148. Should you charge by the day for advisory services?

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I've heard a few people lately talking about using day rates as a marketing advisor or fractional CMO. Things like one, two, or three days a week for X price per month.

I've even heard of people charging around $10k+/month on a couple days per week with the client. Seems decent, right?

There's no hard and fast rules with this, so I won't say never do it. But I prefer not to unless it's for single projects where I visit clients for a day or two to get things done. But even then, I usually lump it into my advisory retainers unless significant travel is required.

When you charge by the day, what ends up happening is people see you as a part-time employee. They begin to ask what you "got done" in the time allotted, or other such questions usually reserved for employees or "suppliers". 

They begin to delegate tasks instead of receiving your expertise and guidance on what to do. You become the catch-all of ideas.

It's also not scalable unless you oversell your time, but even then—now you're not allocating the promised amount of time to them.

I'd rather offer unlimited access to me for a select number of people or in a limited capacities to keep scope down rather than selling hours, days, or other such time-based metrics.

I'd also avoid the execution/project management work unless you're transitioning into advisory services using a "managed advisory services" model or if you charge a lot and limit it to a few months to sort out emergencies. It quickly becomes a full time job and it's just not worth it. 

There are exceptions to this, but that's what I've found.