Over the years as a freelancer I have had clients who would be more devastated by my death than my own family, and it’s not like my family doesn’t love me.

When you are a small business you often have small business clients, and it is fully possible for projects to be at a fairly delicate stage where it’s crucial for their business, they have part-paid, and the time and money in finding a replacement for your input would put them at some risk.

I once had to try to help a company whose web developer had died of a heart attack just before rolling out a really major bit of code that had been months in the making. I couldn’t help much (couldn’t get access to things) but the company could not afford to redo the work.

The people who urged me to try to help them were their most direct competitor! The world of some small businesses is that precarious and interconnected that their competitors were trying help them stay in business.