Systems for Creatives with Amy Gould
Hey creative small business owners! Are you ready to improve your client experience and stop working do darn hard in the backend of your business? You’re going to want to listen in. I’m talking about all things client experience and systems and automation for service-based business owners. On this podcast we talk about how to create an incredible client experience, work less and live more, because I'm guessing you didn't start a business to work nights and weekends right?
If you haven't met me yet, I'm Amy Gould, Dubsado expert. I'm all about making things easier and simpler so you can get out of the overwhelm and enjoy your business again.
Ready to work less, make more, and WOW clients? Let’s do this!
Systems for Creatives with Amy Gould
EP 9: 6 Mistakes I See Creative Entrepreneurs Make With Dubsado That Cost Them Hours a WeekUntitled Episode
In this episode of the Systems for Creatives podcast, I'm exposing the 6 most common mistakes I see creative entrepreneurs making with Dubsado that are costing them precious time each week. If you're tired of constantly chasing down client inquiries, creating proposals from scratch, juggling endless workflows, and hassling over late payments, this episode is for you.
I break down how simple automation and systemization within Dubsado can eliminate these time-draining issues once and for all. You'll learn how to nurture leads without the hassle of responding manually, utilize proposal and contract templates, map out automated workflows, declutter forms with a more organized Dubsado setup, and implement a seamless experience for scheduling and payment plans. Making these strategic tweaks can free up hours in your workweek to focus on revenue-generating activities and delivering an exceptional client experience.
By the end, you'll have a clear roadmap for auditing your current Dubsado setup and implementing quick fixes to work less, make more, and wow your clients. If you’d rather have me personally evaluate your Dubsado set-up and show you where you could improve it, use the link below to book a System Strategy Session with me to get a personalized plan for supercharging your business systems. Don't miss this chance to transform your workflows and reclaim your time - tune in now!
Stay in touch!
Book a Free 15-minute Discovery Call to Learn How I Can Help You Work Less, Make More & WOW Clients: www.amysgould.com/book-a-call
Book a 90-Minute Systems Strategy Session with Amy: https://amysgould.com/workflow-strategy-session
Website: www.amysgould.com
Watch me on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SystemsforCreatives
Share your takeaways by email: amy@amysgould.com
Connect with me on Instagram: amysgould_
Stay in Touch with Us
Book a Free 15 Minute Discovery Call to Learn How I Can Help You Work Less, Make More & WOW Clients: www.amysgould.com/book-a-call
Website: www.amysgould.com
Watch me on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SystemsforCreatives
Share your take-aways by email: amy@amysgould.com
Connect with us on Instagram: amysgould_
Welcome back to the Systems for Creatives podcast, the show that helps you work less, make more and wow clients. I'm your host, amy Gould, and today we are going to be talking all about the five mistakes that I see entrepreneurs making when it comes to Dubsado that are costing them extra time and extra work, especially if you're handling everything manually. So if you're tired of constantly replying to inquiries, creating proposals from scratch, redoing client workflows and chasing down payments, this episode is for you. Stick around, and I'll also share how we can team up for a system strategy session to audit your workflows and map out simple changes you can implement right now to streamline your business. Let's get to it, okay.
Speaker 0:So the first thing I see people doing when it comes to Dubsado and their business is replying manually to inquiries. So you know, maybe they've got a lead capture form on their website or they're just responding to emails and they don't even have the lead capture form. By creating an automatic response email that goes out when someone fills out an inquiry on your website, you can save yourself a lot of time. So this is really easy to do in Dubsado you just need to connect a workflow to your lead capture form and then add a send email step, and what I like to do with this step is to let them know that you've got their inquiry. First of all, because I don't know about you, but I have filled out a lot of online forms and I would say, 90% of the time I'm left wondering if they even got my inquiry because I don't get something back right away and I never hear from them, or I hear from them weeks later. So that is what I would do. And then I also recommend to my clients that you add that next piece of content for someone who's interested in working with you to consume. So that could be a video about hiring someone who does what you do, or things to keep in mind when hiring someone to do that. We've got Lulu on camera today, so everybody say hi to Lulu. There's a lot of different things. You could send them to your portfolio and show examples of your work maybe your photograph online photo gallery, other things like that. So that is a great way to continue the conversation while they're waiting to hear back from you. And then the third thing to include in that is when can they expect to hear back from you? So that's the three things to include in that automated response and then if someone is sending you an email instead of filling out your form, what you can do is send them an email template. Maybe you've got that saved in your Outlook or Gmail, which I've got a video coming up soon on how to create those, because that's something I never knew existed until recently. So check out the videos for that video on how to create templates inside of your Gmail account. But you can create that template with the link to your lead capture form in it so they can click that button, fill out the lead capture form and you can capture that information. So good tip there to save a little bit of time on replying to those email inquiries.
Speaker 0:The next thing that I see people doing all the time is creating proposals from scratch every single time, and this also could go in with creating contracts from scratch or filling in your contracts all of that. First of all, dubsado has templates. You can create a proposal template. 95% of that is going to be the same every single time. You can go in there ahead of time and customize the form for that client and maybe tweak the package that you're sending them if there's a few things different about the package for this particular client. But by creating that proposal template ahead of time you can save yourself a couple of hours putting together those custom proposals for people, and a lot of people don't realize this. I talk to people a lot about this on discovery calls. You can also have the information from the proposal automatically populated into your contract right away when they click approve on that proposal, into your contract. Right away when they click approve on that proposal It'll take them to the contract next to sign that and auto fill their information in using smart fields and custom map smart fields. So even if it's something special for your industry, you can create what's called a custom map smart field for that. Have them fill that information out on the lead capture form or on the proposal and then it'll automatically be added into the contract when they complete that proposal. So that's going to save you a ton of time of manually entering all of that information. It is mind-numbingly boring and it takes a ton of time. I've honestly done it before and there's always that worry that you're going to forget a key piece of information in the contract and maybe that could cause a problem with someone actually signing the contract. So make sure to use proposal templates and contract templates and auto fill all that information in so you don't have to enter it by hand and create those contracts and proposals from scratch every single time.
Speaker 0:Next, I want to talk about recreating your process every single time for every single client. This can look like a couple of different things. It's maybe just not having a written out process for your services, so every time you bring someone into your business, you are winging it and figuring out what you're going to do as you go along. This all takes mental energy and it's confusing. It's not a great customer experience and it takes a lot of extra time because you're recreating your process every time for every single client and creating that sort of custom experience for them. But the truth of the matter is that when you have a clearly defined process that you follow for each and every single client who does a particular service with you, it feels very well organized, it's very well put together, it doesn't take as much time to do and you can still create that feeling of it being special, even if the same exact thing happens every single person. It saves you a lot of mental bandwidth and it gives you more energy to put back into the service that you're providing your clients. So I highly recommend writing out your process preferably in Dubsado workflows, okay and then follow it. That's the other thing.
Speaker 0:I've had clients who have workflows in Dubsado that we mapped out and put together, who are constantly tweaking and fidgeting with the process for every single client just because they feel like it needs to be done differently for that client. I don't know, and no judgment, it's your business, run it how you want. But when you are constantly tweaking that and trying to remember, well, how did I do it for Jim versus how did I just change it for Susie, and then, oh, this other person is coming through what needs to happen next, it takes up so much bandwidth to try to keep track of all of that. It's way easier if you just follow a single process. So keep it simple. Map out a process for starters and then follow the process. It's going to save you a lot of time and energy.
Speaker 0:Then another thing that kind of goes along with the proposal templates, but it's a little bit different, is creating proposals in the forms area that are named for specific clients. So you might have a Susie Smith proposal and a John James proposal and an Eric Clapton proposal and a whole stack of these proposals in there for particular clients. And honestly, I did this in the beginning too, because I didn't realize that when a workflow runs or when you manually apply a form to a client, those forms are copies of the form in the client's project. So any edits that you make in the client's project are only being made on that copy and not on your template. Next time you go to customize a proposal, make sure you're going into a client's project and editing the form that's in the project. That way you're only editing the copy that's in the project and you don't need to have a million forms in your form bank that are named for specific clients. It's going to create a lot of visual clutter. It's going to make it hard to pick your template when you're going in to do that. If you're manually sending forms and anytime, you can get rid of that kind of clutter that's visual, it's going to help you be more streamlined and efficient in your business.
Speaker 0:So if this is you and you have a whole pile of forms in your Dubsado forms area, this is your permission to go in there and just delete every single one of them. You don't need to have them and don't even worry about it. If you delete it, there's already a copy assigned to that project that's probably named Susie James contract or Susie James proposal. So you will not be actually deleting the copy. That's in the client project and you can clean up your forms area and breathe a sigh of relief because it is not so crazy in there.
Speaker 0:Then the next thing that I see clients doing that's costing them a lot of time is not setting up schedulers and not using them to book appointments. So Dubsado schedulers are amazing because they connect with your Google Calendar or your Outlook or your Apple Calendar and they'll look at it and decide if you have availability for an appointment. You can also set your availability or when you want to book appointments in your Dubsado schedulers and you can customize it based on the type of appointment you're having and how many of those you want to have in a day, or maybe you just don't want to do a particular type of appointment on Fridays, for instance. You have the control on when those appointments can be booked and you can also block off days in your calendar or times in your calendar when you don't want to take appointments. So be sure to use the schedulers. Send people the scheduling links. Don't be afraid to do that. You're actually saving them a lot of time and you're saving yourself a lot of time by not playing the email game back and forth to try to book appointments manually.
Speaker 0:The other thing is the Dubsado scheduler then sends a confirmation and a reminder emails. As long as you set those two things up and those are a huge time saver as well, because you won't be getting the did I book the appointment emails, what time is the appointment, where is the appointment? What time is the appointment, where is the appointment, what day is the appointment All of that and you'll reduce your amount of no-shows. So I really highly encourage you to add the schedulers and start using them to book your appointments. Another thing that a lot of people don't realize is that you can manually schedule appointments on behalf of clients, and this is fantastic for businesses like home stagers who want to send a confirmation and reminder emails about their staging appointment, but who maybe don't want to give clients the agency to book their own staging date, because they need to manage teams and plan for truck loading and unloading and having people in different locations, so it's not in their best interest to allow people to book themselves, but you can go in and say they want to book a certain day or time and manually do that for a client and still have the confirmations and reminders and everything like that. So those are huge wins for using the scheduler.
Speaker 0:The last thing and we've got six things the last thing that I see people not doing that's costing them a lot of time and energy is not setting up payment plans inside of their Dubsado. Payment plans are really great because they allow you to send reminders for upcoming payments that are due and also let people know on the due dates or past due payment reminders. The great thing about this is that you can set them for multiple payments and have different reminders and things that go out and really tailor it to your services and how you're operating with these payment reminders. It keeps you from having to remember to remind people to make payments and helps keep cash flow running smoothly because invoices get paid automatically and you're not relying on you going into your invoices and checking in on invoices to see what's been paid and what's upcoming and what's still due out and then having to be the bad guy and writing those emails to people. Right? I hate writing past due payment reminder emails, and that's why I love payment reminders, because you can have those automatically set up and if someone doesn't make the payment by that date, it sends a payment reminder for you. And you're not the bad guy, it's just Dubsado sending that email. Then you'll just open your email inbox and see paid invoices, and that's a huge win, saves you a ton of time, because you're not having to shuffle through all of your active clients and look at payments that are still outstanding and figure out what to say and how to say it. And all of that Dubsado does it for you because you've already set it up once and it's just running like clockwork. So those are my six things that I see people doing with Dubsado. That's costing them a lot of time.
Speaker 0:I want to thank you for tuning in to Systems for Creatives, and I hope these insights are already sparking ideas on how you can simplify and speed up your client processes. If you're ready to take things a step further, click the link in the description for this podcast and book a system strategy session with me. Together, we'll take a close look at your current workflows and create a roadmap to make. With me. Together, we'll take a close look at your current workflows and create a roadmap to make your systems more efficient, allowing you to work less, increase your income and deliver a memorable client experience every single time. Check the link in the description to grab your spot for a system strategy session. Let's make your business work for you so you can get back to doing what you love. Until next time, keep creating and keep wowing those clients.