They Said Yes. Now What

The five things, before you start

Yes is not the finish line. It is the point where things go wrong quietly.

Agree all five of these before you begin. It takes about a minute.

1. What exactly. Not "the yard". The front and the back, grass cut, clippings taken away.
2. By when. A day, not "this week". Saturday morning.
3. How much. One number, said out loud by you, first.
4. How they pay. Cash on the day, or an app your parent owns. Decide now, not while standing in their driveway.
5. What happens if it is bigger than it looked. "If the back is worse than it looks, I will tell you before I start, and it will be ten more."

Then send it in one message. Not because it makes it official. Because in three weeks neither of you will remember it the same way.

Sell the thing you have, not the thing you might make

Here is a difference almost nobody explains to you.

Selling a thing that already exists is simple. It is in your hands, you hand it over, they pay. Done in one moment.

Selling a promise is a different animal. You are agreeing now about something that does not exist yet. There is time in the middle for the supplier to run out, for the printer to eat it, for them to change their mind, and for you to get sick.

That is true for adults too. It is more true for you, because of the wording in the block above. In California a person under 18 cannot make a contract about personal property that is not in their immediate possession or control. Made to order work is exactly that. Every state writes its own version, so this is not a national rule and I am not going to pretend it is one. Go and read yours.

The practical version travels fine, though. Where you have a choice, sell what is already made.

If it has to be made to order

Sometimes it does. People want their name on it. Then do this.

Keep it small and keep it short. Six of a thing in one week, not sixty over two months. Less time means fewer ways for it to fall apart.

Ask for the cost of materials rather than the full price. Tell them what the materials cost. That is the standard answer on this site, and the rest of the money comes when you hand the thing over.

There is one case where half up front is fair. A stranger, a made to order job, and a thing nobody else would buy if they walked away. A name painted on it, a size only they need. Then half is you not being left holding it.

Anything else, take the materials and nothing more.

Get it done early. The hardest version of this is a promise you are still trying to keep the night before.

And if the order is big enough to matter, get an adult into it before you say yes. Not to hold your hand. Because the money and the promise both sit better with somebody who is over 18.

The half of this nobody mentions

You have probably read that a person under 18 can get out of any deal.

Read the second and third blocks above. The customer cannot get out of the deal because of your age. And in Washington, once you have been running a business like an adult would, you often cannot get out either.

So the picture is not a young person with a magic exit. It is two people who made a deal, one of whom has slightly different protection depending on what state they are in.

Which is a good reason to make deals you can actually keep.

Then the boring bit

Do the work. Do it on the day you said.

Then ask for the money, in a normal voice, at the end. That is its own skill and there is a page here about it, because a lot of people your age do everything right and then cannot say the last sentence.