Ask HN: Tips on working for multiple clients simultaneously?

[wildengineer]

I started my own one man consulting company earlier this year and so far it's gone very well with my first customer. However, I am in talks to begin an engagement with a second company. The type of work I am doing for both companies is highly collaborative, meaning I need to be available to both sides part time Monday through Friday. Both companies know about each other and have accepted the arrangement. It's all fully remote work.

Any tips on keeping both clients happy? How do I manage my time between the two? How do I manage ad-hoc meetings?

[muzani]

I just had this conversation with some people recently. I've got 4 clients, bit off more than I can chew, and the switching costs take about 2-3 days unfortunately.

Some tips:

1. Don't switch right in the middle of something difficult. I do this as a way of procrastinating, and it takes a very long time to get into the rhythm again.

2. If something is a WIP over a break (e.g. weekend), get back to it as soon as you're back and don't switch.

3. I would recommend spending one week per client if possible, but it doesn't look like your situation. So another alternative is a time block like one day, or a half day.

4. You probably want to schedule meeting times, even if it's only one client. Interruptions are bad. The uncertainty of a future interruption could make you procrastinate. If you've got two clients, this anxiety is squared.

5. Some things have low switching cost, e.g. writing tests. This was one thing I frequently did on the train and it's a good way to buy time. Meetings too.

It is hard, and while two are okay, I wouldn't recommend doing more.

[davismwfl]

Easy way is to split your days, no way you are working 16 billable hours 5 days a week, so split your days and set office hours for each client where you are available for ad-hoc meetings. And tell them that you are open to communication outside those hours as well (within reason), but it will be best effort responses. Generally if you are up front they will accept you have other clients to work on, and as long as your billings match what they feel you are doing all is good.

This is how I started mine when I did them, it is normal and totally fair to everyone involved. Just gotta set boundaries for yourself and clients. Clients will abuse you, sometimes intentionally, other times unintentionally, if you do not define boundaries. Like gldev said in his comment, it is easy for work to start spilling into the evenings and weekends in an unhealthy way and then you are burnt out and clients start getting upset if you don't reset expectations quick enough.

Even when my consulting businesses grew I would set full time to clients at 32hrs a week for every resource, with the other 8 hours being used for admin stuff etc. I also charged weekly rates per resource so a little different than hourly time. For any work less than a full week I would do day rates to fill in odd jobs. And we didn't screw clients either, if something took us 20 minutes no one ever saw a bill for those 20 minutes, they would see an invoice, just no charge for the time (typically this happened more with existing clients calling for support after projects completed).

[aosaigh]

Don't underestimate the cost of switching contexts. I find that when I have two projects on the go, even the most trivial "5 minute" request that comes in via Slack or Email has the potential to bomb the next 2 hours. You have to unload everything from one project and then reload everything from project two. Any momentum you had from the first project is now definitly gone and needs to be built up for the second project.

[gldev]

Been there and done that, it is key to manage expectation with both companies AND yourself. Make sure every assignment is very well thought out and planned, try to minimize long meetings by doing more small ones asking stuff like : what was achieved yesterday, what will we achieve today, and do I need help from anyone?.

Make sure to get rest and definitely try to scale your operation and avoid moving work to weekends because it will get out of control very fast. I made the mistake of taking more than i could chew and had to let go one of my clients because I was so tired i couldn't keep the quality of my work just as I wanted to.

[tmaly]

I cannot recall the specific blog post, but I remember the idea a few years back. This one consultant would send a weekly recap to each client on Friday afternoon. This recap would summarize the status of the project.

The clients loved the consultant for this one thing. I guess it was not a very common thing to do.

[wildengineer]

Very good advice all around. Thanks for the help!

[fosco]

Be extremely organized.