15 ms·

Lessons from six years as a solo consultant

460 points by Edward9 7y ago

gyulai 7y ago
Element A: PROJECT ACQUISITION & SCALE. It's not true that, by running a "make customers contact you" strategy, your acquisition costs are zero, quite the contrary. In order to make customers contact you, you need to take a lot of risky bets on the acquisition-side of things. Things you might do to build a strong brand, like writing books and having a presence at events come with a likelihood that they won't be effective. By sinking time into those things, they present a risk of derailing work that actually pays. Doing a lot of PR & media work is a double-edged sword from the pov of clients who see the work you do as a trade secret. They want people on the job who know how to keep their mouths shut. And the stream of project opportunities you get from that kind of project-acquisition is highly volatile and unpredictable. Chances are, when an opportunity comes in, you will be engaged in another project, and when a project ends, you won't have an opportunity waiting for you at that moment. This only works, if you can scale it up enough so that the central limits theorem starts working in your favour and presents you with a constant stream of opportunities. But as a solo-consultant you wouldn't actually have the capacity to do anything with them, other than turn 99% of those opportunities down. At which point the relationship between the costs behind those acquisition effforts, and the rate at which you monetize them make the whole economics of the strategy break down. So you need to scale up your capacity and become a big agency, instead of a solo consultant, to make it work. Element B: BARGAINING POWER The other thing: Value-based fee sounds great, but what do you do in a situation where other people who get paid by the hour compete for the work you want to charge a value-based fee on? It's a race to the bottom, and can only work in areas that are so niche and highly-specialized that you are basically without competition, or where it would be prohibitively expensive for your prospective customers to line up alternative offers to compete with yours. CONCLUSION But then, the requirement to have scale, and the requirement to serve highly specialized areas so that you can have a lot of bargaining power are difficult to reconcile. ...so, all of this is just not as easy as the author of this article is making it out to be. If it were, everybody would be doing it, and nobody would allow themselves to get paid by the hour and do project acquisition by contacting the client rather than having the client contact them.
warlog 7y ago
I'm curious to learn about your adventures in value based pricing. I've worked as an independent consultant for 3 years and have priced by the hour, and using value based fixed prices...the latter with mixed results. I love Jonathan Stark's Ditching Hourly podcast... And I must recommend the 2bobs podcast with a shout out to Blair Enns on value based pricing and David C. Baker on expertise advice business.
- ghaff 7y ago
  Not the OP but, when I did consulting/advisory work, we mostly did a combination of value-based and nominally value-based. What I mean by that is our large clients had subscriptions with us for advisory services, which included or could include some specific deliverables like reports but was mostly fairly open ended access for inquiries, press references, etc. I put these mostly in the value-based category. Then we had things like advisory days, speeches, etc. we priced on the basis of the deliverable value--but in practice there was a fairly close correspondence to time spent. In practice also, clients would end up turning a one day session into two half-day sessions for different groups, so from their perspective they were mostly buying our time on-site (plus travel, etc.). We tried to hold the line on pricing for value but I'd say we only had some success here. We'd also do custom research etc. for clients which, from their perspective, was almost certainly more value-based as much of our work was out of their sight. (Of course, from our end, we were mostly coming up with that pricing from a desired internal day rate.) I think the only time we nakedly charged by the hour was when we were doing legal work because that was just the way the law firm which was our direct client worked. (TBH, it was pretty nice to get a healthy hourly rate for everything and it was a substantial job. Also somewhat open-ended work we weren't particularly familiar with, so an up-front quote would have been difficult.)
  - warlog 7y ago
    My biggest challenge with value based pricing (VBP) was that it required an upfront discussion about the perceived value of the work, and my prospects/clients were often totally in the dark about "value". I don't think VBP works well for tech/biotech startups: -founders/exec can't define value -founders/execs are selling the dream (= infinite value) and don't want to pay for it. -startups want to hire brains, but pay for hands -founders/execs and especially managers want to focus on (minimizing) "costs", rather than unearthing or creating "value" with consultants. [Edit: formatting]
Tom4hawk 7y ago
All the customer’s managers including the CEO sided with X, as they concluded that bending the company X to their will was more trouble than an individual. And anyway, I would be paid for the extra work. I absolutely don't understand why this is the problem. Something came-up (not because of you) and you will get paid for solving it. If you don't have time (other plans) or you just don't want to do that (good example: request is stupid and you know it will cause more trouble in the future) you can just tell that to your customer (or bump-up rate for this extra work). How value base pricing would solve the above issue?
- tra3 7y ago
  This is a problem from the perspective of the customer. Company X delivered a substandard product based on a fix bid. The customer then had to turn around and pay 10 weeks of hourly fees to this guy to finish it. Presumably, if magic of value pricing was realized X would be incentivized to finish it. Pretty unprofessional on X's part I'd say, so I understand why the OP nearly lost it.
  - unreal37 7y ago
    The customer found someone to do the work and was willing to pay for it. If he had his customer's interests at heart, his objection should have ended the moment the customer made a decision. No need to "lose it".
  - iakh 7y ago
    I think that just highlights the downside of fixed bids, value based or not, that the author ignores. You come out ahead and are incentivized to finish early, but are deincentivized to do any additional work if you go past your costs plus margin
- 0xEFF 7y ago
  I had a similar reaction. Something doesn’t add up about the anecdote. His customer decided it was in their own best interest to pay his hourly rate to solve the problem. Partner X decided the same. What’s the problem? It’s quite the leap from there to an accusation of unethical behavior. I’d wager he had incomplete information or there’s much more to that story. Edit: For example, Partner X might have said to the CEO, “I understand you’re frustrated with the outcome, but it does meet spec and we advised you Z was missing from the spec you provided. You decided to keep Z out of scope. We’re happy to add Z now, and we’re also happy if the author adds Z. Your choice.”
rgbrenner 7y ago
This would be better if it was about his experience from the past 6 years... whatever he's been doing definitely works. Instead it's ideas about what he wants to try in the future. In fairness, those ideas sound great... but this is more like an advisory notice to his existing clients about how things might change.
iakh 7y ago
> They call you. Your acquisition costs are close to zero. The million-dollar question is: How do you make potential customers contact you? >...a strong brand makes finding new projects so much easier: New projects find you! Be aware that building up your brand easily costs you 60 hours per month. Not sure how this is a compelling argument. 40% of your time seems like a lot more than close to zero
- ghaff 7y ago
  I took it as just a statement of reality that people should be aware of. Especially for higher-level advisory work, i.e. not primarily writing code, a large percentage of time is "off the clock." Most of the independent consultants I know spend a lot of time writing newsletters, doing podcasts, speaking for free at events, in addition to whatever 1:1 marketing/sales they do.
  - RHSeeger 7y ago
    > Your acquisition costs are close to zero I think the point was that the acquisition costs are _not_ close to zero. Rather, the acquisition costs are no longer specific to individual clients, they're general in nature. If you spend just as much time/money but don't spend it on specific client, then the cost for each client doesn't change (it's just the total divided by the number of clients).
    - ghaff 7y ago
      Good point. There clearly are acquisition costs. In marketing speak what he's basically saying is that your bottom of funnel acquisition costs are low. (I don't think they're quite zero because you still need to close a specific contract.) But top of funnel awareness/education/etc. is a large chunk of your time. Which for some types of consulting/advisory work rings absolutely true to me. e.g. https://trackmaven.com/blog/marketing-funnel-2/ https://trackmaven.com/blog/marketing-funnel-2/
    - wtracy 7y ago
      I think the author is trying to say that you're trading high fixed costs to get near-zero marginal costs per client acquisition. If you're only planning on working with half a dozen clients every year, the distinction is mostly academic. If you're running an agency that has a new project kicking off every other week, the difference could be huge.
deleted 7y ago
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k__ 7y ago
If found software consulting a bit boring, but quite lucrative. If you get a project that takes 3-6 months you make enough money for the year and a bit left for the next year. This means that you only need one customer to say "yes" per year. If you contact only 10 per month your success rate doesn't even have to be 1%. What I learned is, charge per week or month and never go for full-time. The month charging filters out all the tiny fishes and the part-time always gives you plausbile deniability when you can't answer the phone.
- bubbleRefuge 7y ago
  Agreed. And take on multiple part time projects.
- yomly 7y ago
  Sorry I don't fully understand >the part-time always gives you plausbile deniability when you can't answer the phone. Do you mind elaborating as the rest of the comment is good!
  - sudhirj 7y ago
    Some customers expect you to be on call 24/7 if they think you work for them full time. Setting clear expectations that you always have other clients removes that.
  - deleted 7y ago
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  - Proziam 7y ago
    Not the OP, but (I think) I get what he means. If you're working a project on a full-time basis, the client will expect to be able to call you up and get you on the line at pretty much any time (and yes, often outside of normal work hours, in my experience). If you're on a "part-time" basis, you don't have this pressure because the expectations are set differently.
    - gist 7y ago
DrNuke 7y ago
It is products designed, made and shipped from you in the past that help set your personal brand as a consultant. You show something so that prospective clients can assess and trust your potential contribution in advance. Portfolio is the name, right?
flyinglizard 7y ago
I shifted from mostly fixed price to mostly hourly based billing over the past year, and increased the rates. It’s very easy to start a project with hourly billing, adjust the scope and expand as you go. It’s very difficult to do that with a fixed priced project. But the biggest issue against fixed price is that companies are quite bad at pricing R&D activities (which is why they’re usually running late and require office heroics to complete). When you try to put a realistic price on such an activity you may give your customer a sticker shock. I still do fixed price at places but only when the work stands alone and it’s something I’ve done many times in the past. Working hourly, if you spread the work across multiple clients and provide good value for each, creates a structure where you cost each of them slightly less than a full time employee. My experience is that this is quite sustainable for everyone.
- ghaff 7y ago
  There are a few general prerequisites for fixed pricing. They apply to hourly pricing as well but they're more important when the price is fixed. 1.) The project needs to be well-scoped with any significant out-of-scopes also explicitly specified. 2.) Client responsibilities/deadlines are specified. 3.) As you suggest, the work is predictable based on past experience and there aren't likely to be unexpected things that come up and significantly increase the time required.
Const-me 7y ago
Not sure I agree about fixed price point. When I'm spending 90% of the time developing software, especially if that's a stand-alone or well specified isolated components - I can quote after some initial research, and I agree it's a good way to go. For other clients I'm doing a job of technical lead. In that case, too much time is spent defining requirements, reviewing other people's work, writing project documentation, etc. These things are borderline impossible to estimate in advance. For these projects, I prefer hourly contracts.
- chiefalchemist 7y ago
  Scrum is more or less a time & materials approach. Agreed. If it's small and finite - similar to an oil change - then a fixed price is doable. On the other, if the resuest is "the engine sounds odd and acceleration is off" then it could be anything. Anyone who is the latter but expects a fixed price must be avoided. They'll cost you more than you'll make.
pnako 7y ago
I'm not really convinced by the argument regarding value-based pricing, because that's just not how markets work. The clearing price (in this case, of labor) is based on demand AND supply; it has nothing to do with how much value you bring to the table. Yes, it's true that maybe writing some piece of software will save some company ten million dollars per year. Should you get one million dollar for writing it? Maybe not, if I can find someone charging 60K to develop that same piece of software. There is one way to do that with software, though: royalties. It's used for middleware for games and movies. But it's more a risk-management tool for buyers than a sure path to profit for providers (i.e. with royalties you limit your losses if the game or movie does poorly).
- madsbuch 7y ago
  So, in the end everything boils down to negotiation. Obviously, if you can't negotiate the $1mil deal, then you won't get it. Furthermore, the market is not perfect. Just because somebody wants to do the job for $60k it not mean that the company can even get into contact with this person.
  - hectormalot 7y ago
    Crucially: if you’re more likely to deliver successfully you’ll be able to price accordingly as well. E.g. if the perceived change of success with the 60k person is 80% and with you it’s 90% then you’re arguably worth a few 100k extra. (Now: that %-chance-of-succes is difficult to measure. Which is why it’s a relationship business IMO :)
zenpaul 7y ago
I've been there and done that for better and worse. It sounds like the author wants to create their own agency which is a different game than being a solo consultant. If you really want to be a solo consultant... Lessons from 20+ years as a solo consultant: - Customers rarely know what they want. - Customers always change what they want. - Change control in fixed bid work is vastly more important than how smart or productive you are. - It takes an extraordinary amount of effort to find customers. - One gets customers by searching, networking, having other good customers and mastering useful technologies. - What matters long term is consistently making money every month. If you truly want to be a solo consultant: - Maintain good relationships with your customers. - Bill hourly and get paid no later than monthly. - Be willing to work with consulting agencies and accept their markup on your rate. - Always be learning and using new technologies. - Always be looking for the next opportunity.
- unreal37 7y ago
  I agree. As 20+ years as a consultant, I can't imagine billing "per project". That dream project where the requirements don't change and the scope is perfectly estimated in advance doesn't exist.
  - hobofan 7y ago
    Those responses are so funny to me, as there seems to be a complete difference in recommendations, every time this topic comes up. I'm also very happy with hourly billing, but the last time I saw a similar topic, the whole comment section was insisting that per-project billing is the only viable way to make money in consulting. Oh well..
    - hanniabu 7y ago
      It's a different strategy. Per project you take on more risk, but you can also typically charge a lot more (less of a barrier for the client to overcome than hourly).
    - Enginerrrd 7y ago
      The real answer is you do both depending on the situation. My best hourly has been doing per-project billing, but you need to be smart about it or you can end up working some hours for free. Hourly T&M is a nice situation to be in since it takes a lot of the risk out and lets you just focus on the work that needs to be done.
bullen 7y ago
There is a broader picture to these lessons that I would like to point out: Not only is it economical to do bad work if you bill by the hour; but it is also necessary to build flawed products to sell more of them. See printer inc, light bulbs, computers, everything that could last 100 years but doesn't... The other side of this is that energy is considered free, if we paid the real price for oil/electricity it would cost many thousands dollars per gallon/kwh. The only way for this to change is for the whole system to collapse, and that will happen during this decade. All arbitrary (not based on experience from nature) human skills are going away. But math, physics, chemistry and biology will stay; prioritize in that order. Build a good computer today, it will not become obsolete technically for the rest of your life. Buy a ARM computer that you use as desktop, it will be usable for the rest of your life AND it will teach you to become a better programmer!
flimflamm 7y ago
Please take also the consultancy buyers perspective when assessing the value you bring in. Are you the only consultant who could figure out how to bring down the cost of the appliance (in the articles example) down by 1$? If not then your value is not as high as you used in the calculation. The potential client could find other consultants to do the same thing (price optimization of a mass product - service well available in the market). As there are more providers then estimating the "value" should take in to account that there are several offerers of service. It is now a tendering situation. I am now excluding a remote situation where all the offerers of the optimization service would collude in their offers.
- wayoutthere 7y ago
  Consulting is a relationship business. The quality of your relationships determines how much you can sell your services for. Furthermore, solo consultants tend to specialize in a few specific niches where their services aren't a commodity. For commoditized consulting services, buyers will just go to a body shop.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    The same applies to advisory type consulting as well. Even people who are more generalist than others are still fairly specialized in the grand scheme of things. On the one hand, you don't want to be so specialized that almost no one is a potential customer. But get too broad and you're getting out of the realm of having knowledge/experience that people will pay a real premium for. I've long felt I had to keep pulling myself back a bit from dabbling in too many things at a relatively cursory level.
    - wayoutthere 7y ago
      I was actually meaning it in terms of advisory consulting since that's what I do :) But my experience has been very similar to yours -- I find myself focusing more and more on product strategy and less on engineering process as I move forward in my career. Clients are increasingly going to body shops for that kind of work, and I have no interest in competing in a race to the bottom.
weinzierl 7y ago
> An easy way to build up productised services is to keep the rights to use of the software that you write or that you oversee others writing. This works best for software that doesn’t give a competitive edge to customers and that is not specific to customers. Your leverage is to give a discount on your fees, if you are allowed to keep the rights to use. I have never seen this going well. It is in my experience very rare that companies are willing to let the consultant keep the rights and when they do there is a big chance that they regret it and want the rights for a small fee later. I've seen this damaging the customer relationship in the past. I'm curious what other consultant's experiences are?
- wtracy 7y ago
  I don't have firsthand experience, but anecdotally this sort of thing seems to be more common with government agencies and large corporations than small business clients. I suspect that negotiating it is a lot more complicated than just offering a discounted rate. Honestly, it probably involves wining and dining key decision makers. (Hence, why it happens with government agencies and large corporations.)
  - iudqnolq 7y ago
    > I don't have firsthand experience, but anecdotally this sort of thing seems to be more common with government agencies and large corporations than small business clients. Dumb question: is "this sort of thing" keeping or not keeping the rights?
    - weinzierl 7y ago
      Not parent, but I suppose that government agencies in the US are more willing to not insist on keeping the rights. There is the idea that tax-paid work should (or must?) be available to the general public. Therefore the agencies don't have a good argument for keeping the rights anyway. As far as I know this is very much a US thing and doesn't exist elsewhere. At least where OP and I work it is - to the best of my knowledge - unheard of. For a prime example see SQLite, which is in the public domain because its author worked as contractor for the Navy, when it was created.
cosmodisk 7y ago
I did both hourly and project based pricing models when consulting. Each have pros and cons but for projects that aren't "off the shelve" and do require discovery days, lots of inputs from client and a level of solution design from the consultant, the key thing is milestones. This way you can fend off scope creep and also be very specific on deliverables.I.e.:created x feature: 10 hours( 15% of the overall project). As for the rates, one hits the ceiling pretty quickly with hourly rates: try pitching $500/h if you not a lawyer. That's why value based pricing is the only way to push it up as high as possible. It's one thing to say that you'll be charging $200/h for the next few weeks and another when you say you'd build something for $24K that'll make the company $500K over next 12months.
m0zg 7y ago
"Don't charge hourly" doesn't work for "researchy" work where you can't be certain things will work in the end or indeed how long they will take. I charge hourly. Setting a high hourly rate (if you can do it) prevents the "bullshit work" situation described in the article. Customer then finds it more cost effective to have their junior FTEs do bullshit work.
fao_ 7y ago
> I couldn’t believe my ears. After regaining my composure, I answered: “I regard such behaviour as unethical, because our customer would suffer a substantial and unnecessary loss.” [...] In hindsight, I should have terminated the project at that point [...]. The example shows how ingrained hourly billing is. Customers accept it as God given, although they know that they are ripped off. But that's the thing. Companies exist solely to make money. Let's say it again. Companies do not exist to create value. Companies do not exist to do cool things. Those are all secondary. Companies exist solely to make money. This is business school 101. The CEO and the rest of the workers were right in this instance. In this decision the agency was better off as a company if the person took the deal. The client at all times had the choice of going to a different firm that was cheaper, the customer in this case opted not to bother with doing those things (which might have cost them more in the long run anyway), and therefore had already committed to the cost that they would be charged. The job of the client company in this case is to extract as much value as it can from the consultants while paying them as little as it can. Clearly in this instance, given they were happy paying that cost, you weren't being paid as much as you could have been, based on the 'value' that you 'created'. I don't see why the person in question sees this as unethical. Or rather, I don't see why the person in question sees this as unethical under capitalism. Capitalism is an inherently unethical system, where the entire system is (From the top perspective) about ripping other people off as much as you can, or (From the bottom perspective) trying to ensure you get paid as much as you are worth to the company that you serve. If you don't like it, back projects to change the system, whether that's to introduce more regulation, or to change the system full stop so that gross wealth-hoarding cannot exist. Until then, you have to make a living and try and make sure that you and the people you support are better off. If you can 'create value' for others by doing that, then all the better!
S_A_P 7y ago
I cant agree with this article. Ive been a solo consultant for 5 years now. Here are my takeaways- -Maintain good relationships with anyone that can give you work. Most of the time you will ping pong between vendors for work. -Don't be afraid to build in "bench" time into your hourly rate. The rates listed in this article are much lower than I would recommend. I target 85% utilized in my personal model. I work in a niche and will not consider less than 150/hr for anything less than a 12 month contract. -Remember that despite the best of relationships and intents, contractors are expendable. You can and will get let go before employees. That is not a bad thing. In fact, its a gift. You get to leave before morale and expectations get too far out of control. -Do put rainy day money away into fungible assets. Savings accounts probably aren't great for that. -Do try to have multiple clients at once, if you can swing 2 full time gigs, most of the time this can be juggled in the short term. -If you get told you are rolling off, don't take it personal. I have the hardest time with this part of it. It is my nature to give my all when I am at a gig. When the let me go, I feel that it is an affront or personal. Its not, its business. If you do this, you will make more than many high level executive salaries. That doesn't count the equity side but making 2-400k a year is a real possibility. -When its time to leave you will know. The biggest upside I see in consulting is I have the freedom to leave when I cant deal with the bullshit anymore. -Every company has bullshit you will grow tired of. Honeymoon periods last 3-24 months, but there will always be bs.
- westoncb 7y ago
  > If you get told you are rolling off, don't take it personal What do you mean by "rolling off" here?
  - taneq 7y ago
    Context indicates it means their contract is not being renewed. Maybe something related to rolling stones gathering no moss?
  - bradgessler 7y ago
    It’s consultantese for “the contract is ending or being terminated”
JoeMayoBot 7y ago
Rather than say one way to bill is better than the other, I view this as situational. I've worked a fixed price project on occasion, but most of my work is hourly. The approach is a result of the negotiation process. I also believe ethics is subjective. A consultant is running a business and has a fiduciary duty and a right to make money. If I can make money and keep the customer happy then all is good.
xmly 7y ago
Any org for solo consultant? How do you guys solve the health insurance problem? Thanks...
zoomablemind 7y ago
It's an ages old dilemma, per-hour vs. per-project. There's no single right approach. It's a choice, often circumstantial. Both options have risks. Solo/freelancing awards us that freedom to balance the risks. After all we do sell our time - we either bill our client for it OR give the account of it to ourselves (man, that design took me awile....). So eventually it's supposed to bring out that feel of one's own time value. Raising rate is what logically comes out of this too. Being solo also means facing one's own anxiety and insecurity. So we need to be flexible and choose whatever works to boost our professional and personal confidence, then review what outcomes this turned us. This, again, will eventually harmonize what you bill your client to what you really want to be paid. The real question is how soon this balances out before bills would choke us. So it makes sense to not routinely under-charge just because of anxiety, as this only will make it stronger next time.
yellow_lead 7y ago
https://archive.is/JNoLA https://archive.is/JNoLA
mlvljr 7y ago
Wow, Burkhard, HN's 1st page! Congrats!
zackmorris 7y ago
I just want to say a big thank you to the author for sharing the derivation of a consultant's profit. I've always struggled as a consultant, generally scraping by and feeling spread too thin. That’s because I subconsciously gave up on the idea of profiting from my business. If you stop and think about that for a moment, it means that I had internalized this idea that I would always be working linearly at my hourly rate. There would never be residual passive income from work that I had done, whether it was SAAS or building an app or frankly just reselling something that I had already made. That death of faith in a better future is one of the most toxic and detrimental blows to a maker’s psyche that I know of. The full profit formula is: profit = (price you charge) - (your cost as hourly rate * hours) Your cost here is the time that you would have put in coding, as if it were any other job. On top of that, you have the periodic struggle to find more gigs, as well as the logistics of handling your own taxes, health insurance, etc. So if you don’t charge something above your own cost, you’ll burn the candle at both ends just getting by, and eventually burn out after 2-4 years just like at any other job (tech especially). I’ve always said that I feel that consultants should charge at least their overtime rate to account for the overhead and headaches involved. So if you make $30 per hour as a developer, your overtime rate (time and a half) is $45 and I would recommend starting around there or round up to $50. That's only part of the answer though, because an agency will charge between 1.5 and 4 times your hourly rate, so between $50 and $120 per hour, often more. So really you are competing with agencies. Which means that there is nothing wrong with charging the same as them, and probably more if you are experienced in your target market. But there are also physical laws to consider. It’s hard to beat a pair of coders making something, so that limits an agency’s maximum value to a customer to just twice what a single consultant can provide. Keep in mind that this ignores an agency’s existing infrastructure, ability to absorb failure costs, and scalability. But if we’re just talking raw coding velocity, an agency is limited to about twice the velocity of a consultant, no matter how many people they through at a problem (see The Mythical Man Month). Knowing that, it makes sense to me that a consultant might typically charge about half the flat rate fee of an agency. And if they always deliver, why not charge the same amount!
brw12 7y ago
From my own 4 years' experience, I echo what zenpaul said, and would add: * Understand who your client is, and stop and check in if they change. I once had a manager at a client company change mid-project, and the politics (and sense of trust) completely reversed -- in retrospect, I should have insisted that we start the relationship over, clarify expectations, etc. * It's not always a good idea to agree to disagree. I estimated one sub-project would take 3 weeks, and a client insisted it should take more like one; we decided to proceed, it took 3 weeks, and the client was unhappy. Looking back, I think we should have more seriously considered dropping the project if we couldn't agree on expectations. This can be proposed gently and respectfully: if you don't think that plan is worth it, I'm happy to do my best to help you find someone else.
zerxy 7y ago
How do you arrive at your hourly rate?

460 points by Edward9 7y ago

Element A: PROJECT ACQUISITION & SCALE. It's not true that, by running a "make customers contact you" strategy, your acquisition costs are zero, quite the contrary. In order to make customers contact you, you need to take a lot of risky bets on the acquisition-side of things. Things you might do to build a strong brand, like writing books and having a presence at events come with a likelihood that they won't be effective. By sinking time into those things, they present a risk of derailing work that actually pays. Doing a lot of PR & media work is a double-edged sword from the pov of clients who see the work you do as a trade secret. They want people on the job who know how to keep their mouths shut. And the stream of project opportunities you get from that kind of project-acquisition is highly volatile and unpredictable. Chances are, when an opportunity comes in, you will be engaged in another project, and when a project ends, you won't have an opportunity waiting for you at that moment. This only works, if you can scale it up enough so that the central limits theorem starts working in your favour and presents you with a constant stream of opportunities. But as a solo-consultant you wouldn't actually have the capacity to do anything with them, other than turn 99% of those opportunities down. At which point the relationship between the costs behind those acquisition effforts, and the rate at which you monetize them make the whole economics of the strategy break down. So you need to scale up your capacity and become a big agency, instead of a solo consultant, to make it work. Element B: BARGAINING POWER The other thing: Value-based fee sounds great, but what do you do in a situation where other people who get paid by the hour compete for the work you want to charge a value-based fee on? It's a race to the bottom, and can only work in areas that are so niche and highly-specialized that you are basically without competition, or where it would be prohibitively expensive for your prospective customers to line up alternative offers to compete with yours. CONCLUSION But then, the requirement to have scale, and the requirement to serve highly specialized areas so that you can have a lot of bargaining power are difficult to reconcile. ...so, all of this is just not as easy as the author of this article is making it out to be. If it were, everybody would be doing it, and nobody would allow themselves to get paid by the hour and do project acquisition by contacting the client rather than having the client contact them.

warlog 7y ago

I'm curious to learn about your adventures in value based pricing. I've worked as an independent consultant for 3 years and have priced by the hour, and using value based fixed prices...the latter with mixed results. I love Jonathan Stark's Ditching Hourly podcast... And I must recommend the 2bobs podcast with a shout out to Blair Enns on value based pricing and David C. Baker on expertise advice business.

ghaff 7y ago
Not the OP but, when I did consulting/advisory work, we mostly did a combination of value-based and nominally value-based. What I mean by that is our large clients had subscriptions with us for advisory services, which included or could include some specific deliverables like reports but was mostly fairly open ended access for inquiries, press references, etc. I put these mostly in the value-based category. Then we had things like advisory days, speeches, etc. we priced on the basis of the deliverable value--but in practice there was a fairly close correspondence to time spent. In practice also, clients would end up turning a one day session into two half-day sessions for different groups, so from their perspective they were mostly buying our time on-site (plus travel, etc.). We tried to hold the line on pricing for value but I'd say we only had some success here. We'd also do custom research etc. for clients which, from their perspective, was almost certainly more value-based as much of our work was out of their sight. (Of course, from our end, we were mostly coming up with that pricing from a desired internal day rate.) I think the only time we nakedly charged by the hour was when we were doing legal work because that was just the way the law firm which was our direct client worked. (TBH, it was pretty nice to get a healthy hourly rate for everything and it was a substantial job. Also somewhat open-ended work we weren't particularly familiar with, so an up-front quote would have been difficult.)
- warlog 7y ago
  My biggest challenge with value based pricing (VBP) was that it required an upfront discussion about the perceived value of the work, and my prospects/clients were often totally in the dark about "value". I don't think VBP works well for tech/biotech startups: -founders/exec can't define value -founders/execs are selling the dream (= infinite value) and don't want to pay for it. -startups want to hire brains, but pay for hands -founders/execs and especially managers want to focus on (minimizing) "costs", rather than unearthing or creating "value" with consultants. [Edit: formatting]

Tom4hawk 7y ago

All the customer’s managers including the CEO sided with X, as they concluded that bending the company X to their will was more trouble than an individual. And anyway, I would be paid for the extra work. I absolutely don't understand why this is the problem. Something came-up (not because of you) and you will get paid for solving it. If you don't have time (other plans) or you just don't want to do that (good example: request is stupid and you know it will cause more trouble in the future) you can just tell that to your customer (or bump-up rate for this extra work). How value base pricing would solve the above issue?

tra3 7y ago
This is a problem from the perspective of the customer. Company X delivered a substandard product based on a fix bid. The customer then had to turn around and pay 10 weeks of hourly fees to this guy to finish it. Presumably, if magic of value pricing was realized X would be incentivized to finish it. Pretty unprofessional on X's part I'd say, so I understand why the OP nearly lost it.
- unreal37 7y ago
  The customer found someone to do the work and was willing to pay for it. If he had his customer's interests at heart, his objection should have ended the moment the customer made a decision. No need to "lose it".
- iakh 7y ago
  I think that just highlights the downside of fixed bids, value based or not, that the author ignores. You come out ahead and are incentivized to finish early, but are deincentivized to do any additional work if you go past your costs plus margin
0xEFF 7y ago
I had a similar reaction. Something doesn’t add up about the anecdote. His customer decided it was in their own best interest to pay his hourly rate to solve the problem. Partner X decided the same. What’s the problem? It’s quite the leap from there to an accusation of unethical behavior. I’d wager he had incomplete information or there’s much more to that story. Edit: For example, Partner X might have said to the CEO, “I understand you’re frustrated with the outcome, but it does meet spec and we advised you Z was missing from the spec you provided. You decided to keep Z out of scope. We’re happy to add Z now, and we’re also happy if the author adds Z. Your choice.”

rgbrenner 7y ago

This would be better if it was about his experience from the past 6 years... whatever he's been doing definitely works. Instead it's ideas about what he wants to try in the future. In fairness, those ideas sound great... but this is more like an advisory notice to his existing clients about how things might change.

iakh 7y ago

> They call you. Your acquisition costs are close to zero. The million-dollar question is: How do you make potential customers contact you? >...a strong brand makes finding new projects so much easier: New projects find you! Be aware that building up your brand easily costs you 60 hours per month. Not sure how this is a compelling argument. 40% of your time seems like a lot more than close to zero

ghaff 7y ago
I took it as just a statement of reality that people should be aware of. Especially for higher-level advisory work, i.e. not primarily writing code, a large percentage of time is "off the clock." Most of the independent consultants I know spend a lot of time writing newsletters, doing podcasts, speaking for free at events, in addition to whatever 1:1 marketing/sales they do.
- RHSeeger 7y ago
  > Your acquisition costs are close to zero I think the point was that the acquisition costs are _not_ close to zero. Rather, the acquisition costs are no longer specific to individual clients, they're general in nature. If you spend just as much time/money but don't spend it on specific client, then the cost for each client doesn't change (it's just the total divided by the number of clients).
  - ghaff 7y ago
    Good point. There clearly are acquisition costs. In marketing speak what he's basically saying is that your bottom of funnel acquisition costs are low. (I don't think they're quite zero because you still need to close a specific contract.) But top of funnel awareness/education/etc. is a large chunk of your time. Which for some types of consulting/advisory work rings absolutely true to me. e.g. https://trackmaven.com/blog/marketing-funnel-2/ https://trackmaven.com/blog/marketing-funnel-2/
  - wtracy 7y ago
    I think the author is trying to say that you're trading high fixed costs to get near-zero marginal costs per client acquisition. If you're only planning on working with half a dozen clients every year, the distinction is mostly academic. If you're running an agency that has a new project kicking off every other week, the difference could be huge.

deleted 7y ago

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k__ 7y ago

If found software consulting a bit boring, but quite lucrative. If you get a project that takes 3-6 months you make enough money for the year and a bit left for the next year. This means that you only need one customer to say "yes" per year. If you contact only 10 per month your success rate doesn't even have to be 1%. What I learned is, charge per week or month and never go for full-time. The month charging filters out all the tiny fishes and the part-time always gives you plausbile deniability when you can't answer the phone.

bubbleRefuge 7y ago
Agreed. And take on multiple part time projects.
yomly 7y ago
Sorry I don't fully understand >the part-time always gives you plausbile deniability when you can't answer the phone. Do you mind elaborating as the rest of the comment is good!
- sudhirj 7y ago
  Some customers expect you to be on call 24/7 if they think you work for them full time. Setting clear expectations that you always have other clients removes that.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Proziam 7y ago
  Not the OP, but (I think) I get what he means. If you're working a project on a full-time basis, the client will expect to be able to call you up and get you on the line at pretty much any time (and yes, often outside of normal work hours, in my experience). If you're on a "part-time" basis, you don't have this pressure because the expectations are set differently.
  - gist 7y ago

DrNuke 7y ago

It is products designed, made and shipped from you in the past that help set your personal brand as a consultant. You show something so that prospective clients can assess and trust your potential contribution in advance. Portfolio is the name, right?

flyinglizard 7y ago

I shifted from mostly fixed price to mostly hourly based billing over the past year, and increased the rates. It’s very easy to start a project with hourly billing, adjust the scope and expand as you go. It’s very difficult to do that with a fixed priced project. But the biggest issue against fixed price is that companies are quite bad at pricing R&D activities (which is why they’re usually running late and require office heroics to complete). When you try to put a realistic price on such an activity you may give your customer a sticker shock. I still do fixed price at places but only when the work stands alone and it’s something I’ve done many times in the past. Working hourly, if you spread the work across multiple clients and provide good value for each, creates a structure where you cost each of them slightly less than a full time employee. My experience is that this is quite sustainable for everyone.

ghaff 7y ago
There are a few general prerequisites for fixed pricing. They apply to hourly pricing as well but they're more important when the price is fixed. 1.) The project needs to be well-scoped with any significant out-of-scopes also explicitly specified. 2.) Client responsibilities/deadlines are specified. 3.) As you suggest, the work is predictable based on past experience and there aren't likely to be unexpected things that come up and significantly increase the time required.

Const-me 7y ago

Not sure I agree about fixed price point. When I'm spending 90% of the time developing software, especially if that's a stand-alone or well specified isolated components - I can quote after some initial research, and I agree it's a good way to go. For other clients I'm doing a job of technical lead. In that case, too much time is spent defining requirements, reviewing other people's work, writing project documentation, etc. These things are borderline impossible to estimate in advance. For these projects, I prefer hourly contracts.

chiefalchemist 7y ago
Scrum is more or less a time & materials approach. Agreed. If it's small and finite - similar to an oil change - then a fixed price is doable. On the other, if the resuest is "the engine sounds odd and acceleration is off" then it could be anything. Anyone who is the latter but expects a fixed price must be avoided. They'll cost you more than you'll make.

pnako 7y ago

I'm not really convinced by the argument regarding value-based pricing, because that's just not how markets work. The clearing price (in this case, of labor) is based on demand AND supply; it has nothing to do with how much value you bring to the table. Yes, it's true that maybe writing some piece of software will save some company ten million dollars per year. Should you get one million dollar for writing it? Maybe not, if I can find someone charging 60K to develop that same piece of software. There is one way to do that with software, though: royalties. It's used for middleware for games and movies. But it's more a risk-management tool for buyers than a sure path to profit for providers (i.e. with royalties you limit your losses if the game or movie does poorly).

madsbuch 7y ago
So, in the end everything boils down to negotiation. Obviously, if you can't negotiate the $1mil deal, then you won't get it. Furthermore, the market is not perfect. Just because somebody wants to do the job for $60k it not mean that the company can even get into contact with this person.
- hectormalot 7y ago
  Crucially: if you’re more likely to deliver successfully you’ll be able to price accordingly as well. E.g. if the perceived change of success with the 60k person is 80% and with you it’s 90% then you’re arguably worth a few 100k extra. (Now: that %-chance-of-succes is difficult to measure. Which is why it’s a relationship business IMO :)

zenpaul 7y ago

I've been there and done that for better and worse. It sounds like the author wants to create their own agency which is a different game than being a solo consultant. If you really want to be a solo consultant... Lessons from 20+ years as a solo consultant: - Customers rarely know what they want. - Customers always change what they want. - Change control in fixed bid work is vastly more important than how smart or productive you are. - It takes an extraordinary amount of effort to find customers. - One gets customers by searching, networking, having other good customers and mastering useful technologies. - What matters long term is consistently making money every month. If you truly want to be a solo consultant: - Maintain good relationships with your customers. - Bill hourly and get paid no later than monthly. - Be willing to work with consulting agencies and accept their markup on your rate. - Always be learning and using new technologies. - Always be looking for the next opportunity.

unreal37 7y ago
I agree. As 20+ years as a consultant, I can't imagine billing "per project". That dream project where the requirements don't change and the scope is perfectly estimated in advance doesn't exist.
- hobofan 7y ago
  Those responses are so funny to me, as there seems to be a complete difference in recommendations, every time this topic comes up. I'm also very happy with hourly billing, but the last time I saw a similar topic, the whole comment section was insisting that per-project billing is the only viable way to make money in consulting. Oh well..
  - hanniabu 7y ago
    It's a different strategy. Per project you take on more risk, but you can also typically charge a lot more (less of a barrier for the client to overcome than hourly).
  - Enginerrrd 7y ago
    The real answer is you do both depending on the situation. My best hourly has been doing per-project billing, but you need to be smart about it or you can end up working some hours for free. Hourly T&M is a nice situation to be in since it takes a lot of the risk out and lets you just focus on the work that needs to be done.

bullen 7y ago

There is a broader picture to these lessons that I would like to point out: Not only is it economical to do bad work if you bill by the hour; but it is also necessary to build flawed products to sell more of them. See printer inc, light bulbs, computers, everything that could last 100 years but doesn't... The other side of this is that energy is considered free, if we paid the real price for oil/electricity it would cost many thousands dollars per gallon/kwh. The only way for this to change is for the whole system to collapse, and that will happen during this decade. All arbitrary (not based on experience from nature) human skills are going away. But math, physics, chemistry and biology will stay; prioritize in that order. Build a good computer today, it will not become obsolete technically for the rest of your life. Buy a ARM computer that you use as desktop, it will be usable for the rest of your life AND it will teach you to become a better programmer!

flimflamm 7y ago

Please take also the consultancy buyers perspective when assessing the value you bring in. Are you the only consultant who could figure out how to bring down the cost of the appliance (in the articles example) down by 1$? If not then your value is not as high as you used in the calculation. The potential client could find other consultants to do the same thing (price optimization of a mass product - service well available in the market). As there are more providers then estimating the "value" should take in to account that there are several offerers of service. It is now a tendering situation. I am now excluding a remote situation where all the offerers of the optimization service would collude in their offers.

wayoutthere 7y ago
Consulting is a relationship business. The quality of your relationships determines how much you can sell your services for. Furthermore, solo consultants tend to specialize in a few specific niches where their services aren't a commodity. For commoditized consulting services, buyers will just go to a body shop.
- ghaff 7y ago
  The same applies to advisory type consulting as well. Even people who are more generalist than others are still fairly specialized in the grand scheme of things. On the one hand, you don't want to be so specialized that almost no one is a potential customer. But get too broad and you're getting out of the realm of having knowledge/experience that people will pay a real premium for. I've long felt I had to keep pulling myself back a bit from dabbling in too many things at a relatively cursory level.
  - wayoutthere 7y ago
    I was actually meaning it in terms of advisory consulting since that's what I do :) But my experience has been very similar to yours -- I find myself focusing more and more on product strategy and less on engineering process as I move forward in my career. Clients are increasingly going to body shops for that kind of work, and I have no interest in competing in a race to the bottom.

weinzierl 7y ago

> An easy way to build up productised services is to keep the rights to use of the software that you write or that you oversee others writing. This works best for software that doesn’t give a competitive edge to customers and that is not specific to customers. Your leverage is to give a discount on your fees, if you are allowed to keep the rights to use. I have never seen this going well. It is in my experience very rare that companies are willing to let the consultant keep the rights and when they do there is a big chance that they regret it and want the rights for a small fee later. I've seen this damaging the customer relationship in the past. I'm curious what other consultant's experiences are?

wtracy 7y ago
I don't have firsthand experience, but anecdotally this sort of thing seems to be more common with government agencies and large corporations than small business clients. I suspect that negotiating it is a lot more complicated than just offering a discounted rate. Honestly, it probably involves wining and dining key decision makers. (Hence, why it happens with government agencies and large corporations.)
- iudqnolq 7y ago
  > I don't have firsthand experience, but anecdotally this sort of thing seems to be more common with government agencies and large corporations than small business clients. Dumb question: is "this sort of thing" keeping or not keeping the rights?
  - weinzierl 7y ago
    Not parent, but I suppose that government agencies in the US are more willing to not insist on keeping the rights. There is the idea that tax-paid work should (or must?) be available to the general public. Therefore the agencies don't have a good argument for keeping the rights anyway. As far as I know this is very much a US thing and doesn't exist elsewhere. At least where OP and I work it is - to the best of my knowledge - unheard of. For a prime example see SQLite, which is in the public domain because its author worked as contractor for the Navy, when it was created.

cosmodisk 7y ago

I did both hourly and project based pricing models when consulting. Each have pros and cons but for projects that aren't "off the shelve" and do require discovery days, lots of inputs from client and a level of solution design from the consultant, the key thing is milestones. This way you can fend off scope creep and also be very specific on deliverables.I.e.:created x feature: 10 hours( 15% of the overall project). As for the rates, one hits the ceiling pretty quickly with hourly rates: try pitching $500/h if you not a lawyer. That's why value based pricing is the only way to push it up as high as possible. It's one thing to say that you'll be charging $200/h for the next few weeks and another when you say you'd build something for $24K that'll make the company $500K over next 12months.

m0zg 7y ago

"Don't charge hourly" doesn't work for "researchy" work where you can't be certain things will work in the end or indeed how long they will take. I charge hourly. Setting a high hourly rate (if you can do it) prevents the "bullshit work" situation described in the article. Customer then finds it more cost effective to have their junior FTEs do bullshit work.

fao_ 7y ago

> I couldn’t believe my ears. After regaining my composure, I answered: “I regard such behaviour as unethical, because our customer would suffer a substantial and unnecessary loss.” [...] In hindsight, I should have terminated the project at that point [...]. The example shows how ingrained hourly billing is. Customers accept it as God given, although they know that they are ripped off. But that's the thing. Companies exist solely to make money. Let's say it again. Companies do not exist to create value. Companies do not exist to do cool things. Those are all secondary. Companies exist solely to make money. This is business school 101. The CEO and the rest of the workers were right in this instance. In this decision the agency was better off as a company if the person took the deal. The client at all times had the choice of going to a different firm that was cheaper, the customer in this case opted not to bother with doing those things (which might have cost them more in the long run anyway), and therefore had already committed to the cost that they would be charged. The job of the client company in this case is to extract as much value as it can from the consultants while paying them as little as it can. Clearly in this instance, given they were happy paying that cost, you weren't being paid as much as you could have been, based on the 'value' that you 'created'. I don't see why the person in question sees this as unethical. Or rather, I don't see why the person in question sees this as unethical under capitalism. Capitalism is an inherently unethical system, where the entire system is (From the top perspective) about ripping other people off as much as you can, or (From the bottom perspective) trying to ensure you get paid as much as you are worth to the company that you serve. If you don't like it, back projects to change the system, whether that's to introduce more regulation, or to change the system full stop so that gross wealth-hoarding cannot exist. Until then, you have to make a living and try and make sure that you and the people you support are better off. If you can 'create value' for others by doing that, then all the better!

S_A_P 7y ago

I cant agree with this article. Ive been a solo consultant for 5 years now. Here are my takeaways- -Maintain good relationships with anyone that can give you work. Most of the time you will ping pong between vendors for work. -Don't be afraid to build in "bench" time into your hourly rate. The rates listed in this article are much lower than I would recommend. I target 85% utilized in my personal model. I work in a niche and will not consider less than 150/hr for anything less than a 12 month contract. -Remember that despite the best of relationships and intents, contractors are expendable. You can and will get let go before employees. That is not a bad thing. In fact, its a gift. You get to leave before morale and expectations get too far out of control. -Do put rainy day money away into fungible assets. Savings accounts probably aren't great for that. -Do try to have multiple clients at once, if you can swing 2 full time gigs, most of the time this can be juggled in the short term. -If you get told you are rolling off, don't take it personal. I have the hardest time with this part of it. It is my nature to give my all when I am at a gig. When the let me go, I feel that it is an affront or personal. Its not, its business. If you do this, you will make more than many high level executive salaries. That doesn't count the equity side but making 2-400k a year is a real possibility. -When its time to leave you will know. The biggest upside I see in consulting is I have the freedom to leave when I cant deal with the bullshit anymore. -Every company has bullshit you will grow tired of. Honeymoon periods last 3-24 months, but there will always be bs.

westoncb 7y ago
> If you get told you are rolling off, don't take it personal What do you mean by "rolling off" here?
- taneq 7y ago
  Context indicates it means their contract is not being renewed. Maybe something related to rolling stones gathering no moss?
- bradgessler 7y ago
  It’s consultantese for “the contract is ending or being terminated”

JoeMayoBot 7y ago

Rather than say one way to bill is better than the other, I view this as situational. I've worked a fixed price project on occasion, but most of my work is hourly. The approach is a result of the negotiation process. I also believe ethics is subjective. A consultant is running a business and has a fiduciary duty and a right to make money. If I can make money and keep the customer happy then all is good.

xmly 7y ago

Any org for solo consultant? How do you guys solve the health insurance problem? Thanks...

zoomablemind 7y ago

It's an ages old dilemma, per-hour vs. per-project. There's no single right approach. It's a choice, often circumstantial. Both options have risks. Solo/freelancing awards us that freedom to balance the risks. After all we do sell our time - we either bill our client for it OR give the account of it to ourselves (man, that design took me awile....). So eventually it's supposed to bring out that feel of one's own time value. Raising rate is what logically comes out of this too. Being solo also means facing one's own anxiety and insecurity. So we need to be flexible and choose whatever works to boost our professional and personal confidence, then review what outcomes this turned us. This, again, will eventually harmonize what you bill your client to what you really want to be paid. The real question is how soon this balances out before bills would choke us. So it makes sense to not routinely under-charge just because of anxiety, as this only will make it stronger next time.

yellow_lead 7y ago

https://archive.is/JNoLA https://archive.is/JNoLA

mlvljr 7y ago

Wow, Burkhard, HN's 1st page! Congrats!

zackmorris 7y ago

I just want to say a big thank you to the author for sharing the derivation of a consultant's profit. I've always struggled as a consultant, generally scraping by and feeling spread too thin. That’s because I subconsciously gave up on the idea of profiting from my business. If you stop and think about that for a moment, it means that I had internalized this idea that I would always be working linearly at my hourly rate. There would never be residual passive income from work that I had done, whether it was SAAS or building an app or frankly just reselling something that I had already made. That death of faith in a better future is one of the most toxic and detrimental blows to a maker’s psyche that I know of. The full profit formula is: profit = (price you charge) - (your cost as hourly rate * hours) Your cost here is the time that you would have put in coding, as if it were any other job. On top of that, you have the periodic struggle to find more gigs, as well as the logistics of handling your own taxes, health insurance, etc. So if you don’t charge something above your own cost, you’ll burn the candle at both ends just getting by, and eventually burn out after 2-4 years just like at any other job (tech especially). I’ve always said that I feel that consultants should charge at least their overtime rate to account for the overhead and headaches involved. So if you make $30 per hour as a developer, your overtime rate (time and a half) is $45 and I would recommend starting around there or round up to $50. That's only part of the answer though, because an agency will charge between 1.5 and 4 times your hourly rate, so between $50 and $120 per hour, often more. So really you are competing with agencies. Which means that there is nothing wrong with charging the same as them, and probably more if you are experienced in your target market. But there are also physical laws to consider. It’s hard to beat a pair of coders making something, so that limits an agency’s maximum value to a customer to just twice what a single consultant can provide. Keep in mind that this ignores an agency’s existing infrastructure, ability to absorb failure costs, and scalability. But if we’re just talking raw coding velocity, an agency is limited to about twice the velocity of a consultant, no matter how many people they through at a problem (see The Mythical Man Month). Knowing that, it makes sense to me that a consultant might typically charge about half the flat rate fee of an agency. And if they always deliver, why not charge the same amount!

brw12 7y ago

From my own 4 years' experience, I echo what zenpaul said, and would add: * Understand who your client is, and stop and check in if they change. I once had a manager at a client company change mid-project, and the politics (and sense of trust) completely reversed -- in retrospect, I should have insisted that we start the relationship over, clarify expectations, etc. * It's not always a good idea to agree to disagree. I estimated one sub-project would take 3 weeks, and a client insisted it should take more like one; we decided to proceed, it took 3 weeks, and the client was unhappy. Looking back, I think we should have more seriously considered dropping the project if we couldn't agree on expectations. This can be proposed gently and respectfully: if you don't think that plan is worth it, I'm happy to do my best to help you find someone else.

zerxy 7y ago

How do you arrive at your hourly rate?