Storytime alert. As a team that is also friends, we decided to go on vacation together (what a cliché, right?). After a festival in Barcelona, a few days in Malta to test the blue waters, and a few more days in Bari stuffing ourselves with pasta and pizza, we were back home and ready to get to work.

But before we jumped into the creative part of our business, we needed to sit down and set some new ground rules.

As creatives, the first few months of 2022 drained all of our energy and creativity from our bodies and souls. We faced many challenges, especially at the administrative level, which is clearly not our favorite thing to do.

We decided that we needed to prioritize this part of the process so that our team could continue to create beautiful work, which led us to automate the administrative part of it all.

What does that mean specifically? Well, for us, it was mostly about evaluating the customer journey and the steps we took to onboard (and remove) new customers

By weighing the key points of that journey, we were able to identify where we were investing too much time and effort, all of which ultimately could have been done in a more automated and simpler way, both for our customers and for us. We did not want to neglect the customer experience, as we still value the personal touch, conversations, and listening that goes into building a project, but streamlining this process could be of great benefit to everyone.

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The solutions? We decided to:

• Find a project management system that would allow us to
  • Track requests;
  • Build a database that we can rely on;
  • Create contracts easily and quickly;
  • Create and send invoices, including the ability to send automatic reminders;
  • A time-tracking system that is integrated with the invoicing system;

There are many more benefits, but just being able to manage these requirements so easily has allowed us and the client to always be on the right track, and to cut through the red tape that, if we are honest, no one really likes

We have to thank the random Tiktok who introduced us to HelloBonsai. We have an affiliate link, by the way, in case you find yourself in a similar situation.

• We have optimized the organization system of our drive. We still rely on good old Google Drive to store our internal documents, but also our external documents. What does that mean? Well, we use Google Drive to deliver all files to clients. But in order to do this successfully and easily, we needed to rethink the organization of the folders and also the naming. A few tips:
  • Find a code name that works for you and keep it consistent, for example Task_CustomerName_YourName_Date.format
  • Try to create a template folder with all the folders and structures. Every time you have a new customer, just duplicate it and add the files from the first day, e.g:
    • Customer files
    • Official or legal documents
    • Assets
    • Benefits.

• Are you done with everyone talking about Notion? Well, there’s a reason for that.

Without going into too much detail: It’s great. There are many ways to organize your tasks, find the one that works best for you. For us, it’s just a weekly checklist, but for you, it could be a grid or a calendar… Limitless possibilities.

We hope this article helps the person who needs it realize that maybe it’s time to take a step back and rethink strategy or organization to optimize your workday. Because, and if you are creative, we think this might be the case, if you are frustrated about the “boring” part, you are probably not enjoying your work as much as you could and should!