Tips for Wearing Multiple Hats

Steven Snell

One of the realities of being a freelancer is that you will have a wide variety of responsibilities in regards to running a successful business. You won’t have the luxury of passing duties off to another department, and your success depends on your ability to wear multiple hats and develop some versatility. The dizzying amount of responsibilities can be overwhelming at times, but it can also be one of the perks to being a freelancer. You’ll have the opportunity to try your hand at every aspect of business, and you won’t get bored from doing the same repetitive tasks over and over again. Whether you see this diversity as a positive or a negative of freelancing, you can increase your productivity by realizing all of your responsibilities and setting a plan for success.

Distinguish Your Separate Responsibilities

The first step is to simply acknowledge the different aspects of business that you will need to manage. Of course this will include income-producing work (designing, developing, writing, or whatever else it is that you offer), tracking expenses, managing invoices, balancing bank accounts, marketing your services, continual learning and development, customer service, and more.

Embrace the Diversity of Your Job

Like it or not, we all have a lot on our plates. In my opinion it’s best just to embrace the fact that we need to be knowledgeable in multiple aspects of business rather than fighting it and trying to convince ourselves that we really don’t have to be good with finances, or some other aspect of the business. When we embrace our responsibilities we’re ready to move on towards finding solutions that will help us to be more efficient.

Schedule Time as Needed

If there’s a particular aspect of the business that we don’t enjoy or that we struggle with, it’s natural to keeping putting that work off into the future. The problem is that with a busy schedule time moves too quickly and these things tend to not get done until it’s too late and things have been made more difficult than necessary.

Part of my routine is to make daily and weekly to-do lists and to schedule out my time. I try to give myself some flexibility, but by setting aside time for necessary tasks I can make sure that I get the “dirty work” done before it’s piled up and created a real problem.

If you find yourself struggling to get everything done and getting behind on the same aspects of business all the time, make an effort to schedule some time each week (or as often as necessary) to make sure that you have adequate time.

Establish Goals for Each Aspect of Your Business

I think it’s safe to say that we all hope to achieve success in freelancing, and effective goal setting is one of the foundations to success in any business. For a freelancer, goals should include a variety of different aspects of the business.

For example, your primary goals may involve how much money you want to make or which projects you want to finish by the end of the month - but don’t forget about the other parts of freelancing. Maybe you should have a goal for contacting one former client each week/month to see if there is any way you can be of service to them. Or maybe you should have a goal for getting all of your expenses recorded by the end of the week. I’ve found that setting simple, small goals like this (and writing them down) can have a huge impact on getting things done and staying ahead of the game.

Give Yourself a Brief Monthly Review

What good is goal setting without following up on them? At the end of each month take a few moments to read through the goals that you had established and see which ones you met and where you fell short. This is a good step for evaluating your efficiency and for helping you to identify any weak areas in your freelance efforts. Of course, this is also helpful for leading in to your development of new goals for the following month.

Provide Yourself with the Necessary Tools

There are an incredible number of resources and tools that can help with all kinds of aspects of freelancing (see 101 Essential Freelancing Resources). An efficient freelancer will take advantage of what is available. Obviously, some tools are free and some are not. There’s such an aversion to paid tools and resources that it can become counter-productive at times. In many cases there may be a resource that costs a few dollars per month that can save a considerable amount of time and effort. While it may not be free, if you can give you more time to focus on the other aspects of your business, it may be extremely helpful to your bottom line. Invoicing tools are a prime example. Take the time to get to know the resources that are available that can help you in your day-to-day work, and see what may be cost-effective.

Recognize Your Strengths and Weakness

Although I feel it’s important to embrace the diversity of freelancing, it’s also inevitable that we will have areas of strength and areas of weakness. Recognizing these areas can help you to identify where you need to be more disciplined and where you may need some further development, or potentially some assistance from a helpful resource. For the areas that you are particularly strong in, try to find ways to maximize them in your business. If your skills involve marketing, devote some time to working on a detailed marketing plan that can help you to stand out from the competition and take your business to the next level.

Outsource Where Needed

Once you’ve identified your areas of weakness you may see some tasks that are simply better off to be outsourced. If it’s something you struggle with and you hate doing, you may be able to save yourself some headaches and free up more of your time for doing the things that you do best and for doing the things that bring in the income. (See How to Earn More and Play More: Getting Started with Personal Outsourcing.) Although you may be outsourcing the work, it’s still in your best interest to maintain some knowledge in the area and look after the work that is being done.

Don’t Loose Sight of Billable Hours

With all the responsibilities of freelancing and many of the points that we’ve looked at so far, you may find yourself getting distracted and having less and less time for client work that actually brings in the money. Whether you charge by the hour or by the project, keeping enough time for income-generating work is critical. Don’t get lost in the shuffle of doing everything right and forget about what keeps you in business. The goal is to find a balance and to develop efficiency that will minimize wasted time by taking care of all the aspects of freelancing in an organized manner.

Prioritize

With so much going on, for freelancers there is rarely enough time in the day, or enough days in the week.Effective prioritizing is an essential skill that must be developed. You simply won’t have time to get done everything that is worthy or your attention. Setting goals and scheduling your time are two big aspects or prioritizing that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Develop a Process

If you’re new to freelancing make an effort to develop habits that will help you to improve efficiency with your various responsibilities. Maybe you want to get in the habit of managing your finances and sending out invoices at the end of each week. Maybe you want to get in the habit of taking 10 minutes at the end of your work day to plan out the next day. Everyone works differently, but I think we can all benefit by developing a process that works well for us. With time this will improve efficiency and cut down on unproductive time.

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