Starting Out
Capacity is the ceiling on a one-person business
A business that sells hours has a maximum income that can be worked out in advance, and most people work it…
· 3 min read
Kabir Anand
Deputy editor, Biz Wealth Focus
Kabir writes about starting out, pricing, cash flow, mostly the parts other people skip and is unreasonably interested in the detail nobody else checks.
21 articles
Starting Out
The first year is not a smaller version of the second
Early figures are distorted by one-off costs, unrepeatable work and a schedule with holes in it, which…
· 3 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
Scope creep is a pricing failure that arrives disguised as a scheduling one
Work expanding beyond what was agreed feels like a problem with the client or the calendar, but it almost…
· 3 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
Cash Flow
Set aside what is not yours on the day it arrives
Some of the money that lands in a business account is already committed elsewhere, and the businesses that…
· 3 min read
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
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
Clients
A difficult first week is a forecast of the whole engagement
The behaviour a client shows before any real work has happened is the cheapest information you will ever…
· 3 min read
Clients
When a client goes quiet in the middle of a project
Silence during an engagement is usually about something happening on their side, and how you handle the gap…
· 3 min read
Clients
Repeat work is the cheapest work and it does not arrange itself
A returning client skips the entire cost of being found, evaluated and convinced, which makes the effort of…
· 4 min read
The Admin
You are the single point of failure, and that is fixable
In a business of one, everything runs through a single person and often a single device, and the…
· 3 min read
Pricing
Money you spend on a client’s behalf should not be buried in the price
Travel, materials bought for a specific job and fees paid to third parties behave differently from your own…
· 3 min read
Pricing
What another business’s price tells you, and what it does not
A competitor’s number is genuine information about their business and a poor instrument for setting yours…
· 3 min read
Pricing
A packaged offer is a decision you make once instead of every time
Turning a service into a defined thing with a fixed scope and a fixed price removes most of the work of…
· 3 min read
Cash Flow
Getting paid from another country adds steps, fees and time
An invoice that crosses a border passes through more hands than a domestic one, and each of them takes a…
· 3 min read
Clients
How much contact a client actually wants
The right amount of communication during a job is decided by what the client has to do with the…
· 3 min read
The Admin
Bringing somebody in to help does not move the responsibility
Work passed to a subcontractor is still work you promised, and the client’s remedy stays with you…
· 3 min read
The Admin
Being asked to sign somebody else’s contract
A client’s standard terms were written by their side for their circumstances, and reading them properly is…
· 3 min read
The Admin
Working for a client abroad raises the question of whose rules apply
A job that crosses a border brings a second set of rules into play, and which of them governs the work is…
· 3 min read