Why You Should Stop Emailing Your Clients To Gather Information & Do This Instead with Brooke Swan

Alyssa Lang interviews Brooke Swan, Owner of Clarity Bookkeeping & Consulting and The Aligned Self, on streamlining client communication and boosting efficiency through automation tools like Content Snare. Alyssa and Brooke explore how ditching emails for client interaction can save mental bandwidth, improve client relationships, and enhance business growth!

In this episode you’ll hear:

• Why Alyssa and Brooke stopped relying on emails for getting info from clients
• How Content Snare streamlines and automates client requests and follow-ups
• What benefits you can experience from using Content Snare with your clients
• How automating tasks saves time and mental bandwidth
• Why setting clear deadlines is essential for client expectations and timely submissions

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/ ****

Follow her on Instagram: @brookeashleyy_

Resources mentioned in this episode:

💻 Effortless Client Requests for Bookkeepers & Accountants

⚙️ Content Snare

☎️ Book a Human Design Reading with Brooke Swan at Aligned Self

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

Check out our courses: workflowqueen.com/courses

Follow the Blog: workflowqueen.com/blog

Connect on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/alyssa-lang-wq

Connect on Instagram: instagram.com/workflowqueen

Connect on Facebook: Facebook.com/workflowqueen

Podcast Publishing Tools we use:

• Podcast Editing: Ian Gilliam: iangilliam.com

💸 Are you ready to take control of your firm’s profitability?
The Client Profitability Tracker helps you analyze margins, adjust rates, and streamline for more profit—all for $97! Stop guessing and start making data-driven decisions.

👉🏼 Grab your Client Profitability Tracker now: workflowqueen.com/profitcheck

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 2:17 The Problem with Email Communication
• 4:06 Finding a Solution: Automation Tools
• 8:01 Implementing Content Snare
• 12:12 The Cost of Sticking with Email
• 15:20 Missed Deadlines
• 18:28 A Better Solution
• 27:13 Real-Life Scenarios and Client Feedback
• 30:27 Effortless Client Requests Program
• 32:31 Conclusion and Upcoming Episode

Transcript

Alyssa Lang: 0:00

If you've ever felt stuck in the endless cycle of chasing clients for information, sending followup after followup only to get and complete responses. Then you're in for a fun conversation for today. I'm joined by Brooke Swan. My go-to system's bestie breakthrough coach and owner of clarity, bookkeeping consulting, and we're diving deep into how we've completely transformed client communication within our firms by ditching email for something much more effective. In this episode, we're chatting through the true cost of relying on email for client requests and how it's actually holding your business back. We're actually gonna be talking about why automation tools like contents. There are not just time savers, but client relationship, game changers. Real life scenarios where we've actually streamlined systems. And have saved us countless hours and helped us get what we need faster from our clients. Plus a sneak peek at our new program, effortless client requests designed to help you implement these strategies with ease. If you're ready to reclaim your time, reduce client frustration and elevate your processes. This episode is jam packed with actionable insights to get you there. Let's dive into the conversation. Hey everyone and welcome back to the podcast. I'm so excited because I'm joined once again by Brooke Swan, one of my lovely besties in real life, but also someone who is co creating a current program with me. It's all about content snare. We're so excited because as of this time that you guys are hearing this episode, it should be right on the cusp of finally going live and we're super excited about it. We're going to dive into some awesome topics today. Our real focus of our conversation today and how we like to kind of present these when me and Brooke are kind of is we want it to feel like you guys are. At a coffee shop with us kind of listening into the conversation of just some experiences that we've gone through and why we've stopped using email to email our clients for information and what we actually do instead. So if you've ever been in a position where you are constantly emailing your clients or you're like, this is so annoying, I have to keep following up with them. They maybe don't get you everything that you need when you send them over emails. This can create a lot of inefficiencies, a lot of delays in your guys timeline, and honestly, creates a lot of strain on your client relationships. And today's episode is going to be for you. So thank you again, Brooke, for joining us. Do a quick little brief, intro for those of them that have not heard any episode, even though there's like 50 million of them with you, which is a quick little intro before we get started.

Brooke Swan: 3:04

Okay. Yes. Hi. So my name is Brooke. I own Clarity Bookkeeping and Consulting. We have been around for almost seven years now and we work with over 70 clients. I do also own another business called the Aligned Self. And I am a coach in Breakthrough, so where we like to talk about all things systems, team, and really growing and like stepping out of your business and becoming a removable CEO. And yes. Alyssa is my best friend and we just like to talk about all the things.

Alyssa Lang: 3:35

Yeah. Usually Brooke is my like, go to and actually probably vice versa. we constantly are calling each other about like, Hey, what are you doing for this? Or like, what do you have going on for that? And it's just so nice to have someone to like, just also uses the same systems. Cause we use pretty much almost the same systems.

Brooke Swan: 3:50

Yeah, I think that makes it nice too. And I don't know if like speed dial is still a thing, but if speed dial was, I'm pretty sure you would be like number one on my speed dials. I don't call anyone as much as I call you.

Alyssa Lang: 4:03

Same. I think you're on like my top little bubble on my iPhone. I just think it's funny. So one of the big topics that we talk a lot about, and sometimes we still have these conversations because like anything else, even though you find a great solution or something that works for you, It won't always work for you. It won't always be the thing that's consistent with you with what we thought at one point in our, I would say a career, but our journey here, like owning our businesses is along the way, we realized that some things worked for us. up until a certain point when it stopped working for us. And so I kind of wanted to lead into like just having everyone just kind of hear about the problem with why we feel so strongly about emailing your clients for any requests or things that we might need from clients and where that kind of came up for, I'm curious for you, like when that started to become a problem where you started to find that solution.

Brooke Swan: 4:49

so I don't recall like, I couldn't tell you what year it was or like, you know, the exact number of clients I had at that time. If I had to like ballpark and kind of guesstimate, I'm gonna guess I was somewhere around that like 15 to 20 client mark. I'm just guessing, right? So this is a couple years ago. But yeah, I just realized like it was so inefficient and so time consuming to like One, be emailing everything, right, and then two, like, you have to go back into your send box, find the email, and then send a follow up, and, like, it was just very time consuming, and then what I found, too, with, like, especially, you know, some of the clients who can be more chatty or maybe don't answer everything in one swoop, like, there would be so much back and forth that you'd literally have to, like, sit there, and I'd have to go through the whole thread again to be like, wait, what did I ask for, you know. What did I get? What did I not get? Like, what are we still waiting on? Like, it was just such a, it was such a pain.

Alyssa Lang: 5:42

Totally. And I think that just, like I said earlier, like, it probably worked for you. I would say, obviously, you just kind of said it was like, what, around the 15, did you say 15, 20 client range?

Brooke Swan: 5:51

Yeah, I'm guessing. I think that was probably around.

Alyssa Lang: 5:54

Yeah.

Brooke Swan: 5:55

Somewhere around there. But I

Alyssa Lang: 5:55

guess, like, a good question for you that I'm probably sure everybody else is thinking is, um, How come you didn't just let it continue going? Like, why was that such a prominent thing for you as it came up to finally be like, I can't do this anymore. Like, we've got to find a solution.

Brooke Swan: 6:10

Yeah, I think because one, like, I think that was at the time where I started to hire team members and like, that just was not going to be doable, like, for them. One, inbox at the time, right? Like, we didn't have like a shared team inbox or anything like that. so like they would have no way of knowing what the client sent or didn't send. And yeah, I was really starting to, like, I wanted to start putting the things in place that were going to let me grow a team because I knew I couldn't, I only have so much time in the week. So I couldn't take any more clients. You know what I mean? Like we had to have better systems and we had to be really efficient and. Like if there was anything that was taking up time when it didn't need to be taking up time I was trying to find like solutions to solve that because one even if it's not like like I said I only had so much time for myself, right? And so i'm trying to find anything that I need to do to get more of my time back to focus on those things that probably are more pressing than sending a follow up email You know but then also too you have to think like when you start bringing on people like you don't really want people to be spending their time Doing things that they don't need to be doing because now you're paying someone else. Or that like time and efficiency or process and efficiency, you know, so I think, I think that's probably why.

Alyssa Lang: 7:30

Yeah. And I also agree too with like the whole, when it's you, it's a lot easier to justify like not having to pay for someone to do the followup because it's like, Oh, I could just sit here and quickly do a followup or quickly, like, you know, do whatever I need to do. But the moment you start hiring team is when everything becomes like, Okay, how can we cut down the time? Because now someone else, like you said, has to go and like do this work and now I have to pay them for it and it's just going to cost me more money. Like, why not just do something a little bit more efficient?

Brooke Swan: 7:57

Yeah, totally. Like, I knew there had to be something that could do that. So it's like if we can automate Even little tiny parts of what we do. It may seem like it only like, you know, saves a couple of minutes here, a couple of minutes there, but all that adds up and it frees up, like, I know you and I talk about this all the time, but like it frees up that mental bandwidth, like, so you're not, sitting there all day being like, Oh, that's right. I have to email so and so because they still haven't responded to my email. I sent them last week or you know what I mean?

Alyssa Lang: 8:21

Yeah. The last thing I want to be doing is sending follow up emails. And plus, like, I feel annoying when I'm sending the follow up email , like, you know what I mean? Like, I feel like I know, and I understand that the clients are busy and yes, they still technically get follow up emails, but now we're not doing it because like you said, like, especially if you're a solo firm. So anybody who's listening who is solo, it's still very helpful too, of the mental bandwidth, because Just trying to remember who I need to follow up with. Like I said last, episode, if you haven't caught it for anyone listening, you can listen to the last episode from last week with me and Brooke. And we talked about some of the old ways that we used to do things of tracking things in our project management system to make sure to remember to follow up. It's like we now eliminated having to remember to even create the task or have to remember to go do those things. So I think for me, like, a really big thing was the whole back and forth with clients. Because nothing drove me more insane than being like, Okay, I'll get this back to you, like, next week. And then next week rolls around and they didn't do it. And now you're setting the follow up and you're like, I promise I'm gonna do it. And it's like, they don't do it. And then now it's like, you're trying to close out the books and you're like, I don't even know what to do anymore because you're just not getting me what I need to. And now you're frustrated, they're frustrated because you're annoying them, you know?

Brooke Swan: 9:25

Yeah, and then too, like, when this is going on with multiple clients in your inbox, it's like, then every time you open your inbox, you have to kind of remember, like, wait, was I waiting on something from this client? Like, did they get me everything? Like, you almost have to, like, every time you're in your inbox, you almost have to, like, go back through everything to, like, catch yourself up with what's happening in those, all those emails, right? So even if you have, like, five or ten clients, well then you might be like, oh yeah, that's right, I was just waiting on this from so and so, but then you're like, oh no, that was actually a different client. Like, it was, it took so much. Yeah, it's

Alyssa Lang: 9:54

mental.

Brooke Swan: 9:55

Yeah, it takes so much mental bandwidth.

Alyssa Lang: 9:57

I'm like, I can't, I already have so much like, going on in my brain every single day, the last thing I need is like, something I don't need to have on my mind.

Brooke Swan: 10:04

Yeah, like, I know you and I are the same where it's like, if I don't have to think about it, I'm not, I don't want to. Like, if something else can think about it for me, then like, I'm gonna love that. tool or piece of software, whatever, do it. Cause worth

Alyssa Lang: 10:19

the cost, any cost. And I think that also goes to show too, that. We value things in a different way. I mean, you've been in business, I think you said almost seven years last, right when we were talking last time. I probably have been in business eight cause I think it was like a one year prior to when we met or two years because before that I didn't know about Bookkeeper Launch at that time. And then I was introduced to a Bookkeeper Launch and throughout the years, like at first, like I valued my money more than anything. I wanted just money, right? And then time didn't matter to me. And now, like, the longer I've gone through this journey, this entrepreneurial journey, I value both time and money. Like, I value the both of them, but I value time more. So, like, my mental space, like, before, I didn't mind being burnt out and being overwhelmed because I was like, this is fun and, like, this is so exciting. And I think also over time, for anyone kind of listening, it's like, you will go through phases, especially if you're listening to this and you might be a little bit newer, that you will When you're in that new phase, you're in the hustle and the grind. I remember those days. However, you'll never like, I can't say never, but you won't usually find me in that stage anymore because I'm so past that. And that comes with like the software you choose and the, when you start implementing things is now I just value my time more than anything.

Brooke Swan: 11:25

Yeah, totally. Your values change and your needs change, especially ones like from the financial side, like once your financial needs are met, then it allows you to start. I think reprioritize it because obviously in the beginning when you're trying to grow the business and you have all that like energy to like push it forward, move it forward and all the things that's because you're like, Oh, I got bills to pay. Yeah, totally. And a lighting a fire under your ass. But once that you're like, okay, no, I'm good. I got this. Like I, I can pay my mortgage and my rent every month. You know, put food on the table or as we call it in my house, putting bones on the table. Cause I have my dog and we got to take care of him. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like then you're like, okay, well now what's actually important to me, you

Alyssa Lang: 12:04

know? Yeah. And you can start investing in things that are beyond like just the feast and famine, just getting by. Totally. So let's talk about the cost of sticking with emails and communicating. And guys, I promise that we are going to give you guys a solution and some ways that you can implement maybe getting out of emails, because we have actually polled you guys and send you guys a feedback form to see, because we were actually curious, like, what are people actually doing to request things from their clients? And we found that like, what I'd say, probably like 80%. of respondents were like, we're requesting via email for everything. It was just so many people. And I'm like, we were both like a little bit like, whoa, I didn't realize it was that many people still going by old school email. So I just want to talk about like the cost of, sticking around with email. One of the big points is really just time wasted. And this is just going back to what we just like, kind of talked about a second ago is the whole back and forth thing. It's not always just like. it might seem on a time tracking system that when you're clocking your time for the time you're spending on actually following up with someone is really one second, two second, ten seconds, whatever, right? They're not a lot of time, but really the time that passes is the time that's wasted. So it might only take me like a quick five, ten seconds to send a follow up email, but it's going to take three days for the client to finally respond. So I kind of want to talk about like how things have changed for you over time, especially implementing something like content snare. with the way that it's really kind of closed that gap for you.

Brooke Swan: 13:26

well, it closed the whole gap. We don't send follow up emails.

Alyssa Lang: 13:29

Content Snare does. So you technically are, but you're not physically doing it.

Brooke Swan: 13:33

Right. It doesn't take any effort from me or anyone on my team to go do them. so yeah, so it completely got rid of all of that. so it saved us just a ton of time there. Just on, I mean, it saved us time on a lot of things, but just, you know, On that alone it sends the automatic reminders. It sends automatic follow ups And I know like we kind of talked about this in the last podcast as well But it it already words things the way that we want to word them in those reminder emails to all to like, you know nudge them a little bit more carefully. Maybe not carefully It's the right word but like, you know like we can literally have a custom reminder that goes out for our month end that says You know, hey today is the due date and you know, we noticed you hadn't got us any of the things that we asked for it. That's totally fine. But just letting you know, that means that when you get your financials this week, they are going to be incomplete. You know what I mean? So it also communicates like, not only, Hey, here's just a friendly reminder, but also here's what happens if we don't get it. So it also saves that conversation later. Sometimes clients will be like, why is this number wrong? Well, because you didn't get us the three things we asked for, you know? So it saves a lot of time.

Alyssa Lang: 14:35

Yeah. And I also like the custom emails. That's always my favorite. Cause. The way I want to talk to someone during a cleanup is going to be different than the way I would talk to someone on, on onboarding, like an onboarding. I'm going to tell them how we can't start with the cleanup and we can't get you accurate numbers unless you get on board, unless you finish this versus cleanup might be talking about, we can't get your books in order to, in order to finally file your taxes. If you aren't getting this to us, you know, and I like that we can customize that. And these are for anyone who doesn't know and understand the way that content is set up, which we'll talk about here in just a minute. Okay. they have this ability for you to create like templated emails and templated like reminder sequences that essentially go out to your clients that you don't have to tweak them. It automatically inputs the data, the info, the link to your request. So we don't have to keep rewriting these things or even have like a template email. We have to copy paste every time in our email provider. which is so cool. So let's talk about missed deadlines. Like you kind of already segued into that easily. So the missed deadlines as far as like the clients who maybe aren't getting us stuff and how content centers have allowed, I guess, both of us the opportunity to be able to not miss so many of those deadlines. I know we can't control what the clients do and that's the annoying part. Like we can't force them to fill out the request. However, I feel like it has created. a better, like, I guess, turnout rate of people actually submitting things? Because one, it's user friendly. It's easy. It's clean. They don't have to do it all in one go. They could come back to it whenever they want. So I'm curious, like, if you've seen, like, I know it's been so many years, but from then to now, just the change in the way that clients actually get you stuff.

Brooke Swan: 16:03

Yeah, well, I remember almost right away when we implemented it, like we got so much more stuff from our clients, like finally able, I think, start getting the things that we had been asking for for like months and months. and so, yeah, we definitely saw better, I would say like response rate in that way. And then, yeah, the deadlines I think is super crucial because. I don't think it's really, not to say that no one does this, but like, I think most of us, when we send those, say we're sending a month end email, we're not sending like, oh, please send this by, or this is due by, like, we're not usually giving clients due date when we're sending an email. And maybe we are, but I don't know, I'll say maybe we didn't, right? But then what ends up happening is, okay, well now, maybe in your mind, you're like, okay, I expect that my client's going to get this to me this week, or by next week, because they know month end's around the 15th, right, or whatever. And then they don't because you didn't set that expectation. And so the client's just thinking, Oh, like I can just get this to them whenever I'm busy, I have a business to run. And then what happens is now month end is due. You ought to close out the books, but you're still missing everything. And you're like, well, shoot, like, what do I do? You know? So I think I love the, I think having that clear deadline. In content snare like one it sets the expectation like for you, but also for the client So now the client knows what you expect of them and not like I think a lot of times Bookkeepers and accountants forget that like our clients don't know what we do Like they don't know our timelines. They don't know when month end happens like they don't know all that No matter how many times you tell them. So even though, like, we know why we're asking it, the client might not know, so therefore they might not know that it's important. You know what I mean? So I think the deadlines just kind of help cover all of that.

Alyssa Lang: 17:43

Yeah, and I think that's for anything. I mean, if you give me, if you say, hey Alyssa, I need you to go, I don't know, park the car. She's using something so simple. If you just tell me to park it, I'm going to think in my brain, okay, I guess it doesn't matter to Brooke for me to park it right now because she would have told me if she needed it right now. But in the other, in the other side of that though, but if you were to tell me, hey, I need you to park the car by tomorrow, then I'm like, okay, I'll park it by tomorrow. I might do it right before tomorrow, but like, I'm going to do it. Like, you know, and I think having those clear set deadlines for the client, and this is something that, you can actually implement inside of content snare. You can give your clients when you're sending out the request, the actual due date. so for anyone who's like, what are you guys talking about? Which has been really nice and really cool to just be like, I need you to get your shit together by this date. Get us everything we need so we can move on with our lives.

Brooke Swan: 18:26

Yeah,

Alyssa Lang: 18:27

exactly. I think it's great. so let's talk about getting into a better solution. I know that we've already kind of hinted at, for us, it's Content Snare, but I just kind of want to dive into some of the pain points that we kind of hit around, like, emails and just everything that we're kind of, like, experiencing prior to that and what, like, why Content Snare, we think, kind of trumps everything else. Because I know a lot of people listening might be like, oh, I want to use Keeper and I have, like, their onboarding and stuff like that. So I guess I'll answer that one to start and then I'm sure you have other things to say as well because I have. So many things to say about this topic. So whatever works for you guys works. If it's working and there's no pain point, you don't feel it, , you don't find that it's necessary. You are happy. Don't try to switch softwares. I see this a lot in the industry where people get excited. This happened when anchor came out, everybody was like, Oh, this new proposal system. And now everyone's switching. It's like everyone in the industry tends to get very shiny object syndrome. And I think over time, as you get more settled into your firm, you're like, It's actually not smart for me to constantly jump around a software. However, I will say that if you are finding that one of your biggest pain points is you hate having to do that follow up, you feel like your clients aren't getting you what you need, you don't have a good system for it, or maybe you do have a team, it might be a good opportunity for you to look into something like Content Snare, which makes it a lot easier to grab these requests. The reasons why I've chosen not to use something like Keeper, well, one, I don't use Keeper, but we do use Zenix, so if Zenix can essentially do pretty much the same thing. The reason we've chosen not to do that is because the reminders are the same freaking thing every week. There's no way that you can send a specific request for a specific thing, like for just onboarding or for just a cleanup. Instead, it's like you can just request a bunch of things and just keep bothering the client about it. And also, I don't like that you have to log into a portal. And that's another thing I never liked about like things like Keeper and Xenex. I'm a busy business owner. If a contractor tried to add me to their software, I would tell them like, honestly, we're just not going to be a good fit. I just can't handle another piece of tech in my system. So I didn't want the same for my clients. And that was really big for me. So with contents there, you don't, they don't have to have portal access, but there are the ability to create passcodes or pin codes, which do you use those by the way, the pin codes and passcodes for clients?

Brooke Swan: 20:34

I use those when we request any kind of sensitive information.

Alyssa Lang: 20:38

Like tax returns or something. Yeah, and so that's what I like about, like doing Content Stare versus something like Keeper, is because I don't have to add our client to this portal and they don't have to be like trying to get acclimated to it. Instead, it's like this form that they can easily fill out. So I'd love to hear from you some of your favorite things and your favorite parts about Content Stare.

Brooke Swan: 21:58

Yeah, so I know we did like a real deep dive on the last podcast too. So if anyone is curious, you can probably listen to that episode because we go, I think, super into detail there. But just to kind of give you like some highlights and recaps of that. So I think one, my favorite thing is, I think, like just the visibility and the transparency, like, it's so easy to see this is what we got. This is what we didn't get. So I, we can tell at any time, like, are we still information from the client and what are we missing? So it's super easy. the other thing of course that we already mentioned is the due dates and I haven't been in keeper in a hot minute But my understanding the last I had met with them was that I don't think due dates was a thing I think like you said like it just kind of sends like an auto reminder every week or two weeks or however often you set that frequency and for me like We're very big on the client experience and to me that kind of feels like spammy Like if i'm getting the same email every single week Like I'm going to start, like, I'm probably gonna move it to spam. You know what I mean? Like, I'm not going to actually acknowledge it. and so I feel like, like, I don't want to do that to my clients, especially, you know, we have those clients that are totally MIA, but maybe they'll get you stuff every three, four months, whatever. But, I'd rather send very intentional emails and try to get a response rather than like a reminder every week that says the exact same thing. I just feel like it actually, one, it's a better experience for the client, but it also, it actually helps us get what we need quicker. That's just my experience. And then, I think, oh shoot, when I just had it, I just lost it. It's going to come to me. Like every day of my life. Oh, this was also the big thing. And again, I don't know if this has changed. It's been a while since we had looked at keeper. Although we did actually look again, just out of curiosity this year, but, the other big thing was that like, I know for instance, with that software and maybe other softwares is like, yeah, you can request the information from the client. And I could request it today, right? Today's Monday. I could request it today. The client could get it today to me But I wouldn't actually get notified that the client submitted it until the next business day and I was like, oh That's a lot of lost time. Like that's time that we could have been closing this out You know what I mean? And so I guess that's also why I love content snare because as soon as a client submits something you get notified right away And so that yeah, that was a big I was like, oh no like we can't especially to again the bigger you get the more clients you get the more team you have like You can't really afford to lose a whole business day when stuff could have been happening, you know?

Alyssa Lang: 24:22

Yeah, that's, that's so true. I'm glad you kind of pointed that out because I think for, especially anybody who does have a larger client base, since we mostly, I mean, check out the podcast episode me and Brooke did on, staggering your month end deadlines. I will link that for below for you guys. But some people traditionally in the space typically try to close out their books from the 10th to the 15th. Like that's usually what most of the standard is. Which, by the way, guys, you can totally change this, and we totally broke this down in that episode, so I definitely will link it, because it's such a good episode. But, with the majority of the industry still being stuck on the old traditional way of doing things, I find that, like you said, you can't risk one day of time, 24 full hours of getting some sort of a notification. Yeah, you could probably go through Keeper. And you could probably refresh it, but it's been a long time since I've been in Keeper, so I'm not sure if this has changed. If any of this has while we're talking, guys, please feel free to correct us. You can come email me or whatever, and I'm more than happy to make sure to update that here on the podcast. But one of the big things for me about, , ContentStar that I do like is that we have that, like, dashboard. You know, you can, like, log into your contents there. You can see easily, like, anybody who's uploaded something or comments on there or, Approvals or whatever it is. Like I can easily get a high level overview of all requests across the whole entire company. So as you're working with more teams, you can also see like nudging the team. If they need to have like, Hey, don't forget, you need to make sure to get this done or like whatever. There's no visibility like that in something like Keeper and Xenex, they don't really do that. They don't have that ability to say, let me just see all the requests that we have open across all clients. You have to actually go into each client actually click into everything based off my understanding. just makes life so much easier when you can just see high level, like what you need,

Brooke Swan: 25:55

Totally. And again, like kind of going back to what you were saying, cause it's, this is not like a keeper bash by any means. Oh,

Alyssa Lang: 26:00

totally not.

Brooke Swan: 26:02

And I think it solves a lot of problems for a lot of people. So anyone who uses that or any other software that's similar, like Alyssa said, if it's not broke, don't fix it. Right. If it works for you, that's Amazing. Like that's really all we could ask for. these were, I just know you and I, especially cause you and I have very similar tastes in the things that we like and we don't like in our industry. so this was just our experiences at that time. That was really only the only thing that we could compare content snare to, because there was nothing else that was requesting client information. So,

Alyssa Lang: 26:31

yeah. Totally. And I like that you bring that up, yeah, because I love Keeper, I love Ben, I love all of them. But it's different strokes for different folks, and also we all value different things, and that's, at the end of the day, I just think that as much as I do my best not to get shiny object syndrome, I am not opposed to checking things out, but I don't go like, oh, I'm switching tomorrow because everyone's talking about it. I always say to people, like, check out Keeper, check out Content Snare, check out Asana, check out all these different softwares, but just determine whatever is good for you, but just because we're talking about these systems, no matter what we're talking about, if it's not a problem for you, like, spend your time on the thing that's the actual problem in your business, and maybe, like, if it's hiring, go hire, like, don't worry about Content Snare if you need to hire someone, like, you know?

Brooke Swan: 27:11

Yeah. Totally.

Alyssa Lang: 27:12

Yeah. So before we kind of wrap up today, I just want to kind of come back to maybe some situations or real life scenarios. And I know you talked about one of them on the prior podcast episode that we did where like you have a lot of your clients who now end up using Content Snare. But is there anything that like kind of comes to mind of like real life situations, scenarios or things that you were just like, man, I freaking love like Content Snare.

Brooke Swan: 27:38

Oh my gosh. I mean, I, I can't think of one particular time. I feel like I feel that way all the, all the time.. Alyssa Lang: But I mean, even recently, like we get, we get complimented from our new clients all the time because they're like, oh my gosh, like, you guys are so organized. Like you guys have Yeah. Systematize. Yeah. Like you guys have your systems, your processes down and you got like, this made it so easy. Like I've worked with other bookkeepers in the past and it's. Super messy. And they're calling me every day or emailing me every day for, you know, these transaction questions. And like, yeah, we get great feedback because one, I think it really lets the client, like our goal, like I'm not trying to add more work to my client. Right. Like they're right. They have a business to run. That's why they hired us. So I feel like this lets us like really centralize our communications when we ask for stuff from them That way we're not like sending a million emails like hey, what's this? Hey, what's that? Can you send me this? So one that's now gonna take less time from them. It's gonna make their experience better because they're like, oh, okay. I hear from my bookkeeper once a month These are the things they need. Let me get that for them real quick I think I'm, going off on a tangent here. Cause that's what I do. Sometimes I am not answering your

Alyssa Lang: 28:48

question, Alyssa. You did, you pretty much said that, it's every time

Brooke Swan: 28:53

it's every time there hasn't been one time where I was like, wow. This was not a good idea to use. Yeah,

Alyssa Lang: 28:59

I think that only happened one time with me and it was at the very beginning because like any new software it's always overwhelming. But it like, once I actually got to see it because you were the reason why obviously I was introduced to Content Snare and I remember getting on a call and I was like, this looks really overwhelming. You're like, actually, Alyssa, it's really easy. And as soon as you like started clicking, it's so easy. But like, it's like anything. That was the only time I think I ever had like my own like, Oh my God, like, It's because I didn't know it yet. Like I didn't take the time to actually learn how to use it at the first, until you like really supported me with that. And that was super helpful. But yeah, me recently, we onboarded a new client and they're also using it in their agency as well, their marketing agency. So that was really cool to have that conversation, with them and just kind of see them say like, this was so organized. and it's so funny. It's one software and people think it's like, Us creating these touch points and that we're the one communicating and that like we are if we're having to comment back and forth with them on the content snare request but all in all like the system's really doing itself as soon as someone signs that contract they're getting shot off the content snare requests and everything else that they need automated and we don't really have to do much and now our onboarding is like two weeks it's so fast for us like when most people take some weeks and weeks to be able to get that done you know.

Brooke Swan: 30:09

Mm hmm yeah yeah oh that's right when we when we implement it for onboarding a while back yeah I feel like It cut down our onboarding time, which by the way, I'm sure most people know that that's also a lot of back and forth communication. Yeah, that it cut down that time, like drastically.

Alyssa Lang: 30:26

Yeah, which is such a good thing. So before we kind of end off, I do want to just tell everybody, I know that we kind of dropped this hint last episode and plus at the very beginning of this one, me and Brooke are co creating, a new program and it's all about content snare, how to use it, how to set it up. We're going to give you the exact same content snare requests that we have in our firms. We're also going to give you all the emails that we have set up, pretty much the whole enchilada. is what we're giving away. And this is called Effortless Client Requests and what you can do is you can go to workflowqueen. com backslash content snare and that's c o n t e n t s n a r e and you can just go there. Also drop the link below this episode as well for you to join the waitlist or if by the time you're listening it might be ready to rock and roll. We're really excited, like how excited are you for this? Like we are currently actively filming it as we're speaking.

Brooke Swan: 31:14

I'm so excited. I mean. I just love everything about this software. I literally couldn't run my business without it. And, yeah, I'm just excited to share it with everyone. I feel like I've, I've done nothing, but like. try to brag and share it to like every bookkeeper I've come into contact with since I discovered it and so I I'm just super excited that We can now show it to other people who maybe haven't looked at it yet, or who are maybe too intimidated to try a new software. And it's going to make it just like really easy because I actually find it to be one of the easiest softwares to use. And, I'm doing the rambling thing again, so I'm going to stop now, but I'm excited.

Alyssa Lang: 31:48

I'm super excited too. And fun thing too, if any of you guys are new to content snare and you actually are just kind of convinced and you really do want to move forward, and maybe you are interested in the effortless client request program that me and Brooke are creating, I would wait and hold off because we have We have something extra special. The owner or co founder of Content Snare is giving us an exclusive discount for people who join effortless client requests who are brand new users to Content Snare. we can't give that code or, or that information live, but we are going to be giving you guys something extra special to make it a little bit smoother of a transition and something to kind of benefit you guys to take the next step, best step forward. So I know you might be eager, but wait, if you already know you're all in on the program, just wait. So that way you can sign up for Content Snare through that process and you can get a good deal with signing up with Content Snare. So. Without further ado, thank you so much, Brooke, for being here today and for just chatting through. And make sure to catch next week's episode. We're going to talk all about creating a good onboarding system using an automated tool. We're going to talk about content snare. We're really going to dive into how we've really gotten our onboarding. Like Brooke said, we've cut down our onboarding by drastically. and we're going to talk about some of those automation tools, the ways that we're connecting them, how we're utilizing these tools to integrate with all softwares as well. So thank you so much for Brooke, for being here.

Brooke Swan: 32:58

Thanks for having me.