Worried About Booking in Advance? Dream Clients Will Wait for You
Have you ever decided that you want to book clients in advance but find yourself worrying that those dreamy, perfect clients are never going to wait months to work with you?
Let me guess, you have created a schedule, worked out your slots, figured out your booking date, and felt SO ready to start being one of those people who can say “booking for Summer!” (or whatever a few months away is right now…)
But then this arrives in your inbox…
“I saw you were booking for xxx but I need to get started ASAP”
Ughhh… I guess no one wants to wait that long.
Well, I don’t want to be harsh here… but you are dead wrong!
The truth is, dream clients will wait two months, three months, even six months! I know because I have been consistently booked 3-6 months in advance in my design business since 2017 🎉
I know thinking this way is holding you back. Not just from booking in advance but from all of the amazing benefits you get from booking in advance…
Consistent monthly income
A secure and steady flow of projects
Dreamy, joyful, spacious processes
Space to work on your business and reach your goals
Less stress and overwhelm from overworking
By switching up this thought process, you're not just debunking a myth – you're opening the door to building the dream business you’ve been pinning onto those vision boards for the past few years!
it makes sense that you think this…
As a mentor working with creatives who want to be booked in advance for 2-3 months, I know that this myth is one of the biggest misconceptions we can face that builds so many confidence blocks around keeping our schedules spacious and organised.
It’s all well and good building the schedule, figuring out your signature services and their timelines, working out when you can fit in your next client and then sharing your booking date.
But then we start getting into our own head, worrying about whether people are actually going to wait and we get all of the wobbles.
And those wobbles get you thinking that dream clients - the clients who are amazing to work with, give you the best creative freedom, value your time and expertise and leave you with the most aligned, on-brand, showstopping case studies. Those clients won’t wait when you’re booking in advance right?
The schedule that previously felt solid and so easy to work towards, feels silly and unrealistic. You start to question whether you can ever be a person who books in advance and take the control you want over your projects.
Maybe you’ve found yourself in this cycle of thinking…
people are impatient, right?
People want things right now! We’re in an age of Amazon Prime, Deliveroo, digital downloads and the information of the entire world at our fingertips. People don’t wait for anything - why would they wait for you?
the customer is always right!
If there’s anything your Dad who’s worked in finance his whole life or your Mum who thinks your projects are “nice little pieces of art” have passed off as their sage business advice, it’s this. You need to prioritise your clients over absolutely anything. Whether that means working all hours, sending emails in the evening, ignoring your offspring, and yes, even starting RIGHT THIS SECOND.
i get impatient myself 👀
You may even feel twangs of impatience yourself - wanting to work with that brand photographer or designer as soon as humanly possible. Refusing to wait for the softback version of the next book in your series and struggling with the heaviest book you’ve ever owned and hand cramps. Picking your second favourite takeaway option because your first choice takes 10 minutes longer (all of these are me)
But here’s the thing… we wait for the things that feel like the perfect fit for us.
Yes we want all those things as quickly as we can but we’re still waiting, we’re still excited, we’re still anticipating. Your dream clients have all of those feelings about you. Yes, of course they’d love to have their dream brand or copy or photos or designs, like yesterday, but to work with you? They’ll wait years! (Ok maybe not years but definitely the few months that you want to be booking for!)
This feeling that those perfect people won’t wait, that need to answer every single need for your clients, the fear that if you say no to the client that wants to start next week, your inbox will never see another enquiry again - this is what’s keeping you stuck.
This feeling is what keeps you overwhelmed, stressed, overworked and stops you from having the freedom, space and joy from booking in advance and having the dreamiest work schedule you can think of.
how do I know what your dream clients will do?
So if the myth is that your dream clients won’t want to wait - what is fact? How do I know that your perfect people will wait for your next opening, whether that’s in 4 weeks, three months or even six months?
Well - this is how I work with my dream clients.
Actually, this is how I work with all of my clients (all my clients are dream clients, excuse the not-so-humble-brag)
As I’m writing this post, I’m currently booking six months in advance - and I’m still getting enquiries from dreamy potential clients and I know that they’re happy to wait!
But I absolutely did not start out with this being the case. Of course, I also thought clients would never wait for little old me! Surely there were a million other designers out there who they would go to instead?
In the early years of my business, I got stuck in that thinking. Any enquiry that dropped into my inbox (whether it was a good fit or not) was booked in on whatever the next Monday was. Sometimes I would even get started on the very same day.
My boundaries were the equivalent of that plastic tape that flies away with the wind whenever you touch it (essentially non-existent) and all of the projects that balanced pushed me closer and closer to burnout every day. The projects were messy with no organisation, no systems, no plans. Literally just me knowing what I had to work on and doing it all at the same time.
Want to stop scope creep? This guide is perfect for you!
On the other side of this were the slow seasons. Stacking all of my projects at once gave me zero space whilst I was working, but I also took on ALL of the enquiries at once. So a few weeks or even months without an enquiry meant even longer without any work booked in.
Something (a.k.a every part of my business) had to change and with the support of an amazing coach, a huge business pivot and the will to not live in constant burn out, stress and overwhelm; I started building a system.
That system was what led me to realising that booking in advance was not just the best way for me to be organised, prepared, secure and consistent. It was the ONLY way.
What followed was me carving out and sharing my unique design superpower, building my messaging to attract the perfect people that I wanted to work with, raising my rates to make sure I reached my income goals, showcasing my best work and designing a client schedule based on how I wanted to work…
…and, you know it! Keeping my boundaries as solid as possible to STICK TO THE SCHEDULE.
My mindset was wobbly, my confidence was low, my will was truly tested - but I knew this was the only way I could enjoy the business that I built, cut out all of the stress and do my absolute best work for those dreamy clients.
What happened? Those dreamy clients waited!
They loved my messaging, my style, my expertise, my offers, my superpower and my processes. They wanted to work with me - and if that meant waiting six months, that was all good 🤯
I’ve been booked 3-6 months in advance ever since. Through a three month maternity leave, taking 12 weeks off every year (including a full month in the Summer) and even lockdowns and recessions.
I promise you, I’m not being self-deprecating here. But I’m not that special! (This definitely sounds self-deprecating, where am I going?!)
I’m not better at what I do than you are. I don’t have more expertise than you. I don’t necessarily have more experience than you!
But I know my people, I know my business and I know my craft. And that is enough to make those perfect, dreamy people wait for your amazing offers and your amazing work.
So let me break this down for you too…
Your perfect people only want you
I don’t want to go too woo, too early…
But the way I see us and our dream clients is as perfect matches.
That means that you are the perfect service provider for your client, just as much as they are the perfect client for you.
Having this relationship together allows you to work amazingly together and get the best results on both sides. You are balanced with respect, value and motivation for the project and you both get a great outcome at the end (they get a fab brand and you get a great portfolio project and the investment!)
Yes, we can naturally be impatient but when we know we HAVE to wait for something, it’s so much less of a problem. And the waiting process is more like “oh my god I can’t wait for the next season of Greys Anatomy!” instead of “ugh why do we even have to wait, I refuse to watch it”
Genius work takes time right?
Even better, the more that you can educate your audience and more importantly, those perfect people on WHY you’re booking in advance and have a wait time of a few months, the easier it will be for those people to see and get so much more excited!
Here are a few ideas for things you can share to work through this process and get your perfect people SO excited to work with you in a few months…
- How you book your clients strategically so you can have the space to do your best work
- The process and time for giving your clients pre-work that is crucial for getting the best results
- Why clients wait for you, your process and your results
- The unique transformations you offer your clients that are definitely worth waiting for!
dream clients value your time
Why do we even want to work with dream clients in the first place?
It’s not just because we want a great project for our portfolio, or because we want our work shared to thousands of followers, or because we want to be part of a high profile brand.
We want dream clients because they are also amazing to work with.
Dream clients aren’t just dreamy for the project itself…
They are so respectful of your time so they get their homework and feedback over to you whenever you ask for it. They turn up for calls on time and they don’t bombard you with millions of questions that are answered on your website.
They’re passionate and excited about the project you’re working on together. They look forward to seeing your concepts and share how much they love your work and how they can’t wait to see the brand live.
They completely trust your ideas and creativity and give you the space and freedom you need to bring your magic to life, fully believing that you are going to create something amazing without too many prompts or guides.
They leave you to be in control of your project and don’t feel like they need to nudge you in between concepts deadlines, micro-manage the project or bring in additional voices for extra opinions. They stick to your process and love being guided.
Most of all, they value your expertise and they completely value your expertise which means they know the work you are doing is special and difficult and are so happy to listen to your opinions and advice.
You know a great way to tell if a client is going to…
Respect your time
Be excited about your project
Trust your ideas
Leave you in control
Value your expertise?
They will be completely happy to wait for your availability!
It’s not just that dream clients are happy to wait. It’s that you can tell they are dream clients because they wait.
you offer something truly unique
We’re all very aware that there are a lot of creatives out there doing amazing things. And with this can sometimes come some wobbles around whether you can stand out and comparison pops its ugly head up out of nowhere!
But I really want you to know that what you offer and what you can create is completely unique.
This is the beauty of creativity!
You can create work that no one else can replicate. You can come up with ideas that no one else can generate. Your style has developed in a process that no one else can go through.
With that being said, what you offer your dream clients is also completely unique.
You can create a transformation for your perfect people that no one else can and that is why you are a perfect match for each other!
When I started not just to understand, but share and refine my unique superpower, I could share transformations with my clients that I knew they couldn’t get anywhere else. They were so happy to wait for the work I could produce because no other designer could do what I do - and the same is true for you and your creative expertise!
Our unique skills, style, expertise and experience give us a completely different skill set that is perfect for our dream clients.
And wouldn’t you be happy to wait for a business or life transformation which you could only get from one specific place?
how do you keep your mindset solid to stop this myth in it’s tracks?
There’s a reason I’ve written this guide and it’s because this is one of the biggest blocks I see with my creative clients and the main thing that gets in their way to having a calmer, less stressful, more joyful working schedule.
So I hope you now feel confident that your dream clients are so happy to wait for you and your work and the amazing transformations you can offer them at the end of your project!
They are people who value and respect your time, your expertise and your schedule; they are so excited to work with you and you alone that they would even wait a year to work with you; and they also want those unique transformations that only you can offer 👏
With all of this in mind - does it feel easier to keep those boundaries in place and keep your schedule slots sacred to book 2-3 months in advance?
If you’re still feeling a little wobbly, here are a few tips that will help you:
set solid boundaries
Being firm with your pre-planned booking schedule is the difference between actually having a schedule and dropping back into the feast and famine we’ve all been familiar with. Creating templated, boundary setting email responses is a great way to keep boundaries firm without overthinking your reply.
build your magnetic marketing
Attracting the most amazing clients is going to be the foundation of booking dreamy clients who totally respect your time and process. Are you currently attracting enquiries from the right people?
share your unique self
Your perfect people won’t understand your unique superpower and transformations if you’re not sharing them! Make sure you’re letting your work stand out of a crowd and be bold with your messaging!
embrace a spacious schedule
The more you see that more flexibility, more space and more joy can be possible in your business, the more you’re going to want to hold on to it. Believing and experiencing a dreamier work week is going to help with all of the above.
🗣 "What if a dream client does get in touch and doesn't want to wait?"
You might still be wondering - but what if a true dream client gets in touch and doesn’t want to wait?
I really understand this question and I have had so many potentially incredible clients dropping into my inbox with the most exciting projects and saying they absolutely can’t wait for my next space.
It’s so important to understand that you have the power and the control to choose which projects you take on.
Although this project may seem really tempting, just jumping back to the points I made about how a dream client can be identified by the fact they can wait - what does it say about a potential client when they don’t want to stick to your process before you’ve even started?
The project may seem exciting! But this isn’t necessarily the best way to get your projects started off.
Of course, there are some circumstances where the client is stuck by their own time constraints and deadlines and maybe they’ve only just discovered you and are desperate to have you work on their project!
In this case, there may be a compromise with a smaller offer or intensive service (if you have a range of offers) but I really want you to prioritise your own peaceful, organised schedule and remember…
…there are so many more dream clients who WILL wait for your availability.
Let’s wrap this up…
I want to leave you with some words of love and encouragement! We start off thinking that dream clients aren’t going to wait to work with you and I really hope you can see that this isn’t true! It’s just another block that’s trying to push you away from where you want to be in your business.
You are not just any creative. You are special. Your style and expertise are unique and what you offer your clients is completely unique too…
You are worth waiting for!
my group mentoring program helps creatives book dream clients 2-3 months in advance to build consistent monthly income
The Clubhouse is a 12-month group mentoring program for overworked and overwhelmed creative service providers who want to build a flexible, joyful, dreamy business
share this with your creative pals!
