I have been following (at irregular intervals) your blog. Though, at times, I feel like I am eavesdropping, I am becoming more accustomed to the “world of blog” and, certainly, see tremendous value in the whole idea.

Your post, Trap of Being Nice, brought back memories of my early days, as a consultant. Although I do not typically comment on posts, I could not resist the desire to share thoughts from those early years. Personally, I am not sure I understand “the trap” in “being nice”, but it is really not important that I understand what you meant by what you said. I do sense the comment is borne out of the struggle you and/or your partners are called upon to develop a “price” for a propsective client/partner. For me, this was really tough “in the beginning”. Given the struggle I experienced every time, I decided to invest some time in developing a “framework” for dealing with this issue.

First, I found I have, approximately, 1900 man-hours per year with which to achieve my goals and further my “purpose”. Not usre about you folks, but that little bit of information brought reality “screaming” into my day! Clearly, this was a worthwhile investment of my time. Clarity around this issue took “center-stage” in my thoughts! Assuming solvency is one your goals, it should be fairly easy to determine what your minimum revenue requirement (Break-Even Point “BEP”) is for the year. For example, if you require $125,000 per year, you must avearage, roughly, $65.00 per hour. This approach may seem fairly simplistic (simplicity is wonderful), but it surely “drives” the point. As “/pd” said in his/her comment, “time is the one resource which cannot be harvested”. (I think that is because you can’t “grow” it! Just kidding!)

Additionally, it is important to consider the Paredo Principle. Even though there are those who would argue otherwise, I do believe that 80% of your success will come from 20% of your clients. Carried further, drawing on my personal experience, 80% of my revenue, annually, came from 20% of my clients.

IF you have clarity of purpose (a whole other discussion) and, IF you have clarity of your “circle of value”, you will have no difficulty developing a “value statement”, declaring your value to current, and future, clients/partners.

Keep having fun with it! I truly admire the “citizen” concept and look forward to following your progress.

Have a great day!

Larry

I just wanted to point out that if it is really a quick, simple job, it won’t take very long and even at your normal rate they won’t be paying very much–so there really is no reason to drop your rate. I found out the hard way that if you charge too little, the job can balloon out of control.

Woot Woot ?? who are you trying to kid eh ?? -

hahaha..just kidden !!

Being nice is nice, but being your worth is difficult. if you undermine yourself and your rates, your worth becomes less and that’s not what you want. Deep discounting may work for repeat customers, where the investment has already been done by both sides, so there is hardly any ‘learning’ curve to be enaged into.. they know what you do and you know how they operate kinda thingy.. being practical and saying..hey we now know each other (customer/Consultant relationship) is strong, we can stop pussy footing around adn get down stright to work. Thats when “Good will” kicks in by saying, hey we can cut your costs by $Y because of yada yada yada.. tiem being saved..

but at the end of the day, the value props that you create for yourself is the yardstick of measure which the community eyeballs you. Working as consultant is tough, because the rate’s always seem to be negotiable (at lest to the customer) –but that should not be the case.

My mentor told me this ” every new day is filled with possibilites. Its upto me to fill it with the things that move us all towards growth and knowledge”. Time is the only resource which cannot harvested. A minute wasted is a minute wasted..

Cutting your rate and taking on projects for the emotional appeal will never look good on the bottom line (especially for a bootstrapping start-up), but a little goodwill goes a long way. And they won’t all be flegling start-ups forever.

The results: I resented work I was doing but not being paid (enough) for, I didn’t bring what my clients needed to hear to them soon enough, I wasn’t honest with myself or my clients about how much work I could take on. That doesn’t mean I turn into a hard-edged business jerk, but as you say you have to start acting like a businessperson, but never give up the ‘person’ part.

Billing, delivering bad news, and charging full price are things that good clients expect. Bad ones will try to squeeze you for a bit more, and will rejoice at the idea of you shaving hours off the invoice. Good ones will be happy to pay it because they like what you do. For me, I really think a lot of it was simply a confidence issue, and with the excellent clients I’ve been lucky enough to have, I’ve been able to recognize value in my work that others saw before I did. And not once did I have to be mean.