The Business Foundations Workbook
The business manual they forgot to give you. 10 sections. No fluff.
What this actually is
A free workbook. The proper kind. The one that doesn't ask for your email twice and then tries to sell you a £997 course.
Ten sections. Each one tackles a foundation most coaches and small businesses are quietly missing — legal, tax, pricing, onboarding, boundaries, systems, offers, visibility, AI, and your one clear next move.
Try this first 🧮
Four numbers. The maths happens live. If your floor rate is higher than what you're charging, that's the gap that's been quietly draining you.
Want the five-step breakdown? See the full Pricing section →
How to actually use it
- Each tab is one section. Click through in order or skip around — your call.
- Each section ends with one DO THIS TODAY action. Just one. Not a list. The point isn't to fix everything in one sitting.
- The progress bar at the top tracks every checkbox across all 10 sections. Watch it move.
- The last tab — Shake It Off — is where you find your next step if you want me to look at your actual business after this. No pitch. Skip it freely.
Are you actually legal? 👀
Legal sounds boring until something goes wrong. Then it becomes the most interesting thing in your business, fast.
What you need — full stop
- 🛡️ Public Liability Insurance — covers you if a client has an accident on your watch.
- 💼 Professional Indemnity Insurance — covers you if your advice leads to a client's financial loss.
- 📋 ICO Registration — legally required the moment you hold anyone's personal data.
- 🔒 GDPR-compliant Privacy Policy — must be live on your website. No exceptions.
- 📄 Terms and Conditions — sets out what you do, what you don't, and what happens when it goes wrong.
- ✍️ Client Contract — signed before a single piece of work begins.
Tax and money basics 💸
HMRC knows you exist. Or they will. They're not scary — they're just very patient. And then suddenly very not.
What you need to know
- ⏰ Self Assessment — the moment you earn one pound of self-employed income, register. Don't wait for a 'good time'. The penalty for missing the October deadline is real money.
- 📒 Bookkeeping — every payment in. Every business expense out. Every. Single. One. A spreadsheet beats a shoebox of receipts every time.
- 🚨 VAT threshold — once your turnover hits £90,000 in any rolling 12-month period, VAT registration is mandatory. Watch this number. Being caught off guard is expensive.
- 🏦 Separate bank account — one for business. One for personal. Non-negotiable. Your accountant will thank you. So will your sanity.
Pricing reality check 🔥
You've been told to know your worth 47 times. Nobody showed you how to calculate it. Until now.
The simple pricing formula 🧮
Pricing from vibes is not a strategy. I say this with love. Start here. Work backwards from what you actually need to survive — then thrive.
Run your numbers (live calculator)
Type in real figures. The maths happens automatically. Your numbers save to this browser only.
That gap is the problem. And now you can't unsee it. Good.
Onboarding and client experience 🤝
Someone says yes. Money lands. Then what? If you're winging it from here, you're leaving money, trust, and repeat business on the table.
A panicked WhatsApp at 11pm is not an onboarding process. Here's the sequence that makes every client feel like the only client.
The sequence that works
Boundaries and scope protection 🚧
One thousand quick questions equals death by a thousand favours. Zero boundaries equals available to everyone, present for no one.
What you need
- 📱 Communication hours — set them, document them, put them in the contract. Clients respect what you enforce, not what you hope for.
- 🛑 Scope defined clearly — what's in. What's not. If it's not in the contract, it's not included.
- 🗣️ A scope-creep script — "That sounds great. That would sit outside our current agreement. Let me send you a quote." Practise it until it's automatic.
- 💰 A late payment policy — and actually use it. B2B: statutory interest is 8% above base rate. B2C: set your own terms.
Your systems and tools 🛠️
You've been sold a lot of software. Most of it is noise, a distraction, or a subscription you forgot to cancel.
If you're paying for three tools that all do the same thing, that's not a tech stack. That's a panic stack.
What you actually need
- 💳 A way to invoice and get paid — reliably. Stripe, PayPal, Wise, doesn't matter — just one that works.
- 📧 One client communication channel — even just email. One place. Not five.
- 🔐 Somewhere safe to store client data — Google Drive, Notion, Dropbox. Encrypted, backed up, accessible.
- 📅 A booking link clients can actually use — Calendly, Notion Calendar, Cal.com. Just one.
- 📊 Simple bookkeeping — that's actually done. A spreadsheet you update weekly beats software you ignore.
That is it. Everything else is a nice-to-have.
Your offer sense check 📦
Does your offer solve a problem people are actively trying to fix? Can a stranger understand it in ten seconds?
Answered "kind of"? Your offer needs work. And "kind of" is just "no" in a polite cardigan.
Four questions every offer must answer
Your visibility basics 👁️
Can people find you online? Does what they see tell a clear story? Google yourself right now. Was that fine — or was it a bit 2019?
What needs to be true
- 🌐 Your website is live and loads properly on mobile (not just desktop).
- 👤 Your bio clearly states who you help and how.
- 📞 Your contact details are easy to find. Not buried two clicks deep.
- 🔁 Website, bio, and social all say the same thing. No "wait, what does she actually do?" energy.
The task you keep doing from scratch 🤖
Name the task you've now done four times this month from scratch. The thing you keep rebuilding because past-you didn't save the template.
Got it? Good. That's the gap. Now here's what does about it.
What AI is actually useful for
For an ADHD brain it's not about automation. It's about having somewhere to put the chaos while your brain works out what actually matters.
For the task you just named — describe it to Claude once. Ask it to build you a template you can reuse forever. Edit it until it sounds like you. That's the loop.
When your head is too full to think — open Claude and brain dump. All of it. Then ask for the one thing that matters most.
When you need to write something — tell it what you're trying to say and who you're saying it to. Never post the first draft.
Your one clear next move 🧭
You've done the work. You've seen what's there and what's not. The danger now is trying to fix everything at once and fixing nothing.
The move → pick one. Do it. Then the next.
- You've done the work → you've seen what's there and what isn't.
- The danger now → trying to fix everything at once and fixing nothing.
- The move → pick one. Do it. Then the next.
The three things that need fixing most urgently — be specific. "Sort my business" doesn't count.
✨ Look at you. All ticked off.
You did the workbook. The whole thing. That alone puts you ahead of most people who keep building on shaky ground.
Want the next thing?
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