#shopify

Hahaha, that’s a very good question!

As you know I use Basecamp when I work with my clients. And there are times I have to make videos showing Basecamp from the client’s perspective.

So the videos have to show what they see, rather than Basecamp from my viewing perspective.

For that reason it’s good to have a ‘dummy client’ account in the project to make it easier.

Why would you do this?

Well, do you really want to show confidential client information to the team?

A dummy account doesn’t have to be boring. And having Woof! as my Security Officer has broken the ice many times while I’m collaborating a team!

And now you know why Woof! the Security Officer has a Basecamp profile.

Today is the day I onboard my clients into Basecamp for a project I’m extremely excited to get start on!

The screenshot is my Basecamp template before the work begins. I have a some client data in there to get started, but it’s pretty much a blank sheet right now.

This client hasn’t used Basecamp in the past, so I have to ease them into it.

But while in the discovery and negotiation stage, we agreed on using it for the project to make sure everything was in one place, and not all over the place!

All design assets, communications, doors to external tools, milestones, calendars events, everything, will be here.

So no emails, messages, pigeons or any other form of communications will be elsewhere. It will all be within Basecamp.

I’m not a communist, if there are urgent matters we will obviously use other tools like video calls etc.

But if everything is in one place and documented correctly, there are no reasons to have things go astray.

Right?

Often we complicate the most basic of things. Presenting a proposal used to be as simple as a phone call, an email, a chat message.

But they’ve became as convoluted as all the three examples above plus documents, PDFs, external services and I’m sure someone as some point has even sent a carrier pigeon!

I’ve been guilty of some of the exsamples above, but I wanted a way to cut through the crap and just get on with the project.

As soon as I simplified my proposals, and the way there were presented, I got busier. So I made them shorter and shared them as simply as I could.

How? Well, I already had the app!

I started using Basecamp and its ability to share the proposal via a public link.

I find this easier than email, as it can be shared internally with the client’s departments, if needed, before I get the go-ahead.

And I’ll even accept the reply via a carrier pigeon!

P.S. This proposal was approved within a few hours, and the invoice was paid the following day!