Six Months Into Freelancing, The Hardest Part Wasn’t Finding Clients. It Was Managing Everything After.

I figured getting clients would be the hard part. Turns out the messy part started after someone said yes.

I had client details in three different places, wrote every proposal from scratch, tracked projects in random notes, and regularly had that “wait, which client wanted what?” moment. More than once I spent 20 minutes hunting for a conversation I knew I’d saved somewhere.

At some point I realised I didn’t need more apps, I needed everything in one place. So I built a workspace in Notion. Nothing fancy, just a few connected pages:

• Inquiry form – collects requirements, budget and project details upfront
• Creative brief – goals, expectations, preferred direction before I start
• Proposal template – so I’m not staring at a blank page every time
• Project dashboard – tasks, deadlines, progress
• Finance tracker – income, expenses, pending payments, and whether a project was actually worth it
• Services & pricing page – ready to send when someone asks “what do you charge?”
• Branding questionnaire – for branding projects
• Social media planner – content ideas and schedule
• One main dashboard – ties it all together

The stuff it fixed for me: proposals eating my whole evening, forgetting small client requirements, missing deadlines, and having no real idea how much time or money a project was costing me.

Now the flow is simple: enquiry comes in, I collect the details, send a proposal, set up the project, track the work and the money in the same place. It doesn’t find clients for me or do the actual work, but it cuts out a ton of admin.

Biggest lesson: being good at your craft isn’t enough. You need a process too, even as a solo freelancer. It makes you look more professional, you make fewer mistakes, and you actually know how your business is doing.

Full disclosure: I turned this setup into a bundle of 9 Notion templates. Not dropping a link here, but happy to answer questions about how any of it works.

How do you all handle onboarding, proposals and invoicing? Notion, spreadsheets, something else? Genuinely curious what’s working for people.