Ep. 360 Simple systems for solopreneurs

Are you resisting structure in your business because you’re craving freedom, creativity, and flexibility? In this episode, Anna Lundberg debunks the myth that structure stifles creativity and explains how the right systems actually give you more space to breathe, more focus, and more joy in your work. Tune in if you’re tired of juggling everything yourself and want your business to run more smoothly – without losing the freedom you left corporate to find.

Key moments:

[00:00] Introduction: The myth of freedom vs. the reality of systems

[01:52] Why lack of structure might be costing you

[02:50] Common challenges: Decision fatigue, inconsistent visibility, bottlenecks

[07:05] What structure looks like: Tools and real-life systems

[09:45] Invoicing and getting paid systems

[10:28] Content creation, repurposing, and scheduling

[13:48] CEO-style systems and strategic boundaries

[14:59] Questions for identifying where you need systems

[16:04] Using delegation and recording processes

[17:31] Invitation to join the Accelerator & closing thoughts

Resources mentioned:

• Free workshop to watch on demand: onestepoutside.com/simplesystems
• Business Accelerator Programme: Next cohort opens in September for an October start. Apply now at: onestepoutside.com/accelerate

Simple systems for solopreneurs

This one is for you if you have resisted adding too much structure to your business because you don’t want to lose the flexibility, creativity and freedom that you left corporate to find. But the truth is that the loosest schedules are not going to help us to thrive. We need systems to give us focus, consistency and believe it or not, space to breathe. So if you’re tired of feeling like you’re juggling everything and you want your business to run smoothly, then, and this episode on systems and structure is the one for you. Welcome to Reimagining Success, the podcast that helps you build a profitable business as an independent expert, one that works for you and your lifestyle. I’m your host, Anna Lundberg, former corporate insider turned business mentor, executive coach and mum of two.

Whether you’re a solopreneur, a coach, speaker, consultant, I’m here to guide you in creating a business that gives you freedom, flexibility and the fulfilment fulfilment you’re looking for, ready to redefine success and build a business that you love. Let’s get started. I know, I know I did not leave corporate to follow the rules and have lots of boring, rigid structure again. But here’s what I realised with time after not setting an alarm and just going where my energy was and oh, I’ll read now and oh, I’ll do this. Very nice. But here’s the thing, the lack of structure is often what keeps you stuck. Inconsistent income, marketing chaos and burnout, worst case scenario. And we need to in a tougher market as we’ve been talking about, a tighter market or in fact always, we need to look reliable, focused and easy to work with and that does come from structure.

So I’m not the most organised person I know, people might think I am, but I’m pretty creative in kind of a big picture strategy thinking where you can’t see me but I’m waving my arms around and I’m quite sort of stream of consciousness, lots of ideas and so on and I, I guess I’ve been, I’ve managed, I’ve learned to cope by putting structures in place. It’s just to say that you know, some and I have clients, my goodness. And I had a, you know, people who give me feedback on things and they’re so structured and it’s amazing, it’s been so helpful to me. That is not me. Even for me though, maybe especially for me and for you perhaps as well. Having those systems and structures will allow us the creativity and Freedom and again that space to breathe and just focus on the highest value work. In fact, I ran a workshop on this last week. It was around those systems that will set you free.

So I think I’ll have the recording still. So let’s say you go to onestepoutside.com/simplesystems and you should be able to watch that on demand. But in the meantime, let’s talk the sort of high level points of why lack of structure might be costing you. And the first thing is decision fatigue and wasted energy. So think sort of Steve Jobs wearing a black jumper every day. But if we have to reinvent delivery every time someone asks us, it’s like, oh, this is the first time this has ever happened and oh, what shall I do? And this is everything is from nothing content. What shall I post today? Oh, a client has started working with me. What shall I write in my welcome email to them? You know, all those things drain time that you could spend on high value work.

And it’s not to say that you should have a gazillion complex automated systems before you even have a single client. The good news is you can create this as you go. Right, But I’m jumping ahead of myself. Let’s stay stuck in why structure? Why the lack of structure is, is not a good thing. So the first one is decision fatigue and wasted energy. The second one is, you know, I come from a marketing background and it’s inconsistent visibility, which means inconsistent clients. If we don’t have a system, a schedule, content pillars, content themes or something that works for you, if you’ve got something that works for you, then great. If not, then I have systems that you can reapply.

And sporadic marketing means that people don’t know you’re available or relevant, you’re not as trustworthy and when they’re ready to buy, you’re not going to be top of mind. And if you suddenly go, oh my goodness, I’ve got a thing to sell, so I’d better post lots of stuff now on LinkedIn, then it’s too late at that moment and we can’t, you know, we haven’t earned the trust. The right to, to sell to people plus is exhausting for you as well. Number three, you’re, you’re still the bottleneck because if you don’t have any systems, if you can’t delegate anything, automate anything, simplify anything, then everything depends on you. You can’t take a step back, you can’t take holidays, you can’t grow or scale the business to any meaningful points. And then finally, and this is maybe a bit of a subjective one, but I do think that, you know, high calibre clients, whatever we want to call them, want to work with people who, you know, are organised and professional and reply to emails on time and you know, remember to attach the attachment. I worked with a client recently in a huge organisation, she’s so busy and she said to me, look, I just want someone to literally give it to me on a play. This is the topic.

Here’s the marketing materials for the workshop. You know, just make it so easy for me to plug and play, make it easy for them to look good. And if we’re just being difficult and saying, hey, I could do this, I could do that, or do you want this? And how about. And you know, let’s have lots of calls that that’s not going to be helpful for that type of client. So if you come across as being, you know, oh yeah, I’ve got my laptop with my cables and my adapters or no problem, I’ll just export that into PDF format, whatever. It might be something really tiny but you know, the tech stuff working, the email communication, phone fusion happening, you’ve got your processes, you know, all that stuff does add up. All the different touch points add up to the perception of who you are and how you deliver. So decision fatigue, wasted energy, inconsistent visibility, inconsistent clients bottleneck, everything depends on you and that kind of perception problem that it, you know, okay, my room is pretty messy.

I hope by the time you listen to this I will have tidied this study and I was getting there. But I will definitely use some time over the summer to do so. But externally at least I try to be organised. You know, I pack my stuff the day before when I’m going to workshop tested everything, make sure I get there early, etc. Etc. Okay, so what could structure actually look like? And I’m pulling up now because I did this in the business academy course. It’s also in my book outside the 9 to 5, the kind of system that I recomm just so I give you a bit more structure just rather than my usual stream of consciousness. And again, like I said, I’m not talking about complicated funnels and automation and so on and in fact I’m reluctant even to recommend particular tech solutions because I’m sure it evolves so quickly.

Obviously there’s better AI solutions and all sorts now. I would also err on the side of keeping things simple and manual at first, at least but here are the things that I would say that we all need something for some kind of system and the first one’s managing your projects. Now I do use Asana, people use Monday or Trello or Notion. I have. The biggest game changer was when I discovered recurring activities, recurring tasks, because I could then have, okay, each week, it’s once a month, it’s okay, plan the podcast episodes, record the podcast episodes, you know, put the podcast episode live or whatever it is. It could also be things like, okay, pitch three media publications, message, 10 leads, you know, complete next week’s content, calendar, whatever it is. I also use my calendar. I did a time management training yonks ago.

Haven’t used the word yonks in a while, maybe 15, almost 20 years ago now, which was all around using Microsoft Outlook to manage your projects. And I, you know, have since thankfully moved away from that particular app. But blocking time in your calendar, turning your to do list into calendar is the other way to manage your projects. So that’s the first one managing your projects. My second one is on and off boarding clients. So, for example, if you go to onestepoutside.com/call, you will book a call. There’s a little questionnaire, so I’m filtering the people who can’t be bothered even to answer those questions. And I’m learning a bit about you.

We’ll schedule the call. We’ll have the call. You’ll get maybe a video saying, thanks for booking the call. Hey, these are my programmes. In the meantime, you can read about it. You’ll get lots of reminders from my calendar booking software and then we’ll have our call. Likewise, when you start working with me, let’s say at the moment you, once we’ve agreed, let’s say that you want to join the accelerator, I’ve agreed that it’s the right fit. You buy.

You press the, you know, join the programme here. It’ll then redirect you to a questionnaire to schedule your onboarding call. And happy days. You’ll get the welcome email and so on. Likewise, offboarding, I could probably get better at this, but some way of collecting feedback and getting testimonials needs to be part of your automated sort of off boarding process. And when I say automated, it doesn’t need to happen automatically, although that’s ideal. But certainly having templates and requests and just a reminder to make sure when you’ve worked with a client and they’re happy with the work, make sure you get the testimonial or referral. Then Obviously you need to be able to get paid.

So managing invoices, reminders, my favourite thing there is I have the accounting software that makes it easy for me and my accountant to work together, but also it sends the invoice, or I send the invoice. Some people recommend you could pretend you’re Dave from Accounts. If you don’t want to have it sent from you, that’s fine, pretend you’ve got an accountant assistant or something. But it sends reminders, hey, this is due next week, this is due tomorrow, this was due last week. And that’s really good because it feels less aggressive than if I send a manual email saying, hey, pay me, but some kind of way of being paid. I have stripe on my website. I use free agent here in the UK for my accounting. The next one, you know, is, is creating and repurposing content now, super simply.

I use Canva for, for the DIY graphic design and because I have the Canva Pro and I really wish they integrated AI more. So here’s to hoping they would. I have my brand assets in there now, so I’ve got my fonts and colours and pictures and logos and things, so. And obviously lots of templates, so that’s really made things easy. And then ways of repurposing content. So I’ve got the flow of, okay, record the podcast. There’s a video that goes with that that might turn into a blog post with a show notes, you could do Instagram posts of that or LinkedIn or whatever it is.

So repurposing content, welcoming new email subscribers. In the past, I think this was even more important than now, but these kind of sequences of like, hey, I’ve downloaded the lead magnet. So who is Anna? Here’s your resource, here’s how we can work together. You know, a series of emails that they get before they then get plumped into your newsletter. And those are the systems I have there. Let’s see if we’ve got others, I mean, that you might think of again. I mean, I talked about content creation there, but content posting, I’ve talked before about my sort of days.

It could be that I. If you are posting daily on LinkedIn or if, let’s say three times a week on LinkedIn. Monday could be the inspirational big picture story, kind of thought leadership. Wednesday could be a more tangible case study or a how to or something like that. And then Friday could be the call to action, like, hey, I’ve got three spots to work with me or I’m opening the doors to the programme or whatever it is, all these things are systems, right? So it’s simple systems. And again, if you want to watch the training I did last week, one step outside.com systems. But it’s documenting what’s happening, simplifying, automating, delegating where possible to not have your business running independently of you, but at least to free up your time to to work on the most value added stuff that you enjoy that’s most meaningful. You enjoy coaching, you enjoy teaching, brand strategy, whatever it is, you don’t necessarily enjoy all this stuff.

We’re not full-time content creators and influencers. So use tools that streamline, simplify, enable all that stuff, the repetitive stuff that isn’t in your zone of genius, that isn’t the stuff you love, that’s super repetitive. And then you can focus and pour your heart and soul into the good stuff. So I think I’ve mentioned a few things, I mean in terms of specific tools, I definitely think a calendar scheduler, I mentioned that briefly. There has been a game changer, I got that from day one with sales calls, discovery calls, coaching, even just catch it, you know, these virtual coffees with people having a way to capture or to sync with your calendar is so, so helpful, obviously email marketing, newsletters, transcriptions, captions for videos, all sorts of things. And also by the way, I guess ChatGPT wants me to call them CEO systems and I’ve seen lots of experts call them that, but it seems a bit much for a solopreneur. But having that strategic time in the accelerator. We do quarterly planning every quarter.

It might be revenue tracking, looking at your metrics, looking ahead, planning your year, those kinds of things. Again, that’s really systems having clear boundaries, physical, emotional, mental boundaries, time boundaries. That’s also a system to have clear availability, set working hours and so on. Okay, so ask yourself again, where are you perhaps reinventing the wheel every single time? If 10 people have asked you the same question, why not put that into your FAQs or create a resource source for that? If you’ve found yourself like searching for a particular thing 15 times, then why not put it in a place where you can easily find it? If you’re writing the same email again and again, write a template that you can plug and play. The simpler and cleaner your systems are, the more energy and time you’re going to have to be creative, take time off and grow the business and just enjoy your yourself, your life and your business. So if you want help setting this up, it’s part of the curriculum in the business Accelerator part of what we do. So we’ll build the systems basically, that make your business work for you. You can go to onestepoutside.com accelerate to apply.

You’ll just about have enough time to join us now for the October intake. If you’re listening to this live in September 2025, and if not, there’s a waiting list for next time. And this is really important part of it, and I can’t say stress enough how important it is, especially if you’re feeling resistant to it. It’ll feel so amazing. And I promise you again, I’m still not sort of religiously following perfect step by step, but some loose frameworks and systems and templates and things are so, so helpful. And to do that, of course, we need to step out of the business business a little bit and sort of see, okay, what’s happening. But. But you can do it as you go.

Final thought, you know, just to. To emphasise that when I first delegated to an assistant years ago, I. I realised that I could sort of screen. And again, there’s an AI tool that does this now, apparently screen record myself, let’s say, creating a blog post or podcast, and the assistant could then watch that, take notes. And, you know, that didn’t take me any extra time. I literally was doing anyway. And then I said, okay, this is what I’m doing. And then it’s really easy to copy and refer to for later.

If you then change team members, then that’s easy for them to refer to as well. So I hope I’ve convinced you, if you’re not already convinced, maybe you’re way more organised than me and you’ve got loads of systems you can recommend to me, in which case I’d be all ears. But I hope that was a helpful reminder that a loose structure is in fact what allows us the freedom that we want to experience, which is why we’re here in the first place. I’d love to have you in the accelerator. So do go ahead and apply. If you’ve been kind of dancing around at this, maybe don’t want to say too much. This may be the last intake I do for a while, so do join us. If you’re kind of on the edge there, at least have a chat with me about it.

I’d love to see if I can support you now. This is a great time to start. It’s the new sort of school year, but it means we’ve got three good months together before the end of the year to already get results now, but also to get a head start on next year. Often we have that kind of new year, new me energy that starts in January, but by the time we’ve done something it’s sort of February, March, then it’s summer and then the year’s gone exaggerating a little bit. But it’s such an advantage to get started already in September. It’s not too late. So let’s double down, get the results we want, set those intentions, design the business intentionally and start getting results and then as I said, really be on a really strong place for when the next calendar year and in fact when the next company accounting year starts as well for me in April. So there’s lots of new starts to the year.

So onestepoutside.com/accelerate we’d love to have you at least to have a discussion to see if it is the right thing for you. And in any case, I’d love to hear how this landed for you. Thanks so much. And next week we have an interview and it’s a good one. They all are. See you then.

If you’re ready to grow a business that actually works, one that pays you well, protects your time and reflects what matters most, the Business Accelerator is for you. It’s a 12-month journey for independent experts who want strategic growth without burnout and without compromise. Apply or join the waitlist at onestepoutside.com/accelerate.

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