Read this one before, I think before I came self-employed. Made a few of the mistakes he's talked about. I'll share them in the hope it might help someone else.

Read this one before, I think before I came self-employed. Made a few of the mistakes he's talked about. I'll share them in the hope it might help someone else. Your customer certainly has to believe you can do the job, but they cannot wonder if you're going to get back to them, or if you're going to do something stupid (again?), or offend one of their customers. I've definitely offended a customer of a customer before. It was a customer who was well known for being rude - a running joke through the whole company. But I definitely ruffled some feathers when I got sick of their shit and left the call. Part of me thinks I should have been more zen and let the insults wash over me. But another part of me thinks that prevention is better than the cure and a frank conversation with my client about what I was willing to tolerate would have been the way to go. I mean, do you have to be a smiling doormat to excel in business? You have no job security, even if you think you do Yeap. Twice at the end of a full time contract, I found another one extremely easily. The one I left at the beginning of this year I still haven't really covered from, and I've essentially had to change niches and start from scratch. Very keen to optimise for multiple part time roles from now on. You are primarily in the customer service business, not the technical business I have made this mistake before to an extent. Zero in on what your customer actually wants not your technical wizardry. This is the easiest to manage: you work an hour, you invoice the customer for a hour. For occasional or ill-defined work, it's hard to use anything but hourly billing. The customer bears the brunt of projects that get out of hand, and the customer is really at the mercy of the consultant for being fair. I disagree with this one though. An hour is way too fine grained - there's much less paperwork and micro accounting with daily. Strongly considered charging weekly next year.