Freelancing jobs can implode for a huge variety of reasons, including mistakes on our part – being overbooked, unfocused, distracted by personal life issues, etc. Sometimes it feels like our clients are lobbing grenades into the project – delays, miscommunications and indecision are common. Stack too many of these issues in one project, and we have the ingredients for a total project meltdown.

As the service provider we need to be in control of the experience at all times. We need to be like construction forepersons, guiding our freelancing jobs through a documented process that has structural guardrails preventing the worst kinds of project killers. What we need is a workflow blueprint.

Without a repeatable and documented process flow, projects tend to feel unstructured and open-ended. Our clients will always detect this lack of structure or rules, and some will see it as an opportunity to seize control of your process.

Give Your Freelancing Jobs Structure and Repeatability

A workflow blueprint is a step-by-step guide of repeatable processes that are purpose-built to deliver top-tier customer service and experience, a great final product, and protection for both you and your client. It is a step-by-step decision tree of procedures and practices that you have carefully plotted out to ensure that these key objectives are always being met and respected. Clients want control over the final product. You want control over the process. A good system gives both sides what they need without conflict.

To be effective, workflow blueprints need to be detailed and thoughtfully constructed to address a wide range of potential issues and needs. The process starts by creating a linear “timeline” documenting every step that you personally carry out in the production of a specific service you offer – logo design, for example. No step in your process should be left out, and if different freelancing jobs tend to require different flows, these should be mapped accordingly.

Once the service timeline is documented, it’s time to circle back and identify any point in the flow where something could possibly go wrong. Turning back to our logo design example, if you think some clients will want to provide reference materials of logo styles they like, then you would need to collect these items for your reference before you can begin. This may not be a step in the service timeline you mapped out earlier, but it IS a complete “work-stopper” – if the client hasn’t provided the reference, you can’t get much done. And if the project isn’t moving, you aren’t earning and the client isn’t getting their logo.

Workflow blueprints get more powerful when you start reviewing them in passes, using each pass to ensure different categories of needs are being addressed. In the beginning you will want to focus on uncovering every “work-stopper” your freelancing jobs might suffer from, like the references example used above. but in subsequent passes you should start looking at the flow from the perspective of our prime directives covered above – top-tier customer service and experience, a great final product, and protection for both you and your client. If a step does not deliver on these objectives, it needs to be revised. And if there are opportunities for nonsense to derail your ability to deliver the prime directives, they must be accounted for in the blueprint. If a given step requires something of the client – a milestone payment, for example – then you will need to focus in on this step and configure it to provide a good customer experience but also provide you the protection you need – getting paid. Sometimes it simply cannot be avoided, but to whatever degree possible your potential solutions should never have a negative impact on our prime directives.

Once you have a workflow mapped out, follow it closely on every project. When a new situation is discovered, your needs change, or a client introduces you to some new hellish form of project pandemonium, you update the workflow. But you always follow the workflow. If it’s clear to your clients that you have a well defined and purpose-driven workflow, most of them will respect and follow it, and your projects will melt down far less often.

The process of creating a workflow blueprint is covered in detail in my Freelance Master Course. Freelance Mentors paid subscribers also get unlimited access to my Workflow Builder Toolkit. This form-based tool makes it super simple to build out an effective workflow blueprint. Further reading on Workflow Blueprints can be found here.