7 Things Successful Freelancers Understand About Creating A Business System

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Business systems

When starting out, most freelancers do it all by themselves and that’s totally fine. But the mistake many make as they grow is overlooking how setting up business systems can make their lives and their work more efficient, easier and certainly less stressful. That’s a shame.

If you continue to do it solo as your business grows, you’ll simply find yourself putting in longer hours and not realizing the enjoyment and the increased revenue you should. That’s not a path you want to thread.

This is where creating a business system becomes critical. Business systems are the practices, policies and procedures that entrepreneurs put in place so that their businesses can run smoothly and they can focus on the “meat” of their work, not the details or the “hired help.”

Freelancers who have grown their businesses and who seem to have time for themselves, their families and an increasing number of clients have understood seven things about setting up a business system. Take a look at these seven and begin to incorporate them now.

1. Work on your mindset

There are people who are self-employed and there are people who are entrepreneurs. It’s a mindset really. If you continue to think of yourself as self-employed, then you will have the mindset that you are the business, not that you own a business.

If you own a business, then that business is a separate entity from you as a person, and you will do those things that will streamline operations so that you have some freedom.

2. Identify your key business tasks

The best way to do this is to take inventory of all that you do within a week. How much time do you spend actually creating work product for clients? And how much time do you spend doing chores like marketing, creating emails/newsletters, maintaining your blog and taking care of all of the accounting tasks – invoicing, recording payments, sending out payment reminders, keeping tax records, etc.?

3. List the steps of each task that relate to your business

Let’s start with a simple example - how often do you post on your blog or social media? What is entailed in creating a post?

The steps you probably take are:

Finding a good topic
Doing the research
Finding or creating the visuals/media to include
Writing and then publishing the post.
Responding to comments/feedback

Create the same “outlines” for all your business chores.

4. Identify what portions of tasks can be automated or delegated

Take a look at the steps of each task process and see what you can automate. Maybe you can spend one day a month creating your blog posts. Then you can automatically schedule their publication. The same with email services. And, as for looking for topics? Use sites like Buzzsumo.com to get topic ideas in your niche. You can also set up an automatic feed from news sites or Google Alerts based upon keywords related to your niche.

Accounting tasks go without saying. Getting a software system that send out invoices, tracks payments, sends out reminders and even categorizes everything for tax purposes is just a no-brainer. Many will even complete your taxes for you, based upon the figures that have been gathered each quarter.

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