The importance of an optimised workflow
If you want to be in business for yourself, one of the things that you’ll have to develop is some sort of optimised workflow.
That was a mouthful of a first sentence. Let’s try again.
In any business endeavour, you’ll waste a ton of time. Whether it’s clicking between windows on your computer, or looking for a customer’s phone number, you’re going to lose time all over the place.
Obviously, this isn’t something you want to do.
I do a lot of stuff… in fact, I’m pretty sure if I went to one of those business doctor people, they’d tell me I was a crazy idiot. “Jamie, stop trying to be crazy and do everything, concentrate on one thing until you make a billion bucks.”
That’s probably a smart idea, but it’s just not how my brain works. I get bored really easily.
Anyway, it’s still a good idea, and the advice in this article obviously applies to anyone who has a bigger brain than I do.
However, if you are like me, flitting from one project to the next, then you need to definitely build an optimised workflow for each project.
“I’m still not sure what you are on about Jamie, what do you mean “Optimised Workflow?””
Good question. I’ll get to it now.
You know all those things I mentioned above? The tiny little issues that lose you time, money and effort are what we need to eliminate.
Like I said, if you’re flitting between projects, this is a must.
When I have a new freelance client, I know exactly what to do.
When I think of an idea for a new book or niche site, I know what to do.
When I think of a new gap in the market, I know what to do.
At least, most of the time I know what to do. The idea of optimising your workflow for all of these things is a constant. You need to continually optimise so that you make life easier for yourself.
I’ve talked around this point in various articles.
Keep your business plan simple.
What can you automate?
How to market your niche site
And many others.
To put it plainly, “automating” various processes will make you better at everything; because it’ll give you time to devote to other things. (Or, it’ll give you time to become better at that one thing you concentrate on.)
Let’s take an easy example:
You’re a freelance writer. You need to pitch people to find new work.
If I told you to do this right now, how long would it take you to be ready to pitch your first client?
Quite a long time, most likely.
Or maybe you’d rely on spamming out the same pitch to a hundred different people. (Let’s hope not, though.)
With an optimised workflow, you could get these things down to a very short amount of time:
You have a set of templates for the various services you offer.
You have a research protocol for particular customer needs and industries you’re targeting.
You have a list of places where you find clients and you have bookmarks that take you directly to where to find the people you need to speak to.
You have a set of follow up emails ready to go for the various responses you’ll get to the initial pitch.
You can do all of these things, and once you implement them and optimise them a little for your situation, you’ll get processes that take hours down into minutes.
Now, imagine you could do that with:
Customer support.
Project delivery.
Upselling.
Getting testimonials and other stuff you do after you’ve completed the work.
Those are all minor competitive advantages that’ll mean you’re taking a few minutes of non-cognitive work where your competitors are taking forever (or are simply not doing anything/doing the wrong things.)
What’s better about this is that if you use split-testing principles, you can see what really makes a difference and what doesn’t. (For instance, a simple “Thanks for hiring me, did you like your article?” Email might mean you get more business. Just a hint.)
Other Optimisations For Different Projects
An optimised workflow will help you with a ton of other different areas. There are a lot of guys in the niche site challenge who’ve told me that they spend hours and even days doing research. Whilst a lot of this is simple indecisiveness or not wanting to risk starting a failing site (or, other reasons we all give ourselves for not doing things – I’m not judging, we all do it) a lot of it is also that people haven’t yet worked out a system.
If you’re in this camp and you want to start a website, try and create a more optimised workflow for your project.
A good way to start is to say, “I’m going to think of a hobby, pick the first three related products, google “best product” and pick the first three items that come up, and then write three product reviews for those items. Then, I’m going to go on my keyword tool, pick the first ten non-competitive keywords for the niche and write ten other articles for my site. Then I’ll upload them all and be done with it.”
The key to optimising your project is to create a set of simple instructions for yourself and do nothing but those instructions.
The Mental Dimension To Optimised Workflow
The physical stuff is listed above. It’s pretty much a case of reading the last sentence. Set yourself goals, do those things, case closed.
However, there are mental issues a well.
People have fears about starting a project and it’s those that hold them back.
People think “Yeah, but what if this or that happens? I can’t plan for everything!”
People worry, “If I do this sort of thing, I’ll provide less of a service.”
Those worries, whilst real concerns, are holding you back.
If it helps, I want you to do the following. Pick somewhere where you want an optimised workflow. It doesn’t have to be online or whatever. It can be working out or socialising or anything.
I want you to create a to-do list that you can always do.
“Jamie, I will add 50lbs to my bench press every month” is not a good to-do. Neither is, “Jamie, I’m going to make 50 friends a year.”
No.
“Jamie, I will lift weights on Monday evening” is better. You can do it. The fewer obstacles you create in this list, the better.
Once you’ve got your list, plan for likely eventualities. “Jamie, what if my customer doesn’t like my work?”
Good one. What won’t they like?
Create three emails.
- Minor correction (e.g. your grammar was wrong or you’ve spelled something wrong.”
2. Major correction you’re willing to do. (E.g. they don’t like your call to action and want you to rewrite it.)
3. Major correction you’re not willing to do. (E.g. they asked for a news article and now they want a first-person account or something that’s a change of brief completely.)
Chances are that you can write a 200 word email for each of those scenarios that’ll cover most instances of this ever occurring. You can then fill in the blanks every time.
These are likely outcomes… if you’ve never had one of these, and then don’t worry. Certainly don’t worry about “What if one of my customers doesn’t pay me because their cat has died and they have buried their business details with it?” Or anything unlikely.
Final thoughts
This has been a weird topic because it’s so hard to explain how to create an optimised workflow.
Also, any particular optimised workflow will be individual.
If nothing else, you should regularly sit with a pen and note pad and work out where you can optimise what you’re doing and where you can save time, effort and money.
An optimised workflow will make everything about your business better in turn.