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Self Discovery, Self Care, & Self Evolution with Fran Rescigno
10 Plays17 days ago
This week, Gail welcomes Fran Rescigno of The Passions Collective. Fran is a Client Experience Architect and firm believer that your client experience and backend systems should be human-centric: benefitting both you and your clients (and your team). She's passionate about building solutions that feel like the right fit for your brain, while enabling you to deliver a 5-star client experience that doesn't require you to be glued to your phone or computer 24/7. When she's not working, which is actually a lot of the time, you'll probably find her hanging with her 3 cats, reading a fantasy or sci-fi book, doing breathwork, or spending time outside with her partner.
In this episode, we dive in to all the ways Fran has engineered her business to give her the space to work with her brain and accommodate her neurodivergence, work fewer hours, and intentionally unpack some of the behaviors we accept as "normal" work expectations.
Having started The Passions Collective in her last semester of college, Fran also opens up about the struggles and instability of being an entrepreneur, applying to 9-5 jobs for the first time in her life, and embracing this season of life and business, despite approaching some major change.
You can find Fran on Instagram, Threads, LinkedIn, and at her website, https://www.thepassionscollective.com.
You can upgrade your own client experience with Fran's Dubsado and Notion templates in her Template Shop.
You can find Where's Your Humanity on Instagram, or listen on Youtube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
To learn more about Gail and her work, you can go to her website, worksimple.io, or connect with her on Instagram, Threads, and Tiktok.
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Transcript
Introduction to Fran Rosigno and her approach
00:00:17
Speaker
Hello, hello, and welcome back to another episode of Where's Your Humanity. I'm your host, Gail Fraser, and I am so excited to be joined today by Fran Rosigno.
00:00:29
Speaker
Fran is a client experience architect, so a systems girly like me, the founder of but Passions Collective, and a firm believer that your client experience and backend systems should be human-centric. She's also passionate about building solutions that feel like the right fit for your brain and is active in the neurodivergent space for systems, which is so valuable and important. And I am so excited to have you here, Fran.
00:00:56
Speaker
Yeah, I'm so excited to be here Thank you so much for having me on. i would love to start by letting you introduce Fran. What's the bio that you wish you could give? So I think what everybody needs to know is that I am a big matcha girly, but I actually used to be a matcha hater. So I am like, I reformed matcha hater turned matcha lover. And I am a big sitcom lover. um My favorite sitcom is Friends. And I Anytime I need something to watch and I don't know what to watch, I will just rerot rewatch Friends because it's just always so good. um
00:01:32
Speaker
And I am also a cat mom to three cats. So they are like my coworkers because my partner works in office most of the week and I am here talking to my cats all the time.
00:01:46
Speaker
I totally get that. My dog gets annoyed with me because I talk to him all day as well. but And I'm also a reformed matcha hater. my gosh.
Creating Human-Centric Systems for Businesses
00:01:58
Speaker
At least you and I have my cup You and met because we were in the same space helping small business owners build better systems for their business that focus on their client experience, that focus on their personal experience as a business owner.
00:02:14
Speaker
And how that is rooted in human connection and how we take care of each other and how we take care of ourselves. And I would love to understand from you, like what got you to this point? What made you really passionate about this and and get to this point in in what you care about and value in your business?
00:02:37
Speaker
It's been ah like a journey for sure, but client experience is something that I've been passionate about for a really long time. Like even before I officially started going by the title client experience architect, um it's kind of funny because i started – my my journey in the systems world started as being like a Dubsado specialist. And eventually, about three years ago, i pivoted into like more client experience as a broad topic. And I remember when that happened, I was like so worried that people wouldn't know why I was doing that or like it wouldn't make sense to them or anything like that. And and then I did it and everybody was like, oh, yeah, isn't that what you've already been doing? Because I had been talking about client experience for years at that point. and for me the way that i think about client experience and why i feel like it's important is something that's really evolved over the years and initially it started off as i i was reading this book and of course i don't remember what it was now but it was talking about like how important
00:03:46
Speaker
customers are to your business. And it made this comparison of customers to customers are to your business, like what air is to a human, like you are not going to survive without
Supporting Neurodivergent Entrepreneurs
00:03:57
Speaker
them. And they're something that's really important and that you should value and communicate how much you value them, because they are the people that are building your business and allowing you to do what you do.
00:04:08
Speaker
And that really stuck with me. And over the years, I've also started developing the mindset around client experience of it being something that should benefit the business owner as well. And that's kind of where the take of like, it should be something that benefits all humans that are involved. like That's where that piece came in because through my own experience, um just like you know being a neurodivergent entrepreneur and setting up my own systems and you know prioritizing that part of my business, I was really able to see how that turned into an accommodation for myself and how valuable that can be to like other business owners who are neurodivergent or you know have chronic illnesses or they just like have other time constraints like maybe parents or caregivers or whatever the situation might be.
00:05:00
Speaker
So it was kind of this like bridging of those two core beliefs of like your customers are... And your clients are so important to the well-being of your business. But you are also so important to the well-being of your business. And so the goal is that like all of those people feel valued and taken care of. Absolutely. And I love that perspective of your clients are essential to your business. Without them, we wouldn't have a business and get to do the things that we love to do. We all have a business because we are passionate about something because we have a skill set in something. you wouldn't be an entrepreneur if you weren't really passionate about it because it's really hard to do. And I love how you talk about your own neurodivergence and your own accommodations in your business. I'd love to hear a little bit more into exploring your own neurodivergence and your own needs for accommodation as it fit into your own business. business I think that process was really just so much trial and error and experimenting. i am a big proponent of experimentation and that's something that I have just like always really carried with me in my business journey. and
00:06:11
Speaker
I think that what that's allowed me to do is really have this mindset of everything that I do, regardless of whether it works or it doesn't work, is just allowing me to learn more about like myself and you know what I need and what my business needs. So i don't i try to look at things through that lens instead of being like, oh, this didn't work out. like I did something wrong. It's like, no this didn't work out. And that's just giving me more information about what is going to work. And that's really how I approached like figuring out what type of accommodations I needed in my business. And what I started with during that process was really just like paying attention to
00:06:53
Speaker
what felt good and what didn't. And that sounds really simple, but I think that like, it's so easy to go into the online business space and have these almost like rules in your head that are just made up that we all kind of associate with business. The whole like working from nine to five and just like the way that you structure your day and and how that like quote unquote should look. They're just things that we've learned over the years and that we accept as normal. So for me, it started with this process of being like, do I actually feel good when like this is how my day
Tools and Techniques for Business Productivity
00:07:27
Speaker
looks? The first thing that I think about is i used to be somebody who was taking calls like,
00:07:32
Speaker
monday through friday like any day of the week clients would be booking calls with me and i just like never felt like i was getting anything done and i was so drained because calls can be a big energy suck for me sometimes and that was really one of the first things that i experimented with was consolidating the number of days that i have calls throughout the week I think originally I was doing like two different days and eventually i just pared it down to one day a week for calls and
00:08:04
Speaker
that was just a process of reflecting and noticing, okay, when I have calls on my calendar, it puts me in this state of not really being able to get anything done because my brain is thinking about, oh, I have a call in like three hours. I have a call in two hours. I have a call in one hour. And not being able to like lock in and get things done. And then like that paired with having to context switch, which is something that I struggle with. And topping that all off with the fact that you know calls are kind of draining for me sometimes it was just like creating this environment where i wasn't really able to get anything done because i couldn't get into a deep focus zone and i just felt like i was all over the place that was like one of the first things that i i shifted in my business and started experimenting with and then from there it was kind of just reiterating that process of like, okay, what doesn't feel good right now? And what things can I try as an alternative to figure out what does work for me? I struggle with that so much too, especially like the context switching. um I still work a full-time job on the side. So for me, it's like kind of the going back and forth between the two. I'm curious to know what tools you're using or you have found to be super helpful for you to like
00:09:24
Speaker
Stay organized, manage all the different things that come with with being an entrepreneur and managing your own time in your day. Yeah. My main tools that I use are Dubsado and Notion. So for like CRM and project management. And honestly, having a project management tool, I think was like the biggest goal. shift in my like that I have seen in just like the way that I was able to feel organized in my business because i went maybe like the first two and a half years of my business not using a project management tool and i didn't realize until after I implemented one how just like much stress it was putting on my brain to have to try and remember everything And like not to mention the fact that I wasn't succeeding to remember everything because I have ADHD and like I was trying to remember too many things anyway. I was was using this like system of writing down the things that i remembered I needed to do and then like working on those. And it was just. It was so not good because I would forget that certain projects existed for a couple of weeks because like out of sight, out of mind. i would say having a project management tool was like life-changing for me and is definitely the thing that I rely on the most.
00:10:46
Speaker
I am in Notion all the time and I really rely on that super heavily to just know what I need to be doing on a day-to-day basis and have a space to like keep track of all of the things instead of keeping them all in my brain because like I said that it just resulted in so much like mental stress I was kind of inhibiting myself from providing the level or like quality of client experience that i wanted to be providing because my own systems for myself weren't
00:11:19
Speaker
up to par and like weren't allowing me to be operating at an ideal level. So that is definitely one of the the best things that I have done. Having a place where everything just lives and I don't have to think about it is like huge.
00:11:36
Speaker
Yeah, you heard it here first. Project management is essential for your business. It's the number one thing that i see my clients struggle with or help them implement is they also are in that place where they have a CRM and they don't have a project management tool because you get the CRM, which is client relationship manager. And you're like, this is my project manager. Like it tracks the project's It's how I get paid. But it doesn't track the tasks within the projects unless you have it like super, super automated, which I honestly don't recommend having your tasks in your CRM because CRMs kind of suck at project management and a tool like...
00:12:18
Speaker
I always say that people are either an ocean brain or click-up brain, and I'm a click-up brain. I love the aesthetic of notion more than click-up, but I've been in click-up for five years, so they're kind of the reverse structure of each other. And so people are going to either gravitate towards one or the other. But regardless of what your pick is that being able to like offload that somewhere, I'm the same way where it's like I'm on a call with a client and I'm going to remember every single thing we talked about. i was so energized. And then like 30 minutes later, it's just all gone from brain.
00:12:55
Speaker
and Like on the call and just like, I'm never going to forget this. Like I have such a clear vision for what we're going to do. And then after it's just gone and that's where ClickUp is totally my second brain. and there's such cool things that you can do to set up like the recurring automations. I have a field for a reminder date if I set that because I know I'm going to need to check up on like my own progress or my client's progress. Yeah. at a later date, I don't want it to just be like a sitting in the waiting queue.
00:13:26
Speaker
It creates a new task for me. And it's like, hey, just as a reminder, like you want to do this today. when I meet other entrepreneurs who like don't have a project management tool and it doesn't come from a place of judgment, I'm just like, so like, how do you do it? Like, I don't know how you how you do that and you don't need to do that.
00:13:45
Speaker
Yeah, it's really interesting because for me, i went so long without one because I was like, well, it's just me in the business. So like, I don't need a tool to do this because like there's nobody else that's in the mix for this process. And What actually prompted me to start using a project management tool was when I started bringing contractors on for my projects and like I had to start delegating certain things and having a place for SOPs to be stored and all of that good stuff. And it was so interesting because I was like, why did I not do this sooner? Yeah, I felt like my brain could finally breathe.
Balancing Efficiency with Well-Being
00:14:25
Speaker
Obviously, like
00:14:26
Speaker
That's a bad comparison because your brain can't breathe. But um it just gave me so much like mental space. And i was like, wow, that project management tool is not just for people who have teams. You can use it entirely by yourself. And it is still like so valuable to have. a place for that all to be Yeah, look, I have I'm an avid ClickUp girly, but I still have my random post-it notes on my desk. I still have like a notebook that I write in sometimes. I still have like that random thought at 2 a.m. where I'm just like, oh shit, I forgot that I had to do this. But those moments are so much less when you have something in place to like take care of those. Or even like for me with ClickUp, I have the widget on my phone. I click add task and I can write in something super quick and it just adds it to my list. I can like
00:15:20
Speaker
Get it out of my brain, which is one of the first ADHD tips that my therapist gave me. She was just like, you have to have some yeah thoughts and like having a place to do that for your business is going to just reduce the amount of time that you're spent thinking about. What is it that I have to do today? What is it that I was going to work on? You can just kind of get into the zone more. We talked about before with like context switching or task switching can be one of the biggest challenges as an entrepreneur with ADHD. Yeah. And I think with the tasks, if you don't have like a project management tool, it's not just the fact that like you're trying to keep track of so many things in your head, but it's also that you're spending so much energy trying to not forget things. Yeah, it's wild because i didn't realize how much energy I was spending just like trying to force my brain to remember things until I didn't have to do that anymore. And then I was like, oh, my God, why was I doing this to myself for so long?
00:16:21
Speaker
No, literally, i got married last year and I planned my own wedding. And I think back to the nights that I just laid in bed. being like, okay, I can't forget to email this person in the morning. i can't forget that at 11am I have this thing. like You're so right. It's not even just like keeping track of everything. It's trying like so hard to hold to the thought and not let it slip away because inevitably you wake up and it's gone.
00:16:47
Speaker
I would love to pivot our conversation because you talk a lot about efficiency because both of us are in a space where ideally we're increasing the efficiency of our clients' work and making their lives easier and their work faster and simpler to do. but also...
00:17:07
Speaker
There's so much pressure to be as efficient as possible and produce as much as possible. you kind of flip the script on that of, no, we want to be efficient so that we can do less and support ourselves and live life in a meaningful way. How did you come to that realization? Was it like you always knew that's what you wanted in your business? Did you have kind of a breaking point where you're like, oh shit, I need to slow down? What did that look like?
00:17:36
Speaker
but Yeah, um it definitely stemmed from a breaking point. When I first started my business, like the first few years of business, i was very much like, go, go, go. I think back to when I started my business, which was during my last semester of college, and i was working two part-time jobs in addition to starting my business. And Basically, like my entire day was just working and then going to sleep. And i did that for a while. And then I just got so burnt out. And I was like, oh, I don't want to be feeling this way about my business. I built this thing that's supposed to support me. and I'm supposed to feel good while I'm doing it. I started to kind of like feel resentful towards it in a way because I was like, why are you making me feel bad all the time? And yeah.
00:18:29
Speaker
Yeah, I've definitely gone through some cycles of getting to that point and being like, okay, something needs to change. So I think the mindset of having things be more efficient so that I can actually not take on more work is something that's really developed for me more recently. Honestly, I would say it stemmed from this realization that I had at the beginning of 2025 where I was just like, I am taking better care of my business than I take care of myself. And like I'm treating my business as if it's the most important thing in my life and putting that above my own basic needs and like not taking time to eat lunch or working first thing in the morning instead of doing something else before I come to my work or working late into the night when I don't want to be, i don't know, like i felt really humbled when I had that realization of oh, I'm like literally putting my business above my own well-being and I don't want to be doing that. So from that point forward, it was a lot of shifting how I thought about it and what my relationship looked like to my business and realizing and accepting that I love my work and I love like the impact that I get to have for my clients and I love the people that I get to connect with through that. But
00:19:48
Speaker
I don't want that to be the most important thing in my life and I don't want it to be the number one thing that I'm focusing on every day because i want to do other things in my life. I want to, you know, spend time with my friends and family and have hobbies and like try new hobbies and, you know, do all the things.
00:20:08
Speaker
And I kind of just didn't want to get to a point where I was 20, 40 years from now looking back on this time in my life and be like, I wish that I didn't spend so much time working. So it was kind of this, yeah, just a lot of like self-reflection and realizing that the relationship that I had to my business at that point was not the type of relationship that I wanted to have to my business. And that's really what started this whole like I actually don't want to work more, I actually you want to work less. And like, how can i create an environment where I'm able to do that and like still support myself and like still do the things that I want to do in my business that I enjoy doing in my business. so yeah.
00:20:53
Speaker
I think that burnout resonates so strongly with so many people. Like we've all gone through those cycles of working ourselves to death, whether it's for a corporation or for yourself, where you're just like hustling and hustling and hustling until you can't anymore. And so I think that's something that's super, super common and like normal. And I'm curious how you took that point of getting to like, okay, I can't do this anymore. This isn't sustainable. And took a step back to look at your own business boundaries and setting like, how do I make this work better for myself and what actually works for me instead of what have I been told is the right way to do things?
00:21:33
Speaker
I think it took a lot of me just getting honest with myself about what felt good and what didn't feel good and like the things that I was doing in my business because I genuinely wanted to be doing them that way versus the things was doing.
00:21:50
Speaker
that I was doing in my business just because I had like seen somebody else do it that way or like somewhere along the line, like a business coach told me that I should do it that way or whatever spin you want to have on that. When you start your business, like absorb what other people are doing and saying and like whether that's other people in your industry or if it's from like a coach or a mentor or whatever.
00:22:14
Speaker
At least for me, like you don't necessarily think about the fact of whether the things that you're implementing actually feel good to you or make sense in the grander scheme of your business. And so something that I really had to kind of start to think about when I was going through this process in my business was like,
00:22:36
Speaker
what are goals that I have for my business? And what are the things that are going to get me to that point? Because what I realized was that my goals were very different from like other people and like other people's businesses that I was interacting with and kind of like taking inspiration from in a way. And that is part of what led me to essentially create that version of my business that really wasn't working for me because I was just like, building towards other people's goals instead of building towards my own goals. And then I got to that point where I was like, I don't even want this. This isn't working for me.
00:23:12
Speaker
It was really just a matter of like starting with that piece of like, what do i want my business to actually look like? What do i want to have... going on like on a day-to-day basis what parts of my business currently feel good and like I want to continue what parts don't feel good and I don't want to continue and just kind of taking it one step at a time and starting to just experiment with different things and you know trying something different and seeing whether I liked it or whether I didn't like it and just using that as kind of like another data point to work with and figure out like, okay, this is either a step in the right direction to getting me like closer to where I wanna be or this is not a step in the right direction and now I know what i don't want and therefore like know what I should try instead. So yeah, it was a lot of trial and error based off of figuring out what I actually wanted instead of what other people wanted. Yeah. What were some of those goals for you that you were working towards that you're like, wait, this is what I actually want versus here's what those people say I should want?
00:24:20
Speaker
Yeah. I think the biggest thing that comes to mind for me is work schedule. And I feel like there was ah not so much anymore, but at an earlier stage in my business, like a couple of years ago, there was a lot of just like noise around working more and scaling and growing and doing all of the things. And there wasn't a lot of people talking about building a business while working less, unless it was somebody who was like, here's how I make $3 million dollars working three hours a week. And I was like, yeah well, that's, we're not talking about that right now.
00:24:54
Speaker
So yeah, working like fewer hours in still being able to maintain my business was one of the goals that
Enhancing Productivity with ADHD Strategies
00:25:03
Speaker
I had. And that took a lot of figuring out like,
00:25:08
Speaker
What tasks are the things that still need to be done by me? What tasks can I outsource? What tasks can I automate? And also like if my goal is to work four hours a day, for example, I need to know what things are most important to focus my energy on that are going to like move the needle forward in my business and get client work done and stuff like that. um So I can't just be spending like four hours cleaning up my notion for like the one hundredth time. Like that's, yeah, like it might be helpful to do that once, but it's not helpful for me to spend, you know, four hours every week, just like tinkering with my notion set up. Just like having an understanding of
00:25:53
Speaker
where I was spending my time and what things were the most important for me to be focusing my time on. um And then just kind of experimenting with that and figuring out what amount of hours actually felt good for me to be working. And not just like amount of hours in terms of, you know, 15 or 20 hours a week, but also amount of hours in terms of the actual type of work. So like How many hours per week did I want to be on calls and how many hours per week did I want to be doing like deep focus work and how many hours a week did I want to be doing content creation and stuff like that?
00:26:27
Speaker
Did you have any major like unlocks once you tried something and you're like, this is it Yeah, there are like two things that come to mind. And one is along the lines of what I was just mentioning about like paying attention to the amount of time essentially per category opposed to overall, because that was a learning experience for me because originally when I was going through this process, I was just like, okay, I want to work, you know, 15 20 hours a week. and I was just paying attention to how many hours of of work I was adding to my schedule per week. And that was ultimately not working because i ended up like booking more client work than I genuinely had the capacity for, even though on paper, like it looked like I was working. still falling into that like ideal range that I wanted to be. ah So that was a learning experience for me to know like, okay, I do actually have a limit on how much client work I can feasibly take on in like a weekly span because most of the work that I do for clients requires a lot of brain energy. And that's not something that I just have like unlimited resources.
00:27:40
Speaker
capacity for. then would say the other thing that was a really big like kind of aha moment for me was when I shifted my working hours. And for a while, i was doing like two hours in the morning and then I would take a lunch break. um Sometimes like I would also go to the gym and then do like a couple more hours of work in the afternoon. And then I shifted to just having like a four hour work block in the afternoon. And that was like life changing for me because I felt like I was able to get so much more done in that time because I was still working the same amount of hours, but in a more like condensed timeframe. So I wasn't being like interrupted. I didn't have to. Yeah. you know, take a break to go like make food. I didn't have to take a break to do X, Y and z I was able to just kind of lock into work and stay focused for that amount of time. And it also provided this sense of fake urgency almost because I was like, well, I only have these hours still i' yeah fake ton i have to get it done in this amount of time. So that was really helpful for me as like someone with ADHD to just have that like sense of urgency to actually like focus and get things done. And also how how easy it is for me to like fill extra amounts of time.
00:29:04
Speaker
if I give myself a larger window, like if I said, okay, I was going to work six hours a day instead of four hours, I'm I could definitely find ways to fill that time, but it would mostly just be like me getting distracted and like scrolling on Instagram for half an hour here or, you know, like doing whatever. So feel like having that time constraint and um really helped me to just like actually stay focused on what I was working on and just like get the things done that I needed to get done.
00:29:33
Speaker
Yeah, that's so valid. And I struggle with that so much where it's just like, oh, there's so many things that I could get distracted by, like cleaning up my ClickUp setup or, oh, yeah, I have to send out like this and this and this and this. But those aren't like my top priority things that need to get done today. But my brain is just like on its squirrel brain mode doing whatever it wants. I like that you found that.
00:29:56
Speaker
Kind of that piece of it, too, where you're just like, no, actually do work better if I just have like a little bit bigger chunk of time and I don't have to do the task switching throughout the day. Yeah, the task switching is like my enemy. I'm honestly like really interested to see how this evolves for me as I step into this phase or season, I guess you could say, of like pursuing a full-time position because obviously that's going to result in like me having less control over my time in terms of working hours and everything. And then that also poses the new challenge of figuring out like when I am going to do business things. I'm not planning on um having like a normal client workload. Like I would take a max of one project per month but my energy will mostly be going towards keeping the template shop up and running and like refreshing those or like bringing new ideas to life so i feel like that's a little bit easier to work around um because i don't have to worry about like scheduling calls with people or um stuff like that but i i imagine that it's definitely gonna be a little bit of a
00:31:10
Speaker
a trial and error um phase again for me as I like, you know, learn to balance that in a different way.
Shifting Between Entrepreneurship and Employment
00:31:18
Speaker
Tell me a little bit about what prompted that decision for you. I know you posted about it recently talking about like, yeah, I'm actually applying to full time jobs. Like what made you look into that decision and start taking that step?
00:31:32
Speaker
Yeah. That's a good question. It was really kind of a culmination of a lot of things over the past like year or so, i would say. And ultimately, I think what it came down to was just financially. i haven't had the income in my business this year to like maintain what I needed to in terms of like personal expenses and everything. So there's that kind of like more logistical side of things where i just got to a point where I was like, I'm putting in a lot of energy to this and I'm not really seeing what I need to see in return. So like something needs to change, but I also don't have the luxury of just being able to take you know, a few months to figure out what that is and like, you know, figure out what I need to do to make it work and not have income coming in during that time. yeah So that was kind of like what motivated it more in like this specific time. But once i sat down and started considering that as an option, because there's definitely been times in the past in my business, like I've been doing this for six years now.
00:32:41
Speaker
There have been a handful of times where you know I've had a a tough month or like a couple of slow months and I've been like, oh, do I need to start applying to jobs? what like What's the situation? And this was really the first time where I was like very seriously considering it. And once I got to the point where i gave myself permission permission to consider that as an actual option. i kind of like opening the doors to how I had actually been feeling about my business for a really long time and like hadn't acknowledged up to this point. And that was just like kind of disconnected in a way. And there is a lot of, I guess, unresolved feelings you could say towards Towards business and the fact that it like wasn't supporting me in the way that I needed it to. Like that's not something that I'm just going to be able to work through overnight. So having full time position like the goal with that is number one, obviously like financial stability, but also just like giving myself more space to figure out what I actually want my business to look like. If it is, you know, just another iteration of what I've been doing or if it's something completely different or, you know, what that looks like. So, yeah, it kind of just made me realize how much stability my system, my nervous system had been lacking over the past six years of having my business and that that is something that I'm like very deeply craving in this season of life. And yeah, I'm looking forward to it. And it's also just like a bit of a scary journey because there's a lot of, you know, that kind of internal um narratives like, is this me giving up? Is my business failing? Like all of these things. um So yeah, it's it's definitely an interesting time. But
00:34:34
Speaker
At the same time, I'm also really excited about like having a new opportunity to pursue. So yeah. I think it's so important to have those realizations. And I think it speaks a lot to this being the right time for you to do that when you have that feeling of like,
00:34:49
Speaker
oh, now I'm like kind of excited about this, the stability and the elements that you feel like you've been missing because there is such like a narrative around like, oh, no, their business failed. And like the reality is, is that running a business is just another job and it has ups and downs just like a corporate job does.
00:35:10
Speaker
it's You've been successfully running your business for six years and you you grow and change too and you learn about yourself and it's perfectly normal to be like, okay, now I think I'm going to like try this for a little bit. Eventually, maybe you'll find your way back to the type of work you're doing now or something totally different. It speaks to similar to you finding your own work hours, like you kind of figuring out like, okay, but what feels right for me in this season? And I think trusting that gut instinct is so important. I'm someone that had
00:35:40
Speaker
so many different careers over like eight years. i kind of felt when it was like time to move on to something different and I just kind of trusted that and it always was. Like it's really encouraging to be like, okay, now that I've thought about this thing and it's scary and it's a big change,
00:35:57
Speaker
To have that gut feeling of like, oh, yeah, but I think this is right, is really important to talk about as entrepreneurs, because it's not an end all be all of like, oh, I'm going back to get a job. And that means I have failed. No, you've been successful for six years and you will continue to be in, you know, whatever, wherever the path takes you.
00:36:18
Speaker
I really appreciate you saying that. One of the things that I have come back to a lot as I was like making this decision is that my my view on entrepreneurship was always that like I was building a business to like support the life that I wanted. Like obviously,
00:36:36
Speaker
Part of being able to do that is like having the financial means to support literally like paying rent, for example. Yeah. Because that is just something that we have to do as adults in this world. It feels like just kind of giving myself permission to like try something new because I started my business in my last semester of college. So like I've never actually had like ah a normal nine to five job. And for a really long time, Obviously, like as somebody who had my business, like i just kind of
00:37:09
Speaker
was operating under the assumption that I wasn't going to like having a nine to five. And as I was kind of like going through this process ah with deciding to start applying to full time jobs, I was like, I actually don't know that for sure. Like, I'm not going to know unless I try it. Unless you try. and yeah It doesn't make sense for me to continue operating like just from that assumption that I'm not going to like it because for all I know, like I could actually love it and like want to continue doing that. um Or I could hate it and be like, okay, entrepreneurship was definitely the move for me. But like either way, it's just finding out more about myself, which I think is cool.
00:37:49
Speaker
Yeah, it's just more information. and that's like, so I used to be a recruiter and like work with college students. So like interns and new grads and stuff. And like, I think that was so much of the advice that I would give them coming from my position, having kind of been all over the map in like the types of jobs and industries that I'd done, but also just like your first job. might be not the right fit or you might move into a position that you're like, this is going to be amazing. And then there are things that you hate about it. But like every job, there are going to be things that you like. And that goes for your business of like, there are things that I love about running my business. And when all of my CRM links broke this weekend and that's literally what I do and I was out of office. Yeah.
00:38:38
Speaker
That was a problem and I didn't like that. So like, there are always going to be those trade-offs. So I think it's super valuable that you're like trusting that instinct of like, no, I'm going to try it. And inevitably you'll learn something about yourself and that'll help you shape the next step, whether it's staying in that job, moving into a different corporate job or moving into the same or a different business venture.
00:39:04
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Well, I want to pivot and give
Importance of Communication in Client Experience
00:39:09
Speaker
you a chance. I know you're the client experience expert. What do you think the most important piece of client experience is or what people should be thinking about when they're developing their own in their business?
00:39:21
Speaker
I actually think that the most important part of your client experience is like your communication with clients. So for most of the clients that I work with, like that is in the form of email templates. But, you know, that can look different depending on the type of business. But the way that i think about this is like when you're working with a client that like you have a relationship with them like you have ah a client relationship and there's a lot of information out there around like the importance of communication in like romantic partnerships or in like friendships or you know family dynamics and stuff like that but it's also really important in like business relationships as well because when
00:40:08
Speaker
there isn't clear communication. And when like on either side, if somebody is feeling confused or like not really sure um what the other person is doing or if they're supposed to be doing something and, you know, like that just hasn't been related to them, anything anything in the realm of like,
00:40:30
Speaker
One or both parties being confused or like not on the same page just creates this friction and mistrust in the relationship. And obviously, as a business owner, your clients having trust in you is a really important piece because that's going to impact how they feel about.
00:40:49
Speaker
the experience of working with you like after the fact and whether they want to recommend you to their friends or like come back and work with you again. And i think that the way you communicate about your process is and just the way that communicate during your process is so important because it is really like the difference between having an experience where somebody feels supported and clear and all of their questions are answered ahead of time because like you've taken the time to really think about what questions they're going to be having and like what information they need to know at different parts of the process versus when you haven't you know like given a lot of thought into that and you're more you're mostly communicating from like a reactive place instead of a proactive place, that's where there's just like more opportunities for miscommunication or certain pieces of information to be missing or somebody to be kind of like feeling out of the loop. And that just, like again, creates that friction in the relationship. So I think that
00:41:55
Speaker
having clear communication around what the expectations are during the project, any like due dates or deadlines. And then anytime that obviously like depending on the service that's being offered, this doesn't always make sense. um But like having having some sort of like project update, I think is really helpful. Especially if you're somebody whose work spans across like a longer period of time. um So for example, like I've worked with a lot of copywriters and typically their process involves like a couple of weeks of like research and writing before any deliverables provided. And even if your client knows in the back of their mind that you're probably working on something, it's just helpful to send an email and say like, hey this is what I'm working on for you know like the next two weeks. And then at this date, like you can expect to receive x Y, and z um It just helps to ease people's mind and give them confirmation that like, okay, yes, they are working on my project. I don't need to worry about anything um because I think it's really easy from like the client's point of view to assume like the worst if you don't hear anything from people. Like I always hate the – like when you go to the doctor's office and like you have to get a test done and they're like, no news is good news. And I'm like, no, I do not agree with that at all because i will just have anxiety and assume that like –
00:43:32
Speaker
maybe there was bad news and like my phone deleted the voicemail somehow or like the email didn't come through. And it's just like, you know, that type of situation. And I think that that's like what I imagine um just from the client point of view as well, especially when it's a big investment or if they've had a previous experience investing that like hasn't gone well, which I know is unfortunately very common in the online business world. Just like having communication that is proactive and really just like over communicating, honestly, i think is one of the best things that you can do from a client experience perspective.
00:44:13
Speaker
That and those like communication templates or um just like communication in general is one of the ways that you can infuse your brand voice throughout the client experience. And that is one of the best ways to make your client experience feel personal and like human and like an extension of your brand as opposed to something that just feels like kind of separate and other. Yeah. What are your recommendations for business owners who are listening to this and going, oh, I haven't thought about that before.
00:44:48
Speaker
where do you recommend that they start? i honestly, i think the easiest place to start is just by jotting down like a bullet point outline of what your process looks like for one of your services. Maybe you already have that written down somewhere. And in that case, like you're kind of already a step ahead you Just kind of going through and looking at what parts of that process you could be communicating to your client during and then taking that a step further to determine like what things you want to be communicating. So, for example, if you're thinking about this from even like starting in the inquiry process, one of the things that you could think about is like, OK, if I'm sending a proposal to somebody, there's going to be an email template that is accompanying that. And like, what are the things that I need to say in this email? So like that could be how long they have to submit the proposal before like it expires or like how long you're holding a specific project start date for them, um what their next steps would be if they want to accept their proposal and then like what happens next after that. Do they get an onboarding email? Do they get whatever? And then just kind of taking that approach for the rest of your process and thinking about it as much as you can, thinking about it from an objective point of view, from the client's perspective in terms of like, okay, what and type of support do they need at this point in the process? What questions might they have? What things are going their head at this point? And something that can be difficult to do as business owners is like, put ourselves in the shoes of clients in terms of their level of understanding of what we do Because the the example that I always use for this is like with photographers, I know that it's so common for their clients to come to them and be like, why aren't we getting the raw files for our photos? And as a photographer or somebody who's familiar with the photography industry, like it's obvious to us, we know why you're not delivering raw files to your clients. But as just a normal everyday human, like you probably don't know what a raw file is and you have no idea why there's like something that's being withheld from you in terms of the photography that you're receiving. So I share that as an example of like
00:47:20
Speaker
You have to think about what the everyday average person would understand about your industry when you're thinking about the way that you're communicating because not everybody is going to have the same level of understanding of your industry as you do. And that's like, that's the whole point. That's why they're hiring you to do something because they don't want to be an expert in it But you have to understand that when you're communicating to make sure that you're communicating in a way that like actually clicks with them.
00:47:49
Speaker
Yeah, especially like I work with a lot of wedding industry clients and a lot of the complaints that I see on Reddit or hear are just like, well, why does my client not know this and X, Y and Z? And I'm like, 90 percent or more of your clients are doing this for the first and probably only time, at least in the near future.
00:48:10
Speaker
And so most of the people like, yes, there are some people that are maybe closer to the wedding industry. Like I had friends in the wedding industry. and so I had an idea of like what I should be looking for, like what questions I should be asking. But if I didn't have that, i would have been doing all this research for the very first time. Like I have no idea what to look for And so there is some education involved that can happen through communicating with your client. in any business. You don't have to know this. And now like, here's why this is happening. And I think everyone kind of wants to know the why especially us narrative virgin folks. I'm like, just tell me why you're doing this and we can we can be good. But like, I think it's super helpful because if they don't care, they won't read it But if they do care, then they like, oh, okay. I didn't know that. And now it's super helpful that you told me that because
00:49:06
Speaker
it also can set you apart from the other vendors who aren't doing that when they view you as really helpful. Yeah, exactly. Well, Fran, what's inspiring you right now?
00:49:18
Speaker
That is a great question. Honestly, i think what's inspiring me right now is seeing like seeing people on Instagram and brands on Instagram take a stance against ai whether that's like in their work or in their business or whatever it might be. i feel like it's just not very common to see in the time that we're living in. And it feels like something that a lot of people feel pressured to like adopt in their business or in their work. because there's a lot of pressure to do things faster and be more productive and like all of that um but i really do appreciate
00:50:07
Speaker
when I see like a business or a brand that is talking about like how they are prioritizing um just like human interaction and that they actually like don't want AI involved in their business or in their, you know, creative process or in their ideation process or whatever that looks like. um And I just think it's really it's really cool to see people like still kind of you know, ah standing up against that um when it's probably easier to just kind of, you know, go with go with the grain in a lot of ways. So yeah, that's been really inspiring to me lately.
00:50:49
Speaker
My last question for you is what's your humanity hot take right now? I would say my humanity hot take is that I think that we should be having a lot more conversations around like the topic of AI and productivity and just kind of like getting curious about why there's this, ah why there's such a pressure in our society to like be productive all the time or to like
00:51:22
Speaker
do things as fast as possible or to do as much as possible in a short amount of time or a long amount of time. um You know, it goes both ways. But I think that there's just like a lot to kind of feel back and uncover when you start to consider where that pressure is coming from and why it exists in the first place and like who's benefiting from you being in a position where you feel like you have to be productive all the time and you have to do like as much as you can in whatever amount of time you're working. yeah.
00:52:00
Speaker
so yeah Totally 100% agree. um i think, yeah, that's such a valuable, such a valuable takeaway and think something for people to chew on as they're listening to this episode. fra thank you for coming on and joining me Always lovely to get to chat with you. And can you tell the audience where they can find you?
00:52:23
Speaker
Yes. Thank you so much for having me. This was so fun. You can find me on Instagram at the passions collective and that is my website handle as well. The passions collective.com.
00:52:36
Speaker
Awesome. Well, thanks Fran. Yes. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening. I'm your host Gail Fraser. And for more information about where's your humanity, you can check out at where's your humanity pod on Instagram and And for more information about me and the work that I do, you can go to my website, worksimple.io, which is also my Instagram and threads handle.
00:52:58
Speaker
Our lovely theme music is brought to you by Emily Bjorki, and you can go check out her album, Are You Going to Heaven or Hell, anywhere you listen to music. Thanks for being here, and I'll talk to you later.