How to Manage Your Freelance Business Like a Pro?
Are you sick and tired of spending your precious time on repeatable tasks?
If you feel like tedious business tasks consume way too much of your time you should read this.
Plus: with this post we have an extra special cheat sheet to help you manage tedious tasks in your business.
What are the 3 parts of any business?
There are three parts of any business:
1. Production
That’s your product or service you offer.
2. Operations and Administration
That’s where you are focused entirely on yourself managing tedious, repeatable tasks. It creates this thrilling feeling of having constantly something to do. But the truth is it doesn’t bring you any further. It’s like running in circles. No progress at all.
3. Marketing and Sales
It’s pretty self-explanatory.
What you should be focusing on?
Now, having in mind the golden rule: 20% of activities creates 80% of results, think about where your focus should be.
Let’s start from the bottom. That’s where Operations and Administration has its place. You should invest only minimal amount of your energy, time and money in this area. 10% is just fine.
Use simple tools, simple processes, outsource whatever you can. It’s just a glue that holds your business together. Nothing less and nothing more. Period.
Next comes your Product or Service. Invest 25% of your time, money and energy to improve your product. Why only 25% you might ask.
It’s because…
No marketing = No money
Marketing and Sales has to take 65% of your energy, time and money. It’s the core of your business. That’s the area where money comes from. It’s the money-part of your business. Without marketing you have no money.
Without marketing nobody knows you and nobody know that your product or service exists or why they might want it.
If they don’t know you they don’t buy. If they don’t buy you won’t make any money. It’s that simple.
Use your resources in a smart way
Let me ask you one question here: can you focus on marketing (bringing money to your business) when the operational side of your business consumes the most of your time?
You probably already know the answer: it’s impossible. You cannot focus on both. Your resources are limited.
The good news is whatever you’re focusing on, tends to expand. So you better think about bringing money to your business than focusing on yourself, operations and managing all those repeatable tasks over and over again.
How to do it right? Keep reading and you’ll learn some proven tactics to better manage yourself in business, reduce time spend on tedious tasks and boost your productivity.
Ready? Let’s dive in.
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Let me show you what we've created especially for you.
This cheat sheet will give you:
a quick overview over 10 essential areas of your business with potential to free your time
an inspiration to build a solid stack of solutions to manage repeatable, tedious tasks in your business like a pro
We will also provide you with a step-by-step email series that will include recommendations
on hand-picked tools to help you create your prefect tool stack with ease.
Why are you freelancing?
Why did you leave the corporate world or a desk job to be a freelancer? Was it the desire to have flexible work timings or choosing the projects you like to do?
Being a freelancer, you are your own boss and can do whatever you enjoy doing. That might be procrastination or a full day of work. You could either be lying around on the couch for hours scrolling your Instagram or Facebook newsfeed.
Wasting time is super easy but is that a smart decision? Probably not!
You have to plan and manage your time. Decide the work timings for yourself, as well as take time for your family, for yourself and for your friends.
How to deal with being constantly busy as a freelancer?
If you are thinking that your freelance routine is too hectic and makes you feel sick or tired, you need to spend some time sorting things out.
Of course, you want to make more money, and the more time you spend online, the better the chances of making more money. But has it started resembling the office 9-5 routine and it’s affecting your health? This was the reason you’ve left the job in the first place, right?! You need to immediately make some changes before you cause harm to your health.
Make a SMART and reasonable To-Do list
Making to-do lists are one of the best ways to organize and schedule your routine. This list needs to be reasonable and doable, if you cannot complete 3 tasks in a day, putting 10’s of items on your to-do list daily makes no sense.
Are you looking for a tool to make it easier for you to organize your schedule without needing a personal assistant? To-doist is the one you’re looking for. It helps you decide what tasks are urgent and important and will help you keep on track.
Keep a track of your time
Now, the most important task is to track the time that you spend doing different tasks and to help you in deciding what projects should you be working on.
You could use a number of online tools like Clockify, Trello and Timely to help you keep a track of your earnings as well as the time to complete a certain task. This will also help you decide your hourly rate and can send in reminders for the date of submission of your projects.
Minimize distractions
Every one of us has experienced how social media sites can take a huge portion of our time and is one of the biggest distractions.
And for freelancers, it’s the biggest threat because you are not being intimidated by a boss and you can easily waste your time on social media. So to help you with that, the first step is to turn off notifications from social media to stop your phone from continuously buzzing and distracting you.
One easy solution is to fix a time for your freelance job where you turn off your phone and give these power hours to the work. Even if you work for 4 power hours, it will excessively boost your freelance career.
Take a break
It’s totally okay to take breaks from work, schedule a gap between a month to plan a weekend trip or picnic with your family, you can also use this to visit your parents or on a day out with friends.
This will help you freshen up a little, and would be a huge change in your monotonous freelance routine.
Start saying ‘No’
Many freelancers have the habit of continuously working for hours and hours and can’t say no to their clients, because it’s more money, right?
But that’s a huge mistake! It can affect your health and you would lose the motivation to work. Some freelancers would even consider the 9-5 traditional jobs because of the horrors of a tough routine.
So it’s better to say “No” to the clients if you don’t have time, just be polite and friendly while explaining why you cannot do the job.
How to maintain focus on your goals?
A freelancer’s job might sound easy, but if you cannot maintain the focus and discipline, it might be the hardest job for you to do.
What should you do to focus on your freelance career, and stay motivated? The following tips will help you out if you’re unable to establish an efficient routine.
Work routine or office timing
You might ask yourself; why do I need a work routine as a freelancer? I left my office job for having more flexible timings!
That is true, you do not need to have a tough freelance routine, but setting the time to work will help you in having ample time for yourself to do whatever you like to do later. You can set up your office, which will also help you to stay focused on your goals and the projects.
Designing your office as a place where you can work without any distractions can also help in maintaining focus on your goals.
Physical activity
For having a fresh mind to work, you need to have some physical activity on a daily basis.
With a fresh mind, and a healthy body you’ll be able to work more efficiently and quickly as compared to being lazy and indolent. You have to set boundaries for yourself to stop working continuously for hours without any physical activity.
Introduce 5 minutes of physical activity after 1 hour of continuous sitting and working.
Appreciate yourself through self-rewarding
If freelancing is your dream job (I hope it is), you should be proud of yourself for working so hard.
Appreciate all your efforts on a daily basis to keep yourself motivated towards your goals, and reward yourself for gaining more motivation to work.
Track your goals
Set a goal for each week for the number of projects and the completion time, do not just randomly try to complete as many projects as possible. Rather work towards how much money you are going to make this week (This needs to be reasonable, nothing crazy!).
For tracking your goals, you can use a number of resources, for example, to buy a planner, in which you can jot down important tasks to do on a daily or weekly basis.
You can also create a list of achievements, that will motivate you and encourage you to work more. You can also use goal tracker apps if you like to have it handy on your mobile phone.
Remap your day, know your productivity cycle
Do you know what time of the day you are super productive and creative? If not, you should find the right time to work.
It could be 4 hours in the morning, or even late at night, whenever you feel comfortable and don’t get distracted. You need to map your day accordingly to boost your productivity and utilize your time effectively.
Automation - It will change your life!
What’s the most important skill of every successful freelancer? It’s the ability to effective manage their time, because time equals money.
How can you use your time efficiently?
You don’t have to spend all your day in front of a laptop, it will ruin your health and burden your mind with stress and anxiety. Luckily, we have technology that works wonders. You can perceive it as your “virtual assistant”. You just have to invest a good amount of time, in learning how to use automation tools, it can make your life easier by lowering the stress you’re getting from all the repeatable tasks.
Automatic Email Communication and Invoices
Most of the time, freelancers are stuck in crazy email situations. Every morning, the inbox is full of emails and it’s a dream for every freelancer to see their inbox with zero new emails. It’s a hassle to read and respond to all emails. It takes up all your valuable time, that you could have spent actually working. How to resolve this problem? “Automatic Emails!!!”
You can use “Labels” and “Folders” to organize your inbox and this way you have easier access to the important emails. Secondly, you can use the option of auto-replies on the basis of certain words in the emails through email automation software. Phew! You now have a clean email situation.
In a similar way, you can generate “automatic invoices” for your clients through different tools like “invoice Ninja” or “Inveezy” which will create and send the invoices for you without you having to manually send them to every client.
Surveys and contact forms
Setting up contact forms and survey forms for your clients is the easiest way you can communicate and understand their needs.
If you are not yet using contact forms, you are making your life harder!
Invest your time in creating forms, so you don’t have to ask a ton of questions from every new client which will take up most of your time.
There are a number of tools that you can use to make these forms, like Typeform, survey monkey or Google forms. It will create a huge difference and will boost your time management.
Automated Contracts
Once you have been successful in getting yourself hired by a new client, it’s time for some (digital) paperwork.
You have to sign a contract and you cannot create a new contract for every new client (obviously!), it’s a hectic job to do it repeatedly.
Set up automated contracts software, it will collect the contact information of the new client, that you can double-check, add specific details and set up a new contract for you! That’s awesome, right? You don’t have to customize contracts every other day.
Automatic Progress Reports
Most clients would want to receive progress reports on a regular basis if you are new to this business.
You would also want to win the trust of your clients by keeping them updated about the work. And it is not too easy to send reports manually to every client, so how can you fix that?
You can use several tools like Trello or Basecamp, which will make this process less complicated for you.
These tools let you check off the tasks or show your progress in the task by some simple clicks. And it also has the option of sending email notifications for the progress on the tasks.
Automated Social Media Posts
This step is a bit tricky for many freelancers because as good as automation can be helpful with scheduling posts you have to keep in mind that you cannot automate the real engagement with your audience. You cannot automate real conversations and care.
However, you can use the power of automation tools to make your life easier when scheduling posts in advance. Because consistency is the key if you want to build a loyal audience.
Later, Meet Edgar are great scheduling tools. They differ in details so you have to do your homework and check out which one will better suit you.
Advantages of outsourcing if you’re a one-man show style freelancer
Do you receive orders on a regular basis, and have a long queue of orders waiting to be submitted? You can use that for your advantage.
The clients that order your work, trust you for the quality work you provide and because of your amazing communication skills.
Instead of saying no to them, you could outsource some of the orders.
There are many advantages of outsourcing, you can find freelancers without having to provide them an office area to work.
You can either find someone from the co-working place you share or a good freelancer or friend who you trust to deliver the quality work.
In this way, you can hire specialized talent suitable for the job, and at the same time not lose your clients.
Another advantage of outsourcing is, you get fresh ideas from people from around the globe. So, if you are out of new ideas, stop worrying and outsource the work to someone else. It will benefit you as well as other freelancers.
Last but not least…
Hope you’ve found this post useful. Please leave your thoughts in comments.
I cannot wait to hear about how you manage your freelance business.
Remember to check out the cheat sheet we created especially for you. It will give you an inspiration to build a solid stack of solutions to manage repeatable, tedious tasks in your business like a pro.
Take care ❤️
Mariusz from the Time Continuum App