π Money Β· E-book
Steady Work Every Month
Building retainers that hold up on both sides
An e-book
Steady Work Every Month
Building retainers that hold up on both sides
Your name
A4 Β· this is a layout preview in the βEditorialβ design. When you generate, the studio writes every chapter in full, paints the cover and chapter art, and composes a downloadable A4 PDF with your name, bio and store link on it.
Retainers are sold as the answer to feast and famine, then quietly become the worst arrangement on your books: unclear scope, endless availability, and a client who cannot remember what they are paying for. The fix is design. This book covers the shapes, the scoping and the conversations that keep a monthly agreement healthy.
What's inside
- 1Why Retainers Go WrongDiagnoses the three common failures: unlimited scope, invisible value and no review point. You will be able to spot which one is affecting any agreement you currently hold.
- 2Four Shapes of RetainerCompares access, capacity, maintenance and outcome retainers, and what each one promises the buyer. You finish able to name the shape that matches the work you actually do.
- 3Scoping the MonthTurns vague ongoing help into a defined monthly allowance with named deliverables and an overflow rule. You will have a scope block you can paste into an agreement.
- 4Pricing and the Discount TrapSets out how to price commitment without giving away the value of availability, and why the standard bulk discount backfires. You will end with a monthly figure and a rationale you can explain.
- 5The Monthly Note Nobody SkipsBuilds a short recurring report that keeps the value visible between deliverables. You will have a template that takes fifteen minutes and prevents the quiet cancellation.
- 6Renewals and Price RisesCovers the review conversation: when to hold it, what to bring and how to raise the rate with notice. You will have a renewal calendar and a script for the increase.
- 7Ending WellHandles the last month, the handover and the door left open, whether the ending is theirs or yours. You will have an offboarding checklist that protects the relationship.
A sample from chapter one
Availability is the thing you are selling
In a healthy retainer the client is not buying a fixed number of hours. They are buying the certainty that someone who already understands their business will pick up the phone this week. That is worth paying for even in a quiet month, but only if both sides have agreed that is what the arrangement is. Left unsaid, a quiet month starts to look like money for nothing.
So the design question is not how many hours to include. It is what the client should be able to rely on, and what you need in return to keep that reliability true. Once that is written down, the quiet months stop being awkward and the busy months stop being unpaid, because both are covered by the same stated promise.
- Name the retainer after what it guarantees, not after a number of hours.
- Write an overflow rule that says exactly what happens when the month runs over, and at what rate.
- Send a short monthly note even when little was needed, listing what was covered and what is coming.
- Put a review date in the agreement itself, three or six months out, so raising the price is scheduled rather than confrontational.
Key takeaways
- A retainer without a stated boundary becomes unlimited support at a fixed price, which ends badly for both sides.
- Value that is not reported is assumed not to exist, so the monthly note is part of the work.
- Scheduling the review in advance turns price rises into an expected event rather than bad news.
The studio writes every chapter from this outline, paints the art and hands you a PDF you can sell the same afternoon.
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