One of the first things a freelancer learns is to always have projects in the wings. You can never be working on too many projects because projects often take a long time to come to fruition. You might be actively working on 1-5 projects today, but you should have 10 or 20 more in some stage of preparation. Often this means that you are “selling” the projects. This doesn’t mean you are actively creating content, designs or software, only that you are slowly, but surely moving them forward, one incremental step at a time.

What you are trying to create, with this mass of projects, is a solid and regular workflow where one project ends just as another is ready to go into production. It doesn’t always work that way, though. You can sometimes have a number of projects start at the same time. That said, I always find having too many active projects far preferable to having too few.

Podcast productions can take a long time to develop, as the content creators need to be brought up to speed on the creative and technical possibilities. You are adding an entire new facet to their work world and you simply cannot do that overnight. Something as simple as agreeing on the artwork for the MP3 files or the description of the podcast can take weeks. Those new to podcasting think everything is written in stone, much like in older media, instead of the fluid and adaptive way it truly is. Still, it all takes time, education and leadership from you to bring a new show to production…and beyond.

How many projects do you have in the pipeline right now? Are any of them ready to “go live?” Are you ready for them? Are you waiting for something to happen? If so, do all you can to find the next project, and the next, and the next, long before you actually need them.