The questions people don't ask on the first call.
Hiring one person to handle your technology is a real risk, and you're right to think about it carefully. Here's what I'd want to know if I were you.
What happens if you get hit by a bus?
This is the real objection to hiring an individual, and it deserves a real answer rather than reassurance.
Everything I build lives in your accounts, not mine. Your domain registrar, your hosting, your repositories, your vendor logins. I get access to your things; you never get access to mine, because there's nothing of yours in mine.
I document as I go — not a handover document written in a panic at the end, but running notes on how things are set up and why. Boring, standard, current.
And I build with common tools in conventional ways. Nothing I make requires me specifically. If I vanished tomorrow, you could hand your documentation to any competent developer and they could pick it up without a rescue project.
That's the honest mitigation. It doesn't make me replaceable overnight — losing your technology person is disruptive no matter who they are. But it means the disruption is a hiring problem, not a crisis.
Who owns what you build?
You do, entirely. Code, content, designs, documentation, accounts, domains. It's yours as it's made, not transferred at the end of a contract.
I don't build on a proprietary platform of mine that you'd have to keep paying for. I don't hold your domain or hosting in my name as leverage. If we stop working together, nothing about your operation depends on my goodwill.
What about the accounts and passwords?
They're in your password manager, under your organization's ownership, with me as a user who can be removed. If you don't have a password manager, setting one up is usually one of the first things we do — and it's worth doing whether or not you hire me.
What if it isn't working?
Thirty days' notice, either direction, no penalty and no exit fee.
I'd rather you leave clean than stay because leaving is painful. An arrangement that's hard to exit is an arrangement built on the wrong thing.
If you do end it, I'll spend part of that last month making sure your documentation is current and walking your team or your next person through anything that isn't obvious. That's included, not billed extra.
What if you want to end it?
Same notice, same handover, same effort on the way out. If that happened — usually because an organization grew into needing something I'm not, a full team or a specialist depth I don't have — I'd rather say so early and help with the transition than quietly become the constraint on your growth.
What does a normal week look like?
We agree on a monthly allotment of hours and roughly when they tend to land. There's a shared list of what's active and what's next, visible to you at all times — not a status report I write, a live list we both work from.
We have a standing check-in, usually every week or two depending on the pace. Between those, you can reach me by email or whatever channel your team already uses. I'd rather join your Slack than make you use mine.
How do hours work month to month?
We account for time monthly, not week by week. About half a day a week is twenty hours a month; a day a week is closer to forty. Some weeks run quiet and some run heavier — that averages out inside the month.
Unused hours don't pile into a bank you have to spend down. If a stretch will clearly go beyond what we've agreed to — a migration, a launch — we talk about it before it happens, not after an invoice.
What's your response time?
Email within one business day during an engagement. Things that are actually broken — the site is down, the donation form is failing — get handled the same day, and you'll have my number for those.
I'm not on call at 2am, and I'd be lying if I claimed otherwise. What I do instead is build things that don't tend to break at 2am, and make sure the ones that could have monitoring and a fallback.
How does pricing work?
A flat monthly rate based on the hours we've agreed to. Not hourly billing, not a per-request quote, no surprise invoices. You budget one number and stop thinking about it.
Rates are simple, and they get better the longer we work together. That's deliberate: I'd rather have five clients for five years than fifty for five months, and pricing that rewards staying is the honest way to say so.
I'm not going to publish numbers here, because what's right depends on how much of me you need and what shape your organization is in. But I'll give you a real number on the first call rather than making you sit through a second meeting to hear it.
Clause · First engagement
What about a paid roadmap first?
If you're not ready to commit to an ongoing arrangement — or you need something concrete to take to a board or a funder before you can — a short paid roadmap is often the right first step.
Usually two to three weeks. I look at what you actually have: sites, systems, contracts, workflows. You get a prioritized plan with honest costs and a clear sense of what's urgent versus what's just annoying. The roadmap is yours to keep whether or not we work together afterward. You can hand it to your board, use it to write an RFP, give it to another vendor, or do nothing with it.
Practically, this matters because many organizations can fund a one-time planning engagement from grant money or a capital line when they don't yet have an operating budget for a retainer. The roadmap is how we start without forcing that decision on day one.
It's sold on a fit call, not ordered off a page. If that sounds useful, book a call and we'll talk through whether a roadmap or a retainer is the better shape for where you are.
What about busy weeks?
Some weeks are quiet and some weeks something big ships. That averages out, and I plan for it rather than billing you for the peaks. If a stretch of work is genuinely beyond what we've agreed to — a migration, a launch — we talk about it before it happens, not after.
Do you do free work?
Not as a sales tactic. A fit call is free because it's how we both decide, and a short piece of advice on a call costs you nothing. But spec work, free audits designed to sell you a fix, and unpaid proposals aren't things I do — mostly because organizations that get their advice free tend to get advice worth what they paid.
Who this doesn't work for.
Being direct here saves us both time.
- You want a sealed handoff with no path back. Website builds are a big part of this work, and sometimes that's the whole engagement for a while. What I'm not built for is disappearing for good — I'd rather you be able to call when something breaks or the next thing comes up.
- You're choosing on price alone. There's always someone cheaper. If the deciding factor is the lowest bid, they'll win and you should let them.
- You need a team. If the work genuinely requires five people starting Monday, one person is the wrong shape regardless of how good they are.
- You need someone available around the clock. I'm one person. I'm responsive, not omnipresent.
If you're reading that list and recognizing yourself, tell me on the call and I'll try to point you toward someone who fits better. That costs me nothing and saves us both a month.
Still here?
Then let's talk. Half an hour, no pitch.
Book a fit call