Building your Systems as a Web Designer

The Big Mac is everywhere. And the reason the big mac is everywhere is because the franchise model works very very well, and the most successful franchise in the world is none other than McDonald's.

McDonald's doesn't make the best burgers in the world, in fact most people would agree that if you're wanting a good burger, they would be the absolute last option on a list of choices. But McDonald's isn't trying to make the best burgers in the world, they are trying to make the best burger business in the world. One that delivers fast service, at a cheap price, at the same consistent quality each time, and can be replicated again and again through the franchise model.

The franchise model works so well because it focuses a business around building smart, streamlined systems where everything is done a set way, and delivers a set result. The structure that helps McDonald's thrive is the same structure that you can use to make your job as a freelancer easier, and far more profitable.

Improving your workflow

Building your systems as a freelancer starts with knowing the outline for the things you do on a day to day basis, and then finding tools to make those tasks faster and easier.

For example, if you're posting to instagram on a regular basis, you can use an app to schedule your posts weeks in advance and only have to set up posts on a monthly basis. Sure, this might mean that you have to plan a month in advance, but it also means that you save hours and hours by leveraging a tool to make a manual process happen automatically.

You can and should build systems for everything you do regularly as a freelancer. You might have email templates set up so you can easily reply to a set kind of inquiry. or have proposal templates set up around different kinds of projects. Or a base website template set up that already has the bare bones of each project ready to go.

There are hundreds of different tools, apps and services that you can use as a freelancer to help streamline your process and save you time, but finding the right ones that suit the way you work can be a matter of trial and error.

Rather than give you an endless list of different softwares to try out, I'm going to outline the ones that I recommend so that you have somewhere to start from, and you can decide for yourself whether you want to try to find other different tools. If you want alternatives to these tools, you can find a super long list of different options for tools on Bonsai's website under Best Freelance Tools.

Speaking of, the first tool I would highly recommend is Bonsai.

No matter what kind of projects you're working on, you're going to want to use some sort of software to create and keep track of invoices, and Bonsai makes it easy to do just that, plus create proposals, contracts, and make it easy to manage the accounting side of freelancing by showing you how much you are making and spending each month to show how profitable you are.

I think of bonsai as my day to day freelancing hub to help me close new clients and to make sure I'm getting paid on time.

Trust me when I say that using a software like this is a million times easier than creating invoices and proposals yourself, and keeping everything in one place means you know that you won't lose anything in the abyss of all your computer's folders.

The only other major program that you'll need to find is a project management software, and though you can use Bonsai for this too, I would recommend a software with some sort of kanban board system built in.

If you've never used a kanban style board system before, the best example of what this looks like is Trello. For each project that you work on you'll have a couple of different boards for the different statuses. And on each board you'll have all the tasks for the project.

For a project you might have boards such as to-do, doing, to approve, and done. Then you'll start with all your tasks on the to-do board, and as you work through the tasks you'll move them down the boards so you know what you've worked on and what you still have to work on.

Depending on how you're working with your client, you might want to add them to the project so they can add new tasks and approve tasks that you've done, or you can keep the management side to yourself and just send your client updates through email or Slack.

The project management system that I personally use is Notion, as it's a super flexible program to keep track of all kinds of different projects, and also a great space where you can keep all your notes for the project.

Whatever programs you decide to use, just make sure that they help you do your job easier and don't add needless complexity to your work. Each software that you add should make everything you do easier, not more complicated.