by Heather at Outstanding Occasions on June 9, 2011
Today, as a follow-up to our post about two ways to use Basecamp for wedding professionals, we are sharing the Basecamp process for OUR wedding planning business.
Create New Client
1. Click on Create a New Project.
2. Name the New Project with LastName1.LastName2 Wedding and click on the Use a Project Template (we set up a New Wedding Client template. In order to use this feature, you must create a Project Template under the Templates tab in the upper right hand corner on the main company page.)
3. Once you have created the client file, click on the Project Settings tab in the upper right hand corner. In Overview Page Announcement box, include:
FirstName LastName.FirstName LastName Wedding
Date of Wedding
Wedding Location
Ceremony: time
Cocktail Hour: time
Dinner and Dancing: time
Then, check the box for Yes, display this announcement on the overview page. We keep the Overview page as the Start Page. Finally we click Active for the Project Status.
Post New Message
Once we have created the client file, we copy and paste the welcome message that we sent to the client after they have hired us.
1. Click Post a new message, include a Title.
2. Select a Category.
3. Choose whether you would like the message to be visible only to your company.
4. Attach and necessary files.
5. Subscribe people to receive email notifications.
6. Post the message.
Create a To-Do List
1. Use a To Do List Template. We have created one for Final Prep clients and one for Full Planning Clients.
2. Edit the template according to the client’s needs.
Create Calendar
1. Enter Wedding Date.
2. Enter Rehearsal Date.
You can use the Basecamp calendar for all of the company appointments. We use Google Calendar for that purpose though.
Upload Files
Upload the signed agreement as well as any documents or agreements that they have already signed.
1. Choose a file to upload.
2. Check the people to notify about this file via email.
Let us know if you have a question about using Basecamp for your wedding business. If you use Basecamp already for your business, are there ways that you are using it that I haven’t discussed above? I would love to hear from you!
by Heather at Outstanding Occasions on May 31, 2011
We wanted to announce the winner for the first giveaway for the Business Book Challenge. The winner, chosen randomly by random.org, was the first person to comment, Janice Carnevale of Bellwether Events!!
Congratulations Janice! We will be sending you the $5 Starbucks gift card soon! Have an outstanding Tuesday!
by Heather at Outstanding Occasions on May 25, 2011
One of the questions we receive a lot about our business is “How do you manage your clients?” We actually do not use a wedding planning software to manage our clients (although we believe that My Wedding Workbook Pro is probably the best one out there and a lot of wedding planners use it.) We also know that some of our wedding pro friends use ShootQ to manage their clients.
We use 37 signals’ Basecamp. We believe there are two great ways to use Basecamp for your wedding business.
1. Client Login: You can create a new project for each client and assign them a login so that you can give them tasks, share timelines and important documents they need to complete or allow them to collaborate on the wedding design. This might work really well for your business and your clients. We actually do NOT use Basecamp in this way for our wedding clients. We DO use this model for our mentorship clients. There are several planners that use this model of Basecamp and actually include the login page on their website. Cynthia Martyn Events and Andria Lewis Events are two wedding planners that do this.
2. Internal Company Use: Another way to use Basecamp is internally for your company (which is nice if you have more than a team of 1.) This is how we use Basecamp for our wedding planning side of our company. It acts as our complete virtual office for Outstanding Occasions. We have a Main Office (which includes our document templates for our company and wedding pro packages and pricing), Mentorship file (where we keep all of our internal documents for the mentorship program), Business Book Library (where the Outstanding team members share their business book reviews of the business books that we all have read), Owners File (where we keep internal documents for Jennifer and I only), and then we create a new project for each new client that we get (but again, we use it internally only and do not share it with our clients.) As stated above, we also have a separate project set-up for each mentorship clients. The mentees are the only clients that we share files with.
Of course, you can do both and use it internally for your company AND allow clients to use it to login and become updated on the progress of their wedding planning.
Do you use Basecamp? If so, how has it worked best for you? If not, what do you use to manage your clients?
Check back next Wednesday when we delve into the way we use each part of Basecamp (To Dos, Files, Milestones, Messages.)
by Heather at Outstanding Occasions on May 18, 2011
I love to read. I really love to read business books. Last year I read one to two business books per month. This year I have read a few, but am challenging myself to read at least one business book per month from now until June 2012. And since I believe that we all need to be educating ourselves more about how to run a successful business, I challenge all of you to do the same.
So, here is the deal. I challenge each one of you to read one business book per month. You can choose the book you want to read. At the end of each month, we will do a reading round-up. You will tell us what book you read and the three most important things you learned from it. Each month we will give away a $5 Starbucks gift card to a random commenter. Since May is halfway over, we will begin our first book June 1st and the first reading round-up will be at the end of June, but pick your first book now and get a jump-start on your reading challenge.
To kick things off, leave a comment below (make sure to include your name and email address as a link or in the comment area) with your first book choice. On Friday, May 27th, we will choose a random commenter that will win our first $5 Starbucks gift card :) Yes, it is that simple!
My first book (which I actually began to read a few months ago and then never finished because I got busy with other stuff): The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk. What book do you choose for The Business Book Challenge?
by Heather at Outstanding Occasions on May 13, 2011
Today, we are officially launching our Wedding Planner Mentorship website. Jennifer and I began the program at the beginning of 2010, and have successfully been mentoring (or coaching, if you prefer that term) wedding planners from across the country for over a year now. At the beginning, we just had the business blog. Now, in addition to the blog, we have a website for the mentorship program. The mentoring programs are limited. We will only take on two mentees per each ten session period. Our next session period begins in August. You can read about our mentorship program and find out more about us. We also encourage you to check out the wedding planner resources to view the amazing blogs that receive a big thumbs up from us. If you are interested in our wedding planner mentorship program, you can contact us here.
