No Compromises

I have a fun story to share. I organize a couple developer groups here in Milwaukee, and at our most recent meeting last week, the icebreaker question we used was “What is something you accomplished this year that you would never have expected on January 1, 2016?”

My accomplishment was successfully selling a value-priced project. A little background on this accomplishment: I sold a consulting company back in 2012 and a big part of my reason for leaving was that I disagreed with my partner on how to price and bill projects. He was a firm believer in fixed prices, whereas I wanted to charge hourly to get paid for all time spent. (For perspective, our current effective hourly rate was only $25 the 6 months before I left, even though on paper it was $100). After taking a year off from consulting, I started a new company in 2013 and was so determined to not budge on my core beliefs (billing, quality, process, etc), that I named my company No Compromises. This is always a fun conversation starter with new clients and usually becomes a key differentiator between me and other consultants.

Anyways, this is how strongly I believed in hourly billing being the gold standard, but you’ve converted me. I still have a lot to learn on the topic (good thing I just bought your book), but I’ve already shifted a lot of my approaches around new client discussions, proposals and billing.

Back to my dev meeting story, as soon as I shared my comment, I got a flurry of questions on what value-priced billing is and why it’s better than hourly, etc. Early next year I’m going to devote a whole meeting to the topic and point people to your newsletter and book. Thanks again!