Episode 96: Understanding and Maximizing Your Client Capacity

Welcome back to The Pursuit of Badasserie: The Podcast! We’re your hosts, Lynn Howard and Amanda Furgiuele, and we’re diving headfirst into season three with more actionable business strategies and a healthy dose of badasserie.

In today’s episode, we’re tackling one of our favorite topics: client capacity. If you’ve ever struggled with balancing your client load, feeling overwhelmed, or trying to figure out how to hit your financial goals, this episode is for you. We break down the concept of client capacity—understanding how much time you can realistically spend with each client, both in front of and behind the scenes, while still delivering top-notch service.

We also explore:

• How to assess your current capacity and what steps to take if you’re maxed out
• The importance of aligning your capacity with your financial goals
• Leveraging technology and team support to increase your capacity
• The crucial role of processes and systems in managing your workload
• How to factor in your team’s capacity alongside your own
• Energetic time management and why not all clients require equal effort

This episode is packed with insights and actionable steps to help you understand and maximize your client capacity, whether you’re a solopreneur or managing a growing team. Plus, we discuss the importance of knowing your numbers, including your retention rates and the percentage of your current capacity.

Got questions about client capacity or want to share your own “aha” moments? We’d love to hear from you! Drop us a comment and let us know where you’re excelling or where you might need a little extra help.

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Read the full transcript of this episode below:

Lynn Howard  

Hey there, I’m Lynn.

Amanda Furgiuele  

And I’m Amanda. Welcome to The Pursuit of Badasserie: The Podcast. We are back again in season three with more business badasserie.

Lynn Howard  

That’s right. We’re super soaked, as per usual, about our topic, but also this next season, Amanda, I’m so excited about this next season.

Amanda Furgiuele  

I know, I mean, we’ve been in it for a couple weeks now, but I never actually called out and told everybody, yes, this is season three.

We are almost to our hundredth episode, which below is my mind. Very excited. So thank you for all of you who are been here, particularly our OGs coming from very first episode.

We appreciate you.

Lynn Howard  

By the way, just drop a comment of which been your favorite podcast because we do have some OGs that are just always consistently listened to us.

We love you. We love you. All right. So today, we’re talking about one of my favorite topics, and it’s, I think it’s my favorite topic because people don’t consider it.

And then when they see like how to break it down and stuff, they’re like, So, we’re talking about client capacity, understanding what your client capacity is, understanding what client capacity is in general, knowing, understanding, and maximizing, essentially.

Amanda Furgiuele  

Everything client capacity within 20, minutes, know, I just had a conversation with one of my clients, I don’t know about a week ago, and we had to really have a hard to sit down about what her capacity was, because she was like, oh, well, I want to start this new program, and it’s this price point, and this, and this, and this, and I’m like, okay, well, how many people can you take?

And she’s like, oh, only like three, and I’m like three. Your capacity, she’s maxed out at three. So to me, knowing that her capacity was three, but her target goal income was X, like, okay, well, someone’s got to get there, because if you can only take three clients, but you, for the sake of this conversation, these are not her real number.

numbers, but you can only take three, but you want to make $50,000 this month, then you can’t be selling your product for $1,000.

You can’t, because if you can only take three or service, I should say, you can only take three, then you’re capped out $3,000.

Lynn Howard  

I hit that goal.

Amanda Furgiuele  

Yeah. So, so the idea is that she was like, I can’t, I can’t, seem hit my goal. I can’t seem to hit my goal.

can’t seem to hit my goal. And that was her, her big issue was like, I’m not hitting my goals.

But then we just found out that it’s completely unrealistic for her to hit her goals because her max capacity is three and her price points a thousand.

I mean, again, these are fake numbers, but you get the idea that she, her, she was never going to make her goal because she never actually did the math on it to realize that her capacity was nowhere near what it needed to be at the price point she was at in order to hit the goal that she needed her net, like her base goal and like not even her dream goal, just her getting through the day goal.

Yeah. And it surprises me how many people don’t understand the difference, like they don’t understand what their capacity, what they can actually take on, and how it correlates to your overwhelming outcome.

Lynn Howard  

Absolutely. How it correlates to your goals. So client capacity is the amount of time that you can spend on a client in front of and behind.

Now, obviously Amanda and I are consultant, so we do a lot of work behind the scenes as well in front of, but even like web designers, people, realtors, people who do things like behind the scenes and not always face to face, those hours add up.

So here’s where to start to start to get an idea of where your client capacity is. I literally just said this with a high level client five days ago.

So you take what you have. So if you already have clients, how many clients, you know, name them out, list them out, and how many hours do a month, and how many hours on week one, how many hours on week two, how many hours on week three, like how many hours.

Now, if for this. this one, it’s okay to overestimate. We don’t want you to underestimate. It’s okay to slightly overestimate because that gives you a little bit more wiggle room for emergencies, whatever.

But if this particular client takes, you know, and actually for this particular client that I just said, we did it by month, it was easier because he has big clients.

So we did it by how many hours a month that this particular client would take. So we did 12 months and we said, okay, this client, how many hours this month for January, February, so on and so forth.

And this line will be this client, this line will be this time. We created a spreadsheet. So we knew how many hours were expected to go in this particular, but you can do this week by week if you already have a full client load.

If you do not already have a full client load, you can do it month by month like we did with him, but understand where you’re at now.

And then understanding the products and services. So there is a bit of knowing what your products and services are, which we’ve done podcasts on before, but knowing that this particular production service is going to take 10 hours.

and it will cost a client $2,000 and it will take over three months or whatever, whatever that is. So that way you understand how much time has involved and so that way you know how many clients you can work into that.

If you know one client is going to take 40 hours in three months, that’s very different than a client that would take 10 hours in three months, right?

So your capacity becomes less, unless you can streamline and we’ll talk about ways of like being able to kind of increase your available capacity or decrease, whatever, you get what I mean.

Make more free time in your capacity to be able to take out more clients, but you need to start, understand where you’re at with your current clients, but also with your products and services, how much time it takes and absolutely you need to understand you know how much you’re making for one, that way you can correlate it to your goals and your financial stuff, but that’s where you should start.

Amanda Furgiuele  

And, obviously, really take a look at products and services and the actual sweat equity, time-worth value that you’re putting in because not every client in every situation is created equal.

Even as a consultant, I have some clients who I might work with for five hours a week and I have some clients I might work with for 10 hours in a day.

So, that’s going to be a very different amount of commitment, very different price point, very different goal set there.

So, those types of clients have different demands and my capacity changes. For many reasons, it could be because of my personal life and what’s going on, like my travel schedule, my kids schedule, it’s not, it’s a fluid thing.

So, depending on what you’re selling, what your product or services, it might be bit more fluid. It might be depending on what’s happening with that particular, like you said, your clients going month by month based on what’s going on with that type of client.

So, you have to know. what you’re doing. And I don’t mean, like, be smarter or anything. just saying, know what your products and services, what the actual real time work is.

And even if it’s not the work that you do, maybe your team is doing the work, but you want to make sure you understand how much effort is going to that.

Because the effort going into a digital product is way less than an effort going into something where is one on one hands on all the time in a location.

So if somebody wants to work with me in Bogota, that takes a lot more commitment and time and energy because I’m out of the country, then it does if they want to hop on a call while I’m at dinner and I’m like creepily sitting in the bathroom on a phone call passing before.

So those kinds of things, they’re different, but my capacity is different as well. And I have to know the difference as the owner of my own personal capacity and what I can take and the boundaries I need to set up around those as well, as long for

Lynn Howard  

capacity isn’t just client facing, it is the prep, it is the follow-up, it is the process, which is where processes come absolutely into play in your systems.

If you’ve been listening to Amanda and I, you know we’re going to preach about processing systems, SOPs, you can absolutely help you and hurt you if you don’t have them or have the wrong ones.

I love that you brought up your team’s capability or capacity because that absolutely plays a part two. You know, it’s interesting because, and I know we both do this, like obviously we do group launches, we have group programs, but also with my, our personal clients, it’s like I know I can only intake X amount of clients if we’re not in a launch, X amount of clients if we’re not in a launch every month or if we’re in a launch, I cannot take unless it’s an emergency.

I typically, with my current, with my average client load, can I? intake somebody during certain time. understanding that, you know, because even though I might be spending the same amount of time actually with, uh, in the intake process, both Amanda and I spend a little bit more time with those clients, just kind of getting everything ready, right?

Rolling. But it also takes our mental capacity and our, our emotional, our like energy capacity. So we have to account for that.

And that’s one thing that people don’t always account for as well on client capacity is like, okay, you know, I used to have a client that would do coaching calls back to back to back.

And they would do eight hours a day and with a 15 minute window. Yet they also sent follow up emails to all of them.

They also had to prepare for each of them. They had to, um, well, I have a couple and health and wellness that we need to meditate around them, right?

And kind of release. And they were setting themselves up for failure because they were cramming them back to back.

And they thought, like, oh, I’m doing myself a service, but they ended up working probably double of what that they needed to because they were so exhausted, the next day had to be in follow-up or they were working like 15 hour days and weren’t really getting ahead.

So you have to look at the whole picture of that client kind of journey and also your part in it.

Amanda Furgiuele  

Yes, whole and holistic view. Absolutely. Energetic time is different and I used to, I mean, I will 100% admit that I used to think that that was BS.

oh, energetic time, but it absolutely is a thing. knowing certain clients might take more energetically than others.

Lynn Howard  

There’s some clients who are going to, and I don’t mean that in even in a negative way.

Amanda Furgiuele  

No. Sometimes there’s gonna be more post-work that you have to do with them or more, I used to have clients that I never scheduled them before a meal.

because they would talk and talk and talk and I was like I’m starving and I got to like the angry stage and so I knew that I couldn’t schedule them around something else like I couldn’t have another client coming in right after because it would always run over or I couldn’t have a meal that I was desperately wanting because then I would be a crappy fan so I you have to kind of know like energetically what’s going to flow there or you know for me now in my scenario I can’t schedule back-to-back clients because my kids not going to be quiet for four hours straight that’s crazy he’s going to be quiet for one hour if I’m lucky so I have to schedule my things much more spread out than I used to because I have to account for somebody else to schedule like what else does he need if he’s you know if I’m home with him so it’s all those other things you have to think about it it’s a holistic view of your capacity as a whole person not just as a business owner because absolutely

when I was 22, I would take 12 back-to-back clients on the hour, every hour, like I don’t even care.

Boom, boom, boom, boom. will take, I would do all of them just back-to-back and not even blink. Ties have changed.

I’m not 22 anymore. I wish I could do those things.

Lynn Howard  

we not know physical training?

Amanda Furgiuele  

I think I would love it. It’d be hard now because of my kid, but I think I love that exertion of working out all the time.

That’s a difference. But anyway, my capacity to do that was different than my employees’ capacities. So I could do that all day long.

I could work 10 hours straight and not even think about it, subsisting on coffee alone, but none of my employees could do that.

And until I learned that, it was very hard for me to understand capacity as an employer, as the leader, because they’re all just being lazy.

They’re capacities different than yours.

Lynn Howard  

Understand your team’s capacity is also important because it’s not just your company as a whole or you as a whole There’s individual people in there as well like there’s individual people that also have boundaries and capacities that you have to consider as well absolutely just a few more kind of high-level points is With client capacity when you can lean into Technology, it’s really gonna help you out in almost every industry So leveraging CRM tools on animations Even for like We use zoom for most of our meetings So we have a note taker that automatically takes off the notes for us So we don’t have to remember things right setting things up in your Google Calendar to remind you absolutely So really really leveraging technology for you and your team And if you don’t have a team so we’re speaking in both if you don’t have a team then it will absolutely help you to maximize technology, but especially

with your team. And, you know, you’ve talked about the team a lot. I think that even more so when you start to, because when you start to look at client capacity, to me, that is one step in taking their business to the next level.

It’s taking it from more hobby, in my opinion, to the next level. Because you see opportunities for growth, you see where adjustments need to be made.

You see where you need to increase, where you potentially need to hire, especially. But hiring strategic expanding before you need it, to outsource some maybe tasks, you know, to help with client satisfaction type of things, to keep your clients, whatever that is.

But hiring strategically is absolutely crucial, especially when you’re thinking of client capacity. Because you want those that can really handle what everything that we were saying, also know that they are not you.

But if you’re going to put them. client facing to help with the client capacity, then they need to be able to have that kind of demeanor as well.

You know, all of our team members that we put in front of our clients or connect with our clients.

And it’s not that they’re not amazing team members, they are at what they’re doing for us, but they’re not necessarily client facing.

So making sure you’re looking at how you’re being strategic when you hire as well for a client capacity is going to help you 100%.

Amanda Furgiuele  

And of course, I haven’t mentioned the money of it as well. So you’ve touched on it for sure on building and growing your business and thinking about your client capacity.

But ultimately, and this is the very first thing I mentioned in the podcast today, if you know you want to hit X amount of dollars, then you’re going to have to adjust your capacity or your prices or something to adjust for that.

Because if your capacity is 10 people, but you need 20 in order to hit goals, something has to give.

So whether that’s creating a new product or service to fill in the gaps that is at a different price point, that has a different capacity that you can adjust for, whether that’s changing your price and structure, whether that’s diversifying through employees or through tech or whatever, this is just a part of knowing your numbers.

Just like you know your P&L, just like you know your balance sheets, hopefully this is part of it knowing your capacity, knowing your retention rates, knowing your the percentage capacity that you’re currently at, those are the numbers that are less spoken about, but are equally as important when you talk about knowing your numbers in your business.

There’s a lot more to it than just take home checks at the end of the year.

Lynn Howard  

Yes, absolutely. All right. We’re at time. We could keep going on and on, but kind of like with everything.

I’m sure we’re going to have a follow up, but please let us know your your questions about this. Like this is something that’s

that we love to do. I’m sitting here thinking, I’m like, dang, especially with these launches that we have going on.

It’s time for me to, because this is something Amanda and I review quite often, even though we have a streamlined process, it’s good to kind of like clear out all the clutter and look at it.

And I was just sitting here thinking, I was like, man, I’ve been doing this so much for everybody. I’m going to sit here and redo it for myself because it also gives you an idea of where you’re actually putting your time and effort because a lot of times people think that they’re spending so much time with their clients, but they’re not.

And they have all this free time, too. So you have actually have more capacity. want you to think it’s mind blowing.

Do the work, but we want to hear your questions. We want to hear your aha’s. We want to hear like where you see either you’re really excelling or dropping the ball because without clients guys, you do not have effort and and thought and strive.

Amanda Furgiuele  

around your client processes, period, period, so let us know your thoughts, what you’re thinking, what you need help with.

We are here to answer it season three.

Lynn Howard  

Let’s answer your questions. Don’t be shy. Absolutely. Triple threat. All right.

Amanda Furgiuele  

Until next time. Get after it.