How to choose clients when you are self-employed
Each client brings a way of working into your business. Before accepting the next project, look at the week you are agreeing to as well as the fee.
When you work for yourself, choosing a client means choosing how some of your time will be spent. The fee matters. So do the meetings, the decisions you will carry and the work that follows delivery.
A useful starting point is to look at what a project leaves you with after you have done all the work it requires. Can it support the income you need? Can you deliver it within the time you have? Does it leave room for the rest of your business and your life? These questions can help you choose between offers that look equally attractive on paper.
Count the work around the work
Start with a recent assignment. Write down what the client paid and the time you spent on it. Include preparation, calls, revisions, administration and the questions that arrived after you considered it finished. If you have not started yet, use the next project you are considering and make your assumptions explicit.
Compare the project fee, excluding any sales tax, with those hours. That gives you a rough view of the income per hour the assignment brought in, before your business costs and tax on your income. It is useful for comparing your own assignments, provided you count the time in the same way each time.
Then look at where those hours landed. A project that takes one uninterrupted day asks something different of you from a project that needs a small decision every afternoon for several weeks. Both may fit your business. They make different demands on your calendar.
Decide what must remain possible
Before deciding whether a client fits, put the rest of your work into the week. You need time to find future clients, maintain the business and develop what you want to offer next. Include the commitments outside work that you want the business to support.
You can then ask a more specific question: where would this assignment go? If it fits only by using time you had set aside for something else, name what you would be giving up. You may still choose to take it. The trade-off should be part of the decision.
Your preferences belong in this review too. Which parts of the assignment would you like to do yourself? Which responsibilities would you spend energy avoiding? An assignment can use a skill you are good at while asking you to spend most of the week on work you no longer want to do.
Change the terms before accepting or declining
Sometimes the work fits, but the proposed way of delivering it does not. Look at the scope and working arrangements before giving a final answer. Who makes decisions? How many revisions are included? When does the client need access to you? What counts as finished?
Consider a hypothetical assignment where the client wants short calls throughout the week. You could ask whether one scheduled review and a written list of questions would meet the same need. The client may need quicker answers than that. Check what would work for both of you before committing your time.
You might agree a smaller first assignment, a different delivery date or a clearer boundary around follow-up. Any change needs to work for the client as well as for you. Once you have discussed it, write down the agreed terms so you can both refer to them.
Make the choice under your actual constraints
If you need the income now, declining a project has a cost. A review of client fit has to take that seriously. You may accept an assignment that you would prefer not to repeat and use what you learn to change the next offer you make.
Keep the decision narrow enough to act on. You could change one condition for the next assignment, compare the time you expected with the time it took, or leave space in the calendar to look for a different kind of client. Choose a step you can carry through while running the business you have today.
These are also useful examples to bring to a coaching conversation: an assignment you accepted, what it paid, how it used your time and what you would change next time. We can work with that alongside what you want from being self-employed.