Responsibility arrives before money does

Nobody warns you about the order.

You think it goes: you start a business, you earn money, and then you take on responsibility.

It goes the other way round.

The first time a client depends on you, you're not earning much. Maybe nothing worth mentioning. But their website is live, their emails go through your server, their customers book through something you built. If it breaks on a Sunday, it's your Sunday.

Money arrives later. Much later. Responsibility arrives the day you say yes.

The stretch nobody puts in the brochure

There's a period in every small company that doesn't show up in success stories.

It's the period when you already behave like a real business, because people are relying on you, but you don't yet earn like one.

You answer at strange hours. You fix things that weren't technically your fault. You worry about clients you charge very little, because charging them little doesn't make their problem any smaller.

Yeray and I built Foxnice without investors and without a cushion. So we know that stretch well. I suspect most people who build something on their own money do.

Responsibility arrives the day you say yes. Money arrives when it feels like it.

Why I wouldn't skip it

The temptation, when you're in that stretch, is to think it's unfair. You're doing the work of a company and getting paid like a hobby.

Part of that is true. Part of it is a sign you're pricing badly, which is a separate article and probably a separate therapy session.

But part of it, I think, is just how it works. Trust comes before income. Nobody pays you properly until you've shown you'll be there when it breaks. And you can only show that by being there when it breaks, before anyone pays you properly.

It's a chicken-and-egg problem where you're both the chicken and the one who gets up early.

And there's something that stretch gives you that money can't buy: the habit of taking clients seriously from day one. Not when they're big. Not when they pay well. From the first website.

If you start with someone else's money, a comfortable salary and a team, I imagine you learn a lot of things. I'm not sure you learn that one.

What I'd tell someone in the middle of it

Not much. I'm not a coach.

Only this: if people already depend on you and you're not earning much yet, you're not failing. You're in the order of things.

Make sure the money eventually catches up. Raise your prices when you can. Say no when you should.

But don't resent the clients who trusted you before you were worth much on paper. They're the ones who made the paper.

Money arrives late. It always has.

The trick is still being there when it does.

P.S. If your Sunday is still free, you probably don't have clients yet. Enjoy it.