful business is a triumph, heading up half a dozen is truly mind-boggling. To many, that might sound like an overwhelming mental load, but Chick enjoys the challenge. 

“I’m still trying to find the balance between everything, but I think it helps to be very particular with managing time and finding people that you trust,” she says. 

Chick gains satisfaction from seeing her events come together and fulfilling her clients’ dreams. Helping her staff hone their skills and meet business milestones is inspiring too. “One thing about entrepreneurship that people forget or don't realize is that you're constantly making big or small decisions,” she says. “Your decisions can have a ripple effect on a lot of different things within your business, but also the people that you carry every day. I'm just trying to make the right decisions for both my business and my people. It makes me feel nervous, but empowered.”

When asked how she keeps herself centered while juggling so many hats—and what advice she might give to others who want to do the same—Chick says it’s important to engage in the self-care that works for you. “I think work-life balance is a very personal thing. A lot of people need meditative space and quiet. I don't—I'm a pretty energetic person. I feel like my brain's always going. So my peace is different from somebody else's peace.” 

Still, Chick finds a little focus in taking an hour to get her nails done; in having her morning coffee a very specific way; in taking a day now and then where she doesn’t look at the computer; and in cooking. “Cooking is like my ultimate [de-stressor]. My partner knows that as well. He knows that when I spend a lot of time in the kitchen, it’s actually when I'm the most stressed. And I need to just cook it out.”

Another component in building some peace-of-mind as a business owner? Finding the right tools. “Securing systems that will help you work better and faster, like QuickBooks, is important. I can't imagine still manually invoicing everybody, and manually keeping track of expenses,” Chick says. “You have to find the systems that work for your business.”

Measuring success—and the importance of community

Chick takes pride in creating amazing experiences for her clients. “Watching someone just be so in awe with how we executed their celebration, their special moment. That's a huge measure of success, because we made somebody else's day or week feel that much more personal and special. I think that's a huge win for us, because so many of our businesses are hospitality-based.” She credits her team for being a big part of what sets the business apart, noting, “Our team goes way above and beyond for our clients, especially when it comes to making their events or their experience with us their own.”

But to Chick, success is also defined by the bigger impact E.C.P. can make it in her community. “I think my measure of success is no longer just how much money we bring in, but also the people, the connections, and the community we're forming within the hospitality and events world,” says Chick. “Building community and making things approachable for each other is huge. That's how you form a very strong bond with your clients, colleagues, and people within the same industry.”

Part of building that bond, Chick says, is sharing resources—not just with clients, but with peers. “It's the mentality of the rising tides, where everyone wins if everyone has access to knowledge and education.” By focusing on community success, Chick explains, business owners yield two inadvertent wins: a reputable brand and a voice of authority.

“Entrepreneurship is a very lonely and scary road in the beginning, and I think my biggest piece of advice is, don't doubt what you can achieve. Never in a million years would I think that I would have all these businesses if I didn't just do it and take that leap of faith in myself.”

QuickBooks customer paid for their time.

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