Your next project is usually an old client who forgot about you.
Solo consulting has a brutal rhythm: you are either delivering or selling, never both. The pipeline goes quiet exactly when you are busiest, and the quickest fix is not more marketing, it is the twenty people who already paid you once. They just need to hear from you more than once a year.
The system
- 1Tier your list honestly
Past clients who would hire you again, people who refer you, and everyone else. The first two tiers deserve a real rhythm. The rest can live in an address book.
- 2Set a cadence per tier, not per mood
Quarterly for past clients, monthly for the three people who send you work. The point of a cadence is that it survives a busy month, which is the month you most need it.
- 3Reach out with something, not nothing
Send the thing you noticed: an article about their industry, a tool that solves the problem they complained about, an intro they would value. 'Just checking in' is a tax on their attention.
- 4Log the project details
What you delivered, what it cost, what went wrong, who else was in the room. Two years later that is how you write a proposal in twenty minutes instead of two hours.
- 5Ask for the referral at the right moment
Right after you deliver something they are happy about, not when you are empty. Write the ask into your closeout checklist so it is not a decision you have to make.
None of that needs software. It needs upkeep, which is the part people lose. That is the job A.R.O takes.
What A.R.O does for it
The core loop. Quarterly on past clients, monthly on referrers, and a weekly brief telling you who's slipped.
Everyone you know at a client, grouped, so you keep the relationship when your champion changes jobs.
A check-in, a referral ask, a project closeout, each with merge fields and sent from your own email.
Rate, last project, specialty, referral source, whatever your practice tracks.
Contract renewal, project anniversary, their launch date, with a reminder ahead of each one.
BCC a private address on any email and it lands on that contact's timeline, moving their last-contacted date.
Questions
No. A.R.O tracks people and conversations, not invoices, time or deliverables. It sits next to those tools.
You can, but tag them untracked and only put a cadence on the ones you would actually be glad to hear from. A list you ignore is worse than no list.
Free for 50 contacts. $4.99 a month on your own AI key, or $14.99 with AI included, for unlimited contacts and live sync.
Start with 50 people, free
No card, no trial clock. Connect Google, Apple or Microsoft and A.R.O fills itself in.