Simplifying Workflows and Automating Your Business Using Dubsado with Krystal Clark
Episode 463: Show Notes
When we say that today’s episode is going to rock your world, we’re not even joking! If you have a client-based business and use Dubsado, maybe you have wanted to set up workflows, but been so overwhelmed that you haven’t started, then stop what you're doing and listen to this show with a notebook because Krystal Clark literally breaks down every step! From lead capture to onboarding to delivering to offboarding, she leaves no stone unturned. Krystal even goes so far as to give us five hacks on how she’s using Dubsado differently than what we have heard before!
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Krystal's creative brain takes something that already exists in Dubsado and then reworks it to be custom for her clients and you guys. If you do not have Dubsado yet, you can get 50% off for the first year by going to the link at the end of the page. It will rock your world when it comes to infusing beautiful branding and designing the workflow process. A lot of what Krystal talks about, we either have a template that will make it simpler or she gave us new ideas for templates that you best believe are coming out. Please share the workflow that you’re going to get set up because you were inspired by this episode, tag us, and then be sure to also tag Krystal on Instagram.
Time for A Throwback: How Krystal Got Her Dubsado Start
The back office, behind-the-scenes, nitty-gritty of running a business is so important, and we are huge fans of simplifying our systems. While most of us probably see the value of working one-on-one with clients, it can be very hard to do if you don’t have the tools to help you streamline your process. Krystal takes us all the way back to 2016 when she first stumbled upon Dubsado while working as a virtual assistant. She shares the story of how she pushed through the initial difficulty of setting it up. When she moved past the teething phase, she saw how it helped her hone her superpower — digital organization. This then, in turn, led to her growing her workflow strategy skills, which ultimately turned into a full-time career. Krystal does admit she is the type to get anxious and want to do everything at once, but Dubsado just isn’t that kind of jam. She realized she had to take a step back and see what was the first thing she could take off her plate. As Krystal continues to explain how Dubsado grew with her as her business expanded, we realize that maybe if we had known about it, we could have kept our one-on-one clients!
First Things First: Tackling the Immediate Workflow Needs with Dubsado
Setting up Dubsado, much like your website, is not a one-day job. We understand that it feels frustrating having to put so much time in initially, but the rewards on the backend are seriously unmatched. Krystal cautions us from going in guns blazing and stresses the importance of focusing on the money maker or your signature service. From there, you can then concentrate on what the deliverables for that service are and you can reverse engineer it so you can focus on fixing what really needs to be fixed. Krystal recommends that we should most likely all focus on lead capture. She outlines the five phases of workflow: Inquiry, booking, onboarding, service-fulfillment, offboarding. Once you are clear on each of these steps, it’s easy to go back to the beginning and truly understand what you need to ask for on the contact form. Also, once you have gained clarity, all the Dubsado tutorials will finally make sense! Another thing that’s also great about Dubsado is the flexibility, so you can build the systems as your relationship with the clients continues to unfold.
Get That Money Honey and Set Up Your Booking
If you have taken Krystal’s words to heart, you would have made a list of all our deliverables, which means you can easily go back to see what we need to do next. And what’s that you might ask? It's booking, of course, because that’s how you get that money! You know what the line items have to be from the deliverables list that you made, which means that you no longer have to spend hours crafting individual proposals! That's music to our ears. By using the line items effectively, you can then make effective proposals that answer client pain points before they arise. You can make it seem like you are reading their mind, which makes them more likely to sign up with you. Krystal tells us why we should think of our proposal as a sales page and how this will simply help grow that cash money even more. If you’re scratching your head on how to set up a proposal, don’t fret. We got you covered with our proposal template that you can download straight into your Dubsado from The Creative Template.
Automating Your Onboarding
After sorting out your bookings, it’s time to tackle onboarding, and luckily Dubsado makes that easy as pie. Krystal explains how once a client signs a contract, makes a partial payment or pays in full, you can set it up so that you trigger a welcome email. But being the genius that she is, Krystal doesn’t just use your run of the mill welcome questionnaire. Instead, as she explains, she uses this initial contact as a welcome guide and takes the opportunity to get to know her clients better. She establishes simple things like what they do for self-care or what type of iPhone they have so she can send them appropriate gifts or phone covers. By automating this process, you won’t have to lift a finger until your first call. Sound too good to be true? Well, it’s not. Not only does Dubsado allow you to automate your onboarding, but it also lets you automatically schedule calls, send reminders, and even automatically send proposals following discovery calls. Dizzy with excitement? We know we are.
It's Time to Fulfill That Service!
Surely, if a client doesn’t book with you straight away, you have to do a manual follow up and then all of a sudden, you’re in a never-ending rabbit hole of back and forth emails? The thought alone is enough to put you off ever speaking with a client again. But don’t worry, because as Krystal shows, you can even automate your follow-ups if proposals are left incomplete. Krystal also shares her idea of making an email course in Dubsado, so that if a client meets some criteria, they can take the warmup prep course until it’s their turn for you to see them. This all leads up to service-fulfillment, where you are actually doing the work that you get paid to do. Another nifty trick Krystal shares with us is building to-dos within her workflow and linking these to email check-ins. This way, once you have completed a task, you can let the client know. It's super important to keep clients in the loop, and Krystal goes the extra mile by sending automated emails after client calls. She uses these emails to outline what the call was about and then sets out the expectations for what’s to come. This way, clients feel part of the process. We also loop back to the signature package where Krystal points out that in some instances, depending on the type of work you do, it may make sense to customize each signature service, but in most cases, it’s fine to make universal one, which saves you a great deal of time.
Getting Over the Finish Line: Tips on Automating Offboarding
The final point of your workflow that you can automate is your offboarding, and Krystal shares the sneaky way that she gets her clients to give her feedback on their experience with her service. By getting all the necessary information from clients all the way from the headshots and bios to their struggles and results, Krystal automatically has content for her marketing. She shares how you can repurpose this content for your website and sheds light on how she builds the marketing into the offboarding process. By infusing the marketing into the offboarding you automatically create content, which frees up your time even more.
Krystal’s Final Dubsado Tips and Hacks
It's not every day you get to talk to a workflow strategy badass like Krystal, so we couldn’t let her go without squeezing the last little bit of wisdom out of her. She shares her mind-blowing idea for how you could use Dubsado to run a program! She unpacks how you could take a form, put a placeholder for videos and buttons, and then link things to the form! This would be so great for coaches who aren’t at the stage where they can afford to pay for expensive course hosting software. Krystal also shares her final two priceless hacks with us — Why you shouldn’t go straight to the workflow setup button in Dubsado, and how to use code blocks to your advantage. She explains these in more detail, outlining the importance of building out your workflow and deliverables as well as all the things we didn’t know could be embedded. With all the tips and tricks we got from Krystal, our workflow game is going to be off the charts.
Quote This
Before you set up a single thing in Dubsado, you really have to get a solid understanding of what you personally need to focus on first.
—Krystal Clark
Highlights
Time for A Throwback: How Krystal Got Her Dubsado Start. [0:06:47.0]
First Things First: Tackling the Immediate Workflow Needs with Dubsado. [0:11:45.0]
Get That Money Honey and Set Up Your Booking. [0:16:40.0]
Automating Your Onboarding. [0:20:23.0]
It's Time to Fulfill That Service! [0:26:45.0]
Getting Over the Finish Line: Tips on Automating Offboarding. [0:31:40.0]
Krystal’s Final Dubsado Tips and Hacks. [0:33:50.0]
ON TODAY’S SHOW
Krystal Clark
Krystal Clark Creative
Website | Instagram | Facebook
Krystal is a Workflow Strategist helping service-based creatives organize their back office so they can save time and serve their clients with more ease. Through her Dubsado setup and consulting services, she helps you create a signature feel-good client process that wows your clients and helps you to manage your day-to-day with more freedom, confidence, and peace of mind. She's all about transforming the way you work so you can live life unchained from your desk while still wowing your clients into raving fans who refer you again and again.
KEY TOPICS
Dubsado, Workflow Optimization, Streamlining, Automation, Lead Capture, Inquiry, Booking, Onboarding, Service-Fulfillment, Offboarding, Time-Saving, Templates, Proposals
