Non Project Activities

Aside from working on projects, 0:00 you also need to spend a good bit of time on non-project activities. 0:01 These activities can be broken down into three primary groups, administrative, 0:06 educational, and marketing. 0:11 Administrative tasks are as important to the success of your freelance career 0:13 as the work itself. 0:17 You need to set aside time to handle these tasks, 0:19 when considering the management of your time and establishing a workflow. 0:21 These cannot be tasks that you just fit into your downtime. 0:25 Spend time actively working on these tasks and 0:29 you'll get rid of a lot of the negatives that people associate with freelancing. 0:32 Let's start with administrative tasks. 0:36 One of the most important administrative tasks, and 0:39 one that should always be on the top of your mind is scheduling future work. 0:42 Working on projects is fun but the business needs clients to survive. 0:46 So having work coming in through the door should be priority number one. 0:50 Put time aside to make sure that once a project is complete 0:55 you already have new work lined up. 0:58 This requires understanding a few different things. 1:01 First, the time it takes for you to secure new work. 1:04 If you're relatively unknown and 1:07 just starting out, you have to work much harder to get new clients. 1:09 How long does it take you to find a client? 1:13 Then, what does your timeline look like for 1:16 the current project that you're working on? 1:18 And we just took a look at this in a previous video. 1:19 How much money do you need to survive per month? 1:23 This is also something we worked on earlier in this series. 1:25 Now, put all these things together to figure out when you need to line 1:29 up more work. 1:32 Let's look at a simple example. 1:33 Let's say I need $4,000 a month to survive. 1:35 I'm halfway through a project that ends in 30 days but 1:39 I will only be paid $3,000 for it. 1:42 I obviously need more work to make ends meet. 1:45 Now it takes me around two to three weeks to line up a new project. 1:47 So I know that if I want to meet my goals for the month, I need to start looking for 1:51 new work in around a week or so. 1:55 That way if I take a full three weeks to line up a job, I will have more work and 1:57 therefore, some money, in the near future. 2:02 Now this is an oversimplified example, of course, but the underlying principle is 2:05 that you should always be proactive about scheduling work. 2:08 Now, the second admin task you should set time aside for is accounting. 2:11 Accounting is hard and boring, there's no doubt about it, especially for 2:16 creative types but like all our admin tasks, 2:19 getting a grip on this means you can run your business more efficiently. 2:22 For most people running a freelance business, 2:26 accounting is such an unknown skill that we're going to devote a separate video to 2:28 understanding accounting basics for freelancers. 2:32 For now, know that you should be setting time aside to do it but not so 2:35 much time that it detracts from your main work. 2:39 Accounting helps you understand your finances and keep things in order but 2:42 it won't make you money. 2:45 Third, communication. 2:48 Communication is the key to everything. 2:50 Properly communicating your skill set brings in more business. 2:52 Properly communicating your work flow gets the project done faster, and 2:56 properly communicating costs keeps your clients happy. 2:59 Put some time aside for staying on top of communication, and correspondence. 3:03 This means making sure you're going through your inbox and 3:07 answering your client's questions on time. 3:10 Making sure you get back to perspective clients as soon as you can, and making 3:12 sure you're prompt, clear, understanding, and empathic in your communication. 3:16 Proper communication will reflect positively on you and 3:22 help build trust in you. 3:25 There are a few ways you can get better at this. 3:27 When answering emails, 3:30 you will soon notice that you will get a lot of emails with similar questions. 3:31 Rather than spending time crafting polite emails every time, 3:35 create templates with your most common responses. 3:38 Save these as drafts or documents and every time you get a question, 3:41 copy the relevant answer from the template and modify it to save time. 3:45 Form a habit for answering emails. 3:49 Scan your inbox at some point early on in the day. 3:51 Get back to those that require only short answers, and 3:55 leave the longer, more detailed responses for 3:57 later in the day once you've tackled some of your more important tasks. 3:59 Use labels, filters, or 4:03 whatever tools your email client provides you to organize these things. 4:05 When you're done answering emails, 4:09 get your inbox out of the way until the next designated time period. 4:10 Don't keep it open all day, or you'll be answering emails as they come through, 4:14 breaking up your work flow and concentration. 4:18 Finally, be brief. 4:21 You don't need to write up a story every time you respond to an email. 4:23 If you're to the point, you can answer a lot of emails in a short time. 4:26 Finally, to wrap up our admin tasks, we have client relations. 4:30 Take the time to understand your clients better, and 4:34 what you can do to serve them better. 4:36 This overlaps with most of the areas we have already talked about, 4:38 primarily communications. 4:42 If you find yourself constantly butting heads with your client, 4:44 take steps to improve on your end rather than assuming that they're the ones who 4:47 are always wrong. 4:51 Aside from administrative tasks, the other indirect activities we should be concerned 4:52 about are educational and marketing tasks. 4:56 These are two very important tasks. 5:00 To be a successful freelancer, you need to constantly educate yourself. 5:02 You need to be following up with the latest trends and 5:04 developments, understanding new languages and technologies, and 5:09 breaking new ground yourself. 5:12 All this requires time and dedication. 5:15 If you can, set aside a half day, or a complete day for this. 5:17 Staying on top of education also means budgeting time and 5:22 money towards things like conferences, meetups, and local talks. 5:26 This serves the dual purpose of increasing your knowledge, 5:30 as well as achieving our last non-project task and that's marketing. 5:33 I'm using the term marketing in the broad sense. 5:37 It means everything that increases your brand and 5:40 results in a successful business. 5:42 Marketing involved activities like networking at talks, conferences and 5:45 meetups to meet potential clients, industry peers and mentors. 5:49 It also involves things like blogging about what you know, and 5:54 what you're learning. 5:57 This establishes a trust factor and sets you up as a thought leader. 5:58 Finally, it also includes some of the usual stuff like using the web to increase 6:03 your brand awareness, whether it's through things like advertising or social media. 6:06 These educational and 6:11 marketing activities are quite crucial to the success of your business. 6:13 So schedule time for them often. 6:16 Try and attend two to three conferences a year, local meetups, 6:18 at least, once a month, and start educating people and 6:22 talking about your craft wherever possible. 6:25 Soon, business will start to flow. 6:28