I don't have a plan B. I have clients

Everyone is asking me about plan B.

I don't have one.

I never wrote one, not even before all this. No drawer with an emergency strategy. No slide with three scenarios in different colours.

What I have is clients.

It sounds like a cheap line. Let me explain why it isn't.

The boring money

Foxnice does two kinds of work. On one side, things we'd like to build: our own products, ideas that one day might stand on their own. On the other, services. Websites. Maintenance. Fixing what breaks. Keeping things running.

The first kind is the exciting part. The second kind pays the bills.

For years, I've thought of the second as a necessary evil. The thing you do while waiting to do the thing you really want.

This month, I've changed my mind.

When everything stops, the exciting projects are the first to freeze. Nobody launches anything new in the middle of a lockdown. Nobody wants to hear about your roadmap.

But websites still need to work. Servers still need someone watching. Emails still need to arrive. That work doesn't stop because the world has.

A plan B is something you write in case things go wrong. Clients are something you build so you don't need one.

A net made of small things

I'm not going to pretend nobody is struggling. A lot of small businesses are having a very hard time right now. Every small company I know is doing sums at night.

And I'm not saying services make you immune. They don't. When a client has to close, the fee goes with them.

What I am saying is that a lot of small, recurring payments behave differently from one big bet. If one falls, the others are still there. It's not a wall. It's a net. Slightly frayed, sure. But a net.

That's the thing about service income nobody puts on a pitch deck: it's not impressive, and it doesn't need to be. It just needs to come in next month. And the month after.

Why I'm not ashamed of it any more

In the startup world, a company that lives on services "doesn't count". It's not scalable. It's not sexy. It's an agency.

Fine.

But I've noticed that the companies that "count" are the ones that need a plan B right now. Because their plan A was someone else's money, and someone else's money is nervous this month.

Ours isn't. Ours comes from people who pay because the work is useful to them. Patient money. It isn't in a hurry, and it doesn't ask for a new forecast every time the news changes.

So when the services pay for the product, I'm not taking a detour. I'm taking the long road on purpose. Slower, yes. But with nobody else's hands on the wheel.

So no. I don't have a plan B.

I have a list of people who pay every month for something that still works today.

That's my plan A. Turns out it was also the B.

P.S. If someone sells you a plan B template this week, ask them what their plan A was.