694: Invoicing With Studioworks With Jessica and Chris  ## Metadata - Author: [[ShopTalk]] - Full Title: 694: Invoicing With Studioworks With Jessica and Chris - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/ce609111-b260-4a39-aede-6c7424ee5331 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Subscription Over Transaction Fees** - StudioWorks charges a flat subscription and avoids per-transaction take rates to keep more money in creators' pockets. - The app focuses on presentation, CRM-like client relationships, and a roadmap toward proposals and contracts. Transcript: Chris Coyier What is Studio Works? I know it's an app because I used it to invoice you, which felt pretty cool. That's what it does for now, right? Like people can sign up for this thing right now and use it to invoice people. And that already might be a good idea, but it's like going to be more than that someday. I'll tee you up. How about that? Take it, Jessica. Jessica Hische Yeah, totally. It already is a good idea because of invoicing, because, you know, you got a lot of independent creative slash developer folks in your audience, I'm sure. They're having to invoice people every now and then. And I know that your audience is probably more tech savvy than just sending PDFs. But what they probably don't realize is that if they use other invoice software like QuickBooks and all that, they're paying the same amount for their subscription as they would to Us, except they're also giving 1% of everything they earn to those companies, 1 to 1.5%. And we don't do that. If you use Studio Works and you want to keep more of your money, then you get to do that when you invoice all of your clients, which is awesome. And then also... Chris Coyier So you pay a monthly and then you pay no additional slice. Jessica Hische No additional transaction. So we build on top of Stripe, which is what a lot of people build on top of. Like FreshBooks builds on top of Stripe. Stripe even has their own invoicing option. So Stripe invoicing is a product that they have. But even they charge on top of their own fees. So they have a percentage based fee for transactions on top of their base rates. And so we're just using their base rates, which they like had a really hard time understanding that we didn't want to add an additional transaction fee on top of when we were getting set Up. Like their sales team was like, and here's where you add your percentage. And we were like, yeah, we're not doing that. But they're like, but you are, because that's like what everyone does. And we're like, nope, we're not doing that. So their rates are 0.8% with a maximum of $5 per ACH transaction. And so everybody else charges 1% with no cap at least. And so, yeah, so that's one of the reasons. The other reason is it's super designy and it's meant to look very white labeled, like you hired a very fancy person or you yourself as your audience is very fancy and good at development To build a crazy backend for running your business. So it looks as though you have spent the time doing that yourself or have paid someone lots of money to do that. Which, and everyone knows, if you look more pro, you tend to get paid faster. You tend to be able to justify your costs a little bit better to clients. So we're just trying to help people make more money. So on top of the invoicing, you can also add clients. And we're working on building basically like a CRM-ish product that makes sense for independent creatives because most CRM stuff is really like crazy and about sales pipelines and Data metrics and all this kind of stuff, which independent people, what they're mostly concerned about is like relationship management, which is what CRMs say that they are but aren't. So we're trying to build some really fun interactions for helping people actually have better relationships with their clients through that. And then on top of all that stuff, we are also working on a proposals product. What we want to do is basically have the whole pipeline of onboarding to offboarding clients done. So we'll be building out a thing for proposals for MSAs and, and contracts, and then also you know, file management and handoffs and stuff like that. ([Time 0:01:05](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7967ab70-4c63-4e0f-ac23-94b0d7ea29b5)) - **Avoid Extra Payment Slices** - Use StudioWorks' Stripe integration so you pay only Stripe's base rates without an added platform percentage. - Choose ACH with StudioWorks to access lower capped rates like 0.8% with a $5 cap for transfers. Transcript: Chris Coyier So you pay a monthly and then you pay no additional slice. Jessica Hische No additional transaction. So we build on top of Stripe, which is what a lot of people build on top of. Like FreshBooks builds on top of Stripe. Stripe even has their own invoicing option. So Stripe invoicing is a product that they have. But even they charge on top of their own fees. So they have a percentage based fee for transactions on top of their base rates. And so we're just using their base rates, which they like had a really hard time understanding that we didn't want to add an additional transaction fee on top of when we were getting set Up. Like their sales team was like, and here's where you add your percentage. And we were like, yeah, we're not doing that. But they're like, but you are, because that's like what everyone does. And we're like, nope, we're not doing that. So their rates are 0.8% with a maximum of $5 per ACH transaction. And so everybody else charges 1% with no cap at least. And so, yeah, so that's one of the reasons. ([Time 0:02:11](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0d0595e2-74f3-470d-bb77-79218a06ef90)) - **Human-First Reminder Design** - StudioWorks designs invoicing to preserve client relationships and dignity rather than automating blunt reminders. - They send owners a heads-up before reminders so users can prevent awkward client emails. Transcript: Jessica Hische So we're trying to build some really fun interactions for helping people actually have better relationships with their clients through that. And then on top of all that stuff, we are also working on a proposals product. What we want to do is basically have the whole pipeline of onboarding to offboarding clients done. So we'll be building out a thing for proposals for MSAs and, and contracts, and then also you know, file management and handoffs and stuff like that. So that's all on the pipeline or on the roadmap, but for now it's worth it just even for the few things that are really awesome and easy and beautiful that we built. Dave Rupert I have a question. You guys, you both made your careers on invoicing clients and doing client services and building beautiful products. Like what makes you feel qualified to do this? Like what is... Chris Shiftlett Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, probably like both of us have, you know, even before I met Jessica, I had already spent many years freelancing, running a client services company. And you kind of, you know, you run into all the same problems that everyone else does. You know, you see the pain points of running a business. And a lot of it really is about those client relationships. You know, you want to present yourself with dignity, with professionalism. And I think a lot of tools don't really focus on that part of it. ([Time 0:04:08](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6d1836c0-014a-446e-b206-45a0ea99a706)) - **Small Team, Big Infrastructure Experience** - Jessica and Chris assembled a small team of veteran developers who left prior jobs to build StudioWorks. - Their backend experience includes running Samsung's global e-commerce infrastructure with zero downtime. Transcript: Chris Shiftlett And you've maybe encountered a lot of the same problems. Like, wouldn't it be cool if? And like, you know, to give you an example, like we've both been embarrassed by the QuickBooks auto reminders that get sent to your clients with no real heads up to you. It's just that if there's an invoice that's due in however many days and they've already paid, but it hasn't been reconciled yet for some reason, you know, your bank feed, which feels Like you have to reconnect that thing like every three days, you know, fail to do that for you, then it feels embarrassing. Like you're copied on that email. So a client might get an email from QuickBooks that says, hey, pay up, essentially. And you're copied on it, so you feel like also implicated. Chris Coyier Right, and then they respond just because they're like, bro, I have. Yeah. Like we paid you last Tuesday. Chris Shiftlett Like, is there, you know, and you're like, oh, I'm so sorry, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Chris Coyier It just feels like it makes you look less than. So you don't do that, but you don't do it because you just don't do it. You do it because you warn you that you're going to do it. Chris Shiftlett We do send reminders, but we send you a heads up a day before. So you have a whole day to either mark that invoice as paid if you actually got paid, to just turn off that reminder if you're kind of in the middle of a whatever, you know, for any kind of Reason. So, you know, we talked through a lot of stuff like that and had all these big, big ideas. And I even got to wireframing and kind of scheming and dreaming a little bit, you know, more real. But it wasn't until the two developers that are working with this right now, Sean Coates and Nick Sloan, they both quit their prior jobs and, you know, kind of reached out and were interested In working together. And, you know, I know a lot of developers and I've been very fortunate in that way. And they're two of the best that I've ever worked with. You know, Sean and I worked on Samsung's global e-commerce solution, for example, and he, you know, he basically spearheaded the entire infrastructure for that project. It was worldwide. It was, you know, hugely important. It's the kind of thing where if you go down, you know, you can see the millions of dollars they're losing every second kind of situation. And we had zero downtime in the three years or so that we ran that infrastructure. So we've got a lot of real serious technical chops. ([Time 0:05:59](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9361643a-b8e4-4423-877b-9b4d065b734b)) - **Let Clients Tell You How They Paid** - Let clients mark invoices as paid with payment method and expected deposit date to reduce noise and reconciliation work. - Use that client-provided intel to reconcile bank entries faster and avoid duplicate chasing. Transcript: Jessica Hische So they write you and say, hey, it's coming. And then it just puts a thing on your plate. So we anticipated that relationship of the clients to the payments to that by building a way for them to actually tell you how they are getting paid and interact with that invoice. So we have this like mark as paid flow. So they can say the money's coming on this date from bill.com mark as paid. And then that not only stops them from getting like, Hey, you haven't paid this alerts, but it gives you Intel about when the money's actually hitting your bank. Because I don't know about you guys, but like I end up invoicing people for very similar amounts of money. Like I'll have like multiple invoices out at the same time for the same dollar value. And then when they come. Dave Rupert For 2069. Yeah. Yeah. For 2069. For 6767. Jessica Hische Yeah. And then when it hits my bank account, it just says like some random string of whatever. And maybe they're both paying through bill or like whatever. I can't see where it's coming from. But with the like mark is paid thing, I can at least be like, okay, well, this person said the payment date happened on this date. It was for this amount. I can rectify those two things and say, yes, confirm payment. ([Time 0:10:09](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a26294f5-56e5-46bf-bff7-3da25a265e5a)) - **Designing For Financial Clarity** - StudioWorks aims to lower the hidden cost of being poor by exposing cumulative transaction fees and offering clear pricing choices. - The product packages core business workflows so creatives can stop cobbling many expensive tools. Transcript: Jessica Hische To be poor. You know, like there's, we have a lot of folks that use our platform that are sending invoices for like $150. Like they're not sending invoices for $20,000. And when you're sending an invoice for a low amount of money, those rates don't feel like they add up. You don't notice them until the end of the year. And this is why a lot of folks that don't make a lot of money end up giving so much of their money away because they don't feel the hit every time. They can only see it sort of in retrospect. And so it's a hard decision for those folks to make because they can look at, you know, any, some of these other platforms where it's like free, you just have to give us 3% of every transaction Or it's $9 a month, but whatever. So like, they're able to say like, well, I don't want to take the risk of paying a higher monthly rate because I might not be invoicing very much. And, you know, like whatever, 1% is nothing or 2% is nothing. But then when you actually zoom out at the end of the year, if you're making any sort of money at all, $30,000 a year, like whatever it takes to survive as a creative, like it adds up to like Hundreds of dollars, you know? And so we're just trying to figure out how to make that clear to people so that people don't make like penny smart pound foolish decisions and kind of help them, you know, get a better sense Of what's happening with their businesses. Cool. Chris Coyier So this is fundamental to what you're doing here. This isn't going to be like, yeah, we tried that, but now we're going to pivot away from it. Like this is like baked into what you're doing. Chris Shiftlett Yeah, it really is core. I think our long-term vision is pretty comprehensive. You know, we look at people who are freelancing or run like small design studios or something like that. And there's a lot of tools that they use that added up, you know, they're spending a lot of money each month to kind of cobble together these different tools to run their businesses. And, you know, they use like a small percentage of each one. And part of what, part of the problem with that is, one, it's overwhelming. You know, there are a lot of people who feel dissuaded from, you know, being independent or running their own small business because it feels really intimidating. Yeah, Dave's one of them. Worst part. It is the worst part, you know, and it makes people feel like, oh, I'm not businessy enough. You know, it's almost like kids that have a bad math teacher and then they kind of develop this like, oh, I'm just bad at math. Well, not necessarily, you know, so we want to address that primarily. And we also want to like really level up the dignity that people feel when they interact with their clients and kind of, you know, the email reminders thing is just one little example Where we really try to think about the human side of this stuff and really, you know, inject that into these tools. So instead of cobbling together a bunch of different platforms, you might have one place that feels like your place where you conduct business. You know, and we try to do everything we can to make you look more and more pro, you know, whether it's customizing colors and fonts and putting your logo on everything to, you know, every User gets their own subdomain, which you guys know, that's a little bit of a pain. And a lot of other companies would, that's like the real expensive plan. You know, you're paying a hundred bucks a month or 150 bucks a month or whatever to get the one where you have like your own little custom subdomain. You know, so it looks really pro and everything's really seamless. So those things are important to us. And, you know, I've had, the analogy that I would use is, if you guys remember when TSA pre-check was like a new concept. And this was like you still had lines at the airport where like there's a long line for people that don't use the Internet. And it was like kind of this golden era. I loved it, but mostly not because of the shorter lines. It's because I felt like I could go through the airport with my dignity still intact. So I even had friends question that, like once the TSA pre-check lines got longer and longer, you know, they're like, wow, there's like almost no difference now. And it's like, no, there's a huge difference, you know? So to us, like there are some mechanics, like we started with invoicing because we knew that people could, like the membership to Studio Works can pay for itself if you're actually cobbling Together a living. So that's, you know, we know that that matters to people, but that's kind of our shorter lines thing. It's not really the core of who we are. ([Time 0:13:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/db86790c-db15-4b24-ad01-d38db0984788)) - **Show Time vs Cost Choices** - Map common business tasks and show time vs cost so users can choose DIY or pay-for services knowingly. - Avoid building features that solve fake problems; prioritize real, efficient workflows instead. Transcript: Jessica Hische You guys familiar with the concept of TMATs? No. Which is throw money at that shit, right? And so I recently had to file my statement of information to the state of for my S-corp, right? The last two years, I kept hitting that deadline and not doing it. And then I had like a lawyer that had done something else for me. They just periodically reach out to all of their people that they've ever worked with to be like, hey, I noticed that your statement of information hasn't been filed yet. Want us to do that for you? And I'm like, yes, just do it. Like, I don't care. Go for it for $250. So this year I filed it myself and it was $5 and it took six minutes. And so that's the kind of stuff that I'm just like, I want to point out. I like, I would make a whole page on Studio Works. That's like, here are all the things that you have to do as a business. Here's the average time it takes to do those things manually, you know, like, so that you can be like, okay, filing my sales tax for the year, that should take approximately 40 minutes, You know, like whatever versus paying someone else or paying like, like I use Shopify for my online store, for instance, they'll file my sales tax for me for $25 a month if I pay for it. So $25 a month times 12 months versus spending 20 to 40 minutes myself doing it, you know, and I just want people to have the option to like do that math. So we're trying to basically like figure out all the ways that people could use more advice, more help, more product or less product in the things that they're doing. It's one of the reasons why we haven't built like a robust bookkeeping software because we don't believe in it. You know, like we've used, you know, QuickBooks and Mint and whatever that does like auto importing of things. And what it does is it gives you this false belief that if you just like spend a little time each week cultivating that you're like doing better business. But now I do all of my books manually and it takes me four hours and I do it once a year. So I could be doing it for an hour and a half a week and then that equals you know dozens and dozens of hours throughout the year or I can just do it when it's important to do it and just sit down And do it and so we're just trying to be like hey I know that it feels better to like pay for the thing that makes you feel more professional let's point out the ways that you can actually Do the thing that's the most effective, efficient, and least expensive way of doing all the stuff. So we're like both trying to build the things that help make everything fast and easy, but also trying to point out all the ways that things don't need to be necessarily paid for. Because there's a lot of software that's been created and invented to solve fake problems. ([Time 0:18:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/dd88e117-a133-4447-972e-1c72797946fd)) - **Bank Statements As Single Source Of Truth** - Accountants often prefer bank statements as the single source of truth rather than invoice-led platforms with messy reconciliation. - Exportable CSVs let you align any invoicing method with your accountant's workflow. Transcript: Chris Shiftlett Because you've got, sometimes you'll get revenue counted twice until that stuff gets reconciled. It's much cleaner for them to have your bank feed or bank statements be the single source of truth. Like that's, that is the money in and the money out. And then the other thing was, because Jessica and I arrived at a very similar place with how we do bookkeeping, I went even more extreme because I used to be the diligent every day, categorize All my stuff or whatever. One year, I didn't do that. I can't remember why. I just got really behind or something. My accountant's like, well, just send me your bank account and credit card statements, like CSVs. And they took those, threw them into QuickBooks, basically made human guesses on everything and were correct enough. And it took them like an hour and they just charged me for that hour of work. And I was like, wait, I could just stop doing this for good? Yeah. Jessica Hische The only reason why I, uh, so I download and export my own CSVs and sort and pre-sort them, but that's only because like I have sometimes account murkiness when somebody doesn't take Amex or whatever. And so I want to make sure that like when I send the things, it doesn't include personal expenses, But like, I also just go through, I sort by alphabetical order of the, you know, like the Vendor or whatever. And then I just drag all the, the, you know, my categories or whatever, and then I'll send them to my account and then he'll update it to be whatever he needs it to be. But yeah, one thing that we noticed is like, people will be like, well, I can't use Studio Works because my accountant says they use zero or my accountant says they use whatever. And I'm like, the way that you get money does not have to be the same way that you sort your bookkeeping, you know, like, and they don't need you to actually use software to do that. You can just literally download CSVs and it's the same thing because you can save out a CSV as a QuickBooks file format. You know, it's literally the same thing. ([Time 0:22:44](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c8efaa8f-d23c-4717-823f-a581776190ce)) - **Batch Your Bookkeeping Imports** - Avoid always-on automatic bank imports if they create anxiety; instead batch-export CSVs monthly or quarterly for predictable bookkeeping. - Mark and reconcile known periods so you know exactly what you've reviewed and what remains. Transcript: Dave Rupert Do this work and care about it and still want to do it versus people who are just trying to extract money from me, you know? Totally. Jessica Hische It's also similar to like if you're collaborating with someone on a project or if you're collaborating with AI on a project, like you can't just trust whatever that other person that You don't know very well is going to make everything fine. You still have to go through and fine tooth comb everything and make sure it's okay. So I feel like you're actually giving yourself double the work because if you just like do it yourself, you don't have to second guess things. And you don't have to assume it's going to like even if you go through on your super fast software or whatever and like change things that it's not just going to suddenly like overwrite Stuff that you did when it does a new import or whatever. Like, I feel like I was getting such anxiety when I used one of those things too, because I had this sort of like, remember when you used to be able to actually like read the whole internet On like Twitter and stuff like that? Like you could go back to the last thing that you read and just spend the day doing that. I feel like with these things that auto import, you know, you're sort of like second guessing, well, when was the last time that I went and actually corrected it? I don't remember when that date was. Now I have to make a date on my calendar to say, okay, from November 2nd on, those things are all new and whatever. Whereas if you're just downloading them like a month at a time or a quarter at a time or a year at a time, you know exactly which ones you've sorted through and which ones you haven't. ([Time 0:25:24](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e7212874-9549-41dc-b6c4-e8c5f3d9aff6)) - **Signing Up Felt Frictionless** - Jessica described signing up and customizing StudioWorks as fast and delightful, taking under five minutes for her invoice setup. - She praised curated font and template choices that make invoices look professional without overwhelming options. Transcript: Chris Coyier What is it? Maybe we could paint the process and I can start it a little bit because I went through it. It really did take me, you know, because Chris is like, you know, because this was a was a one off invoice for me to you or whatever, because the future shows on Chop Talk Show, be prepared. People are going to have a little studio works blurb from from from me, probably. And and so, you know, that's a transactional thing. And I was like, well, I have my crappy little way of invoicing people, which I do it so infrequently now that it's like a pages.app template. And I just like plug the crap into that or whatever. But Chris convinced me. He's like, just do it, man. And I was like, okay, all right. I'll use your little software. It is beautiful software, by the way. It was a pleasant sign-up process. And I bet it took me less than five minutes, including connecting it to Stripe because I already had a Stripe. I guess if you had to sign up for Stripe, it might be 18 minutes or something. And then what you're talking about, there is a lovely little moment where you get to choose kind of a theme. So you can kind of pick any colors, which is nice. But when you're specifically thinking about the typography and layout and stuff, there's only just a few. And I think that's nice. There's not like a hundred, there's like eight or something. Chris Shiftlett Yeah, it's trying to curate, it's trying to make it like flexible enough that you can kind of present yourself the way that you want. But we do want to really stick to making things simple. Right. So like really easy, quick and simple, you know, the least that you can kind of get away with to do these things. Jessica Hische Well, also too, with the font stuff, like, so we're working with font foundries that are like amazing font foundries. So we have a bunch of other fonts in our pocket that we haven't like put on there yet. And the reason is, is because, you know, most other places what they would do is just dump in like Google Fonts library, like anything that's free. But they wouldn't be accounting for the fact that some of those are display fonts that don't have a complete like set. Some of them are like variable fonts. Some of them are, yeah, some of them are, you know, huge things. So what we do, what I do is I map every font against every CSS style so that it looks good within our UI and within the system. So like all of the H1s are like custom handled to work best with that new font. So it's not just like you're adding a font family and it's swapping out the font family. We're actually changing CSS attributes so that it looks great across everything. So that's, we didn't talk about it too much, but one of the things that's really cool about our team is that everybody's like super polymathic. And so like Chris obviously like has a background in both like product design, development, and then also like managing businesses and teams and engineers and all kinds of stuff. And like while my background is primarily in design, I, the reason why I got so excited about building StudioWorks is just because of all the resources that I've made for the community About pricing work and sharing business tactics and stuff. But I also do all of my own front end development on all of my projects. So I like write CSS and HTML. I'm like, I haven't advanced into like actual coding languages so much other than PHP. And I know that that is like a little of a dinosaur-y way to build, but I'm very happy. It's coming back. This is what I've learned if I just stay with my 15-year languages that everything comes back around to them after they've burned through something else. And so what's really great about all of this, and then like Sean is of course like a complete wizard with all the backend stuff. And then Nick basically apprenticed from Sean, so can do both like the backend and is a very amazing front end developer that, you know, has a good like aesthetic sense as a front end developer As well. But because I understand how front-end dev works, I can design with that in mind. And I can like build with the constraints of what a, you know, design system looks like from the dev side. And so all of the grain of the web. Yeah. So all of this has been really handy. Chris Shiftlett Shout out to Frank. Jessica Hische And so, so yeah. So like, that's why it's's not like I'm not a weirdo for being on a – that's why Chris and I know each other and Dave and I know each other because I used to be a weird web person. I've built a bunch of weird web stuff. Yeah, indeed. Chris Coyier There really needs to be one, though. This is a free idea. If you have one client, like for the most part, you want to look very distinguished and nice and you want your invoices to look beautiful, you know, but you have one client that you're Like, oh, I need to look a little more blue colliery for, you know, like to just make like a sh**ty aerial theme or something just for that one client that's just a little jacked up looking, You know, just for that. Jessica Hische Well, I will tell you that I actually, so we have, right now we have three different templates for the invoices. We, I designed five different templates, but we've implemented three so far. And part of that is just because, like you said, like there's, it's one of those things, like when you have all these different variables that are already in play. Like there's like the main color palette that you create, which like you choose a primary color and we create an accessible palette based on that. But then you also choose your text color, which is like your black and there's several options. And then a page tint that goes above the whole screen that kind of makes it feel printed and then like a highlight color. So those are already like four things that can really shift the vibe. And then with the fonts, that's another thing that can shift the vibe. And And then with the template, that's a thing that can shift the vibe. So what you'll, and then also just the data that goes into the invoice can shift the vibe. So what I find is that even though like I might have a preferred template that I use for most things, cause it showcases the fonts that I like the best for certain clients, I'll use a different One just because it's like the information looks better in it or is cleaner or is quieter or whatever. ([Time 0:37:47](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fd56d7ba-2793-4286-a243-a390be3cbe2c)) - **Designing For Low Friction Execution** - StudioWorks intentionally designs for neurodivergent users by minimizing friction at the moment tasks are done. - The team values making invoicing as effortless as possible because founders themselves face attention and motivation barriers. Transcript: Jessica Hische Up the neuro spice is big, right? I am also neuro spice. I don't know if Chris is neuro spice. I think I think you're the straight the straight man of our our spicy relationship here. Chris Coyier Which Chris being that I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm sure I'm not. If they don't know, they're both. Jessica Hische If they don't know, they're both. They're both basically whether or not you have ADHD or some other form of neurodivergence. And so like anybody that has ADHD knows that the second that you hit any friction along the path of doing anything, you're like, and I give up now. And then you go and do whatever is the path of least resistance. You just can't move on. And like, like, no, just everyone should know. Because I feel like the web developer world is full of NeuroSpicy people because we all find our path into things where we either like want to talk to people all the time or never have to Talk to people again. Or can't hold down a normal job. Dave Rupert Yeah. Jessica Hische Yeah. Like everybody, like we don't want normal jobs. We can't have normal jobs. We're unemployable because we have to bumblebee around all of our interests and like, let the wind take us to the next thing that we want to do. But just know that one of the main people behind the helm of this is someone who's like, I can't make anything happen ever. So I need to make it as frictionless and humanly possible. ([Time 0:48:07](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3300a6d7-f08b-4ed3-bd0a-309b9d912859)) - **Give Clear, Secure Payment Options** - Provide explicit payment instructions for check, wire, Zelle, or PayPal inside invoices so clients can select the correct method. - Implement secure reveal flows for sensitive bank/wire details to protect account information. Transcript: Jessica Hische And so for me, it's like really, it's the same deliverable no matter what, which is a thing that's not actually giving my accountant the login, though we do have a plan to like have accountants Be able to like get into your account to make it even more seamless and things like that. But I mean, the main thing for me is it's just been so much easier to send invoices to clients. And like if a client gets a reminder email, but they've already paid it, I'm like, oh yeah, like you didn't mark it as paid, which is why that happened. You know, so in the future, like if you... Yeah, it kind of puts it on them a little bit. Chris Shiftlett Yeah. It doesn't feel like your fault. Jessica Hische Next time, just say you've processed it and you won't get that anymore, you know. Yeah. And yeah, it just makes having the conversations around money a lot easier because like I have people that's pay by check and things like that too. And so they can select like I paid by check on this date and it shows them like who to make it out to and what. That is nice. Chris Coyier I've never seen that. Jessica Hische I know. On an invoice app. The thing is it's like normally people will just write a big block in the note on the invoice. That's like if you're going to pay by check, send to this. If you're going to do this, send to this. Chris Coyier Yeah, all these different ways. Oh, yeah. Mine has a huge footer on it. It's like half the page of like, because I totally don't care. It's like, do you want to PayPal me? Fine. There's actual UI for that for your clients. Chris Shiftlett So when they pick check, we say make checks out to, you know, Chris and here's his address, you know, send it here. Jessica Hische Yeah. And I have a whole thing designed for that for like you doing custom payment methods that we just haven't implemented yet so that you can be like, I want to add Zelle. My number for Zelle is this. I want to add PayPal. My thing for that is this. Like, and then you can give instructions like, like if you're going to send by PayPal and we're friends and family, I recommend that, you know, because like, otherwise it's like, Is Chris Coyier There no fees? Somebody asked me that the other day, just to make sure we do a weird aside. Why did we ever use PayPal? It's so popular. And I can't even remember. Jessica Hische PayPal's fees are outrageously high. If you're using it for business. Chris Coyier They're super high, but they have the friends and family thing. Chris Shiftlett So most people just are not honest. Chris Coyier Which makes it zero all of a sudden, right? Yeah. Chris Shiftlett And you're not really supposed to do that. Jessica Hische But you know, we can't, you're not supposed to do that, but that's on you as an individual to make that choice for yourself. Chris Coyier Why did we, why was it so popular? I can't remember history. I'm like, it's blocked out of my mind. Well, there weren't a lot of other options. Dave Rupert Yeah. It was the first one that figured out how to... But there was credit cards, right? Jessica Hische Yeah. Credit cards fees are just as high though. Like credit card fees are really high. Usually 3%. Yeah. And so PayPal is close to that. PayPal is around 3%. But they also, like I was trying to print all of the, like what I wanted to do is make all the fees really transparent for every service. Like here's what you're paying, blah, blah, blah. And for PayPal, I couldn't even do it because they have different fees depending on which like state you're in and things like that and what industry it is. So they actually like calculate things totally differently. They have like a foundation, but then they have all these additional fees that go on top of it based on your location and also like what you're doing it for. So it's really complex. But anyway, like just long story short, we currently, the UI allows you to get paid online by bank transfer or credit card. Um, and then offline by check or by other, and then other is a blank where they, the client can say bill.com, PayPal, whatever. And then they say the date of the deposit and mark is paid. But we have a whole UI that we've built out so that you can say, I want to get paid by e-transfer, send it to this account, like whatever. And, and, uh, same thing for wires and stuff like that. ([Time 0:52:01](https://share.snipd.com/snip/becf340a-1bef-49a2-ba24-a1f7c21e8248)) - **Longevity Linked To Subscriber Success** - StudioWorks' business ethic ties its longevity to its subscribers' success and aims to model a non-extractive product approach. - They hope other niche-focused businesses will replicate transparent, service-first pricing. Transcript: Dave Rupert The ethos is your longevity is connected to your subscribers longevity, right? Chris Shiftlett Like it's people who, yeah, we're in it together. Dave Rupert You understand the costs that hit you real hard as a, as a consultant and small business. And like, you're trying to make that as low as possible for people so they can survive, survive and do their job. And yeah, I think that's really cool. Jessica Hische Running a small business is really hard no matter what. And I just feel I'm also, I hate that we live in a world where people have to look for like every opportunity to extract money from you because that's like how capitalism works now. It's not, and I feel like it's happened within how we behave on the internet, how, like all kinds of stuff. Like you used to be able to just be on the internet and it wasn't about you selling something or being sold to all the time. Like there were spaces where that wasn't a reality. And we just want to make it so that people can live in a world in which like everything that they interact with is not looking for another way to fleece them, you know, like, and we want to Prove that that's a way of building that is sustainable so that other people can build similar products. ([Time 0:56:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/38e472fb-0a58-4e4a-9a6d-e15398555615)) - **One Plan, No Hidden Upsells** - StudioWorks offers a single flat plan with no tiers, no per-seat pricing, and no in-product upsells so everyone gets the same features. - Consider trying their trial offer to see if the single-plan approach fits your workflow. Transcript: Chris Shiftlett Yeah, well, we have a special offer for Shop Talk listeners. If you head on over to join.studioworks slash Shop Talk, And I'm going to put this page up later today. So good thing this isn't live. But we're going to offer basically instead of $39 a month, it'll be $29 a month for your listeners indefinitely with the first month free. So you can try it out and see if you like it. If you sign up before the end of the year. And just to put a little emphasis on the price, like for us, that is the only money that we are making. That's our business model. It's as simple and transparent as we can make it. And that's the price that we gave to people who signed up with their credit cards in hand, ready to pay us before we even launched. And we call them our founding members. And we've got several hundred of those. And, you know, they're our VIPs. We, you know, we just think the world of them. That was what gave us life while we're working on this thing for several months with no money, was that we've got all these people kind of have pledged to become customers as soon as we Launch. So, you know, your listeners have a chance to kind of be part of the same group of people. Jessica Hische And also, we should probably like really emphasize there's no in-product upsells. There's no per-seat pricing. That's it. There are no tiers. There's no tiers. Like everybody gets everything. Chris Shiftlett We thought about doing that, but we didn't. We were like, we're going to write code to say like, if you didn't pay us enough money, don't execute this code. That just feels dumb. Like everybody gets everything, you know, like you, you have a, you know, you're at no disadvantage to companies that can pay more money. ([Time 0:58:46](https://share.snipd.com/snip/53c1cec5-a1c2-4c06-b01e-b947dfc3b32d))