A one-page client brief template for consultants.

When an engagement goes sideways, it is rarely for lack of skill. More often it is an assumption nobody wrote down: what done looks like, who else has to approve it, or what was never in scope. A brief is where those assumptions go before they turn into a difficult conversation.

Long briefs do not get read. One page does, and it gets read again in week six, when it matters.

Copy these twelve lines into whatever you write in. Each one should take a sentence or two to answer. If a line takes a paragraph, that is a sign the engagement needs a discovery step first.

1. Client and contact: the company, the person you work with day to day, and how they prefer to be reached.
2. Decision maker: who else has to say yes, and whether they have seen this brief.
3. The situation: what is happening now, in the client’s own words.
4. Why now: what changed that made this worth paying for this quarter.
5. The goal: what should be different when the work is done.
6. What done looks like: how you will both know, without arguing, that it is finished.
7. In scope: the work you will do, as a short list.
8. Out of scope: the work you will not do, even though it is nearby. This line saves more friction than any other.
9. What you need from them: access, documents, people, and by when.
10. Timeline: the start date, any fixed dates, and the end.
11. Fee and payment: the amount, the deposit, and when the rest is due.
12. How you will work together: where files and questions go, how often you check in, and how fast each side replies.

The brief is most useful when the client has said the words themselves. On the first proper call, share your screen or a document and fill it in together:

1. Start with the situation and why now. Let them talk; write their phrasing, not yours.
2. Ask “how will we know it is done?” and wait. The first answer is usually vague. The second is usually useful.
3. Read the out-of-scope line aloud. It is easier to agree on it now than to discover it later.
4. Fill in fee and timeline last, when the scope is clear.
5. Send the finished page within a day, and ask them to reply with “yes” or with changes.

Marcus, an illustrative fractional COO in Austin, fills in the goal for a twelve-person software company as “the founder stops being the approval step for every hire and every purchase.” What done looks like: “three written approval rules, and two managers using them for a month without escalating.” Out of scope: “hiring the managers.”

None of those lines is clever. Each one is specific enough that, in week six, both sides can point to it.

Notice what is missing: no methodology, no list of meetings, no promise about how hard anyone will work. The brief records what the client wants and where the edges are. How you get there is your craft, and it belongs in the work, not on the page.

A brief can exist and still do nothing. Watch for these:

• Writing it alone and sending it as a formality. The client skims it, agrees, and does not remember it.
• Describing activities instead of outcomes. “Weekly calls and a report” is how you work, not what changes.
• Leaving the decision maker blank. The person who can stop the work should know the brief exists.
• Skipping the out-of-scope line because it feels awkward. It is the most useful line on the page.
• Never touching it again. A brief that no longer matches the work is worse than none, because both sides believe it.

A brief that lives in an email attachment is read once. A brief that sits at the top of the place where you and the client work is read every time either of you opens it. Wherever you keep it:

• Put it first, above the notes and files.
• Change it in the open. When scope changes, edit the line and tell the client what changed and why.
• Open each check-in with it. Two minutes on “are we still aiming at this?” prevents the slow drift.
• Close with it. At the end, walk through what done looks like, line by line, together.

You can keep this brief in any shared document. In a SoloBase Studio, each client has a private Client Hub with the brief at the top, your notes and the files under it, and questions attached to the note they are about, so “what did we mean by done?” has one place to be asked. Client Hubs are live.