How to Optimize your Dubsado Account with Sarah Martin

About the episode

In this episode of the Mom Owned and Operated podcast, Rita Suzanne talks to Sarah Martin all about how she is raising a family, running a business and remembering herself.

Sarah Martin is a mom to a busy little boy, wife to a tree climber, and Dubsado Specialist. She works with busy mompreneurs who need help with their Dubsado accounts. Whether it’s a full Dubsado set-up or you need a second pair of eyes to review your account, she’s your lady!

When she’s not working you can find her in her backyard playing with her son, going on long walks with our pup, or drinking Starbucks.

You can find Sarah at: her website, on Facebook or on Instagram

Apply to work with Rita at ritasuzanne.com/apply/

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Show Notes
Rita Suzanne
Welcome to the Mom Owned and Operated podcast, the podcast about moms and for moms, where we have candid conversations about running a business, raising a family, and remembering ourselves. I’m your host, Rita Suzanne, a single mom of four, digital strategist, and provider of no nonsense business strategies and tactics. Hi, this is Mom Owned and Operated. I am Rita Suzanne. And today I have Sarah Martin with me. She’s a Dubsado expert. And I am so excited to talk to you today, Sarah, and talk about how you’re raising a family running your business and remembering yourself. So please tell us all way more about you than that.

Sarah Martin
All right. Well, I am a mom to a two year old toddler. He has crazy claims on everything. I am a wife, and I’ve been married for 36 years this year. I live in Cleveland, Ohio. We have a four year old dog, I want to forget about her firstborn. And I am a Dubsado specialist, I work with busy mompreneurs that don’t have the time or energy to figure out dubsado or they just feel really stuck. They need like a second eye on things or contributions. So I do that as well, on top of being a mom.

Rita Suzanne
Yeah. So why do you love Dubsado? so much? I mean, everybody has their preferences, right?

Sarah Martin
Yeah, I so I love dubsado. Because it just it all makes sense. To me. It’s like the everything I’m all about like systems, an organization. And it just, it everything can be so automated, you don’t have to do anything. And so you can really automate like your whole onboarding and off boarding process. And it just makes your life so much easier. So why not? Why not use this? I just really like it. It’s my favorite.

Rita Suzanne
So what can you do in there? So you’re saying like you set up your contract, you set up all of your like you accept payment from there? And then what else do does it do? I haven’t, I haven’t used it. So I don’t really know.

Sarah Martin
So you can do all forms, you can do contracts, you don’t need DocuSign or anything, you can sign contracts electronically inside dubsado. And you can do proposals, which they can select the package that they want, and they get invoiced for that just automatically and fill out the contract at the same time. And they can you can send questionnaire forms have lead captures, where basically that takes place of your contact page on your site. That way, all those leads that come in filter through, they filtered from your website into Dubsado. And so you have that client information already in there and start them down a whole rabbit hole of what the you know, subprime scheduler, and then the questionnaire form and the proposal and all that stuff. I’m gonna do and you can automate with workflows.

Rita Suzanne
It’s just, I love it so much.

Sarah Martin
I just love it so much. You can schedule calls, like have a bunch of different schedulers going on, and post those on your website, too. It’s just I yeah, I really enjoy it. You can also organize clients based on like, job like, where they are in the process, as well. So it’s just

Rita Suzanne
so interesting. You’re just trying to make everybody’s business run smoother. Because, you know, a lot of times people are just, you know, very reactive, just, you know, doing what, and sometimes forgetting steps and doing all the things I know when I’m working with a design client, I’m I even asked them, What is your process for this? And that because, you know, maybe it doesn’t seem related to your website, but a lot of times it really does. Because once someone hits your website, what do they do? And then once they hire you, then what you know, and then all of these things, they all it all plays together. And a lot of times people don’t really realize that these things like need to coexist, right? And in order to make it easier for all for us.

Sarah Martin
Yeah, right. Yep. And I actually work with moms I work that I work with them through their processes that will make sure that everything will be compatible inside Dubsato because some of them solid doesn’t do everything. But it i think is moving in that direction where it will be able to handle lots of integrations and everything but that way we have like conversations and we map out their whole workflow. So that way they are their workflows, so that way they have like seamless, and maybe it’s not all automated, but it’s mostly on its best than what it was,

Rita Suzanne
Well, yeah, cuz you have to push them through to the next step, right? Like they can’t you just Dubsado just doesn’t know when the project is over. Like you have to

Sarah Martin
say, right? Yeah, yeah, sometimes you have to, like, pause the workflow or make sure you approve an action or something. But yeah, it’s it’s pretty, it’s pretty seamless.

Rita Suzanne
Yeah, I mean, that’s good. It, I think it’s always better to have whatever processes work best for you, right? I can’t say, Oh, my process is gonna work. It’s gonna fix your whole thing is gonna solve your life and might not. You know, but Okay, so tell us before you started focusing in on Dubsado, what were you doing before that?

Sarah Martin
So I, the first thing I did was I was a VA and I worked with, like, just general admin VA, I did everything I did. Pinterest, pins, I did. Social media templates are good, like mood boards, and like, regular ads, and things like data entry and stuff, and email management. And then I worked. And then I moved into project management, because I really like organizing. And that’s kind of why I like this a lot. But I started getting into project management and dubsado, setups. And then, end of last year, I just decided I’m not doing project management anymore. I just want I just want one time clients, right? I just want Dubsato. So that is what I do now.

Rita Suzanne
I mean, it’s always I think it’s better to niche down and focus in on something and especially something that you really love. And you know, it just makes everything so much easier, especially when you’re running around chasing a toddler almost all the time, right? Yes. What have you found to be the most challenging thing about running a business and you know, raising your son?

Sarah Martin
Oh, God? Well, a lot of times I had, I had trouble figuring out when I was going to do things and get things done. And that was really hard. That was harder when I was a virtual assistant, because I had clients that you need to do things at certain times. And so I had to be flexible, and I had to do things while he was awake. Yeah. And that was kind of that was kind of difficult. He he doesn’t really allow them to work, like on my laptop. So which is how I how I make money. So I didn’t know. So I have basically just been working during nap time. And when he goes to bed, or I have a really big project or a really long day, I send him away some like to a grandparent or something. So I make sure that someone can watch him. And that way I get a break anyway, he gets to play and he’s not my area. And I know

Rita Suzanne
that mom that mom guilt has been really, you know, remote. Yeah, right. Because I feel like I remember when I started my business, my sons were, I want to say like, five and seven are four and six. I don’t remember. But I would be sitting on my computer. First of all, well, after I had my first and my second son, I used to read books, like physical books. But after having him I had to transfer to reading audible books because or, you know, looking at things on my phone, because he wouldn’t let me like actually hold a book because he wanted all my attention. So I’m sure that that’s how your son is. But when I started my business, and I have my computer, I had both of my sons, they would just sit beside me they didn’t want to do anything. They just wanted to sit beside me and make me watch something like you know, I don’t know. I little Weinstein’s or some, you know, something. And, you know, it was just fun for them to just be near me, you know, so, but it became out of control, because they would draw pictures of me holding, you know, doing nothing but sitting on my laptop. And like, that was how they perceive me because I was doing nothing but working. You know, I was so obsessed with trying to make sure that my business was going to succeed, that I wasn’t really doing a lot of stuff for myself, I wasn’t taking care of myself, I wasn’t doing any of the things that I should be doing. So that’s why I wanted to do stuff like this so that I can find out from other moms, how are you taking care of yourself, you know, since we have everything else to take care of, so please tell us that?

Sarah Martin
Well, I have been really bad with self care, but that’s because I don’t know what it is. I guess self care to me is like, I get to take a shower of itself. I mean, usually I shower at night so he’s not even right but you know, but I do like to send him to some you know, my mom’s house for the night and then I get the whole night and I get to choose, Oh, do I want to stay up till like one o’clock and watch movies or whatever. doesn’t want to go on date night or go sleep and then I get to sleep at until you know, whenever I usually my body usually wakes up at like 8am which is really unfortunate but i don’t i but um, yeah, I I used to go before him I used to go shopping before I had these, like shopping trips, go to TJ Maxx and buy stuff and I can’t even get myself to buy myself anything sometimes so hard. I want to buy him everything. And I’m like, Well, I guess I should buy a new pair of underwear. That would be nice, right?

Rita Suzanne
That’s my that’s why I’m saying like we as moms, we always put ourselves last. And so I think it’s really important just to remember, you know, you are important. You need to take care of yourself. And you know, I think it helps us to to be better moms because we’re not so stressed because I just remember myself being very edgy. I guess she was on edge. Like I’m like, No, I’m trying to finish this thing. I’ll come play with you later, you know? And, you know, I don’t think that that’s you know, it’s like I wanted kids so bad. And here I am telling you leave me, leave me be.

Sarah Martin
Leave me alone. Yes, I used to be so stressed, I used to wear my son, when I had to really work. He was really small and I was a BA. And then my husband would come home and I’d be so moody and I’d be so stressed. I’m like, I have to get this done. I’m sorry, an hour already an hour late, I have to, I couldn’t do it because Sawyer was cranky, or I like he napped on me and I could move you know, and Michael, so my clients really did understand, but some did not. And it’s fine if they you know, I’m just not compatible. But it was just very, I was so stressed like constantly,

Rita Suzanne
which also makes the kids you know, cranky, because they’re like taking our cues and stuff. And so I found when I when I first started my business, I met someone and she told me first of all, I had a lot of mindset issues that I needed to fix, which I have, you know, through a lot of journaling and self reflection and all that other stuff. And that’s super important and very, very helpful. I know a lot of people are kind of resistant to it. But if you could just get in there, it’s going to help you. But then she also told me, she said, you know, you need to get dressed every day. And I say, I don’t really have time, like I roll out of bed and I all I want to do is help my clients and I got to do this for them. And I got to help them because you are committed to them like almost in a people pleaser way, right? And you just say I’m not important enough to do this. And she told me she’s like, you have to do this for yourself. And ever since then I just started doing it. It’s not that I don’t like get crazy dressed up, I’m still wearing sweat pants, I’m still wearing you know, like, and I and I barely put any makeup on and do to do you know, or do my hair like this is like leftover from two days ago. And you know, so I just do like the very bare minimum so that I can feel good about myself. And when I leave the house and not feel you know, self conscious. I yeah, I hear I hear you. I mean, so that I feel like is that is like one of the minimum things that we can do to like care for ourselves. But one of my other guests, she told me this thing and I thought it was super important and really something for us to keep in mind that self care isn’t always like going and doing something it isn’t always like, you know, getting your nails done or going for a massage and all these things that people like make it seem like is important for you. But it’s just being mindful in the moment. And if you need a break, you go take yourself a break, you know, go you know, go do these things so that you can control that. That mood and I think it’s like probably a habit that we have to get into. It’s not something that’s just gonna click and we’re going to be like, yeah, yeah, I’m mindful now. You know,

Sarah Martin
I think sometimes I my husband has been out of town for a while. And so I’ve been just alone with a toddler. My, I have been, I have not been getting faster. Because I, I bedtime, I realized that I’m not sure I actually took him on a walk in our neighborhood, like, four days ago, and I didn’t know I was wearing pajama pants. I was totally in my pajamas. I will I probably look like a homeless person. I just didn’t even realize it. So I was way far down. Like couldn’t couldn’t turn back. But I I think I used to my husband before my husband left in January for a trip. Go to like Target who would come home from work and I’m like, okay, so dinner’s ready. I’m going to target I’ll see you in like two hours. I’m just gonna go walk around, have coffee and exactly You know, be alone.

Rita Suzanne
Right? And that’s, and that’s what we have to do. And I and I, I used to go to my son’s school like and wearing false full pajama pants. I didn’t care, you know, at all probably hadn’t showered in two days, you know, so I completely get it. You know, it’s like, it’s just something that I’m saying like to try maybe yes, yes, I got it perfectly. No, I’m not talking about you, Sarah.

Sarah Martin
I know, I practice together too. I do feel a little bit better when I do actually, like, get dressed in the morning. Like, I’m gonna go somewhere, but I might not.

Rita Suzanne
I always thought so. For me, it was like, sometimes my clients would want to jump on a call and not just a call, like a zoom or back then Skype, you know, and I would just be like, Oh my gosh, no, like, I don’t want nobody to see me. You know, so, um, and I think that’s just my own. That’s my own issue. But I just, you know, said, Well, at least if I can look okay, you know, when I see myself in the mirror, and I think, yeah, oh, you’re not a total disaster, you know?

Sarah Martin
Yeah. Yeah. I’ve been looking at myself lately. And I’m like, wow, I’m a train wreck today. It’s fine.

Rita Suzanne
No, you’re fine. You’re beautiful.

Sarah Martin
I’m alright. I better most days. But yeah, there are there days I look at I’m like, whoa.

Rita Suzanne
Right. Because you know, when you leave, like working from a corporate job, where you get to get up and or you we say get up now and get dressed and all this other stuff, you get to get up. But no, we had to get up and get dressed and look a certain way in order to you know, go but when you’re an entrepreneur, you’re just at home, you know, all the time. And I think it’s easy to slip into these habits of, you know, putting ourselves last again and again and again. And then it becomes so commonplace. Like, even for like buying clothes. I completely understand that too. Because there’s times I mean, there’s, I have clothes in my drawer that I’ve had for years, but they’re just so comfortable. And I’m like, I don’t care. Like I’m just gonna keep wearing these. I don’t wear them outside the house, though. I’ve gotten to that point where I’m like, these are not okay, for outside. Yes.

Sarah Martin
clothes, I’m like, yeah, these are only for what I love. But then I’ve got, like, Lately, I’ve been forgetting that. There are vowels, but

Rita Suzanne
I mean, we just have to, we just have to do you know, and it’s so hard, especially when, as a new mom, right? It’s like getting into the habit of all these things. And plus, you’re running a business, like, it’s just a lot to keep in mind. And just, you know, I just hope that we can all like try to make better habits because believe me, I’m not gonna make a lot of improvements. You know, so I just, I love to hear what other people are doing and kind of share other to you know, tips about how we can all be take better care of ourselves in general. Yeah, because it’s so stressful to to do all these things at once. And then you know, the pandemic is only added to it, because now like, we can’t even go out to outside, you know, yeah, yeah, I mean, we could I always took my kids to the park and all that stuff during this. But you know, it’s like, you want to get out and socialize. And you can’t even do that. Because, you know, everybody’s being careful and cautious, and nobody wants to even look you in the eye anymore, which is crazy. But yeah, it’s the whole

Sarah Martin
thing is I know, we use that part of myself care. So I don’t know if this is self care. But I was I was a part of a mom playgroup for a while, actually, like, first until COVID happened. We were doing like, we were doing things with this playgroup, like three or four times a week where we didn’t know. And we just like, so we could leave the house and we wouldn’t be alone. And he would have my son to have someone to play with. And we would, it would, it was a group of maybe like, 10 of us. And we would just all it was all moms and there was one dad, and we would all just play, he had a meet at a park or if I wanted to go to the zoo, I say, hey, Zoo, I’m going at this time, and we’re going to meet here. If you want to come come, and at least one person always came.

Rita Suzanne
So I love that. So you started a meetup?

Sarah Martin
Yeah, meet up. That’s exactly where we had it. It was I can’t wait for it to start back up again. Because I it was so fun. Right. And it was and it was a way for me to get out even when I wasn’t a part of a deal. Like it wasn’t seeing my employee in that place. But like co workers everyday, right, right.

Rita Suzanne
I think Yeah, I started I started a meetup too after I had my second son. So I have both of them. It was supposed to be just a meetup to like walk and talk. So we all stroller, you know, we would all have strollers and then we’d go on these trails and, and walk and talk. I am still friends with some of those women that I met and we’re talking 10 years ago. Yeah. And so I think that any type of, you know, any type of adult stuff, like even though there’s kids around, like communicating with other other moms is, you know, definitely self care. Because, you know, we can relate to each other and understand, like, the hard times.

Sarah Martin
oh, yeah. And we are and I wasn’t, oh, I knew I wasn’t alone. And then I just had someone I could like, have an adult conversation for because like, when we were doing that playgroup, my son was like, talking. Right, right. So I was just alone, for like, nine hours a day. Right? Like that didn’t talk. And I was like, really well, and I was busy working, but then I need the distractions some days. It was really good to have that. I totally recommend that to like any mom.

Rita Suzanne
that’s the hope it comes back for you because that it’s so key in order to implicits good socialization for the kids.

Sarah Martin
Oh, yeah. So I get so bad for my son. He doesn’t even know what to do around. You either figure out the other day, he doesn’t even know what to do around the other kid. He was so excited. And he just didn’t know how to

Rita Suzanne
interact, right. They didn’t know how to talk to each other anymore.

Sarah Martin
He couldn’t even walk you can run straight here. But he was he was so excited. He was walking. Just couldn’t handle himself. He was so excited.

Rita Suzanne
That’s so that’s so cute. So hopefully now that the weather is starting to break, especially here in Ohio, because we’re both in Ohio. We will be able to get outside like here, because I’m two hours south of you is was actually warm for the last couple of days.

Sarah Martin
Yes, it was warm here. It was like today, it’s now like, it’s like low 50s like high 40s ish. Yeah.

Rita Suzanne
You’re like, I’m still going outside. I don’t care.

Sarah Martin
I’m probably going to sit outside on my patio. I put my patio furniture out the other day, right?

Rita Suzanne
I mean, because it’s we’re so it’s so depressing to be in this cold weather. You know, I want to move back to California just so that I can be outside in the sun.

Sarah Martin
Oh, yeah. We lived in San Diego for a year. My husband is a breed and so we were there for like, I was there for a year and he survived. And it was awesome. Except he didn’t have family there. So that was that was the sucky part for me. But so warm. And it was like the dry heat. That was the best.

Rita Suzanne
I lived there for 15 years with my ex husband. And we lived in, like outside of Orange County LA area. So really close to San Diego, which is so beautiful. There is but you know, obviously it’s so expensive to live there. But I love going hiking every single day. I loved it.

Sarah Martin
Yeah. We lived on it. We lived like maybe 15 minutes from Temecula. Hmm. I loved it. I loved it. I thought it was low. If I could move all my family or some of them to the west coast, I would we would move there on our feet. It’s but

Rita Suzanne
yeah, it is when taxes are so high and everything. Yeah, I just I want to go back so bad. My, my ex husband’s family lives there. Well part of them. So we could go back. But I’m torn. You know, I said I said if I go back, I have to figure out a way for my mom to come with me. So yeah. Now we’ll say last week. Exactly. That’s what I was thinking. Well, I’m like a mother in law house like yeah, backyard. We both need distance.

Sarah Martin
She could have a little white house that type thing.

Rita Suzanne
Yeah, because I’m a neat freak. And she’s not and so that would definitely not be great for us. Yeah, but Okay, so tell everybody where you where we can find you online.

Sarah Martin
So you can find me on Facebook and Instagram. And they’re both the same handle. So at the dubsado is my handle for both. I share tons of free content. So based on my Facebook page I share as risotto tip almost every Monday and then on Wednesdays on my Instagram I share different insider tips on almost every Wednesday. I’m trying to be more consistent on that page as well. And then I have some deals going on and that’s all on my Instagram Facebook pages. I don’t advertise on my website so you have to follow me to get the discount. So I did love it. Yes also forgot to get to it. Um, I was but yeah, then what’s your website as sarahrmartin.com.

Rita Suzanne
Yeah, because it’s such a common name right? You have to I didn’t have to put my middle initial middle initial, didn’t want to listen, I could tell you the story about how I started out as Rita Morales, which is my previous married name, got divorced then and got remarried again and decided, you know what? I’m not doing this last name thing with them again. I’m just going to use my middle name. So here we are. That way you don’t have to rebrand over and over and over. That is so true. Yeah, yep. Thank you so much, Sarah, for taking the time and chatting today. I appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks for having me. And there you have it. I want to encourage you to remember that being a mom who runs her own business is not easy. we all struggle but just keep moving forward. And don’t forget to make time for yourself. As moms we are usually the first thing to go to the bottom of the list. If your business is overwhelming you and you need real solutions, not just some sugar coated suggestions apply to work with me at ritasuzanne.com/apply

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