Episode 222: Overwhelmed with Onboarding? Try This

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Brandi: [00:00:00] You've mastered marketing, and now you have all these clients that are coming to you, but you're feeling a little overwhelmed with onboarding. Onboarding is the most time consuming part of being a freelancer, and when we have multiple clients onboarding at the same time, We have mixed emotions. One is we're so freaking happy.

We're having a great month. We got revenue coming in and then the other side is holy bananas. We're overwhelmed. There's a lot going on and a lot of moving pieces when we onboard. So how do we make onboarding easier when we have a lot of clients coming to us? That's what I'm going to address today with one approach that will change the way you onboard.

Even if you're just getting started, I highly recommend using this method with your onboarding.

[00:01:00] Welcome back to the Serve, Scale, Soar podcast. The go to place if you want to start, grow, or scale your ad management business. My name is Brandi Mowles. And today we're diving in to how does do a staggered onboarding approach. This is a game changer when it comes to how you onboard clients, especially if you find that you're in this situation where you have a lot of clients coming at you at once.

What a wonderful place to be in, unless. You don't have a system that allows you to onboard multiple clients at once. And instead of putting them on a wait list, if you do a staggered onboarding approach, one, you don't miss any boxes. Everyone's happy. Everyone's supported. And you're not overwhelmed or working 24 seven to get everyone onboarding.

So if you're like, yes, Brandy, this is what I needed. Or you're like, holy cow, I don't even see my business ever getting the push. point [00:02:00] where people are like beating down my door to work with me. You should still implement this approach in your business because it keeps the overwhelm to a minimum. And y'all know, I'm a big fan of not working my business from overwhelm, but instead of working my business from a place of ease.

So I started doing staggered onboarding when I found myself over freaking whelmed and exhausted. I was onboarding a ton of clients at once. All of them were launching and I was dropping balls. There was dates being missed. There was things falling through the cracks, even someone with amazing systems. I still found myself in a place of Just not enjoying my business and having some bad experiences with clients because of it.

And what I found out is I need to not onboard so many people at once. We always overestimate what we can actually handle. And when it comes to having clients, once you [00:03:00] have clients onboarded, it's pretty easy to manage ad management clients. It's the onboarding that takes so long. You gotta get added to accounts, you gotta do kickoff calls, you gotta get all the creative, learn about their audience, and so it takes time.

And so what I started doing is implementing an onboarding, a staggered onboarding approach. 

So what that looked like was that I would look at my calendar, I would look at my client load, and I would look at how many clients I wanted to onboard. And I already had set up where I was only doing discovery calls on Wednesdays. So that was, that day was blocked for discovery calls. And I knew I didn't want to onboard on Wednesday as well.

So what I did is I marked out the Mondays Where I could onboard and they were marked out in green where these are my onboarding days. So I had this calendar in front of me and I would only onboard one client each week. So when I was doing discovery calls and a [00:04:00] client came on and said, yeah, I want to work together.

I would be like, great. My next onboarding day is, and I would tell them the day. So I would say, if you want to hold your spot for that onboarding day, Then I'm going to sign your contract, pay your invoice that reserves that spot. If I don't get your contract or invoice back, I can't guarantee that that spot will be available and we'll have to start your contract at whatever my next onboarding day is.

And then if I had launches, I would mark out those onboarding days. So it did mean that every Monday someone was onboarding. It was also based off, do we have a launch starting? Do I, am I going on vacation? But I would mark out the days that I could onboard. They were only on Mondays. That's when our contracts would start.

That's when we do our kickoff call. And so with that being said, it sounded one, so professional. Two, it made sure that I was never onboarding more than one person a week. And then it also gave [00:05:00] urgency around the proposal and invoices. Getting those back because people didn't want to miss their onboarding, especially if I knew I was going on vacation or we had launches or something.

Cause it would be like, I have an onboarding date this Monday or the next one would be in three weeks from now. So which one would you prefer? That's how quickly, so it builds in the sense of urgency. It also keeps your overwhelmed down and it makes sure no balls are getting missed or you're not putting too much on your calendar.

So when we stagger the onboarding, it's not only going to save. You overwhelm, but it's going to set you up to be a true professional. Imagine coming on a host call with someone that says, okay, I can onboard you this or I have an onboarding spot four weeks from now. I still do this with my consultant clients.

They said, we'd love to work with you. starting in two weeks. And I was like, unfortunately, my next onboarding is in eight weeks after summer. [00:06:00] And then another consultant client, I told them, you have X date to sign your contract and invoice after that. I'm not going to be able to onboard you for two more months cause I have things, other things on my schedule.

They got their contract in and it's not a lie. It's true because I have my onboarding schedule set. I usually do this each quarter, sit down and look, what are my days for onboarding? What is my capacity to onboard? And I take an account things like vacation, summer, the kids being home, all of this goes into effect.

And then you have a calendar that clearly is set. tagger that you can set on when you can onboard clients. And so when they get on, you give them the choice. This is my next onboarding, sign your contract, pay your invoice. It's something so simple, but can change how you work completely. And it cuts down on overwhelm.

And so if you're going to implement anything into your onboarding process, this is one thing I highly recommend you do is you set up staggered onboarding. [00:07:00] Things like this is something we really talk about inside of my mastermind strategist society with one on one support with me. And one of the things that I see working with my students one on one is that onboarding time management.

Systems are not put at the forefront of how we want to work our business, which leads to working too much. And I'm on a mission to make sure that we're all making multiple six figures working less than 20 hours per week, because at 20 hours per week, you're getting enough work in to really make a difference, make real income, big girl money, but also So you're living a full life, you have time to go out and do the things that you want, and adding a staggered onboarding approach is one of those steps that you can take.

So if you're already at that 4, 000 mark or higher, You have a few ad clients, maybe you have several ad clients, maybe you're at 20, 000 a [00:08:00] month, maybe you're 5, 000 a month, maybe 4, 000. And you're like, I want more one on one support. I want a group of digital marketers who are just doing the dang thing and working towards big goals.

And I want that close knit community. Go on and send me a DM at Brandi Mowles and let's chat to see if the strategist society can help you and where you are. So I can't wait to find out if you're a right fit and how we can support you the rest of this year. So let me know, are you going to be adding staggered onboarding to your onboarding process?

I swear it will change the game for you and you'll show up more professional. So until next week, my friends go out, serve your clients, scale your business and soar into the success you deserve. [00:09:00]