I ran a studio from twenty-six to thirty-two. Six people at the largest, two at the end, and the end was my decision rather than the market's — which is the only reason I can write about it without flinching.
On the contracts
Three of them were bad and all three were bad in the same way: generous about scope, silent about what happens when scope moves. We did not get cheated. We agreed, in writing, to absorb a risk we had not priced, and then acted surprised when it arrived.
The fix was not better legal language. It was saying a number out loud, early, in a conversation I found unpleasant. Every bad contract I signed was downstream of avoiding one uncomfortable sentence in a meeting.
The cost of a difficult conversation is a bad afternoon. The cost of avoiding it is a bad year, paid in instalments.
On the money
I understood revenue and ignored timing, which is how a profitable studio ends up unable to make payroll. Six years of invoices taught me that the question is never what are we owed but when does it actually land, and the gap between those two is where small studios die.
- Deposit up front, always. The clients who object are the ones the deposit is for.
- A client who pays late once will pay late always. This is a property of their finance process, not their opinion of you.
- Know the number of months you can survive with no new work. Mine was two for years and I did not know it.
On the friendship
I started with two friends and finished with one. The one that survived is the one where we talked about money every month, awkwardly, before there was a problem. The other is the one where we were too close to be formal, which felt like trust at the time and turned out to be the opposite.
That is the letter, if there is one. Being explicit with people you like feels like a small insult and is in fact the whole of the respect.
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