Creating an Effective Workflow

March 13, 2017

Oh friends. We all know the feeling of getting started. It’s like this amazing, giant rush… and then the panic sets in once we realize that there are so many things to do that we never studied or prepared for. Starting a small business can feel a lot like trying to drink out of a water hose. We flip on the metaphorical open sign and then we just try our very best to keep up. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Creating effective systems early on in your business can be a game changer. Our systems and workflow become these amazing Life Rafts for our businesses when things get crazy. They can ensure that you are able to not just keep up, but to thrive and have more margin to do the things that you really love – the things that, more than likely, are why you got into this whole entrepreneur thing to begin with (Are you nodding your head in agreement? Amen hands emojis? Let’s keep going!).

If you’re a creative small business owner, you chose an interesting career. Creative entrepreneurs are one of the only jobs that we can think of where the professional spends most of their time doing things other than what they are actually named for. Doctors are usually doctoring. Farmers are usually farming. Bankers are usually banking. Creatives, on the other hand, are only photographers/ painters/ designers for about 10% of their working hours.  The rest of the time they are focused on clients, marketing, editing, book-keeping, driving carpool and just about everything else. You do a lot. Hats off to you!

One of our goals with our business is to help other creative entrepreneurs set their businesses up to serve their lives, instead of always feeling like they are working so incredibly hard to serve their businesses. We know that just because you’re a solopreneur and just because you are incredibly passionate about the work you do doesn’t mean that you have to work 80 hours a week. So, the question that we want to answer is: How can we create as many life rafts for our business as possible?

Tim Ferris, in The Four Hour Work Week, talks about the ideas of efficiency and effectiveness:

Effectiveness is that which you do that gets you closer to the goals you want to achieve

Efficiency is how quickly you can get things done, whether it is important or not

We want you to take these ideas and use them to define the ideas of shortcuts and time-sucks.:

Shortcuts – Choosing Efficiency over Effectiveness

Time-sucks – Choosing Effectiveness over Efficiency 

Time-savers – Increase the Efficiency of an already Effective task

In our small business, the goal is to create systems (life rafts!) that are as efficient as possible without sacrificing their effectiveness. We want them to work fast and work well. If they aren’t doing both of these things, then we need to rework them.

When your systems are efficient and effective, that’s really when they become a life-raft that will keep your business above water even in the busiest, most hectic of times. That’s when they are falling into the Golden Mean of being time-savers – and that’s exactly what we want more of! Having time-savers in your business means that you get to spend more time doing what you love, but it also means that your client experience will be better: you’ll be communicating more often and more clearly with your clients, you’ll be delivering images more quickly, and you’ll be answering questions for your clients before they even have to ask!

We know that it can be a challenge to commit to creating effective, efficient systems, but the time you will be putting into establishing these Life Rafts is time well spent. It will require effort on the front end that will reap real, meaningful rewards at the end. You owe it to yourself to set your business up to be as exceptional as you are. You can do this, friend!!

Creating an Effective Workflow

(image of us teaching at Inspire by the amazing David Apuzzo)

When you are establishing these effective systems, you want to make sure that they are:

1. Replicable: When we edit, we follow the same process over and over (and over) again which means that every-time we edit, we are getting better and faster at doing it. Imagine that you’re an actor. Think of your workflow as your lines. The first step is to memorize them by wrote; know those lines like the back of your hand, that way you can do what you do (editing, answering e-mails, designing albums) as quickly and as effectively as possible.

2. Scalable: The client management system that we use is the same one that we started using in year two of our business. This system is amazing because it was able to support 10 clients a year, and it has been able to support more than 50 clients a year. A good system will be able to grow with you so that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time your business changes.

3. Teachable: The best systems are ones that are easy to pass off to someone else. You want to make sure that your systems are streamlined enough to be able to easily teach to someone else when it’s time. When we hired our studio manager, it was easy to teach her how we designed albums because we had defined that system so well.

Once we have effective systems in place, we can get to the fun part: automation.  So many of our daily tasks are ones that we do over and over again.  We answer the same questions for clients, import and export our images the same way, send contracts and invoices, post to social media, design albums, and even follow up with potential clients using the same sequence of emails.  We can automate each of these tasks, saving seconds, minutes and hours every time we do them.  It’s like conjuring time out of thin air!  Amazing!  Below are some of our favorite time saving tools that we have come across.  Each one of them saves us minutes of time every day.  Those minutes add up to hours, and the hours add up to days that we can spend doing things that make us feel alive, like spending time as a family in the mountains or having kitchen dance-offs (you’re welcome to join anytime, just bring your best moves!).

To learn more about creating Life Rafts for your business and to get our favorite time-saving tools delivered to your inbox, check out our free eBook.

And if you’re ready to jump in and make 2017 your biggest year of growth yet, check out our 6 week course Growing on Purpose.

  1. Great article and great tips! Cory and I have enjoyed following y’all. Keep up the good work!

  2. Sara Normand says:

    Loved this post. I’ve definitely been taking too many shortcuts!! I work full-time while trying to get my blog going as a potential full-time option in the future…

  3. Jennifer Outlaw says:

    What a great post. I really enjoyed reading it. I have found that most shortcuts I try and take end up back firing on me.

  4. Yes, I have been struggling to develop a good and effective workflow. Thanks for this blog post!

  5. Kate says:

    So many great tips. I’ll have to save this for future reference.

  6. Melissa Johnson says:

    This is SUCH great advice! Thanks for sharing!

  7. Alissa says:

    Thank you for the great tips and advice!

  8. Aryn Baker says:

    These are great tips!

  9. Jo Haley says:

    This is my struggle everyday! Especially with have two young kids. No time to be consistent. 😉

    Great tips!

  10. Misty says:

    THANK YOU for this! I have way too many time sucks and I definitely need more shortcuts!

  11. IDOWED says:

    I take so many shortcuts. This was a nice reminder.

  12. Lexie says:

    Wonderful tips! Thank you for the post! I need to keep this blog for reference! I need to stay more organized.

  13. Gabrielle says:

    I love the thought of creating life rafts for my business!! I have definitely found that they more systems I have set up in my business, the more freedom I am allowed! thank you for the reminders of great ways to put those systems into place!

  14. Morgan Ellis says:

    This is great! I totally agree; make your business work for you, not the other way around!

  15. Emily Moore says:

    These are great tips on how to maintain an effective workflow! Thank you for sharing!

  16. sarah says:

    Workflows are life! I woudlnt make it without mine!

  17. Alekandra says:

    These are awesome tips for business owners who feel overwhelmed.

  18. Alyssa Bouma says:

    Such great tips! Workflow is the hardest

  19. Ali says:

    This is seriously such a helpful post! Thank you so much for all the tips.

  20. This is so fantastic! I can’t tell you how much I NEEDED this post at this point in my journey. Thank you so much for such great tips on business workflow!

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