A side business almost never fails on the quality of the work. It fades because the five available hours a week go into admin instead of the craft — or because a client who said yes never got called back.
This page describes a minimal routine. It takes a few minutes a week.
The principle: one thing you must never miss
You do not have time to keep a complete client file, and that is fine.
There is only one rule to hold: everyone who has shown interest must have a follow-up date. Everything else — statuses, statistics, splitting work into activities — can wait months.
Do only that and you are already ahead of most people starting out.
Setting up: ten minutes, once
- Create one activity in your own name. Not three. You can split it the day you have something to compare.
- Create records for your current clients — not all of them, just the ones that matter. Name, email, phone.
- For each one, set a reminder: when should you get back in touch?
That is it. The free plan covers that volume comfortably, with no card and no expiry date.
See the 10-minute setup.
The daily habit: thirty seconds
Someone asks you for a price — at a family meal, in a comment, by message.
From your phone, before you move on to anything else:
- create the contact record — a first name and an email is enough;
- status Prospect;
- a reminder in four days, recipient User.
Thirty seconds. It is the only discipline that counts, and it is the difference between a side business that grows and one that stalls.
The rest — full address, second email, splitting by service — you fill in when it becomes useful, or never.
See reminders.
The weekly meeting with yourself
A fixed moment in the week — Sunday evening works well. Open the dashboard and look at three things:
- Upcoming reminders. Who needs contacting this week?
- Upcoming appointments. Is there anything to prepare?
- Recent contacts. Is there someone you met and never followed up?
Five minutes. That is your sales meeting, and it replaces the permanent feeling of forgetting something.
Looking established without spending time on it
This is where the difference shows fastest. When you set an appointment, send the email confirmation: your client gets the details, properly laid out, with a secure link to their own space.
The client has no idea whether you do this full time or on a Saturday morning. What they see is a confirmation that looks like it came from an established business.
A copy always comes to you — so you keep a record of what was said, which beats a verbal agreement when someone changes their mind.
See appointments.
When to add more
Do not complicate anything until you have a real problem. The thresholds worth acting on:
| Signal | What you add |
|---|---|
| You no longer know which service pays | A second activity, then the statistics |
| You forget what was agreed | Notes after every conversation |
| A client disputes an agreement | Shared notes, the same day |
| You hit the free plan quotas | The Pro plan — not before |
| You go full time | Re-read the guides and open up the rest |
The compliance question
The moment you keep a client's name and phone number, the GDPR applies — side business or not, your status changes nothing. The good news: at your scale it comes down to three things. Collect only what you need, be able to say what you hold, and be able to erase it on request.
See GDPR and consent.
In short
| When | What you do | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Someone shows interest | Record + day-4 reminder | 30 seconds |
| Appointment set | Email confirmation | 1 minute |
| After an important conversation | A three-line note | 1 minute |
| Sunday evening | Dashboard: reminders, appointments, recent contacts | 5 minutes |
Ready to start? See the 10-minute setup.