Streamline Your Design Business with Dubsado

Ian Paget: So today I'm joined by Becca Berg here and she is somebody who a mutual friend of ours connected us together and I really enjoy your product. I haven't started using it myself yet, but I thought this is so great. I need to get you on the podcast. We need to talk about this. A because I think it's an inspiring journey that I think anyone that's listening, that's into maybe building a product, building an audience., and building a business around that could learn from. But then also I think Dubsado, which is your product, which we'll talk about shortly, is something that designers can use. It's something I want to start using at some point when I get around to migrating over the data. yeah, cool. So, you know, should jump straight into this. Would you mind sharing, you know, a little bit more about you and what Dubsado is?

Becca Berg: Yes, thanks so much for having me. I'm Becca, co-founder of Dubzado and Dubzado is a client management system. And Dubzado specifically is built for service-based business owners, creative service-based business owners. And what a client management system is, it's your hub for running your business. So from sending contracts, invoices, getting paid, sending your proposals, everything from lead capture to off-boarding that client. That is what a client management system does. It helps you run your business so that you are not drowning in the admin tasks. You are actually doing what you love and why you started this business in the first place. So that is what Dubsado is here for and what it helps creative business owners do.

Ian Paget: So you know why I like it. So when I started what I'm doing now, I kind of tried to do everything I could. So if you can imagine invoices and all that sort of stuff, I'd design it in design and I do it manually that way. And to be fair, that works if you don't, if you've only got one or two projects a month, it's manageable that way. But I've obviously needed to eventually use some kind of invoicing software and that's been fine.

Becca Berg: Mm-hmm.

Ian Paget: But then when we connected and I had a look around what Dubsado is, it's way more than what I'm using in terms of functionality. And it's actually pretty much the same price as what I'm paying for just for an invoicing software. And this is why it's so appealing to me. And I think I mentioned it to you previously, why I'm like, haven't jumped straight in right away, just because I've got like 10 years worth of data in a platform already and it's just a headache to move over. But anyway, so I think it'd be fun to break this conversation down into two areas because like I said, I think your store is really inspiring for anyone that wants to build a product and grow that. So I think it'd be really great to dive into your journey and your story and just so people can get to know you as well in the process. And then I think I want to go through later on some of the things that will add real value to designers that's, you know, in the same position as me because there's just so much there. OK, so I want to start with because I like I like this story.

Becca Berg: Yeah. There's a lot, there's a lot I can do for designers, for sure.

Ian Paget: Why did you, how did this come into existence? Why did you decide to build a software business?

Becca Berg: Well, like every great idea is because I feel like every great idea is because you need something. You see this hole in the market. And that's what I saw 10 years ago. I was a photographer running my business. I was doing a lot of headshots for children's acting headshots. And I was also doing weddings. so at that same time, my husband and I had just gotten married a couple of years ago. So we were still getting the newlywed thing down.

We just had our first child. And so we were doing that for a while. I was doing my photography and I was noticing that I was having a hard time really keeping my stuff straight. Yes, I was using this platform for invoicing. I was using this platform for this. I was, oddly didn't have any canned email templates. So I was literally writing all my emails to my photo shoot clients right off the bat. I, back then, we didn't have, like I didn't have email on my phone. And so I remember like bringing my computer into my college classes and like responding back to leads really fast so that I can make sure to get on those leads. So I was like, you know what, like there has to be a better way to do this. And so time and time went on, we went on and we had our second kid and things got a lot more chaotic in life. And I was like, you know, this is crazy. And it turned out I had a photo shoot planned and I didn't know.

the photo shoot walks into my office and I was like, hi, I'm here. And I'm like, cool, for what? And I look at my calendar and there's nothing on my calendar because I had to manually add things to my calendar. It wasn't automated. Everything was built on me actually doing it and carrying those things out. So it was at that point in time, along with a few other things that I was like, you know, there has to be a better way to do this.

So I looked to my husband as other people would do and just be like, build it for me. People don't ask their husbands to do that. But my husband was also a web developer and web designer at the time. And so he had that eye, he needed it himself and set out to start building it. And we saw the hole in the market. Yes, there are so many other client management systems out there. I wasn't just the new frontier person taking this on and going to build something new. No, there were other systems out on the market, but where I saw the whole was no company really focused on what the client experience is like. What your clients experience when they're getting an invoice from you, when they're getting a contract from you, and it didn't represent my brand very well. And so I knew that I wanted my clients to have a cohesive in their client journey. wanted my brand to be represented and not the client management systems brand that I'm using. So I said, you know what, Jake, my husband, I was like, build this for me. And I know it's gonna be helpful for me and I know it's gonna be helpful for others.

Ian Paget: I can relate already with a lot of this. I've got a six year old daughter, so I have to juggle everything around her. sometimes, you know, people don't really talk about it much, but when you've got children, especially you've got more than one, it's, you know, sometimes just sitting down to write an email, it's hard to do it. Yeah, I tend to have my little one climbing on me. like, daddy, can we play a game? It's like, can you let me? Please, I just need to write this. I have to do this now because it's, you you know yourself with the photography stuff. If you don't take the call then they just go to someone else because there are obviously options in every scenario. So I know things like, you you started talking about template emails and the things being booked in auto. I'm doing that now. I book stuff in manually.

And you try, like you try so hard, but it's easy to think, yeah, I need to add that to my calendar and then the phone rings. And you're like, I need to take that. And then for whatever reason you didn't drop down a note or whatever, it's really easy to do these things. So I think it's very, very relatable with this. So like it's an extra reason why I need to migrate my data.

Becca Berg: Absolutely. Yeah, and I think the thing that struck me the most throughout this whole process, like you said, like handling things manually and doing all that, it works. It works for a certain amount of time, right? And I think the thing that really hit me hard when that photo shoot client walked in and I wasn't prepared was, yes, I can flub it and make sure to put on a good show and make sure that they don't feel like they were not treated like all my other customers, but deep down I'm like, this client didn't get the same experience as the client, maybe a couple clients back who I had more time. I was able to put invest the extra time. Maybe my son was able to take a few extra naps and I was on top of my emails and stuff like that. And it's just like making sure that every single client has that same experience. And that's what really creates raving clients. And that's what really struck me hard because that's ultimately where a lot of our business comes from as creatives, as word of mouth and people talking really great about you. And when you have a poor experience, forgetting a photo shoot, like that can really hurt your reputation as a business owner.

Ian Paget: I take it everything went okay with that? Did you- so the person that just came in and you didn't know about it, I take it you still was able to cope with that? Good.

Becca BergWhat was that?I still did it. I put on a good show of like, you know what, let me go get my camera, AKA run home, which is five minutes away, or like, just sit down, get some water, get your clothes changed, ready for the photo shoot. And I was like, my gosh, behind the scenes, it was a mess.

Ian Paget: My God, stressful. OK, so in terms of building the product, so far you had this idea, you had this need, you and your husband wanted this, so you set out to build it. Getting to that point is quite big compared, no, getting to that point is... Not simple, I don't know what the right word is, but that's one thing compared to actually having a large use space. I'm curious how you went from it being this thing that was kind of just for you to actually being a larger scale product that lots of people are using. How did you scale it from just you and your husband?

Becca Berg: Yeah, with seeing that great need that the whole was in the market for having my brand come across well and having a excellent client experience, when I saw that whole, I was like, this is my in to talk about it to the broader group of people. And so immediately when that idea came into our heads of we need to start this company, we started a social media platform, we started to build our email list.

I had no idea how to do these things. This was my first, obviously, tech venture, something bigger than just myself and service-based, service clients. And I just knew that I had to attack it from the problem side. Here are the problems that you are facing, can, Dubsado can help be that solution for you. So that's what we did immediately, is just starting attacking that problem solution, problem solution, and making that really well known.

And being able to know what holes there are and what gaps there are in the field and being able to talk about that on social media, through our email newsletter, we were able to really get a strong community right at the bat. And we didn't even launch it yet. We just built up all this hype, all this excitement of people seeing that hole as well, maybe not realizing and be like, yeah, I don't want my client management systems logo.

On all of the emails I send out or their email address sending my emails and just really putting those problems front and center to the our perspective customers is what really got that first traction in the very beginning and built our email list. And I remember it's it's small now like thinking back, but I remember I was so proud to have built an email list of 300 people. So on our day of launch, we launched it to 300 people and we got our first

I think two, was, yeah, it was two signups that first day of launch and I was writing on cloud nine. It was just such a exhilarating experience to know like, yes, I had this need and it just really like the proof was in the pudding right there of like people are already starting to pay for something. It's validated, it's there.

Ian Paget: It's really cool because I think when you have an idea for a product, obviously need to then build it. But getting the, you know, the first users is not always that easy. And it's nice to know that you've basically just gone out there, shared on social media, focused on the problems that people are having, which, know, you've already addressed some that I have as an issue, but I never really thought about that there's something out there that could make my life easier. Congratulations on launching initially and having people to shout out about it too. How did you get the emails? Was it just a case of promoting or did you have some sort of lead magnet or something like that to get those emails initially? Or was it just?

Becca Berg: Mm-hmm. I didn't even know what a lead magnet was. like, that's how, that's the excitement about all of this when I look back is there was so much, I was so naive to what to do and how to do it. And I think that's what also got us really far is because we just had no fear in anything that we did. And it was just all based on gut. So what we did when we built the social media platform, when we started our Instagram, we also launched our website and it was just a landing page pretty much of what Dubsado is going to offer. I had some very, very rough prototypes that it didn't end up looking exactly like what Dubsado was at all, but I had some like just here's what it's gonna do, here's how it's gonna solve your problems. And then it was just like sign up to be on the wait list. They didn't get anything by signing up to being on the wait list, but it was just excitement, hype.

Ian Paget: That's cool. I get it. I get it. Well, I mean, that works. So if you're going out sharing the hype and it's like, if you want to be part of this when we launch, then here we go. I think that's a nice way of doing it, isn't it? To like start promoting it, sharing it, to collect up data initially and then launch. And then you've got those two people, which is cool. Okay, so I guess scaling that from there on was just the case of doing more and more of that, I guess.

Becca Berg: Yes. It was just so great.

Ian Paget: or was there anything that you did more, more advanced as you progressed?

Becca Berg: It was a lot. Absolutely, and I think we found our niche in, I say it's a niche, but it's something that every company definitely needs to do, but is listening to our customers. And when we, for the first year and a half or so of Dubzado, it was just my husband and I building this platform. And we had some pretty exponential growth within like that first week, the first two weeks, three, like every single week was exponential. It was really exciting.

But when we were building, was hard to, I was not a developer. I could not change the pace at which things were going. So I really focused on, what can I control? And my husband, he's gonna be cranking out features as fast as he can and solving these users' problems. But there's something that I need to be doing in the meantime. And so what I did is I really leaned in to conversations and discussions. It was shortly after that that we started our Dubzado community. It was on Facebook. We just moved over a couple of weeks ago to Circle after nine years of doing this. And we just had conversations. And I learned a lot about businesses and how they run and how different businesses run, because it wasn't just for photographers. It wasn't just for web developers. It was for the creative service-based business owner. And so a lot of

What made Dubzado successful at the very beginning was leaning in and listening to our users and iterating our product from there. Of course, we had like our pillars and our table stakes that we needed to do as a company, but a lot of what our product is today was built on what our users requested.

Ian Paget: I think that's really, really cool. think, you know, I know every time I use a product, I'm always thinking of, oh, that would be really cool if it would do that. And it's nice to know that you listen and continually grow and adapt things. So out of curiosity, you, it was just the two of you then, I think, is it 10 years on now? What size, what?

Becca Berg: Yes! yeah, in February it's going to be 10 years.

Ian Paget: What size are you at now? How many people are you working with now? Is it quite a big team or still quite a... Wow.

Becca Berg: We're about 30 employees. So we're running pretty, like I would say lean in terms of the tech space. And largely part of that, and which I'm very, very proud of, of part of our story is being self-funded and being bootstrapped. And so normally a software as a service, a SaaS product, tech would get millions of dollars in funding because that's easier to build the features that you need to because you can do it as such a fast velocity and we aren't able to do that. So we have to get what one of our values is be scrappy. We have to be scrappy with the resources that we have. And here we are 10 years later serving a group of 30,000 business owners paying for Dubzado with a small group of 30 people as our employees and just leaning into that scrappy mindset of

Yeah, we can accomplish a lot as a small team and every dollar that we make just gets poured back into the business. And we call our users, our investors. They are the ones investing in the future of Dubsado and making it great.

Ian Paget: Nice, I love that. So, you know something that's that I'm thinking, so we've kind of fast tracked how, you know, small business, big business. Was there any struggles along the way that you would do differently now based on what you know? Like you're 10 years into that journey now based on what you've learned through that experience. Would you change anything from from that early journey, do you think?

Becca Berg: I think a lot of it just would be changing the actual trajectory of growth of myself. There is so much growth as a founder you can do. And I think in the early days of Dubzado, it was like you said, it was the shift of being small business to this is not a smaller business anymore. Like I have 30 employees. There's benefits that I need to provide for these people. There's a 30,000 user base that I need to, I am responsible for. it becomes this huge responsibility. And no matter like what you're doing, it all is a big responsibility because at the end of the day, like you're in charge of the food that gets put on the table, all of that.

And it's a big weight. But I think one thing that I would have changed earlier on was my growth path. And there's so much growth as a person that I've done in the last two, three years or so, that have really also helped take the company to bigger heights. And I felt like the first couple of years of Dubzado, I was kind of walking around blind. Like I felt that we were on cloud nine, I didn't need to change, like things didn't need to iterate. And there was this huge shift, like we all know the shift of like AI and things that came into play a couple of years ago. And it just, I feel like it was such a great like shake. was a great wake up to be like, wake up.

Life isn't the same as it was before. And so really leaning into how to be a good leader, how to lean in and listen more, how to have curious conversations. And that really changed the trajectory of what I felt like I was being valuable in Dubzado. And it changed the team's dynamic as well, because how I led also trickles down to other parts of the company.

And so leading more with that curious nature instead of, you I'm the boss, I can do whatever I want. Like at the end of the day, like, yes, I am the CEO of this company and there are certain decisions that I need to make. But I wish I would have leaned in more to be curious to be, to have the ability to lead with a more listening ear. And now that I've gotten to that point, it's like, I'm happy that I made the mistakes that I made because I'm... The company is the way that it is because of it. But now I'm excited for this next future part of Dubsado.

Ian Paget: I'm gonna dig into this a little bit more. hope you don't mind. you, I think this is really important because if you are going to scale any kind of business, you do need to obviously grow. And I've never really been in a major management role. Like in my previous full-time position, I was a design director, but I had a really small team. So I didn't need to grow in a way that you have.

But I have been around people that have needed to scale because that company I was at was initially small and then I saw it scale and grow and I saw the growing pains that my managers needed to go through. So that changed that you went through. it sounded like you went from wanting full control to being more curious about how staff can help and almost like hiring people more intelligent than you, if that makes sense. I can't remember who was that coined that, but there's this thing that I've read somewhere where hire people smarter than you or something like that. And it kind of sounds like you've lent more into that sort of style of managing. Where has that come from? Has that come from literally...

Becca Berg: Yes. Absolutely.

Ian Paget: ...feeling like you're not doing it right and just adjusting or did you read something or hear something or where did it come from? Did you do a course or get some coaching or something?

Becca Berg: I'm the type of person where I need an abrupt wake up call to be able to shake me out of whatever path that I'm on because when I'm on a path I'm just gonna keep I'm gonna keep running I'm gonna keep driving towards that and I you you think that your you know your company is doing well you're growing month over month and you're doing great and so you don't think that anything is wrong and my wake up call was at one point we hit in our company

Ian Paget: I can see that

Becca Berg: It was about 55 employees. And when you grow from a certain stage of business with like running 10 employees, there's some growing pains and then 20 and then, but 50 and above, it was just this slap in the face of holy cow, this is hard. And there was different interpersonal things happening and all of this. what I saw it boiled down to as I took a good hard look at what was happening, it was very poor leadership on my end. And so I was able to take a step back and see that because of certain things that happened in the company. And I was like, what is happening to my company? Like, this is my baby. Yes.

Ian Paget: It's hard. know growing pains are normal. It's where I, like I said, where I used to work, they scaled as well and you get growing pains within the company and that's when you have to shift and change management styles or whatever, or, you know, have managed management layers or whatever within the company.

Becca Berg: Yes, and it was in that where I was like, you try so hard, and this goes with any business, you try so hard to fight what's coming at you, to try to ward it off, to push it back. And instead of fighting it, I got a really great business coach who helped me be confident in the things that I needed to be confident in. And there were great things that got me to where I was that I didn't want to strip away and I didn't want to just reinvent myself as a person. Like obviously, like there are great bits in there that made Dubsado Dubsado, but also there are some improvements that I can make. So I invested in a really great business coach who has completely changed who I am as a person and Dubsado as well.

And like I said before, just leaning in and being curious. And that for me looked like letting go letting go of things that I was holding so, so tight on. And this goes for any business owner, like, especially if you are, you know, you're working by yourself or you're working with a team of like five or more, like you want that control, you want to be able to, I can do this, I can do that, and I can do that. And at the end of the day, you can't do everything because you can only do a couple of things really, really well. You cannot do everything really well. And that's what I was trying to do is I can do this, I can do that. And just grabbing all of these things and I was taking so much on my plate and I was being controlling. And that doesn't help grow and scale a company no matter what size you are. And just being able to hire those people that know way more than me on certain things. Is it important for me to still have a say in how the future of the company goes? Absolutely. And just identifying that at the end of the day,

I'll always be that last decision maker, but hiring those people that can push me to be better really changed the game.

Ian Paget: I love that. I thank you for being transparent because I know, you know, I've been on the inside of things and a company where it has gone through that and people in your position become a bottleneck. Like people can't do things because they're waiting for you. And it's nice to know that you've got coaching, which is what I was expecting. I was thinking maybe...

Becca Berg: Mm-hmm.

Ian Paget: Like, did you read a book or? But I think coaching is such a good way of learning quickly and progressing, because if you can find somebody that's done what you're trying to do, it's going to save you a lot of pain, struggling, and they can guide you through it. So I think it's really nice that you did that.

Becca Berg: would not be the same without her, know, just leaning in and her saying like, you're really good at this, but you kind of suck at that. You know, it's like, it's that stab in the chest, but it's that homework that we need to grow as a person.

Ian Paget: So the things you suck at, guess you just hire people that are good at that, right? Okay. So one last question. I think you kind of answered this in terms of the journey. What are you doing to continually stay relevant? And I know you've got some changes coming up and probably by the time I release this, it might have already...

Becca Berg: It's exactly, exactly.

Becca Berg: Yeah.

Ian Paget: ...come out, there's a lot changing in the world right now, as you've already mentioned, with like AI, the tools. I'm going through tools like crazy at the moment because there's so many new things coming out. You think that something's great and then a new thing comes out and then like a product that you used to use. I stopped using Grammarly a couple of years ago and they've changed this, like they're doing this superhuman thing and it's like, I need to go and...

Becca Berg: Yeah.

Ian Paget: ...check that out and go back to that thing that I've forgotten about because of chat to you, there's so much going on right now. What are you doing to stay sort of relevant and keep things, you know, continually growing and developing and stuff like that?

Becca Berg: So we are currently at the very end and almost ready to launch Dubsado 3.0. And that is our way of just cleaning the slate and being able to stay relevant for what's coming ahead. What we realized over the last 10 years is that we've been working on this same code base. I'm not a developer, so I'm not going to get super specific. So you don't have to worry about that.

Ian Paget: fine, we don't need it. I I always think with development, people don't care how it works, they just want to know what it does and how it's going to help you.

Becca Berg: Exactly, exactly. And so that's all I know. But we've been working on this like old, old code base. And we realized that around year eight of Dubzado, seven or eight, we could not develop and iterate the way that we needed to in order to stay relevant and in order to create the best tools for our small business owners that were using Dubzado. And it was such a friction point.

because there was a period of time for like two years where we could not release a single feature and we could not iterate. And that was our bread and butter of, like I said, of like our founding story. That's what made Dubsado. Dubsado was leaning in and listening to our users and what they need. And we couldn't do it for two years. And that sucked. And that was so hard. But here we are at the end of that. We're releasing Dubsado 3.0 in the middle of November. And it will allow us to have this foundation where we can get back to our roots. I feel like we're coming full circle with everything.

We've started and then we've learned, we've grown, we've gone through pain points, we've gone through everything and now that we flush through so much, we're getting back to the roots of what made us us and being able to listen to our users. And that's what helps us keep the product continually relevant because our users are the ones that are running their businesses, that are working with clients that they know best about how they run their business. And so it's those tiny little micro conversations that we see them having, continuously parsing through our customer care tickets to see what users are asking, going through our communities and seeing what people are even talking about, not even asking for, but how are they talking about businesses? So really, again, like we're opening our ears up and we are having lots of notes being taken on making sure that we stay relevant and creating that foundation. That's what Dubzado 3.0 is, to continuously evolve and it will allow us to evolve so much faster with the tools that we have now. It's crazy what we can do with a smaller team.

Ian Paget: I'm so excited for you. know it's not long away and but I can imagine by the time I put this episode out, the new version will have probably have been a release. But I'm excited for you. I can tell that it's a big deal for you. OK, so we've spoken through the journey, the story, and I think for anyone that wants to do sort of software as a service, you provided a lot of inspiration there.

Becca Berg: It's a big thing, yes.

Ian Paget: But I think it worth going through what this can do. And I think something that's important, can you remind me how much it costs per month at the time of recording this? Because I know sometimes you might change the pricing, so I have to be conscious of that.

Becca Berg: Yes, our pricing will be going up in December, but we are staying very competitive to those that are in the market. at the time of recording, it's $40 a month, but it's going to go up to about $50 USD per month. And that's because of all the great tools that we're going to be adding. But it also has several different tools in Dubzado that can cut out all the other subscriptions.

Ian Paget: Sure, sure.

Ian Paget: Yeah, sure. I mean, that's what I wanted to... I wanted to make sure people was aware of that prior to going into the features because there's a lot that we could do here. So personally, I already have like a platform that's just for my invoicing and it has like all my client data in there. And that alone is like almost the same price per month. So should we sort of go through like a journey of a project?

Becca Berg: Mm-hmm.

Ian Paget: And I think most people that will be watching or listening to this will be graphic designers working in logo design or branding. So I think it'd be worth going through the workflow to think how this can happen. So in my case, most of my clients contact me by email initially. I understand that this is one area straight away where Dubsado can help. Would you mind talking through like the email stuff? How Dubsado can help the initial email and managing that side of things initially.

Becca Berg: Yeah, and capturing leads is such an important part of business because you want to make sure that you get back to those people that inquire with you within a quick amount of time because otherwise they're going to go to somebody else. And so we have two options where you can have a contact form on your website that is like a Dubzado contact form, but no one knows that it is. And as soon as your potential lead fills it out and wants to work with you, they get inputted into Dubzado as a lead automatically. And from there, you can have a series of workflows kick off to automatically send them emails and whatnot. But additionally, like the route that you said, sometimes people reach out to you via DM or reach out to you via email. You could send them a link to your lead capture form and have them go in that way. Or you can just simply go in and very easily create them as a project. in very near future, we're going to be adding those in automatically for you and parsing through your email in that way for that first contact.

Once they're already in the system of Dubsado, any emails that you have back and forth with them, they're gonna stay within that project. They're gonna stay contained because how annoying is it to try to search through your email inbox to try to find your back and forth with your clients? Like it's hard because all your other stuff is on there. So Dubsado kind of keeps that in a single spot. So that's getting the lead in. And what is your next step that you do with that?

Ian Paget: Yeah, um, uh, so, so the lead would come in, I would reply to them, which I assume you can do in Dubzado as well. There's like you do. Yeah, sure. Um, and then we would organize a telephone call. Um, after the call, it, depends on, on how the call goes, but it would, it would go in one or two ways either. Um, they want further information. So I would send over like a proposal document, which has, you know, images, stories, so on.

Becca Berg: You can. Yep.

Ian Paget: Or they want to proceed and in that case I skip that bit and I just go straight to sending over like a contract and an invoice for a deposit. So how can DubSado help with this part?

Becca Berg: There is so much in that process. Like that's a lot of steps and that's the normal part. That's a normal part of business and you need to have all those steps. And like with Dubzado, I think we can get that down to like two steps in one because once that lead comes in, you can have a workflow. That's your series of automated tasks that you want to go out. With Dubzado, you can choose to have everything automated if you want it to be. You can choose to have

Ian Page: Yes, yes, I'm conscious of that... Okay.

Becca Berg: ...some things automated, or you can just do things manually and have the confidence that your templates are in one place, I know I'm gonna save time doing this, and things are gonna get added to my calendar, like that. So there's kind of like three different paths you can take. I think I'll choose like the semi-automated, yes, yes.

Ian Paget: Yeah, can I, can I pause you for a second? so when you say about automating this, so, you know, right now I would, like I said, the project kicks off. I create an invoice in one piece of software. I create the contract in like InDesign. When, when you say automated to, to what degree, like, you know, client wants to go ahead. Can I just like,

What can I, like, can I just press a button or something and it will do all of that for you? Okay.

Becca Berg: Absolutely, you totally can and you don't even need to press a button. It can just do it for you as soon as that lead comes in and When you get started on a client management system like dubs auto or anything else out there There's gonna be some time into getting things set up because you're gonna want to have your contract all created so that it is easy to pull you're gonna want to have your packages your most common packages that you have of

different types of client and what services they do. You're gonna wanna have your proposal built out, your schedule are built. And once you've built all those things, yes, it is like a click of a button, automatically it happens. So in the case of someone emails you, let's say you enter them into Dubzado, go ahead, click that button, have that workflow go out. And that workflow can be your scheduler, they book on your calendar, make sure like those reminders automatically go out like.

what not nothing you need to handle. Let's say a day or an hour or whatever you set after you that call that they have with you, you wanna send out that proposal. Well, great, your workflow is gonna do that. Let's say an hour after that call, your proposal is gonna have all your package option. And the proposal is my most favorite part of Dubsado. And I think for especially designers, it's one of their most heavily used forms that we have. it has, proposal is like the menu of items that

you can choose. So say you have your different services, they can pick and choose what they want from that proposal. As soon as they pick and choose, like the services that you have and what they need, they can automatically are directed to the contract. And then after they sign the contract, they're directed to the invoice to pay. And this is all within one link, one form. And it's just a seamless thing. And what I love about Dubsado's forms, especially for designers, is we offer...

Ian Paget: I love that.

Becca Berg: ...the most customization out there on the market. So our forms can be beautifully designed for especially designers who know how to do these things. especially for people who know a little bit of like CSS or HTML or whatever, like you can have the ability to have custom code on your form. And I have seen some of these like proposals, phenomenal.

what they can do. And it looks like they spent a ton of time on them, but they just created it once. And now all of their clients get this like wonderful experience of this brand that's like so cohesive through and through from contact to the very end. So that pretty much, I think, sums up all of your steps. So all that you did was click a button and the workflow started.

Ian Paget: It does, it does, and it's nice to know. So there's a couple of other things, and I know this is probably kind of default for this kind of thing, but one thing I know I not screw up on, but I think I can improve is say I speak to a client and that I don't hear from them. It's the follow up.

Is this something that can also be automated so that you can like set up like if you don't hear from them it will alert you or ping them a message or something like that to say you know we had this conversation a couple of weeks ago would you be interested in going ahead or do you have any additional questions blah blah blah you know that kind of thing

Becca Berg: Yeah, this is such a huge request. And this is why we're creating Dibsato 3.0 is for something like this conditional logic. That's called conditional logics, like if yes, if no. And that is something that we're gonna be adding to the platform so, so soon. There are little workarounds that you can do right now of like, okay, say this form is not filled out. Like this is what already is in Dibsato. If they don't fill out this form, like send them a reminder like, hello.

Ian Paget: Right.

Becca Berg: Hey, like fill this out, especially like the proposal. feel like that's where you get most crickets is like, did they like my prices? Did they not? Like, okay, if this form is not filled out, send them a reminder. You can even set expiration dates on your forms to help increase the intensity of like this proposal is only gonna last for till the end of the week. So, and all of those dates you can set to be relative so that you don't have to go in and pick and choose those dates. And I think for right now, what we have is...

Ian Paget: Yeah.

Becca Berg: if the form is not completed, the proposal in that case, like send them a reminder of like, hey, what's taking so long? Not that, but so many words. That's a great way to do it.

Ian Paget: Yeah, yeah, I know that's that's amazing. Because I keep I keep reminding myself I need to do this. And then I start creating a spreadsheet of everyone I've spoken to on the phone and when I need to get back to them. But then I just get too busy and I just goes up in the air and I I never do it. But, you know, every time I do check back in or not every time, but quite often when I check back in, they're like, yeah, you know, yeah, we can start that project next week. You know, it's it's

Becca Berg: Yes.

Ian Paget: And I know that if I didn't do the follow up, they probably wouldn't have done it or, you know, was something that they was thinking about two weeks ago, but they got distracted by something, you know, and knowing that something like that would be automated would be really good. So I am like, I'm like sold. I need this.

Becca Berg: Mm-hmm. One of my favorite things that I know so many business owners love about our forms is you can see if a client has viewed something. And so there's been a lot of fun social media posts that I've seen of like, my client viewed my proposal 10 times and they still have not completed it. Why? So it becomes like this obsessively checking to see like they viewed it, why haven't they done it? And so you can have a little fun with that too.

Ian Paget: I like that. I like that about I use Loom. I do screen recordings of stuff and I like it when I can see, my clients just watched it. Yeah, so sometimes like if I if I don't hear from the client like a week after it's like, did you not like it? What's the situation with this? So it is it is fun knowing that. So I like I like that that's there as well. So going through the workflow. So we've kind of done the initial like salesy bit.

Becca Berg:
Yes, yes. They did and they watched it again.

Becca Berg: Yeah.

Ian Page: and I assume all communication because they came in through the inquiry form that you can store it. Does it store? Is it linked to your email inbox as well and it will store in Dubzado? Is that how it works?

Becca Berg: It is, yes. And it's not going to bring in the other noise of your inbox. So spam emails or other like receipts that you have, it's only going to pull in things. You have a client set up in your address book in Dubzado. It's going to look at your email and only pull in emails that are tied to that email address. So all the emails that you have in Dubzado, it's going to pull those clients in so that you're only, when you're in Dubzado, you mean business. This is, this is where business happens. And so any future conversations that you have, email threads back and forth, like they're gonna be brought into Dubsado through that. So we're listening and picking up on those emails that come in.

Ian Paget: Sure, okay. And then I'm thinking, so going back to my process, so that's like the sales bit. A lot of it, you know, is like telephone calls, Zoom calls and stuff like that. And I wouldn't expect the platform to do that. Usually I do the work, then I do a presentation and currently I'm Loom. So I'm like designing a presentation in design and then I'm presenting that over Loom currently and I'm sending over a link to my client to watch that. And then the rest of it is just, you know, back and forth, any feedback. And then like a once they've signed off, then final invoice, creating a package of files and then emailing that over. So that's that's the kind of like the final part of the process. It can Dubsado help with that stuff or is that

I wouldn't expect it to you, but if there's stuff it does, please share.

Becca Berg: Absolutely it can. And I love seeing the way specifically designers use Dubzado in that way, because there's a lot of iteration and feedback that's needed in a designer's business to really get that end result that the client wants. And there's going to be those rounds. And however many you have, using Dubzado's forms to help collect those rounds and even get signature approval on, all right, I approve this.

The beautiful part of some of our forms is you can embed loom videos. You can have pictures of different things. They can check, like, I like this one, I don't like this one, in terms of if you're sending revisions and whatnot. So this is where, for designers, a little bit more of that manual process comes in, obviously, because it's the work that you're working with that you need approved. Exactly, yeah. So you're going to want to have that base form already created, but just knowing you can go in and add your loom video.

Ian Paget: Yeah, yeah, it's what they're paying for.

Becca Berg: Knowing that you can go in and let's say you're just wanting to, let's say, get logos approved. So have like your whatever iterations and they go through and check, like this one, give a little feedback. I don't like this one, give a little feedback or whatever that is. And then that form gets submitted. And the beauty of all of this for the client and the reason why we started Dubsado in the first place is we want the experience that your client has to be seamless, that they are not guessing what's going to happen next. They're not guessing where everything is at.

And I've seen so many business owners, and you too, using so many different platforms that for the, yes, it costs a fortune for the business owner and then for the client, your clients. It's like, where did that link come from? Like, where is that? And Windows Auto, there is a client portal where your clients can log in at any time, see their contracts, see how much they've paid you, see all the revisions that they have instead of them...

Ian Paget: I'm using loads and when you work it out it costs a fortune.

Becca Berg: ...going through their email threads and trying to find what's happening and working with you. For example, like right now I am working with a designer on something in my house. It's like an interior designer. We have an email chain of 50 emails back and forth. And there have been several documents in that email chain that I need to consistently refer back to. And I was like, it would be just so wonderful right now if I had a client portal in all of this where I can see my communication, where I can see the contract and see as a client what I'm getting from this project and it keeps the client satisfied and happy throughout. So through all those revisions, your client can have peace of mind seeing that process iterate throughout too.

Ian Paget: I love that. And out of curiosity, it's really useful that I don't use the platform because I have so many questions. So this portal that clients can log into and the forms that you mentioned, what does the client log into? Do they go into a Dubsado URL or can you white label it or how?

Becca Berg: I love it.

Ian Paget: What does that look like for the customer? Is it a Dubsado link? I assume it would be. Can you white label it so it doesn't look like it is?

Becca Berg: We don't want Dubzado's name on anything if you don't want it to be. So you can completely white label the URL of any links that are sent through Dubzado. So the client portal would be whatever you need it to be, client.whatever your business name is or.

Ian Paget: Is that within the normal cost of the subscription? Whoa, nice.

Becca Berg: Yep, absolutely. It's not added on. It's one of our table stakes. It makes Dobzado, Dobzado. We want your brand to be on everything.

Ian Paget: It does, yeah, that makes it most, most products that have this kind of thing is like that's an extra yeah, that's the end. Yeah. And it's like, well, that's cool, but I can't afford that. That's really, that's really impressive. Cause I think I mentioned prior to having any conversation about this, I'm already paying close to the subscription cost just for...

Becca Berg: That's the enterprise plan. Exactly.

Ian Paget: ...the invoicing part just for the storing of the data. And there's so much that can be done with this. It's really cool. it's, yeah, I see what you mean about making a really, like a really amazing experience for the customer. Because if it's completely white labelled and you can't, and you can add your own logos and stuff like that, it's

Becca Berg: crazy. Yeah.

Ian Paget: It just makes you look like you're really... And you have your shit together?

Becca Berg: Yeah, even if you're a solo, yeah, even if you're running your business by yourself, like, Dobzado is your assistant. It's your virtual assistant. It's the one that is carrying out all these tasks so you look like you have your stuff together, you are on top of it. We wanna make you look wonderful to your clients.

Ian Paget: I definitely need it because like you, because I jugger my time around my daughter and there are times when I'm cooking dinner downstairs and I'll just quickly run upstairs and do this and then my daughter's climbing over my back it's like I want to play this game on there it's like I just need to do this right now it would have done it for me it would have just automated those...

Becca Berg: Mm-hmm.

Ian Paget: ...you know, when the inquiry comes in, it automatically pings the reply. They can book it in and it's just automating so many things. So it's a massive time saver and it kind of sounds like you can use it with every step that you want to and you can grow and adapt it to your process as you wish. And I think it works best in cases where you have a productized service offering, which I do.

Becca Berg: Mm-hmm.

Ian Paget: And I think a lot of designers do, know, they've got like, you know, one of my main products is like a logo design package, essentially. And I've got everything, I've got a product systematized offering. And yeah, I guess you can set up different workflows for whatever the product is. So it's so cool.

Becca Berg: Exactly, and I think one thing that I forgot to leave off, I accidentally left off at the beginning is you can trigger, say you're a designer that has several different types of offerings and maybe there's different processes for different offerings that you have, in your initial inquiry form, you can have a little drop down of like, what are you interested in? And in that drop down, the client doesn't see it, but as soon as they select whatever selection they choose, it triggers a different workflow for whatever selection that they choose. So say your logo design, maybe you do more custom logo design and that requires a different process. Or you have a more streamlined logo design that's like quick, fast, whatever. That's a different process. Exactly.

Ian Paget: Hey, wow.

Ian Paget: I might do like a brand identity project which would be a higher value project.

Becca Berg: Perfect and those are probably two different tracks and how you interact with those clients and the steps that you do and you can trigger off specific workflows for whatever they choose. So from the very get go, you're set up for success and making sure that whatever they choose, it's being carried out. Like they are your only client that you have, you're providing all the attention that they need on this and you're giving them a truly great experience.

Ian Paget: I love that. I love that. So we've been speaking for nearly an hour now and I think I mentioned to you at the beginning, I'm, so for people listening or watching, I'm back recording today. So you're going to watch a few where I'm like wearing the same clothes. People will be thinking, you've worn the same t-shirt for three weeks running. Now I'm back recording stuff. So I need to kind of wrap this up now for another interview, but this it's been so great. It's been really lovely to chat with you. I think I think something that's really important with software businesses is is to know that there is a face and a human behind the product and it's not just it's not just somebody doing it for money. mean, obviously people need to work for money, but you built this because you needed it. And I can tell that you've got this real passion to continually...

Becca Berg: Absolutely.

Ian Paget: ...improve it and adapt it. And I know I can tell every time I've mentioned bought up something during this that the product doesn't do, you're like, yeah, that's coming. We're going to do that. We're going to you're going to solve that. you're very excited to be able to add that. And it sounds the Dubsado 3.0 is going to be much more scalable, adaptable and hopefully it'll be...

Becca Berg: Yes, I get so excited.

Ian Paget: Putting out new things really quickly and yeah, it'd be exciting time. So I'm looking forward to the upcoming launch, which I can imagine at the time of releasing this, you probably would have already released it. Can you remind me the launch date of 3.0? November 70s. I'll try to put this out around that time so that people can go and check it out.

Becca Berg: Mm-hmm. November 17th. Yes. Awesome.

Ian Paget: But like I said, it's been lovely to speak with you. Hopefully people have enjoyed this as much as I do and hopefully they will check it out. And I think I want to stress this isn't a paid thing. I just thought this was awesome. It's something that I want to use and I want people to go and check it out and hopefully use it like I want to.

Becca Berg: Yes, yeah, well we want you to get back to doing what you love instead of working on those darn admin tasks. So do the fun parts of business.

Ian Paget: For real. Well, brilliant. Thank you so much for your time.

Becca Berg: Thank you.