Conquering Workflows & Systems For Bookkeepers & Accountants | with Alyssa Lang (Workflow Queen)

Streamlining Client Requests: How Transforming Your Process Can Boost Efficiency and Results with Brooke Swan

Episode 94

Alyssa Lang and Brooke Swan, Owner of Clarity Bookkeeping & Consulting, chat about changing client management through effective systems like Content Snare. Alyssa and Brooke uncover how this tool transforms the often-overwhelming task of client interactions into a streamlined, stress-free experience, making it a game changer for bookkeeping and accounting professionals!

In this episode you’ll hear:

  • How Alyssa and Brooke struggled with ineffective systems and how that’s changed since then
  • What software to use for client information requests
  • Why manual processes can cause stress and how our solution can alleviates that
  • How our upcoming course Effortless Client Request can streamline your client requests

About our guest:

Brooke Swan is the founder and CEO of Clarity Bookkeeping & Consulting. She started her firm in 2018 with the goal of helping business owners not only understand their finances, but enjoy a better work-life balance and helping them build the business of their dreams. Through their advisory services and creative strategic approaches, Clarity has helped hundreds of business owners reach their goals!

Brooke operates her firm on a 4-day work week that values efficiency, collaboration, and positivity which also allows her team to enjoy a better work-life balance as well! Brooke has a burning desire to help others and has been coaching other bookkeeping business owners for years. She now exclusively coaches with Team Workflow Queen in their Breakthrough program.

Connect with Brooke Swan:

Check our her website: https://www.claritybkpg.com/

Resources mentioned in this episode:

⚙️ Content Snare

⚙️ Asana

💻 Effortless Client Requests for Bookkeepers & Accountants

⚙️ Zapier

Thanks for listening. If this episode inspired you in some way, take a screenshot of you listening on your device and post it to your Instagram stories and tag me, @workflowqueen

For more information about the Conquering Workflows & Systems for Bookkeepers & Accountants Podcast or interest in our programs or mentoring visit our resources below:

Visit our website: workflowqueen.com

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Welcome back to the podcast. Today's episode is going to feel like you're right here with both me and Brooke Swan chatting at a coffee shop. We're going to be deep diving into one of our favorite softwares and tools as completely transformed how we gather information from our clients within our firms. We're talking about content snare, a software that simplifies requesting client information and keeps your team on track. With onboarding cleanups month end and so much more to make sure you get everything that you need from your clients to get the job done. In this episode, you'll hear us talk about the common frustrations of chasing clients for documented information, how content stares streamlines. These requests improves client experience and saves countless hours. Our favorite features like conditional questioning and customizable reminders that make life so much easier for our team ourselves and our clients. And an exciting sneak peak at our brand new course that we're creating to help you implement this tool effectively inside of your own firm, whether you're stuck in the email followup spiral, or looking for ways to free up your time and your team's time, this conversation is packed with tips and solutions that will inspire you to truly level up your client requests and information gathering process. So let's dive into the conversation.

Alyssa:

Hey, everyone, and welcome back to the podcast. I'm super excited because today I'm doing a non traditional version of a podcast interview, which is really not an interview. It's really just an open discussion, kind of like you guys are sitting right next to me and Brooke in a coffee shop while we're discussing new tools and new softwares and things that we can transform in our business. The one big thing that we wanted to talk about today which is one of the most transformational softwares that we both experience in both of our firms. we'll save another episode for all the other fun software, but this one, we're really going to truly highlight one in particular. And this was one that has really allowed us to request information easily from our clients, make it a really good experience for the client as well, and also keep our team on track with onboarding, , requesting information and getting everything that we need. So in today's podcast, Not so much interview. It's going to be just me and Brooke, just chatting through our experience with implementing content snare, which if you've never heard of it, guys, don't worry, we are going to cover a little bit about it today and just some exciting things that are coming up that you can expect if you are interested in content snare and what you can do to implement this and also alleviate the same pain that we felt at one point in our firm as well. So hello, Brooke, welcome to our mini coffee shop show.

Brooke:

Hi, Alyssa. I feel like I should have brought coffee for this. I know, I had too much today,

Alyssa:

so I was like, I should probably not.

Brooke:

Okay, we're just gonna chill.

Alyssa:

We're gonna, we're gonna chill today. But before we dive in, because I know a lot of people following the podcast and listening in, they may have caught your episode or they may not have, but I'd love to know if you can share a little bit about yourself. I clearly know most of your life, but people might not. So let me know

Brooke:

all the people all about

Alyssa:

you.

Brooke:

Okay. Yeah. So my name is Brooke Swan. I own Clarity Bookkeeping and Consulting., we've been around now for almost seven years, which is just like baffling. We have a full team. we're super big on like systems. I was Alyssa's like test dummy when she was rolling out the breakthrough program. And that program has really like, I mean, it's removed me as the CEO in my business. And, Yeah, what else do I do? I don't know. I do a bunch of other things too. I'll just keep it there for today. I'm not gonna like dive into too many other rabbit holes. But yeah, just like Alyssa, I love all things like systems and operations and streamlining and like the big thing for us has always been in efficiency, especially because workweek firm. So that's always been like our big priority. So that way we can maintain a four day work week firm.

Alyssa:

Yeah. So I guess, I would love to kind of start off and like I said, I don't want to make this like an interview. I really genuinely want it to be like a discussion, but I think setting the foundation is probably so key right now. Yeah. When you were just talking about how your efficiency is top of mind, especially as you're a four day work week firm, what has that. look like for you up until now? So what are the things that have been at the core of your efficiency of what you had to implement within your firm to be able to have that four day work week?

Brooke:

Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I think a lot of it is really in continuously reviewing what we're doing and questioning what we're doing and also looking for ways to do it better. Or ways to automate it. So that way one, like our team isn't, you know, especially to what I, I didn't used to have a team when it was just me, right? Like I was trying to be more efficient because, well, I only had one of me and I only have so much time in the week. And so I wanted to be like, Oh, I, you know, I wanted to get as much done as I could with the least amount of effort, I guess, And so I think that's kind of where it started. And then of course, as I had the team and we were a 40 work week, as we continued to grow, I, we really just started like, and we still do this, like we pick apart everything we're doing and we're looking for ways like, okay, can any of this be automated? Is any of this redundant? Like, does any of this actually serve a purpose? And so. That's just always been a big thing. And especially when it was just me, like the client follow up was always like a huge pain point. It was so manual. Like, yeah, I mean, I used to like, I think back in the day, you know, for a long time, I just emailed the clients, like, you know, at the end of month end or quarter end or whatever. And I would just say, Hey, like, what was this for? I need this. Can you send me that? Like I'd give a whole laundry list of things that we need and then i'd have to like manually remember to send them a follow up email. and then I have to like actually sit there and go through the email to figure out like, well, okay, well, what did we get? What did we not get? You know, cause sometimes like email threads can be long and lengthy and stuff can get lost in translation. And, yeah, it was definitely a headache. So that was a big efficiency pain point for us for sure.

Alyssa:

Yeah, it's so funny because I know that me and you both are so huge on client experience. That's actually, I think, one of my most important, like, systems within my firm is like, and I do that here at Workflow Queen too, like, my priority is always, how can we have the right systems, processes, team, training, whatever it is, that's going to make life so much easier for everyone else as they, like, also experience it, because last thing that we need as business owners is to feel stressed or overwhelmed or like, feel like we're dropping the ball when it's like, I thought I hired people to not make me drop the ball and now I feel like I'm dropping the ball and I'm the client and I'm freaking out, you know?

Brooke:

Yeah, yeah, I think that we're the same there because I think you and I are always very mindful of what we're doing and not even just how it affects us in, like, internally in our team, but like what that experience is like for our client and like, that's always been one of our, Pitches is like, you know, we're here to make your life easier. Like we're not here to

Alyssa:

complicate it

Brooke:

and give you like a million things to do, you know? So we're, yeah, we're definitely very mindful of that. And I will actually say, cause I know we're going to dive into it, but. Without a doubt, like all the softwares that I've ever used for anything where clients have some kind of interaction with it. Yeah. Content Stare is the one software that I get so much positive feedback on. Like our clients love it. Like they are so impressed by it every time. Like when they be, when they sign on with this, I literally just got this feedback from a brand new client yesterday. Like they were so impressed with our systems. It's funny. We've even had clients that aren't in our industry, right? Like they're not bookkeepers or accountants, but they've actually liked it so much that they've implemented it in their businesses.

Alyssa:

Yeah, we just onboarded a, um, who do we onboard? It was, it's like a marketing firm and we, they're going through the onboarding right now. They're like, or actually they're in the cleanup phase. They already onboarded. So now they're in the cleanup. So now they have like our content snare requests for cleanups. They've already seen the onboarding one and he's like, his name's Connor and he just messaged me literally today and he was like, I am just so blown away by this little software. I think we're going to implement it for our clients to get brand assets and all the logos and I'm like, I love it. I love that we're inspiring you guys.

Brooke:

It's so cool. It can be used. I think a lot of different businesses, especially, you know, online or virtual ones for sure.

Alyssa:

Yeah. So I know we're going to kind of segue into which is such a great way that we kind of move towards this, but I really want to talk about so everyone kind of listening in can really understand what the hell is content snare. What are we even talking about? And what are these pain points that we keep saying that we're going to be talking about and just kind of really diving into there. So for anyone listening content snare. But honestly, the reason I know about it is actually because of Brooke, and I remember nobody used it. Like, how did you come across Content Snare? I'm just curious.

Brooke:

Diving down a freaking Google search rabbit hole for forever, because I think this really became, and it's been a long time, so I'm just going off memory here, but like, I think this really was one of my biggest pain points, and so I literally scoured the web to find something that could help solve this problem for me, and I stumbled into it, and I think it was a relatively new software at the time, it definitely wasn't something that was marketed for bookkeepers and accountants, like, it was just, actually I'm pretty sure that It was originally designed for marketing companies. I

Alyssa:

think so. That's what, that's what James said when I interviewed him.

Brooke:

Yeah. And so I, yeah, I literally just did, I was just searched the internet for forever and I stumbled across it and I was like, this is freaking awesome. And then, and I tried to introduce it and show it to everyone I could. So I'm like, this is amazing. Look at how great it is and all it does. And look at all these problems it could solve for our industry. and then I, I think shortly after became a, um, Why can't I think of the name? Not a board member, what do they call it? Advisor? Like

Alyssa:

a What is it called? I'm gonna go crazy trying to figure it out, like, It's not a board member. I know what you're saying, where you're like, your advisory, is it the advisory team? I'm on their advisory

Brooke:

board. I think that's what it is. Yeah, I came on their advisory board shortly after, because I was so impressed and I was like, this is amazing. And, it's been really awesome to get to work with them over the years, too, to also help. I think even tailor it towards some of the specific needs of the bookkeeper and accounting industry. So that's been really awesome too.

Alyssa:

Yeah. I love that. Yeah. I think you introduced it to me. Like, this is before I had magnetic. So this is like, I didn't even have my first firm cause at the time I was like fully workflow queen. And I remember you had like, told me all about it and I kept seeing you post about it and I was like, okay, I'm going to go use it for nothing because I didn't have clients at the time, just so I can understand how it like function. And I was like, wow, this is so cool. And then when I started magnetic, I just remember being like, it's absolutely 100 percent what we're going to implement. And it's just so convenient because at the end of the day, it's like, You just pop in there, you throw out a request, it's templated, you never have to worry about it. So I want to kind of paint the picture of how life was, especially because I already knew right when I started Magnetic, I mean, if I knew about Content Snare when I had my first firm, it would have changed the game. However, I knew from the beginning, as soon as I started the second one, I was going to immediately go for Content Snare. Like, there was no There was no stopping me at that point. So I'd love to hear like kind of painting the picture of the problems that you experienced and why you needed something to help you request documentation from your clients easily.

Brooke:

Yeah, so I mean, kind of like I mentioned before, some of the, a lot of it was very manual, meaning it was time consuming. And like I said, I was, I've always been very mindful of being efficient, especially with my time. Right. And so, I'm like, okay, well, how can I make this easier? This shouldn't be this hard. This shouldn't take me this much time. This shouldn't take me this much bandwidth. Right. because I could be spending my time doing other things like actually doing the client work, like things that are going to make me money, right. Rather than busy work. So, yeah, I mean, I used to, back in the day, right, I just used to send emails, like, during month and quarter, and, and, like I said, kind of earlier, a lot of that, I think the big problem with, with that too, especially, is like, when you're requesting a lot of things, it gets hard to keep track of, wait, what did they send me? What did they not send me? What am I still missing? Like, did I get everything I asked for? Especially if there's a long thread or a lot of back and forth. And so I feel like that got very painful. and again, too, it is also like very manual. Like I was literally in my brain of like, Oh, okay. I haven't heard from them. So I'll email them today. It's probably been like four days. And like, it was like kind of a constant manual follow up of, Oh, let me just now. Respond and send a follow up email that takes time. I got to type it. I mean, I'm sure you get templated But you know what I did, right? Maybe I did but it's still it's very manual I think the other thing too was like I feel like and this is my personal belief is that when you don't make things easy for clients You're less likely to get what you're asking for and I really feel like when you ask it via email You're not making it as easy as it could be so they're less inclined to give you what you need to get the books done, right? And so then that creates a backlog of work for you. I eventually, because again, I recognize this was a pain point, which by the way, it wasn't scalable either, because it's like, do you teach a new team member? Hey, I don't really have anything documented for this, but can you just remember in the back of your head that if a client hasn't responded to an email, you need to go respond to them? You know what I mean? Like, it's very, yeah. It's just not scalable. It's not. and so I think I actually transitioned, I found Karbon. That was like the first actual software that I used for like requesting client information. And I will say that it. solved some of the problems I was looking for. it was able to kind of like send a checklist to a client, which I loved. I loved the checklist format. I love that it send the auto reminders and I love that it was so much easier to keep tabs on like, you know, what did we get and what did we not get. Right. And so I love that. I think the big thing for me at that time too, especially when it was just me, we were smaller, I probably had like, I don't know, maybe less than 20 clients. I'm not totally sure, but something like that. Right. it was really expensive. That software was super expensive back then. especially in that we were only using it for that one thing. And so it always kind of didn't sit well with me. I'm like, Oh, we pay so much money and we're only using this one facet, but we didn't want to use the other facets because like, It just didn't, I don't know, the other things didn't appeal to me and I felt like, you know, we already had stuff that solved the other problems, so we just need something to solve this one problem. And then I think I, after enough of those pain points with carbon, it was expensive. I also just really didn't like the interface if I'm being totally honest.

Alyssa:

It

Brooke:

just wasn't for me. that's how I started searching for something else and found Content Snare.

Alyssa:

Yeah. I remember when we first met and we used to do our, we used to do like weekly calls. I think you're right. And we like did weekly calls, like, and at first it was like you picking my brain about Asana and then it turned into like friendship and, you know, all the things. I remember that when we first started, like, blossoming our friendship. It just started to blossom. I remember that you were in Carbon, because I remember at the time you were sharing so many different things about Carbon that would just, like, didn't make sense for you. But like you said, there's people in the industry, actually, no, no one, I don't know if you still use it, but David, he still loves it, uses it, and it's, like, cool. As long as it's giving you what you need is always what I like to say. And, The one thing, that you had mentioned about the follow up, so one of the solutions that we used to do, is inside of a sauna, we used to actually put a task. So, like, we would send out, like, an email to ask the client for, like, stuff for onboarding or stuff for, like, whatever we needed. And then what we would do is we'd have a task inside of a sauna, and we would just say, like, three days from now, do three days from now to follow up with them. And then if the person ended up giving us what we needed, we'd just go in and check off the task. And while, yes, that helped to remind us to go do it, it wasn't the solution. And that's what we used to do at my other firm. So like, that was just, it worked, but it was not efficient and nor was it easy. Then you had to hope that your team would remember to go in and put the, the like, task itself to remind them to go check up on them. And then what do they do if like, they still don't respond to you, then they're like, what do I do with the task? And people freak out and it's just like, Oh my God, this is just too much, you know? So I get the pain point.

Brooke:

Can you imagine too, like, if you still had that system and even like, like, as you get more clients, like, we have 70 clients. Could you imagine having 70 follow up tasks in a week? Or like, just, just for following up? Like, no. That would, anyone would lose their freaking mind.

Alyssa:

Yeah, they'd be like, I'm quitting, bye. So I guess that's a good point to say it's not just a solution. Like when you're trying to solve certain things, sometimes it's not for the client alone, it's also for the team. Because I want my team to have a good experience, but if they're using, imagine like the years that we had to go with like using our mental capacity, like you were saying earlier, like using your brain, my brain would feel fried, like fried after work because I was like, we're trying to remember tasks and trying to remember all these things. And oh my God. And then trying to, like you said, the mental checklist, did they send me the tax return? Did they send me over this? And like, You just get so stressed out and you're just so maxed out and I can't imagine trying to do that to my team right now.

Brooke:

Totally. Yeah. I feel like the more brain space that you can save for you and your team, like the, and your clients too, of course, but like the happier everyone is, I feel like, and people will start to feel this and know this as they grow, but it's like, even those little things that maybe it only takes you a couple seconds to think about, like those really do suck up a lot of energy, especially when there's a lot of them. So it's like, The more you can get things out of your head and into a system that has some kind of automatic way to, to think of those things for you, like reminders, tasks, whatever, like, the more energized you will actually feel and more well rested you'll feel at the end of the day, which is not good, not only good just for us, but yeah, also our team, because we want our, we want our team to thrive, right? Like, we want them to feel successful, we want them to feel good, we're not trying to You know, we want to create a great workplace for them that they enjoy.

Alyssa:

Yeah. I love that. So I want to just kind of, I feel like I totally skipped over us introducing what Content Snare actually is. I'm

Brooke:

skipping over this part.

Alyssa:

It's okay. If the people are here, it's like us at a coffee shop. We ping pong everywhere. So this is really normal guys. So for anybody who's listening, who's like, what the hell is Content Snare? We will kind of dive into more of like how it's painted a better picture for us, but I'll just, Really lay the foundation. So content snare essentially is this software that you can, you don't have to add your clients to, which is one of my massive pluses. Like I, as a business owner cannot handle yet another place to log in. If a contractor tries me out to add me to it or another company, I will go crazy. But anyways, it's neither here nor there. Inside of Content Snare you can send out specific requests and the beautiful part about Content Snare is like you have the ability to create what's called templates and with the templates, so like for example we have templates for onboarding, we have templates for month end, we have templates for 1099s, templates for so many different things in the business and I know you do too because we've got like pretty much the same exact setup. And so we have all these templates that we can reuse over and over again so instead of having to constantly send out emails or reframe In the past, I used to do a Google Form, so I'd send off a Google Form with like, what people would have to fill out. And while that was great, and it got me somewhere, it didn't have automatic emails to nudge the client that, hey, we need this done by, within two weeks. I'd have to manually follow up on email, like, it just kept creating this cycle of constantly having to follow up with them. And there was like, no way in the Google Form to like, Save and come back. Do you remember when Google, I don't think they still have that option still. But I remember at this time when I used to use Google forms for this, like they had to like bang out all the questions in one, one go. And I just think that's really inefficient because at the end of the day, like they get distracted just as much as we do shiny object syndrome real quick. And. So for content there, if anyone's just curious of what it is, it's just really on a requesting function to help you get information from your clients. And it's not just them telling you like when their business started. It can be like files. It could be answering questions. It can be like, you putting out separate, how do they call it? Whether it's like multi select where they can select multiple things. Like there's so many different functions of contents there.

Brooke:

that's what I love about it. Again, kind of going back to what I was saying about like the easier we can make things for the clients. The more likely we are to get what we need from them. So like, here's a good example, right? Like if you ever asked a client a question about something and gotten something like their answer back was like, no, no, no, no, no. That's not what I needed. And I'm not

Alyssa:

even talking about that. Like you literally gave me the opposite of that.

Brooke:

Yeah. You're like, what was this transaction for? And they were like, potatoes, right. Or like, I don't know. I know that's like the dumbest example, but just go with it. But what's nice about like content scenarios, like the, the different Types of question formats that you can ask so you can make sure that you're getting exactly the answer you need. So, as an example, you might have a transaction that you're like, I wonder if this is for business or personal. You can literally give them an option where they have to select personal or business. So that way they're giving you the right answer, the right response. Yeah, I don't know where potatoes came from. Sorry about that.

Alyssa:

I love it. I'm with potatoes. Potatoes, they're all the same, right? Yeah. One of the other functions that I really like just talking about content snare in general and like I guess we can just highlight the features that we're obsessed with and then we can dive into all the other things. One of my favorite things is the deny and approve. Like I've never been more excited to deny someone in my life than when content snare was introduced to me. Because it's so, it's not like it's fun, but like, I'll explain, guys. Let's just say, for example, and during your onboarding process, you ask your client for their tax return, because you need it in order for, especially if they're an S Corp, to be able to put it on the books or whatever you have to do. Let's just say that you ask them, and this happens, all the time. They accidentally upload their personal return every single time. Their whole 1040. And I like to hit that little, little deny button and I'm like, deny. And then they like, allow, it prompts me as like the firm owner to say, why did you deny this? And I can type in there, Hey, you accidentally uploaded your, uh, 1040. We actually need your business return. Can you please upload it once again? And then it will literally send them out an email, a prompt to, Hey, click this button here to go into content snare to make sure that you upload this right document. And that's one of my favorite features is that like, because it happens so, and I know you know this, like it happens so often where people are uploading or, or submitting the wrong things or answering the wrong way or they're trying to categorize your transactions for you by saying that's, that's like, you know, it's automatically this and it's like, but what is it for?

Brooke:

Yes. Yeah, I, I think, you know, especially in the beginning, I think actually one of my favorite parts of content snare was that requesting information from clients was literally its only function. You know what I mean? I feel like in our industry, there's so many softwares that do so many different things. There's task management, there's client port, and they have a client portal, and there's a part on the other side for sales and proposals and contracts and payments. Like there's so many softwares that have all these features, but if we're being honest with ourselves. They may not do all of them really well. Like, they might have one or two that, like, that's their strength. And then they tried to add on the others to be, like, you know, a one size fits all. But they're usually not great. And again, that was kind of one issue I had with Carb. And I was like, ugh, like, I have to pay so much money for this software because it does a lot, but I only need this one part of it. And so I think I loved that. Like, literally it only does this one thing. It's not tempting me to move my Asana into here. It's not like, it's not tempting me to, you know, try to consolidate my softwares or move stuff all into one. Like it just does this one job and it does it really freaking well. And so I think that was like, honestly, that was a big selling point for me. And it was more cost effective too, than what I was paying previously., and yeah, and I just, I love, I mean, if we're going to talk about favorite features, so you know, my, probably my most favorite feature, because I, and I've talked about this forever and it was one of their newer ones, they didn't always have it, but it's called conditional questioning. And the thing I kept calling conditional formatting, it's not conditional formatting, but I get it. It's it's conditional. Yeah. What the conditional questioning allows you to do is it allows you to almost preempt. the next question that would come along. So let me give you an example. So say, you know, sometimes when you're in the books and you see, oh, well, that's a new credit card payment I've never seen before, right? And then you have to ask the client, say, hey, is this business or is this a personal credit card? Right? But if it's a business, okay, well, now that's going to trigger other things that you need. Now you're going to also need access to this credit card. You're going to need to get it set up in your QuickBooks, right? All the things. But if it's personal, you don't even do anything. So what conditional questioning allows you to do is it allows you to basically ask that question if they answer that question a specific way. So if I were to say, hey client, is this capital one card business or personal? I can set the function in there that if they select personal, nothing happened. They can just go on to their next question in the list. But if they select business, It's now going to actually create a new question for them that says, Hey, can you please add us as a view only user to this, please, you know, to this account? Please provide username and password below, whatever, right? So now it's cutting out that time of that back and forth conversation and it's directly getting what we need. And so I just freaking love that because it just saves a lot of that back and forth. It saves a lot of time and we get what we need quicker.

Alyssa:

Yeah, I think that that's one of my fun features for the longest time. I kept calling it the wrong thing. Poor James. By the way, guys, James is one of, I think he's a co founder of Content Snare. I've had him on the podcast before. I'll actually link the episode below. But he's just awesome and just wicked smart. And we were talking one time and I was like, conditional formatting, and he was like, what are you talking about? Like, the thing where like, when you ask a question and they like answer this and then it does this after, and he's like, yeah, that's not what we call it. I'm like, okay. So anyways, that's actually one of my favorite features too. And the best part is, is because I can't tell you how many times I have been on boarded by a company where the company asked me a question where like the next, based off my response, the next five are going to be not relevant. They're like irrelevant to me. Right. So. And I'm like, it makes me feel like when I open up that form and I'm actually visually looking at it, I see, oh my God, this forms 50 freaking questions. But it's like 20 of them aren't even relevant to me if I don't answer this question over here. And so that also makes it like the business owner themselves see it and think, oh my God, I have to answer all these. Rather when they do answer the question in a specific way. So if they say, yes, that's a business bank account, just like you were saying in that, that suggestion. Now they're going to be hit with three questions. While the person who it's not their business bank account, they don't need to look at three additional questions. And that's one of my other favorite features too.

Brooke:

Yeah, I think that's definitely a perk, because, again, going back to the client experience, right, like, what is the client seeing, and if you were them, yeah, like, like you said, like, I wouldn't want to, dude, if I saw a questionnaire that, like, had 20 questions that did not pertain to me because I answered no to the one before, I would, like, I would not be motivated to do the rest of it, I'd be like, yeah, fuck this, I'm

Alyssa:

going to do

Brooke:

it later, like, yeah,

Alyssa:

it's not happening

Brooke:

at all, no, yeah, so it's like, Again, we're trying to help them help us, you know? So it's like, how can we make this easier for them so that it makes it easier for us?

Alyssa:

Yeah, and I think that brings up a really good point because I think a lot of people in the industry and we see this all the time is that everybody is trying to get what they need. But at the end of the day, it's like, are you thinking about everybody else? As much as yes, the whole goal is for us to be able to deliver on a service. But just like anything, even when we're talking about testimonials, we can even use that as just a random example. When you're trying to get a testimonial from your client, if you're making it really complicated for them to leave you a testimonial, they're not going to do it. but however, if you say, Hey, based off of our prior conversation, I really loved what you said, so I paraphrased it here. Can you approve whether this is a good That you would accept this as your proposal. I'm as your, testimonial . And a lot of the times you're like, sure, that's great. I can't believe you went out there and just compiled all the things I've said to you in the past and they approve it. It's legit. It's a real testimonial. It's like, why can't we present things in the same way and think through that in all parts of the business? So as far as requesting, that's the hardest thing. I know this is the biggest pain point of the industry is getting everything that we need from the clients. And if we aren't doing what we should be doing to be more proactive about it, it's just gonna make it worse for everybody else. And no wonder they hate working with most people in the accounting firm. They're always bothering me and asking me for a bunch of stuff. It's like, can you just make it easier for them?

Brooke:

Yes. Yeah. I know that our industry is notorious for lots of Well, it's good. Typically it was like one or two ways, either. Like they're notorious for sending like emails all the time of like, what's this for, what's that for, what's this, can you send me this, blah, blah, blah. Or they haven't heard from you in like three years and they think you might be normally falling off the face of the planet. Right. Like, yeah, no in between. And so I think too, you like using something like this really gives us a way to, like, set us apart from a lot of the other people in the industry to where we can provide a better experience to our clients. And those clients can tell other business owners. Like, you know what I mean? So it's, it serves so many purposes.

Alyssa:

Yeah, totally. I wanted to bring up a feature that I really like that I think sets apart from every other software because I already know There's people here listening just being like, I use Keeper, so like, Keeper can totally ask for things. And that's fine, guys. If you love Keeper and you love sticking with it, stick with it. But the one thing I will say about Keeper that Content Snare will always trump on is the fact that within Keeper, you can send, yes, you can send email reminders when a client hasn't submitted something to you. However, those emails are generic. They're the same email for no matter what you're requesting. If you're doing the onboarding, it's the same type of emails. I know that you can change your frequency and keep her to be like, okay, I want to nudge them every week. If I signed on to work with a company and they emailed me every single week, to remind me to do something, I would literally be like, why am I working with you? Like, honestly, that's just me though. Like that literally just sounds exhausting. So however, the good thing about content snare is you can change the email. So with, let's just say an onboarding request that we send over the onboarding request might ask, when did your business start? What are the services you offer? What are your goals? You know, all the logistics give us access to this. With that email guys, you can actually attach what they call it, like email sequences. And that email sequence, you can set up to be very manual that says, I want to send off five emails over a two week period that says, if they haven't filled this out, send this email. And the one reason I like this is because in the onboarding sequence, I can customize it in onboarding language. So what I mean by that is like, Hey guys, we can't actually start your books. We cannot start to clean anything up until you're fully onboarded. It's like re reminding them in that with Keeper and all these other platforms. It's just going to send a generic email saying, we still need information for email. And so we can customize it. So same thing when we're done with onboarding, we move on to the cleanup. Now we can do a whole nother series of emails that follows up with that cleanup request to say, Hey guys, you're the reason that your cleanup could not be completed because like, you're failing to get us on time. We're trying to aim to get this done in four to six weeks, but here we are. Like you can say whatever you want, like the language that I would speak to someone in a cleanup request versus onboarding quest. We're Would also be different from even a month end request. Like, we can't close your books until you give us everything. And I like that part.

Brooke:

Yeah, I think that part's actually essential because one, like, if you get the same email, it says the same thing every single week, like, are you going to actually look at it or pay attention? Is it helpful? Is it informative? No, it's not. And so yeah, we customize all of our verbage. One, because we want it to sound like us. Like we have a way that we sound, you know, like our brand, like we're positive, we're supportive, we're upbeat. Sometimes like generic reminder emails can sound very, like, direct and very I'm just gonna say rude. I don't know, but you totally,

Alyssa:

yeah, I know what you mean.

Brooke:

You know exactly what I mean. Cause you and I are both also big on this. Like I like that we can make it sound like us and we can, yeah. Tailor that verbiage. Like we just did this for our w nine requests that are about to go out. Like, so it, It also clearly communicates to your client one. Why are you asking for this particular piece of information? And if i'm not getting it to you, what's actually going to be the result of that? So like for instance, we have as a part of our reminder schedule if the client did not complete Any of the W 9s, or didn't complete it all the way, like, meaning they didn't provide them to us. Like, the verbiage basically says something to the effect of, like, we will not be able to file your 1099s for you. so now they know, right? As opposed to, hey, reminder, your checklist isn't complete. You know what I mean? They know what's going to happen since they didn't do that part. So it also communicates for us, which saves us that time later on. I love that. And then I think too, and I could be wrong, I haven't been in Keeper in a hot minute. But the bigger, thing too, is that, if I remember correctly with keeper, like you said, it just sends auto reminders, right? Like until they do it. What I like about content snare is we actually are able to assign due dates. And so the reminders go around that due date. So that way they're not just getting these endless reminders every single week or every other week until the end of time, you know what I mean? Because I don't also want to spam my clients because we're

Alyssa:

spamming

Brooke:

them. They're less likely to actually read the emails we're sending them, you know?

Alyssa:

And the redundancy, like you said, like the subject line is always going to be the same. A lot of these softwares, you can't probably customize it, but it's going to be the same redundant. And I know this from just email marketing in general, that like, if you send something to someone with the same email subject line, every single week, they're more likely to not open it because it's like, Oh, it's going to be the same information. So it's the same thing. So how can we cut that down? And how can we make it very clear that, Hey guys, your request is due in one day. If not, like, we can't do what we were hired to do or what we can do to support you. Well, I think we hyped up content snare a lot. So people who are like, Alyssa, can you guys like shut up and just tell me about what can I do to like, start using it? So before we dive into like, what life has been life a little bit before, or now after using content snare, I just wanted to like give you guys a heads up too. So the reason why we're intentionally doing this today is that me and Brooke, I've actually had this on our mind for quite some time, but it's like now finally we had the space and the energy to do it. We are actually creating a content snare specific course. And I'm so excited about this because one, I actually don't think I've ever partnered with anybody. Which is, now that I'm thinking about it, I've done things with like Serena a lot in different ways, but never partnered in a program. So I'm really excited. So, me and Brooke are going to be partnering on creating a content snare program. It's called Effortless Client Requests. And you guys can go to workflowqueen. com backslash content snare. And that's, uh, C O N T E N T S N A R E. And I'll also link it below in the show notes. But essentially, our whole plan and the whole outcome of what we want to produce for you guys within this program is the ability for you guys to see the exact same templates that we use in our firm. So, we're not just going to show you how to use Content Snare, how to set it up, how to send emails, but it's literally going to be all the emails that we use, also all the requests, cleanup requests, month end requests, every request you can possibly think of. Which is super exciting because then you guys don't have to do all the heavy lifting. So if it's something that interests you, as of this recording of this episode, when this goes live, we will currently have a wait list for it. We will be making this program live in about mid December. I'm super excited. So make sure you join that wait list and we'll give you guys an email as soon as it goes live. And you can come be a first time buyer of our program to pop in and be able to just eliminate the stress and this overwhelm with your clients and the requests.

Brooke:

It's gonna be super awesome. And I know we're also going to be kind of including like a year end templates. I know we're all coming up on your end time. And so that way, like, I will say it it's just gonna make it so easy to actually set up and get use it like get ready to use it right away. Also, you have team members to get them up to speed, like It's a really, yeah, I'm just super excited., but you know, you could probably tell in my voice, like, I just freaking love content snares.

Alyssa:

I think we all do. And it's so funny. We've been asked this so often, um, inside of Breakthrough, if you guys didn't know, Brooke is actually one of our coaches inside of Breakthrough. And we talk about content snare all the time. And Brooke once did a onboarding, I think you did like an onboarding content snare guest expert session before you were a coach.

Brooke:

Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah, we went through all the things. Honest, I will say it's probably one of the things i've recommended most over the years because it just solves So many pain points and it can make life so much easier and yeah, and I know I think I think everyone really, uh took a lot from that session that I did and yeah, we're gonna be providing like all the templates. So it's like you guys to start from scratch. We're basically giving you like the keys to the the Peace to the kingdom and saying, here you go, run free, enjoy your life working less.

Alyssa:

Live your best, go live your best life inside of Content Snare and thank us later when you, love it so much. Yeah, it's, it's funny cause when we did that session, so Brooke gave the template and then she also did like, it's funny because you barely did even a brief overview, which a lot of people were like, Oh my God, Content Snare looks a little overwhelming. I even felt the same when I first looked at it. Once you actually like, Build something. You're like, this is so much fun. Like, I am obsessed with like creating contents and requests or like adding to them or building onto the templates that we have. Like I have a lot of fun, especially when you do the conditional, whatever we call it, conditional thing.

Brooke:

Yeah.

Alyssa:

I always think it's so much fun, but everybody was mind blown by just doing that. And that was scratching the surface.

Brooke:

I know. Yeah. I don't even get into like the meat and potatoes. I just like, Went through the onboarding appetizer and so I'm also excited that we're like really going through every part of it here. So it's going to be, yeah, it's going to be really awesome. I'm, I'm super pumped.

Alyssa:

Yeah. Same. And I'm really excited to support you guys as you're listening. Feel free to drop it. Just go click on the link in the show notes. And if the program is already live, by the time you're listening to this, maybe you're listening to it a little bit later, you can probably join at that time. And yeah, so I'm really excited for all the fun things. So before we kind of end off today, I would just love to hear. I guess from the both of us, what are, I know we talked about some key features that we really like, but talking about the benefits as far as what has it really done for you and your firm to like alleviate maybe a pain point or support you better, what are some things that you can highlight?

Brooke:

Oh my God. I had so many that came to my mind. I don't even know how to pick one. I would say the biggest things were, it allowed us to. To grow easily, right? Cause like I said, we couldn't send emails to 70 clients. Like, no, no, no, no, no. It's given us our time back, right? It saves us time month end. And of course, when you have a team that saves money, it's just made us more efficient all around. It just, yeah, I don't know. Peace of mind, time. Like I don't think I could actually pick.

Alyssa:

Yeah, same. And I also don't think that like, if content center would have crashed tomorrow, I would actually be very sad. Well, James would never let that happen. I'm banking on you, James. If you're listening to this episode, I'm banking on you to make sure that nothing ever happens to contents there. At one point, really funny when you were talking about the software developers and, you know, softwares that are trying to be jack of all trades can never be a master of one. A great example of this that I always talk about is ClickUp. I actually have just recently had a conversation today, actually, with someone who was like, I need to switch because they're so slow because they're trying to do too many things. I'm like, That's what's happened. So when all these softwares are trying to be a client portal plus a month end request and then do this and then do that, it's like, that's why it can never be super efficient because it's, it's trying to do too many things just like QBO. It's gotten slower because they keep trying to add crazy features and start doing these crazy things. And it's like, we just needed to get this done. But at one point in mind in, uh, Brooke's blossoming relationship here is we went down the route of talking with the software developer. I think that was in like 2020 or 2021.

Brooke:

Oh my gosh, I almost forgot about that. But yeah, I do remember that. Yeah.

Alyssa:

We met with like a software development company because I think we wanted to find better solutions for polling bank statements, requesting stuff from clients, also like some sort of a portal. We like gave them this long list and guys, we were like introduced to the software company. Well, one, it costs a lot of money to develop a software based off the conversations that we had. But two, the guy was the reason why he changed the game for the way I thought about software that tried to do everything. Cause remember when he told us like, If you're trying to do everything, you do nothing good because all your developers are now trying to develop for 20 things rather than one thing really well. And so your developers become really, spread thin. And that's why I think content star does so well because they are listening to only this one thing and fixing it. They just recently came out with, which I was so excited about, they came out with the feature that now you can schedule send your requests. So if I, so cool. My team's working on the weekend. I don't care when they work, but what used to drive me insane is they'd have to wait until like Monday to then send a content snare request. But now they just, you know, Can schedule, send it for business hours and it's so cool. Yeah. And it's connected to Zapier. So I should probably throw that out there for anyone. So we have like upon our onboarding , when someone signs the contract, we can like initiate the onboarding request and get things ready to rock and roll. So just know that there's also the ability to automate it, which is honestly one of my favorite things too.

Brooke:

Yes.

Alyssa:

fun stuff. Well, thank you, Brooke. Everybody who's listening, we are going to have several more episodes following this episode, all about Content Snare and just like what you can expect, ways that you can maximize it, ways that you can use it. Once again, you can go to workflowqueen. com backslash content snare, and you can join the waitlist or join the program if it's ready to rock and roll as we launch it and release it. We are so excited. We have just been making this magic behind the scenes and it's so much fun. And I can't wait. So people can like experience it.

Brooke:

Oh my gosh. I know. I can't wait. Everyone's going to love it. At least we love it.

Alyssa:

At least we love it. We're going to be, we're biased here, but like, we're very excited about it and we think it's so cool.

Brooke:

Yeah, I know. We're definitely biased, but I really do. I really think people will love it. And I, especially for the ones who have been like still in the email world, like it's going to fricking change your life.

Alyssa:

Yeah, we did the, I remember we did a market analysis and we sent out an email. Most of you guys, if you're listening, probably filled it out. And literally, probably 80 percent of people were like, we use email. And I'm like, Oh my God, we were even blown away about how many people are actually using email and not other softwares. And a lot of you guys are like, I just hate having to follow up. It's like, guys, We're literally going to solve these problems for you and we're so excited for it. So, stay tuned. We will have another couple episodes coming up and we're so excited to dive into the contents there. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me or my team. You can email us at support at workflow queen. com or come on Instagram at workflow queen. And if you have any questions, I'm more than happy to answer them for you. And so is Brooke as well. And thank you once again, Brooke, for being here.

Brooke:

Thanks for having me.