Have you seen adverts for project management tools or heard people talking about them and think they are just for people in big teams or corporate companies. Well, I’m here to tell you otherwise. Project management tools should be used by anyone in business whether they working for a multi-national conglomerate or a running their own business as solopreneur or freelancer. Project management tools are useful for so many reasons, but below I’m sharing the exact reasons why I believe every solopreneur or freelancer should use a project management tool.

A PROJECT MANAGEMENT TOOLS ALLOWS YOU TO GET EVERYTHING OUT OF YOUR HEAD AND RECORDED IN ONE PLACE

As a solopreneur or freelancer, you are wearing lots of different hats. You are responsible for everything, which includes sales, marketing, finances, operations, customer service, legal etc. That is a lot of information with lots of different deadlines. Trying to keep all of that information in your head isn’t productive.

Using a project management tool means you have a reliable way of storing all your commitments, projects, deadlines and ideas. It means your brain can relax knowing that everything you need to know is in one place and it doesn’t need to keep on reminding you.

YOU CAN ACCESS A PROJECT MANAGEMENT TOOL ANYWHERE

Now I’m a big pen and paper fan and for a long time, I didn’t see the need for having a digital system. However, there is a major advantage of having using a project management tool that’s based online – it’s available everywhere and anywhere (well anywhere your phone is).

Nowadays, the majority of project management tools are web-based and have an app. That means that you can update things easily no matter if you are working at your desk on your laptop or you have a great business idea strike you in the middle of the dance floor.

A PROJECT MANAGEMENT TOOL ALLOWS YOU TO EASILY RECORD YOUR PROCESS AND CREATE CHECKLISTS

Whilst some bits of business are exciting and changing every day there are other bits that follow the same process over and over again. In fact, in marketing, I promote having a content creation and publishing process to ensure you stay consistent.

For example, if you have your own podcast then your creation and publishing process might look like this:

• Decide on episode topic
• Research topic and create podcast outline
• Record episode
• Edit episode
• Write copy for episode
• Upload episode to podcast host
• Create and schedule the blog post
• Schedule posts on FB page, Twitter and Instagram
• Post an Instagram story on the morning the episode goes live

This is the same for every single episode week in and week out. Using a project management tool allows you to create a checklist that you can copy over and over again. You never have to write the checklist every again. And it means even when you are tired, working away late at night, you aren’t going to miss a step because everything is listed out for you.

USING A PROJECT MANAGEMENT TOOL WHEN YOU WORK ALONE IS PREPARING YOUR FOR IF YOUR TEAM GROWS

Now maybe your dream is always to stay as a solopreneur or freelancer and build your one-person empire. However, if you are hoping to grow your team in the future recording your systems now is going to put you in a great place.

So often when people take on someone new in their team they don’t have any processes or systems recorded. They have everything in their head and have to spend time getting it out in order to teach someone else. Or worse they expect the person to know and get upset when something isn’t the way they would like it.

If you have already been using a project management tool properly it will mean you are already fully aware of the processes or systems you use within your business. You will quickly be able to work out what tasks you want to handover to the new team member and you can assign the new team member the tasks right in the project management tool. Super simple!

Are you ready to start using a project management tool?

By now I hope you can see the major benefits of using a project management tool. So the question is what to use? Now there are lots of different tools, but established favourites in the solopreneur community are Asana and Trello. I have used both and both start with a free plan. So I would recommend you check out both websites, decide which seems best for you and just give one a go. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain!