The top 1% of creative professionals in any particular field want to work for themselves. From coaching to consulting to designing to even developing an application, professionals who are really good at what they do, they want to work for themselves.

Scoping creative projects at the start can be challenging. With problem statements that require a novel vision, a cookie-cutter approach to the solution does not work. Novelty in the approach is necessary.

The employment route, which originated in the industrial age, allows you to start working without defining the project. However, it comes with a package of environments where optics are prioritized over outcomes, resulting in pretend work.

But today, creative professionals either work with hourly estimates with a downside that nobody wants to held accountable for each hour in a day. Creative ideas do not understand time very well. It can take anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of weeks to come up with something that truly thrives.

Contracts are a joke in these setups. If you are working with a listed company, you will probably spend the budgeted project duration in agreeing on the terms of the agreement. You are a one member team and they are thousands. If they want, they can really go mad.

Last option, most common, and the root of all evils, send a rough estimate of duration, cost and a few milestones on an email. It leads to the problem that I have named them as below:

Tied to the pot
Since one has already budgeted the time for a pre-mature project, they try to stick to it even if there is a better way to solve the problem. It is like you are closed to novelty before you can get to the solution. Retrofitting to that email that we sent out as we all wanted to get started influences the best work of our life.

Email, When ?
As the time goes on, new unknowns get known. and this old email keeps loosing its relevance for the project day by day. It would not have been a problem unless the payment terms were on it. Or the only place there are at.

Let us play the blame game
Since there is no place that has a boundary of this creative project, both parties look at the coin from two different sides. Both sides exist but since there is nothing that kept these two parties on the same page, they do not want to look at the other side.

In this democratised world, there is a gap where there is no system where crafters can work with builders in a way that builders get access to best talent and crafters can earn with their mind, not time. Once solved, this will promote getting best at what you do while experiencing the upsides of financial freedom. World with a better place where two people can collaborate on a problem that excites them rather than competing on it.

Solution will be something that will be a mix of contract management, project management and expense management. Do not want to build a core value that is a lot of things in one so I have started with the promise of getting crafters paid on time with https://wellpayout.webflow.io/. There is a natural scope of generative AI here as well that can help scope the project and keep everyone on the same page.