I've always overloaded myself, but this was more than 10 years ago, at the peak of trying to keep a dozen or more balls in the air at the same time.
When he said that, I looked at him like he was speaking a foreign language.
He pulled off anyhow. I mailed him a check, and hired another guy to finish. He came back after a couple of months when he ran out of money (I guess "the muse" was upon him again by that point), but the deck was already done.
That was the last time I hired Bob, but even the good guys are pulling off to go do something else, post-Covid.