122. Why I Don’t Recommend Business Software the Usual Way—and What I Do Instead for Better Results

Phylicia Pough: 00:00:00

Hey friend. You're listening to Harmonious Mompreneur, where faith, family and business come together.

I'm your host, Phylicia Pough, a Christian wife, mom of two, and life and business system strategist for moms.

If you've ever felt like there just aren't enough hours in the day, or find yourself craving more time for yourself but feel guilty about it, you're in the right place. While many strive for balance, I believe it's harmony, an integrated flow that works for you, that truly sustains.

Each week I'll share insights from my personal journey and practical strategies to help you design systems that bring peace to your business and home life. So give your kids another snack, take a deep breath and let's dive into today's episode where we'll start creating your harmonious Mompreneur life.

Hey friend. Okay, so I know you have seen the posts on social media. They look like what's the best CRM? What tool do you use for email marketing?

And while I get and understand why people post these, I have a bit of a love hate relationship with these types of posts. Here's the problem.

People are giving their opinion or their recommendation based on their specific business, their goals and their preferences and what they are using may not make sense for you and your business. So let's say someone comments that they love Dubsado for client management.

What they don't mention though is that they run a service based business with a handful of high touch clients each month and they have taken the time or paid somebody to set up all the custom workflows and the automations that Dubsado can do.

Meanwhile, the poster, if the poster is you, meanwhile you might be in a different stage in your business where you have simpler workflows or you just want something that is easy to set up, that doesn't have a high learning curve, right? You can set it up easily without spending a lot of hours customizing it.

In that case, Honeybook might actually make more sense for you because there is a simpler learning curve and it could be a faster setup for somebody who you know doesn't need all of the deep customization and automations that Dubsado offers. So another example, somebody might recommend Dubsado because it is great for proposals, contracts, onboarding clients one on one.

But if you're running a membership or if you are selling a digital product where you have a lot of smaller transactions, you don't need proposals and contracts, right? You don't need a full blown CRM like Dubsado at all. So in that case, a different tool would make sense.

Something like a Thrive cart that would be a much better fit because it's designed specifically for that, for checkouts, for automating upsells and handling higher volume of transactions without the manual work. Okay. The same thing happens when it comes to email marketing tools. Somebody might rave about activecampaign, let's say, right?

Because it's amazing for building those complex automations and you can do advanced customer segmentation.

But if you're somebody who is only sending a weekly newsletter or a few basic email sequences, then you might not need something as robust as ActiveCampaign. A simpler and also more affordable tool like Flodesk or MailerLite could meet your needs without the overwhelm or without all the extra cost. Right?

And so this is why I say that strategy comes before software. Your process always comes before the tools. Right?

Because when you pick a tool first without knowing what you actually need it to do, you either waste money on the features that you are never going to use, or you end up duct taping a workflow together that doesn't really support how you want to run your business. Okay, so when people come to me asking what's the best tool for this, right?

And they give the specific type of tool they're looking for, I don't just throw out a random recommendation. I don't. Y'all know I love Dubsado, but I will never just blanketly come out and say that Dubsado is the best CRM. So this is what I do instead.

I ask questions first. Okay, Some of the questions that I ask are what industry are you in? There's also lots of software that are specific to different industries.

I know the therapy space has different CRMs than online coaching, for example, and I think it has something to do with like the HIPAA laws. Not a hundred percent sure, but I know there's like some therapy CRMs. I also ask, like, what's your business model? So are you service based?

Are you selling digital products? Are you coaching? Do you have a membership? What is your client journey or your sales process? What does that look like?

What are you looking for in a tool? Are you trying to save time? Are you trying to improve your client experience? Are you trying to have advanced automations?

Like what are you looking for? And then finally, very importantly, how much time and energy do you realistically want to put into setting up and managing this tool?

Because like I mentioned earlier, some tools are easier to set up and easier to use than others. Do you have the capacity For Advanced Automations.

Now, after those questions are answered, that's when we can pick a software that fits the strategy, not the other way around. Okay?

So when you choose your tools this way, after you have asked questions, okay, not just getting blanket recommendations from strangers on the Internet, you actually use the features that you are paying for. I used to use a white label version of High Level, but I realized that I was paying for a bunch of features that I didn't need at the time.

This also is going back to saying no, what we talked about in the last episode.

Sometimes we have to say no to Shiny Object syndrome because we're spending so much time fiddling around and playing around in this tool and we could be doing other things. Okay? When you choose your tools this way, asking questions first, your systems feel simpler. Systems can be simple. They should be simple. Okay.

They should not be complicated. When you choose your tools this way, you saved money again, not just on the tool itself, but on the time that you lost trying to make it work.

Looking up all of the tutorials on YouTube, searching blog posts for your answer, reading through the knowledge base and going through all of the universities that the software offers. Okay? And then finally, your client experience improves because everything is built intentionally and it's not pieced together after the fact. Okay?

Client experience is so important. If you missed our client experience series here on the podcast, I'll link them in the show notes.

Now, if you're somebody who is feeling overwhelmed by all of the options out there, because there are a ton of options for everything and more options are just coming onto the market, especially with the emergence of AI, a lot of people are creating micro tools, people are creating custom GPT bots. So there are so many options. Okay?

So if you're feeling overwhelmed by all of the options, or if you've been trying to make your systems work but they still feel a little clunky, right, that's a sign that you need to go back to your strategy. You need to go back to your process. First, refine that, map it out, make sure it makes sense.

You need clarity about your business model, the client journey, and also your capacity, your capacity to integrate this tool into your system. After that, then you'll be able to choose the right tool to support you.

Now, if you need help mapping that out, that's exactly what I do with the workflow work session. It's a one time session where you will walk away with your client journey and strategy mapped out. So you'll be able to choose the right tools. Okay?

And then if you decide, hey, Dubsado is what I want to go with, Dubsado is going to be a good fit for me. Then, yes. I can set up your entire workflow for client experience through the Harmony System, Sprint VIP week.

And I will drop the link for both of those in the show notes. I want to leave you with this. Tools are just tools. They do not fix a broken system. They just automate the system. They just magnify the system.

So if you have a broken system, if you have a bad system, if you have a system that's not efficient, your tools are just going to magnify those problems. All right? So before you get caught up in another what's the best tool rabbit hole, I want you to slow down. Get clear first.

Get clear on your goals, get clear on your strategy, get clear on your process, get clear on your capacity. And then build a system that actually serves you, your clients and your business in this season. Okay, Now I would love to hear from you. Let me know.

Are you realizing that there's a tool you might need to let go of or rethink? DM me on Instagram and let's talk about it. Thank you so much for listening. With grace and gratitude, I will see you in the next episode. Hey friend.

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