Questions, answered in the first sentence.

Pick one thing people already ask you for. Give it a price you’ve worked out, not guessed. Write down what happens if somebody cancels. Then tell the people who know your work, one at a time. A practice starts with a single paid booking, not with a logo.

Run three tests. People already ask you for it for free. Somebody else is already paid to do it. You can say what changes for the client in one sentence. Pass all three and you have something to sell. Fail one and you know what to fix first.

Start on the side if your contract allows it and you can sell evenings or weekends. You learn what clients buy while a salary pays the rent. Quit first only when the work can’t happen around a job, and when you’ve saved enough to cover every month until the practice pays.

To take home $60,000 a year at $180 a session, you need about 11.2 paid sessions a week for 46 weeks. If each client comes every other week, that’s around 23 clients on your books at once. Tax, costs and card fees are counted in.

Four things: a way for clients to book you, a way for them to pay, an agreement they accept before paying, and somewhere to keep their details. A logo, a website with six pages and a business card can all wait until somebody has paid you.

One thing, with a result somebody can picture, at one price. Usually that’s a single session, and a package of several once people want more than one. A menu of eight makes a stranger choose before they trust you, and most of them leave instead.

Yes. The first price you charge becomes the price people tell their friends, so a discount for the first client sets it for the next ten. If you want to make the first booking easier, make it smaller: a shorter engagement at your full rate, not the full engagement for less.

Say who you help, with what, so that what changes: “I help first-time managers run their first performance review, so they walk in with a plan instead of a knot in their stomach.” Specific people, a specific problem, a result they could notice. Twenty examples follow.

Weeks one and two, make the page: one offer, a price, your agreement. Weeks three to six, have five conversations with people who know your work. By week eight, take your first paid booking. By week twelve, ask your first client who else they know. Nothing else comes first.

From people who already know your work: former colleagues, people you’ve helped for free, people in the communities you belong to. Strangers find you later. Write to the people who know you one at a time, say what you do in a sentence, and ask who they know.

In the US, you’re a sole proprietor the day you take your first paid client under your own name, with nothing to file federally. In the UK, you register as self-employed with HMRC once you earn more than £1,000 in a tax year. A company comes later, when the liability or the tax makes it worth the paperwork.

Work back from what you need to take home this year. Sell that hour in the shape the work needs. Put at least a starting price on your page. Raise it when you’re booked a month ahead.

Fewer than you think. Count the hours a client paid for last month, not the hours you were busy. Price for those, never for forty, because the hours you sell have to pay for every hour you don’t.

Start from your single-session price, take a little off for buying ahead, and give the package an end date. The discount rewards the commitment. The end date keeps the sessions from drifting into next year.

Yes. Put at least a starting price on your page. It answers the first question every client has before they ask it, turns away the people who could never pay it, and lets everyone else arrive already decided.

Forget the market rate and find your floor: the least an hour has to earn to cover your life, your costs and your tax. Then test it this week against what clients paid before, what the alternatives cost, and how people react when they hear it.

Yes, if it’s short and has an end: twenty minutes to find out whether you can help. Start charging the day the call starts doing the work, when people leave it with the advice they’d otherwise pay you for.

Enough to keep what you need after tax, costs and card fees, across only the hours a client pays for. Taking home $60,000 over 46 weeks of 15 billed hours needs $134 an hour. That figure is your floor. Charge it or more.

Only when anybody could choose the lower price. A concessionary rate for students or people on a low income, open to whoever asks, is fair. A price set by how much a client seems to have isn’t. The therapy setup starts with $70 and a concessionary $45, no questions asked.

Decide by the result you sell. An hour suits one good conversation. A package suits a change that takes several sessions. A project suits a thing with an end, priced as a whole. A retainer suits a client who wants you on hand every month. Most practices need two of the four.

A day rate is a price for a full working day, for work billed by time rather than by result. Use it when the work is already under way and the scope keeps moving. To set one, multiply your hourly floor by the hours a day really holds for client work. Six hours at $134 rounds to $850.

Estimate the days it takes, add a share for what you can’t see yet, quote one number, and take half up front. Write down what’s out of scope, so the unknowns you didn’t price stay outside the quote. The first one teaches you what the second should cost.

A retainer says four things: a fixed amount of work each month, how quickly you answer, what isn’t included, and how a pause works. Without the first, a retainer turns into unlimited work for a fixed fee. Without the last, a client who needs a month off stops instead.

No, offer a short free call instead. A free session gives away the work and teaches the client what it’s worth: nothing. A twenty-minute call to decide whether you’re the right person gives away nothing but the decision, and it ends with a paid booking or a polite no.

Make them short, ask one question before booking, hold them to a few slots a week, and end each with one link. A 20-minute call with the 30-minute gap after it is 50 minutes. Five a week is more than 4 hours nobody pays for.

When any one of three things is true: you’re booked a month ahead, you’re saying yes to everybody who asks, or it’s been a year since the last rise. Each means the price is lower than the work is worth. None of them means you should wait for permission.

By enough that you’d be glad if a few clients left. Going from $180 to $200 is 11%. You could lose 9% of your clients and earn the same for fewer hours. Tell existing clients first, with a date a month out, and change your page on that date.

One at a time, in writing, at least a month before it applies to them. Say the new price, the date and that anything already booked stays as it was. Give a reason only if it’s about the work. Don’t apologize, because a price rise isn’t a mistake.

No, but you can change what they get. A smaller scope at the same rate keeps the price true and gives them something they can afford. “I can’t do it for less, but I can do the first part for that” is a better answer than a discount, and it’s still a yes.

Package the part you repeat. Write down the advice you give every client and sell it as a file. Teach it to several people at once. Hold time for a client every month. Each one earns from what you know without another hour of you for every sale.

Five things: a file people download, a group session, a course on set dates, a monthly retainer, and a file that renews each month. You already know how to make every one of them. They’re what you do now, in a shape that doesn’t need you in the room each time.

A product ladder is three or four offers at different sizes that a client climbs one at a time: free, small, your main offer, then something monthly. Not ten. Each step should make the next one obvious.

A monthly offering, for the clients who want to keep going, offered before the last session, not after it. And nothing at all for the ones who got what they came for. Let them go well, and they send you the next one.

Find what you explain in every first session. Write it once, as something to fill in. Test it on three clients, fix where they stop, and sell it beside your sessions. If somebody can use it without you, it’s a product.

On a file, yes: set a lowest price, suggest the one you’d charge, and let people choose. On your sessions and anything monthly, no. Your time and your ongoing commitment deserve a fixed price, so neither of you has to wonder what they’re worth.

Per seat, well below what the same hours would cost one-to-one, and above your one-to-one rate in total. Each person pays less than they would alone. Each hour you teach earns more than an hour with one client. Both of you come out ahead.

Watch for the client who keeps booking without being asked, or the package with one session left. Then offer a month, not a pitch: fewer sessions than they’d book one by one, for less, refilled every month, and easy to stop at the end of any paid month.

What the client picks before they pay, what they get once it’s paid, and whether it happens again. Answer those three for anything you sell and you know what it is: a session, a package, a course, a project, a file or something monthly. The name comes last.

Forty things, grouped by kind of practice below, and each one is a file, a group, a course on set dates or something monthly. None of them is new. They’re the work you already do, in a shape that doesn’t need you in the room every time somebody buys it.

Price it against an hour of your time, not against other people’s PDFs. A workbook that does part of what a session does is worth part of a session. Between a quarter and a half of a $180 session is $45 to $90, and that’s a fair place to start.

Make each month’s version worth renewing for on its own. A monthly file works when the subject changes every month (prices, a market, a season) and the reader would otherwise have to work it out themselves. Update it on the same day each month, and say what changed at the top.

When you find yourself teaching the same thing in every engagement. If three clients this month needed the same explanation, the same exercises and the same examples, that part is a group. Start with the smallest group worth running, about six people, and keep one-to-one for what’s different about each client.

Small enough that everybody speaks, every time. For a discussion, six to ten. For a workshop where people mostly practice, up to twelve with one teacher. For a talk with questions at the end, as many as you like, but then it isn’t a cohort, it’s an audience.

Fix the dates before you sell a seat, sell the seat for all of them at once, and say in advance what happens when somebody misses one and what happens if they stop. Then send a short note before each date. The work is in deciding those rules, not in running the sessions.

A slot held each month for one client, paid monthly and booked when it suits them. It’s a retainer for the client who needs you now and then, not every week. The consulting setup on WorkWith starts with a standing monthly slot: one hour a month for $300.

Write down what the month includes, how fast you answer, and what isn’t in it, then look at it with the client once a month. Most retainers grow because nobody said where they stop. A short monthly review turns “can you also” into a conversation about the next month’s scope.

Five things: what the client gets, when, how much and when they pay, what happens if either of you cancels, and what stays confidential. One page is enough for most practices of one. The client accepts it before they pay, so nobody reads it for the first time in a dispute.

Seven things: how long a session is and how it’s held, the cancellation window, when payment is due, how long a package lasts, that what’s said stays confidential, that coaching isn’t therapy, and how either of you ends it. All of it fits on one page.

Six things: the deliverables, the dates, what’s out of scope, how a change is priced, how you’re paid, and who on the client’s side signs off. It’s a page or two, written per project, and it sits under your general agreement rather than replacing it.

An engagement letter is a short agreement for advice: what you’re advising on, what you aren’t, how you’re paid, and the limit of your responsibility. Accountants, lawyers and consultants send one before the work starts. It’s a letter, not a contract that reads like one.

Five things: the deposit that holds the date, how many rounds of revisions are included, who owns the work and when, whether you can show it in your portfolio, and what happens if the client walks away halfway. Revisions and ownership are where the arguments are.

Not to start, for most practices of one: a clear template edited to how you work covers a session, a package or a small project. You need a lawyer when the work carries real risk, when the sums are large, when your profession sets rules about wording, or when a client sends you their contract.

Make it short, put the sentence they’ll care about first, and ask them to accept it before they pay. One page in plain words gets read. Twelve pages of clauses get scrolled past, and the client finds out what they agreed to when it’s too late to matter.

Free to move or cancel up to 24 hours before for most sessions, 48 hours for therapy, and a deposit for anything tied to a date that can’t be resold. Inside the window the session is charged. It’s fair when it’s agreed before booking and you apply it the same way to everyone.

Yes, if your agreement says so and the client accepted it before booking. A missed session costs you the hour and the client you could have booked into it. The first time, say it kindly and in writing. If they’ve paid at booking, there’s nothing to chase.

Nothing, by the agreement: inside the window the session is charged, and that’s what they accepted. You can still refund, and sometimes you should, such as for illness or an emergency. What matters is deciding the same way for the same reasons, so the policy means something.

In the UK, a consumer who agrees to a service online or by phone can cancel within 14 days and get their money back. If they ask for the service to start sooner, they can still cancel, but pay for what’s been provided. It applies to most practices that take bookings online, and not to business clients.

It depends on what you sell. Sessions follow the cancellation window. Packages refund what’s unused. Files are usually final once downloaded. A course refunds dates not yet held. A monthly retainer stops at the end of the month already paid. Write one line for each offer you have.

Say it in writing, say why in a sentence, settle what’s owed both ways, and leave the door open. The ending a client remembers is the last message, not the reason. A clean one means they can come back, or send somebody else, without either of you feeling awkward.

Whatever your agreement says. There are three choices: they expire at the end of the window, they’re refunded, or the window is extended. Most practices remind the client before the date and give them longer when they ask, because a client who loses three paid sessions to a deadline doesn’t come back.

Keep what you need to do the work and what tax law asks for, and nothing more. Money records are kept for years: three to seven in the US depending on the case, and at least five years after the filing deadline in the UK. Notes about a person are kept only as long as you need them.

Often, yes. A name next to the fact that somebody sees a therapist says something about their health. In the US, whether HIPAA applies depends on whether you’re a covered entity, which usually means billing health insurance electronically. Many private-pay practitioners aren’t, but state laws can still apply.

Get paid before the work whenever the work is short. Take part of it up front when the work is long. Put one due date on everything else, and send a reminder a few days after it passes. Most late money was never refused. Somebody forgot, and each of these makes forgetting harder.

Send four short messages over four weeks, starting the day before it’s due. Every hour you spend chasing is an hour you could have billed, so under about $500 the chase costs you more than the invoice is worth.

For anything an hour or two long, yes. A client who has paid tends to show up, and an invoice you never write is one you never chase. Wait until afterward only when nobody can know the price before the work starts.

Half, for a project with a fixed price. The first month, for work that runs for months. Enough to cover the day, for anything that blocks a date nobody else can book. Take it before the work starts, and say in your terms what happens to it if either of you cancels.

Make paying part of booking, not a request that comes after it. When the price, the time and the card are on the same page, nobody reads it as pushy. They read it as how you work. What feels pushy is the email asking for money once the time is already agreed.

A number of its own, your name and how to reach you, who it’s for, what the work was and when, the date, the amount, the due date and how to pay. In the UK, add the client’s address, and VAT if you’re registered for it. The clearer it is, the less there is to ask about before paying.

Fourteen days for most work, seven for anything weekly, and due on receipt when the amount is small. A shorter gap leaves less time to forget. Whatever you choose, put the same number on every invoice so neither of you has to remember which client gets which.

Ask three things before you start: who approves the invoice, where to send it, and whether it needs a purchase order number. A company pays when its paperwork is complete. Get it right on the first invoice and the ones after it tend to follow on time.

Usually nothing serious. The bank stopped one payment, often for something as small as a new card number. At booking, the client tries another card, and the time isn’t held until one works. On a monthly renewal, Stripe tries again on its own, and a new card from the client fixes it for good.

Two fees come out of a card payment: the processor’s and the platform’s. On a $180 session, Stripe’s US rate takes $5.52 and WorkWith’s 0.75% takes $1.35. You pay them, and the place for them is inside your price. A fee added at checkout reads as a surprise.

Stripe pays a card payment out to your bank on its own schedule, usually about two business days after the client pays. The first payout on a new account takes a few days longer. Standard payouts cost nothing.

Only if it was agreed before the work, and only if you’ll apply it every time. A late fee nobody agreed to is a dispute, and one you waive for some clients is a favor you’ve given the rest. For most practices of one, a reminder on a schedule recovers more than a fee does.

Sometimes, for a debt large enough to be worth a few days of your time and small enough to fit under the limit. In England and Wales the small claims track covers most claims up to £10,000. In the US the limit is set by each state, from a few thousand dollars to $25,000. Send a final letter first.

A client books without an email back and forth, knows what happens before the first session, has a reason to come back, and leaves on good terms. None of it needs a team. It needs the same few things to happen every time, in the same order, without you remembering to do them.

Show them the times you’re offering and nothing else. Set the hours you work, connect the calendar you live in so anything already there is taken out, and leave a gap after each session. The client picks from what’s left, and never sees your dentist appointment.

Enough to prepare, and no more. The WorkWith setups start with tomorrow for coaching and consulting, and 2 days ahead for therapy. A week suits work that needs reading or a site visit first. Longer notice means fewer last-minute bookings, and fewer bookings.

Enough to write notes and reset. The WorkWith setups start with 10 minutes for therapy, 15 for consulting, 30 for coaching and none for project work. If you’re still writing notes when the next client arrives, add ten minutes.

Pick two or three real openings, put them in one link, and send it to that person. They see only those times, pick one, and pay as anybody booking does. Once one is taken the link closes, so nobody else books into the times you held for them.

Yes, up to your cancellation window. Every move a client makes for themselves is an email you don’t write and a time you don’t have to find. Closer to the session than the window, they ask you, and you decide. That keeps the rule and the exceptions both in your hands.

Five things, in order: the client accepts your terms and pays, gets a confirmation with the time and the place or link, answers your one intake question, gets a reminder the day before, and arrives knowing what to bring. If any of it needs you to remember, it’ll be missed on a busy week.

Ask one question before booking and save the rest for the first session. One question is answered; a form of fifteen is abandoned. Ask what they want from the work, in their words. The rest, such as history, context and constraints, comes out better in conversation.

The time, the place or the video link, what to bring, and how to move it if something comes up. Send it at booking and again the day before. Four lines, no attachments. Your agreement was accepted at booking, so it doesn’t need sending again.

Three reasons cover most of it: they got what they came for, they can’t see progress, or life got busy and they never rebooked. Only the first is a good ending. A short message before the drift sets in, naming what you’d work on next, brings back many of the other two.

Send three messages and then stop: one a week after the last session, one a month after, and one at three months. Each is short, about them, and easy to answer. After the third, leave it. A client who wants to come back knows where you are.

Ask after a result, not after an invoice: the third session, the end of a package, the day a project launches. Ask one question they can answer in a minute, such as what changed for them. Then ask permission to use their words, with their name or without it.

Quickly, with a reason in one sentence, and with somebody better placed when you know one. A fast no is kinder than a slow maybe. The client can go and find the right person, and you’ve kept the time for work you can do well.

Name what was agreed, say what the extra is, and offer it at its own price. Most clients don’t know they’re asking for more. They’re asking for what they need. Saying “that’s outside what we agreed, here’s what it would cost” turns an awkward moment into a second sale.

Listen to the whole of it, write down what they said, and decide what you’ll do within two days. Answer in writing with what happened, what you’ll do and by when. Most complaints are about not being heard. A fast, specific answer settles more of them than a refund does.

Make word of mouth deliberate. Have one link people can pass on, ask for referrals at the moment a client says something went well, and write something useful often enough that people remember you. A practice of one needs about twenty good clients a year, not a funnel.

Usually not to start. A page that says what you do, shows what it costs and takes a booking does what a first website is for. A website starts to earn its keep when you have writing people search for, several kinds of work to explain, or a team to introduce.

Three lines: who you help and with what, the one fact that makes a stranger trust you, and how you work. Then your offerings and prices. A visitor decides in a few seconds whether to keep reading. Your career history, your values and your morning routine can wait for the first session.

A good bio fits in three lines: who you help and with what, one fact a stranger can check, and how you work. Thirty examples follow, across kinds of practice, each with a note on what it does that a longer bio doesn’t. Copy the shape, not the words.

Use one if your practice has a name people search for or type from memory, or if you already own one. Wait if you’re starting out under your own name. An address like yourname.workwith.page works on day one. A domain can be pointed at the same page later, and old links keep working.

Ask once, at the moment a client tells you something went well, and hand them a link to pass on. “I’m glad. If you know anybody else stuck on this, here’s my page” is a sentence, not a sales pitch. The awkward version is asking everybody at once, by email, months later.

Usually not in cash. Paying a client to refer changes why they do it, and some professions forbid it outright. A thank-you note, a session on you for the referrer, or looking after the person they sent does more. Paying a business partner a referral fee is a different decision, made in writing.

Write to them a few times a year with something useful, and only if they said yes to hearing from you. A past client who remembers you sends the next one. Four short notes a year, each with one idea and no hard sell, are enough to be the name they think of.

Yes, if you have one useful thing a month to say, a few people who’d want to read it, and an hour to write it. No, if you’d be writing to fill the slot. A newsletter that arrives with nothing in it teaches people to delete the next one.

The questions clients ask you, answered once in public. Every question you’ve answered three times is a note. It’s already been tested on real people, you already know the answer, and the next person with the question finds it when they search.

Monthly is enough for a practice of one. What matters is that it arrives when people expect it. A note every month for a year does more than a weekly one that stops in March, because people learn that yours is worth opening.

Ask the people who already meet you. A sign-up on your page, a box clients can tick when they book, and a line at the end of every note asking readers to forward it. Each one adds the right people, slowly. A list of two hundred who asked is worth more than two thousand who didn’t.

Take the one idea in the note and write it twice: a few short paragraphs for LinkedIn, and a sentence or two for X. End both with the link to the full note. Don’t paste the whole note into either. Give people enough to be curious and a reason to click.

By the problem, then the profession, then the place. Somebody types “can’t sleep after baby” before “sleep consultant”, and “sleep consultant Denver” after that. Your page should use the words they type, in the order they think them, not the name of your method.

Keep four systems and skip the rest: one page that takes bookings, payments and the agreement; one calendar; a share of every payment put aside for tax; and the records an accountant asks for. Each one should run without you remembering it. Everything else is optional until it isn’t.

Eight of them, out of the hundred on the usual lists. The other ninety-two were built for companies with departments, and every one of them assumes somebody else is doing the work.

Into the hours nobody pays for: email, scheduling, invoices, notes, finding the next client and keeping up with your field. Most people who work alone guess too low until they count. Count one ordinary week, hour by hour, and you’ll know which of those hours to cut first.

Less than you have, almost certainly. A few hours a week covers email, notes and the books once booking, payment and invoices run by themselves. If admin takes a day a week or more, something you do by hand could be done by the client or by software.

Later than you think, and for the work only you find tedious, not the work only you can do. First cut the admin that software or the client can do. Then, if you’re still turning clients away, hire a few hours a week of help for one job, usually bookkeeping or editing, before anything else.

A share of every payment, moved aside the day it lands. 25% is a common place to start in the US and the UK; on a $180 session that’s $45. Last year’s tax as a share of last year’s profit is the better number, once you have a year behind you.

What came in, what went out, and the proof of both: every invoice and payment, the card fees taken from them, your payouts to the bank, your business costs with receipts, and anything you paid toward tax during the year. Hand it over in one place, sorted by month, and the bill gets smaller.

Yes, from the first payment. One account for the practice and a second for the tax you’ve set aside. In most places a sole proprietor or sole trader isn’t required to, but mixing the money makes every year-end slower, every tax question harder, and every good month look better than it was.

Four things: one page that takes bookings, payment and your agreement; the calendar you already use; email; and an accountant, or software they recommend for your costs. Most practices of one run on more than that, and pay for it twice: once in subscriptions and once in the hours spent joining them up.

Run both for a month. Set up the new one, move your future availability there, and keep the old one only for sessions already booked. Change the link everywhere it appears, tell clients once, and close the old account when the last old booking has happened.

Retainer, day rate, deposit, package window, statement of work, engagement letter, set-aside: the words that come up once you work for yourself, each in a line. Most of them describe how you’re paid and what you’ve promised, so knowing them makes a conversation with a client shorter.