Wedding Pro CEO | Building Profitable Wedding Businesses

299. Why We Switched CRMs – Part 1

• Brandee Gaar and Taylor Hedden • Season 6

Share episode

You didn’t start your business to stay stuck. If you're ready to finally hit 6 or 7 figures WITHOUT burning out — book a call with our team → https://weddingproceo.com/application

After years of sticking with an "all-in-one" platform, I finally faced the hard truth—it wasn’t doing everything well, and it was costing my team time, efficiency, and client experience. 

In this first part of our CRM switch series, you’ll hear exactly how we decided to break up with our old system, why we chose Dubsado, and how pairing it with specialist tools is making our business run smoother than ever.  

The (FREE!)ASSUME Sales Training: 2x your wedding bookings in 30 days—step by step. Thousands of wedding pros have already used it to land more clients immediately! http://weddingproceo.com/freetrainingorg

=========================  

EPISODE SHOW NOTES BLOG & MORE:

https://weddingproceo.com/why-we-switched-crms-part-1/

=========================

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Wedding Pro CEO Podcast. If you find these strategies helpful, make sure to share this episode with your fellow wedding pros. And remember, in the world of weddings, it's all about building genuine relationships and showcasing your best work. Until next time, keep shining, CEOs!

PLEASE SUPPORT THE PODCAST! LEAVE A REVIEW HERE: https://ratethispodcast.com/swd 

Have a question you’d like Brandee to answer? Ask here: http://bit.ly/3ZoqPmz

=========================

FREE TRAINING for Wedding Business Owners

Take the Wedding Pro CEO's free GAP assessment

Support the show

I know I'm gonna send a few shockwaves through our audience when I tell you that we have officially switched CRMs You guys know that I am a huge proponent of having an all-in-one CRM because then you have everything for every client housed in one spot. However, as I've learned over the last five years, unfortunately there aren't a lot of all-in-one CRMs that do. Everything well, so our team finally made the difficult decision to switch back to a CRM plus additional softwares that all do it really well. They do what they do excellently. So in this episode, this is part one of how we made the decision. To switch CRMs and why we made the decision to switch to the one we are now with. in part two, you're also gonna hear some of the other softwares that we had to put in combination with our CRM. ultimately this decision came down to the efficiency of our team. While I love an all in one, ultimately not all of the tools inside our All-in-one. Worked flawlessly, right? And I think that's to be expected. When you're a generalist, you can't be excellent at everything. So when you're an all-in-one, to be able to have perfect timelines and perfect floor plans perfect RSVPing and perfect workflows, it's just very difficult to pull off. Whereas if you're a specialist and you're A CRM, that really just focuses. On the workflows, the lead management, the client management, and then you have other softwares that really focus on having incredible floor plans or having incredible timelines. The reality is it's a lot more efficient. There's a lot more bells and whistles. There's a lot of things that just make it easier for our team to do business. So while this was a difficult decision, it's one that we did with lots of research, we. Looked into so many different platforms, so many different CRMs, but in this episode, you're gonna hear exactly why we landed on the one that we did, how we've implemented that. We're actually in the middle of implementing it right now. It's a little bit crazy over here, but we're super, super excited to partner with these new CRMs. And all of the new softwares and tools to really do a lot more content around how we're using them efficiently, how we're tying them together, how our team is becoming more effective and efficient by using these CRMs. So lots more to come on the podcast about it, but I'm excited to dig into part one of why we decided to switch CRMs with my guest. Taylor Hedden, who is the brilliant brains behind helping us to build our CRM out move it over. So you guys, I'm excited for you to hear this episode. Let's dig in. Taylor was a speaker at our wedding Pro CEO Summit 2025 this past year in Denver, and we got such great feedback about having you there. was just so fun to see how you were interacting with everybody and really just kind of. Explaining like how a system works and how workflows kind of go together and helping people to really understand that so that they can be more efficient in their business. So I've loved getting to know you both as a speaker through Wedding Pro CEO, and because you have been the brains behind helping us switch platforms, CRMs for blush, which. I'm aware there's many people that are gonna be shocked by this episode that we have made the decision to switch platforms, but there's a lot that has gone into this. But before we dig into all of that, Taylor, can you just kind of share with everybody a little bit more about what you do and kind of how you got into doing this? Absolutely. Yes. So I am the owner of Chanel and Lee. We are a consulting studio that helps entrepreneurs of all different stages and sizes really create systems in their business through CRMs to not only give them. A, a platform to manage all of the things, but also to give their clients a fantastic experience so they can get paid faster so they can serve their clients really well. And I help make sense of all of the backend stuff that most creatives either are not great at or really just don't like and don't wanna spend their time in. I primarily work with Dubsado, so we only focus on Dubsado. I am a Dubsado certified specialist. I was one of their first ever specialists when they announced the program in 2021, and I have worked with hundreds and hundreds of businesses. I've set up over 300 custom accounts, and this isn't just for wedding pros. I mean, I've worked with interior designers, branding and web designers, agencies, personal trainers. I mean, if you have a service, I have probably worked with you or a business like yours. And I got started in this space. I've been in entrepreneurship for over a decade, which it first started as a photographer, which actually informed a lot of how I knew about these backend processes for service providers. But I had some life twists and turns that happened and found myself. As a virtual assistant, this was back in 2019 and I was leaving an agency job where I was doing marketing and decided I wanted to start my own business. I was pregnant with my son, and so I got into this virtual assistant world and very quickly as a virtual assistant, I realized how most people didn't have any kind of processes in place, or if they did, it was super manual, very overwhelming, lots of different platforms and systems and. I was introduced to Dubsado in 2019 through my client, who I was a virtual assistant for, and she had tasked me with learning the platform and getting her moved over. And I had never used it, but I researched everything I could. I learned everything I could, and this was before there were all these Dubsado experts. Before it was even really a big platform. It was pretty new at the time. I applied it to my own virtual assistant business and just started to tell all my clients about it. And so every virtual assistant client I had, I started offering them setups and then they would tell their peers. And all of a sudden I realized I was becoming the go-to for Dubsado, and it was also something I felt super passionate about and that I really, really enjoyed. So in 2020. 2021 ish about, I pivoted completely away from virtual assistants and, and the backend operations side of things and just niched and zoned in on Dubsado all things set up education training, and I've been doing that ever since and I absolutely love it. That is so fun. I love kind of hearing how the journey went. You were like broad, broad, broad, and then all of a sudden, okay, wait, I'm really, really good at this and I wanna kind of become just like the voice of Dubsado. Um, and, and, and why they're great, right? Like you love them. And so doing those build outs. Helping business owners to really automate, become more efficient through Dubsado is so helpful and I love watching your content. We were actually introduced through Katie, who is one of our coaches inside of Wedding Pro, CEO, and I think she did your wedding right. She was my planner at my Yeah. Her team, Right. And then you built out her Dubsado, and she's been telling me about you for a while and she's like, you know, you have to meet her. She's so great. She's so talented. Like I, I don't know how my business would run without Dubsado. And I'm like, okay. Okay. Okay. And um, you know, that's great. And then slowly but surely, Sophia, who is the operations, she runs everything over at blush, just slowly would just continue to say like, Brandee, I need our CRM to be able to do this. I need our CRM to be able to do this. And it was just like, you know, I kept kind of hearing from our team over at blush, this is difficult for us, this is difficult for us. And. The more I heard it then I was hearing Katie kinda talk about Dubsado, talk about you. Um, you and I talked about you being a speaker at the summit I just started thinking, I think it's time. Like, I think it's time to make everybody's lives easier. And you and I talked a little bit about this before the show, but my biggest hesitation in switching CRMs, well, there's a lot, right? Anybody that's listening to this that's ever done a CRM switch before, you know it is not easy. It's. It's, it can be easier obviously, when you have like a tailor, but it's, it's a big undertaking. Like it's definitely a big lift. It's like, how are we doing it? What are all the, you know, what, what exactly do we need to do and what are we looking for? Like, what doesn't work now that we're looking for? So we spent a lot of time researching. Multiple different platforms before we landed on Dubsado because we really wanted to say what is painful now and what, you know, what are we looking for to be fixed? So that was something that was a really big question for our team. We put a lot of time into researching the different options for that first. Um, and then from there, the other thing that was holding me up was. I really love the concept of an all-in-one, and Taylor and I were chatting about this and Taylor said, well, it doesn't exist. And I kind of giggled to myself because. Eddie from Timeline Genius, who's on next week's episode to kind of talk about part two of this switch that we made, has been saying that to me for years. He's like, I don't know why you aren't on Timeline Genius. You know, our timelines are superior to any other platform. And I was like, yeah, but we're in an all in one. And it's great because everything's right there in the one. And he has always said, right, but it's not. Great. Like when you, when you try to be everything, you can't be great at all of them. And that has always stuck with me that he said that. And, and even though I didn't change for years, right? I was like, I hear you, but it's good enough. But as we started to see the difficulties our team was having, it was, that's where we started to realize, okay, maybe, maybe there's truth to that, that you know, an all in one is great for many reasons, but it's hard to be great at every single piece of the platform. And so. That's when we started looking at Dubsado and we were like, well, if we paired, these are the things Dubsado can do. So now we have to find how to do our timelines right? Where are we gonna do our timelines? Okay, we're gonna use timeline genius now where are we housing our client portal? Where are we? You know, different things like that where, how are we doing a client budget, which is something that we could do in our all in one. So little things like that, we had to really decide can we piece this all together? Will it be more efficient? And I'm excited to say, as you know, Taylor, 'cause you are almost completely done with blush, thankfully. Like we're almost at the end of it, but. As you know, we have made the switch and we have kind of figured out how to piece all of that together. So, what would you say would be, you know, one of the biggest draws that you like about Dubsado? Like what, what is the biggest thing that you see? I would say, especially wedding pros, um, that you would say this is what makes Dubsado superior to maybe some of the other options out there. yeah, there's a few things, but before I say that, to your point, I always tell my clients as well, like there is no perfect system. And I, and I love that Eddie had mentioned that because it. There's just so many different business types, and every business has different priorities. So it really is about figuring out like, what is the real priority? What are, where are the bottlenecks actually happening? And then if we can solve those bottlenecks, then some of those other things that the system can't quite do, they're not going to be as, as burdensome for the team because now we have these other bottlenecks handled or automated. So I, I love that you guys really considered that and, and thought through the priorities for Dubsado specifically. One of the two of the things that I think are the most, impactful about the system when you're comparing it to others. One is going to be the automations. I really have not found another system in this type of industry at this cost that supports this level of automation because you can go find systems like HubSpot and these other ones where they're very, very advanced and they have all these automations, which that's a whole nother can of worms.'cause we're trying to learn it and teach it and build it. But the cost, it's so affordable for how much it can actually handle if it's. Set up correctly for your business. And so the, the automations, especially when people are comparing something like HoneyBook, um, or other, you know, kind of CRMs in this category, you don't have the amount of available triggers and automations. And so I think that's a huge piece of it, right? How much can we actually automate in the platform itself? And then secondly, and I have stood by this since I discovered Dubsado, their community, their customer service, their transparency as a platform I, it, it's really hard to find another platform that operates this way. And you know, they have always been a really. Um, honest, transparent team. It's a woman founder. She, she's just, you can tell that they embody everything that you would want in a platform to support you in your journey when you're trusting them with your business and you're paying them, and there's not a lot of platforms out there that really care as deeply as them. And so things like even transparency with updates and support. I mean, they have a fantastic support team. They have an amazing community, not just of other specialists, but of users that are super active. And you can pretty much always find the answer to a question, whether it's the community, whether it's. The hundreds of resources they've created through YouTube or free webinars, or free courses, or even with their team themselves inside of the platform when you're requesting support or have a question. So it makes it a little less intimidating jumping ship when you know that, uh, the, the team is there to support you in making it successful. Yeah, it's funny that, we'll, we'll kind of break both of those down 'cause they were both a big part of why we made the switch. Those, both of those things you just said, the automations one was almost comical to me. I'm, I think you would agree when you started building out Blushes because one of the things, so Blush is obviously we're 18 years old. We've had a CRM for over a decade, right? Um, different CRMs, but we've had, um, the same one for the last five years and. We had a lot of strategy already built out in there, so we really thought it was gonna be like, pull the strategy out of this one, hand it Taylor, let her dump it into this one. And as we were going through kinda those initial, um, meetings that we had, it was so funny to me how often you would be like. Well, what's the, how does this process work? And we, it so much was manual and I honestly didn't realize it until we started talking it out. And I would say, you know, or Sophia would say, well then that zaps here and then we have to go in and tell it to do this, or we have to go in and push this button or, and you were like, well, all of that's automated now. And we were like, what? So. I think we just got used to it, to be honest. And, and that's okay. I mean, I think that happens right in all businesses where you evolve and you grow and then you start to realize, whoa, look at all of these things that we've been doing manually for so long. And there's so much room for human error there. In addition to the fact that like, you know, one of the things that I was, I, I don't, I, I don't know, a blind spot I totally did not see until we started working together was like, one example of this was when a client would sign their contract. Right. This was one I think that was so baffling to you. You were like, wait, what? So when a client would sign their contract and pay, we, only one person on our team was notified, which is fine. But then that manually had to be pushed out. Like there was no automation that could make that work. And, um, so that the client would be notified like, yay, welcome to the family. Like, here's how to get onboarded. That had to be. Manually pushed out. So if a client signed on like a Friday night, they wouldn't get all of that information until Monday. And you were like, no, that needs to happen like right away and automated. And we were just like, what? Um, little things. Right? And they sound stupid. Like, to be honest, I'm saying it out loud and I'm like, half my audience is gonna be like, you're a dingdong. But again, it goes back to how many people run their business in this way, myself included sometimes, where you're just like. It just becomes the norm because that's just how you do it, right? And it's not until you start looking for a better alternative that you're like, whoa, there are so many things that can save us time. All of those little minutes add up. Those client experience touch points really make a big difference. And I love that. One of the things that you pushed on us, like you were impressing on us so much was. No, let's automate this because it's part of your client experience. Let's automate this because it's part of your client experience. And again, we had been so used to manually doing some of those things that we were just like, oh yeah, you're right. Let's automate Anything else that you wanna touch on in automation since we're sitting here? I wanna touch on your other one too, but. I mean, I think you put that perfectly, especially from an anecdotal perspective. I think people are very scared of automation because they, they think it's going to lose personal touch or they're not gonna be able to see what's happening. Like I always hear that, well, how am I gonna know what's going on? Or how am I gonna, I need to. See that email go through, I need to push the button. Which again, it's, it's more of just, again, a change in how you're operating and kind of a mindset shift. But at the end of the day, you are serving your clients better when they're being taken care of, regardless of your team, your availability, your mood that day, whether forgot something, and especially when it is those pivotal moments like. Someone pays you a large chunk of money, they getting something immediately, right? Not always is everything need to be automated. And that's a key thing too, is I'm definitely not in the camp of we gotta sit here and automate everything. I mean, you saw with our process, there are still many manual things that need to happen. There's. Tasks, there's things that need to be adjusted depending on the client situation. So it's not a catchall, like we're just gonna automate everything in your workflow. So I don't want people to think that's the best practice 'cause it's not. I'm all about figuring out and back to our um, talk at Wedding Pro CEO Summit was what actually needs your energy or your team's energy? And then what can we automate? And if it's not, whether you need to lead it or it can be delegated to a team member. Then we can definitely automate it. So it's just figuring out and prioritizing. If it doesn't need to be personalized, then let's automate it and it's gonna serve your clients better in the long run. Yeah, and I love that you said that because you're right. One of the things we did was automate that first email, but then their process to actually becoming a client is something that we manually turn on. So if there's anything that we have to adjust or manipulate in the system, we have time to do that. But writing that first email, just like, welcome. We're so glad you're part of our family now. That makes so much sense to automate. Um, and so it's, it's really kind of a, a together thing, but again, now there's tasks that are assigned to the correct person so that, you know, you come into the office on Monday and you're like, oh, we got a new contract over the weekend. Let me do anything that I need to do. Like, it's, it's very assigned and very easy to follow. the other thing that you mentioned, which. Was actually a really big piece of the puzzle for us was when it came to their community was really just their presence online. Like they're not only very visible, but they're sharing client wins. even little wins, big wins at their clients are having, they're sharing updates. Tips how to use it. There's so many people that do use it, and so it seems like there's just like this really thriving community of people who are excited about the platform and also excited to share strategies on how they're using it. And I feel like that's a really big deal because it also means that they have happy clients, but they're also innovating is what I saw. I see a lot coming out about 3.0, 3.0, and I love seeing that they're taking feedback from their community. They're starting to implement, they're making updates like they really are passionate about being this great platform that is really, really good at what they say they're gonna be good at. Yeah. I think what's cool about how they've done this, just because I've been a user for so long, and then a specialist, is they're not just innovating to innovate. They're really listening to like, okay, what are the needs? Because when you look back at Doto, when they started I think eight or nine years ago, I think nine coming up, they really were concentrated on the creative, you know, industry, wedding pros, photographers, things of that nature. But because it's expanded so much, we have these other industries that are like. Hey, I need this type of feature. I'm here now. Like, how can you serve me? And so what I've seen, you know, again, just to throw out a competitor, HoneyBook, they were making updates, but. Come to find out those weren't even really requested by people. It seems like they were just making updates and, and they, people were not happy with it and they were increasing prices. And so I, I love that Dubsado really listens. They do have a, an active pipeline. It's called their roadmap, and you can literally submit requests and they will show you what requests they're working on, what things are currently in their development software. What things are slated to launch. They've always had up, which I find so helpful for transparency. And they've also just been very open about, I mean it is a software, so every software is gonna have delays or things going on, and they've always been open. If there were situations where it's like, Hey guys, we actually need to come back to the drawing board, or 3.0 is gonna be a little bit longer whenever they were, you know, releasing it.'cause they were making such massive changes to their, to their backend software and so. I find that amazing. And, and to your point as well, they really care about their success, which makes sense because if they don't have any users, then they're not a successful platform themselves. So they're always going to be looking to make sure that the businesses that are trusting them with their businesses are successful in that. And I just, I really can't think of another platform in our industry that has that same ethos, honestly. Yeah, and it's, it, you know, it's a really big deal for, especially wedding industry. Like we tend to be a very expressive community. Like we wanna kind of all be together and rah rah. And so I love that they have a community. I think it just, it's also just feels good, right? It's exciting to be. Something, um, that's really making our industry better. those are all of the reasons that we decided Dubsado would be the platform that we moved to. And full transparency, we're literally, as we're recording this in the middle of the switchover, Yes, we are. so, so I know poor Taylor's, like, I get 150 slacks from you guys a day. Um. But you know, we're literally in the middle of moving everything over to Dubsado. We had set up, we've been trained on it. We're troubleshooting everything, you know, getting our sales over there. So it's been really fun and we're excited to just more and more dig into all of the features that it has. But I wanna talk about your Dubsado, build out. What are you, what do you call it, Taylor? I should know this. I call it a VIP experience because it is the VIP treatment. It really is. It really is. And I, I wanna touch on a couple things that I really enjoyed about it, but can you kind of explain to everybody what the VIP experience is? Yes. So this is my signature setup. I only have one offer, one process. It keeps it really, really simple, and I've refined this and truly, I feel like I've perfected this and done it with hundreds of businesses. But essentially it's a setup that's built into three parts. So the first part is strategy, which I know we're gonna get into. This is where I sit down with my clients and we really. Brainstorm and map how we want the system to run, not just from an automation perspective, but even to their experience. What touch points, how are we saying things? Where are we doing things? How is Dubsado coming into all of this? So that's the strategy part. Once I have that strategy, I then can go into part two, which is the full build of the platform with my VIP. It includes. Everything from the automations itself to the optimizations, to the canned email writing to the form design. So every part of the system is customized for my client. And then part three, which is truly my favorite, is teaching the platform. I've, I've heard, and not just ido, but many systems where, you know, something gets set up and people invest and then they're just left not knowing how to use it. And there's nothing worse than investing in something that you can't use. So in my part three is when I train my clients and their team and we are live in their account, we walk through all the things. It's a lot of information, but it's, it's really me making sure not only do you know what's going on, but you know how to make changes your confident in, in utilizing this and scaling it, and then I support them for an entire month as they implement. We polish things, we revise things. So it's, it's really the entire experience from strategy to build to actual implementation with their team. Yes. So good. Okay. So one of the things that you said, and I don't think I even realized how helpful this would be, um, but I want everyone to hear this because I think you are like, yeah. And so like writing your emails and things like that. I, you glaze over that so quickly and I think that. on my marketing for that. A little bit. I'm like, girl, let me explain, because I was actually speaking with one of my students yesterday who does not currently use a CRM at all. Like, it's kind of like, um, DocuSign, um, here's a, you know, here's a Zelle link. And she actually has a really, I. Amazing, thriving business. But she is like, I feel like I'm losing my mind. I'm like, no kidding. So when we've been talking about different CRMs for her, same thing. I'm not just like, oh, Dubsado is the one. Because now I used Dubsado. I, we've really gone through several different, like, okay, here's how this one would work for you. Here's how this one would work for you. But I was talking to her yesterday and this was after, now we are almost done with ours, and one of the things I said to her was. Because you don't already have a CRM built out. I'm gonna highly suggest working with Taylor because I mean, even if you do already have a CRM built out like we did. It's still so, so helpful because you've worked with so many clients for you to say, well, what if it worked this way, or, what if we did this instead? Or, I think this email should go here, and it was super helpful to us. But for somebody like this student that I was talking to yesterday who doesn't have any of it, you really have all of that for them, right? Yes, absolutely. And what's cool now is. You know, I obviously have worked with some industries where it's a repeat industry, like lots wedding pros, lots of branding and web designers. But I think because I've had my eyes now on hundreds of businesses, which I, I take with so much honor because they're really showing me all of their business. I, I just know. The backend so well to where even if I haven't worked with your industry, I feel super confident I can help you because it's, it's less of a, let me like know this industry up and down. It's about asking the right questions and thinking through kind of a logical mindset of, okay, if this happens, what would be the best option? A or B. Now, obviously with the wedding Pros listening, I have worked with hundreds, I mean, planners, florists, DJs, photographers. And what's cool about that is I also hear what the other vendors are saying about each other. So, you know, a planner is telling me, oh yeah, we really want our photographers to give us this, or my photographers are saying, I'm always talking to planners and I'm running into this roadblock. And I'm like, well, the little birdies of my planners are saying your CRM sucks, or whatever it be, you know? So I do think that's an advantage of just being in this space for so long and I, I really enjoy helping people just figure it out. And I think that's a misconception is that you do have to have a process or a CRM or you have to have it all fleshed out. Don't get me wrong. I'm sure there are some services where you do have to provide a lot of that, but I want it to feel like you are coming to me in this VIP and I'm handling it. So you just need to bring, here's what I'm selling, here's my type of client, and here's kind of like my, my priority list or what would be nice to have, and then I help you figure out, okay, well where are all, where, how does all of that actually play out in the system. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, I was. Honestly shocked at how, how much you provide, and that's not just because you're sitting in front of me. I really want anybody that's listening to hear that and say, Taylor comes with a wealth of knowledge about our industry, and I think one of the things I pride myself on as a coach is like, if I have done what you're doing, I'm gonna just give you everything that I can to make you successful. Like that's something that we do inside of our program with all of our coaches. All of us are like, I already have this for you. Let me just give it to you. Whether something we teach inside the program or not. And so what, what I think is so interesting about the fact that you're like, I'll write your emails for you. Like I have the workflows. I was just like, what? That felt so crazy to me because we've worked with lots of service providers over the years and no shade to them at all. It's not it, you know, it was more of a wow, like it's something that you do that I was like, wow, it's so smart because you're like, I, but it's just so easy for me because instead of having you go recreate the wheel every time I've already done it, like, let me help guide you. And so I think that that's a really big piece of your offering that. A, a lot of people would be shocked is in there Oh, thank you so yes, I would highlight that more. And, It's so funny too, 'cause when I started doing this years ago, I mean, I, I was not as educated as I am. Now, of course comes with time, but there was a point in time where I did require my clients to provide like the emails and the content, and I just realized it was. It was like pulling teeth because again, most business owners are not the experts in email copy or knowing what to put here and what to put there. And I just realized so many of my projects were not as successful as I wanted them to be in the beginning, even though those people would still say, oh, it was great. And I'm like looking back, oh my gosh, if I could just take that off of you, you're gonna feel lighter. I'm gonna be more successful because I can do it how I think needs to be done without you trying to, you know, put the puzzle pieces into place. So I really appreciate that feedback. Yeah, I love it. I love it so much. Okay, so for anybody, Taylor, who is, kind of on the fence, they, maybe they already have a CRM and they're, but they're frustrated with it. They're like, I don't know how to use it. I, I don't actually use it at all. Or I just, it's not doing what I need it to. what would you say if they're thinking, okay, I think I really do wanna make the switch to Dubsado, but it feels. Too much right now. Like it feels too heavy. Um, what would you say to somebody thinking that? Mm, couple things. So. Unless it's an absolute necessity. I always really try to remind my clients, try to do this project in a timeframe when you're not in your busiest season or time of the year, which I know can be hard, but, you know, really kind of look at what is my team capacity, what's my bandwidth? When you know you have bandwidth for either a switch or to dive into it just so you can approach it a little bit lighter. There's, you know, a couple of options. I always tell my clients, you don't have to start with like. Full automation. Now, obviously, if you need this to be running like you guys where it's like, no, we're, we're jumping ship from this one and going to this one, then yes, hire me and I'll handle it. But you can start small like the Dubsado trial, which I love this about what they do. This is also very unique to them. They do not have a timed trial, meaning you have to sign up for two weeks and then it's locked and you have to pay for it. You can use the trial for as long as you want until you have more than three clients in the system. So I always say if you're in another CRM or not one at all, and you're just trying to feel it out and see if it's the right choice, get the trial, sign up for it. Peek around, watch some videos. And put some of your stuff in there, like you can get your contract in there, you can start playing around with the schedulers. You don't have to automate everything right away, and you can still just utilize it and get a feel for it before you actually make that investment. So that's kind of one camp of maybe the, the DIY person who just wants to get in there and, and test it out a little bit. But also what I would say too, if, if there is someone who is wanting to make the switch. And just really get kind of clear on those priorities like we discussed in the beginning of what is, whether it's no CRM or the CRM you're in right now, what are the things holding you back the most in that process? Where are those bottlenecks happening? Whether it's certain emails or certain steps of the process that contract happen to be manually sent? Make a list of those things. So that way when you do talk to me or you go and search for resources, you really know what the priorities are so you can make that right decision and know if Dubsado can handle those things or what kind of questions you even need to be asking when you're talking with a Dubsado expert or the Dubsado team or in the community. I think it just gives you a clearer picture of like, where are my top priorities to not only. Feel successful in the platform, but to actually, um, start tackling some of those, those bottlenecks that are happening in the business or some of those areas where it's just feeling way too complicated. then again, also just come and I will point you in the right direction. Yeah, I, I love that first point that you made in saying, you know, do it when you know that you're gonna have the bandwidth. And so to kind of give you guys an example of the timeline that we used, so Sophia has been basically beating her head against the wall with me for a while and saying like, Hey, I really just wanna look at something else. I'm like, okay, okay. Okay. So we, I think we started even just. Considering the option, you know, maybe quarter four of last year, so we're in August right now as we're recording this, um, of 2025. So we, we probably started opening the door to like, okay, we're gonna look for something else. Um, we started exploring some different options probably around. March, February or March is when I was like, okay, I think we're starting to hone in on Dubsado. I feel really good about it. We've gotten a lot of great feedback and so Sophia jumped in and started the account that you're talking about, and I will say is actually a huge feature of Dubsado. So I know we all feel this so many. Tech anything has a 14 day free trial. And it's like, what are you gonna actually figure out in 14 days? Like nothing. Nothing. And so she started it and I was like, oh my gosh, wait, no. Like I don't think we're ready. And she was like, well, it doesn't seem like there's a timeline on it. And that's when you were saying no until you have three clients in it. You can keep it on trial basis as long as you want. What I loved about that is it gave our blush team time Sophia and Norma to both go in and start playing around. They were just kinda like, what does it look like? What does it feel like? What are some of the features that it has? So we were able to just kind of play around with it like you're talking about. And then I think maybe April is when I said to you, we would really like for you to build this out for us. But the reality is. We're in wedding season and my summit is in 60 days, so it is bad timing right now, but we, we already got on your calendar to start the process, so we were like, this is when we're gonna do it. We were starting to get everything on the backend that we needed, but we were fully focused by the time. We started working together and I think that, you know, so for you guys that are listening, I mean that's basically nine months that we now, does everybody need nine months? No, we, we took a forever to figure out what we wanted, but I would say if it, you know, you do need to plan for it. One, there's an expense to it, so you should budget for it if you can. Um, and two, there is time needed from you. So like. Taylor did the biggest lift of this for sure, but our team has needed to be very involved, um, in making sure, like what do we want it to do? What, you know, what are the things that we need it to, to happen? And then also getting everything out of our old CRM. So I would just say, you know, be mindful of the time capacity that you have, um, and also like really plan it out also. You can't really go to Taylor's website today and book a time for her to start this tomorrow. So No. need to, right. She's booking out too, so if it's something that you're considering, you need to make sure that you're, you're planning ahead so that she has time available as well. Yeah. And, and also with the time capacity, you know, it's the, the pre-homework is the, is the least difficult part. It really implementation because though now I've finished it and we're now just kind of revising things, you guys are gonna have to start. Implementing it with clients and whether that means bringing clients over or training the team or even just having a little bit more finger on the pulse as you are reviewing things and getting things in there and making notes of any kind of revisions. Like that's where I think people don't consider is, okay, now we actually have to implement it. And you wanna, you wanna feel like you have that capacity and you're not, you know, in the middle of this crazy wedding season and you don't even know if the system you've, you've just paid for is actually working, right?'cause you haven't had the time to sit down and like review it. So that's always something I. Say to my clients is, we can set it up any point in time, we wanna make sure you're ready to implement it and you have that space in your calendar to actually go through it and take the time to to dive in. Yep. Yep. I love that. I love that. Taylor, this is so good. I've thoroughly enjoyed the experience of working with you, and like I said, we're kind of like, I, I'd say we're in the most difficult part of the process. Currently, and I still am like, this is great. So Good. Okay. Good. You know, we're, we're in that part where we're moving everything over, which as you just said, is really kind of the biggest lift, where testing everything. And so it's just been a really enjoyable experience. How can everybody connect with you if they're interested in learning more about your VIP experience? Absolutely. I'll have to save this as like a case study Brandee. Yes. I, anytime you need a case study, I'm your girl. I love it. So you can go to Chanel and lee.com. I'm on Instagram as Chanel and Lee, I'm always sharing information. My dms are an open door, so please, if you have a question whether it's, is this right for me? Could I do this? Is this possible? Brandee's already said it. I do not withhold information because I just, it's, it's natural to me and I love sharing this and I really want all of my, peers to be successful. I think that's the most rewarding part about this, is watching other, other people just thrive in business. I am always accepting applications for VIPs, so you can find that on the website. And at the time of this recording, I do have a new quiz out, which will tell you if Dubsado is the right CRM for you. It's like a seven question quiz, so that's really, really simple and can give you some immediate resources if you're just poking around. So I'll also give that to Brandee to drop it into the description and details. Perfect. Yes. We'll have all of that in the show notes, and if you're considering it and you just want some more information about like why we made the switch, um, what were the things that were the most important to us, feel free to drop into my dms as well. I'm at Brandee Gaar over on Instagram and Taylor, thank you so much for being here. This was great. Thank you. This is awesome.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Brandee Gaar

Host
Head Shot

Taylor Hedden

Guest