How Nicole Smith uses ClickUp Forms to Onboard Small Businesses

Small businesses in the United States account for 99.9% of all businesses. If we’re rounding up, that’s practically every business in the United States…

Knowing just how many small businesses exist, some might consider starting one an “easy” career option; however, when it comes to day-to-day growth, there’s no doubt that running a small business is incredibly hard work!

As a CEO, there’s an unwritten expectation to be on top of all areas of your business, be an active family member, and still have time for yourself?! 　

Enter Nicole Smith: Director of The Artisans and ClickUp power user, who offers out-of-the-box solutions for small business owners looking to move past the process blockers keeping them from flourishing in growth.

Nicole crafts informative content to accompany her consultations, including The Artisans Academy and a podcast known as Take Control with Nicole.

We took a virtual seat with her to discover how she finds success in working with small business owners:

What are The Artisans?

The Artisans review and redesign business systems, processes and practices to create an efficient, easier working life. We give you practical tools and holistic support that create space and freedom for your professional and personal life to flourish.

Procedures are not the sexiest part of any business, however, we can genuinely say we love every aspect of what we do. As a small business consultancy, we’re here to set you up with the structure and confidence to pursue your dreams and grow your business without sacrificing your personal commitments and wellbeing.

We work with successful business owners every day to design business solutions that not only support their businesses to thrive but give them the mental space to create, live and grow.

Together we harness the power of slick processes and bring big business thinking to your small business.

How do you use ClickUp to push your company and projects forward?

Designing a solution and process that is not off the shelf allows businesses to continue to operate their business, their way. ClickUp supports its users to fully customise their work spaces their way.

Creating one central location for all the activities we complete, not only for our business but also in my personal life, introduced simplication and streamlined all our actions.

Communication, workflows, daily planning, reminders, reporting, the possibilities are endless. We utlise the functionality of ClickUp every day be that on the laptop or on the go.

What is your favorite ClickUp feature?

How can we select just one!!! Our favourite at the moment are Forms. This feature has enhanced our onboarding process and podcast production by centralising all actions into one space.

How do Forms help you achieve your business goals?

My business is all about creating beautifully streamlined processes for not only my clients but for the way we work each and every day. Welcoming our clients into The Artisans Family is a process we love and we wanted to create an enjoyable experience for all parties involved.

With the utilisation of the Form view, it has taken our Client onboarding process to another level. Designing a form with Custom Fields and personalised branding is a simple an efficient method to collate all the key information from my clients.

To create a personalised touch, we’ve embedded our ClickUp Form into our client welcome webpage that covers all the stages of our journey together and instruction on our next steps.

Previously, we were using another solution to capture this information, but now with the introduction of ClickUp Forms, this has created even more simplicity to our process.

What tools, if any, do you integrate with ClickUp?

Activating the Microsoft Teams integration is a must. This introduces the ability to streamline the process of capturing tasks and correspondence along with communicating externally with ease.

About how many hours a week do you save using ClickUp?

10 hours (at least) 😉

What do you do with that time back?

With the time created utilising workflows and automations within ClickUp this has provided the opportnity to explore exciting new avenues for my business as well as the space to spend with my family and on personal activies.

How has ClickUp improved your work and life?

The discovery of ClickUp has been a game changer for the way our business operates.

It’s such an enjoyable platform to use each and every day with frequent new feature updates, simple integrations and a structure that has created space and time in my world.

When launching my business, I did not think there would be an affordable, fully customisable option for my business and then I found ClickUp.

What advice do you have for others looking to streamline their productivity?

No one person or business is the same, different ideas, different goals, different people, so designing a bespoke process supports not only the success of the business but also allows you to take a step out of the day to day and create the space to grow.

Start at the foundations. Look at what and how you are currently operating and ask yourself “Is this still serving and supporting where I’m headed”?

Introduce automations to your workflows—why work harder when you can work smarter!

Create a centralised location for all your daily actions, this allows your to make informed decisions and saves you time when prioritising your business and personal activities.

Looking to follow along on Nicole’s journey? Check out the latest happenings with The Artisans here and sign up for ClickUp today to discover how you can balance business, family, and time for yourself! 💃