Streamlining Your Business Like a Rockstar Using Dubsado CRM with Biz Johnston
Dubsado is a customer relationship management software company, but in reality, it is so much more. From client management, automation of workflows, sending invoices, getting paid, scheduling appointments, accounting, and reporting, and so much more. It's a streamlined way of saving you time and growing your business.
Today we're talking with Biz Johnston, the head of the Dubsado community and human resources at Dubsado. She has worn many hats throughout her time at the company from customer support to marketing, but she always finds her way back to roles that require building strong relationships with people within Dubsado. Biz is helping us trust our crazy ideas because if you don't go after it, you'll never know.
Dubsado - The CRM meant for creatives.
Client management, contracts and forms, automation and workflows, sending invoices and getting paid.
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Mike Zabrin:
It's time to streamline your business and all of those repetitive tasks to allow for more free time to focus on your craft and thrive of what you do. Today, We're talking about client management, automation of workflows, getting paid, scheduling appointments, sending invoices, accounting reporting. I'm talking about dub Sato. It's a customer relationship management software, but in reality, it is so much more, Today, we're talking to biz Johnston business, the head of community and human resources at . She's worn many hats throughout her time at the company from customer support to marketing, but she always finds her way back to the roles that require building strong relationships with people within dub cyto and within our community. I'm your host. Mike Zabrin welcome to the Funktastic. Chats a podcast where we talk to industry leaders within the creative field to help you navigate being a boss and dominate with originality and vision. This is essential information for all small business owners and industry leaders join every week to help monetize their passion and how to strive and what you do. Harvard business review did a study on when should companies call web generated leads for optimal contact and qualification ratios. A Research team at www.Insidesales.com examined three years of data across six companies that generate and respond to web leads over 15,000 leads and over 100,000 call attempts. The result of the study is the odds of making a successful contact with a leader a hundred times greater when a contact attemp occurs within five minutes compared to 30 minutes after the lead was submitted. And for the real kicker, the odds of the lead entering the sales process or becoming qualified are 21 times greater when contacted within five minutes versus 30 minutes after the lead was submitted, what does this mean for you? 50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first. Essentially people in sales aren't only missing the opportunity to contact leads when they wait to respond, but they're also missing opportunities to qualify leads. You ever gone out to dinner or maybe gone to pick up dinner these days and promising lead comes right to your inbox? How about the budget field on one of your forms that someone just filled out that got you're really excited? What if it comes from a service-based website where naturally people are price shopping? Let's say you're super quick about it. You go pick up your food, race home, feed the dog, jump on the computer, your chance of getting that gig just dropped by half. If you're scared, that means you care about the growth of your business and in turn Dubsado has a place for you. It's totally free for up to three clients. Dubsado is a customer relationship management software company, but in reality, it is so much more. From client management, automation of workflows, sending invoices, getting paid, scheduling appointments, accounting, and reporting, and so much more. It's a streamlined way of saving you time and growing your business Today we're talking with Biz Johnston, the head of the Dubsado community and human resources at Dubsado. She has worn many hats throughout her time at the company from customer support to marketing, but she always finds her way back to roles that require building strong relationships with people within Dubsado. So what's better than talking biz with the lovely biz Johnson. Welcome to the podcast.
Biz Johnston:
Thank you. Thank you.
Mike Zabrin:
If you've ever start a podcast, I think that we can come up with a great name for you talking biz with biz or something like that. Yeah.
Biz Johnston:
says that everyone's man, you could, you should get like biz.biz as a website or something like that, too.
Mike Zabrin:
totally. That would be amazing. Well, I touched on a lot of statistics, but before that, let's talk about the Dubsado community a little bit. So you run the dip saddle community, and it's one that thrives on diversifying your network and it forces you to go beyond your immediate circle to contact and nurture real relationships with real creative entrepreneurs across the country. So what is the Dubsado community and what's the importance of having such a collaborative space like this one?
Biz Johnston:
Yeah, Well, it started with our Facebook community and is turned into, real world, personal relationships, both in and outside of the internet as well. But The Facebook community itself is a place where you can really interact with other business owners, either going through something that you're currently going through or have already gone through it and have plenty of advice and tips and things regarding your Dubsado account, how to just deal with things in business. Just deal with things in life, in general. It's just a really great place to collaborate and get ideas and just grow together.
Mike Zabrin:
Yeah. And we'll touch on how amazing Dubsado'S customer support is later, but it's not really.. The Dubsado community, it's not really meant to be a tech center. Over 19,000 members strong, it could really spark some momentum as an entrepreneur. Would you say so
Biz Johnston:
Yeah. It's not supposed to be a tech center. However, things like that do get in there and people are super helpful that way as well, but it's really just about growing and expanding your business and using whatever tools and people and just getting to where you need to be and having great people support you in that process.
Mike Zabrin:
Yeah, you even have a regular post that you do looking to hire someone let's support our Dubsado community. I've hired a few users to help me with my business. Like Colin from Dub-Ins, Caitlin from Indigo Tide Market. Yeah. He's amazing. And Caitlyn from Indigo tide market . what is the gratification that you get knowing that other users, especially during COVID where creative people are hit the hardest that people are able to support their families and find a new purpose in their career by helping other users take their Dubsado workflows one step further than they were yesterday?
Biz Johnston:
It's so it's, it feels so good. I feel there's so many parts to it, right? Like people are trying to provide for their families. They're trying to grow their business, grow their dream, but also in the process they're helping other people do the same thing by providing whatever their specialty is or their, their piece of knowledge. So it's so rewarding that it's such a a circle of events that just keeps giving.
Mike Zabrin:
I love that. And, we were just talking before the podcast, how different industries within the creative field can really translate over to each other and just inspire different workflow ideas. And so I think it's so cool. Back to my point of the opening, a big way that you can set the stage for how you're going to build your client interactions from the time a lead comes in to the time you respond within that five minute window starts with Dubsado's Lead Capture Form. And it's the most crucial forum that you can embed on your website. You can text it, you put it on Instagram, Facebook, et cetera. When someone fills out a lead capture form, it automatically creates a project in Dubsado, and it sets the stage for how you're going to build a workflow. So biz, can you break down what a workflow is for us and what are some vital first step workflow actions, or at least some industry wide common ones that you see from Dubsado
Biz Johnston:
users? Yeah. Going off of specifically the lead capture form, which is huge and a make or break moment for so many people you can have some, if someone inquires about your services or whatever the case may be, you can have something go out immediately, whether that's for some people it can be. Something as simple as, yeah, here's my order form. Just go for it, pick whatever you need or it can be something like, sure. Let me get a little bit more information about you upfront and we can see how this could work really well together. And those are things that in a workflow you can set up to send in any designated amount of time that you prefer. So like you were talking about earlier, those first five minutes is crucial. So if you want to send something a little personal. Within those first five minutes you can do that automatically without even having to lift a finger. Things like that. Invoices being sent payment reminders getting sent out. Cause I know sometimes for people following up on money is a little awkward. So things like that are all things that you can do in a workflow without really lifting a finger.
Mike Zabrin:
totally. And with that basic lead capture form itself, it could really help you, even when you're on a phone call with a client, almost using it like Zendesk or something like that. Save it to my bookmark on Google Chrome, where when I'm talking on the phone to somebody and as soon as I collect their name, their phone number, what they're looking for I just create the project right there for them and just keep that all in my leads folder. If you're new to starting a business, what is the benefit of writing down your business process versus jumping ahead, end up settling and start building things, or do you write it down? What are your tips for that?
Biz Johnston:
Oh, man. I always suggest writing out your process before you even get started moving things around in Dubsado. I think a lot of people are like, that sounds so, For lack of better words, like basic, like why do I need to write it down? Like I know what I do. I can just get right in there, but there's so many pieces in Dubsado that can customize it exactly to how you run your business. So knowing exactly what you do and being like, okay when a lead comes in or when I'm first contacted, what is my process? What do I do immediately then when they respond, what comes next and make it a flawless, seamless process on paper. And then it's so easy to just transfer that into the program itself and tweak everything to make it work for you. I think that's the biggest thing is with writing your process is that you want to make Dubsado work for you. Not try to figure out how Dubsado can make sense for you. Cause you can make it work for you. If that makes sense.
Mike Zabrin:
Yeah. Yeah. One of the things in the wedding industry that I'm in is that Eldep Seidel really has a great appointment scheduler too. Being able to automatically send an appointment scheduler out really gets the client on the phone. You're able to personally talk to the client and upsell the different packages that you do offer when they see the proposal to o the coolest part for me personally, with using Dubsado has been watching my workflow build over the year that I've been using Dubsado. And at first, all I did when someone fills out a lead capture form is that it creates a project. It labels it in a lead folder and then. Automatically sends out a canned email with my appointment scheduler, and then later I can approve the option. And when I'm ready to send their proposal, Iacontract and invoice over the course of a year though, I started adding things and my business started becoming not only longer but bigger, and when when someone fills out a form, some of my appointment scheduler, then after the call, I send a proposal that a contract and invoice, then it activates their portal that has done a questionnaire six months into becoming a client to start building their set list. Then after one week of the event, I sent the link to my weddingwire page for a testimonial. Then I have Dubsado's Zapier integrations, which are amazing too. So what are some of the ways that you've seen Dubsado users automate their process, but still keep some, a level of personalization. And there, I think people are sometimes afraid of automation sounding very robotic.
Biz Johnston:
Yeah. I think that is the first thing that everyone's worried about when they get settled into Dubsado is they're like, I just want to keep everything in one place. And that's what Dubsado is going to be for me, but I'm going to do everything manually. But then as you're getting set up and seeing how things are going you notice that you can literally make it be whatever you want to be. I think smart fields are huge for that situation and smart fields are basically taking information from one form and dumping it into another. So if you say what's your what are you super excited about for your wedding? And they talk about it. Then later you can say in an email to them, we're really excited to talk more about whatever it is that they're super excited about and you don't necessarily have to Plug that in, on your own, you can make it,do it for you. And so it allows you to have those small tweaks to where you're really paying attention to the client and customizing everything for it to be a personal experience for them. But it's not costing you a ton of time or extra energy, and you can still focus on your business rather than all of those little details.
Mike Zabrin:
Yeah. And I think some basic personalization that people do know of from other services would be like your name or your address, something like that. There are so many other personalization fields that up saddle offers like. Invoice due the date that it's due so what are some other personalization fields that Dubsado has that makes it easier for clients other than those?
Biz Johnston:
Those are like our standard ones that we offer across the board, but you can create your own, which is what I really like
Mike Zabrin:
Oh, wow.
Biz Johnston:
You can, we have this thing called custom map fields. And with that, you can you can literally create whatever you want it to be. So if you write in there what's one song that you do not want us to go the night without playing and they can add that in there. And then you can populate it later in an email and be like, don't worry. We will not forget to play whatever that song may be. And things like that where it's. Super simple. And things that, like you said your process has grown so much over time from the beginning of you using Dubsado till now. And it's small things like that, that you can keep adding and keep tweaking as you go along to really create that personalized experience.
Mike Zabrin:
That's so cool. I didn't even know that myself. So that's amazing. As a CRM, that's really meant for creatives, many of our lives have been poured on a total standstill because of COVID. And in a month in the COVID 19 Dubsado was mentioned in Forbes magazine as a leveraging software company that can give your business an edge up during the pandemic, and that same article, they mentioned automating customer interactions by up to 85%, including converting leads, billing, and more in what ways have Dubsado had to adapt to the pandemic and how has it translated over to the users too?
Biz Johnston:
Yeah, it was something that the beginning of the pandemic, we really had to slow down and really pay attention to our users even more than usual. We're very much user-facing and always trying to figure out what what our users really want and really need. But in this case specifically, we really had to slow down and be like people's lives are being impacted much differently than how they typically do in a rough season. And at first it was more support in issues that were uncharted for some people. Really navigating contracts. And if they're still standing up well to what's happening in the world or it, a lot of situations like that, but then as time went on, we started working on features within the program that are built out for situations that we're in at this point in time. I know a lot of people already use video conferencing and stuff like that, but we didn't have that integrated into the platform yet. And we were like, you know what? This is a time where this is even more so important than it typically is for conducting business. But again, also really honing in on small things that we could do to help support our users during a time that they could have had their lives completely turned upside down.
Mike Zabrin:
Yeah. I watched a really great webinar on Dubsado's, I think it was Dubasado's facebook page with Sam. Is that her? Is that her name? I think her name is yeah. Who's amazing. And she was talking about different ways that users have utilized the tag feature, which is really cool. So when when somebody rescheduled an event or canceled that event, or just anything that you want to be able to filter later and keep records of later she adds tags to it. And I think th I think the upside also has a a recent zoom feature, that subtle came out with
Biz Johnston:
We recently integrated with zoom and a couple other video conferencing apps so that it makes it easier to communicate within your appointments, through your schedule or through dubs auto and all that good stuff. Yeah.
Mike Zabrin:
That's awesome. I feel like dub saddles culture in general just really involves empowering one another. You're working together as a family and every employee at such a gift to the workplace. And this is even a transcended of course, or the Dubsado community because you run it. I can totally close my eyes and just see all of the employees hanging out for like drinks at cheers or friends that. Or like friends and a full house in Seinfeld. I guess what I'm trying to say is Dubsado is my favorite nineties sitcom.
Biz Johnston:
we also feel that we were a lot of us joke around that we are like a 90 sitcom all the time and we need some weird show to follow us around.
Mike Zabrin:
God. Let's put let's play. Let's play a game. Who's the most like Jerry Seinfeld at dub
Biz Johnston:
Oh my gosh.
Mike Zabrin:
seeing their friends lives is an opportunity for a joke material.
Biz Johnston:
David are oddly enough, if it's David and he is the guy who is behind the scenes on all of our blogs,
Mike Zabrin:
Oh, yeah, I know the name.
Biz Johnston:
Yeah. You've heard his voice, but you might not have seen his face, but David is that guy.
Mike Zabrin:
What about, let me think of another one. How about fresh Prince? I don't know. Carlton.
Biz Johnston:
Carlton. Oh, I don't know if we have Carlton, but Cameron is definitely our will.
Mike Zabrin:
Oh, really?
Biz Johnston:
I don't know if we have a Carlton, I'm going to
Mike Zabrin:
Anybody that loves Tom Jones. Yeah.
Biz Johnston:
about that one.
Mike Zabrin:
Okay. Let me know. Let me know. And I'll be, getting back to the culture. Any advice for small business owners on growing your company? How many employees is it? 45 right now. You guys have.
Biz Johnston:
are going to start off January with 50.
Mike Zabrin:
Wow. And you guys started at 14, right?
Biz Johnston:
We this year, gosh, I should know this being an HR this year. I think we were lower, but we started off in this new office at 14. Our old office. We were at three,
Mike Zabrin:
Oh, wow. Really?
Biz Johnston:
three and then five. And then yeah, now we're at 50 it's been a wild ride.
Mike Zabrin:
Wow. Talk to me about, being able to maintain the culture that Dubsado has put in place from three employees and how it's evolved. And at the same time stayed the original culture with 50 employees.
Biz Johnston:
Yeah. It's I think the biggest thing is not losing the heart and soul through it all. We weave who we are into everything from the very beginning, from like an onboarding interviewing training, giving people mentors cause I starting a new job in general is just. You're nervous, no matter what, like you don't know people and things like that. So really providing like friends and family type of vibe straight out of the gate and then mentoring through it's a lot of work upfront. It's definitely... it's easier to just throw someone into the gate and tell them their responsibilities and get them ready for their responsibilities, but getting people to really care about our customer base, getting to really have each other care about each other. It's a lot of work upfront, but it's worth it. Like we have run club. We have some of our employees play like video games together after work. We have a game room granted. We can't utilize all of that right now and it's killing all of us, but,
Mike Zabrin:
What games do they play?
Biz Johnston:
anything from like smash, they play smash brothers, like all the time. There's we have like game nights. Some, sometimes they get together and play like Dungeons and dragons and stuff. It's we have an
Mike Zabrin:
so much fun.
Biz Johnston:
Yeah.
Mike Zabrin:
Every time I watch a webinar or every time I interact with any employee through the customer service or the Dubasdo community everyone has their own unique gift that they bring into the table. Did you guys set out to hire specific job roles for each employee? Or how do you utilize everybody's creative strengths? Well
Biz Johnston:
at first it was what, when we were hiring, it was just friends or friends of friends. And we really looked for people that were hard workers that were smart and were they understood the why behind the company. And we're just down to contribute in any way possible. And I think that It doesn't always work out as well as it did for us. But as we grew, it was something that we really wove into our hiring process. And we're constantly adding and pivoting and working to utilize strengths. I think that Becca and Jake do a really great job at giving people the ability to be themselves at work. And then your strengths shine through in everything that you do. And then you feel so empowered that you want to do more and figure out how you can utilize your strengths better. And so it has become a really organic way of just how the company has moved, but it definitely started out with just like really empowering leaders that are just like down to, to help you learn as you go, but also like really just be you.
Mike Zabrin:
Yeah, and you're such a star, what you do. Before this, you were working with booking DJs you wear so many different hats in the Dubsado world. When did you realize that your passion for networking is something was a turning point for you that you really wanted to set out and make this what you do?
Biz Johnston:
I don't know necessarily what age, but I've always been even as a kid, I was always the one that like Understood that nurturing your relationships with people is just good. I don't know if my parents taught me that or whatever, but I've always known that and this sounds more not in the realm of be nice to people and see if you'll eventually need them one day, one day, it's not like that. It's more along the lines of like, how can you help people constantly achieve their goals and go after things that they want, because in reality, like we all do better when we're all doing well. If that kind of makes sense. So any way that you can help somebody else do well, like you can continue them to do well and learn from that. So I don't know when I realized it as a kid, but as an adult, I think it was while I was booking DJs and just really understanding, Knowing people and not trying to get something out of them constantly, but genuinely building relationships and getting to know people. That's going to get you a lot farther in life. Just by genuinely being a nice person and getting to know them and understand them and where they're coming from. It's just, it's super important in general. I don't know when the open.
Mike Zabrin:
What about working in the DJ world and booking DJs did you learn about networking that has really shaped and put you in a great place to Dubsado?
Biz Johnston:
Yeah. When I started booking DJs, my goal was always just to book the DJs, get the gig that's, what you need to do is lock in the gig and I wasn't as successful at it at that point. But when I started actually genuinely making friends with people and going out of my way to, to know people and just to be known and make friends in that realm is when things really started doing better. And I really started booking a lot of gigs for my roster because people were saying, Oh my gosh, she's so nice. She's so much fun to work with. Go check out her roster. And then I would go out and hang out with these people and develop these genuine relationships. So then when we, when it came to Dubsado, Becca was like, I, we need to start working on people are reaching out about partnerships and people are reaching out about working together, and I know that you really enjoy that. And so it just became bread and butter for me was like, yeah, I love talking to these people. I want to know their story. I want to know why they want this, and what about their business is something that they love and why did they start their business? And so I think it, it just flowed very natural and she knew that about me being friends for so long. And it just happened.
Mike Zabrin:
with your help too. Not only did they start talking to you, but they also started talking to each other, which is an amazing thing. It's kinda like when I'm I'm a musician and when really talented musicians are on stage together, and somebody makes a mistake. Let's say I play a wrong note, which happens very often, we just laugh it off. I just always thought it was funny for some reason. I never really knew why, but I realized that on-stage experience was an early life lesson for me of embracing failure. The ability to take risks, try new ideas, fail and learn from them, and succeed is really the mind of a true creative. What advice would you give to entrepreneurs that don't necessarily have. Something like, like you did with working with DJs or that networking skill that you, you did as a kid that you can give some of them advice as far as embracing failure and believing in your passion.
Biz Johnston:
Yeah, well, risks are scary in general. I think especially when you own your own business Risks have a major impact or can have a major impact and some people are like, ah, I don't know if I want to take that risk because what if it tanks something or whatever the case may be. But we have a little saying that we yell across the office when we're in office and it's trust your crazy ideas. We have it on notebooks, all kinds of things. But I think it's something. If you don't, if you don't go after it, you'll never know a situation. And I think that there's always different ways to take a risk that maybe failed. You're always gonna learn from that risk. Or that failure. So rather than sitting there and moping about it, take whatever happened and really learn from it because that could open doors for so many future possibilities. There were, there was a sale that we had once and our Deb's auto sales have turned into fairly well-oiled machines. Cause we have three a year and we just know how they run and how to run them fairly well for us. And I came up with this idea once and I was like, Becca, I know this is crazy different, but I think we should try it. And she was like, Oh, we can try it. And we tried it and it definitely, we put in so much work and it definitely didn't do exactly what I was hoping for. But again, it created an Avenue for so many relationships to build off of and granted it didn't pay off necessarily in that sale, but over the last year, the relationships that we built from that crazy idea have put us in different positions that a regular sale never could have. So it might just open doors completely for something else that you weren't necessarily planning for.
Mike Zabrin:
totally. What is a typical day at Dubsado? Can you, or I guess pre COVID when, everybody was in the office together are you guys totally remote right now? Okay. Yeah. What would be a day of the Dubsado life? I don't know. I feel like I will walk into the Dubsado office and there'd be like recliner chairs everywhere and a meditation room going on... the ultimate creative space.
Biz Johnston:
We go for the creative space for sure. A typical day is I feel like we have a routine, but it's also wild all at the same time. I would say we're all in the kitchen around the same time in the morning. There's always coffee right in the morning. Yeah. And then I th you know, every morning this could sound counterproductive for a lot of people, but every morning we all just hang out for the first few minutes and just catch up. And even if we saw each other that the day before, it's still Oh, did you watch that episode last night? Or it's really friendly. And I think that's something that really bonds us is we talk and we really enjoy each other's company, but then we also like are like, all right, got to get to work. And then we hammer out whatever we need to be, but there's always like bursts of joy and laughter throughout the office at random times. And everyone's what's happening cause it's just everyone's just having a good time. And it's a wild experience that I'm so grateful to be a part of.
Mike Zabrin:
that sounds so much fun. And it sounds like not only is it a fun environment, but it is something where you're always learning every day and just working with different people every day has gotta be so much fun. Let's dive into the platform itself, working on my packages in a proposal contract and invoice all in one link is. Incredible, working with booking agents on multiple projects or gigs through one portal login, no details are lost in translation. So biz, let's say I'm a bands that works with a booking agent for a series of events throughout the year. Can you talk about how that works in Dubsado, having multiple projects under one client
Biz Johnston:
Yeah. So we have this thing called a client portal and it all can live in one place where they can log in, whether it's embedded in your website. Maybe if you want to allow for them to have a username and password situation in their portal, or you can just send them a link and they have access to this portal and you can customize it completely per client, if you want to get real . fancy I'm a sucker for a really cute nice portal banner at the top. I love a nice aesthetic. But yeah, you can share task boards in there. So they're kept in the loop through the process forms that are customized to them. It's just a hub where they can constantly keep up to date with whatever's going on. You can constantly be adding things and they can just see it every time that they log in and it keeps everything in one place all at one time and they have access to it whenever they'd like.
Mike Zabrin:
Love that you said that because I feel like some users worry about constantly keeping their clients engaged with the portal. I Know you touched on a few, but what are some other ways that clients could still be engaged with their portals all the time? When interacting with
Biz Johnston:
Forms for sure. I think having a well branded and personalized form. And throughout the process, you're doing like a, getting to know you form. So you're understanding who they are and how to interact with them better. And then you can go into kind of what they're looking for. You can do order forms or, invoices. You can have that all and just consistently be loading in things, something, my little secret weapon that I love to do is during the most stressful part of the. The process, whether it's like the day before a wedding, maybe, or an event or something like that. I like to do like a link to a Starbucks card, just to be like, here's coffee on me. And like stuff like that to where they really feel taken care of. And yeah, it might not necessarily be your typical here's a form fill out this contract type of thing, but it really like. Solidifies that you care about that person. And it's just a little, like extra thing for you, later on when they're having a friend, once you're served once or is asking for the same kind of services that you provide, they're going to be like, I know the best one. It was so easy. They were so nice. And so that's something that I love to always add in and sprinkle into.
Mike Zabrin:
a lot of freelancers based more than one project per client like myself. So let's say you're a web designer and you're designing somebody's logo then. Later that same client asked for a web site redesign. The Sato allows you to add your email address of yet as M T P. So you can send things through the project view in this project view is the Homebase for the interaction with the client. And I feel like a big part of why this is so great is because it really establishes credibility between you and the client, especially like it's sometimes it's assumed that yeah. My website is going to look amazing because I've seen this guy's work, but they the real mindblowing part of it is also how you work with the client too, and everything leading up to that point. So let's say I'm an entrepreneur and I have three clients right now. And. I would get them into DAP sido now and take advantage of billing my job statuses. Because this is how you keep track of the client's journey with you. Why are these important and talk to me about the Z shape of status is becoming a lead and then come back around and moving into the client phase or just some industry-wide project status is that, that you see.
Biz Johnston:
Oh man. The ones that I really love that keep things super easy are starting with the lead. So you have a section on just like hot lead, cold lead. And going from there, but then even further going into just like where they are in your process or like Sam's webinars with tags even are. On, not only where there are in the process, but then what kind of job they are, like you said, if it's a logo design, and then they come back and they want to do a full web design, and then they want to do product stuff as well. Then you can add all of that in and customize it. So things don't get lost in the shuffle. I know just from the beginning to the end is. Especially if you have multiple things going on at multiple times, if things can get lost really easily. So just having those tags and those statuses really just makes it super clean and easy to get
Mike Zabrin:
I really hope, but then the next, I don't know, year or so, that dub Sato is the entertainment industry standard. Dubs Sato is left in my client reviews because we had great communication. And vendors, we'll call you first because they already have all of your information in one place through what's called a proposal and it's and it's more or less assumed when you're when you're going back to rock their local designer website, but every single client interaction. Leading up to that point is so important. So I'm just, I guess I'm trying to say that by building credibility, can you talk to me about the process of constructing a DUP saddle proposal? And especially what we mean by having a template
Biz Johnston:
Yeah. So first of all, there's like packages and that's the analogy that we use is that like packages are like things on a menu and the proposal is the menu itself. And so the packages are like, The hamburger or the spaghetti type of a thing. And you can go through and really pick out what you want. But in regards to setting it up, always get your packages together first and that's what you offer. And then you can add those into your proposal. And my main thing for proposals is turning it into something that your client can really imagine themselves. Being a part of, so they can see the possibilities of what you provide and how that relates to them in a proposal. And that kind of seals the deal. So really doing anything, whether it's a little bit about what makes you different or however you want to really close the deal, that's your opportunity is right in there.
Mike Zabrin:
and as soon as they fill out that proposal, the contract screen is the very next thing that they see. And so sometimes sending a proposal is like a. It's not as of a high question as asking somebody to fill out your card attract, could you talk to me about just that automation between the proposal, the contract, and then the invoice.
Biz Johnston:
Yeah, so you can link all three, which is pretty cool. And from whatever they pick in the proposal, it'll automatically you can link it so that it automatically shows their selections within your contract. once they submit that contract, it also shows up. in an invoice and they can pay all right there if they want to. So it can be as quickly as a commit and go a situation, or they can definitely wait on it, but they get all of that information right up front. they know exactly what they've selected. What's expected of them. What's expected of you. In that contract, you can, they can sign it right away, move on to the invoice and the invoice nicely lays out exactly what. What's being paid for. And the, and it's all, it can be one, one quick swoop, if you really would like it to be, which I know a lot of people try to avoid all the back and forth between, negotiating things and then into a contract and then into an invoice and things get lost. And so this is a quick, simple way to just get it all through quickly and without a lot of back and forth, if it's unnecessary,
Mike Zabrin:
So Sato is a customer relationship management software company for creatives, but in reality is so much more and biz. I just want to thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's been so awesome talking with you and it's been so much fun. And if you are interested, which I would. Highly, every service we talk about on the podcast is one that I use personally and has helped me grow my own business and my friends' businesses too. It does sato.com and you can use this, you can use it for free, right? You could have all the features for free up to three clients. Is that right? Check it out and biz Nikki so much, and we'll talk to you soon. We'll stay in touch. Okay.
Biz Johnston:
Thank you so much.
Mike Zabrin:
in touch And, you know, nothing says streamline my business quite like dub Sabo does. I've been a huge fan of dub sabals as they, I found out about it. Make sure you go to www.salvo.com. Get set up in there and it's totally free for up to three clients to get all the features and everything. And I know when you get in there, you're going to love it. So we're going to give you 20% off your first month or year. Just enter the code, funk, tastic. Chats all one word Funktastic Chats be safe. Be extraordinary. And we'll see you next week. Yeah.
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