I charge up front on smaller projects.
People hate it. But I do it because it puts the difficult conversation at the beginning, where it belongs.
It simplifies the work. No watermarks, no redactions, no holding things back. It also settles the question of control. I know my values and I know I will refund if the work changes, but unpaid invoices have a way of distorting judgement on both sides.
Most importantly, it allows me to be honest. As a consultant, my job is sometimes to say the thing you may not want to hear, and that only works if the payment is not quietly sitting in the room, waiting to decide how brave I’m allowed to be.
The tension of having defined terms.
But when I say it, there’s a tension and it’s my job as the ‘aggressor’ to recognise it. When people keep something back, the whole atmosphere changes. Movements slow. Trust becomes conditional. Everyone starts cooking for an imagined worst case. My job is to stop that, which is why I take payment up front.
Not as a power move. Not as a test. But because it removes the tension entirely.
I am not a king, I shouldn’t need walls If I didn’t, I’d have to build a small defensive city around the work. And a system to man and maintain them: Contracts thick with clauses. Watermarked logos like crime scene tape. Progress rationed into safe, uncontroversial chunks. And then at the end of the process, there’s a final reveal where someone gets to decide whether to cooperate or pull the pin.
That is not how good work is made.
It’s also not how humans behave at their best.
Golden Balls and Game Theory
If you want to understand why, you don’t need a business book. You need to watch an episode of Golden Balls.
Golden Balls was a UK game show that dressed up game theory as daytime television. Two contestants. One pot of money. A final choice. Split or steal. If both split, they share the prize. If one steals and the other splits, the stealer takes everything. If both steal, nobody gets anything.
On paper, it’s simple. In practice, it was a mess of promises, emotion, betrayal and spite. Most episodes ended with both contestants stealing, guaranteeing the worst possible outcome. The structure encouraged mistrust. So mistrust flourished.
Until one man refused to play it properly.
He looked at his opponent and told him the truth. Not a comforting truth. Not a strategic half-truth. He said he was going to choose to steal. No matter what. And then he said something that changed the shape of the room.
He promised to split the money afterwards.
By doing that, he removed the illusion of mutual control. The other contestant no longer had a fantasy of leverage. There were only two options left. Choose to steal and guarantee nothing. Or choose to split and trust that something better might follow.
He chose to split.
At the reveal, the first man split too. Both walked away richer.
Not because they trusted each other blindly. But because the structure forced honesty early.
You’re not negotiating about money, you’re negotiating about control.
That’s the bit people miss.
Most conflict does not come from bad intent. It comes from badly designed systems that invite people to hedge, stall, and protect themselves from imagined future harm.
Deposit systems do exactly that.
They create a final moment where someone still has a weapon. Payment withheld. Work withheld. Momentum held hostage until a ceremonial exchange at the end. Everyone pretends it’s fine. Nobody relaxes.
Full payment changes the terrain.
Once the money is settled, the game is over before it starts. There is nothing to steal. Nothing to threaten with. The only thing left to do is work. Properly. Quickly. Without the low-level anxiety of who might blink first.
If the scope changes, we talk. If something no longer makes sense, I refund part of the fee. That conversation is possible because it’s no longer charged with fear. It becomes practical. Human. Adult.
Fully Committing is Where the Magic Lies
I’ve found that when people commit fully at the start, they behave differently. They ask better questions. They are clearer about what they want. They stop testing the edges of the relationship and start using it.
The work improves. The atmosphere improves. Time stops leaking away into defensive manoeuvres.
Golden Balls taught us something quietly profound. When you remove the option to betray at the end, people make better decisions in the middle.
That’s all this is.
Not rigidity. Not bravado. Just a structure that assumes cooperation and makes it easier than conflict.
And like any good system, once you’ve experienced it working, it’s very hard to go back to anything else.
