For five and a half years, I've helped you map your client journey, get excited about what's possible, and then spend the rest of our time together bending that vision to fit inside Dubsado or HoneyBook. As of today, I'm done with that.

This one's short and sweet — part behind the scenes, part building in public. My business has flipped upside down in the last year and a half, and building the Systems Professor app cracked something open that I can't un-see. So here's where I'm going next, and what it means if you want to work with me.

In this episode:

• The pivot I've been circling for five years and am finally saying out loud
• Why building my own custom tool changed how I think about your tools
• What I got wrong with workflows, and then again with Email Like You Mean It
• Why the Experience Edit is now the front door to everything I offer
• The one step I'll never skip with a client again, no matter what software they use
• When a custom-built tool is actually the right move (and when it isn't)

Links mentioned:

• The Experience Edit → https://coliejames.com/experience
• Order of Operations episode → https://coliejames.com/building-client-experience-systems/
• Tomorrow's episode with Kara: how I built the Systems Professor app → https://coliejames.com/everyones-an-ai-expert-ft-kara-duncan/

Ready to map the client experience you actually want, before we ever talk about tools? Solo sprints are open now, and one more group sprint is coming before the end of 2026: coliejames.com/experience

Hey, y'all.

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Welcome back.

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Today's episode is gonna

be short and sweet.

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Think about it as a combination of behind

the scenes and also building in public.

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Because I feel like in the last two

weeks, maybe the last two months if

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I'm being really honest, I have made

some huge pivots in the way that I

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am working with my clients and what

I want my business to look like going

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forward, and I have a lot of really

fun things planned on the horizon.

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Today's episode is just kind of,

I'm putting some of these things

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out into the world so that they're

not all living inside of my head.

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I've been doing the system side of my

business for a little over five and a

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half years, and it's only now that I

truly believe that, like, I know what I

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want to do in my business going forward

for the next five, possibly 10 years.

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And so I'm not gonna share all

of those plans with you today,

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but this is, like, the first

iteration of where I'm going next.

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Now, in the last five and a half

years, I feel like what I have

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offered you has changed, and it

didn't really change a lot in the

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first four years of me doing systems.

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But in the last year and a

half, like, my business has

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flipped completely upside down.

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I now have offers that didn't exist

before a year and a half ago, and these

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are the only things that I am really

focusing on now and going forward.

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And so there's just something

to be said for that.

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And I don't think that, like,

all of the things that I did in

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the past were a waste of time.

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I mean, I've genuinely helped hundreds

of photographers and creative service

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providers to build systems that saved

them real hours and real stress inside

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of their business, and I am proud of

what, you know, I created with them,

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but I am making, like, some pretty

big moves to drastically change, like,

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the actual core offer that I have.

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Now, up until now, I have really

been focused on the tool, and

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more specifically, I've been

focused on my favorites, which

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are Dubsado and HoneyBook.

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I would help you map your client journey,

get excited about what was possible,

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and then we would spend the rest of

our time together bending your vision

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to work inside of software that I was

recommending to you, and I'm honestly

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done with that as of today going forward.

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And what's really made me have this

huge shift inside of my mind was

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building myself the tool of my dreams,

my business dreams, if you will.

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I kept running into the same

problem with my own clients.

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All of my tools, my templates,

my trainings, my feedback, my

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frameworks, everything was scattered.

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Nothing was in one place.

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And so I think all of you know by

now, during my birthday sabbatical,

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I built the Systems Professor app to

help me manage clients inside of the

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Experience Edit and Systems in Session.

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Now, I could never have imagined

that building this custom tool for

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myself was basically going to spark

the next iteration of my business.

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But it just…

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It cracked something open for me,

because I have jokingly said in the

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past that if I had, like, a coder, a

developer, someone that could help me

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take ideas out of my head and actually

put them out into the world, maybe

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that's the path that I would've taken.

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But unfortunately for me, my husband

is a biochemist, and so he is not

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capable of helping me do any of those

things, and all of my besties are

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photographers and photographer educators.

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But I think right now with the evolution

of AI, and more specifically vibe

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coding, that the world of opportunities

in terms of making the tools that

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truly make our business easier is

really open and available to everyone.

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And so now I am of the opinion, if you and

I can really think of what your customer

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journey truly needs to be in order for you

to deliver a five-star client experience,

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that is what I want you to have.

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I no longer want you to feel like you

have to compromise parts of that because

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the tools that are currently available

cannot fully help you realize your dream

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on how you want to work with your clients.

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I want to stop asking you to squeeze

your business into software that

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was not designed for how you work.

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And I'm really sorry that it took me,

like, five years to say this out loud.

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I mean, granted, I was not in a position

three years ago to build the software

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of my dreams or anything like that.

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But here's what this means

going forward and working with

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me inside of my offer suite.

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I want everyone to do the Experience Edit.

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Now, I will admit, it didn't

really seem like the Experience

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Edit was gonna work out.

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It started as that client communication

course that I felt like everybody needed.

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And to me, that was like

the first pivot that I made.

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Because up until I created Email Like You

Mean It, I was 100% focused on workflows.

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I thought workflows could solve all

of your problems in your business.

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You know, you're spending

too much time doing this.

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Let's just automate it

inside of a workflow.

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That was where I thought most

of you were dropping the ball.

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You're doing things manually off of, you

know, checklists and the whole nine yards,

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and I thought to myself, "If I could just

give you some workflows to help you manage

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it, your business would run better."

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And then I admitted in a very

public way that most of you

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weren't ready for workflows.

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Most of you guys needed to sit down in

a corner with a piece of paper and a

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pen and figure out what it was that you

wanted to do with your clients first.

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And then you needed to write the

client communication that guided it.

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But where I went wrong in creating the

course Email Like You Mean It was that

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I was 100% focused on the communication.

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Because that is what my clients

were telling me at that time.

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All of the people that I worked with

in Done For You were all really excited

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about the emails that I wrote them and

what a difference it made when they

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were communicating with their clients.

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But again, I thought the emails were what

was giving them that, when in reality, it

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was one more step backwards to actually

look at the client journey that we had

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planned that the emails were guiding.

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So going forward, Experience Edit is

going to be my forward-facing offer.

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I want everyone to do it with me.

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What we do is we sit down and

we look at your offer first.

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Now, this is new.

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You know, I haven't really talked about

this outside of the Order of Operations

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episode that I published a few weeks ago.

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But everyone is going to get an

offer review from me, and that is

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because I still believe that we cannot

build systems around a shitty offer.

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I want to make sure that you guys have

really looked at these offers that you

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are selling, that you are marketing,

to make sure that they are profitable,

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sustainable, and enjoyable to deliver.

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Now, once we've looked at your offer

and you've gotten the seal of approval,

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you've gotten a green light, the next

step inside of Experience Edit is

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for us to map your client journey.

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And this is an absolute

non-negotiable for me.

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This is the thing that gets you the

business that you've dreamed of.

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This is the thing that makes

workflows and automations possible.

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And so I want us to get together.

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I want us to map out this client journey

so that we know every single milestone

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and every single touch point that you

are going to have with your clients.

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Then we are gonna talk about tools.

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Now, that is the first part, though, okay?

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Experience Edit is all about

reviewing your offer and

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mapping your client journey.

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And after the Experience Edit, I will

still offer you the opportunity to

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work with me one-on-one to implement

this new five-star client experience

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into the tool of your choice, whether

that is an existing tool that you

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brought with you, like Dubsado,

HoneyBook, 17hats, VSCO, Sprout Studio,

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Or if building you something

custom is where we need to go so

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that you can manage your clients

and deliver the client experience

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exactly as you have designed it.

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Because that's what I did with

the Systems Professor app.

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Okay, so is every person

going to need a custom tool?

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No, absolutely not.

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But for those of you that are running

a business like me, where you haven't

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quite found the tool that allows you

to do all of the things that you do

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with your clients in the most efficient

way, that is probably gonna be a

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conversation that we need to have.

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And so I wanna say, I would

love to have you come and join

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me for an Experience Edit.

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I think it is the best thing that

you could do for your business.

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You can go to coliejames.com/experience.

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Right now, I am booking solo sprints,

and what that looks like is you and me

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one-on-one to do these things together.

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Now, I am going to have one more

group sprint before the end of

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2026, and I will be opening up

registration for that next month.

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So you can do a solo sprint or you can

do a group sprint, but going forward,

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everyone that works with me is going

to start with an Experience Edit.

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And if you wanna hear more about

me building custom tools and

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exactly what I did to build the

Systems Professor app, stay tuned.

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Tomorrow's episode is with Kara, my blog

writer, who has been inside the Systems

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Professor app, and she is going to be

interviewing me about how I created it and

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what that means for you if you decide that

you need a custom tool for your business.

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All right.

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That's it for this episode.

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See you next time.