How an eCommerce Consultant reduced proposal creation time from 3 days to 5 minutes with a custom Dubsado setup.

Name: Elle Williamson

Industry:  eCommerce Consultant and Educator for Shopify & Klaviyo

Service Provided: Summit Package (Full Dubsado Setup of 3 services) + ongoing support via Summit Support).

THE CHALLENGE: “I was writing emails from scratch every single time.”

Elle started her consulting business at the height of the pandemic and, within just a few years, grew it to the size it is. Behind the scenes, however, her systems weren’t keeping up. 

“It was getting really hard work. I’m constantly writing emails from scratch and onboarding was taking ages.”

But a system didn’t seem to be in the works for her. Despite being a relatively tech-savvy person, she’d tried Dubsado before and walked away — unconvinced it was worth the time or complexity.

“I was very resistant to using Dubsado. I’d gotten it years ago, set up a scheduler, and decided that I didn’t really want to pay for it and was going to just use free tools. 

It wasn’t even a cost thing….I just thought it’s not for me.”

So, for years, Elle continued managing her business like a lot of other business owners do. Running it on a patchwork of tools like Calendly and Trello and keeping everything in her head.

THE TURNING POINT: “Finally deciding on a new system was genuinely a lightbulb moment.”

Elle had known Harriet since 2022, introduced through her business strategist, after realising they were local to each other in Hampshire, UK.

But she didn’t make the move to work with her until summer 2024 on a weekend away. As she’d recall,

“I wasn’t even thinking of work. But it had been bubbling away behind the scenes that I wasn’t managing things on my own and by giving my brain that space, I just woke up one morning and made a decision.”

In that moment of clarity, Elle made a decisive call: Dubsado was the right next step for all the manual admin she’d been doing. And she knew exactly who to trust with it.

“It was always going to be Harriet. In the first instance of meeting her, I knew one day I'd be working with her.

Straight away I just knew she had the kind of knowledge and brain that I would need and we get on so well.”

And that same morning, Elle DM’d Harriet to get the ball rolling.

THE PROCESS: “She built the system for how I worked.”

Elle booked Harriet’s Summit Package, a full client experience system setup for her three core services — complete with strategy, mapping, implementation inside her Dubsado account, and 30 days of post-project support.

Harriet’s process began with unpacking the workflows that’d been in Elle’s head all these years.

“I hadn't taken the time to look at my ways of working, my systems, procedures, and my onboarding.”

And Elle admitted this part of the process wasn’t easy at first.  

“I found writing down the workflow process quite difficult. The fact that I could keep coming back to the form though, and through it all, her process made it easier.”

But Harriet met her with patience, guidance, and well-timed nudges that were a nice surprise because it can be difficult to get things done when it comes to your own business. 

“(In our call), Harriet was very patient with me, helpful in coaxing each part of the workflow out of me and going through each step because I was holding so much in my head.”

After all, her systems couldn’t be a generic template, especially with how it had been working for her prior. It needed to be deeply customised to her processes, business model, and client flow. 

That clarity gave Elle the confidence to hand things over:

“She really helped me take that first step of figuring out [how to] onboard each service, what information I need, how I want to communicate with people.”

THE RESULTS: “Letting the systems do it for me has saved me time.

Adopting the new system required a mindset shift — when the old way had been working for years.

“At first, I found it really hard to kind of trust the workflows and know that it was going to benefit me.”

But once Elle started using the workflows Harriet had built, she saw immediate relief:

1. The turnaround time on her proposals drastically reduced from three days to five minutes.

Honestly, it used to take me three days to send a proposal — that’s terrible. And I didn’t really have a reason why, apart from it being so manual

”(Now), I’ll just have a call, send a proposal five minutes later, and then (another) five minutes later they’ve signed the contract.”

2. But it’s not just about beautiful proposals. 

Onboarding has also become smoother and clearer, thanks to forms and workflows tailored to each service.

3. Most valuable of all? A client experience that finally matches the value of her services

“It’s obviously a really great experience for clients — getting these forms and those beautiful proposals, that’s all a given — but for me it was definitely the internal less in my head, less to worry about with the ease of sending proposals, the ease of chasing things, or onboarding with forms.”

The biggest win is the mental space freed up. It forced her to finally step away from holding everything mentally, which has made a huge difference. 

“It’s the mental time… just taken like a weight off, I suppose.”

Continued Partnership

Elle feels confident enough to handle much of Dubsado herself now but appreciates ongoing expert support. When Elle added a new service and needed a new workflow, Harriet was right there to help.

“I probably could learn it all because I like tech, and I can do it with most of it, but it’s so much easier for me to ask Harriet to make these tweaks on things. 

It’s so nice to kind of have her support in that way.”

From her initial resistance to full adoption, Elle became a Dubsado believer — not because the platform changed, but because Harriet tailored it to work for her, not against her.

“It was so slick and easy to give her all my information and get onboarded. 

But the reason ‘why Harriet’ was because I knew she’d give me the right guidance and tools to create a better experience for my clients, but also for me as a business.

For any e-commerce business who needs help with Dubsado or systems or client experiences, I will always recommend Harriet. She’s so easy to work with, really knows her stuff, and makes it really easy to get the desired goals. 

She simplifies all the tech speak that can be overwhelming and scary and breaks it down for you while holding your hand through it.

It’s also nice that she has options to support you as your business evolves. The system she builds isn’t rigid. It’s fluid and she makes sure it still works for you even as your business and tools change.”

This case study was built on a conversation with this specific client, going through our work together. Anything in quotes is a near-word-for-word statement said by the client on a recorded call or in a testimonial.

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