When I first started my journey into entrepreneurship, it didn’t take me long to find a community called The Rising Tide Society. I quickly fell in love with their mission to create a #communityovercompetition creative industry. I then became a RTS leader which soon after partnered up with HoneyBook. It didn’t take me long to absolutely fall in love with HoneyBook and everything they offer.

Before HoneyBook, I was using multiple softwares to manage my tasks and client projects. It was messy.

I have zero qualms with other companies, except to say that I’ve tried several but always found myself coming back to HoneyBook. The caliber and the capabilities never came close to what HoneyBook offers and for over three years, I’ve been a committed HoneyBook member, educator and advocate. In just a few years, HoneyBook has helped me completely streamline my business, connect me to like-minded humans across the globe and support me in so many impactful ways since I first started back in 2016.

So today I want to share my top 10 reasons (there’s more, I promise!) on why I use HoneyBook to manage my creative business and hopefully by the end of this post, you’ll feel inspired and ready to get started!

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Reason number 1, HoneyBook has 5 core values that as a consumer, resonate with me deeply

People come first
We love what we do
We are family
We are fearless
We go the extra mile

I’ve been with HoneyBook long enough to know that these statements are all accurate when it comes to what you can expect with this company. They value you and go out of their way to make sure you know that you’re supported and have all the tools you need to better manage your business.

Reason number 2, Templates

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This is where I keep #allthethings. If I ever find myself writing something even just two times, it’s put in a template in HoneyBook. Here’s what I use templates for with HoneyBook:

Emails
Agreements
Questionnaires
Proposals
Packages
Timelines
Brochures

I used to think that I wasn’t being ‘authentic’ enough for using templates but quickly realized that I was being ridiculous. Just because you create a template, does not mean it’s not personalized. I found that setting up all my templates within HoneyBook FIRST was important. That way when you start creating workflows (trust me - we’ll get there), you will be able to do it much more efficiently. I save all my canned responses via HoneyBook and also in Asana, just incase there’s an email that needs to be sent outside of HoneyBook.

I’ve found the best way to get organized with templates is to start outlining what you do within each service you provide and finding past emails you sent to clients and from there start building out the outline to create the right templates for your brand and business! It’s a bit daunting at first, but once you do this backend work you will be wondering why you didn’t do it from the very beginning.

Reason number 3, Questionnaires

Starting a service based business, questionnaires quickly became something that was essential to gather details for any given project I’m working on whether it’s a website build, wedding day photo planning with my brides or requesting feedback from clients. They are easy to put together and help me keep every workspace organized with all the important information I need! It’s also a huge time-saver when you can save them as templates and implement them into your HoneyBook workflows.

Reason number 4, Calendar integration

HoneyBook syncs up with Google Calendars which always makes life more organized. I depend on my calendar for #allthethings and if it’s not on the calendar, it doesn’t happen.

Reason number 5, Workflows

For full transparency with this post, workflows remain a work in progress for me within HoneyBook! For so long, I’ve used a separate task management software called Asana which is where I store all my workflows and use for projects. However, more and more I’ve been drawn to the idea of transferring these workflows over to HoneyBook because I know it will save me so much time! Here’s the thing, once you create all your templates (you know — emails, questionnaires, packages, proposals, etc.), workflows work seamlessly with those templates to have a completely automized workflow and system. You can have certain things push automatically or in your control. You can set up tasks within these workflows to keep everything tidy in one space. I hope to have an update soon specifically on workflows because I truly believe this is one of the best features HoneyBook has to offer. I personally am setting up all my workflows something like this:

Wedding INQUIRY Workflow
Wedding BOOKED Workflow
Portrait INQUIRY Workflow
Portrait BOOKED Workflow
Design INQUIRY Workflow
Design BOOKED Workflow
Design LAUNCH Workflow

Reason number 6, Project stages

This is a simple little thing, but one of my favorite features within HoneyBook! On my main project pipeline, I’m able to see a birds-eye view of my various projects and the stage it is in. This comes in handy when I’m working on any of my projects. For example, immediately after a wedding I’m able to move their workspace from “Planning” over to “Editing”, and as I’m looking at my workload I can see which sessions still need to be edited. From there, I then move it over to my “Thank you” stage which indicates for me that we’re in the close-out stage of the project when I’m working to collect Google reviews and other relevant things to wrap up the project. HoneyBook has certain built-in stages but you can also add in your own to completely customize to fit your business!

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Reason number 7, Contact forms

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I love these contact forms that you can embed right on your website and is completely customizable to match your brand and questions you want answered upon inquiry! I love how clean and tidy it is which is something as a website designer, I appreciate. Once this contact form is filled out by a potential client, a workspace is automatically created in HoneyBook which is yet another time saver and convenience factor I love!

Reason number 8, Professionalism

Professionalism goes a long way when it comes to booking clients and making a strong impression. When I send information with HoneyBook, I know that my clients are impressed. I’ve booked things in the past with people where I’m literally printing off documents and scanning them back to the person which at one time or another may have been the only way but those days are long gone. People in our world today are truly lazy when it comes to living in such an instant society. I mean Amazon two hour delivery? Whaaaaat? The point I’m trying to make is that people like things easy and simple. HoneyBook offers that and much more. Every time I send anything to a potential client or current client, I have confidence in the experience they’re getting and I couldn’t achieve those feelings without a CRM software like HoneyBook.

Reason number 9, Getting paid

Again, full transparency with this section, friends! I do not use all the bookkeeping features within HoneyBook because I use Quickbooks. I’ve used Quickbooks for years and it’s my happy place to reconcile and keep track of all my income and expenses but, I get paid through HoneyBook 95% of the time and there’s nothing sweeter than the cha-ching noise that hits my phone almost daily! Seriously — it’s amazing. I love that I can easily create reports to track my income and that it’s so easy for my clients to make their payments online. Most of my clients are on a payment schedule so they can either manually pay upon each due date or set it up for auto-pay per our agreement. HoneyBook will even automatically send payment reminders to your clients!

Reason number 10, Their incredible customer service

Since being with HoneyBook since basically the beginning of Emma Rose Company, I can without a doubt tell you that their customer service, or what they call their Concierge Service, is truly remarkable. Did you know that HoneyBook will actually help you set up your account and transfer over your exisiting projects from another CRM software to theirs when you sign up? Yeah — epic. I’m talking your invoices, questionnaires, contracts and even your email templates to help you get up and running and familiar with HoneyBook instantly. Like seriously, what are you waiting for?

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DISCLOSURE::

In order for me to support my blogging activities, I may receive monetary compensation or other types of remuneration for my endorsement, recommendation, testimonial and/or link to any products or services from this blog. I appreciate the support and love you all have shown my blog and will only recommend products that I use, love, or covet. That's all!