I’m working on a series, and the working title for it has been “Freelance Systems and Processes: How to Be Non-Stupid” because stupid is exactly what I’ve been over the years. This is the first installment in the series, and it covers the two big mistakes I have made when trying to bring more sanity and scalability to my business, which has evolved from freelance writing to consulting to a mix of marketing advisory work, brand strategy, and business coaching.

We can outgrow our systems, but we can’t outyield them.

I have learned that the hard way, through expensive inefficiencies. Few things drive me crazier than taking more time to produce work I know is worse or being unable to quickly locate a checklist or template I know I created. Those productivity wounds are self-inflicted, and I had to get my fill of the frustration and pain, before I finally got my act together by creating easy-to-follow recipes, just in time.

You probably know that pain and frustration, or you wouldn’t be here reading this. Chances are, right now, your business has too much spaghetti or canned asparagus. They prevent the growth that wants to happen. If you want to grow your business but not your headaches, then you need your own recipe book.

Let’s put you on that path by going over the two preventable mistakes I made.

Mistake #1 - Spaghetti

The first mistake won’t take me long because most freelancers and consultants are as familiar with it as the air you breathe: messy systems, or what I call “spaghetti.”

Spaghetti is the status quo for most of us. You have systems and processes that pile up over time with your business. You keep switching platforms looking for the best one (e.g., Google Workspace to Honeybook to ClickUp to Notion to Moxie to Utter, Inky-Black Hopelessness), or you get frustrated enough with the inefficiency of a manual process that you finally implement a tool to replace it (e.g., setting up scheduling links instead of the back and forth in email threads).

Without fully realizing it, I used to act from the belief that the best way to get excellent outcomes was to start from scratch with every project. Custom work called for regular improvisation.

To give myself some credit, I knew to put together project briefs, and I generally followed a predictable set of steps. I just didn’t have a structured way, a process for process if you like, for carrying forward and refining the best bits of process. I wasn’t using each project to make the next one easier.

Once you reach a certain point in your career, it’s the avoidable five-minute time wasters, not huge miscalculations, that take little bites out of your effective hourly rate. Across a month and year, you lose significant time worth tens of thousands of dollars.

What’s worse is that being loosey goosey with process added to my stress. Though I was never sloppy in how I approached a writing project, I couldn’t help but wonder, “Am I forgetting something?”

Spaghetti works okay until various inside and outside pressures break the bowl, so to speak:

• You recreate something because you can’t find the last version.
• You hire a virtual assistant or subcontractor but can’t effectively delegate.
• You make a rookie mistake like not using spell-check because you weren’t following a pre-flight checklist.

Spaghetti’s twists and loops affect your efficiency, therefore your output, and therefore your earning.

Most folks don’t change until it hurts worse to stay the same, and eventually, more ambitious creatives and consultants realize that the spaghetti approach to business processes is limiting their growth. The inefficiency and ineffectiveness keeps ratcheting up until you burn out or commit to making drastic changes to the way you operate, whether or not you consider yourself naturally organized and systematic.

That brings us to the second mistake which is a predictable response to the first one: the overzealous documentation of systems and processes, what I call “canned asparagus.”

Mistake #2 - Canned Asparagus

In early 2018, I had just co-founded a branding and marketing studio with a friend, and while I was supposedly out of office and on vacation with my family, I read most of Build a Business, not a Job by David Finkel and Stephanie Harkness.

As they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, all change starts with honesty, and the book forced me to admit two things:

• After 9 years of entrepreneurship, I still had a job, not a company or even a well-defined business model.
• Inefficiency continued to plague my pseudo-business.

That book I mentioned helped me scrutinize my M.O. from a critical distance, and when I looked, really looked, at the various writing and marketing projects I did for my clients, I saw no evidence that the spaghetti approach made my work any better or got clients better results. I also saw that the studio would have the same problems as my solo freelance business. I would unconsciously import them.

I needed to do something different and expect different results.

This was a sane and beneficial insight. My solution, however, was not. I told my co-founder Chris that we needed to document everything.

It wasn’t all bad. We codified most of our branding methodology, and those exercises and workbooks still inform my approach to this day.

It wasn’t all good either. I assumed that if we designed and documented SOPs that team members would follow them. Who doesn’t love clear instructions?!

We soon found that you can have the right systems and processes, and yet if you lack the discipline required to stick to them, they may as well not exist.

Well-defined systems and processes aren’t an incremental improvement. They represent a whole new paradigm. I liked the new paradigm, so I overdid it at first.

Most of the SOPs I so lovingly crafted in 2018 were canned asparagus, gathering dust on the digital shelf. We weren’t going to throw them out. They did have some value. But no one knew quite what to do with them.

How was anyone supposed to actually use an SOP? Do you put them in a three-ring binder? Do you keep them open on a second monitor?

The team gave a collective shrug and did what humans do: They slipped back into old habits, which is to say spaghetti workflows.

Solution: Easy-to-Follow Recipes, Created Just in Time

If I had it to do all over again, I’d do a couple of things that will make it much more likely the processes get used:

1. Let the people responsible for the processes help me create them.
2. House processes where work happens.

People take ownership of processes to which they contribute. So if you want to build a team or have one already, the easiest way to get buy-in is to co-create processes. There’s an efficient way to do this, too:

1. Record a screencapture video of you doing the task.
2. Use a tool like Scribe to create the step-by-step guide.
3. Send the video and guide to the person on your team responsible and ask them to compare the two and ensure accuracy.
4. Ask them where the process should live so that they can quickly, easily reference it each time they need it.

In other words, you don’t train people. You create training and give people access to it. You ask them to contribute and to improve it.

This way of documenting and refining processes represents a relatively light lift for you and has a sneaky side-benefit: It is a test.

What if the person responsible for improving a process known to lead to a positive outcome won’t stick to that process? And what if they won’t propose an alternative and better process? Then, that person has the wrong role. It may be time for them to move on.

The process of creating and improving processes helps you identify mismatches and dead weight.

House processes where work happens.

Now, it’s easy to not stick to processes if they live apart from the work. That was my critical misstep when I had the branding studio: SOPs lived in Dropbox Paper and the work happened in ClickUp. No bueno.

It’s inconvenient for people to interrupt their workflow to track it down. That’s why most of them won’t. They’re not going to rifle through the pantry to find the canned asparagus, and then hunt for a can opener.

It’s hard to stick to the SOPs. It’s annoying to stick to them, and that’s why the sanctimonious manager-cum-mall-cop gets on everyone’s nerves. Human beings just aren’t good at sticking to inconvenient habits. Like water, people flow downhill. We all will do more of it if it’s easy. James Clear wrote Atomic Habits about this very insight: If you want better habits, make the better habits easier.

The solution for us is to make it harder to deviate from a prescribed process than to adhere to it.

If you work in Notion, your brand strategy project template should live right there inside of your project database. And if you work in Moxie and have a “success checklist” for publishing blog posts, then the checklist should live right there in the project card.

One last point: You can wait a while longer.

You don’t need all of your missing processes and recipes right now. You’ve gotten this far without them. You can wait a while longer.

My mistake with the studio was sinking tons of time into creating processes we didn’t need yet. “Just in time” prioritization would have made more sense: What do we need for the client meeting on Tuesday? What do we need for the identity design project next week? It’s the end of the quarter, so what if I put just a little extra effort into turning my quarterly review into a reusable template?

At the start, a solid, just-in-time process only needs 3 things:

1. Intuitive, searchable Name
2. Two-sentence summary of the desired outcome (i.e., what success looks like)
3. Checklist of required steps

You can add videos, screenshots, examples, links to resources, and other salt and pepper, but those basics will take you surprisingly far. This will save you time, and it will also save you regret if the process later changes or doesn’t get used at all.

In Part II of this series, I’ll explain the value of having a visual framework for your freelance systems and processes. I’ll also explain exactly how to create processes that stick. Stay tuned.

When you’re ready, here are ways I can help you:

1. Free Money. A pricing and money mindset guide for freelance creatives. If you’re unsure about your freelance pricing, this is the book for you.
2. Morning Marketing Habit. This course will help you build an “always be marketing” practice, become less dependent on referrals, and proactively build the business you want with the clients you want. My own morning marketing habit has enabled me to consistently make 6 figures as a freelancer.
3. 1:1 Coaching. Gain clarity, confidence, and momentum in your freelance or consulting business.
4. Business Redesign (Group Coaching). Raise your effective hourly rate, delegate with confidence, and free up 40 hours a month.
5. Clarity Session. It’s hard to read the label when you’re inside the bottle. I've done well over 100 of these 1:1 sessions with founders, solopreneurs, and freelancers who wanted guidance, a second opinion, or help creating a plan.