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If you are in a service based business, is it possible that you have taken on too many clients?
Some signs that you’ve overbooked yourself would be:
- Clients are asking where their work is
- Clients are expressing concern about deadlines
- Clients tell you they didn’t give you work because they thought you were too busy
- You forget things
- You forget appointments
- You miss deadlines
- You push an existing client’s tasks down the list in order to work on a new client’s task instead.
There’s more for that list but I think you get the idea.
There is an epidemic of overbooked consultants, writers, virtual assistants, web designers and graphic artists going on right now. I’ve heard concerns expressed by no less than a dozen people in the last few weeks. (Does a dozen make an epidemic? LOL!)
Alice Seba taught our community to Outsource and now that we’re all doing it - we can’t find enough quality, reliable support people to go around.
If you do good work, you get booked up. If you’re in this position and you feel like you need more money, do yourself a favor and give yourself a raise and bump up the rates you charge your existing clients. They’ll be happy to pay it. Trust me! They’d rather pay you an extra $5 an hour for your quality work than have you take on another client and bump them down the totem pole of your work week.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Michelle Waters 08.18.07 at 2:26 pm
Sometimes you can feel overwhelmed and over worked — but you’re actually under managed. If you don’t have a system by which you manage and track your projects, you’re going to spend a lot of time running around putting out fires, projects are going to slip between the cracks and people are going to be unhappy. You’ll be doing at least twice the work with fewer rewards, because you really don’t have that much going on.
Once you start managing your projects, you’ll be able to keep track of what you’re doing, learn how much you can handle, set boundaries for when you will and won’t work, and report accurately to clients who want to know where there project is and how it is progressing.
This will also help you learn whether or not it’s time to outsource. And if it is, your system will help your new assistants work effectively.
Tishia 08.20.07 at 10:55 am
Like Michelle said (You’ll be doing at least twice the work with fewer rewards, because you really don’t have that much going on) I’ve been there before too. But what’s going on now is I really do have alot going on and it’s more than I can handle - I know I’ve bit off more than I can chew, I know I took on projects and new clients when I shouldn’t of. I don’t have any clients asking where their work is or expressing concerns BUT I’m working all the time (sometimes around the clock) to meet the deadlines I gave clients.
So I’ve learned a big lesson here - money can’t motivate me to take on new clients/projects just because I THINK I need it - I’m a single mom with a broken down car, a son that always needs clothes, shoes, etc so I will always NEED money. My health and my son are more important than this business.