It goes without saying that all companies, even those run from a house by a husband and wife team, should have formalized processes: divisions of labor, official lunch breaks, the whole bit.

Yet, the reality of running your own business is that you’re constantly adjusting to new scenarios and shifting priorities: the game changes quickly. If you’re smart, you learn to change with it. Otherwise, you risk locking yourself into a singular way of doing things and miss out on opportunities for creative thinking.

Keep it flexible

So how do you allow for flexibility, while keeping your internal processes crisp and effective as a freelancer or small agency? For us, the answer is short daily status meetings. No Gantt charts, scary to-do lists, or advanced technology — we just meet every morning over coffee and granola to talk about the day’s priorities. What each of us is going to do, what we probably won’t do, what’s changed since the previous day, and how we plan to kick ass. About once a week or whenever’s convenient, we address long term strategy and side projects we’re interested in doing. The meetings are short, informal, and face-to-face.

Our way of doing status allows us to be realistic about the fact that priorities do shift (when a client wants 30 more hours of billable work or a really great new lead comes in, for example), while keeping each other informed and on track. More importantly, we both leave feeling inspired and motivated—effectively tackling the biggest challenge of working alone.