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Transcript

I'm Done Squeezing Your Business Into Software That Wasn't Built for You · Business-First Creatives: Client Experience & Systems for Service Providers

• 0:26
  Hey, y'all.
• 0:27
  Welcome back.
• 0:28
  Today's episode is gonna be short and sweet.
• 0:31
  Think about it as a combination of behind the scenes and also building in public.
• 0:36
  Because I feel like in the last two weeks, maybe the last two months if I'm being really honest, I have made some huge pivots in the way that I am working with my clients and what I want my
• 0:48
  business to look like going forward, and I have a lot of really fun things planned on the horizon.
• 0:54
  Today's episode is just kind of, I'm putting some of these things out into the world so that they're not all living inside of my head.
• 1:02
  I've been doing the system side of my business for a little over five and a half years, and it's only now that I truly believe that, like, I know what I want to do in my business going forward
• 1:15
  for the next five, possibly 10 years.
• 1:19
  And so I'm not gonna share all of those plans with you today, but this is, like, the first iteration of where I'm going next.
• 1:27
  Now, in the last five and a half years, I feel like what I have offered you has changed, and it didn't really change a lot in the first four years of me doing systems.
• 1:38
  But in the last year and a half, like, my business has flipped completely upside down.
• 1:44
  I now have offers that didn't exist before a year and a half ago, and these are the only things that I am really focusing on now and going forward.
• 1:55
  And so there's just something to be said for that.
• 1:57
  And I don't think that, like, all of the things that I did in the past were a waste of time.
• 2:02
  I mean, I've genuinely helped hundreds of photographers and creative service providers to build systems that saved them real hours and real stress inside of their business, and I am proud of what, you know, I created with them, but
• 2:17
  I am making, like, some pretty big moves to drastically change, like, the actual core offer that I have.
• 2:26
  Now, up until now, I have really been focused on the tool, and more specifically, I've been focused on my favorites, which are Dubsado and HoneyBook.
• 2:37
  I would help you map your client journey, get excited about what was possible, and then we would spend the rest of our time together bending your vision to work inside of software that I was recommending to you, and
• 2:51
  I'm honestly done with that as of today going forward.
• 2:56
  And what's really made me have this huge shift inside of my mind was building myself the tool of my dreams, my business dreams, if you will.
• 3:07
  I kept running into the same problem with my own clients.
• 3:11
  All of my tools, my templates, my trainings, my feedback, my frameworks, everything was scattered.
• 3:17
  Nothing was in one place.
• 3:19
  And so I think all of you know by now, during my birthday sabbatical, I built the Systems Professor app to help me manage clients inside of the Experience Edit and Systems in Session.
• 3:32
  Now, I could never have imagined that building this custom tool for myself was basically going to spark the next iteration of my business.
• 3:41
  But it just...
• 3:42
  It cracked something open for me, because I have jokingly said in the past that if I had, like, a coder, a developer, someone that could help me take ideas out of my head and actually put them out into
• 3:56
  the world, maybe that's the path that I would've taken.
• 3:59
  But unfortunately for me, my husband is a biochemist, and so he is not capable of helping me do any of those things, and all of my besties are photographers and photographer educators.
• 4:09
  But I think right now with the evolution of AI, and more specifically vibe coding, that the world of opportunities in terms of making the tools that truly make our business easier is really open and available to everyone.
• 4:28
  And so now I am of the opinion, if you and I can really think of what your customer journey truly needs to be in order for you to deliver a five-star client experience, that is what I want you
• 4:43
  to have.
• 4:44
  I no longer want you to feel like you have to compromise parts of that because the tools that are currently available cannot fully help you realize your dream on how you want to work with your clients.
• 4:58
  I want to stop asking you to squeeze your business into software that was not designed for how you work.
• 5:05
  And I'm really sorry that it took me, like, five years to say this out loud.
• 5:10
  I mean, granted, I was not in a position three years ago to build the software of my dreams or anything like that.
• 5:18
  But here's what this means going forward and working with me inside of my offer suite.
• 5:25
  I want everyone to do the Experience Edit.
• 5:29
  Now, I will admit, it didn't really seem like the Experience Edit was gonna work out.
• 5:34
  It started as that client communication course that I felt like everybody needed.
• 5:39
  And to me, that was like the first pivot that I made.
• 5:42
  Because up until I created Email Like You Mean It, I was 100% focused on workflows.
• 5:49
  I thought workflows could solve all of your problems in your business.
• 5:53
  You know, you're spending too much time doing this.
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  Let's just automate it inside of a workflow.
• 5:57
  That was where I thought most of you were dropping the ball.
• 6:00
  You're doing things manually off of, you know, checklists and the whole nine yards, and I thought to myself, "If I could just give you some workflows to help you manage it, your business would run better."
• 6:13
  And then I admitted in a very public way that most of you weren't ready for workflows.
• 6:18
  Most of you guys needed to sit down in a corner with a piece of paper and a pen and figure out what it was that you wanted to do with your clients first.
• 6:27
  And then you needed to write the client communication that guided it.
• 6:31
  But where I went wrong in creating the course Email Like You Mean It was that I was 100% focused on the communication.
• 6:40
  Because that is what my clients were telling me at that time.
• 6:44
  All of the people that I worked with in Done For You were all really excited about the emails that I wrote them and what a difference it made when they were communicating with their clients.
• 6:54
  But again, I thought the emails were what was giving them that, when in reality, it was one more step backwards to actually look at the client journey that we had planned that the emails were guiding.
• 7:08
  So going forward, Experience Edit is going to be my forward-facing offer.
• 7:14
  I want everyone to do it with me.
• 7:16
  What we do is we sit down and we look at your offer first.
• 7:20
  Now, this is new.
• 7:21
  You know, I haven't really talked about this outside of the Order of Operations episode that I published a few weeks ago.
• 7:28
  But everyone is going to get an offer review from me, and that is because I still believe that we cannot build systems around a shitty offer.
• 7:37
  I want to make sure that you guys have really looked at these offers that you are selling, that you are marketing, to make sure that they are profitable, sustainable, and enjoyable to deliver.
• 7:50
  Now, once we've looked at your offer and you've gotten the seal of approval, you've gotten a green light, the next step inside of Experience Edit is for us to map your client journey.
• 8:01
  And this is an absolute non-negotiable for me.
• 8:03
  This is the thing that gets you the business that you've dreamed of.
• 8:07
  This is the thing that makes workflows and automations possible.
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  And so I want us to get together.
• 8:14
  I want us to map out this client journey so that we know every single milestone and every single touch point that you are going to have with your clients.
• 8:23
  Then we are gonna talk about tools.
• 8:26
  Now, that is the first part, though, okay?
• 8:29
  Experience Edit is all about reviewing your offer and mapping your client journey.
• 8:36
  And after the Experience Edit, I will still offer you the opportunity to work with me one-on-one to implement this new five-star client experience into the tool of your choice, whether that is an existing tool that you brought with
• 8:50
  you, like Dubsado, HoneyBook, 17hats, VSCO, Sprout Studio, Or if building you something custom is where we need to go so that you can manage your clients and deliver the client experience exactly as you have designed it.
• 9:08
  Because that's what I did with the Systems Professor app.
• 9:12
  Okay, so is every person going to need a custom tool?
• 9:16
  No, absolutely not.
• 9:18
  But for those of you that are running a business like me, where you haven't quite found the tool that allows you to do all of the things that you do with your clients in the most efficient way, that
• 9:29
  is probably gonna be a conversation that we need to have.
• 9:33
  And so I wanna say, I would love to have you come and join me for an Experience Edit.
• 9:39
  I think it is the best thing that you could do for your business.
• 9:42
  You can go to coliejames.com/experience.
• 9:45
  Right now, I am booking solo sprints, and what that looks like is you and me one-on-one to do these things together.
• 9:54
  Now, I am going to have one more group sprint before the end of 2026, and I will be opening up registration for that next month.
• 10:04
  So you can do a solo sprint or you can do a group sprint, but going forward, everyone that works with me is going to start with an Experience Edit.
• 10:15
  And if you wanna hear more about me building custom tools and exactly what I did to build the Systems Professor app, stay tuned.
• 10:23
  Tomorrow's episode is with Kara, my blog writer, who has been inside the Systems Professor app, and she is going to be interviewing me about how I created it and what that means for you if you decide that you
• 10:37
  need a custom tool for your business.
• 10:40
  All right.
• 10:41
  That's it for this episode.
• 10:42
  See you next time.