The most common shape of small business technical need isn't a single big project. It's a constant trickle of small ones — a feature this week, a server migration next month, a custom report someone asked for, an EA-style "can you handle this vendor for me," another bug surfacing somewhere unexpected.
Hourly engagement works for this but creates friction: every task becomes a tiny negotiation about scope and price. In-house hiring solves the friction but costs $80,000+ a year and underloads at small business scale.
The retainer fixes both problems. $500 USD a month, 10 hours a month, and you can use them however you want — dev work, L3 tech, EA work, or any mix — week to week. No re-negotiating per task. No pretending you have a 40-hour-a-week need when you don't. No agency markup.
I call it the Lead Steer because it's the package most people end up on after a few hours of ad-hoc work convinces them I'm worth keeping around.
What you can use the 10 hours for
The whole point is flexibility. Real examples from real retainer clients:
A SaaS founder uses ~6 hours/month on dev work (small features, bug fixes, infrastructure tweaks) and the remaining 4 on EA-style operational work (vendor coordination, expense reconciliation, a complex booking).
An e-commerce store uses ~7 hours on Shopify L3 work (new sections, app debugging, performance tuning) and ~3 on social-post drafting from their content calendar.
A consultant uses ~2 hours on dev (their own marketing site upkeep) and ~8 on EA work (calendar, inbox, travel, vendor management).
A small agency uses the whole 10 on dev — their team is full but understaffed for backlog work; I'm their overflow.
A founder in transition uses 5 hours one month, 15 the next (over-cap, billed at $50/hr ad-hoc), 3 the month after. The retainer absorbs the variance without anyone having to renegotiate.
The point: I'm not three different people you have to hire separately. The retainer is one engagement that flexes to whichever capability you need this week.
What's actually included
10 dedicated hours per month. Time-tracked transparently. You see the timesheet weekly.
Real-time Slack/Discord access. A direct channel between you and me, not a queue or ticketing system. Most things get handled within a few hours during AU business hours.
Weekly priority sync (15 min). Optional but offered — a quick "what's on the list this week, what's the top thing." Usually monthly is enough once we have a rhythm.
Roll-over of unused hours. Up to 50% of the month's allocation rolls into the next month. So if you used 10 hours in March, you can use up to 30 in April. No "use it or lose it."
Predictable overflow. Hours beyond your monthly cap and rollover are billed at the same $50/hr ad-hoc rate — no markup, no surprise pricing, just a soft cap that doesn't penalise you for needing more help in a busy month.
One Loom-recorded onboarding session in week 1 — I record myself going through your stack, your tools, your team, and your priorities. Builds the institutional memory immediately.
Time-zone coverage. I work AU business hours, which overlaps morning UK and evening US East Coast. Most retainer clients get same-day responses on weekdays and Saturday morning.
What's NOT included (without a separate arrangement)
To be clear about scope limits:
- Emergency / out-of-hours work. Available, but billed at $75/hr in addition to the retainer.
- Long fixed-price projects. Anything that's a 100+ hour project gets quoted separately so neither side gets squeezed.
- Direct customer support for your business. I'm working with you, not as a customer-facing person for your customers.
- Anything outside dev/tech/EA. Sales, design, copywriting, accounting — I'll happily refer you to specialists I trust.
- Multi-client work. I don't run a team and bill you for their hours; the work is mine end-to-end.
What it costs vs. the alternatives
The honest comparison for a US/UK/AU small business:
| Option | Approx cost | Hours/mo | Caveats | |---|---|---|---| | Lead Steer retainer (this) | $500 USD | 10 | Mixed dev/tech/EA, AU-hours coverage | | US/UK/AU senior freelancer ad-hoc | $800–1,500 | 10 | Premium hourly rate; same quality | | US/UK/AU agency retainer | $1,250–3,750 | 10 | Agency overhead; multiple billing tiers | | Offshore VA team (multi-person) | $200–600 | 10 | Lower per-hour skill ceiling; coordination overhead | | Part-time in-house hire | $2,000–4,000 | 80–86 | Realistic only if you can use 20+ hours/week |
The Lead Steer fits the "real but spiky" small-business need that's awkward for every other category. Less than a part-time hire, more committed than ad-hoc, faster than agencies, broader than VAs.
How the cap and overflow actually work
Worth being specific because retainer clients ask:
- Month starts with 10 hours. Plus up to 5 rolled over from previous month (max 50% of base allocation).
- Hours used are deducted in real-time and visible in a shared timesheet.
- At hour 10, I notify you and we decide together: stop, defer to next month, or keep going at $50/hr overflow. I don't quietly burn through your hours into overflow.
- Unused hours at month-end roll forward up to the 50% cap. Anything over the cap doesn't carry — that's what stops the retainer becoming a savings account where I do nothing for 4 months and owe you 80 hours in May.
- Cancel anytime. 30 days notice. No exit fee, no clawback. If we stop working together, you get a handoff doc covering what's where.
When the retainer isn't right
About 1 in 4 prospects who ask about the retainer aren't actually a fit. Worth saving us both a call by being honest about that:
- You need fewer than 3 hours/month. Use the hourly rate ad-hoc — cheaper than paying for a 10-hour retainer you won't use.
- You need more than 15 hours/month consistently. You're approaching part-time hire territory. Two retainers stacked work, but at 40+ hours/month a different arrangement is healthier for both sides.
- You need 24/7 coverage. I'm one person on AU time. For round-the-clock you need a multi-person team or a managed service.
- The work is project-shaped, not maintenance-shaped. A clearly-defined 80-hour build is better as a fixed-price quote than as 4 months of retainer.
- You haven't worked with offshore help before. I recommend starting with 5–10 ad-hoc hours first so you see the working relationship before committing to a monthly. The retainer is for after we've established trust, not as a way to test someone.
The trust layer
Honest piece: a $500/month retainer requires a level of trust that ad-hoc work doesn't. You're handing me Slack access, often inbox access, sometimes credentials to your hosting and payments. That's why I never recommend starting with a retainer — start hourly, see if I do good work, then graduate to monthly.
What I do to make the trust layer work:
- Time-tracking is transparent and real. Every retainer client has a shared sheet showing what I worked on, when, and for how long. No black-box billing.
- Credentials live in your password manager, not mine. I get access through 1Password / LastPass / Bitwarden shared vaults you control. You revoke access in 30 seconds when you want to.
- All work happens in your accounts. Your GitHub, your hosting, your domains, your Slack. I'm a guest in your environment, not a custodian of it.
- Monthly invoices itemise the work. Not "10 hours retainer." Actual line items: "Tue 4 March, 3.5h, fix double-charge bug in checkout."
How to start
Start with ad-hoc, not the retainer. The first call is free, 30 minutes. Bring whatever's on your plate. We try a few hours of ad-hoc work first, you see what I'm like to work with, and the retainer becomes the natural shape after a month or two.
If you're sure you want to skip ad-hoc and go straight to retainer, that's also fine — say so on the call and we'll talk about whether it makes sense for your situation.
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This is the catch-all retainer. The category-specific service pages are: SaaS Startups, Bootstrappers, WordPress Migration, EA for Solo Founders, Shopify Plus.