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> "we are growing and need a hired gun to handle a broad spectrum of miscellaneous requests"

I have difficulty seeing how you could charge for this other than by units of time.

As the other commenter says, a retainer agreement for a "block" of time is common, but again for simplicity sake I just do it on the fly and we keep each other in the loop. They keep me informed of current/future things that are coming up and I keep them informed of sizing estimates (e.g. "thats simple", "thats pretty involved", "we should hold off on that and have a discussion to see if we can solve it with a hack then reevaluate")

billing weekly for things like this i’ve found works nicely. they basically get everything you got for a week. still requires some level of trust, and understanding of the work by the client.

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