November 22, 2019

It’s not a purchase, it’s a trade

Sent by Jonathan Stark on November 23rd, 2019

Switching from hourly billing to value pricing for custom projects requires some pretty mind-bending shifts to your thought patterns.

One of the big ones is that with rare exceptions, your clients don’t care how hard the work is for you.

All they really care about is the result that they’re going to get from your engagement.

Pretty much nobody really understands this right away so here’s a mental model that might help:

Don’t think of the money that changes hands as the client paying you.

Instead, think of it as a trade: the money for the result.

Of course, this requires that you know what result they want, but that’s a story for a different day.

Yours,

—J