Consulting as a Small Business – What you need to know – Small Business Show 152

The Small business show, episode 152 for Thursday, January 4, 2018. Greetings and happy New Year, folks. This is the Small Business show here at BusinessShow co. The show where you hear all kinds of strange sounds when you least expect it, but also the show by, for and about small business owners here in snowy Durham, New Hampshire.

I'm Dave Hamilton and in rainy Northern California, in Lafayette, this is Shannon Jean and I am the perpetrator of the noise. My apologies.

Our sponsor for this episode is a new sponsor for us. It's Biya B E E Y A where you can create a free account to both find employees or find a job. We'll talk more about that a little bit later. So, yeah, Happy New Year, Shannon.

Hey, Happy New Year to you as well. See, it's a new year. I've forgotten to mute everything when we start, but now we're good. All right, good. We're all, we're all set. So you had a great New Year's.

Yeah, I actually worked on New Year's Eve. I, I, you know, I'm a drummer, so we did a. I actually worked on Christmas Day this year, too. We played midnight performances on New Year's Eve and Christmas Day of the Rocky Horror show, which was, which was interesting, especially on New Year's Eve. People were. Yeah. Well, lubricated for that. As sure as you might imagine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's awesome. Work is good. We love our work. So it's always good to be doing it.

It is, yeah. It's true. That's very cool.

So what do we, what are we chatting about today, Dave?

We. I got a question, actually, from listener James, who's a listener of both this show and my MacGeek Gab podcast. And James is a consultant. And he said, well, he's about to be a consultant. And so he wrote and said, I'm hoping to move into doing my own thing and support consultancy is something I've long considered. I'm a fairly experienced Mac user, which is why he wrote into Mac Keycap, who knows my way around a lot of the common issues. I'd like to say I'm red hot on good network setups. My question, he says, is what sort of steps did you go through to make sure that you're doing everything right and that you can inspire confidence in your clients? Do you vet potential clients before you take them on? So, as we always do here, I kind of saw this question and thought, man, what a great topic for a show. Because this is like, there's so many people that do this and the start of the new year. This is not rare for something like this to happen.

And it's such a great bridge to maybe you have a main job and you want to go go out on your own, but you want to do things on the side to get started, and this can lead into that. So it's awesome.

Yeah. Consult. And the nice part about consulting is it certainly can be a very low or almost no cost to entry business. I don't want to say zero cost to entry, but certainly very low because chances are you're leveraging a skill set that you already have. You don't have to learn. You're just taking the value that already is in inside you and marketing that. And that's where things start to get interesting. I have all kinds of advice for James, but I'm going to kind of prioritize not necessarily the steps that you would normally take, but the things that matter most. And to me, the first thing to figure out is to make sure clients. There is a way for clients to pay you at the time services are rendered. I can't stress this enough.

Yeah, we've discussed this here before.

Yeah, right. But it's the difference between success and failure is just figuring out how to do this. And you know, these days it's actually pretty easy. You know, you don't have to figure out it used to just be cash or checks. Right. And by the way, always take cash if people offer it. There's very few scenarios where cash is a bad thing. It's not going to bounce for the most part. We'll talk about vetting clients. Checks certainly are part of that, but checks are okay to take, but you really want to be able to take credit cards. Thankfully, these days it's super easy to get that set up. You can do it with a number of things. You can do it with PayPal if you want. Square and stripe both make it really easy. You can get for free from them. You can get the swiper for your phone. I think you can pay about 30 or 40 bucks. And I highly recommend you do to get the chip reader for your phone so that you can just take everything and there's no weirdness and it just works. So to me, that's the most important thing is figuring out if you're going to be in business. You need to be able to have money coming in. So do that. Okay. Go ahead.

Good. Well, I was just going to add the other great thing about getting set up with these services is most of them if not all offer a subscription type of billing to where perhaps you need to be on call or you want to go to some kind of service contract model, which is awesome to have that income every month. You can set that subscription billing up automatically with your credit card where on the 1st of every month, if you're billing somebody, whatever, it'll just hit their card for your services, which is great.

I didn't even think about that. That's right. That changes everything. The other part b to that is having a way to give your clients an invoice. You don't just want to, when you leave, you both need to leave something behind with the other, they are leaving payment behind with you. That's a good thing. You want to leave an invoice with them. You don't want to say, I'll send you an invoice when I get home. Limiting the things you're going to do for the work you've already done. When you get home, you want to eliminate as much of that as possible. Because trust me, I know I share the mindset of a consultant. You go, you do the work, you love the work, especially this kind of thing, tech support consulting. If you're predisposed to doing that, you're going to love doing it most of the time, you know, sometimes it's going to be a pain, but yeah, you know, and then when you, when you leave that client, you kind of want to be done with that as much as you can. So don't say you're going to send them an invoice and wait for, wait to get paid. You just want to give them the invoice right there. I used to print out blank invoices that I would leave in my, you know, backpack or bag or you know, whatever it was I was bringing around to me with me. And I, you know, just fill it out by hand. A lot of times now, you know, with a smartphone you can take a picture of that and now you've got a record for yourself and you're good to go. You can use things like, like I know freshbooks and I think even quickbooks Online will let you do like send invoices via email. You certainly can do that if, if your customers are savvy enough to, to want their invoices that way. But, but yeah, yeah, there you go.

Yeah. And I think that another thing, and part of my notes today were follow up stuff, but I'll just add this here is when you leave them with an invoice or whatever you're going to do I think it's important to also leave them with some additional info. Like, what happens if the problem that you solved comes back? Is there some tips? Is there a handout, if you will, that an info sheet you can leave them with if you're there solving WI fi problems. Do you have a standard one page here? Here's tips and tricks when I'm not available in this kind of thing, which also comes back to your billing. What happens when the problem. If the problem reoccurs again? Does the customer understand that if you come back out, you're going to bill them again? I think that's really important that they know that, hey, you fixed my WI Fi. And then I tweaked this or I did this, and now it doesn't work anymore. Or in most cases, hey, it just doesn't work. You fixed it. It's broken again. Are you going to bill when you come back out?

Yeah.

Really important to make that clear.

I would say, and I know I've said it before on this show, but one of the most important tactics or practices, I guess it's a much better term, one of the most important practices I ever learned when I was doing consulting was when you're finished and you are satisfied that everything works, even if the customer is looking over your shoulder, get up, let them sit down at the computer, the iPhone, whatever it is, let. And let them with your hands off the process, let them test it themselves, because when that problem recurs, you have a much easier time having that conversation about, well, you know, we both tested it independently before I left, so clearly something must have happened. Let's see if together we can figure out what that was. It makes that process a whole lot easier to go through and to bill for if the customer has truly tested it themselves. So, yeah, that's great. Yep. Yep.

Awesome.

All right, step. Step two. Are we. You want to take. You want to take the next one? Sure. Okay.

Sure, sure. Well, my thoughts on consulting and Dave, you certainly have a lot more experience on it than I do, but we had a consulting, you know, division as part of our company and go out, and one of the. The thing that really stuck with me is all or most of the problems that would occur were all related to communication and effective communication with the clients that you're working with. And that is before you do business with them while you're doing consulting or solving their problems, and after critical steps along the way that can help you avoid problems. And, you know, in my experience, it was, you know, like, maybe like everything else, you Know, most of the time, everything flows smooth and people are happy. But if you don't have this information that you provide to them, you know, before, during, and after, it can be very problematic. And to your point, Dave, hard to solve that, hey, it didn't work. You know, it's not working anymore. Come back out and spend four hours for free.

Yeah.

You know, fixing it again, since you already charged me. So, you know, before you're. You're consulting, what services do you offer and maybe more importantly, what don't you. What can't you do and do not want to do? So how do your customers know that? Do they go on your website? Do you have something you provide to them? And in that same realm, why they should choose you? That's where you have your experience. Reviews, testimonials, and that kind of thing. Then back to billing. What do you charge and how is it handled? Are you charging by your time, by your project or the results and going through the whole thing? So they know how does the process work? Do you talk with them for free? Is there a free initial consulting 30 minutes or whatever it is? Do you bill for every single minute? Are you going to be able to bill while you're researching how to solve a problem? Because certainly you're not going to know how to solve every. Every single problem that's out there.

Right.

So your customer needs to understand that before you agree to go do the work. Because that, I think, eliminates a significant, you know, amount of confusion, if you will. Yeah, in the. In the process, for sure.

And I will, I will add to that and say, don't be afraid to talk money early on in the process. Right. I mean, think about it. If you're calling a plumber, the first thing you want to know is, God, what's this going to cost me? In fact, what you've probably said when you see whatever leak is happening is, oh, this is going to cost me a fortune. Right. You're already thinking about it. So if these people have contacted you to have you fix their computer, it's literally the same thing. They've already gotten frustrated. They can't fix it themselves. Now in their head, they're like, okay, I give up. They're waving the white flag. They know it's going to cost money. Here's the thing, it's going to be way weirder for you to talk money than it is them. Right. And as soon as you understand that, they are going to be very comfortable talking money, because that's what they have in mind to begin with. Then it's not going to be awkward for you to talk money at all. So be very comfortable right up front and just say, oh, hey, I'm happy to help. You know, maybe talk through the problem a little bit. If they call you on the phone or however they contact you and then say, yeah, I'd be happy to come out. The way I work is I charge 150 bucks an hour. I have a one hour minimum. But I don't charge for travel time in whatever area you're in and figure that out ahead of time so that you can speak comfortably, confidently, and without stumbling over your words. Don't apologize for your rates. I was always the most expensive consultant around and I used to tell people I have to charge this much because I work really quickly. And so if I don't charge this much, I won't make enough money to keep doing this. And eventually most of my customers are like, oh, yeah, I love having you because you get in and you just do the work. Yeah, I know.

Yeah. And that's like to James point about vetting your customer, that's kind of another way you're vetting the customer because you want the customer that is like, oh, I'm happy to pay you that. You're the guy. You don't want the guy that says, well, my nephew could come over and fix it for free, but he's not available, so could you come? You need to think. And that's when you're vetting that and having that first conversation. If the customer is already not happy paying what your rates are, I would argue that that's probably not the customer for you.

That's right. But you can create that customer by apologizing for your rates up front.

Yeah, that's true.

You know what I mean? At some level, you to decide how that interaction happens. If you're confident about it and you just say like, yeah, my rates are 150 an hour and I do this and don't do what I just did. Where you, you, you know, you speed up when you say the rate. Make it clear, be confident about it. It's fine. It's your rate. And if you're not comfortable with it, then rethink what you've done. I want to put a link in the, and I will put a link in the notes. But Laurie Duncan is a, she's actually a Mac consultant. So she's a great person for James in particular to model. But her, she calls herself Mac Samurai. She runs all over New York City doing this type of stuff. Very, very skilled, great person. Her website's actually great and probably worth anybody looking to do any kind of consulting to model. But her pricing page is brilliantly done because all of this stuff is right there. It's very, very straightforward and it, you know, obviously I'm sure she will tell you this over the phone if you were to call her that way. But if you visit her website, this is what you see. And it's, you know, 150 per hour for on site service within the five boroughs, 200 outside of that day rates on site calls have a one hour minimum, except where noted, subsequent billing time is in 30 minute increments. I almost said 15 because that's what I do or used to do, you know, that's good. But. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, yeah, yeah, I love it.

Yeah, it's great. This is really, really important. Yeah. And, and you definitely want to take a look at this. And it, I mean, we keep kind of coming back to this billing thing and money thing. But especially if you're just getting started out, you're going to find that this is a very common stumbling block and where a lot of great consultants fall down, fail.

Because if you don't do this, you're not actually in business. You're just helping people with their computers for free. Yeah. Or doing whatever your consulting is, you know, the next thing. And I really think, like, obviously you need to figure out how to market to these people. You know, build yourself a website. You can do that very, very easily in a variety of ways. You know, there's squarespace out there, there's, there's Wix. You know, you can set up a WordPress site, depends on how technically savvy and what you want to do. But this stuff is very, very simple and you want to have that. It will make you look legitimate and it doesn't, you don't have to spend, you probably don't have to spend any money on hiring someone to build your website for you. You can do a lot of this stuff there. You know, I, like I said I linked to Lori's page. She's got several pages on her website. You can easily do this with a single page design where it's not overly complex. You just have something out there where people, you show people what you do, you tell people what you charge and you give people a way to contact you. That's it. Then you got to figure out where to, where to market. Right. Which, you know, like I Google local ads from what I hear from other consultants that are, you know, Actively doing this. Now, that's a huge one because people will search on Google for. Yeah, sure, you know, for their things. Yelp is another. Make sure you have a Yelp presence so that people can find you and review you. And then I think, Shannon, you can talk for probably a year about that.

Yeah, it's important. That's right. I think one of the things like you've done, Dave, is you've branded yourself Dave the Nerd. And like Max Samurai, that's much, much better. Again, consulting, there is no barrier to entry to your point earlier. And that's a thing. And it can be a challenge because there's lots of Bob the computer dude I know floating around out there. But you want to be above that. So you want to have a branded name, whether it's got your name in it, like Dave the Nerd or Max Samurai, something in it, an entity to where when people are searching, it's going to come right up and you've got your Yelp reviews. Yelp is. I have a love hate relationship with them. But the one thing they are very, very good at is search engine optimization to get your name and ranking and reviews up there at the top of the search list. And that'll help you tremendously. Yeah, definitely want to do that.

Yep, for sure. You know, I want to talk. I have some more thoughts about this, which is going to come as no great surprise. But I do want to spend a minute or two and talk about bia, our first sponsor. Like I said, they're a new sponsor here for the show at B e y a dot com. They are a job matching website that takes the hunt out of job hunting because they've built an algorithm and they've actually spent a lot of time building this algorithm to match employees with employers based on each party's specific requirements. And it's not just that you go to some of these job sites, you go there and you say, I want to work in this field. And an employer says, okay, I want to find somebody that works in this field. And then they match you up. No, no. This looks for the specific requirements of the employer and the specific skills of the employee. And the algorithm kind of is like your high school guidance counselor, only like, you know, way knowledgeable about everything. And they'll take your skill set and say, you know, have you ever thought about doing this? Because there's somebody looking for work and this matches what you say you do, even though you never would have gone and applied for that job. And so, like I said, they've spent A lot of time, a lot of money. They are a very well funded company. And one of the benefits of being a very well funded company is they can offer this for free to you as an employee, to you as an employer. And they did a great investment round and they've got their stuff together, they've got a good foundation, they're able to do this. So take advantage of it while it exists. B E-E-Y-A.com is where you're gonna go to create your account. And it's free, so you have nothing to lose. Very, very cool stuff. We got to talk to the. In fact, we might bring her on the show. We got to talk to the CEO and founder of Be There.

She was great.

She's great. Yeah. And unlike other job sites, you don't have to have 100% match. It'll connect you if there's an 80% match. Like I said, this algorithm, it's smart enough to know that. Yeah, there's probably a fit here. Let's take a look. It continues to match after you join. Right. So it's constantly taking your profile and applying it to all the things that are out there, not just the things that are there when you join. And it's for businesses of all sizes. Very, very cool. So Again, visit b E-E-Y-A.com biya.com today to create your account. And it's free. You got nothing to lose. Our thanks to BIA for sponsoring the episode.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

Because you're going to start your consulting business and eventually you'll have to hire some employees, Right?

Yeah.

So it's a great place to start.

That's right. That's right. Or if you need a gig while you're getting your consulting business going, this is also the way to do it. So, yeah, it's cool stuff. All right.

Good stuff.

Good stuff. Yeah. Kind of the next thing that I wanted to talk about, Shannon, was certifications. Now, this is very specific to the tech consulting thing. I look at certifications as marketing value. They can be a great thing from that standpoint. But unless you need them for marketing value, I would not prioritize going out and getting certs before you start consulting. Now, you might have stuff, extra stuff that you want to learn. If in the process of learning that you wind up taking a class that gets you a certification, by all means, put that certification on your website and anywhere else it makes sense. But I wouldn't hamstring yourself by saying, well, I can't do consulting because I don't have those certs. Your skills are what's going to bring the money in and just focus on that. I wouldn't go crazy about the certs. What do you think about that, Shannon?

Well, I agree we had Apple certified technicians, but again, it was so we could put that info up on our website and it made people feel good and this kind of thing that, hey, even though we, excuse me, new, I mean our techs, their real world experience was incredibly far beyond the basic technical skills that an Apple certified technician needs to have.

Right.

It is still to the, to the uneducated consumer, they look at that and go, oh, that's cool, you've actually done something. But your, your point about not letting anything get in the way of you starting is the critical, I think, factor. You know, you just want to get out there and start and along the way as you pick up things and put them in your hat as marketing feathers, if you will. That's awesome. But nothing should stop you.

Yeah, we always ask people, as listeners know what's your favorite mistake? And there is one that seems to be a common thread with people and it's, I wish I had started sooner. Like that's the constant thing. It's just like, oh, I don't know why I waited so long to do this. And of course we do know why we wait so long. There's fear. I mean all of that stuff. Right. But yeah, don't let the certs fuel that and justify that fear or that procrastination. Just get going and you'll find out very quickly if you actually need those certs. You probably don't now. I mean, obviously if you're, if you're going to consult by being a CPA or an attorney.

Yes, that's right.

That's a little bit different than, than some of this other stuff. But yeah, otherwise just get. Yeah.

Hey, so can we jump back to my communication? I've got a couple of more things I want to hit before we wind down here. And so we talked about before doing business and communicating with the customer. And I think equally important is during the services that you're offering. So during the consultation, having the customer being clear and concise with the customer on what you will achieve, what problem or service are you really there to perform? Be specific. If you're a tech consultant and you're there to fix the WI fi connectivity, that's what you're going to do and then you're done. While you're there, they want you to look at their Photoshop or their monitor doesn't work or also doesn't print, you can add those things on. But like any contractor, building contractor will tell you, you need to be clear that, hey, we're adding these things on and it's going to be an extra cost.

Right.

You know, the same if you're, if you're doing project work, hey, I'm going to. I'm going to get 5,000 new Instagram followers for you. Great. That's the project. Here's what you're going to charge. And you know, we both agree that this is when the job is done, is when I fix that problem.

Yep.

And these are just clear, concise benchmarks. We're moving towards this. If you're doing this service, I'm going to get you 5,000 followers or whatever. I'm going to do it this many per week over this time. Really clear. So you can show that you achieved what the client is paying you for.

Right.

Because if it's vague and you're just kind of coming over, you're going to fix their problem. This generic stuff, it can cause you problems.

Totally, totally. Yeah. I have a couple of. I kind of want to dig into a couple of the things you said. The first is, is just generally communicating during the consultation. That can be the difference between getting paid and not getting paid, especially when the problem is unsolvable. Because if you go in, and again, we're kind of focusing on the type of business that James wants to do here. But there's a lot of you out there that are interested in this kind of thing. So if you tell the customer or the customer is led to believe that they are paying only for resolution, whatever that means, you're going to run into problems. Because there are going to be things where you get in, you start digging in, you go deeper and deeper, and you finally realize, oh, whoa, now that we know the cause of this, well, this isn't solvable. You either need a new computer or you need a new car, or you need it. Right. I mean, you have to make sure that they understand what it is they're paying for. Now, in some businesses, you are going to charge just for the solution or just for a specific thing. That's fine. Make sure you're both aware of that. But if you're charging for your time, you really need to. I found communicating with the customer all the way through the process, explaining what you're doing, what you're doing next, and why, and if you get to a point where you're like, well, I could do a Next. Or I could do B next. Talk that out with the customer. They might not understand all the technical details or whatever, but, you know, and this is true of the computer repair. This is true of an auto mechanic. Like, you know, we're troubleshooting here. There is no magic answer that presents itself, because if it did, we already would have done that. But now we're in the troubleshooting phase. So we could do A, we could do B. Here's what A, what kind of time A will take and what, you know, kind of cost that would be. Here's B, what kind of cost that would be. And decide together. So that as you're marching down, you're. You're having this ongoing conversation with the cluster, with the customer, as opposed to getting to the end and then trying to encapsulate it all. You'll never get there.

Yeah. So you're. You're having. Just so I'm clear on it, while you're working or as you show up to do the job. I mean, because it's a very difficult thing if you're there to fix a, you know, oh, I can't connect. Let's use my WI Fi example. I can't connect to WI Fi. And with my iPad or whatever it is, and you're working on it, I would agree that that's critically important, because if you can't fix it, it's not just like, well, you didn't fix it, so I'm not going to pay you. Are you having that conversation before you start working or during or both?

It's all of the above. Yeah. It's just constant. And I've had customers say, look, I don't want to hear about it. And at that point, I'll tell them, okay, look, that's fine. There's two reasons that I talked to you about this. Number one is I find that sometimes just me trying to explain it to you helps frame it better in my mind. And I get you a solution that I wouldn't have otherwise stumbled on because it forces me to think about it as opposed to just sort of reacting and plowing through. And that's very true, in fact.

Sure.

Certainly makes sense. Yeah. For me. But it's not just me, it's everybody. Because otherwise you get tunnel vision sometimes and you just.

Well, you're like pulling tidbits of information out of the customer as well. Right.

Yes.

Could help you. Oh, I didn't know you were doing it this way, you know.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

You don't want to wait till the end to get that.

No, you don't. In fact, it's often best for. Along those lines, it's often best to have the customer show you the problem, because sometimes the problem is in the way they go about doing things, not what they're trying to do in the end.

Sure.

So watching that path and being aware of it can be very, very enlightening. But the other is that.

And how about. I'm sorry. No, I was going to say I'm curious to this as well. I have a good question.

The second part of it is I tell the customer, look, not only does it help me solve the problem, but it helps you understand the value that I am bringing to solving this problem. Because we might not get to the solution you want. My goal is to get to the solution you want, but there's no guarantees because we don't know what the problem is yet. So I like to make sure you understand what we're doing so that when we do get to a point where a decision has to be made, you are informed. And sometimes I've had people say, yeah, well, I'm too busy for that. Okay, that's fine. And then, yeah, I tried. Right. I'm not going to be a jerk about it. But, yeah, yeah. So.

And are you focused? Yeah, my question is, like, then are you focused, like, how long it takes and all the hours that you spend there, I mean, you know, versus your billing. If, you know, I've always struggled with, oh, wow, man, this guy spent six hours on site and now he's telling me, oh, I can only bill for four, you know, this kind of thing. How do you handle that?

Yeah, you know, I am, as I said before, abundantly clear about my hourly rate upfront and the fact that I do charge for, you know, all the time that I spend there and how that works. So when I. When I'm on site, and certainly if we get to a point where it's like we need to decide A or B, you know, I'll say, like, you know, it used to be. And this is in the old days, but used to be, you'd get to a point, especially with Windows computers, where it was like, look, we've been trying to find this needle in the haystack for the last hour. So we're at an hour now. And I'm always aware of this in my head. I don't communicate it all the time, but I'm always aware of how much time I've spent there. And of course, what that's costing this person, that's going to pay me eventually. And so if I feel like I've spun my wheels enough, I've got to stop and just be the responsible consultant and say, okay, look, we've spent an hour on this. I've tried the things that seem most obvious to me, and we haven't been able to fix it. With those, I can keep spinning my wheels, and it's possible that in five minutes I'm going to stumble on the thing that is the problem, and then we're out of here, we're done. But it's also possible that we could go another five hours and we're not going to find that thing. So plan B would be, let's start down a different path and, you know, wipe your computer clean and reinstall the operating system, restore it from a backup and see if we can get things resolved there. Because that's a much more, you know, it depends on the problem. But a lot of times, you know, you can be pretty certain that that's going to go ahead and solve the problem, even though it's going to take whatever time that's going to take. And you have to give the customer the estimate of, okay, here's what I think it'll take to do that. So we've got, you know, sort of a defined period of time that's maybe longer than you wanted to spend or a undefined period of time. It is sort of nebulous. And I always, you know, it's good to have that conversation. It's never a fun conversation, but if you've been doing your job up until that point, telling the customer what you're doing, proving your value to them, by the time you get there, they trust you, which they should. You're not there to screw them. Right? You know, Right.

Of course.

But you can't do that. When you walk in the door fresh with somebody new, you have to demonstrate some value first. And again, figuring out how to demonstrate that value without bringing a solution to the customer is the difference between successful and unsuccessful consultants. And so it's that talking process of just, you know, hey, here's what I'm doing, here's what I think, and it can be really helpful. But I don't.

That's great.

You know, kind of along that same line, I don't obsess over the hours in terms of my communication with the customer. Like, if I say, like if in your example, okay, we're getting the WI fi fixed and we're at the end of that. Let's say we've got the WI fi working. And they say, you know, while you're here, I'd like to have you look at the printer. I would never say to the customer, you know, that's going to cost you more because we haven't stopped the clock yet. Like, to me, that's assumed. If you think you're only paying for the hour and 15 minutes I spent on your wifi, and the next 30 minutes that we spent on the printer is not billable because we didn't talk about that when you called me on the phone. Like, to me, there's a tacit agreement, and actually it's an explicit agreement that you're paying me for the hours that I spend. It doesn't quite matter what we're doing, as long as we both agree I should be doing these things.

Yes, that's right.

And so in those things, I don't say, you know, that's going to cost you more, because that's just foolish business, frankly.

That's right.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah.

Very good. Very good. So for me, I have a couple more comments left about, you know, what happens after you do the work. And I think that, you know, one of the hardest things to do is follow up either with. Even when you're selling a product, right? It's always like, hey, how's it working? Do you like it? Well, if you're doing your service, you know, are things still working okay? Are you happy with the results? Because when most people are not happy, you just won't hear from them again ever, and they will not use your services again, and you don't want that. Obviously, if they're not happy, you want to solve that problem, even if that means, despite what, you know, Dave and I have been telling you, billing for all your time, you may have to go back out there and make somebody happy. Yeah, that's certainly going to happen.

To that point, I have. It was not. It certainly wasn't happening at every appointment, but if I did 10 appointments, there might be one out of every 10 where I spent three hours, but only build for two and a half if I felt. And again, this is where you get into the confidence of your own abilities, especially with something where you're troubleshooting. There are going to be things that you do that in the end have no value, but they were part of the process of getting you there. And it's okay to bill for your expertise. And the way I always looked at it was, what would I do if this were my computer? That's only when troubleshooting when setting something up new. It doesn't matter what I want. It's what the customer wants. But in terms of troubleshooting, is this what I would have done if it were my computer or my car or whatever it is? And if the answer was yeah, then I wouldn't feel bad and I would charge for all the time. But sometimes something would happen and be like, okay, yeah, you know What? I spent 30 minutes kind of doing my own thing on this. I'm not going to bill you for that. Or sometimes it was a really good customer and maybe it was my 10th trip out there. So it's like, you know, you've been a great customer to me. We spent a lot of time today. If this were anybody else, and this is a great phrase to use, if this were anybody else, we wouldn't even be having this conversation. I just give you a bill for all. For the. For all the time I spent. But you've been a good customer. I'm going to cut today's bill in half. I know you've been through a lot. You know, that kind of thing. And that, that can be great customer service. Yeah, yeah.

And that's how you get referrals from those customers, and that's how you get to ask that question, well, what's the next project that we're working on? So that's all good. Follow up with the customers. And we'd certainly like to hear your stories about what's worked in your consulting business. And you can let us know. Feedbackusinessshow Co. Or in the small Business support group at businessshow Co. Facebook.

That's right. Businessshow Co. Facebook, folks. Good stuff. I love this stuff, man. It's so much fun. Yeah. Yeah.

That's great.

Good. I want to thank B B E E Y a dot com. Remember to head over there and create your free account today. That way you can both find a job or find somebody to do a job for you. It's great, great, great stuff. Always be following up, folks. That's the key.

That's right.

We'll see you next time. Take it easy.