Systems Without the Automations: How a Custom Stationery Designer Made Her Systems Her Own (A Case Study with Mori)

Every client I bring on the podcast has something unique about them or the systems we set up together. Mori is both.

Mori is a custom stationery designer who creates gorgeous, one-of-a-kind invitations for bar and bat mitzvahs and other big events. When she came to me, she was worried her process was far too custom to ever be systematized. (Spoiler: it wasn’t, and her story is a perfect example of what Dubsado for designers can look like.)

Here’s what makes her story different. We set up her systems, I let her fly away, and about four months later, we talked about too much automation. Then Mori did something I don’t see very often: she walked her systems backward.

If you’ve been around here for the last year, you know I’ve had a major shift in how I think about automation. Your systems are never set-it-and-forget-it. It’s your business, and if you change your mind four months, six months, or a year down the line, you absolutely have my permission to change your systems.

How Mori Found Me (Hint: The Case Study Episodes)

Mori is a designer, not a photographer. She sent me a VideoAsk, and we went back and forth for about three days before she hired me because Mori had lots of questions.

“I loved VideoAsk. I thought it was such a great way for me to spill out everything I wanted to ask you, but in a casual way. I didn’t have to formulate an official email, and you were able to quickly respond back. And it got me thinking, like, how could I incorporate this into my client work?”

(Remember that last part. It comes back in a big way.)

She also told me my case study episodes made her reach out.

“I was in a place in my business where I was just getting really overwhelmed with the amount of work I had to do, and I was like, ‘There has to be a better way.’ Then the episodes started turning into case studies, and I heard you talk to people I felt I could relate to. And I’m like, ‘Wait, Colie works with people just like me, and I could work with Colie too.’ Because of the case studies, I was like, ‘Oh, she works individually with people like me and could help me come up with solutions for my actual personal business and the way I work.'”

“But My Process Is So Custom”

In that first VideoAsk, Mori asked what every non-photographer asks me: “Do you work with people like me?” Then she followed it up with the second most common concern I hear: “My process is so custom. I don’t know if we can actually create systems when I work with every single one of my clients in a different way.”

So I asked her: You came in with that perspective. How did you leave?

“I left with, like, everything can be systemized.”

It truly can.

Ditching the Discovery Call and the Custom Proposal

Mori is a stationery designer who does a lot of invitation work. Because I have one rule (we work on one offer at a time), we built everything in our 60 days around her signature offer: bar and bat mitzvah invitations.

I don’t cut my clients off often, but I’m pretty sure I cut Mori off when she walked me through her process: inquiry form, discovery call, then a custom proposal. I said something like, “Oh, you can stop talking. We’re not doing that going forward.”

“The biggest thing is I don’t do a call before a proposal is sent and paid. And that’s just been a huge time saver and also a great way to filter out the clients that really wanna work with me. In the kind of work I do, there’s a lot that is unknown at the very beginning. So I was putting together these proposals based on guesswork, and having my clients agree to them and pay my 50% deposit before we got started. Now my clients just pay a fixed-fee deposit to get started. I give them a range of what they can expect to pay by the end of the project, and we go from there. It’s been a game changer in my workflow and in my business.”

Mori isn’t cheap. We’re talking thousands of dollars for her invitations. And she was spending hours on calls and custom proposals that were, in the end, a guess at what the client might want.

“I was guessing. ‘Are they gonna want three inserts? Are they gonna want those to be die-cut? Are we gonna be doing letterpress printing?’ I was trying to make these guesses for them without them even knowing what a lot of that meant. I was just in my head a lot.”

Replacing the Call With a Video

Mori replaced the discovery call and custom proposal with an asynchronous video that walks every lead through her design process, what they get, the design fee, and what happens after they book. She embedded it in the form she sends after someone applies.

As a designer, Mori spent more time on that form than any client I’ve ever had. She wrote multiple scripts, got detailed feedback from me, and recorded a few versions. So, six months later, how’s it going?

“Sometimes I work directly with clients, and sometimes I work directly with planners, and I’ve definitely heard from the planners, like, ‘Wow, this is so impressive. This is so professional.’ I don’t think a lot of other vendors in my field do this, so it kind of stands out.”

And when she built out her other offers, the next video was a breeze:

“I just had to copy the form, copy the script, change a couple of words, and re-record it. So it was worth putting all that time into the first one.”

To be clear, Mori didn’t eliminate the call. Clients still get face-to-face time, just after they book. And because her Dubsado forms now collect the logistics, that call is spent on the good stuff:

“I wanna just hear from them about their vision and their vibe. And then I’m like, ‘After this call, I’m gonna follow up with this form, and you can give me all the nitty-gritty.'”

Feedback Rounds, on Video

Designers have a feedback loop most photographers and coaches don’t. In Mori’s systems, we built two rounds: first designs for approval, then final drafts before print. And of course, Mori added another video.

“I’ve always struggled. Do I schedule a call and walk people through designs? Do I just send them the PDF? So I record myself presenting the work and upload that to the top of the form so they can see me explain the design. They can watch it in their own time, rewatch it, pause it, show other family members. So it’s actually probably more convenient for my clients than an in-person call. I’m explaining why I made the decisions I made. They feel sold. And I’ve noticed the feedback rounds have gotten shorter. Instead of four or five, we have two or three.”

Why Mori Turned Off Her Automated Emails

For a lot of designers, chasing clients for feedback is what sucks up the most time. So we wrote automated emails based on whether or not the client completed the feedback form.

Mori doesn’t use them anymore. (I sound like a mother scolding her. I’m really not, guys.) She still sets up the workflow in each project and sends reminders manually when she needs to, which isn’t often. Event clients have a hard deadline, so they’re usually motivated to keep things moving.

So why did she stop?

“It didn’t really feel authentic to me and my business. My clients are all very different personalities. Some are repeat clients, and they’re accustomed to things a certain way. It just makes me nervous when emails get shot out to somebody and I know that they might be put off a little bit by it. I wanna have control over what communication gets sent to each individual client.”

But on our check-in call two months ago, she told me something else: her automated emails were telling clients things she’d already told them.

What fell out of my mouth is what I’d tell anybody: “Oh, that just means you’re not sending the information early enough. Don’t get rid of the automations. We just need to push that information earlier.” Because a big chunk of what I help you do is figure out what to say and when to say it, so you answer the question before it even occurs to your client.

Then Mori brought up my case study episode with Xan Heller:

“Oh my gosh, Colie. I listened to that episode with Xan, and I think that I’m a concierge-level service provider.”

Yes, you are. And I never want anybody to feel pressured to keep automating if it doesn’t feel authentic.

The Templates Still Do the Heavy Lifting

So was it still worth writing all those emails?

“Definitely. Having the body of the email composed with all the components that need to be included saves a ton of time. I can quickly alter things that don’t make sense for that specific client, and it takes me one or two minutes as opposed to composing an email from scratch and trying to remember, ‘Don’t forget the part about the timeline. Don’t forget the part about the spreadsheet.’ That system has been working much better for me and supports the concierge level of communication I want to give my clients.”

That’s exactly what I said in Xan’s episode. Templates keep you on track, even when they don’t go out automatically.

So hear this: you are allowed to tell me no. You’re allowed to change your mind a few months later. My job is to show you what could be automated and what I think you should automate. You get to make the final call.

“I was very new to automations and workflows. You’re the expert, so I was like, ‘I’m gonna trust her.’ I could tell at the beginning it didn’t necessarily feel authentic to me, but I was new to it all. And as I worked in it, it still didn’t feel authentic to how I like to communicate. So I took off all of the auto-sends. Honestly, you offer systems and automation, and what I really needed was the systems. And that’s been gold for me. Having those systems in place has allowed me to continue to provide this concierge level of service to my clients and take on all the clients I wanna take on.”

The Starter Account Surprise (and the Gmail Confession)

The first time I went into Mori’s Dubsado account, I saw a colorful little tab I’d never seen before and no workflows anywhere. She was on the Starter plan, which doesn’t include workflows. Now every inquiry form I send asks which Dubsado plan you have. Even I learn things from my clients.

“I was a complete newbie. That’s the other thing I’ll give you so much credit for. You taught me how Dubsado works. I didn’t fully understand how each component works with the others, and you gave me a crash course. That was also invaluable.”

Then came her confession: she still sends her client emails from Gmail.

“You’re not gonna like my answer. I have some issues with the formatting options in Dubsado. It feels a little clunky to me. I like to keep things on strings, and I need the flexibility to email multiple people in a process. So I’m using all of the system setup and templates in Dubsado, and then it’s a copy-paste.”

I’m not slapping her hand. Mori often works with parents and planners, and Dubsado is not friendly when there’s more than one decision-maker. Any email automated in a workflow only goes to the main client. At the end of the day, all I care about is whether her business runs better now than it did six months ago. It does. If you want a better alternative for sending client communication to select parties without leaving your tool, we should chat!

And as a designer, how her emails look matters too:

“I’m trying to prove to my clients that I’m a designer and I know how things should feel and function, and if I’m sending you a clunky email, that’s reflective of my design work.”

Offboarding (and Yet Another Video)

Many of Mori’s invitation clients go on to hire her for day-of stationery for the event itself, so I asked how she handles offboarding.

“I’m able to sense pretty early on in the invitation stage whether these clients are going to be day-of people. Sometimes there’s a lot of time between when the invitations go out and when the day-of stuff starts, and sometimes it’s right back-to-back. So if I know a client is going to continue on, I wait to do all the offboarding until after the event has ended.”

Then she casually dropped this:

“If time allows, I’ll do a quick, personal video with my offboarding questionnaire. ‘Hey, it was so great to work with you on your child’s event. I hope it was wonderful.’ I put that video at the top of the form where I get their feedback.”

You guys should have seen my face. That’s her third or fourth video, from someone who did zero video before we worked together. Mori is officially a video convert.

When my Experience Edit clients map their journeys in the Systems Professor app, I ask for at least one highly personalized touchpoint in every phase. For offboarding, my number one recommendation now is a video asking for the review that mentions something personal about the project.

“I feel like I throw a lot of forms at my clients, and having that personal video at the beginning has to go a long way. It makes them feel like, ‘She puts so much effort into her process, and she genuinely wants to know how to make it better. The least I can do is answer a couple of these questions and write her a review.'”

Gold star, Mori.

Ready to Plan Your Concierge-Level Client Experience?

Mori isn’t using every Dubsado feature as designed. I don’t care. She’s happy with her business, she’s happy with her systems, and knowing her process as I do, she’s saving hours per client.

That’s the point of these case studies. Everyone’s systems look different, and I hope you hear one of these stories and think, “Wow, that could be me.”

If you want to plan your own five-star client experience, no matter how much automation you choose to put in it, the next Experience Edit group sprint runs November 30 through December 11. In 10 days, we’ll map your client journey from inquiry all the way through offboarding and write the emails that go with it, whether they end up automated or copied and pasted into Gmail. Get all the details here.