Feeling Business Revisited

October 3rd, 2006
[ Office Gossip ]

I was talking to a younger colleague recently and he mentioned the Feeling Business post. He’s a recent graduate working at his first job, getting married this summer, just bought their first house. He mentioned that he didn’t think he could handle the part where you don’t get paid until the client pays. He doesn’t have that type of ‘wiggle room’ in his budget.

It’s always interesting to hear first hand what people take away from the things you write. He rightfully noticed fear as I was focusing on that, possibly too much. The real history, however, is that our client’s have a basically perfect track record when it comes to paying. We have some late payments, usually nothing more than thirty days, but that’s expected. Ultimately our client’s have a stellar track record when it comes to compensating us for what we do for them.

I have a house, student loans, more debt than I care to think about, and two young children. I think I have a decent argument for having little to no wiggle room. If I don’t get paid there’s at least four people directly impacted.

Bottom line, working in a model like ours provides the opportunity to get an on the job MBA. It may hurt some days but it’s better than paying gazillions to sit in a room and talk about running businesses, in my opinion.