May 02, 2024
- Systems
- Systems
Articles about Systems for a one person business
Systems for solopreneurs
I’ve spent ten years building my microagency as a highly lean, leveraged lifestyle business. I’m sharing everything I know about using systems and automation to build an automated lifestyle business, including templates, tools, resources and video walkthroughs of the systems I use every day in my own business.
FAQs from solopreneurs about Systems
How do you balance automation without losing the personal touch with client as a freelancer?
Good Q man. There’s quite a few parts to it…
🔵 Eliminate, Systemize, Optimize, Automate
Before I automate I’ve already cut a lot of stages out that don’t add any value to the project.
Most of the stuff I’m automating is admin and busiwork.
Instead of calls I do Looms.
The client sees my face & gets the personal touch, but without the small-talk.
Emails are a major time sap for projects.
Many freelancers waste a lot of time emailing back and forth.
Every email generates more emails.
I’d say 80% of emails aren’t needed.
Emails are an art.
Spend 50% longer on every email you send.
Use conditional statements, offer multiple A/B/C options, pre-empt the next step, the next question, make sure you have all the needed info to progress.
Spend longer now, to eliminate future emails.
🔵 Comms
Make sure all your comms are on one channel.
Use apps and tools to gather the info you need in one place in advance to speed up the timeline.
I have an onboarding system that means I get all the info I need collected upfront, which skips a lot of emailing throughout the project.
🔵 Templates
You find yourself saying the same things over & over.
Never do things twice.
Create email templates for the FAQs.
Write guides for the complex topics.
Record Looms with SOPs.
When asked you can simply paste a link to your client so it looks like you’re going the extra mile with advice.
🔵 Feedback
Many freelancers still emailing designs and drafts across.
You can’t get quality Feedback over email.
I do fewer, in-depth 1-1 zooms at key milestones.
Zooms take longer than emails, but there’s less rounds of revisions,
Plus the client gets to feel ownership over the project.
In the long run it saves time to spend a bit longer with clients.
🔵 Always get a happy ending.
People only remember the beginning & the ending.
The lasting impression they have of your service is based 80% on the end.
Most people fuck up the end.
I do “offboarding” to get feedback, improve my process, get a video testimonial, so the last thing the client sees is my face.
I go the extra mile.
I put together a “superhero pack” for my Design Hero clients and post it to them. It’s go some merch, sweeties, a superhero outfit, some lego. Each pack costs me about £30.
But it leaves them with a next level experience, and it sticks in their head, for the next time they get my referral email they are more likely to pass my name on.
There’s no way to automate these special touches.
Sometimes going that extra 10% manually pays off in the long run.
So that’s how I do Personal touch + time saved.
- — from Sajid, SEO Copywriter
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When in my solopreneur journey should I start automating?
the best time to start automating is yesterday. The second best time is now. 😂
Lol seriously though, start as soon as you can so you can buy back your time.
The only caveat:
Automation multiplies your inputs
If you automate a bad process,
you multiply the bad outputs.
Make sure you’ve done the messy manual work first,
So you can optimize the process before you automate it.
When to automate a solo business
Rule of thumb: If you’re going to do it more than once a week, try to automate it,
or at the very least build a template.
Example: even the smallest things like LinkedIn connection messages can be templated, and saved as a snippet in your notes.
It may take you an hour to build an automation for a 5 minute task.
Most people aren’t willing to do this.
But those 5 min tasks are going to continue to pile up, and a good automation quickly returns your time back to you.
- — from Tunca
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How do I meet Deadlines?
Ok, Here’s what I would tell you if you were one of my team.
Lifted directly from my team SOPs
Here’s the Deadline Policy
I want you to take the time to do good work, I don’t want you to feel rushed.
But timeliness is very important.
It’s critical that we show clients regular progress, especially in the early stages after a project, when money has just been exchanged.
So don’t wait until the deadline to start the project.
As soon as you are given a job, start it.
Set your own internal deadlines to be proactive.
Things will come up, feedback will be delayed etc.
So always be as far ahead as you can.
Time only runs one way,
so if the client comes back with feedback late, we adjust the timeline to give us more time to work on the project.
But if client comes back with feedback early, we don’t bring the deadline forwards.
The client gets the results earlier, but the timeline will stay the same which buys us time for future unforseens.
We make sure the client knows we are ahead of schedule.
But we don’t squander this extra time by waiting;
We move ahead with the project and build ourselves a safety buffer.
Agreeing Deadlines
We will agree deadlines that work for both of us at the start of a project.
All tasks and subtasks will have deadlines set in Clickup.
I will try very hard to make sure that you are not rushed in your work, that you have plenty of time to think about things, and that the pace is relaxed. Good work can’t happen in a rush 😊.
Once a deadline has been set we need to meet the deliverables for that deadline.
Client Deadlines
Please note deadlines in Clickup are client deadlines.
“due dates” are the final dates by which the phase should be complete, so includes feedback, mistakes, revisions etc.
You should be working to “review dates”.
Internal review dates are about halfway between formal client review dates.
Review Dates
The review date is the date by which you should have progressed as far as you can,
and then you share the work with me for internal feedback.
There may be informal reviews or feedback needed before that deadline, so please factor this in, and don’t leave work until the client deadline, as this may be too late.
If you’re working by yourself, you can set internal dates for yourself to keep yourself in check:
- Pretend you are the client
- set your own internal review date ahead of the deadline your aiming for.
- Self critique your own work
- Roleplay and ask yourself what I’m going to say, and fix them in advance.
Changing Deadlines
If you think a deadline is too tight
Please tell me so I can factor this into my communication with the client. I don’t bite. 😁
I would much rather you told me a task will take 4 weeks and complete it in 4 weeks, than tell me that a task will take 2 weeks and instead take 4 weeks to complete it…
If things are running behind schedule
Sometimes the client is slow to respond, people get sick, and you might have creative block.
If you feel you will be unable to meet a deadline or feel you are falling behind.
Please let me know as far in advance as possible so I can adjust my response to the client, and adjust any future deadlines to suit.
The earlier I know, the earlier we can find a solution or manage client expectations. 😊
The Key point
If you plan well, optimize your process,
and set internal deadlines well in advance of the actual deadline then you should rarely miss a deadline.
Unforeseen stuff comes up. Always make sure the client knows about it, why, and what the new timeline is.
This way you’ll always be ahead of schedule.
Always underpromise and overdeliver.
That’s how you get happy clients that keep coming back for more.
- — from Sharls
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How do you juggle all the roles you need to do in a solo business?
The short answer is you do have to do a hell of a lot of learning.
At the start, you’ll need to learn all the skills that a business normally has staff for.
You’ll spend half your time doing the work, half the time on “support tasks” that run the business and find the work.
So there’s the project work itself, having some kind of marketing strategy (which you’re always improving), sorting out background admin like contracts and invoice etc.
Once you reach a certain level of retainer income you can invest that regular income to get a VA.
This is a game changer which will free you up to focus on big-picture thinking instead of “doing”
In the meantime systems and automation are the way.
If you’re going to do something more than twice, then spend a little extra time to figure out a system or a way to automate or reduce the steps.
Use templates for everything.
Create template emails for onboarding, feedback request etc.
I’m going to expand this later…
- — from unkown
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