Groundwork
Practical guides for people running a business alone Monday 21 September 2026
Finance  ·  The long read

Financial Controls When There Is Only One of You

Every standard financial controls framework rests on segregation of duties, which is impossible with one person. This guide rebuilds them around three substitutes: a delay instead of an approver, a record instead of a reviewer, and a rule set in advance instead of judgment under pressure. Includes a six step setup, a twenty point checklist, and the five failures that actually happen at this size.

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Micro-SaaS 24 Finance 26 Marketing 12 Startup 14 Operations 13
Founder Operations

Runbook: The Four Documents That Replace You for a Week

A runbook is the operational reference that keeps a business running when you cannot. For a business of one it is four documents: an oper...

11 min
Marketing

Objection Handling Without Sounding Like a Salesperson

A five step process for handling sales objections, the four questions that reveal which kind you are facing, word-for-word scripts for th...

10 min
Founder Operations

Business Operations for a Business of One

The six systems a one-person business actually runs on, how to set them up in an afternoon, and a one-page operations map to fill in.

10 min
AI and Tools

Writing an AI Policy for a Business of One

A one-page AI governance policy for a solo business, written in about an hour. Six steps, a copy-paste policy template covering tools, da...

10 min
Founder Operations

Handling a Difficult Client: Six Scripts and a Checklist

A five step process for handling a difficult client, with the exact wording to send in the six situations that actually recur: scope cree...

11 min
Marketing

NPS vs CSAT: Which Metric to Use, With a Calculator

NPS and CSAT compared side by side: what each one measures, how they are calculated, what counts as a good score, and which to use in a b...

9 min
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