Bonus #49

Ellen Yin36min

Ellen Yin

00:00

Hey friends, it's your host Ellen Yin. Welcome back to another bonus episode of cubicle to CEO, the podcast where we ask successful founders the business questions you can't google. This is one of our last public episodes that we are posting as far as bonus episodes go on our regular show. Starting in 2024 any new bonus episodes, particularly ones that are focused on Behind the Business Insights, are going to be moved to a private podcast feed that is only available to our C Suite members for listening. So if you have no idea what I'm talking about, I recorded a bonus episode on this announcement with all the details that I'll link below in the show notes. You'll also find in the show notes, a link where you can join us in the C suite at an early, hugely discounted rate, if you are hearing this before December 16.

Ellen Yin

00:56

All right, so for today's bonus episode, I thought it would be kind of fun to bring you all with me on my trip to California last week. This is more of a true founder's journal entry, founder's diary sort of day in the life or week in the life, if you will, of a founder of a media business, which is me, obviously. So last week, I rode trip down to San Francisco with my husband and our dog for the HoneyBook Partner Summit. This was their first ever summit and they invited some of their top partners from around the world to come meet in San Francisco at their headquarters to show us the product roadmap, some of the exciting innovations and developments they're working on at HoneyBook for 2024 and beyond. As well as bringing together top partners to share inspiration and ideas for how we can all show up and serve our communities better as honey book educators, but also just growing that arm of our business, the affiliate side of our businesses even more.

Ellen Yin

01:58

So this first part of the episode might be helpful to you. If a your honey book user, if you are a freelancer or a service provider, or a coach or consultant who works with clients one on one. And you either currently use Honeybook or you're looking for a CRM system that can better manage the entire workflow of working with one on one clients from sending out proposals and discovery calls collecting payment through invoices all the way through the actual process of delivering the service and the whole project management behind that and off boarding the client. So this first part, I'll kind of focus on some of the key developments that I think are really exciting that are coming to HoneyBook. But also kind of this larger conversation of how AI and AI driven tools are only becoming more prevalent, especially among tech companies who want to integrate AI tools to allow their customers more time and freedom to focus on the things that they are best at and that they actually want to do, rather than all of our time being spent on tedious, repetitive tasks that frankly, don't require as much human involvement.

Ellen Yin

02:03

I think one of the things that I do appreciate most about HoneyBook, and other companies that are bringing AI into the mix, is that they still believe in the power of the human touch right. And at least right now, any AI tools that are available in HoneyBook still require human approval. So it's not like you have no control over what is being put out into the world on your behalf. But I think that if you like me like to lean early into new innovations and tools, you'll be really excited about some of the time saving features that are part of their roadmap for 2024. By the way, this episode is not sponsored, I feel like I should have said this at the beginning. I just think it's really interesting to kind of bring you guys into the rooms where you may not have been present yourself. But you still want to stay in the loop of what's happening in the world of online business, and also the tools that many of us use in our everyday businesses.

Ellen Yin

04:09

Okay, so just first, a quick rundown of some of the features that I am most excited about that they shared at this summit. Some things are quite simple, but again, just really help elevate the client experience things like being able to include smart fields and emails, smart fields or anything. For example, like when you're writing an email, you can auto populate someone's information in a specific field so that you're not having to individually tailor each thing. You know, machine learning automatically can pull that data from their profile and put it into set email or you know, whatever other medium you're communicating to them. And then SMS notifications I thought this was great for especially any of you who work with clients in person like if you're a photographer, for example, you're able to send text reminders, letting people know like, hey, you know you have your upcoming photo session. Meet at this place at this time, you can also send SMS notifications about payment reminders. So if you have someone on a multi pay installment plan, this would be helpful for them to remember to pay their invoices or to remind them that an auto charge is about to happen for set invoice.

Ellen Yin

05:16

Also, another thing that I thought was pretty cool is that they are planning to have this built in out of office feature where not only people who are contacting you, through the HoneyBook portal are notified that you are out of office and taking a well deserved break. But also that some of those email communications or steps in the client workflow are still managed for you on your behalf while you're away. So you don't come back to just a huge inundation of tasks that you have to catch up on. So those were some of the things that I thought were really helpful that I wanted to share with you all.

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