Amanda McVicker (00:00)
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of The OBM Educator. I always love bringing topics to this podcast that I am currently going through, because that's when you know like it's real, that's when you know that it's like okay, yeah, this is what OBMs go through, because me, as an OBM, I'm going through it. So today's topic of what do you do when, like, there's one client or one project or you know a situation that is just eating up a lot of your time, like how do you handle that in relation to your other clients and I am coming off of that right now One of my clients is a local chapter of a national association and we do an annual awards ceremony event Very big thing. This year we had over a hundred more people than we did last year and I am the chapter admin but I also am the event planner for this event. And so leading up to this event, it's just, it's so much. There are a lot of details, it's a lot to organize and I've talked about this before in my past life, before I started my business, before I became a mom, I was a conference planner and I did that right. I would do seven day conferences for 3000 people. That was kind of my regular and I'm not in that anymore, I'm not in that life, and so when I do get to events now and really it's just this past event it's really stressful. Like it's, there's a lot going on, like I said, a lot of moving parts, and it's so easy and natural and somewhat necessary to prioritize it over other clients. And so what I'm going to be talking about today is what happens. What do you do when that happens? Right, because we're all going to have clients and different clients are going to have these at different times that there's something going on in their business that takes priority. You know, whether it's a launch, maybe your client is having an event, maybe they have, like this really last minute big project or something like that, but something is going to happen that is going to make you have to put other things on the back burner, and what I'm going to be talking about today is how to make that happen so that you are not overwhelmed and so that you can do it in a way that provides the least amount of interruption for your other clients. So let's get into it.
Welcome to The OBM Educator. I'm your host, Amanda McVicker, a veteran OBM who serves six and seven figure entrepreneurs, as well as educates new OBMs with the skills and confidence they need to start and grow their own successful online business management business. Follow along as I share valuable insights behind the scenes, sneak peeks and proven strategies to help you build a better OBM business. So the first thing that I want to talk about when you have a client who has something going on that requires, like, your full attention. So maybe this is like a one day thing and there's like a lot of prep work leading up to it, like, for an example, an event, or maybe it's like a longer, less intense thing, but you still kind of have to be ready at a moment's notice, say like a launch, if you know you have to manage it and make sure things are going smoothly.
The most important thing to do with your other clients is keep the communication open. Communication is going to be key, letting your clients know like hey, this day I am completely out. Now, as a contractor, as someone who's very flexible with my schedule, if I have a day mostly, that I'm kind of like not dedicated to work, I'll be honest. I do not let my clients know that I'm out of office. I don't let them know like, hey, I have a doctor's appointment. I'm, you know, not going to be reachable at this time. Um, sometimes, even if I'm like driving most of the day, I'm not going to be able to reach them. I'm not going to be able to reach them, I'm not going, and I plan to like check in at night. I don't let my clients know that because I don't really want it to become like an expectation that I'm going to drop everything to do what it is that they need me to do. Right, I have my boundaries in place 24 hours notice on communication, all of that stuff and so normally, for normal situations, I don't feel the need to communicate if I'm like not around during business hours because my hours vary.
In a case like this, like yesterday for my event, I let all of my clients know that I am out of the office, I am unreachable, that if they have something for me, it is most definitely going to have to wait until the next day, and it also helps with, like, the planning beforehand, but communicating that there is something going on, you can say it's for another client, you can just say I am not available, but giving that communication to your other clients is going to help them feel taken care of, but also give them like an alert, like, hey, if I have something I know that I'm going to be needing from that person, like from my OBM, I need to get it to them now. You know, if you give a few weeks notice, like they know, okay, if I'm planning on having you know an email go out or I'm going to be needing like a refresh on some contracts or something like that, I know that I need to get that to them like ahead of time. I can't expect to give it to them even the day before and have it be done the next day. So keeping that communication going is so important.
The next thing that you're going to want to do is you're going to want to figure out what your priorities are and what your client's priorities are, right. So if you are working, say I'm going to just use the event example, but I'm sure that there are many other examples that could fit into this but say you have an event that you're working on for a client and there's a lot of lead up to it, say, like the week before it's probably going to be the majority of that client's work, but you can't ignore your other client's work for a week, right? So what do you do? You have to figure out what those priorities are. What is it that must be done for those clients? If you have like regularly scheduled things, can you pre-plan them? Can you schedule them? Can, if you have a team member, can you pass those things off to them and then, as things come in, kind of assess, like, okay, can this wait until after, or should I do this, like find the time to do this now?
I have a client that sends their team sends a lot of emails, and this past week I've been receiving the emails, taking a look at them and, you know, categorizing them essentially to be like, okay, I know that this can wait until next week, I know that this is urgent, like this needs to be done within the next day. Can do this when I find a couple minutes of downtime, but I, you know, essentially organize, like based on what I know about the client and what I know about the work, to create those priorities. And then you also need to look at what your priorities, right, you need to look at your personal priorities. You want to make sure that you are taking care of yourself in all of this, but then also your business priorities, right. Like it might be that you skip a newsletter, like I did on Monday. It might be that you don't post on social media, right?
I think that in this particular case, where you are prioritizing a client and leaving other clients with minimal work, you should be prioritizing their work over your content, essentially, and that's. You know, that's kind of the main thing that we focus on in our like working on our business. Normally I would not say that in like a regular season, you know, if you have made a commitment to yourself to like put out three social media posts a week or one newsletter a week, I would normally would not say like if you're a little bit behind on client work, you know don't do the social media or don't do the email. But if in this situation where you are really limited on time and you're already like kind of deprioritizing the other clients, I would even more deprioritize your content and maybe some of the other like business stuff that you have. But figure out what your priorities are of like these are the things I have to get done and make sure you schedule in time to do those and then the last thing that is going to help you in these situations is remembering that it is not going to look perfect and, honestly, from your perspective it might look far from perfect.
Chances are you know, just kind of looking at it objectively someone is probably going to feel like you're lagging behind. Someone's going to probably send a follow-up reminder of hey, where are we with this? Someone might feel like maybe you're having an off week, might feel like maybe you're having an off week, but the reminder here is that chances are, every client you have is going to have a moment of need like this right, and so, objectively, you can look at it as this is this client's turn. Next time it'll be that client's turn, and you can even talk to them and like in that communication portion if you wanted to share this information of saying, hey, I have another client who has this thing going on next week, so I'm gonna be a little bit delayed in responding. I will be catching up on everything the week after if you wanna say something like that.
But know that you're also going to be showing up for that client when it comes their time, and so you kind of have to keep your like feelings, emotions, because we kind of all like would probably lean towards feeling like I'm a failure. You have to keep that out of it because, objectively, it's going to come around to them at some point and you're going to be serving them at that high level in that scenario and you're going to have to go to the other client and, you know, reduce their workload a little bit. It all will eventually even out, but there are some times it's just part of being in business that there is a busier time than others. Now this might be another podcast episode in itself of when the busy seasons overlap and you're doing this with all of your clients. That's a lot more that we can get into in another episode. But just know that you know when a client might be feeling that way and it's totally valid on their part to feel that being honest with them about what is going on and your expectations of getting caught back up are really going to show them your work ethic of like when it comes their time for it. Now, before I wrap up, I do want to kind of share like a little caveat of like when is too much too much? This is kind of coming from like maybe not once in a blue moon, but kind of like that occasionally this happens, right. What happens when this is happening all the time? Either with all clients, that you just feel like you're constantly having to devote so much time to all your clients and you don't have time to finish it all, and it's like it always seems like there's something going on but then also like what happens if it's always the same client who, like, needs all of my attention all of the time. So let's talk about first when it's a consistent thing with all of your clients, like just feeling like you don't have enough time.
Part of my OBM story is that in 2022, I had six clients and I was also hired by my old company to come plan their national conference that year, and I was also pregnant. There was a lot going on in 2022, but I was doing so many things and this particular instance was before like the majority bulk planning was happening. I was still doing stuff, but it was kind of like just another say, like 20 hour client, which is still too much, so it's like seven clients. I never felt caught up. I never felt like I had a handle on things. It always felt like I was not able to serve my clients well, that there was never enough time to get to everything. There were definitely times that it was like the clients needed, like a client would need something extra and, like you know, in a similar case of like what I was talking about earlier, but when it would happen, I could never get fully caught back up. I just always felt behind, always felt like I was letting someone down, always felt like I was disappointing someone.
And so when that happens, you need to make kind of a choice. In that case, you are probably overbooked and you need to make a change or else it's going to lead to burnout, and burnout is really real. Like I know, a lot of us maybe have come from like a nine to five where we did experience burnout. And you know we look at our business now and you're like, oh, I worked 25 hours this week. Like for me, that was when I really hit burnout, when I was working 25 hours, like billable hours a week, while also being a stay at home mom and, you know, handling everything else. And you can like look at like your nine to five and be like, well, that's nothing, or what I'm doing now is like nothing compared to what it was, but that many clients, seven clients plus like seven things to think about is going to burn you out and it's going to make you want to burn down your business, which is where I was in 2022.
So, if you find that you are consistently feeling like someone needs me always to just drop everything that I'm doing for them and I can't keep this up and it's just too much, you're probably going to have to let go of clients or at least make a significant change. That could be hiring a team member, it could be lowering hours, but ultimately, you need to be doing less work. There needs to be less on you and less on your brain so that you can get out of this situation that is going to lead to burnout. Now, if it's always the same client that is you're having to like drop everything for, or that always just has something going on, it's going to kind of be the same thing, right? You need to determine, like, what is? What does that client need? Does that client need another team member to help handle the workload? Does that client need to be more realistic in their expectations? Do you need to share your boundaries more, enforce them, or do you need to let go of that client?
Having one client like that is going to like in a constant state of always needing you, always needing you to drop other clients work to work on their stuff is going to leave your other clients with a bad taste in their mouth and they are going to potentially end the working relationship. And so if you find that you have a client who is you're always in this situation with, you really do need to figure out what is the best course of action to make it so that you are able to deal with your clients evenly right, like there are going to be clients that maybe have more hours than the other, and so naturally, you're going to do more work for them or not, but you still need to be able to show up for all of your clients in that the way that is contracted, and if one client is preventing you from doing that, you need to make a change. Well, I hope this was helpful for you. Again, I love being a mentor to OBMs and VAs who want to become OBMs, people who want to start their OBM business. I love doing that while also being an active OBM, because of situations like this where I can sit down to record a podcast and be like what is going on in my life right now that I'm sure other people need to hear, and so I hope this was helpful.
I hope that if you're going through situations like this, that you're able to take all of this information and apply it to the situation. I know it's not easy Unfortunately, nothing ever is but I hope that this gave you some insight and some inspiration to take to the situations to help make them better for you. I'll talk with you guys next week. Bye.
Thank you for joining me for this episode of The OBM Educator. I hope what you heard today is helpful for you on your OBM journey. If you loved today's episode, I would so appreciate you sharing it and leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform. Want to be a guest on The OBM Educator? Fill out the form in the show notes and I'll be in touch. Join us next time on The OBM Educator. Educator.
