Former BMX pro. Former agency operator. Now I help agency founders build businesses that attract clients rather than chase them.
Minneapolis, MN
Joined March 2007
- Tweets821
- Following705
- Followers2.4K
- Likes171
Hourly billing is a pay cut for getting good at your job. Move anything you've sold more than three times to a fixed price and keep the hours you save.
Put the exclusions before the inclusions. Four or five of them, specific, on page one. Clients skim what's included and fight over the gaps. Ten minutes of clarity up front kills the scope argument in month two.
Picking a niche feels risky because you picture the clients you'll lose. You already have clients who don't fit, and they eat up hours a better client would pay for.
By month two a new hire will copy whatever they saw first. Hand them one finished project folder on day one, brief through final invoice, so what they copy is your best work.
Biggest accounts often pay the least per hour. Divide each client's yearly revenue by the hours your team spent on them, then rank the list. Better to find that out in a spreadsheet than from burnout.
Refusing to share a budget range is a red flag I've learned to respect. Those projects tend to end in an argument over the invoice, and I've yet to see one go the other way.
You're still chasing late invoices by hand. Set a rule in QuickBooks or Harvest that sends reminders at seven and fourteen days past due, and let the software be the bad guy.
When you praise work, point to the exact decision you liked. Good job teaches a designer nothing about what to repeat next time.
Claude & Apple Intelligence SEO: How Anthropic and Apple AI Source Information in 2026 mediaofficers.com/insights/c…
Founders collect frameworks the way other people collect gym memberships. Pick one and put it on Monday's calendar.
Your first product is already built. Scan your last ten projects for the one you delivered twice, give it a fixed scope and a fixed price, and stop pitching it like a custom engagement.
Many late projects were late the day they were sold, when someone picked a date without checking who was free.
Kickoff calls are where everyone agrees to things they'll forget by Friday. Send a recap that same day. By month four, that page is the only memory anyone trusts.
Shops that write every proposal from scratch will keep losing bids to shops that send a finished one by lunch. Build a template in PandaDoc with your scope blocks and prices already in it.
Cap revisions at two rounds in every scope. Unlimited sounds generous to the client, and they'll use every bit of it on your time.
Whoever answers the client email fastest becomes the account lead, whatever the org chart says. I've watched juniors take over accounts that way. Decide who owns each client on day one.
Track profit per project. Revenue is easy to look at. That's why you check it every Monday and skip the margin number, because that one might sting.
Pretend a stranger takes over your project on Monday. Each question they'd have to ask you points to a process you haven't built yet.