How to Set Up Systems for a Brand New Service (Before You Get Clients) with Anthea Proudfoot

Colie: Hello. Hello. Welcome back to the podcast. It’s very rare that I have somebody on this podcast that is basically brand new to business, but that’s where Anthea was when she joined Systems Inception. So even if you have heard like every other case study that I have done with previous clients, I really want you to pay attention to this one because we’re taking a direction that I just haven’t had the opportunity to take before Anthea, welcome to my podcast.

Anthea: Hi. Thanks for having me.

Colie: No, thank you for coming. So I mean, I already alluded to the fact that you were brand new to business. So my first question is literally brand new. What made you decide to get a CRM and really like work on your systems before you even started letting people in to like pay you for your services?

Anthea: Well, I think it comes from my corporate background. I’ve worked in CRMs pretty much my entire professional career. I know how important they are and I know what an absolute pain in the, but it is, if you try to move anything, if you start off small and then you grow and then you realize you need this and you realize that. And it makes it, the longer you’re in something simple, the harder it is to change to something that you need as you grow. So I just figured, let’s just start with the end goal in mind. Let’s just set it up because the sooner I’ve got that set up, the means as well. I, while I’m still new to business and my clients also know that I’m newer to business, if things go wrong, they’re a little bit more forgiving of it.

I’ve still got the time to have the personal touch with them, to really explain to them. Why things haven’t quite worked out as I thought that they would work out and then I can fix it so that when I do get busier, as I do get more and more clients coming through and I lose that time to be able to fix anything, it’s already working fine.

Colie: I mean, it’s just so awesome that you say this because there’s like a running joke. People are like, Hey, you know, where should I be in my business before I get a CRM? And I’m always like, uh, if you have two or three clients, it’s time for a CRM. And people are like, no. Like I can’t justify the price. I don’t even really know what I’m doing with my offers.

And I’m like, that’s okay. Because every hour that you spend when you are setting up your systems now will pay you tenfold in the future. But also as your client base grows, you’re not spending time trying to figure that shit out in the moment. You have your systems down so that then you can spend more time marketing and getting more clients.

And so, I mean, I love that you said that I, I try to encourage people to think this way and it just never works out.

Anthea: Well, I think like, as I said, it comes from the corporate background and it’s, I, so my corporate job, so I work in photography part-time and I work in my corporate job part-time. And that part-time job is in learning consulting. So I work with all sorts of different corporate organizations, designing, training, and a lot of the time it’s for change projects, change of policies, change of procedures, change of systems, and the change of systems is always the most.

Frustrating and annoying one to do, partly because it’s change of behaviors, but it’s people are so ingrained in this is how it works, and the amount of time it takes to get them to shift how they’re thinking and shift their behaviors for the new system is one of. My most hated things. I would much rather design an onboarding program than a change program because onboarding, it’s a fresh, clean slate.

They don’t know what’s, they don’t know what used to happen. They don’t know anything else. So you’re able to just go in and go, this is how it is. And then develop the behaviors and the processes and everything you want.

Colie: So people don’t develop bad habits from the beginning. I mean, that’s what I heard you say

Anthea: yes.

Colie: and it’s really interesting because now that you said that I had two different people this week. ’cause I’m currently in a launch for systems in session. By the time this airs, Q2 could possibly be sold out. I don’t know.

When we’re recording, I am currently booking for April, may, and June kickoff calls, and I’ve had two people this week who both contacted me and asked, Hey, Cooley, like I have no systems. Will systems in session work for me? And I’m like, oh my God, absolutely. Hallelujah. Yes. Blank slate. Let’s go. And. I told my, uh, fractional CMO, Chelsea this, and Chelsea’s like, why are they asking you that?

Like, of course, systems in session will work if you don’t have systems. And so I’m like, don’t you worry. I’m interviewing Anthea lately. Lately, and or don’t you worry, I’m interviewing Anthea soon and she’s gonna set the record straight.

Anthea: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And the time that we did my system in session, we did it in a 30 day block that I, I think I said to you at the start, I dunno if I’m gonna be able to get it done in the 30 days.

And I did. I, I was kind of lucky because I do juggle a lot in my life, my corporate job, because being a contractor, the hours do change.

And I just happened to have a lull and I kind of said to them, look. It’s not that terrible that I’ve got a lull because I’m trying to set up all this stuff in my photography business and I have uni ’cause I’m also doing a Master’s of education. Um, and I’m like, so it’s kind of okay because I’m balancing it.

I’m like, I can smash all this out and I know you’ve got these bigger projects coming and I can make sure I’m set up. So then that way all I have to focus on in the photography is getting clients, editing their photos, having the shoots. Really, really maximizing that client engagement and just continuing to build the nice little add-ons.

Like my, on my website, I’ve got a client, portal area where they can have a look at the different types of products and things they can get the guide on, like what to wear because I do pet photography, how to prepare your dog for a session like grooming, uh, the how to match a color to where you’re going to your clothing, like all those kind of things. I’ve got that on my website, but there’s parts of that that I can just slowly add onto as I’m going. I’ve got the core basis there. It’s good to go and then I just can just add to it as I’m able to.

Colie: I mean, I thought it was amazing. You were like, yeah, I’m like practically brand new. And I’m like, oh my gosh, let’s go. So I am glad that you brought up the fact that you did a 30 day sprint, because I don’t offer that publicly, but you were one of the two people who basically said, I volunteer as tribute.

To kind of test this out, and you were really concerned about not being able to get it done in 30. And I was like, well, don’t worry if you don’t get it done in 30, you can just extend for an additional cost for the extra 30 days and just try it out. Now, I will say, since you were in systems in session, I mean, and you did a 30 day sprint, so it’s a little different.

I don’t know if you’ve heard on the podcast, but now I really encourage everybody to get through one offer in 30 days. That additional 30 days is for refinement. It’s for testing, and it’s for them to kind of duplicate the processes that we started and customize them for their additional offers, which you wouldn’t have needed because you do pet photography, only pet photography, and you have no interest in doing anything else.

Anthea: A little bit, yes. But I do have the seasonal sessions that I offer and like just even setting up things like the proposal so that if I’ve got clients that wanna do a payment plan, like one of the clients that I had, um, in January, she just got her gallery last night. And she was basically said, I, I want the whole lot, I want the whole collection.

Gimme the top tier. Can we talk about a payment plan? So working with you to figure out how to set up the proposals and things like that. Even just invoices with the, the payment plans in Dubsado just makes it so much easier because I can confidently say, yeah, sure, no problems. We can do that. Why didn’t we? Just in case you wanna spend even more than that, why don’t we have a quick chat before we set that up for you so we can get as much into the payment plan as you want?

Colie: Awesome. I mean, let’s talk about clients. ’cause again, you did this before. You really had clients and you did have one or two that you were able to send things. And like you said, you warned them, Hey, this is a brand new process. I would really appreciate it if you could tell me if anything is like. Bad on your end.

I won’t take it offensively. I need to know these things. So what has your marketing and kind of working with clients look like since you finished systems in session? ’cause just for reference when we’re recording this Anthea actually finished almost six months ago, so it’s been quite some time.

Anthea: Yeah, it’s been a little bit, so I have been, focusing a bit more so on organic, just not like paid ads so much. It’s, I’m not really in a position where I feel comfortable with that. I don’t really know enough about it to go down that route and potentially waste money. So I haven’t really done that.

But I’ve gone to markets, I’ve had referrals from other people, so. I literally had a woman call me in, middle, well, she put an inquiry through my website using the Dubsado contact form. And she literally just said, Hey, I wanna book a session. And I didn’t know the name, didn’t know anything. And then when we were on a call, I was like, I was like, by the way, like, how, how did you. Get to me. She’s like, oh my God, my niece, um, you photographed her dog. Every time we go over, we see the photo in her house. And that dog was actually a model call while I was still learning

how to shoot dogs. but it is one of my all time favorite photos that I’ve taken. Not this photo, um, but it is absolutely gorgeous.

It’s a German Shepherd. In Parliament House here in Melbourne, Australia and is like the colors, the warmth that we were just starting to hit Golden hour and it was hitting the building and it’s like those old, I think like sandstone limestone, I dunno, the old, the old stone look. And it was just beautiful how it was all complimenting his colors.

He got a little bit of the, the brown, orangy brown tones through his fur and it was absolutely gorgeous. And she was like, I want that, I want that, I want you to create something of that. She’s like, your vision, I just want your vision.

Colie: Well, let’s talk about a little bit of your customer journey because I do think it’s really interesting that you are a brand new photographer, but you really focused on like the getting to know your client and you probably. We have one of the most in depth inquiry forms that I’ve ever seen, which I mean, you remember when I said, when I looked at it and I was like, Anthea, I like half this stuff.

You shouldn’t be asking at this point. And you’re like, well, no, Colie. This is why I do it. So talk to me about how you see your inquiry form working for the rest of your system.

Anthea: So I want to be able to gather information at that initial stage that tells me, number one, am I gonna be the right photographer for you, but also what value can I add to your experience with me? Is there something that I can let you know about? So if you tell me that, oh, my dog’s reactive, and I do specialize in reactive and aggressive dogs, then I immediately know, okay, well. We are not gonna go to the CBD on a weekday at the end of like peak hour when there’s a shit ton of people around. Like that’s not gonna be helpful for your dog. So maybe a forest location’s gonna be better. So that way when I have that consultation with them, I can already be having those conversations with them.

I can get an understanding of what level of training they have. If they’ve got a dog that’s high in prey drive, well we probably don’t wanna be going out into the middle of the bush kind of locations where there’s kangaroos. And I’ve actually also recently seen, see deer and goats out there. So, um, it’s, they, it can be pretty intense with the wildlife in some of my locations because I do focus on locations.

I can take reactive dogs to where I can guarantee we’re not gonna see people. But it does come with the downside that that means we have our native wildlife

and native wildlife are very pre triggering. So I wanna know that as early as possible so I can have the right conversations with them when I first speak to them.

So I can drive them towards time of day, time of year, type of locations that are gonna through what they’re looking to display in their homes, but also what’s gonna be best for their dog.

Colie: Yeah, I mean, and one of the questions if I’m not mistaken, because now I’m like, oh, is my memory failing me? I mean, I think that. 

Anthea: as well 

Colie: You were asking them about vaccine records? Am am I cr like Yes. And I was like, um, can’t we wait for that until after they’ve actually paid you money? I was like, I don’t think you need a copy of that, like right now.

Anthea: So I don’t need a, a copy. It’s more so around, especially if I’m photographing younger dogs or newly rescued dogs, because those dogs do not have the same immune system that older dogs that have been getting regular vaccines every single year. Because depending on, there’s about four to five different vaccines I think here in Australia that we give our dogs and they’re at like, say different intervals.

I think one or two might be annually, a couple, like every say three years and another one’s every five years. So. Depending on where your dog is at, they may not have had all of it. The body may not be at the right immune system level, and things like parvovirus can actually hold into dirt locations and grass for like 12 to 18 months if someone, another dog with pabo has been in that area. So if your dog is very, very young, maybe not fully, um, immunized, or newly rescued and maybe only just starting to go through that, the immunization process, well then I’m gonna be telling you, let’s steer away from public parks where there’s lots of grass. Let’s stick to either the middle of the bush where there’s hardly any other dogs out there, let alone ones that are likely to have parvo or we are gonna stick to concrete environments like the CBD, where parvo virus is what able to washed away very, very quickly and easily. So again, it’s about helping me inform them of the different risks and benefits of different locations for their docs.

Colie: And I absolutely love this entire part of the conversation because think about it guys. I looked at her form and I was like, that’s too much. She has just described why that is part of her process and like that’s what’s so important in systems and session is that I have my opinions, but I really do ask you the questions so that if you want to make a different decision, I understand it and I can help guide you to making forms and processes and writing your emails that will be most effective, whoever your client is and whatever service you provide.

Now, speaking of your clients. What have they thought of your process? Because again, like you, I don’t wanna say you didn’t know any better, but they definitely didn’t know any better. And so what did they think of your process as you, you know, took one client from the inquiry form all the way through to, um, delivery of the gallery and then their ordering session?

Anthea: Yeah, so I’ll go with the first one because she actually started her process while we were still building systems in session. So, um, once we built the initial kind of workflow up until basically where the session date would be, that’s when I then sent her the form and the proposal and everything like that. And she made the comment pretty much straight away. So this is all a girl that I had worked with professionally and she like. Through our little professional, there’s like a little, like on Slack, we were using at the time a little challenge of like general chitchat and we can talk about whatever you want. And I mentioned a couple of the photography awards that I’d won and I shared some of the photos I’d submitted. And so she saw that and she was like, oh my God, I want a book with you. And it just kind of was this thing where we were both kind of just in and out, blah blah. Like it never really worked out.

And I’d said to her, look, let I, I got to a point. Mid last year I went, Hey, can we just wait because I’m gonna, I know I wanna do this thing with you. Can we wait till I get that set up and then I can run you through that? I’m like, you know me, you know how anal I can be about making sure things are right and like perfect. So you can give me my Guinea pig, you can gimme some feedback. And she was like, yep, no problem. So she filled that in and her pretty much first comment was, she laughed and she was like, I can see you all over this. She’s like, having worked with you, I can hear your voice. I can see where you are going with everything. And she’s like, while some people might think it’s probably a little bit overkill, she’s like, I can, I know you. I know you’ve got a logic behind absolutely everything that you’ve included in every question that you’ve asked exactly where you’re going with this. She’s like, I don’t necessarily know exactly where you’re going, but I know you’re going somewhere.

Colie: Yeah. I mean that’s one of the things that people question though. They’re like, are my clients even going to be able to tell the difference? And the answer is absolutely yes.

Anthea: even though the woman that I’d never spoken to before that knew me because her niece had modeled her dog for me once, and that was a free model call that was not a paid session. And so she literally was like, I pulled up the, the proposal in our consult and I was like, well, if you know that you wanna book with me, here’s this form.

I’m gonna send you the link if you know you wanna. Sign on. Just literally scroll straight down to the bottom. And that was something that you and I had had a conversation about, I think, about how to do that. And then, a marketing coach that I got in touch with last year to talk about. The markets and things like that, how to approach that. She was like, don’t do that. Like they’re gonna have to scroll so far. I’m like, yeah, but if I’m on the call with them, I can just tell them to scroll all the way down to the bottom and she was like, oh yeah, I guess you can. I’m like, because it’s right, right, right down the bottom. It’s not like you’ve gotta go three quarters of the way down the page and then then you’ve got the bit to fill.

So. You gotta be careful how far you go. And she was like, yep, no, this is great. This is so good. And she, even as she was scrolling, she was like, oh wait, is that the different collections that you offer? Because I use this, um, simple sales system. And I was like, yes. I’m like, did you wanna pause on that? And we’ll have a chat about that.

And I was able to have that chat with her then and there. And even talk about the fact that they weren’t looking for fully custom artwork, but they would like more than three digital files. We were immediately like, okay, well that’s the middle tier. Like something as simple as that. It was, we were able to kind of have that conversation around her expectation. And I was also at that point because we were able to chat about the collections and what is included in the collection, I was able to get a bit of a feeling the type of artwork that she was gonna be looking for so that when we’re I was in my session, I was able to start kind of already planning and thinking about how is she potentially gonna want to display this on her wall. So she had two dogs. I was able to then make sure I got individual photos. Of each dog in the same location. I got photos of the two of them together. I got like whole different mix and match of different things and she’s already said to me they’ve got a bit of a plan about how they wanna display it on the wall.

She’s just gotta confirm with the husband the final decision before she puts her order in. So.

Colie: And I mean, all of that is great. And I think it’s interesting that you talk to that marketing coach about scrolling all the way down because my thing is. Even if you’re having a consultation call with someone, I like the proposal to have all of that information. Again, the process, your collections, if you’re doing simple sales, timelines, frequently asked questions, because often if a client is super excited and you know you’re talking on the call, sometimes they don’t remember what you said.

So having all of that information in the proposal before they actually fill it out and sign with you is just another way of assuring them that they are fully on board, that they got all the information, and that they can basically peruse it when they need to. Or if say you have a consultation with one person and they need to consult with their partner, which guys is not always a bad thing, 

Anthea: It’s a. 

Colie: the proposal.

And, you know, give them all of the information. And I love that you were able to like take that pause during, because I’ve often told people when you’re on a consult call, play around with sending them the proposal right before the call or bring it up on your screen and, and screen share so that you can actually walk them through it.

I personally feel, I mean I haven’t timed it or anything, but I feel like when you do that, it actually. Reduces the time between a consultation call and someone potentially booking you because it’s not like they verbally heard you on the call, and then they have to visually process it after. When you give them the proposal, you’re actually doing both at the same time, which makes sure that they understand each part before again, they’re filling in their information, they’re signing the contract, and then they’re paying the invoice.

Anthea: Yeah, and she did that literally within minutes of getting off the call.

Colie: Was it less than five minutes? Anthea? Come on, tell me that. It was a five minute 

Anthea: I, I gotta say, I think it was like three minutes after.

Colie: Okay. That’s awesome. Okay, so what happens after the clients are getting booked? Like what does your process look like then and how did we craft systems to kind of guide them and create that consistent experience for everybody?

Anthea: And this is another thing that you were concerned about why I was doing it, is that because I’ve gotta account for the different temperaments of the dogs, the different types of styles that people might want, the different seasons, things like that. So as I said before, if you have, uh, dogs that are reactive, well then going to the CBD for an urban shoot on a weekday at 5:00 PM is not a great idea.

But if you go at 6:00 AM on a Saturday. There is absolutely zero people around. Not only does that make my life shit ton easier editing because I don’t have to edit people out in the background, but it means that we don’t have to stress about the dogs freaking out. So what I do is once they sign the contract and pay the invoice, so that invoice is the session fee that they need to pay, that then will send them information to the client experience portal.

And I did call it experience portal, so it was different to the Dubsado

client portal. I, I did purposely think about that. And in that client experience portal, I have a location guide and those locations cover, my main options, the best time of year to go to them. The best times of the day, if you’ve got a reactive dog considerations for that, whether it’s a, Hey, this location’s not at all suitable to reactive dogs, or it is at these times of day or days, that type of thing. So I have all that there, and then that way I want them to have access to that. So if they sit there and go, I want a CBD shoot, but I’ve got a reactive dog, well then they know, okay, when I’m looking at your calendar to book a time to actually have my session, I need to be looking at weekends. I need to be looking at sunrise. If they want to be out in the forest, well then, okay, the middle of summer went during peak snake season. Probably not a good idea to do an afternoon shoot at that time. And I will say my dog and I have come across the tiger stick in one of these locations, which is why I say no, no afternoon shoots in that location in summer. So,

Colie: I 

Anthea: they can then have all that information. They can make an informed decision, pick the day and time that is most suitable for them and their dog and the artwork they want in their home. So that way it’s not like they pick a location. They go, oh wait, shit, my dog can’t go to this location at this, because I picked that time.

Oh, that’s, that’s not great. I didn’t want that.

Colie: I mean, and I feel compelled to say, first of all, her portal is amazing. Y’all like, I mean, I, I, I think I recorded a video when I was like, holy shit, Anthony, like this is great. It’s not that I objected to her having a portal on her website. ’cause I think all of us know, I personally hate Dodos portal and anytime I have a client that’s like, Hey co, should I use the portal?

Like my almost immediate visceral response is no, I mean. The part that I was questioning was her scheduling the session after they booked and having the multiple calendars do it. That was the part that threw me off. But again, when we have this conversation, this is what I really wanna emphasize to everybody.

We build systems that work for how you work with your clients. And so it’s not really my job to tell you. No, don’t do that. Or no, I won’t allow you to do that. To be even like crazier. It’s my job to make sure that you’ve thought of all of the pitfalls that come with using a particular software to do it this way, but sometimes what you need outweighs the like extra manual work that it will take to make it all work together.

And so again, that’s what we did in the case with Anthea because. I will say with her, I didn’t do as much of like the actually mapping out the customer journey. Like she knew how she wanted this to work and so it was just my job to help her put the pieces together, end of sodo, the best way that we possibly could with like minimal friction.

Anthea: Yes. And that because yeah, because I, because I do the photography part-time and I don’t do it full-time. I know that. Okay, we’ll say, three days before the session, I can’t remember exactly what timeframe, but it’s like two and a half, three days before is I want them to have, an email come through reminding them of their session and be like.

By the way, remember to look at the guide about what to wear, this, that, and the other, what to bring. And then I have another one that’s set to go like, I think six hours before their session to be like, this is what I need you to literally bring to the session, including things like appropriate footwear.

Because if we’re in the middle of the bush in winter, guess what? Your little sandals are not gonna cut outta your mud. Things like a long line for, for your dog who. If they’re not able to be safely off leash, we can keep them on a leash so they don’t run off after that kangaroo and I can just edit their leash out later, like treats, toys, all that kind of thing.

I had that all set up and I knew that I wanted. To have those reminders at that time. But I also know that I do not have the time and my memory is bad enough. I would probably, even if I had the time, forget to go in and send them those emails and those reminders, or I would forget a key piece of information.

So having it all automated and then let’s say two weeks before this session, I get a little dubbed out, a reminder, Hey, you need to approve this email. And I can go in and I can just tweak little bits that I might need to do for their particular location choice. And then. It all just does it for me. And then occasionally they send me an email or a message be like, Hey, can I just check?

And I’m like, oh, yeah, that didn’t,

Colie: Sometimes, I mean, I’ve told this story, but like I’ve been at Disneyland and I’m on Dumbo and I get a notification that somebody filled out a quiet questionnaire and I’m like, I don’t even remember which client that is. But great, I mean, they, they were clearly sent the questionnaire and or a reminder to fill it out.

Okay. So it’s been six months and one of the things that I usually encourage my clients to do is, Hey, quarterly. Every six months, every year you should be looking at your systems to see if there are places to improve tweaks that you wanna make. So I am curious, in the last six months, have you done any major adjusting to the systems that we built together?

I.

Anthea: I have actually, well, no, I wouldn’t say major, but I would say a few small tweaks, uh, things that I found didn’t work quite as smoothly as I wanted, or maybe there was a step that it, that I wanted to add because working with them I was like, oh, I kind of wish I could do that. Oh, that’s right. I have workflows.

I can just. Tell it to do that for me. Um, so I have added in a couple of different steps, the client feedback form that you, the template that you gave me, I had a, a friend of mine, my ambassador, who went to fill it in. She was like I filled in, I answered all the questions and like I clicked the link to go to the Google Review. But then like. Oh my God, did I just lose all my answers? ’cause it like, it didn’t open in a different thing. She was freaking out and it was like at six in the morning, my alarm hadn’t even gone off at that point in time, so I didn’t even see her messages as she’s texting me. And then I wake up and I’m like half an hour later and she’s like, oh, it’s okay. It’s alright. It’s saved it. She’s like, I think maybe if you had a little light in there saying that, that I wouldn’t have freaked out. I was like, I will do that.

And so I literally, that day went in and I put that line in saying. Don’t worry, like fill in this form, click the Google Review link. This is all gonna save. Once you press, like send on the Google Review, come back to this and then press submit.

And I’m like, it’ll all save. 

Colie: I also feel like that means that your button doesn’t have it clicked. Anthea we’re, when we finish this podcast episode, we’re gonna go check because there’s literally a little checkbox that you can check that says open in a new window. So I want you to do that if it’s not already checked, so that it does 

Anthea: does that work? If they’re on a mobile though?

Colie: Oh no.

Anthea: Because if they, even on their

mobile phone, because she’s on her mobile, she opened it from her email in her mobile, she clicked the link from the email in her mobile, which I know my emails, it opens us a browser within the, like, say my

Gmail app, and then it only opens up another browser on top of that.

So I’m like,

that’s probably where it happens. 

Colie: That is probably where it happens. ’cause literally I’m having like a little bit of a, oh shit, how did I not get that in testing? But I mean, in my defense, I don’t test y’all stuff on mobile. I test it on my computer so that I can record everything in Loom. But no, that makes total sense. Being on a mobile, and I mean, I sometimes I get people that are like, you know, everybody’s doing everything on their mobile.

Occasionally I will have clients that are like, oh my, you know, everybody’s gonna open this on their phone. And I’m like, well, when you send them the email with the proposal, or you send them an email with something that you want to make sure that they’re actually looking at it on a big screen, just tell them to open it on a big screen.

I mean, people will do what you tell them to, but you have to tell them to do it.

Anthea: Yes, and I have that actually in my, simple sales system in the, literally the very, very, very, very, very first email that goes out to them to say, your gallery is now live. I literally say this, there is a video. The video is only gonna be there for two days. Do not click this link. Just don’t, do not click this link. Get everyone that you wanna be involved in this entire, like, viewing process. Get ’em all ready to sit down. Get yourself onto as big a screen as you can. If you can cast your phone to your tv, if you’ve got a, a laptop, a desktop. Um, if you’ve got a computer that’s connected to the tv, whatever it is, get it on the biggest, best screen that you have and make sure you watch it on that. Once you’ve got that set up, then you can click on the link. And

so I tell them very, very explicitly because for that experience, I don’t want them watching it on a tiny little screen that’s not gonna have the same emotional impact I want them to have the big cinema movie thing. I even say that. Pour a drink. Pour a drink, sit down the couch

Colie: Cocktails encouraged? Yes.

Anthea: Pretty much. So when there’s something that I say needs to be on the very, very, if I need it to be something specific, I tell them it needs to be on this.

Otherwise, the proposal, I, I basically, as we were designing it, I was constantly looking at it on my mobile to be like, how is everything flowing? Are the boxes in the right order? So it’s not like you go say first name, email, last name, like date of birth. Like, it’s just, that doesn’t flow. Whereas if you’re. Set it out right in the boxes. Well, then you’re gonna have first name, last name, mobile email type flow regardless of whether you’re on a computer or your mobile.

Colie: Yes, a hundred percent. Now I’m gonna ask you a question and I don’t actually know what your answer is, so I’m gonna be surprised with everybody else. What is your favorite part of your systems inside Dubsado? Like what is the one feature that you set up that you’re like, holy shit, I would never live without this, like ever again.

Anthea: I think it’s just the workflows as a whole,

like just having everything automated because to me that is such a time saver. I don’t have to sit there, um, and be like, oh, it’s like say I’ve got the invoice paid. Great. So they’re at this stage of it. Um, okay, now they’re, I’ve gotta send them. The link to be able to then book their actual date and time.

Okay, well now I need to give them the reminder email. Okay. Now I need to give them this. Like I don’t have to sit there and remember to do that. I don’t have to be. Chain to my, my computer doing that. Like I manage so many things in my life, I don’t want to have to do that. So that in and of itself takes so much off my brain and off my list of things that I have to do, and it’s just, it’s pages, long list my whole life.

I just, I wish I could get back down to a simple life, but I’m getting there. So having just the workflows take up, like probably, I reckon 80% of just like. Emails, the communication, that kind of thing. And then if there’s, if they’ve got a very, very, very specific question, they’re obviously gonna contact me and then I answer that question.

But if it’s just general things, it’s either in the client experience portal, it’s already being provided to them in one of the automated emails. And my system updates things for me. It even, um, does the, like say the 12 hours or whatever it is after the session, it will change based on the calendar dates and times and everything that the session has now happened.

And it sends them a thank you email

like. That kind of, those, those little, those little touches that the clients appreciate. It just, it makes them them easier. They don’t have to be sitting there going, oh, you said you would send me this link, or you said you’d send me this information, and then I go, oh my God, I haven’t gotten around to that. I don’t have any of that stress. So conflict,

Colie: And that’s awesome. And normally I would follow this up with the hey Anthea, like how many hours do you think that it’s saving? But you weren’t doing it manually to start with, so you don’t know how many hours this 

Anthea: no. 

Colie: Yeah.

Anthea: But I, I can imagine it would save me a lot. And I also know that it would save me a lot of stress and knowing my life and everything else, like I’m trying to build healthier habits. I’m trying to manage everything better so that I can reduce stress in my life. So that’s just another thing that’s gonna help me do that.

Colie: I mean, and I would also typically say what percentage of your, client communication do you think is automated? I don’t know if you’ve heard me say this, but when I help people plan their customer journeys and their client communication library, most of the time, 80% of your emails can be automated, but I feel like with you we probably hit more than 90%, which 

Anthea: I, I’d say probably more than the idea, I think the only real time I get. But me personally having to do anything and it’s usually like, say the one or two days before a session about the, oh, hey, just quickly checking this, that, and the other. Oh, my. Or like the, on the day, oh, I’m just running five minutes late. Or it’s say, there. They know. They’ve seen the sneak peeks on my Instagram story. They know the gallery’s getting close. They’re like, oh my God, I love it. I can’t wait. And like the girl who got her gallery last night, she literally sent me a message being like, I’m sobbing. These photos are amazing.

She’s like, you’ve literally captured us in time. A moment in time. She’s like, I love it. So it’s like those kind of communications, obviously communications. I’m the one actually physically doing that, but I would say yeah, probably 95% of the rest is all automated.

Colie: That is super awesome and I can’t personally wait to see what that client says in your feedback because you know you’re gonna be able to take it and potentially use it as social proof in your proposal or sprinkle it inside your client communication. I mean, I’m excited for you.

Anthea: Well, and I’ve even, the, my friend who was the one who got the proposal while we were still in systems in session, we had an issue with one of her prints, so I’ve had to get that reprinted. So I should get that early next week. I’ve got it coming to me so I can triple check. It is actually correct this time. But she. Been sending me things along the way and I’ve been kind of like just mentally keeping tabs of where it all is so I can go back and put that together into social proof. But she actually literally said to me the other day when I said confirmed, it’s all ordered and it’s coming to me to make sure it’s all good.

Once I’ve confirmed, I’ll post it out to you because she lives about two hours down the coast from me. She drove into Melbourne to be able to have her session with me, which is amazing. and she said. I think I’ve covered everything. You can use whatever you want out of everything I’ve said for like your social proof, your marketing, whatever, and I’m like, oh, don’t worry.

You’re also getting a form with specific question.

Colie: Oh, don’t you worry, Cooley. I mean, even I have the feeling you would’ve written one even if I didn’t force you. But I’m always like, oh no, here’s the template. You will go edit this. I mean, and I have clients that are sometimes like, no, you know, I don’t wanna use a form. And I’m like, could you humor me? I’m gonna give you the template.

Could you just customize it? And it’ll just be sitting in your Dubsado so that if you wanna use it in the future, you have it. I mean. There’s nothing better. Then giving your clients a form where they can actually tell you about the different parts of the client experience and how they felt. And then, I mean, my testimonial form even has a place for you to upload your favorite photo.

And I always tell my clients like, that’s the one that you should use when you are sharing their testimonial or adding it to your website. Use the photo that they love, because then that’s just like one more touch point to where they realize you were listening to them because they shared that as their favorite and that’s the one that you used.

Anthea: Yes. And I, so I knew I wanted a form because any of the businesses that I’ve worked with, when they go, oh, give us a rating. So in the corporate environments, it’s an NPS, survey, and it’s basically you get given three questions, usually up to five, but three is kind of the ideal. And you scale on a, one to five kind of ratio. And then they, because it’s like, okay, did this person answer your question today? Do you feel like your problem was resolved? Do you, would you recommend us to family or friends? Like they give you really, really, really specific information, like questions to answer. And I even find the, like everything I do, if people give me questions to answer, it’s much quicker for me to give feedback.

It’s much quicker for me to be able to give them the information that they need. So I knew I wanted to do that, but at the same time, I didn’t really have an idea of. What were the right questions to ask someone? So then getting your form. I tweaked a couple of the questions a little bit basically to suit pet audience, but it gave me a really, really good basis.

So I went, oh, okay. Yeah, I can see how that goes for that. And then like, I think I tweaked one and then I got to one of the ones further down. I’m like, oh no, I’m putting back back to where it was. ’cause I can see how it leads into that. Yeah, sorry. That was really beneficial. Yeah, there’s probably one other thing I will say as well in the, I think it’s a session questionnaire, the one that goes out about two or three weeks before the actual session, I asked them to upload photos of their dogs. And I had someone ask me, why do you do that when we’re actually in the session?

Like, why do you do that? I’m happy to do it. Like, why do you do that? And I said to them, well. Every dog because dogs are a little bit different. They come in different coat color styles, everything like marking. And I try to, as much as possible, if I know ahead of time what they look like and the location, I can start to plan ahead of time where I wanna be in that location.

At what points of the sun coming down the golden hour to make your dog look as good as possible. So it’s like little things like that as well. Again, micromanaging planning control freak, but it means that I already know where to place them to get the exact right light. Like fluffy dogs, you get this beautiful rim line, but you want it more filtered than you would with a short coated dog because you’re more likely to blow out the highlights in their so like stuff like that.

Colie: Your experience is just so custom, uh, and it’s hysterical to me though you are really customizing it, but everything that you’re gathering from your clients is completely automated, and so I feel like this is just like the sign that I will hold up and like I will die on this hill. Automation does not mean that it’s not a custom experience.

It just means that you’ve pre-planned and that you are spending as little time managing it as possible, but you can still give your clients a completely custom high touch experience with low effort on your end.

Anthea: I have been known to, while I’m filling up my car with fuel on my phone, looking through someone’s session answers to go, okay, do I need to respond this? Do I need to ask any follow up questions when I get

home? So, 

Colie: Amazing. So I’m gonna ask you one, like final question. I usually ask it at the beginning, but like, this interview has just been all kinds of different, so at the end of the, do not apologize, that is why you are here. At the end of the day, I always ask my clients like, what made you decide to do it with me instead of doing like a DIY or you know, hiring somebody to do it for you.

So, Anthea, why was done with you, what you chose?

Anthea: so, uh, so I booked, I think I contacted you August, 2025. To get into the 30 day system. I had gotten Dubsado in the 2024 Black Friday deal going. I’ve heard your, sorry, I had heard you on Annemie’s podcast. I’d heard you talking about Dubsado. I’d done some research. I knew I wanted a CRM, and I was like, that seems to be the one that’s gonna have my, everything that I need long term. So I’m, so I’m just gonna invest now. I’m, I’m light on. I can figure it out. I’m like, between all the resources that you have online, blah, blah, blah. I’ll be fine. I’ll figure it out. And then I got to like July and I was starting to get a few people asking me about, you know, I really wanna book in. And I was like, shit, I still have not done this. I’m like, I. I, I like, if I haven’t done it by now, I’m not doing it without help and I am the type of person that I have a little bit of a control freak problem in that I need to know how my own website and my own systems work so that if I just wanna tweak one small thing, I don’t have to go and outsource it.

I don’t have to wait three to five business days turnaround for that to happen. I can do it then and there right in that moment. I’m a bit a control freak in that way, so because of that, I knew I wanted to be the one to do it. And then you just happened to,

Colie: You did. I think the email that you responded to was the one that I was actually selling systems in session and like at the very bottom 

Anthea: it was right at. 

Colie: It was like a, and I’d really like to test this with a few people in 30 days. Anybody up for it? And like you and Megan, who was the other person who did it in the exact same 30 days that you did.

I mean, I think you guys both messaged me within minutes. It was hysterical. Like, oh no, me. Me, me, me. No, I mean, that’s great. And I did not realize that you had honestly tried to like DIY or that at least it was on your to-do list for eight freaking months. ’cause Yes, it was midgut when, when we actually had the conversation and you booked in.

Anthea: Yeah, I think I had, I had a pretty shitty version of the contact form. I had a terrible version of the proposal ’cause I couldn’t figure out how to make it look nice. There was like a, a few things I tried and like, I think you took one look at it. I were like, yeah, sign from scratch, which is shit.

Colie: I mean, you guys appreciate my honesty that, I mean, and it’s funny, you called yourself a control freak, almost everybody in systems in session, their response is, oh no, I’m too much of a control freak to let somebody else do that for me. And I’m just like, that’s what I, I mean, I need to have a banner on my website that’s like control freaks.

Welcome. Join me.

Anthea: Yeah, and like I, I have friends and everything, so even my website, I have it as on a self-hosted WordPress website using Elementor Pro as my like visual design element. And I have so many people being like, why wouldn’t you just use like Squarespace or something? It’s so much easier. And I’m like. Oh my God.

That does not gimme the design options I want. It doesn’t do this. It doesn’t do that. Am I gonna cost an arm and a leg? I can get it way cheaper for WordPress IB because I book blog and I’ve been using WordPress for book blogging for years. I’m like, I know the basics. Look, I may not be able to create the most swish, fanciest website that I would love to have, but it looks pretty damn good.

Colie: I mean, your website does look pretty damn good. Guys. Her, her website is linked in the show notes. Please go check it out, especially now that you realize that she is doing self-hosted WordPress. I mean, come on. Anthea, like I can’t thank you enough for being my Guinea pig. I can’t thank you enough for joining me on this episode, and I really am so happy to hear from you that six months later that the systems that we built together are doing what they were supposed to do, and that you and your clients are having such an amazing experience from it.

All right everybody. I just wanted you to get a case study from someone who really was so different than all of the other clients that I have had inside Systems in session. I mean, she is still a photographer ’cause you guys are constantly asking me if systems in session will work for non photographers.

It will, but. This is proof in the pudding that it works regardless of what kind of photographer you are and what kind of experience you are trying to deliver to your clients. So I hope that you have taken something away from this episode and if you are interested in hearing more about systems and session, I don’t actually know if I still have any more spots for Q2 when this airs.

If there are, you can find out more information at Colie james.com/systems. All right. For this episode. See you next time.