Company Summary:

Meet Mary Beth Wood, owner and lead photographer at Capture Photography. Mary Beth has been running Capture for 17 years and does around 55 boudoir sessions a year. Her favorite thing about her business is making her clients feel empowered, like the goddesses they are, and helping them see their inner value. Mary Beth works by herself, with the help of an assistant at her sessions. She also does IPS (in-person sales) with all of her clients on the same day as their session.

Mary Beth's Goal:

When Mary Beth reached out, her main goal was to make her life easier by getting her workflows set up in a CRM and all of her clients added. She’s worked in and out of CRMs for a few years but had never had the time to completely set one up so that it would really work for her and her business. BUT, with her business growing and the number of sessions that she does every year increasing, not to mention a new baby on the way, Mary Beth knew it was time to get her CRM up and running once and for all. 

Mary Beth needed a system that was not only easy to learn to use but also kept things visual for her. She needed to be able to schedule consultations and sessions, send contracts, text with her clients, track payment plans and payment schedules, and keep track of her post-production workflow and tasks. 

I set Mary Beth up in Dubsado, a great user-friendly and intuitive CRM option for photographers. We also incorporated SimpleTexting through a Zapier connection so she could easily text her clients. 

List of Included Services

• Done-For-You CRM SetUp
• Advanced Zapier Integrations
• Website Connections

Mary Beth’s Return on Investment (ROI)

Before we dive into the nitty-gritty of what we set up for Mary Beth, let’s take a look at the results that she achieved by using our Done-for-You CRM set-up service. 

• Across all services, we mapped out and planned 165 steps. Of those 165, 141 of them are now AUTOMATIC! (That's 85%!) This means that just 24 of them are manual (and most of those are in Mary Beth’s post-production workflows!). 
• If we assume that Mary Beth books on average 35 clients a year, that means it takes an average of 1444 steps to execute and deliver her client experience(s). BUT because of the work we've done together, 1234 of those are taken care of AUTOMATICALLY by Dubsado, leaving her with just 210 steps to do manually each year. And, each of those 210 steps will remind her when they need to be completed. 
• I estimated that based on all the emails Mary Beth sends, she would normally spend around 200 hours per year writing emails, which she won't have to do now because Dubsado will do it for her - yay!! I also estimated that on average, she would have spent up to 18 hours a year creating and customizing forms, and 534 hours on other project management tasks (changing statuses, starting workflows, etc.). 
• This means that Mary Beth’s Dubsado set-up is saving her around 752 hours per year. And that's if she *only* books 35 clients (she’ll likely book many more than that). That's just over 31 days that she’s getting back into her year - yes! 
• When it comes to the money that Mary Beth is saving, I estimated the value of her rate using an individual hourly rate of $100/hour. This means that she’s saving upwards of $75k in her own labor each year by using Dubsado workflows. Isn't that crazy?! And at least $22k ($35/hour) for a virtual assistant to do all of these tasks manually as well. 

Canned Email Library

Mary Beth prides herself on giving each of her boudoir clients an extremely personalized, hands-on experience. For this reason, we made sure that she had an email template for any email that would ever need to go out to her clients. Each email was customized using Dubsado’s custom fields feature to ensure that the client’s personal session information was included in the messages, making each email feel like Mary  Beth wrote it herself. 

Schedulers Created

One of Mary Beth’s biggest priorities for her new CRM was that she be able to book sessions on behalf of her clients. They would be responsible for booking Discovery Calls and Outfit Consultations, but she wanted to be able to book their sessions and enter their payment information for them. This was accomplished by using Dubsado’s schedulers. Multiple schedulers were created so that she (or her clients) could schedule any type of meeting or session necessary, including product pick-ups or installations. When creating the schedulers I ensured that confirmation and reminder messages were included to ensure Mary Beth’s clients were never left wondering what time or where they were meeting. 

Forms Created

As part of Mary Beth’s super-custom, hands-on boudoir photography experience, she likes to gather information from her clients about their likes and dislikes, allergies, etc. This way she can make sure she tailors each session to each client, specifically. To help her easily capture this information, I created a few brand-friendly forms to send to her clients. Dubsado’s drag-and-drop form builder is great for making beautiful forms. And easy enough that Mary Beth can make further edits in the future if she needs to.

Workflows Created

Once the workflow foundational pieces were in place, it was time to make the real magic happen. Building workflows! Workflows were created for every type of service Mary Beth offers. I also created aDiscovery Call workflows that sends follow-up messages if clients have not yet booked a call with her. We built out two post-production workflows so Mary Beth can easily track her post-production and order fulfillment tasks.

Zaps Integrated

In addition to building Dubsado out for Mary Beth, we also created a few custom zaps using Zapier for her. Zapier was used to connect Dubsado to her texting software, SimpleTexting. This enables Mary Beth to confirm discovery calls with clients before their call, increasing her show and booking rate. It was imperative that this be seamlessly integrated into Mary Beth’s workflow. Using Zapier was the way to make that happen. Now, her clients have a way to confirm their Discovery Calls with her. Booked sessions will also receive a text the morning of their session with the address for her studio. All without Mary Beth lifting a finger. 

Custom Video Training Library

Sometimes the hardest part of getting new workflows up and running is learning how to use them. As part of Mary Beth’s offboarding process, we did a Live, 1:1 training session. This session walked her through how her new workflows function. We also created a completely custom-to-her-system Video Training Library. The short videos walk her through her workflows and show her how to make updates. They will also serve as a great place to help train any future staff. All in all Mary Beth's Custom Video Training Library includes over 30 videos, specifically about her workflows and systems.

Thanks again so much for choosing Virtually Done Systems, Mary  Beth! I’m so excited that we got so much time back for you! 

Do you need help getting your CRM or systems up and running? Schedule an obligation-free Discovery Call with me here!