Dealing With Feast Famine Times

How do you balance yourtime, energy and financesduring the feast andfamine, intensely busy monthand super quiet months?I think we've touched on this,but we can dive a little deeperon that.So just happy to share.Joe, are you still here?Yes all right.Talk to me.What is this all about?Well, I think duringthe feast season,I feel quite overwhelmedbecause I'm oftenworking until sort of like theearly hours of the morning,or it just feels a bitunbalanced and out of control.And whilst I'm really gratefulfor the clients that I get in,I would kind of like tophase it out a little bit.But then I findthat maybe it mightbe that I'm a little bitopen with my clients in termsof the timelinesto the projects.So sometimes they take a littlebit longer to get back to meor and so I end up findingthat a lot of my projectskind of converge intoa bit of a crazy week.So I think at thisstage, I kind of justwant to see thingsbalance out a little bit.So it's not so hectic atcertain parts of the year.OK, so I have somegeneric advice,and then we'll get into themore detailed, granular partsof your question.OK Yes.Jim Rohn has this great book,and you can download the bookif you search for it.I think it's called theseasons of life or somethingby Jim rohn, andhe talks about hownature has a very rhythmic cyclethat their spring, summer, falland winter, and that oftentimeswe need to look at our lifeand understand that there'sdifferent periods like we'renot upset when wintercomes because winter comesevery single year, and we're notupset that summer comes either.So when we talk aboutfeast and famine,I think we want italways to be summeror we always wantit to be spring.And we know thatthat's not the case.This is not how nature works.So why is it that ourmind is set on this?So for you, the feastseason is probablymaybe your fall or your spring.I don't my farming seasons well,but when you have to harvestor when you haveto do a lot of workand plant the seedsbecause winter is coming.As they say, in France,winter is coming.So when you're in yourfee season, you're happy,you're thrilled thatthe work is hereand you know that this isgoing to be your busy timeand then you're going toenter into a winter state.And that's when there's no workand you're like, totally coolbecause you made money.You worked really hard.Now you can rest up, youcould do your readingand you can do a lot ofpersonal development.So the conflictcomes in when it'stime for you to dothe work, you're like,I'd rather be reading right now.And then the winter comes andyou're like, I want clients,so we're never quite happywith where we're at because wemisread the seasons, right?So that's the genericlike life advice.And if this soundsinteresting, I'veprobably done the originaltext very little justice,so I would search for it.The PDF is available.I happen to have the bookmyself and it's out of print,but you can read it, and it'svery interesting the parallelsto seasons, to our life.There's a time for youto work like a dog,and there's time for youto play like an animaland you need to notmix those two up.Now, when it comes to clientsand project management,this is the morespecific part whereone client is bleedinginto another clientand it's creating alot of stress for you.The stress is createdbecause you can't beat two places at the same time.So you start tocompromise and thenballs get dropped,details get missed.And this is very stressfulfor people, right?If you promise topick up your momand also to meet your bestfriends for a cocktail shoot,now there's conflict like doI pull one off or the other?And it's very stressful.So you just need betterproject management skills.And here's how you do it.First of all, I would encourageeach and every single personwho's still onthis stream with usright now to thinkabout it this way.When you get work, youshould be giving the workto some other human being.When you get work, you shouldbe giving it to someone else.The price in which you chargeand the price in which you payis your profit.So if you're notmaking profit, itmeans you're notcharging enough.If you can't get another humanbeing to do the work reasonablywell to like 85% ofyour skill level,then you're notcharging enough money.The reason why I suspectyou're stressed outis because there'snobody to help you.It could be that you haveone person helping youor 0 people helping you.So what you need todo in the winter timeis to develop a database ofpeople that you can call.Now, if you remember,earlier in the call,Andrew said he got someother pro member groupto design the book for him.See how he did that, sohe wasn't stressed outin making it happen.So what you needare people that youcan give the work tothat are dependable,that are reasonably priced.So that you can managethe project so that you'rehappy when there's two, three,four or five clients comingto you at a time.This is how youscale your business.Now, the otherproblem is this isthat once youinitiate a project,you should have termsand conditions to saythat if the project is delayedby 2 weeks, there are penaltiesif you take more than xnumber of days to respond.In terms of givingyour client feedback,there are penalties so thatprojects don't drag on.We have this in ourterms and conditions.If x number of days expiresbefore the client gets backto us, we will close out thejob, build out the remainder.And we're moving on whenyou want to re initiatethe project, we're going to giveyou a new bid and we're goingto pick it up where we left off,but it's going to cost you moremoney now because you cannotreserve the time indefinitely.Whoever is drinkingwater, can you guyssit yourself on mute, please?OK, you understand that, right?Because it's not fair to younot to take on other workand have the clients drag thisout without a finite deadline,so there's someproject management,some staffing and some mindsetstuff that I'm hearing.So let's go back to it.Joe, do you havesomething else youwant to talk about or a questionor follow up or anything?Yeah, I think that allmakes so much sense,and I've been consideringgetting someone like a VAjust to help out withsome of the admin stuff.And I think definitely withthe terms and conditions,I even though it'sset in place, I'mnot the best policewhen it comesto ensuring that peopleare getting back to mebecause sometimes I don't know.I feel like I should besupportive and kind of coachingmy clients through.And so I kind of letthem slide by a dayand then another day goes by.So yeah, it's definitely Ineed to firm up on the termsand conditions stuff.And yes, you do.Now here's a solution tothe terms and conditions up.Charge so much money thatif it slides by 4 days,you don't even care.And you can have thatconversation with themup front.See, so a lot of the problemsthat you are facing nowcan be resolved just bybeing clear up front.Here's what you do,Mr and Mrs. Client.Here's the thing in myterms and conditions,we say that you have 24hours, 48 hours to respondand most people agree to that.But in reality, life happens.You have your business onall these kinds of things.Now here's how we can do it.We can do it option a, whichis if it goes past this point,you're going to haveto pay a penaltyand we're all in agreementthat this is fair, right?Yeah but in reality,this happensand I don't want tonickel and dime you.So here's option b,I'm going to charge you15% more in this project.We're not going to worryif it slips a few days hereand there.If it slips into like threeweeks, we'll have a problem,but otherwise we'll be OK.Are you OK with that?That's why I chargea little bit more.Because I want to providebetter customer service.I honestly think that byasking you for over just hereand there starts to wear downthe relationship so that youfeel like all I care aboutis the money, and I don't.But to be fair, I can't keepthis time open just for youwhen we're not moving forward.Financially, itdoesn't make sense,and you, as a businessowner, understandthat I'm sure you do.Mr and Mrs. Client.You see, now you've set it up.So you want topay me more or youwant me to hit youup for an overageor are you goingto make decisions?I like that because thatallows them to be in control.Giving options, ok?Yes all right.I think Seth wantsto say something,Seth, I know you're drivingand you unmute yourselffor half a second.But talk to me.So there was some thingsthat you were saying,Joe, that it sounds like you'reworking in your business.And I'm kind ofin that same boat.And I want to transition outfrom working in my businessto working on my business.And another book that I couldrecommend on top of Chrisis from Jim Rohn is the e-myth.I think it's Michael E Gerber.This is an excellent book.It definitely changedmy perspectiveon how I should berunning my own business.I've been doing it solofor a very long time,and it constantly feels likeI'm drowning and trying to keepmy head above the water.But I'm drowningmost of the timeand hiring people togo and help you supportall these different tasks.Projects is going to reallyfree up stuff for youto go and push your furtherinto where you want to put it,and not just constantly workingin it, but working on it.I really recommend that.And that's it.That's it for me.OK, Yeah.Awesome thank you.OK, very good, everybody.