January 21, 2026
Breaking Free from Hourly Billing
The fine folks at the Boston Association of Structural Engineers (BASE) had me present a talk to their members this evening.
Here’s the description from the invite:
Title: Breaking Free from Hourly Billing
Speaker: Jonathan Stark, Host of the Ditching Hourly podcast
The following is a high-level summary of topics based on the speaker’s materials:
- Value-Based Outcomes: Transitioning from selling time to selling results.
- Scalability: Why the hourly model limits the growth of engineering and design firms.
- Leverage: Alternative pricing models allow your firm to scale.
During the lively Q&A following the talk, there were a bunch questions that, shall we say, expressed some doubt about the viability of my pricing models for their industry.
“That’s great for people in YOUR industry, but in OUR industry, it would never work because of X,” where X equaled things like:
- Our buyers are more sophisticated
- Our industry is more competitive
- Our clients don’t want to hire us but they have to for compliance reasons
- Our industry is too risky to offer guarantees
...and so on.
What I found after answering a few of these was that I kept coming back to the same point:
Being different from the competition in a way that matters to your ideal buyers is a pre-condition for increasing your fees.
Here’s the thing...
If your buyers can’t tell the difference between you and the competition, they’re going to choose based on who is cheaper.
It makes sense, right? I mean...
Why would they pay more for (what to them is) the exact same thing?
Yours,
—J