Transcripts
1. Introduction Skillshare: [MUSIC] One of the
hardest parts about starting out as a freelancer, a coach, a consultant, or really any other
service-based business is the juggling of all
the different tasks, projects, and client communication
within your business. About three years ago I
discovered an app called Notion, and it has actually transformed how I
organize my business and manage my clients and I think they might be able
to do the same for you. Hello. I'm Cheryl here. I run a brand in
website design business and a YouTube channel
called Made on Sundays. For the past 3 1/2 years, I've been working with many clients around the
world and I actually run my whole business and
client management on Notion. As I've been growing my
business over the years, I keep these three
main priorities to make sure that my business is growing in the right direction. Number 1, I create organized systems so that
I'm more efficient with my time versus
spending more money on hiring people or using
multiple paid apps. Number 2, I simplify my
work so that I can reduce, overwhelm, and prevent burnout. Number 3, I always
try to provide the absolute best
client experience I can so that they keep coming. Notion is really that all in one platform that
helps me centralize everything all in one place to hit those three priorities. In this class, we're going
to be using Notion to create your custom and unique
client headquarters. This includes a dedicated space for your client dashboard, a place where you can see all of your client information
whether it's a pass, current, or a potential client
all in one glance and internal project space
so that you can see all of your project notes, your request, your expenses, information basically just
shared between you and your team and finally
your client portal. A collaborative space between you and your clients that houses all of your project
information or resources, your project phases,
your project timelines, and actually all of your
client communication as well. With the setup,
you're going to have this really effective client
ecosystem that's going to help you be more
productive, stay organized, as well as help you achieve all of your business and
life goals whether that be making more money or creating more space and time
for relaxation. If you are ready to transform
your small business, I want to welcome
you to the class and I will see you on
the other side. [MUSIC]
2. Class Project: In this lesson, let's go over the class project that
we'll be working on. Throughout this class, you're going to be learning
how to create your own client management
system on Notion. As part of that system, you're going to be creating
your custom client portal. In the class project section, I would love for you to
share your completed client portal customized for
you and your business. It can be super basic or you can customize it and decorate
it as much as you'd like. Just take a screenshot
of it and share it and remember to let us know
what your business does. With Notion, the sky is really the limit in terms
of customizations so by sharing your
thoughts and ideas it can really inspire
others as well. Let's get this class started.
3. Get Set up with Notion: In this lesson, let's sign
up for your Notion account, which is the only application you'll really need
for this whole class. Let's make sure that you
get on the right plan. I am on the Notion pricing
plan page right now. I am going to leave
my referral links to this page in the
class resources PDF. Feel free to head to my referral link to
get to this page. Notion does have quite
a few plans here. They're really only ones
that we're looking at today is the free plan and
the plus plan right here. Now, if you're just
getting started for the purposes of this class, you can do everything within this course in this class
through the free plan. The only real difference between the free plan and the
plus plan is one, you get to invite
unlimited guests. For the purposes of this class, that would mean clients. If you want to invite more than 10 clients
into your client portal, then you will need to
upgrade into the plus plan. With the free plan, you
only get 10 guests, meaning you can only really have 10 clients that share a
client portal with you. The other difference
is that you can upload unlimited file
uploads with the plus plan. That's probably not going to be like any challenge for you, unless you're a designer
and you want to upload huge design
files into Notion. You can always just work
around it, like for example, uploading your big files
into Google Drive and then sharing the link to
the Google Drive instead. There's really just
one basic thing that you need to keep in mind
of it's the guests count. For now, just sign up
for the free account. Do this class, and up
until your 10th client, you can then upgrade
into the plus plan. Once you sign up
for your account, you can just click on one
of these to get started. I would actually recommend
using the Notion desktop app. They have one for
Mac and for Windows. Personally, I use a MacBook, so I have the
desktop app for Mac. For the rest of this class, I will be showing my tutorial through using the
desktop application. There's not really much of a
difference between the two, but for simplicity sake
and for organization, I love to keep my screen as
minimalistic as possible, and I feel like the
desktop app really keep things as organized as
possible on my computer. That's the one that
I would recommend. Again, I will leave this link to download your
desktop application. It's free in the class
resources PDF as well. Once you sign up for
your Notion account, let's get to the
next lesson where we actually get started on
building your workflow.
4. Create a Client Database: In this lesson, we
are going to be starting off by creating
your client database. Now, this is a space
where you'll be able to basically put all of the information about
all of your clients, whether they be a past client, a current client, or
a potential client. Essentially, you'll be
making your own CRM, Customer Relationship
Management for free on Notion. Now, if this is not your
first time using Notion and you already have
some dashboard setup, then you probably have some Home Dash,
like you see here. This is my personal Home Dash. In my Home Dash, I have a specific
section for anything related to Made on
Sundays, my business. Right under here is
where I would create my client database
as you can see here. But if this is your
first time using Notion, then you probably don't
have a Home Dash here. We're going to create one
really quickly for you. I'm just going to go
under Private here and I'm going to
click on Add a page. This is going to bring
up a brand new page. This is going to be basically
your first space on Notion. I am going to call
this Home Dash. You can create one for every part of your
life like I did, or you can have one
specifically for your business. You might want to
call this whatever your business name is and then dash or H cue or
whatever you like. You can add a cover if you like. I'm just going to click on
Change cover and then let's just pick a random
one right here. You can also upload
your own image. If you prefer that,
you can do that. You can also add an
icon if you want. I typically like to put a little Home icon
there or you can go to Icons here and pick one of these more minimalistic icons so that they can
all look similar. I'm just going to click
on Empty page right here and it's going to start off
a clean new page for you. Let's just create a
space for your business. I'm going to call it
Made on Sundays Space. [LAUGHTER] You can call
it whatever you like, but there's a couple
of things you can do. You can double-click it and
bold it and underline it. You can even change the size of the text if you wanted to. You can go to Color here. There's these little three dots. If you click on that, there's a ton of things you
can do to customize it. One of the things
that I like to do is to change the color of it. This will now become
your business space. I'm going to be creating
a new page here. If you click on the plus button, you can add new
sections to your space, and we're going to
add a new page. We're going to scroll down
here and click on Page. This page is going to be
your new client database. Again, you can add a
cover if you like. Again, we're going to
create an empty page, and this is going to be the space where you
create your CRM. First things first,
I'm going to click on this Add button again, and we are going to be
creating a database. We're going to be
scrolling all the way down to where it says Database, and we're going to add
an inline database. You can give it a
name if you like. I'm going to call
it Client Database. Now we have this
little database here where you can add properties. Let's start adding
some properties. Every time you create
a new database, Notion always adds this default one which I don't
really like so I'm just going to delete that one and we're going to start
off with the name. In a client database,
at this point, you want to start brainstorming what information that's
important for you to write down for each
client that you come across. Every time you come across a potential client or a client that you've
already signed, what is information that
you need from them? Obviously, their name is
going to be important. Next, one thing that
I like to include in this database for
myself is the year. If you press the
Add button here, this will allow you to input different types of properties. You can go through the list, but we will be using
a few of them. There's texts which is
the one we just used , number, selection. This would be what
we'll use next, which is one selection
of something. Multi-select means
you can select multiple tags for something, their status, date, person, pretty self-explanatory stuff
that you can play with. But for this one, I'm going to click on
the individual select. You can name this property, so I'm going to call it year
actually because that is what I need to add
for my database. If you click on the year, you can actually edit property. This is where you
can add options. For me, I started my
business in 2019, so I'm just going to add
all the years that I have been in business for. [NOISE] Wow, it is the fifth year now.
[LAUGHTER] That's crazy. Yeah, so now that we
have all these options, we can now go into here, and essentially, we'd be able to select one of these years. This is a year that I
typically put when I signed the clients or maybe when I first met them or when they first
reached out to me. Usually, that all happens
within the same year, but I like to keep
track of that date. Next, I'm actually going
to put date because I like to jot down the day of
our discovery call. By adding date here, I can actually go click on it and then I will
basically input the date of when she reached out and we scheduled
our discovery call. Next, I actually like to write down which service that
they signed up for. If you are, let's
say, a nutritionist, then you might want
to jot down like what types of packages
they signed up for. Or if you're a
fitness instructor, maybe you have certain
three-month, four-month, six-month retainers,
and maybe you want to jot down what retainers
they put down. If you're a
copywriter, then maybe you have three different types of packages depending
on the platform. Maybe you have blog posts and website post or whatever it is, and that might be what
you want to put down. For my business, I have branding and websites, so I would typically choose
multi-select because they can sign up for multiple
types of services. I'm going to pick
Multi-select and I'm going to call this Services booked. [NOISE] For my options, I am going to an option
as full experience brand, full experience
website and intensive. Just so you know here, if you click on these
little three dots, it can also change the color. What else is next? Maybe you want to find
out how they found you. I usually put this on my intake. On my website, I have a discovery form and
I like to ask them, how did they find me? You can also use
multi-select for this one. If it makes it easier, if people typically find
you in the same spaces, then you can actually
go to Type here and change this to Multi-select, and then you can add
your options again. Maybe we have add an option,
maybe there's Instagram, there's YouTube, there's
referral. What else is next? I actually like to put down the country
that they're from. Again, we can add those
in US, Canada, Australia. Essentially, I would start
with something like this. As you work with more clients, you're going to realize the
questions that you ask them, what you need to jot
down and you can keep building on this as you
grow your business. For now, let's keep it as that. Let's create a new
client as if maybe someone reached out
and you are ready to input a new potential
client in here. I'm going to call
this client Susanna. When you click on Open, it's actually going to open this new space where you can type in even
more information. Let's say you had a
discovery call with her and you learn a
lot of information, you want to take notes
during the call. This is a space where you
can do that or maybe they reach out by filling
out a discovery form, and on that form,
they shared with you their life story
and you want to put that information somewhere just to make sure
you have it on hand. This is where you can
copy and paste that. I personally like to
use this space here as a template so that
I can write down all the notes of my discovery call with
a potential client. I'm actually going to
create a template here. In this template,
I'm going to call it Discovery Call template. Basically, every time
I open a new client, this template will
open up to help me remember what I want to talk about on a client
discovery call. Some things I might
like to include in my template is the date
of the call maybe, maybe the names of
people on the call, maybe I want to write down what package they are interested in, maybe you want to write down
the name of the company and the industry, Call Notes. During the call,
maybe I'd like to take some notes in this space. I'm just going to add
a little point form. That's how I usually
like to take notes. Maybe I want to remind myself what questions
I want to ask. Maybe like prompts, 0.1, 0.2, and 0.3. Just write it all out so
that you remember you had these as like call
notes during the call. Then maybe I want to write
down what my packages are. Maybe you want to
write down all of your packages out so
that you remember your pricing and notes that you want to talk about
during your discovery calls. But this discovery call
template is complete now. I'm just going to click
on back and that's going to save automatically. Now as you can see, there is this discovery called template that we can click on every time we start
a new client. You can actually create
multiple templates. If you have a discovery call for branding clients
or website clients, or you want to differentiate the different types of discovery
calls, you can do that. When you click on it, you're going to see
this template pop up. Now we are ready to get
on that discovery call. We're just going to head back into your client database here. Essentially, you have
created your own CRM now. Now, in one glance, you can see all of your
clients, past, current, and potential clients
all in one space with all of their
information filled out. Now, in the next lesson, we are going to be creating
your internal project space.
5. Create an Internal Project Space: In this lesson, we
are going to be creating your internal
project space. Meaning, let's say you got on the discovery call with
this potential client, you've inputted all
of the information in your client database and
the call went really well. Now the client comes
back and they're like we're ready
to work with you. Now you're going to want to
create a little project space for this project so
that you can write all of your notes moving
forward for internal use only so that it's a space
where your client can access. Let's get right into it. We are going to head back into your home dashboard and we're going to create a
separate page called. Let's add the button
and then click on Page and we're going to call this
page projects database. We're going to again
create an empty page. We're going to again
add a database. We're going to click on the Plus button
and we're going to scroll all the way down to
where it says database, and we're going to click
on Inline Database. Another way of pulling
up this really quickly is actually to
use what they say here, the forward slash, that one and you can
type in anything. We're going to inline database and that's
going to pop up. We can click on that
and we're going to call this projects database. Now that we have
this database setup, we're going to start inputting
our properties again. We've done this before, so you know what to do. Again, I'm going to delete this tag because I
don't find it helpful. Right now, just keep
in mind this is your internal project space. What do you want to
actually document and write down for every project
that you're working on. I think this is pretty
self-explanatory. This one is going
to be the name. Again, I'm just going to
use Susanna as an example. Something else that I like to put in this
space is actually, status and we can
change these statuses. I'm going to change the
names of these so you can do not started in progress or done. Done for me would be like
a completed projects. I'm actually going to
name this completed. Maybe you want to say in
progress is probably fine because that's a project that
is in progress right now. This one needs to
be up next maybe. What else would you want to put in your project's database? I like to actually
put priority here. Maybe you're working
multiple projects such time. Maybe you want to
prioritize these projects. I'm going to go into edit property and I'm
going to add Low, Medium, and High. Next up, you might want to put in what type of project
you're working on. For me, I actually
like to create this database for all of
my different projects, including my client projects. I'm going to actually
you can say branding or you can make this also
multi-select as well, just like we did before. We can change this to multi-select for
example, and for me, the types of projects
that I might do is branding, website. You can be more as detailed
as you need it to be. Sponsorships is something that I'm working towards and UGC. Those are all the
different types of projects I might be working on. I'm going to add those
in so then we can select them when we
input a new client. Really you can add whatever
you need for your projects. Just really think about it and work with it and
adjust it as you need. When we are creating
a new project, we're going to again input the name and then we can open it up and we can actually open
again another project space. This project space again will be now your internal project space. For whatever you're
working with, Susanna, this is going to be for your eyes only or for
you and your team only. I actually like to
create templates for this space as well. Again, we're going to
create a template. What would we like to
include in this template? I'm going to call this template
the new project template. You can call it
whatever you'd like. Maybe there's a certain type of project that you'd
like to set up, then you can name
it accordingly. For my template, I like
to actually include things like my project scope. This reminds me what exactly we discuss will
be part of the project. I actually like to add a
little checklist here. I'm going to go to add
and add a to-do list, and I'm going to add
the project scope. Again, this is a template, but essentially when I
start a new project, I'm going to use this
space to type in five-page website or maybe they wanted three
Instagram posts. Then I'm going to write all of those deliverables in here in this space so I can remember exactly what was said would
be delivered in this project. Next, I like to actually
include my expenses. For my projects, sometimes I hire contractors to help
out with the project. For example, I might have
my copywriter in here, so I would write down like, what exactly I need to hire for this project and the price that I agreed to pay
for those project. I have all of my expenses
here and one look, and I like to make
these checkboxes because this reminds me if I've actually paid
my contractor yet. If it's checked,
it means that I've paid that portion already. You can use this in
whatever way you like. But that's just an example of how you might want to use it. Next up, I like to just include a space to
write any notes. You can even add a space
for consultations. Maybe you are a
fitness instructor and you have lots of
consultations with your clients. What you can do is
you can actually put, if you like, and actually
add a little drop-down here. We're going to go add a toggle list and you can put
down the appointment name. Let's say the call was
today and this is where you can toggle out and
it'll toggle up more information and you
can put like notes here. This is just an example. Since this is a template, I'll put like consultation date. Then when the call happens, I'll put down the date and this is where I would basically put in notes from that call. This looks like a
pretty great template. One thing that I haven't
talked about yet, which we will learn in the next lesson is
your client portals. We're actually going to
be adding a new page here within the template
for your client portal. I'm going to call this
client portal template. In the next lesson, we are going to be filling out this client portal template. Before we go to that, I'm
actually going to go back. Now you have your internal
projects database to write down all of your notes going
forward for that project. You can customize it as you see need for your project
or for your business. It's really super customizable and personalizable
for your business. Really think about what
you need to jot down and include it within your
internal project space. In the next lesson, we are going to be creating the first part of
your client portal, which is your project resources.
6. Create a Client Portal: Project Resources: In this lesson, we are going to be creating
your client portal. Now, this is going to be that collaborative space
between you and your clients. It's going to house all of your project information,
your resources, all of the back-and-forth
communication, all of your project
deliverables and feedback, as well as your
project timelines. This part of the
system will be split up into three different lessons. In this first lesson, we're going to be focusing on the first portion of
your client portal, which is your project resources. Let's get into your dashboard
now and in the last lesson, we were creating your
project templates. I'm going to go back
and do projects. We were creating a template. This is the template that
we created just now. You can actually, if you
wanted to edit your template, this is good to
know in the future, is you can actually click on these three dots here
and you can go to Edit and that's how
you would bring back up an old template
that you worked on. Let's say you wanted to make
changes or updates to it. That's how you would
bring it back up. This is the client portal
that we were editing. Now we're going to
actually go into it and edit this client portal. Again, I'm going to
add a little emoji. I like to use this little
dancing emoji here. You can use whatever
makes sense. It might even be
your client's logo or something that
represents your client. Again, I'm just going
to use the default like this graphic here
because it looks really nice. We're going to click
on an empty page and let's think about what you might want to
put in your templates. I like to, in this very first
part of your client portal, create a resources section. Actually before we start that, I'm going to let a couple of styling things that
you can do on Notion. If you click on these
three little dots here, you can change the font. There's like three
types of fonts here. Sometimes I like
to use this mono. I like to use small tax just because most of my pages
have a lot of texts, so keeping it small works best. Then you can actually make
it full width as well. That would actually make
use up the whole page. If that is easier for you, for this client portal, you will want to use full
width because there's going to be quite a bit
of information here. In this first section here, this is just an example
of what you might include in your
resources section. But for my client portals, I like to have a section
where I welcome my clients. I'm going to say a
little like, hello, welcome to our client portal. Then I might do a
little description, so description of what
this space is all about. You want to just
type that out and maybe you want to put like
hello client name here. That is going to be like a
little description here. This does look quite small, so I'm going to turn this into a bigger tax here
so that it looks a little bit more profound. After this welcome message, I actually like to then create a space for where we can chat. I'm going to add a
little message me here on the right hand side
to send me a quick message. This will all make sense later, but we will add that
chat in here too. I'm going to make this even bigger because I don't
want it to be missed. If you want, you can
change the color. We can change the color
of any of these sections. You can even add your emoji
there if you wanted to. But for now, I'm just going
to keep that there for now. Now I actually want to create some different sections in
this resources section. The first section here
is I like to start here. Welcome video. If you double-click it, you
can bold it and underline it. You clicking on these
buttons right here, or just go to Command
B and Command U. This is where I like
to actually embed my welcome video that we will learn how to film
at a later lesson. I'm just going to
add here video. This is where you'll be
able to embed your video. The next section
I like to include typically is project details. Again, I'm going to bold it and underline it and you can
also change the color here. I'm just going to
change this here. Under product details, I
like to put the start date or expected completion date. If you want. It's just
like an overview, like let's say you have
different parts of the project or maybe you have like a
consultation call at some point. If you want, you can put
those dates in there as well. Then another section I like to include is project deliverables. Again, I like to
section these out with a little bit of styling here. For project deliverables,
I actually like to make these into little checkboxes. Again, you can go to Add
and then go to to-do lists. Then we are going to add like different
types of deliverables. You can in this space,
type it all out. Like if all of your projects
have similar deliverable. For example, I might
have like branding, like let's say five page
website and copywriting. Those are like the main
services that I have. If you have main services, then you might want to
type those all out. The next section
I like to include is our shared Google
Drive folder. Again, this is very, very much personalized for me, but for every project
that I work on, I always have some shared
Google Drive so that they can send me documents and assets and then I can send
them documents and assets. This is where I would paste
that Google Drive link. Then the next section I like to include is useful resources. Then this is where
I actually like to include different things
like for example, I might create a page here and I'm going to call this page like how to provide
effective feedback. That's something that's
really important for me. I might write an article here or find an article online
and copy paste it into this section so that
they know like what's the best way to provide
effective feedback. Super customizable. But some other sections I might like to include here
might be my referral programs. Another section you
might like to include is like maybe a
testimonial section. You might want to
put a space here and maybe put your Google, your business link in here. Or maybe you can just open up a space like for
example it can be like write your testimonial
here and then you can add a little call out. You can add this
little pencil here. This is where basically they can type in their
testimonial for you. Then the last section that
I like to include here is actually my contact space. I like to call it
contact Cheryl. This is basically
just my office hours. If you need me, these are the days or times that I will
be more responses. I'm just going to add that in. I like to actually
create a little call out here and put a little push pin. This is basically
just going to be like Cheryl's office hours. Sometimes I like to have my
copywriter in here as well. Now you're probably thinking like there's so many sections, it's so not neat. This is where you can start
styling this section now. We can do this and move this
section back into here. Now we're going to
do our second row and we're going to
move this into here. You can really like stylists, whichever way fits best
for your business. But for me, I feel like
having three rows or three columns is
actually the best way to view all of this information. Again, you can add
more sections if you need to or replace these
sections to something else. But essentially,
this is going to be your resources section. The last thing we
need to do here is actually create this chatbox. What you're going to
do, you can do this wherever you like on Notion. If a client has a
specific question on a specific line that you have
later on that we create, they can make this
comment as well. But I actually like to
use this hack to create a little Chatbox like an instant message
feature right on Notion. I'm going to go ahead and select this whole line here and I'm going to add
a little comment. Just to show you how
to do that again, you can click on any line here
and click on comment here. It goes away if you don't
actually comment something. We're going to write
here, Hi clients. I can write the client
or maybe just hi there. Respond to this
message to ask me any questions regarding
our project together. Then I always like to
remind them to tag me, remember to tag me @Cheryl so
that I get a notification. You can send this message. Now we have this little
chatbox here which allows you to have basically instant
messaging with your clients. If they have any
general questions, I can just respond to this, tag you and you'll get
a notification and you can start your two-way
conversation there. This is the first part
of your client portal. In the next lesson, we are going to be creating the next section of
your client portal, which is your project phases.
7. Create a Client Portal: Project Phases: In this lesson, we are
going to be building out the second portion of your
client portal template, which is the project phases. In this section, you'll
basically be grouping together different phases
of the project at hand. It's where you'll
be able to send over your client questionnaire. You can send over your
deliverables to your client as well as they can fill
out their feedback. Basically it's where the actual
project will take place. The different phases of
your project will obviously be so different depending
on what your business does, who your clients are, what industry you're in. But let's just go
over a couple of really more popular
setups that I see and you can customize it
to your own project needs. Let's get right into it. We are back in our client portal template
and we're going to be creating this next
section right here. So in this section we're going
to add again a database. So if we go to database
so far we've only played with basically like a
database database [LAUGHTER], the one where you can put in different properties and stuff. But for this section,
I actually like to use the gallery view. So we're going to make this
into a gallery view and right here is where you're
going to type in the name of this database. So we're not going to be
selecting one from the past, we're actually going to
be creating a new one. So I'm just going to type in, let's say project
phases example. Oops. I'm going to create the new database and
I'm going to click on new database right here. So for my business, I actually like to start off
with a client questionnaire. So my first phase right here in this first image view will
be the client questionnaire. The next section I like to do
is usually my mood boards. So after the client
questionnaire, I would provide a mood board to them and they will
provide feedback. Because I'm a designer, like for most of my
branding projects, they flow through the same way. So the next section
I might be working on logos and assets, and the next one might
be the brand board, and then finally they
might have a wrap-up. Yours might be a
little bit different. So let's say if you
are someone who is a nutritionist or I don't know, a fitness instructor and you work by appointments
or retainers, then your phases
might be something like your one-week check in. It might be your five-week
check-in and then you're one month check-in
or whatever it might be. Then maybe you want to
add one separate phase for the different
appointments that you have. Or maybe it's a fitness plan, maybe you're working with your client on fitness
and nutrition. So one section might be
your fitness exercises, one might be your
nutrition advice, one might be alternative
practices or meditation things, whatever it might be, you really think about how you can separate out the
different phases of the project that you're working on right
now with your clients. So I'm just going to create
some template sections to get things
started and you can start thinking about what might be helpful
for your projects. So one section that I find most clients or most service-based
business owners will need, is probably some client
questionnaire section. So remember, this is a template, so your client questionnaire
here can be for example, what is your name? You can actually type
this out here and have them fill it out
right on notion. Or you can even create
this on let's say a Google Doc and just
embed it into the space, or just copy and paste the Google Doc link into here and they can fill it
out from Google Docs. So I actually like to use
everything within notions. So I actually create my
questionnaire right in Notion, so it might be like, what
is your favorite drink? Then your next question. So that is a popular setup. The next most popular setup
is probably some sort of client deliverable and feedback. So for example, because I am a brand designer, I usually will maybe
work on somebody's logo. So I typically like to
create a space where I can design assets, download. I actually like to
create a little toggle. Actually, why don't
we name it that, Design Assets Download. Then we'll make this
a little toggle. So this toggle allows you
to show more information. So for example, this might be a link to
the Google Drive where I link to Google Drive
or whatever the link is. Then you have the
option to toggle out the information just so it's a little bit more neat and tidy. Then maybe a different
section might be like watch this loom video tutorial. But usually I would like to film these old
loomed tutorials to basically go over
the design assets that I have provided for them. If you'd like to do a little
bit more styling, again, you can change the
color of these just to make it a little
bit more distinct. Then the next section
I like to include is usually like a client
feedback section. So and then this
is basically where they would type their feedback. There we go. So this is a very typical setup for any kind of client
deliverable and feedback. You can actually drag and drop your assets
right into here. So let's say the assets that
you're providing is a PDF or a picture or a
graphic of some sort, you can actually drag and drop those assets right into notion. So if you want to put them
here instead of a Google link, you can literally just
drag those images in or drag the PDF in here, and this is where they
would get the deliverable. Then, yeah, that is a very popular setup that I think most of you
might be able to use. The next type of setup is
maybe some project wrap up. So for most projects you probably need to
wrap up the project. In this space, I like to provide all of the assets
that were provided. So this might be like the Google Drive link just to remind them where they can download all of their assets. If you want, you can actually
drag all of your assets, again into Notion
because it does save it in high resolution
if you have Notion pro. So that's one of the reasons
why I'm on the pro plan. The next section might
be a video tutorial. So for my branding clients, if I do a website for them, like I design their website, I like to actually film
tutorials of how to use their new website
moving forward or how to edit their videos
moving forward. So I would basically embed all of the videos
into this space. Then the next
section might be to ask them to provide
a testimonial. So again, really play with these spaces and customize
it to whatever you need. The options and
customization is limitless on notion which makes it the perfect space
to be doing this. So you can make these as complicated or as detailed
as you'd like them to. But my number 1 rule with
notion is to keep things as simple as possible,
straightforward as possible. It can get overwhelming
really quickly in terms of all the different
things that you can customize or change or
make it look better. But really your
client just wants an organized space to get the information for you and
then provide their feedback. In the next lesson, we are going to be creating the last section of
your client portal, which is your project timelines.
8. Create a Client Portal: Project Timelines: In this lesson, let's build out the last section of your client portal,
your project timeline. This section is meant to help you and your clients
really put all of those tasks that are part of
the project into a calendar. This will help both
you and your clients to see what will be accomplished
during the project, see who's responsible for
all of those tasks and when, and then also give you
both a visual look into where those tasks will
actually fall into place. Let's get right back into
our client portal and we are going to be scrolling
all the way down to the next section. In the next section here, we're now going to be adding again another project database. Do you remember how
to do the shortcut? I'm going to forward slash, I think that's the word for it, and then we're going
to put database. This is where it's
going to come up. I'm going to call this
project timelines. Or you can call this
project deliverables, whatever you want to call it. Keep in mind, this
is a template so for my projects that I worked
on with my clients, it's really often
that it's really the same task over
and over again. That's how I've set
up my project so that it makes it easier for me to replicate
things per client. A lot of my project tasks are very similar for each
project that I work on. Maybe you want to
think about how to create these efficiencies
within your business so that when you have similar tasks within each
project with a client, that makes it a
little bit easier to replicate and save you time. What are these different tasks? In this list, I'd like to add a property
called task name. I like to add a property
for the person that its task is for. Then I might make this like I can then tag
whoever the task is for. So it's either for me or for my client or for my copywriter. The next thing is I like to link this to the project phase. For each of these phases, let's say this phase is
the client questionnaire. I want to be able
to link this to this phase so they
can just click on that link and it'll bring
them into this phase. What you can actually do is scroll all the way
down to relation. I'm going to link it to
this one right here. Project phases example. I believe it's this one. Now I'm going to
add the relation. Now, let's say this task was to complete
the client questionnaire. They can go in here and they can click on client questionnaire. Then let's go into
the next line. We might want to
put a note section. For example, if I assign
this task for my client, like they have to fill
out the questionnaire, this might be a space where I
just add a little note like remember to do this as well. It's really up to you. Then the next space
I'd like to add is whether it's completed
or not, so completed. Then if they complete the task, they can just check
this box off. Then next, you could
maybe add a status. But I actually like to use
the status bar to indicate, I'm actually going to,
instead of using status, I'm going to use select. I'm going to call this status. I'm going to remove this one. I'm just going to call
this again status. This is more of
an internal thing just to help me
filter things out. I like to add a property. I'm going to add
this option as in progress and not in progress. The reason why I add these statuses here is because this project list can
actually get pretty long. Like for each project
there might be like thirty something tasks. It gets a little
bit overwhelming if this line keeps
going down and down. I actually like to only show what is in progress right
now over the next few steps. By tagging it as in progress, I can then filter it out to view only the ones
that are in progress. If I click on in-progress,
as you can see, it didn't show the ones that
are not in progress anymore. It's only going to show the
ones that are in progress this way it gets a little
bit less overwhelming, but this is really just
a personal preference. You can use this
any way you like, but that's how I use this in
progress status property. Did we actually include
a date? We did not. That's the most important thing, we need to include a
date, so due date. This will tell us when the
project is due and I'll probably put that
here somewhere. Part of that. That's probably the second
most important thing. Next up, let's put all of these
tasks in a calendar view. What we're going to
do is we're going to click on this plus bar. Instead of creating a
separate new calendar view, I want it to be linked
to this database. Whatever it shows on
this due date here, it needs to also show
on this calendar. What I'm going to do
is I'm actually going to keep scrolling right here, linked view of database. I'm actually going to click
on this one right here. I want to link it
to this database. I'm going to click on that. Instead of viewing
it in the same view, because right now it's
still a database view, I'm going to edit the view right here by clicking on
this right here, and changing this to
the layout of calendar. You can do a bunch of
different layouts. If you want, you
can also do like a traditional project timeline
view called timeline. But I actually personally
like to see it in calendar view so I'm going
to set it to calendar. If you want to test
out the other views, that's fine as well. When I put a deadline now here, so let's say I put the
deadline of today, It's going to show
up in the calendar. So whatever this task is, let's just pretend this is
like complete questionnaire. Now, this is going
to show up here and the beauty about putting
it in a calendar view, it actually makes it really
easy to change the deadline. As you can see here,
if I put it there, it's actually going to
change the due date to the 16th instead of like
editing it one-by-one. If you needed to change
the date of this, you can just drag it
over to another date. And I love that
about calendar view. I like to have both views. This is more of a Hey, this is due, then they
can check it off. Then they can also
review the calendar to make sure that it works with
their personal calendar. You can also use this as where you can put
in your appointments. Let's say you have an appointment
with them on the 21st, you can just double-click here
and be like check-in call. Then you can put some notes there if
you really wanted to. Then you can also add them. So we can go to people. Whereas the people
on, task is for, and then you can add them into
here and it will give them a reminder when
that task is due. Use a space however you like. Obviously your project is
going to be so different. But keep in mind right
now that this is a client portal template
so I would actually remove these dates right here because obviously every project will have a different timeline. I would type in all of your different tasks that are reoccurring
for every project. Keep these things empty for now and then fill them in once
you create a new client. Your client portal is now done. In the next lesson, we are going to be linking some of these
databases together.
9. Linking Databases Together: In this lesson, we're
going to make sure that the two databases that we just created are
linked together. I am going to head back
into my home dashboard, and here we have our client database and
our project database. We're going to make
sure that both of these are linked together. I'm going to head
into client database first and I'm going to add a property and I'm
going to go to relation, and I'm going to look
up that database. I think it's right here,
project's database example and I'm going to add relation. Now when I add Susanna
to my client database, I can link it to her project. So I'm going to look up
Susanna here and that will be now linked to
the Susanna project. Let's head back to
project database, and we're going to do
the exact same thing. We're going to add a property. We're going to add
a relation here, and I'm going to link it to the client database
example here. Link it to whatever
your database was. Again, I can now link it
to the Susanna clients. Every time I create a new
project or a new client, I can then access their project or their clients
space accordingly. It makes it super easy, like let's say I am
punching in Susanna here. I can actually just go
ahead and click on this. I will head into
Susanna's project space. That is it and in
the next lesson, we are going to be going over my client management workflow.
10. My Client Management Workflow: In this lesson, we are going to be going over my client management workflow. You're actually
going to get a pick into my actual database here on Notion and we're
going to go through every single step as if I was starting a new client right now. Let's pretend that
just got an email from a potential
client from Instagram. They found me on Instagram and they filled out my contact
form on my website and I have a discovery call that I have scheduled
for tomorrow with her, so I want to set her up. Let's head into my
client database. I have lots of
different clients here. I particularly have
the client name, the year that they
reached out to me or that I'm
working with them, I have the date of
the discovery call, the status of the project, the project link, so that it is linked to
the project space, the packages that
they have booked, how they found me, so which platform that
they find me from, which country they're from, their time zone and
who the referral was. I am ready to punch
in a new client now, so I'm going to go all the
way to the bottom and we are going to create
a new clients. What should we call
this client today? I'm going to call her
Lady Rose Client. That's what I'm
going to call her. I'm going to punch in
a couple of things, so we have I met her this year and right now I haven't
filtered to by the year, so she's actually showing up. There she is. We have the date, so we have tomorrow is
the discovery call. It is not booked yet. It is still someone
that I am pursuing. We don't have the
project space yet because the client hasn't booked yet and then she's
interested in a full brand, but she hasn't booked it yet, so I actually don't
want to fill that out and then it's by Instagram. She found me through Instagram. She is American and she's living in New York and that's it. I am going to open up this client and I am
going to click on discovery call template
because I am heading on this discovery call
with her and I want to make sure that I am ready. I'm going to open up this
discovery call template and these are some of the
questions that I typically ask. Personally, I don't
really use these anymore. I use them a lot in the beginning
of starting my business because I wanted to feel ready. But this is just an example of the different things
that are included in my packages and my process. All handy here for me to
make sure that I have it on hand and then a lot of times I'll just write
my call notes here. Every call is different
and so I like to make that space custom
for that client. Once I am ready to, let's say she's like
gets on this call, she's palm, she's like, let's start this project, so I'm going to look
for her and we are going to start this project. Let's look for her here. I'm going to create a new
project space for her. You can actually do that right
in your client dashboard. If you click on
the relation here, which is your project relation, I'm going to click on here and obviously I haven't made
a project for her yet, so I can actually create the project right
in this space here, so I'm going to
Lady Rose branding and I'm going to add
this new project. It's actually going to create a brand new project
space for her. I'm going to click into that, and I'm going to click into that project space
now and I'm going to click on my new
client template of 2022. Perfect. I'm just going to fill out some of these
things here and this is going to automatically create a new project in your
project database. Right now this is ongoing. Next steps, let's say the priority is high as
we're starting tomorrow, we have eastern time
and that is good. I'm just going to
write down like we are doing a full branding for this project and a one-page
website for this project. I'm going to actually
be bringing in my copywriters so
copywriting included, and I'm going to put in my
prices, whatever it is. These aren't my actual prices, but just to drop that
down and maybe I pay my copywriter $800
for this project. I need to make sure that
I take note of that. I actually like to put
down all my client login information because
I'm a website designer, so I usually have
their Canva account, their website login
and domain login, all of that and then if
I have any client calls, I actually like let's say
after the project assign, I'm actually going to have
a call with her on the 10th and I'll just use this space to write any notes
for that client call. Because this was a template, the client portal has
already been created, so we're going to head into her client portal and this
is where I am going to now adjust this for this
client so we have Lady Rose. I'm going to call
this Lady Rose HQ and I'm going to
put her name here, Lady Rose and I already have
my welcome message here to welcome her and tell
her what's going on. This is going to be
the messaging area. Again, I'm going to create a comment here and we're
going to say, hi there, message me back to ask any general questions
about the project. Remember to tag me at my name and then I'm
going to send that. Then in the next lesson, we're actually going
to learn how to film this welcome video. But once that video is filmed, we're going to embed it
into this space right here. The start date of
the project is, let's say this date and then we're going to
fill out those details, those project includes whatever it is so I can adjust those. Then I'm going to actually add my Google Drive link here, so I'm going to grab
that link right now, but when you paste
a link in notion, you have the option to
embed or bookmarks. Usually I like to
embed so that there's a little linked space
there and they can just click on this
and that will link to the shared Google Drive. Make sure to actually
share the drive with them. These are the different
useful resources section that I've created. This is my how to provide
effective feedback section. I have a little section
on a little checklist before they launch their
website, my referral discount, a space to add their
testimonial and then a link to a VIP day which is only
available to my past clients, and then here's my
office hours section. Then there's nothing
to adjust there. In the next section, I'm going to go
through these phases. Every project has pretty
much the same phase so there's not really much
for me to adjust here, but if you need to
adjust it per client, then feel free to do that. I'm going to go through
my timeline here, and we're just going to look
at all the different tasks. Right now there is a filter, so I'm going to remove this filter so I can see
all of the different tasks, and I'm just going to make sure that all of these are still relevant for this
project and if you want, you can see what
I mean by if you just do like unfiltered, there could be so many tasks
and it's overwhelming. Having this filter really helps with this
status bar so I'm going to add that
filter back in. I'm going to go to status
and only in progress. We can actually view this by calendar view as well
so in the next session, we have our calendar view and we can start
punching those dates in. Let's say right now it's February 8th so I'm going to put that
date in here and I'm just going to populate all of those dates so that
the client can then see all of the
different tasks that are due during that times. That is it. After I
complete that section, I can then add my
client in here. I'm going to go to share
and I'm actually going to punch in their email
right here and invite, and that's going to
actually invite them as a guest into this
client project portal. That is my full client
project workflow. I hope it was super
insightful to see how I use the
system for my business. I would love to see
how you then take the system to use it
for your business so be sure to remember to take
a screenshot or send us a link to your client portal and share it in the
project section. Now in the next lesson, let's go over how to film your welcome video
for your client.
11. Film a Welcome Video: In this lesson, let's film your welcome video for your
client portal together. Now the platform that I use
to film any of my videos, including this video
right here is Loom. It is a paid service, they do have a free plan as
well as a business plan. I recommend going on the business plan if
you're using it to film these tutorials and
if you're using it to film client-like feedback
and deliverables and stuff, because on the free plan
you only get five minutes of a video recording time and on the paid plan
you get unlimited. These tutorials might take a little bit more
than five-minutes. Feel free to try use a free
plan if you can keep it to five-minutes if
that works for you, or use any platform
that allows you to film your screen as well as I personally like to
have a little bubble so that it can just be a little bit more
personalized experience for each of your clients. Now I'm going to include
my Loom referral link in the class resources PDF, so if you want to head to that
link to sign up for loom, then go ahead and
find that link there. But the main purpose of this lesson is to
figure out all of the talking points
that you need to include within your
welcome video. Let's head to our client portal and let's review all
those talking notes. We are back at our client
portal template here, let's just pretend that you are starting a new project now, and you want to film this video. What do you want to include
in this actual video? First off, you want
to make sure that you include some welcome
message in the video. You want to make this a
personalized experience. You're introducing
your client for the first time into the space, so you want to make it feel
very customized and warm, especially if you are
an international, if you're working
with international clients, like for me, I live in Amsterdam and most
of my clients are actually North American based
and I'll never be able to see them in person. We might have a couple of
Zoom calls here and there, but having this welcome
video to welcome them into your project space just creates a little bit
more personalization. Say welcome, explain
what this portal is for basically just like
whatever you write here. Tell them that this
is a space for you to host everything
regarding your project. It's where communication for your project will
be moving forward. There's no need
for email anymore. You can do quick messaging
right on notion. This is where they will go back for everything project related. The next thing you
want to make sure to include is your notion settings. This might be the
first time that your client is usually notions, so they might be a
little confused in terms of how to navigate
notion and stuff. You want to make
sure to tell them that there are actually two ways to use Notion, you can either use
it on the web, they can open it as any website. If they want to use it for web, they can save this in
their favorites or something so that
they can head back to this space really easily. If they're using
the app version, you can recommend them
to use the app version, which is what I usually use, and what you're seeing here. Then just make sure to send them the link of where they can
download the Notion app. It's free it depending on
which computer they use. Then when they open up Notion, they can hit into
their navigation here. If they click on, it will say their name like whatever their name
is, Notion space, they will have to head into
your Notion space to open up this client portal space that
you both have access to. That's some quick notes
of how to use Notion. The other thing is to make
sure that you tell them about the notification
settings on Notion. If you head into your
settings and members here, you can head into notifications. Here you just want
to make sure to tell them to turn all of these on. This way, they will always get a notification from Notion, if you have any updates for them or if you tag
them in something, then this ensures
that they don't miss any communication from you
regarding the project. Next up, you're going to explain them about the space
that they're seeing. You can tell them
this first section is all about your
project resources. You can tell them this is the welcome video
that you're watching, and right here, when
they click on this, they're going to see this
little chatbox here. Just tell them that this
is where you will be able to exchange
conversation moving forward. Instead of using email, all of the communication
can happen in one place. Just remind them to tag you and any general project questions they can ask you right here. Then you can just talk through these different spaces here. Whatever you have in
your resources section, just make sure that if there's important things that
you want to call out, just call out to them. Then in the next section
you want to just explain to them what this
project phases section is. Maybe show them an example
of how to provide feedback. Let's say this is an
example you can open up, show them what a toggle is. By clicking on this triangle, you're going to show
more information. Then you can tell them, this is where you'd be
providing feedback to me. Just type into the space. One thing about Notion that's
annoying as if you hit "Return," you'll see
that it leaves the box. You just want to tell them
to hit "Shift Return." That actually
creates a new line, but still within the nodes. It's insignificant, but if you want to keep things a little
bit more organized, that's a little notion know that you might
want to tell them. Then you can tell them about
the product timelines. These are all the different
tasks that are part of our project and all the
due dates are now on this calendar and
just tell them to review this calendar
to make sure that if there's anything that is required of them to
provide feedback for, make sure to check
your calendar to see if it works for them still. This is a great space to
just reconnect with them. Be like, "Hey, this is my expected timeline
for our project, just make sure you
let me know ahead of time if you can't hit
those deadlines." Make sure that the
project keeps going in whatever capacity
that you both have. Then you just want to wrap
up the video, be like, "hey, I want to thank you so much for signing on to be one of my clients" or
whatever you want to say, just wrap up the video with a thank you and welcome them
into your new client portal. Just remind them that you can
always be reached through this chatbox and you're
excited to start your project. Once you are ready to film, just turn on Loom or whichever platform you're
using and record a way. If you're using a
platform like Loom, it will create a
video link for you, and all you have to
do is copy and paste that link and paste it into your start here
"Welcome videos section." Right here is where you
can basically paste that video link and your
video will be embedded in this space so they can
watch this video before they start working with you on your
client portal. That's it.
12. Final Thoughts: [MUSIC] Thank you so much
for taking this class and I just wanted to congratulate
you for completing it. I remember when I first started setting up this system
for my business, I was so excited about all the different possibilities
of how I can customize it exactly for me and
my business and my clients and I'm just really hoping that by
taking this class, it has really sparked that same motivation and
excitement for you as well. But I do also understand how notion can get a little
bit overwhelming sometimes because
of all those ways that you can customize it. My tip at this point is
really just to keep it simple and focus on the
usability of your system first. Trust me, over time, you will learn how
to improve it as you work with it with
more client projects. Start simple and build
to improve it later. I hope you'll also
consider sharing your custom client
portal that you've created in the project section. I really look forward to seeing all of the creative ideas on how you've adapted my
system for your business. Just take a screenshot
of it, share it, and remember to let us know
what your business does. Be sure to check out my
other classes here on Skillshare by following
my teacher profile. You can also check out
some of my free video content all about creative
entrepreneurship on my YouTube channel made on Sundays or you can message
me directly if you want to connect with
me personally on Instagram @made on
Sundays studio. Good luck with your
setup and I'll see you soon. Bye. [MUSIC]
Cheryl Chan, Brand Designer / YouTuber
