I love the idea of convenience for my clients and visitors – one place where everyone can see our list of services with full descriptions, pricing, availability, and a scheduling feature all in one place.

I began using the 10to8 online scheduling service years ago, but last month I decided to cancel the service. Why?

Well for one, people emailed me anyway. Which I loved! Emails give me every opportunity to connect with clients and potential connections more in-depth. What did I learn? Our people like the personal connection. Easy access, generalization, and disjointed disconnectedness isn’t attractive for our client type. People have questions before they want to schedule (i.e. commit).

Two, more than too many times everyone emailed me anyway saying the 10to8 system wasn’t giving them what they were looking for. Three, I heard myself telling people “the 10to8 system uses parameters that doesn’t account for the human factor.” What does this mean? While a digital calendar is programmable to outline and hold to the things I wish to assign for convenience, this isn’t really what we want. The human factor is not there.

I am a solopreneur, and my workday is all about creation and flow. I am not someone who rents space in one location and offers only a few things. I drive to my clients. I work out of multiple studios. I accept walk-ins. I am available virtually. I offer private and group sessions, and I host multiple events and teach classes. Each day is a mixed bag of meetings and conversations and opportunities, online and in-person. While I did my best to make things very clear and outlined for visitors to my scheduler, it never seemed to provide the ease and grace that neither my client or I needed. I will venture to guess about 98% of booking requests were adjusted, and that was after I contacted them to find out exactly what they were looking for. What did I learn? I thought what I made available in the system was clear and articulate for convenience, but after a brief consultation 90% of the inquirees switched what service they thought they wanted, or were looking for. Also, I was continuously explaining what my schedule actually looked like, and where I was, when.

I love opportunity. I have no qualms about students learning or practicing. I also love to support the underdog, or in this case a start-up. 10to8 was new when I first joined them, and it was a pretty basic package. As they grew and made changes, I was happy to grow with them, even though I was already experiencing challenges. From start to finish with 10to8 never did the system ask for clients to provide more than a phone number or email. The minimum required input was so the system could send reminders for me, which I liked. But most people said because the reminders were auto generated by a bot, they went to spam and so were missed and/or ignored because they didn’t know what it was. A form for plugging in an adress was there, but not provided to the client. If I was hired for an in-home visit, I had to first contact the client to obtain their address, then enter the data myself. I learned a lot people didn’t want a home visit anyway – they were trying to register for a class I provided at that time and location! There was a lot of extra work for me and I became an office asssistant. I was on the sytem more than any client ever was. Then came the point about 2 years ago when the service outgrew me – I was no longer able to access support from the company, but forced to try suggested troubleshoot techniques. Then support came in the form of a facebook group led by other users. Though I emailed requests and asked questions to the company, they weren’t resolved because my eclectic need was not understood by an IT tech. As a solopreneur this isn’t what I need. Updates began happening more frequently and changes to using the system were quick and not so solopreneur friendly. With every update on their end, I had more work to do in the back end of the site. Now I felt as though more time and effort was being wasted – by me AND visitors, and I really really tried to hang in there. Then they took more away, disproportionating what I got versus what I paid for. The cost per month to use the service was definitely beyond what I was getting from them, and my needs were still not being met. I deleted my account with them.

Why did I stay with the service as long as I did? Because of fear. I was afraid you wouldn’t know how to find me. Which is silly, because you can find me, and in so many places – Facebook. My website. Multiple online platforms (see my website for the list). I had cut + pasted that 10to8 link everywhere!! For years! It’s on my business cards, it’s in all of my books bios, in media where I collaborate with other experts. And every single time someone expressed interest in working with me I directed them there. I told everyone to send referrals there. Un-doing it all definitely creates more work. Am I frustrated? – Yes. But the decision to cancel is more in alignment with my needs (and yours!), and the outcome, than the decision not to.

Who knows, maybe one day I’ll research and find something I like that works. But for now I am happy to save the money per month I had been spending on an idea I hoped would work, but didn’t. What does this mean for you? You get my undivided attention! I’m returning back to the basics, the personal and preferred way to provide for you. If you are interested in what Ken and I do, and how we can help you – email us at LiKeEnergyHealing@gmail.com. The first thing I’ll do is ask you when you’re available to chat, and my second question for you will be do you prefer to meet by telephone or on Zoom? We’ll go from there 🙂

Thank You