Starting Out
What has to exist before you can legally take money
The list of things that must be in place before a first payment is shorter than the folklore suggests, but…
· 4 min read
Biz Wealth Focus — The business of working for yourself
Starting Out
What has to exist before you can legally take money
The list of things that must be in place before a first payment is shorter than the folklore suggests, but the three items on it are not optional.
By Nikhil Bose · · 4 min read
Starting Out
More →Going from an idea to something that can take money, and what has to exist first.
Starting Out
Choosing a structure is mostly a decision about who is liable
Two quite different questions hide inside the choice of legal form, and only one of them is about tax.
· 3 min read
Starting Out
A business name does two different jobs and they can conflict
The name that sells the work and the name that identifies the legal seller are separate things, and…
· 3 min read
Starting Out
The first sale tells you more than the first plan does
A plan is a set of assumptions nobody has tested, and the cheapest available test is asking one person to…
· 4 min read
Pricing
More →What to charge, how to say it, and why the number is rarely the hard part.
Pricing
Why the first price you set is nearly always too low
The first number a new business names is produced by a set of pressures that all push in the same…
· 4 min read
Pricing
Hourly, fixed and retainer allocate risk to different people
The three common ways of charging are not three formats for the same transaction — each decides who pays…
· 4 min read
Pricing
Converting a salary into an hourly rate leaves out what the employer was paying for
The arithmetic that turns a former wage into a freelance rate omits a long list of costs that used to be…
· 3 min read
Pricing
Half of a self-employed week is not billable, and the rate has to know it
The hours that produce no invoice are not waste to be eliminated; they are a real cost of production, and…
· 3 min read
Cash Flow
More →Money arriving later than it leaves, which is what actually closes small businesses.
Cash Flow
A profitable business can still run out of money
Profit and cash are two different measurements taken at two different moments, and the gap between them is…
· 4 min read
Cash Flow
Payment terms are a loan you did not decide to make
Agreeing to be paid some weeks after delivery means financing your client for that period, and the…
· 4 min read
Cash Flow
A deposit changes who is carrying the project
Money taken before work begins does more than improve the bank balance — it moves commitment, filters…
· 4 min read
Cash Flow
Staged payments turn one large risk into several small ones
Splitting a project into paid stages limits how much work is ever unpaid at once, which changes the…
· 4 min read
Clients
More →Finding them, working with them, and ending it when you need to.
Clients
The enquiry that never becomes a job still costs you a morning
Time spent on work that never happens is one of the largest hidden costs in a small business, and most of…
· 3 min read
Clients
A brief is a shared document or it is two different projects
Most disputes about delivered work are disagreements about what was agreed, and they are decided by whether…
· 3 min read
Clients
Ending a client relationship is a business decision, not a failure
The arithmetic on a client who costs more than they pay is usually clear, and the reluctance to act on it…
· 3 min read
Clients
One client paying most of the bills is a concentration risk
A single dominant client changes the economics of a small business in ways that go well beyond what happens…
· 3 min read
The Admin
More →Records, contracts and obligations — the machinery running underneath the work.
The Admin
What records you keep, and why the reason matters more than the list
Record-keeping obligations differ by country but they exist to answer the same three questions, and…
· 4 min read
The Admin
Separating business and personal money is a clarity decision first
Whether a separate account is legally required depends on where you are and how you are structured, but the…
· 3 min read
The Admin
What an accountant actually does for you
The value of a good accountant is mostly in the questions they ask before a decision, not in the forms they…
· 3 min read
The Admin
A contract for people who do not like contracts
A written agreement is mostly a memory device, and understanding that removes almost every reason small…
· 3 min read
Most recent
Full archive →
Choosing a structure is mostly a decision about who is liable
A business name does two different jobs and they can conflict
The first sale tells you more than the first plan does
Capacity is the ceiling on a one-person business
Buying equipment before there is revenue is a bet on a customer who has not…
Starting alongside another income, and the four constraints that decide…
What you sell is not the same as what you do
Your first clients come from people who already know you