Late payments are rarely about the client being difficult. They are about the invoice arriving at the wrong moment, in the wrong shape, with nothing attached to it that explains why it exists. Here is a sequence that fixes it.
A project can look profitable because the invoices get paid. Track every hour for one week, including the ones you would rather not see, and the picture changes.
Forty minutes, nine questions, and a project that starts with both sides knowing who decides, what done looks like and when the money moves.
A new inquiry should become a signed contract without anyone retyping a name, a price or a deliverable. Here is how the rooms in Meadow Desk hand the work to each other.
New posts, the occasional template, and what's new on the desk, written for people who run a small studio, not for a funnel.