Cloning is no longer the fantasies of science fiction as it was in my youth, and I am sure there are times when all sole traders which they could clone themselves.
As a sole trader, especially in the early years while you are establishing yourself, building a reputation while operating within the boundaries of limited financial backing, you are the CEO, accountant, marketing manager, cleaner, receptionist, salesman, admin assistant and all other roles in between doing the actual projects for your clients.
However no matter how small or large the business, to grow the business, the operations of the business does depend on good systems and processes. The more the business grows, the greater the need to find efficiencies both in use of time and in productivity.
Systems are nothing more than organised knowledge. The more organised the knowledge, the easier it is to share that knowledge in a way that others can then support you in delivering results to customers and to grow your business. In my early corporate days, Total Quality Management - TQM was the rage. In several jobs, I worked on many business process re-engineering projects. Today, technology gives us so many options is enable us to work smarter that were not possible then, although sometimes it is frustrating dealing with organisations that are so automated that the "personality and personal interaction" seems to have been lost. Businesses that can still engender a personal customised approach while being extremely efficient are rare. It is finding that balance.
To be honest, one of the things I have struggled with, strangely enough in spite of my corporate background and knowledge of systems, has been applying all that knowledge to my own business and business processes. It is something I have been working on throughout this year as I am extremely conscious that the downside of being a sole trader is that what I can achieve within the business is more than anything else constrained by time, and in order to outsource the workload while maintaining the standard I want to deliver to customers means that I have to convert my knowledge and what is in my head into some form of organised system. I think it would be fairly common for those in a creative space, or those that want to deliver a "customised service" would struggle with the concept that their work can be captured into a system. The biggest hurdle is the feeling that putting it down into a system takes away the personalisation, the individual stamp that marks our work as our own.
However, I am at the stage in my business where one of my primary focuses is on building relationships with customers for repeat business - and repeat business means delivering a consistent quality time and time again. In the early days, I tended to treat each assignment as a one-off and although I hoped that customers would want to work with me again, I did not count on it. This was a short sighted approach though and says more about my personal lack of confidence than anything else. The problem was that a vast majority of my product photography clients have come back for more to do more work, and because my early business systems were more reactive rather than proactive, I would then have to spend considerable time revisiting the early work to work out what the hell I did to deliver that result the first time. Not an efficient or smart use of time. I started to become more organised, and started writing down the "editing recipe" I used for a particular client - because each client has particular requirements. This was an improvement in being smarter but still not an efficient use of time.
Today I had one of those lightbulb moments - so simple that I almost kicked myself for not having thought of it earlier, but that is the process of continuous innovation and business improvement. Solutions can be simple and sometimes the inspiration comes from the most unexpected and unrelated sources. I have been trying to explain a technical process to a friend. Unfortunately, the process for me comes almost unconsciously and I knew that no matter how many words I used in different ways that I was not able to sufficiently explain it to them in a way that matched their knowledge. I ended up doing a video of the process.
It was only later in the day when reflecting on this, that I realised I had solved my own problem with how I was going to be more effective and efficient in capturing my clients' editing recipes. Simple, when I work on a client's set of product images all I need to do is record the process through video screening to capture the steps and through audio record the certain parameters I use for that client, for their particular product images. I will then always have a reference if I need it for the future; or even better as the business grows and when I start to outsource the work, I can simply share the knowledge through video, with an easy to follow recipe of what needs to take place for that particular client. I can then be more confident that I am delivering consistent outcomes to my client whether or not I have physically done the work or relied on others to do it for me.
Flying Solo Tip 059365 : Organised knowledge is a cornerstone to business success, consistency in product delivery, and building quality relationships with customers.