Ditching Hourly

By Jonathan StarkBusiness

Ditching Hourly episodes

March 08, 2019 Should you work for free in exchange for referrals?
What would you say if someone asked you to work for free in exchange for referrals?

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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!
5 min
March 01, 2019 XY Positioning Statement
How to craft an XY Positioning Statement.
Click here to read the companion article

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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!
10 min
February 20, 2019Making Seconds Count with guest Alice Lee-Yoon
Scientific research into the negative psychological effects of trading time for money.
Guest bio:
Alice Lee-Yoon is a prospective phd student researching the link between time, money, and employee happiness. Her papers have been published in leading journals such as Current Opinion in Psychology and Academy of Management Journal, and her works have also been covered in Harvard Business Review, Psychology Today, and New York magazine.
Related links:
The Psychological Trap of Freelancing
Making Seconds Count: When valuing time promotes subjective well-being
People Who Choose Time Over Money Are Happier
Time is Money When You’re Paid by the Hour
How I Realized That Hourly Billing Is Nuts
Hourly Billing Is Nuts: Essays On The Insanity Of Trading Time For Money

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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!
25 min
January 12, 2019Productized Services with guest Jason Resnick
Jason Resnick (aka @rezzz) shares how he went from burnt out jack-of-all-trades to in-demand specialist.
Related Links
Jason's Twitter
Jason's website
Transcript
Jonathan Stark
Hello and welcome to Ditching Hourly, I'm Jonathan Stark. Today I'm joined by guest Jason Resnick. Jason, welcome to the show.
Jason Resnick
Thanks for having me Jonathan.
Jonathan Stark
Can you tell folks who haven't heard of you before who you are and what you do?
Jason Resnick
Sure, as I said my name's Jason Resnick, Rezzz online as most people know who I am there. Yeah, I'm a web developer, I've been since the late 90's so showing my age a little bit. And yeah, and I've worked the full gamut from Fortune 50 companies to small agencies, largee agencies, consulting firms. And then I struck out on my own doing my own thing twice, the second time is in 2010 and I've been doing that full time every since.
Jonathan Stark
Excellent. So, the main reason, the impetus of this phone call is that ... I don't want to air too much dirty laundry but I was considering a platform migration from Drip to Convert Kit. So, anyone lisetening to this show I'm sure knows I sent out daily emails from a very heavy user of email automation, email marketing software, and it's one of my daily tools. So, small things really matter to me because it really adds up over time if there's small things that are annoying or not the way I'd like 'em or whatever the case may be.
Jonathan Stark
So, I was kind of, to be honest I was kind of ranting about this in a slack room that we're both in and as many times as we've talked in the past you were not pigeon holed in my mind as an email marketing platform guru the way that you are now. So, it was like we started talking and I was like, "Wow, Jason's got amazing answers to these questions. What's going on here?" So, tell me a little bit about ... And then, I came to realize oh this is your deal. So, could you tell people a little bit about your, I don't know I'll use the wrong word but sort of convert kit trusted partner or whatever it is and I think you're also a Drip one and that whole.
Jason Resnick
Yes.
Jonathan Stark
Talk a little bit about how that piece of it happened, the sort of partner thing.
Jason Resnick
Yeah. So, like I said I am a web developer. I focused ever since I started on my own I focused with e-commerce companies whether they were selling digital, physical products, membership websites, subscriptions, even non profits, basically anybody that was taking some sort of a transaction online. And as that grew and I really started to work, sort of fall into a specialty there where I was helping them decrease the time from the first interaction to their first purchase as well as creating repeat buyers and rating fans out of the customers. That was around I guess 2013, 2014 ish, I really started to look into email marketing. Because that was kind of, I mean obviously at that point in time it was out there, it was doing it, but it wasn't doing it at the level that it is now. But I was a web developer so when Drip came along I was taking a look at their API and to be able to do some of the things that Drip was able to do through the API meaning leveraging that subscriber data on the website making the experience on the website a little bit more personal based around whether you opened up the last email or not and these kind of things. And I mean you can do down the rabbit hole of personalization there but that was the genesis of where I am today because what I was doing with my clients as far as the development end of it people wanted more of the other stuff. They wanted the on site personalization. They wanted the beahavioral marketing that I was implementing more so than the custom development work that I was doing. 'Cause at the time and I still do this to this day is I sort of put that final 20% into their website. So, out of the box they install orld wcommerce or whatever. They get 80% of the way there, they see that it's working and getting traction and now they want to put the rest of their business into it whether that's inventory control or anything like that. So, I ...
Jonathan Stark
Can you sort of drill into that a little bit more? I want to make sure it's clear. So, when you say, "Put 80% into it", and you mentioned WooCommerce. I'm not a 100% sure I'm following so.
Jason Resnick
Sure. Yeah. So, I focus in on WooCommerce based customers and a lot of times the companies would install world commerce and find out that it was working for them just out of the box. They would be able to sell products, they would be able to do these things but then other areas of the business whether it was a brick and mortar business like I had one customer that was an ice cream shop that only could deliver to local areas because otherwise it would melt or whatever it is right?
Jonathan Stark
Yeah.
Jason Resnick
So, things like that right?
Jonathan Stark
So, that's what you meant when you said put the rest of the business into it?
Jason Resnick
Right.
Jonathan Stark
Okay I've gotcha.
Jason Resnick
So, but then I noticed a trend towards the behavioral marketing stuff, the email marketing, and automation, and things. And I decided that I could essentially do a lot of that stuff with Java Script code. I didn't need to be in the WooCommerce space, or Magento space, or any of that kind of stuff. So, I just gave it a shot and I basically said, "Okay I'll give this six months. I'm going to essentially slice that part of the business out and offer that as a service." And at that time it was just Drip and I wound up getting a couple of Shopify customers, a couple of Magento customers, and it worked out well. It was nice and easy for me to be able to implement that stuff over and over again. It was a platform that was working well.
Jason Resnick
Support was great too in the growing API there and all that other stuff. So, I was like, "Okay this is great". When they offered the consulting, I think they called it a certified consultant program or something like that, they knew who I was. 'Cause just in and around the community around Twitter and things like that I would jump into these conversations where Drip was mentioned and not to totally get into the weeds over there but I would just basically set up Zapya recipe to look for those mentions and then ping me in my own private Slack. So, I kind of jumped ahead of drip a lot of times in the conversations and I was just offer suggestions, or answers, or things like that because I was well versed in the platform. So ...
Jonathan Stark
Now is that ... Sorry to interrupt. Is that where these clients came from because they saw you and you put them ...
Jason Resnick
A lot of times.
Jonathan Stark
Okay.
Jason Resnick
Yeah. Yeah, a lot of times.
Jonathan Stark
So, basically you being helpful online in public brought you to the attention of Drip but also a bunch of clients who were evidently wrestling with these problems and then you just basically act like third party support in a way.
Jason Resnick
Exactly, exactly right.
Jonathan Stark
Awesome.
Jason Resnick
And they said, "Well we're opening up this consultancy platform, or certification program, or whatever you want to call it", which was really just a [inaudible] had to use Drip in the best way that they wanted you to use it. And so, I dove in...
57 min
November 28, 2018Setting Expectations with guest Ben Manley
The benefits of offering a productized service.
In this episode of Ditching Hourly I'm joined by guest Ben Manley. Ben is the founder of Knapsack, a web design firm that offers an laser focused productized service that allows his team to deliver beautiful websites to their clients in one day.
Ben shares his background and explains in detail how he went from a generalist design freelancer who would do anything from Photoshop comps to theater sets, to running a highly specialized web design firm that generates incredible word-of-mouth referrals.
As a past client of Ben's, I can tell you from experience that his process is stellar and delivers a huge amount of value in a very short time.
Talking Points
Transitioning from hourly billing to project based prices
The benefits of specializing
The importance of having a healthy margin
Designing with the client over your shoulder
How to ask for good design feedback
Capitalizing on a platform specialization
Preventing scope creep on fixed price services
Related Links
Knapsack
The site Ben build for Jonathan (password is 'mobile')
StoryBrand
Breaking the Time Barrier by Mike McDerment and Donald Cowper

----
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!
54 min
October 25, 2018Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You with guest John Warrillow
Business valuation expert John Warrillow explains the benefits of making your business more valuable as an acquisition target, even if you have no intention of selling it.
Talking Points
The two most common reasons business owners consider selling their business
Why it makes sense to build your business to sell even if you don't want to sell
The difference between growing value and growing revenue
Why productizing makes it easier to charge upfront for services
Quotable Quotes
"I see a lot of freelancers 'start a company', but they really just created a job."—JW
"There's a difference between 'specialization' and 'productization'."—JW
"Focus on a very small niche and become dominant in that space."—JW
"People say 'Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity,' but neither is the value of your company."—JW
"If you're just a hodgepodge of a bunch of undifferentiated services, an acquirer could easily go after your revenue without buying you."—JW
"The very same things that make your business valuable and sellable, are also the things that will make your business fun to run forever."—JW
"Can the business succeed without you?"—JW
"Employees thrive on repetition."—JW
"Every service offering you add grows the complexity of your business exponentially."—JW
"Take a half-day and think about the one thing you do better than anybody else."—JW
"Billing after services are rendered creates a 90-day negative cashflow cycle."—JW
Related Links
Built to Sell (the book)
Built to Sell (the podcast)
Value Builder
eMyth Revisited
John's Bio
John Warrilow is an entrepreneur, podcast host, and best-selling author with over 20 years of research experience into the small and medium business market. He has started and exited four companies, including a quantitative market research business that was acquired by the Corporate Executive Board in 2008. His best-selling book, Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You, was rewarded by both Fortune and Inc. Magazine as one of the best business books of 2011. He is also founder and host of the successful podcast, Built to Sell Radio.
Recently, John has founded The Value Builder System, which helps business owners and advisors assess the value of their company. With over 35,000 business owners and advisors having taken the Value Builder Questionnaire, this system has helped reassess and raise the company’s value by up to 71%.
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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!
37 min
September 19, 2018The Language of Business with guest Norman Lieberman
Veteran recruiter Norman Lieberman shares hard won war stories from 37 years of cold calling.
Talking Points
You have to take control of the conversation in the first 20 seconds
The importance of finding out the client's problem before you even think about selling anything to them
Why talking about your company, product, or process is worse than useless
Why to lead with a question and then shut up
What you can learn from a cold-calling master, even if you'll never do them yourself
How to bring prospects back to what they want accomplished if they start talking about price too early in the conversation
How to pull a relationship together out of thin air
How to anchor your high price against the much higher cost of doing nothing
How to respond to a client who asks if you guarantee your work
How to make buyer's eye glaze over (and what to do instead)
Links
Norman's site
Norman's email
Learn Your Lines
Jill Konrath on TBOA
The Secret of Selling Anything
The Red Balloon

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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!
1 hr
August 27, 2018The Shape of Engagement with guest Scott Gould
You know you want your customers, employees, and communities to be engaged, but what exactly does ‘engagement’ mean? Scott Gould, author of The Shape of Engagement joins me to talk about how independent software developers can sow the seeds engagement.
Talking Points
Why engagement matters
What engagement is
The three levels of engagement
The three processes that make up the cycle of engagement
Real-world examples of how typical marketing activities fit in the cycle of engagement
Simple steps software professionals can take to understand why their work matters to their clients
Guest Bio
Scott Gould is an author and popular speaker who champions the cause of real engagement in a world where so much is only skin-deep. As a management advisor he has helped some of the world’s biggest brands and oldest organisations get their customers, employees and communities highly engaged around their mission.
Related Links
Scott’s website
Scott’s book "The Shape of Engagement"
Trainer Weekly by Reuven Lerner
How to Fascinate by Sally Hogshead
TED Talk by Joe Pine
Social Proof
Derek Sivers
Kai Davis

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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!
58 min
August 03, 2018Breaking The Time Barrier with guest Mike McDerment
Freshbooks CEO Mike McDerment joins me to discuss his book Breaking the Time Barrier.
Talking Points
The importance to talking to your clients
Looking for ways to help your audience
How to push yourself out of your comfort zone
Why hourly billing is a bad idea
Quotable Quotes
“In one year, I worked 19 days and brought in $200,000.”—MM
“I think the constant paranoia of not knowing something is healthy.”—MM
“Your peers are great for support but you should look for an advisor who is a reach for you.”—MM
“If you think your clients are the enemy, you’re so far off ”—MM
“Sitting around and saying ‘It’s hard!’ is not going to get you anywhere. Figure it out.”—MM
“Hourly billing pits you against your clients.”—MM
“When your billing by the hour, everyone is staring at their shoes instead of where they want to go.”—JS
“You have to choose your clients.”—MM
“It’s a flag for me if my client going to tell me how I charge for my work.”—MM
“Let’s stop talking about hours. What is it you want when I’m done?”—MM
“I want to know that I can be successful when I'm done.”—MM
Related Links
Breaking The Time Barrier
Freshbooks
Bureau of Digital
Give it five minutes
Mike’s Bio
Mike McDerment is co-founder and CEO of FreshBooks, the world’s #1 accounting software in the cloud for self-employed professionals and their employees. Prior to FreshBooks, Mike ran his own design firm where he accidentally saved over an invoice and realized an unmet need in the market. In 2003, he started FreshBooks from his parents’ basement in Toronto. Since then, over 10 million people have used FreshBooks to save time billing, look professional, and collect billions of dollars. Mike and his team dedicate themselves to executing extraordinary experiences everyday for customers who want to focus on what they love, not their paperwork.
Mike has also authored “Breaking The Time Barrier,” a guide to using value-based pricing to unlock your true earning potential which has been downloaded more than 250,000 times.

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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!
43 min
July 25, 2018Building Signature Systems with guest Maggie Patterson
Guest Maggie Patterson describes how she more than doubled her income by ditching hourly billing.
Talking Points
How hourly billing decreases your income
The value of creating clearly defined service packages
The benefits of systematizing your service delivery
The magic of naming process steps
How taking control of the client engagement increases your fees
The importance of saying no to clients who are a bad fit
How productized services make the sales process easier
Quotable Quotes
"If you're saying yes to everyone, that's a bad thing."—MP
"If your close rate is off, you're either talking to the wrong person or your proposals are off."—MP
"We're always going to make more money with a flat rate. Always."—MP
Maggie's Bio
Maggie Patterson is a communications strategist, business growth consultant, and the principal consultant at Scoop Studios. With two decades of experience, Maggie has spent her entire career in client services and has been a successful entrepreneur for over 10 years.
Today, she works with online and small business owners to help them implement smart strategies for business growth and to maximize the impact of their digital marketing. She’s the host of the Small Business Boss podcast, has been on stage at events such as New Media Expo, Podcast Movement, and the Conquer Summit, and her work has been featured in leading publications such as Entrepreneur.com, Fast Company and Virgin.com.
Related Links
Scoop Studios Website 
Small Business Boss Website 
Instagram 
Scoop Studios Business Facebook Page 
Small Business Boss Facebook Page 

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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!
31 min