« Why My Wife Thinks I’ve Completely Lost My Mind… | Home | Winners of Clayton Makepeace’s Holiday Contest »
5 Ways To Avoid Overbooking Your Schedule
By Michael | January 13, 2009
Yes, I’ve done it more than once. You’d think I’d learned after the first time I did but I didn’t. It took my second round of accidently overbooking myself to learn my lesson.
It started out innocently enough. I had two projects already on my schedule for the month. Two new clients wanted to hire me. I offered to start their projects the next month. They wanted it sooner. They asked if they paid more if I’d move them up in the line. I countered by asking for 50% more, figuring that they would say no. You can imagine my surprise when they both agreed to pay alot more money to get a quick start date.
That month I worked my butt off. Every spare moment I could come up, I was writing copy for those clients. I didn’t have a day off the entire month. My family wound up having to do a number of family things without me because I needed the time to try to catch up on the projects.
By the end of the month, I felt completely wiped out. Worse, partway through the month, one of my forearms cramped up. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get it to uncramp. About two months later, I finally was forced to take a week off from doing lots of typing just to break the pain/muscle cramping cycle.
Since then, I’ve learned my mistakes. There’s only been one instance since where I was booked so tightly and those clients did so with the understanding that I would deliver the best possible sales copy I could but I would not guarantee the delivery date.
Here’s my 5 quick tips that have made a world of difference. I use these every day to help give my schedule some sanity and structure. Feel free to try any or all of them in your copywriting business.
1. Hire a part-time babysitter.
I started out with a few hours each week and as my business grew, added more hours of babysitting. Now I have babysitting coverage 20-25 hours weekdays so I don’t have to work exclusively nights & weekends. Just factor your babysitting costs in to your project bids.
2. A project isn’t booked on my schedule until I have received the client’s deposit.
If it’s a check, I wait until it clears my bank to finalize the bookings. The longer they take to pay their deposit, the further in line they wind up.
I once had a client send me an unsigned check. I sent it back to him with a note saying his project wouldn’t be booked or started until I received his payment. He sent me a new check and during that delay, 2 other clients booked with me. You can imagine his shock when I told him it would be a month later start time because two others had paid while I was waiting for his payment.
After that, he paid in full upfront to ensure his booking spot.
3. Overestimate the time you need to complete a project, then work on delivering it early without sacrificing the quality of your work.
By overestimating the time I need, I’ve been able to work around deaths in the family, my son’s birth, my wife’s major car accident last year, and countless other things that threw scheduling roadblocks in the way. I still meet the client’s deadline because I hadn’t lost time to the unexpected or unavoidable incidents in life.
4. Guard your time against time vampires.
That’s a Dan Kennedy term, not mine. I highly recommend you read his No B.S. book on Time Management.
Case in point: I RARELY talk to prospects on the phone about their project.
It’s WAY too easy for a 10 minute call to balloon into an hour if you’re not careful. Everything initially is done by email. Paying clients get my office phone number. VIPs get my mobile number as well.
99% of the calls I take or do are by appointment. It’s a lot easily to manage that way.
5. Put your own down time and personal projects into your schedule.
Not only does it recharge your batteries, but it gives you something different to look forward to. All work and no play will make anybody a grumpy soul eventually.
Hope that helps,
Mike
![[Post to Twitter]](http://michaelhumphreys.com/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-twitter.png){kind=icon}
Topics: Uncategorized | No Comments »