3 Ways Kanban Boards Can Help You Grow Your Freelance Business

Although most people think of Kanban boards as a collaborative tool for teams, they can also be useful for freelancers working on their own. In this post, we’ll discuss how you can use Kanban boards to grow your freelance business.

What Is a Kanban Board?

Kanban boards are a type of visual project management tool. They usually consist of a series of columns, with headings like “Planning,” “In progress,” and “Returned to client.” Individual tasks or projects and their key details are contained in cards, which can then be moved between the columns to indicate their status.

Kanban boards display the steps of a project clearly, allowing you to keep track of where you are in the process and what tasks need doing when. There are many different types of Kanban board programs, with some of the most popular being Trello, Monday.com, and ClickUp. 

Kanban boards offer a host of benefits for freelancers to help you expand your business. Let’s find out how!

1. Boost Your Productivity

Working freelance can make it difficult to keep track of all your individual tasks and projects. And when you’re trying to grow your business, it’s easy to get overwhelmed or burnt out.

That’s where management tools like Kanban boards come in handy. Kanban boards can help you focus on and prioritize your work by:

• Breaking down projects that seem overwhelming into clear, manageable steps.
• Keeping all the information you need to complete a task or project in one place.
• Showing you where you’re spending your time and how you might better use it to improve efficiency.
• Providing visual evidence of the progress you’ve made on projects, which can improve your motivation and self-esteem.

Some Kanban boards also come with the ability to impose limits on your columns. By limiting your “In progress” column to three projects at a time, for example, you can maintain healthy work boundaries while steadily increasing your clients and workload.

2. Impress Current and Potential Clients

As you take on more work, Kanban boards will help you to build good relationships with individual clients and larger businesses. 

For one, Kanban boards are a popular and recognized tool in many industries. By showing that you’re familiar with them and know how to use them in your work, you’ll demonstrate to potential clients that you’re organized, professional, and will collaborate well with a team that uses Kanban tools. As a result, they’ll be more likely to choose to work with you.

What’s more, one of the key benefits of Kanban boards is how clearly they convey the status of a project. This is especially helpful when freelancing, as you can share your boards with clients to give them an idea of your progress and when they can expect the finished product. This will improve your communication with clients and build better relationships.

You might even choose to create a Kanban board specifically for managing client feedback, enabling you to stay on top of reviews and testimonials as you expand your business.

3. Manage Your Work and Home Life

Kanban boards are a highly flexible tool, so you can adjust and use them however you prefer to stay on top of your work and home life while growing your business. In addition to keeping track of your work for clients, you can use Kanban boards to organize:

• General admin tasks, such as contacting clients or sending out invoices.
• Marketing tasks, such as setting up a social media calendar or building and developing your own website.
• Work-related goals, such as a business plan or continuing professional development schedule.
• Household tasks and chores to properly balance your work and home life.

All of these things can help you to get organized, boost your productivity, and grow your business (and make more money!). 

Becoming A Proofreader or Editor

Taking a course and improving your skills is a great way to grow your freelance business. Our Becoming A Proofreader and Becoming An Editor courses can help you get started on your freelance career or give you the boost you need to get extra work. 

These courses even come with guaranteed work, so you can start earning as soon as you graduate. Why not try them out for free? If you like what you see, you can buy both courses as a bundle and save 15% of the total price.