Creative Freedom: How Systems Create Space & Flexibility
It's a really common thing I hear from small business owners where they think, “Okay, if I put up systems, put in systems, I won't be able to create the way that I want to.”
People will often conflate being creative with being disorganized.
The clients that I've had over the years, they’ve found that the opposite is true.
Transcript below!
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Do you worry that you’ll end up feeling like you don’t have space for creativity or flexibility in your business if you put systems in place?
It's a really common thing I hear from small business owners where they think, “Okay, if I put in systems, I won't be able to create the way that I want to.”
People will often conflate being creative with being disorganized.
The clients that I've had over the years, they’ve found that the opposite is true.
I've just worked with a client and this has just exactly happened for her. We set up the systems so that her email marketing was on autopilot. That her admin was either done on autopilot or was on like a really simple to follow schedule.
And for a while she tracked all of her time and she realized by doing that once we got all the systems in place she had way more time to actually create her art.
And from tracking her time she learned that she was able that if she carved out like an hour in the morning that she Was able to get all of that beautiful creative work done and then could spend her afternoons focusing on the admin because it was a lighter load than she had before.
This all meant that she was actually getting to do her creative stuff because she had the energy and the space to think about it and she had this structure that was pushing her business forward in a way that she was then still able to create her beautiful art from a really aligned, clear place every morning.
Similarly, I have structured my business to prioritize so much for flexibility. I structured my business so that I don't have to work specific days, times, or locations.
I can work anytime and anywhere.
I do tend to show up at my desk Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, because I appreciate the routine. But I can go to America anytime I need to and I tend to work half days on Mondays and Fridays.
Even better is if something happened and I needed to instead work a full day on Monday and take a half day on a Wednesday, I could do that.
So I have all this flexibility that I've put into place. I have these systems that are so strong that if I have a task that I've scheduled for Monday, it’s almost always going to be perfectly fine if I pick that task up on Wednesday instead… or if I outsource that task to my team.
So I want you to be really curious about that narrative of “if I put in systems/processes, I won't be able to be creative.”
And remind yourself that actually that will give you the structure and the space to be so much more creative and flexible in your business.