Dec 19

Dec 19 100 invoices

On the first day of every month, I generate invoices.

I look back at the work I've completed over the last 30 days, check my emails and fill in line items on invoices from the work I've completed. They're invoices of phases of long-term projects, a month's worth of work for my consistent clients and reimbursements for Facebook advertising dollars spent. These digital invoices and their attached PDFs represent everything I've done in just a few lines, and they're set in a click while I drink my first cup of coffee.

It's a simple task, and it takes maybe 30 minutes of my time each time. But on Dec. 1, I had to pause before I hit send to one client.

I saw it, and I looked again. It for a second didn't seem right, but there it was:

Invoice #0100.

After three years and two months working at it, I sent my 100th invoice to a paying client.

That roll over to three digits doesn't seem like much to businesses that invoice for every product sold, but for Checkmate Consulting, our invoices represent dozens, sometimes hundreds of hours of work. They're long weekends spent grinding out details or Wednesday nights brainstorming on my couch. They're afternoons on days off executing tasks. They're plans made and broken to meet a deadline. They're mornings spent away from my home, headphones in, at a coffee shop.

And now, after three years of loving this work, we end 2016 with our 100th invoice: paid.

The work I do at Checkmate Consulting is never boring, but with this milestone, we reach a status of longevity that I never thought possible when I filed the LLC paperwork on my college apartment floor. This year alone, we brought on four new clients, as well as served the fourth largest employer in Checkmate Consulting's hometown.

We got sharper, we got quicker, and we improved our business practices to tackle larger projects, while still maintaining an affordable price point.

We don't work because of the paid-on-time invoices, but their number does represent the quantity of quality work projects we have achieved. Now on to 150.