Gaining Time Freedom Through Workflows & Systems

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Setting up systems and workflows may not be at the top of your to-do list when running a business, but they are key to creating a great client experience and ensuring you have some work-life balance. In this week's podcast, Laura Murphy, a brand photographer and systems strategist, clarifies the top workflows you should have in your business and the value behind implementing them.

Laura is a photographer, systems strategist, business coach, retreat host, and speaker for creative entrepreneurs. She educates the creative community on all things workflow, systems, productivity, and time management to help her clients and students run THRIVING businesses that don’t require working around the clock. Laura is on a mission for entrepreneurs to schedule more date nights, brunch weekends, and vacations as a result of finding work-life balance while running a thriving business!

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The episode:

Katrina Widener: Hi everyone, this is Katrina back with another episode of the Badass Business Squad podcast. Today, our guest expert is Laura Murphy and Laura's business is called Laura Lee Creative. She's going to be talking to us all about systems and automations today. So before we dive in Laura, would you please give everyone a little bit of an introduction about who you are and what you do?

Laura Murphy: Yeah, hi guys! So I'm Laura Murphy, I am originally from New Jersey but me and my husband are RV'ing around the country right now because I set up my business in order to give me some more freedom and flexibility and especially time freedom. So I am a very multi-passionate entrepreneur. I'm a wedding and family photographer, which is under business one: Laura Lee Photography. And then Laura Lee Creative is kind of the hub for everything that has to do with service-based business owners and creative entrepreneurs. So I do brand photography, business strategy and coaching, and then workflow and systems strategy. All kind of under the purpose of helping people redefine success on their own terms and find more time freedom and balance as a business owner. Because I think as soon as we become entrepreneurs, it's like workaholism just attacks us, because everything is on us. And so my goal is to help people pursue their passions with more ease and I love that I get to do that in a variety of ways.

Katrina Widener: I am always so excited when the guests come on and are explaining who they are and what they do, what their values are, and I'm like, "Yep, yep. Me too. Me too. Me too." It's always so fun cause I'm like, "We're totally aligned and you're meant to be on this podcast, because talking about ease and not feeling like chained to your computer are things that I really, really value for my clients as well." So it's always just so fun for me and it also makes sense because workflows and systems are such a huge part of making sure that you have that work-life balance and you're able to do things for yourself outside of your business, so it makes complete sense to me.

Laura Murphy: Yeah. Yes.

Katrina Widener: So before we completely dive into some of the tips and tricks that you're gonna be sharing with people today, would you mind first really identifying for people what systems and workflows are?

Laura Murphy: Yes. Yeah. So I think that there's a lot of education around there that is wrong about defining workflows and systems or there's just not a lot of education out there, so it's easy to have misconceptions about what they are and there's a lot of varying definitions. But for the point of this episode, we will assume that a workflow is basically a step-by-step sequential order of any action that you do to perform your service for a client.

An action could be sending an email, sending a questionnaire, a scheduling link, a contract, an invoice, or just doing a manual task, like "text client to see how they are". That can be built into a workflow. So it's step-by-step from the second that somebody inquires with you through a contact form, preferably connected to your CRM which we'll talk about, all the way through to your last offboarding email which should ideally be asking for a testimonial, just saying thank you, and stuff like that. So workflow is an action and a trigger.

So that's kind of the second part of a workflow is that every action has a trigger, which will tell your CRM when to do that action. So in my wedding photography business, for example, I have an action that says "Send wedding day questionnaire to client" and the trigger is 120 days before project date. So when that trigger comes due, the CRM is reading all the information behind the scenes and magic: It will pop up onto a daily task list and say, "Hey, it's time to send the wedding day questionnaire to your client. The template is already preloaded".

So that's a workflow, actions, and triggers. And then a system... I feel like this is a word that is thrown around in so many different capacities. I think it is really interchangeable with the word software, but for the sake of this episode we'll say a system is how an action is performed and ideally a system is an organized method or framework for performing an action in the most efficient way possible. So if a workflow is the "what" and the "when", the system is the "how" basically.

Katrina Widener: I love the "what, when, how" part. It makes it feel so succinct and easy to manage and easy to understand. Where I know that even myself in the past, before I really learned the value of my CRM and the value of implementing these workflows in my business, it felt like this huge intimidating topic, right? Like, "Oh, I have to put so much work into this. I don't really know how this happens." And so I love that we just were able to break it down for people and you saying how all of that happens... I absolutely love that.

So can you give everyone listening an example of like a very common workflow that might happen in someone's business and how the systems would be utilized within that workflow?

Laura Murphy: Yes. Yes. Okay so first right off the bat, if you are a service-based business owner and you work with more than three clients a year, I would highly, highly, highly recommend getting a CRM if you don't have one. That stands for Client Relationship Management system, and that is essentially going to be the one-stop shop hub where all of your projects, your workflows, your emails, questionnaires, contracts, everything is going to live there that you send back and forth to your clients. So that's step one, get that set up, that's just a software.

And then to me, the most important workflow, or at least the one that everybody is going to need and have is going to be an inquiry workflow. So I always say that for a service-based business, workflows are really divided into five phases. So it's inquiry, booking, onboarding, fulfillment (which is actually doing the work that you are delivering), and then offboarding. I always use a restaurant as an analogy because hopefully we've all been to a restaurant. And so it's like the inquiry process is you get there and you get seated, you got your menu, they fill up your water. The booking process is paying, so it's kind of a little bit backwards than a service-based business like we know. But onboarding could be telling you about the menu, about the specials, telling you what wine goes well with the order that you're about to place. And then fulfillment is checking in to see how the food came out. Do you need more wine? Do you need extra soy sauce with your salmon? Like whatever you need, and there can be client education involved in there. There's communication.

And then offboarding, me and my husband, we're living on the road right now in an RV, and when we were in Sedona, we had this amazing waiter. And he was like, "Okay guys, I had so much fun with you tonight. My name's Adam. I would really, really appreciate if you could give us a review on Yelp and specifically mentioned my name in the review, because then I get a free cheeseburger from my boss." And we were like, "Thats awesome!" And he literally gave us a hug when we left. We totally vibed with him, and he was like, "This was awesome. You guys need to come back." And so that was such a great off-boarding experience. And I was like, "Wow, we just had literally a whole service-based workflow happen in a really good way." And then there's the restaurants where it takes forever to get the menu and check in on your food or get a new fork when you drop, it or anything like that. So I always use that as an analogy because I think everybody has had good and bad experiences at restaurants.

So coming back to the most important workflow that service-based business owners should have, I would say is the inquiry workflow. So that's going to be basically starting as soon as your contact form gets sent through from the prospective clients, and then it'll end when that client makes a decision. So they could either make a decision that they want to move forward booking with you(in which case you'll move into phase two which is the booking workflow) or they will pick somebody else. In which case, the end of that workflow is just archiving their lead.

So within an inquiry workflow, I think the most important elements of an inquiry workflow is one: A really powerful initial point of contact. So that could be a really well written email. It could be a phone call to the prospective lead. It could be sending them a video message. So we want to make sure that we are standing out as a service provider amongst probably multiple service providers that they're reaching out to. And you could have multiple! Like in my wedding workflow, I have a call/send video text message to client and then I also send an email with my pricing links and all of that after I send that phone call.

Then the next really important point are follow-up emails. I think that a lot of people feel like they're being annoying by sending a follow-up email, but I think that people are just really busy. I mean, the world gets busier and busier and busier every single day, I feel like. So we want to float our services back up to the top of their inbox. So I always recommend an inquiry workflow to have between one to five follow-up emails. I would say kind of depends on how expensive your service is. They might need some more nudging in those follow-up emails. And they don't need to just be generic where it's like, "Hey, just following up if you got my pricing link", they can be more in depth. Talking about your service and why you would love to work with them, and sharing more about their project.

So they can be customized, but also templated at the same time. So I think that's really important. Then having a consult is usually a part of an inquiry process, and then having post consult follow-up emails. So a thank you email, "Thank you for meeting with me." And then if you don't hear from them right away on whether or not they want to book, having more like sales tactic type emails in your sequence of your workflow after the consult.

So those like sharing testimonials, sharing why you think you'd be a great fit working together if you do. I always take liberty to not send follow up emails, if I don't think somebody is a good fit for one of my services. Then I'll just kind of back off and let them decide for themselves.

But those are some of the main elements. So initial point of contact, follow-up emails, a consult, post follow-up emails. And then from there you go into either booking, if they decide to work with you, or archiving that lead. All of those actions in the workflow look like "Send email", you know, "Inquiry with pricing, create task call inquiry". Then the triggers on that would be immediately after workflow is activated and then the follow-up emails, the trigger is like "Three days after the previous email is sent. Four days after that previous email is sent."

That's how the CRM is going to read all of these things, and so if your business starts to boom and you know, one of my clients, she went to a bridal show and she had 22 inquiries in a day. And she was like, "Oh my God, this would have taken me days to respond to all of them previously." But her contact form and her CRM reads the project date, so she can see if she's available. The inquiry workflow is automatically attached to the contact form, and then all of those actions are auto-populating in her task management section of the CRM.

So she was like, "I literally just answered 22 leads in like less than an hour," because she was just, you know, customizing a couple sentences of that first email, and like "Boom! Off!" And she was like, "Oh my God, I just booked eight weddings in like a day." So that was awesome, and she was like, "That would have taken me a week just to respond to all of those without these workflows and templates in place." so that's kind of the gist of an inquiry workflow, which I think is the most important. A: We want to answer people really quickly and B: We want to give our services the time and space they need to shine for this prospective client, and hopefully move them into the next phase of the journey with you.

Katrina Widener: First of all, I want to thank you for going through all of that, cause I'm sure everyone is like, "Oh my gosh," I either were taking notes while listening to this or like, "I need to relisten to this and write down all of these notes" so that's awesome. Also for anyone listening, a reminder: There's full transcriptions in the show notes so you don't have to relisten to it, you can just pop on there and it's already written down for you.

One thing that I wanted to clarify just for everyone listening is within this workflow, how many of these actions would be automations versus manual? Just so everyone can kind of be like, "Okay, got it. Makes sense."

Laura Murphy: Yes. Okay. I think that people have this huge fear around automation, because they're like, "What if I send the wrong email? What if the CRM sends the wrong email?" Or, "I didn't want to send that email, or I didn't want to answer that client because they weren't a good fit or something." So within any CRM, anytime you set up an action, there's going to be an option to completely automate that action or review the action before sending. So basically what I do for my own business, I automate the thinking of doing the actions for me, but I don't automate the actual doing.

So my CRM, I use HoneyBook. My HoneyBook does not send anything without me just taking a quick glance at it at first. So this year, I think we did 200 client projects or something like that. So every single day HoneyBook is just saying, "Hey, this is what's due for Kevin and Carla. This is what's due for Emily and Jimmy. This is what's due for Crystal's workflow project." So we have all of those actions pulled in and the templates are preloaded in the workflow, so all myself or any team member is doing is just reviewing the email or the questionnaire and sending it. So I say it's full automation in the sense that the CRM gets to do the thinking for you, and you're not trying to remember what you should do every single day. And then it's partial automation in the sense that I just got to review, edit and send. So the other day, I think I had 23 tasks due for my wedding photography business and I did them in 12 minutes. And I was just like, "Boom questionnaire. Okay. Email sent." And some of those tasks in the inquiry workflow, really the only one that's fully manual is calling the inquiry or sending them a video text. So basically a task is going to be anything that you're manually doing. And then everything else, like an email questionnaire, those are things that can be templated, so you're like starting from 99% of where you want to be in that email or questionnaire, and then you're just reviewing and sending.

But I do know a lot of people that fully automated their inquiry process and it just has their scheduler in there, those are more so people who are just like, "I'll book anybody", but I'm way more selective at this point of who I want to work with, and I want them to be really aligned with me. So I review every email before it goes out.

Katrina Widener: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. I know in the past when I've used automations, for anyone listening who is looking for, "Okay, when would you maybe have it automatically go out?" Someone can put in my contact form, and if they answer, "I'm interested in business coaching, I'm interested in group coaching," then it might automatically send them an email with the information to schedule a 20 minute consult with me, right? For me, the weeding out happens in that consult and you'd get them on the phone, but maybe I'll automatically send other things for the consult. So after the consult though, I have follow-up emails I may or may not send, depending on how that goes. So the automation would just say, "Okay, it's time to send this email." I can review it and then choose whether or not to set it out, or send it out as is. So for everyone listening, that's a great example of how you can do either or both of those options.

I want to also make sure that we talk about CRMs and what exactly a CRM software is. There may be people who know, but there may be people who don't know listening to the podcast, and then also a couple options of CRMs that people might be interested in trying.

Laura Murphy: Sure, yeah. So CRM stands for Client Relationship Management or Customer Relationship Management. Those see where it's can be used interchangeably. Basically it is a hub for running the client side of your business. So a good CRM should have all the available tools you need to send emails, questionnaires, contracts, invoices, payment schedules, create workflows, task management, bookkeeping, and contact forms and stuff like that. It's really a one-stop shop that you can utilized to send anything back and forth to your client. I always say, "I used to think that I can just run my business off of spreadsheets and Gmail." And then I had more than three clients and I was like, "Oh my God, where did all of these forms go?" and just kind of duct taping together a random strategy of like, "I'm going to send a Google form as a questionnaire, and then I'm going to use HelloSign for my contract, and I'm going to send the invoice through Way Back." It was just like a haphazard mass, and you have to go into all these different platforms to find things.

So a CRM brings everything that you need to send a client all into one spot and they all will put your clients into a project, and then that project will have an activity feed so you can literally see your entire history of emails with that client, your questionnaires, your contracts. So there's usually an activity feed and a file tab where you can see your contractor invoices, payment schedules, upcoming payments, all of that stuff. So you can get paid through the CRM, and it can log your bookkeeping and everything as well, so it's like the biggest game changer for running service-based businesses.

I still have no idea how, or why I ever tried to run my business off of whiteboards and spreadsheets. I was like, "I got this". And then it was like, "Oh my God, I don't got this." So that's what a CRM is, and the one I use is HoneyBook. I've been using HoneyBook for seven years, I think that one is great for just ease of use. I find it very, very intuitive and not super tech complicated, which I think a lot of the other ones can be. But some other options are Dubsado, Tave, 17 Hats. Those are the only ones that I have personally tested out, but I stuck to HoneyBook. I was like, "This is so easy to use." It's basic enough. I think anybody can get a hold of it, even if you're not a super tech savvy person.

Some of the other more complicated ones, I would say those are probably better if people have larger teams, if they have multiple associate service providers under them that are taking on their own projects or tasks within a workflow, those might be a little better to serve that level of business owner because you can delegate tasks within a workflow to certain team members, which you can't do in HoneyBook. So HoneyBook is great for solopreneurs and small teams. I have a team, I still use HoneyBook, my assistant just knows everything she's responsible for within the workflow. And then if it's a manual task, since I can't assign it, I just write the initials of whoever is responsible for it. So it'll just say like "LM call client, RR do this thing." So that's kind of my work around in there, but I love it, I've used it for seven years and it's always been super easy and I liked that you can brand your business within it as well.

Katrina Widener: Yes I use HoneyBook. For everyone listening, HoneyBook is also who powers the Rising Tide Society. Which, I'm a Tuesdays Together co-leader, I've had Natalie Frank on the podcast beforehand. So definitely a community if you haven't checked it out yet, I would recommend checking out. But HoneyBook is what powers that entire community. Otherwise it's all volunteer-based, and that's another reason why I am super loyal to HoneyBook is because of the Rising Tide Society community.

Laura Murphy: Me too!

Katrina Widener: So thank you, Laura so much for sharing all of this information too, I really, really appreciate it. Before we hop off, would you mind sharing with everyone listening, where they can find you after the episode, if they have any questions or they just want to keep learning from you and taking in all your good stuff?

Laura Murphy: Yeah, absolutely. So my Instagram is at @lauraleecreative, so L-A-U-R-A L-E-E creative. And that is also my website, which is a huge hub of blog posts and resources and freebies, and the different services that we offer for coaching and workflows and systems and all those good things.

Katrina Widener: Perfect. Thank you so much for sharing that, I will link to everything in the show notes as well. Thank you so much for coming on today.

Laura Murphy: Thanks for having me.