Ditching Hourly

Guest Nick Disabato (aka nickd) talks about measuring the economic value of design. Links Nick's personal site Nick's consultancy Nick's new book Nick's A/B testing course ----Before you go!The next time someone asks you for your hourly rate, I want you to stop what you're doing and head on over to valuepricingbootcamp.com to sign up for my free value pricing email course.Hope to see you there!

Does the idea of doubling your prices make you physically ill? Janet Kafadar shares a very personal, inspirational, and funny story about how pricing herself too low wrecked her health... and yet raising her prices literally made her puke. Definitely check this one out. Links Janet's site Janet's YouTube ----Before you go!The next time someone asks you for your hourly rate, I want you to stop what you're doing and head on over to valuepricingbootcamp.com to sign up for my free value pricing email course.Hope to see you there!

Jane Portman joins me to talk about her new book, Your Productized Consulting Guide. Links Jane's book - Your Productized Consulting Guide Jane's SaaS - UserList.io Jane's home site 20% Off Ditching Hourly listeners can use coupon code DH20 for 20% any package of Jane's book. Thanks Jane! ----Before you go!The next time someone asks you for your hourly rate, I want you to stop what you're doing and head on over to valuepricingbootcamp.com to sign up for my free value pricing email course.Hope to see you there!

Blair Enns delivers an impromptu master class on the strategies and tactics of value pricing creative work.Blair's BioBlair Enns is a 25-year veteran of the business side of the creative professions. In 2002, he launched Win Without Pitching, which has worked with thousands of creative professionals in numerous countries through direct engagements, seminars, workshops & webcasts. Blair is the author of "The Win Without Pitching Manifesto" and the forthcoming "Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour"LinksPricing CreativityWin Without Pitching2Bobs PodcastBlair on TwitterBlair on LinkedInImplementing Value Pricing: A Radical Business Model for Professional FirmsJonathan's notes on "Pricing With Confidence" by Reed Holden"The Big Lie of Strategic Planning" in HBRTranscriptJonathan:Hello and welcome to Ditching Hourly. I'm Jonathan Stark. On today's show I'm joined by Blair Enns. Blair is a 25 year veteran of the business side of the creative professions. In 2002, he launched Win Without Pitching which has worked with thousands of creative professionals in numerous countries through direct engagements, seminars, workshops and webcasts. Blair's the author of the Win Without Pitching Manifesto and the forthcoming Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour. Without further ado, here's my interview with Blair [00:00:30] Enns, enjoy. Blair, welcome to the show.Blair:Thank you Jonathan, my pleasure to be here.Jonathan:I am super excited to talk with you today especially about your new book Pricing Creativity. Could you start off by giving listeners a little bit of context about what the book is meant to do for its readers, who's targeted at, what led you to write it just sort of the big picture.Blair:Yeah so my businesses is Win Without Pitching, it's a sales training for creative professionals. We work with [00:01:00] independent, typically owners of independent creative firms of various types usually design or advertising based but often going into the kind of adjacent markets and their teams and we help them get better at selling what it is that they do and you know there's some right there in the name Win Without Pitching there are some ideas around the conventions that we help to challenge. Pricing Creativity is meant to be a [00:01:30] desk reference ... an enjoyable readable reference manual for anybody in the creative professions who sets, negotiates or delivers price.Jonathan:Excellent. Well that's right up our alley here. We have had similar paths over the years, we've read a lot of the same people, I know Alan Watts is big on your list, Ron Baker, many many others [00:02:00] I think we probably have the same set of 20 pricing books on our bookshelves.Blair:Yeah, probably.Jonathan:And also we both have spent at least a decade I think you probably have at least two decades of actually implementing this stuff or experience in a field that you're now implementing these theories in, actually converting them into practice so it's going to be ... it sort of comes as no surprise to me that we have lots and lots and lots of kind of like shared ... I don't want to say revelations [00:02:30] but it just like, wow this stuff does work, it is tricky to implement and it takes some doing, there's a perhaps more art than science at some points but it definitely works and largely in my case I'm super anti hourly billing in case you couldn't tell by the [inaudible 00:02:51] portal, but I know that you do talk about some types of hourly and [00:03:00] for your target market, for people who are making payroll and they've got a bunch of bodies that they have a lot of capacity I should say, it does make sense to perhaps sell blocks of time.Kind of want to talk about that at some point. Maybe we don't have to dwell into that now but you have this great framework called the four phases of client engagement that talks about this sort of decreasing value curve as you come down [00:03:30] from the discovery phase or I think you call a diagnostic phase and the and that moves into recommendations. Maybe you could talk about the four phases just briefly because people, listeners are familiar with this concept I've talked about you before.Blair:The four phases in any engagement of any expertise space business would be diagnose, where you come to understand the client situation, prescribe, where you prescribe a therapy if we wanted to use continue with the medical analogy, [00:04:00] the deliverables of the diagnose phase would be diagnostic findings, the deliverables at the prescribe phase would be a strategy and then you have what I call the apply phase or the initial application of therapy. Then you have ongoing reapplication of therapy so diagnose, prescribe, apply, reapply, and the highest value offering that you have is first and foremost your ability to accurately diagnose the client's challenges, [00:04:30] assess the scene as it were and from there if you're not able to diagnose properly then it doesn't matter how good your prescription is if it's not targeted to the challenge that's really there.Then when you get into reapplication, excuse me you get into the fourth phase reapplication, that's the highly commoditized stuff of redoing things over and over again where you're adding very little value. It's mostly you're getting paid for things that you do with your hands and your [00:05:00] feet mostly your hands a little bit of your brain still but I do like to break those four phases of the engagement into two separate categories. I refer to the first two diagnose and prescribe as the thinking stages or phases and then the latter to apply and reapply are the doing phases so your point is the highest value offering that you have is in the ... I call them stages, the thinking stages and then once you get into doing that tends to [00:05:30] be more commoditized.I think from time to time it makes sense to package up a whole lot of that doing. Sometimes it does make sense to sell that as units of time. It really depends on the business, it really depends on how you sold the previous stages of the engagement, it depends on how your business is set up, how your clients businesses are set up, so I really do like the idealism of value based pricing. Ron Baker who I'm sure we're going to talk about [00:06:00] has been a tremendous influence on my thinking on value based pricing and he read an advance copy of the book as did you and he had some really good feedback for me and one of his points of feedback where I had to say, "Well I think we're just going to have to disagree on this one," is he's just adamant that at no point should you ever sell time.I like the idealism of that I think practically there are times when it makes sense to sell time and one of those times might be when [00:06:30] you're selling that fourth phase, the ongoing reapplication work and it's just a whole bunch of busywork. It might make sense to sell that in units of time.Jonathan:I think you ... I see this as well, I tend to tackle it in a little bit different a way but again I think this is because of different audiences. There ...

Corey Quinn is a consultant who helps companies fix their horrifying AWS bills. In this episode, Corey explains how he monetized his technical expertise by selling sponsorships for his weekly mailing list. Links Last Week in AWS Quinn Advisory Group Corey's Twitter Corey's sponsorship page ----Before you go!The next time someone asks you for your hourly rate, I want you to stop what you're doing and head on over to valuepricingbootcamp.com to sign up for my free value pricing email course.Hope to see you there!

Former software consultant Brian Dunning talks about transitioning from hourly billing for dev work to donation supported content production. Description My guest today is Brian Dunning. Brian is an old friend who I met back when we were both building FileMaker solutions for clients who we billed on an hourly basis. Over the years, Brian has transitioned away from trading time for money to the most purely value-based model I've ever encountered: he now runs a donation supported non-profit called Skeptoid Media. As a former dev, I wanted to have Brian to hopefully inspire you to consider packaging up and selling your expertise in an novel way. Enjoy... Links Skeptoid podcast Brian's personal site Brian on Twitter Closing The next time someone asks you for your hourly rate, this is what you should say: "I don't have one." To learn what to say next, visit http://valuepricingbootcamp.com to signup for my free email course. Again, that url is: http://valuepricingbootcamp.com ----Before you go!The next time someone asks you for your hourly rate, I want you to stop what you're doing and head on over to valuepricingbootcamp.com to sign up for my free value pricing email course.Hope to see you there!

Shopify guru and former Wordpress developer Kurt Elster explains how he monetized his technical expertise by selling sponsorships for his podcast. Links Kurt's press page Kurt's Twitter Kurt's sponsorship page ----Before you go!The next time someone asks you for your hourly rate, I want you to stop what you're doing and head on over to valuepricingbootcamp.com to sign up for my free value pricing email course.Hope to see you there!

Dr. Sherry Walling, a licensed clinical psychologist and expert in promoting well-being among high-performing professionals, discusses the unique anxieties entrepreneurs face. She shares insights on the emotional challenges of transitioning from employment to running a business, emphasizing the need for a shift in perspective. Effective communication and empathy are highlighted as vital in client relationships. Sherry also addresses the importance of community and support in remote work, while providing strategies to prevent burnout and manage stress.

Money is worthless if you can't exchange it for something you want. ----Before you go!The next time someone asks you for your hourly rate, I want you to stop what you're doing and head on over to valuepricingbootcamp.com to sign up for my free value pricing email course.Hope to see you there!

Push past your clients self-diagnosis to unlock more valuable outcomes. ----Before you go!The next time someone asks you for your hourly rate, I want you to stop what you're doing and head on over to valuepricingbootcamp.com to sign up for my free value pricing email course.Hope to see you there!