Fellow solopreneurs, I’m curious to understand how you balance your current work commitments while also finding time to build your future client pipeline?
I’m super green within the sport of freelancing so I worry that if I occupy my week up to full time with client work I wont have the time nor energy to also network and entertain future work opportunities. How do you balance this? Any tips?
The only thing that has worked for me is time blocking - having pre-allocated time in my calendar for gathering leads, sending proposals and networking. So something like this essentially:
Agreed. What REALLY works for me is investing significant, directed energy in finding and nurturing a very small number of very good, repeat clients. But this isn’t viable with every industry or specialty, and even this has its drawbacks.
The primary issues with this are:
I agree completely with @kristinkirstein’s approach. It’s the only way I’ve seen to allocate the time I know it takes to cultivate the new business pipeline while not losing my mind or getting discouraged by the seemingly-unproductive (see: Uncertainty + Delayed Gratification) grind.
Yes, time blocking with a specific focus helps a lot! Also having in mind your workload capacity is super important, many times we want to reach all possible clients and do all at the same time and is not possible. So my recommendation is to focus on the high impact clients like Benjamin was referring, but also focus on being aware of your workload capacity and adapt your activities according this.
Networking not only means getting new clients now or in the future, also means being present in the community and ecosystem, having inputs on new trends and ideas, and building conections that could help you take a next step in your profesional path.
Totally agreed. I have repeatedly fallen into the freelancer trap of securing absolutely everything I wanted (loads of high-value work at rates that actually work for me) and then realizing that I’ve overwhelmed myself and I’m miserable and can barely motivate myself to do all this stuff that looked so excellent before I had it. At that point, you’ve got to clear the plate, ideally without dropping anything in a way that damages your prospects, and then re-evaluate how much you can actually do and for how long.
As @ariel is implying, you can only do so much - and what you can do for a two-week sprint is probably different than what you can do for a 3-month or 6-month marathon. That balance also changes over time, depending on what else is going on in your life.
When I was an entrepreneur, I looked for ways that don’t feel like a burden or require extra time to do actively, so I can still focus most of the time in work and still get new customers.
#1 Talk About Work with Everyone: It might sound odd, but bringing up your work in casual conversations can really help expand your network. You never know who might need your services or know someone who does. Networking isn’t just for formal events; every chat can lead to new opportunities.
#2 Set & Forget (improve your SEO) You do it once, and opportunities comes to you instead you chase them. There are some ways to scale your reach passively, such as making your profiles on LinkedIn, Xchange complete as possible. If you have a bit of spare time:
#3 (most obvious one) Do Great Work and Collect Referrals: Quality work speaks for itself. Referrals are gold. On platforms like Xchange, you can collect reviews even from work done outside Xolo’s marketplace, which helps build your reputation from existing clients to get new ones. This makes it easier to get a new channel of clients. Consistently doing great work means your clients will naturally spread the word about you.
