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At any given time, I’m juggling multiple clients. That means I’m juggling context for multiple projects, background information on various companies, and a lot of deadlines. Some of my clients give me a steady stream of work each month, while others pop in with a request every few weeks.
Whether you’re coaching, doing creative work, or have long-term retainers, most solopreneurs eventually find themselves managing multiple clients simultaneously. The number of clients you take on directly impacts your income, but more clients also means more complexity.
In my corporate life, I worked as a product manager at a software company. Even though my work is very different now, much of the project management follows the same basic concepts.
When running a solo business, you need to estimate your capacity, plan for future work, and not lose track of 100 moving parts.
Think in slots, not hours
If you can’t accurately assess your bandwidth, you run the risk of overpromising and underdelivering (or working some really long hours).
Rather than trying to track hours across overlapping projects, I break my week into client “slots”: blocks of time dedicated to a single client or deliverable. I have three or four slots available per week. One slot equals one deliverable. My slot is an entire workday, but you might do half-days if you need to spend time on smaller chunks of client projects.
Slots give you a visual map of your capacity. When a new request or deadline comes in, you’re not guessing whether you can fit it in. You look for your next available open “slot” (or multiple slots, if the project needs to be done over several days).
This approach also makes it easier to communicate your availability to clients. “My next available slot is on XYZ date. Does that work for you?” Clients can plan around a concrete timeline.
Plan before the work arrives
Don’t wait for assignments to land in your inbox before you start planning your month. I can generally count on a similar amount of work from my regular clients each month. Even when I don’t have the specifics yet, I still block off a slot.
I use a paper calendar—a big visual on my wall—to pencil in tentative work. I’m very much a “systems and tools” person, but I don’t want to add projects to my project management tool until they are confirmed. With the paper calendar, I can see my bandwidth in a way that my project management tool won’t necessarily show.
By tracking projected work this way, I can see how much upcoming availability I have for less-frequent or new clients.
Keep track of client details
As your client roster grows, so does the mental overhead of remembering details about each project. For example, I have some clients who want me to follow a specific process for deliverables. Others give me a lot more creative freedom. Since I work as a freelance content marketer, I have to keep track of style guides, current messaging, and any prior feedback I’ve gotten from editors.
I keep a mini checklist for each client with these kinds of details. When I start a new deliverable, I copy that checklist into my working document. Most project management tools also have checklist/template features you can rely on.
The real challenge with multiple clients is context switching. Even with slots, you’re laser-focused on one client on Monday and another client on Tuesday. Checklists reduce the mental load so you can focus on the actual work rather than hunting down the details you need for each project.
Build a system that scales with you
Over the years, as I’ve taken on more clients, I’ve dealt with a wide range of communication styles, project briefs, and idiosyncratic requests. The only way this stays manageable is to create a standardized process on my end. No matter what I get from the client and what I need to deliver, it is streamlined behind the scenes.
Even though none of this is client-facing, that consistency is what keeps things running smoothly. While more clients means more complexity, it doesn’t have to mean more chaos. The earlier you put systems and processes in place, the easier it’ll be to manage multiple clients.
Below, Nedra Glover Tawwab shares five key insights from her new book, The Balancing Act: Creating Healthy Dependency and Connection Without Losing Yourself.
Nedra is a licensed therapist and author of the instant New York Times best…
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