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The floor exercise — facilitator note

One page. How to run the arithmetic with a cohort in a twenty-minute slot, what comes out, and what to say afterward.

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What it is

Each participant works out the price per engagement below which a job costs them money — the floor — from what they need to earn, what the business costs, and the hours they can actually bill. It is arithmetic, not accounting. Most participants find their current price below the floor, and most are surprised by how far.

Before the session

  1. Send the link the day before: runsonone.com/floor.html. Ask each participant to bring three numbers: what they need to pay themselves each month after tax, their fixed monthly business costs, and what they charge for one typical job.
  2. Have a projector or a shared screen for the page, and a printed copy of this note.

In the slot — twenty minutes

  1. Two minutes. Say what the floor is: the number below which a job costs them money, not the price they hope for. Say that most people in the room will find their price below it, and that this is the most common thing in self-employment, not a personal failing.
  2. Three minutes. Walk the first three fields on the screen with your own numbers, or with the example: $5,000 a month after tax, 30% set aside, $650 of fixed costs.
  3. Ten minutes. Participants fill in the page. Circulate. The field people get wrong is hours: forty is never billable. Ask each person what they do in a week that no client pays for, and watch the floor move.
  4. Five minutes. Ask three people to say their floor and their current price aloud. Do not ask them to justify either. Then say the one action: write the floor where you quote from, tonight.

What to say when someone asks

"Is this financial advice?"
No. It is structural arithmetic — floors, ceilings, cash timing. The tax percentage goes to an accountant.
"My business is different."
The numbers are yours; the arithmetic is the same. Three very different businesses run through the book for that reason.
"What do I do with the number?"
Quote above it. Then the next nine instruments — the buyer, the fence, the weekly number — are in the book and the Binder.

After the session

The page is free and stays free. If the program wants the whole system for the cohort, the Cohort Licence gives every participant the Binder for a year with a forty-five-minute session included; details on the programs page. Questions to the address in your licence confirmation.