Great post today from Yaro Stark at Entrepreneurs-Journey.com about whether Freelancers are really business owners. It's very much in line with my post about why business owners should avoid freelancing. But what I really love about it is that Yaro goes into detail about Business Systemization. Freelancing Cannot be Systemized There are absolutely no problems with freelancing. I know a lot of successful people who are doing quite well with freelancing. It's just that you cannot create a "freelancing business". They are mutually exclusive terms and ideas. And the reason for that is that freelancing cannot be systemized. A successful business is one that runs on systems - something that is not totally dependent on one individual. Even individuals that make 6 and 7 figure salaries are not really businesses. They may be incorporated as one and have an entire support staff but at the end of the day, they are selling THEIR HOURS to a client. Once systems and processes are implemented to deliver the same type of quality and effort on a consistent basis, it has cease to be freelancing. It is now a business. Turning Freelancing into a Business It's not to say that a freelancer cannot turn their efforts into a business that has other employees providing the service to clients through a set of predefined systems and processes. I would make the argument that that is what most freelancers should do. Maybe I have some bias because that is what I did. If that is the steps that you want to take, Yaro has some great ideas on how to do them:

• Think about what you are good at and how much time you currently spend on these activities
• Determine what tasks are stopping you from doing what you are good at and make a list of the “impeding” activities
• Find ways to outsource, eliminate or employ someone to handle the tasks or ways minimize the amount of time you devote to the impeding activities
• Realize the activities that create the most value for you and increase the time spent on these activities (learn about the 80/20 rule)
• Determine what your true motivations are when it comes to income, labor and lifestyle - are your current activities congruent with meeting these goals?
• Create systems - documentation, flow charts, mind maps and videos - so any person can perform routine tasks
• Let the experts do the jobs that require expertise - if you are not an accountant, a web programmer, a graphics designer, a writer, an “insert expert here” then don’t try to become one, hire one instead!
• Don’t be afraid to say no to projects you can’t do or are not well matched to what you are good at
• Get a mentor and seek consultation if you can’t move past a certain roadblock
• And if all else fails in the end, going back to a job is not something to be ashamed of if you find freelancing is not your cup of tea - there is nothing wrong with experimenting in life

- From "Are Freelancers Really Business Owners"

Avoiding Service Delivery and Creating a Product Instead While this type of business model (service delivery) is much better than freelancing if you want to grow your business, I still feel that you should move towards creating a product. If you set up a service delivery business that provides the same services that you could do freelancing, you will no longer be doing that work. Instead you will probably be doing Project Management (Note: You can get certified in Program Management and your title would be PMP - one of the most unfortunate acronyms that I know). There are problems with this. Mainly the recruitment, retention, and the training of talent that can do the work. When the end goal is creating systematic processes, you want interchangable parts, not some hard-to-find, expensive, headache causing talent. Migrating to the Good Model I know it's easy to get started in freelancing because that's what you are good at and that's what you love. It's nice to make money doing some freelancing work but you end up spending so much time doing that that it is very tough to set the foundations of a real business (whether that's creating a product or setting up a service delivery company). So I would recommend that you put your time, money, and knowledge into creating a business instead of totally relying on freelancing. And if you're already freelancing or just want a taste of it, put aside some time each week, whether it's 1 day a week that you focus on actually building the business. That way, you are building something of value that you can eventually just manage, like the lazy (and successful) business owner would.