How Much to Charge as a Consultant - Hourly-Based Pricing Strategy

Welcome to today's episode of Black Belt Startup with Feras. Thank you for tuning in. So what's new in the world of entrepreneurship? Pricing, pricing, pricing. How much to charge as a consultant, and specifically, what is the optimal hourly-based pricing strategy. That is what we want to discuss today. And if you're new to this channel, I'm Feras Alhlou. I've built 7 companies, exited one and sold it to Dentsu, the global media giant. And I'm on a mission to help new consultants succeed, build their business, build a business they're proud of, make it profitable, build an amazing culture and achieve their dreams. And I provide strategies and tips on how to start, how to build, and how to scale consulting businesses. So if pricing— if you're new to sales and if you're new to pricing and pricing feels fuzzy, it feels capped or stressful, this is your reset. Whether you're guessing your hourly rate or whatever you've been doing, is not working. I know that the results are typically the same. You're overworked, you are— your margins are low, and then you're constantly second-guessing when you're pricing. And I can tell you that I was in the same exact boat when I started. I, I had no idea. I was trying to sell project-based and I tried— I heard someone talk about value-based and I tried that and failed miserably initially. And then after so many different trials and so many different attempts, I landed on hourly pricing. Now I'm not saying hourly pricing is the only one way to price. As a matter of fact, I have an entire video, a 19-minute video on all the pricing models for consultants. You can check out on the channel, in the channel, one of our ultimate guides. And I go over the pros and cons of every pricing model. But for those of you who are about to start or you've started, I believe, I highly recommend that hourly is the most optimal and the best solution for you from a pricing perspective. And I'll go over a whole lot of questions on this topic. 26 of them to be exact, and I'll also send you— I'll share with you a link of a video that I made recently on hourly pricing where I talked about how it works, when it works, when it doesn't, what to do when clients ask you tough questions. So all of that information is available in the pricing video, the hourly video, and I'll put those links in the description, one for the pricing models, the 7 pricing models, in case you want to explore different things and want to learn before you get your feet wet. And also I'll have a link to the hourly-based pricing and all the details around it. And I can tell you, like I said earlier, um, I've, I've been in the same boat that you, you are in. I know when we pivoted from digital marketing to analytics and we started to specialize and we, we knew our craft really well by that time, we decided let's move, let's higher our rates, let's go from $150 an hour to $250 an hour. Now that was a big jump, and I remember one of those very early proposals that we sent, that I sent with, with the $250 an hour. I wasn't sure, can I defend this rate if the clients the client comes back with rejections or with questions, can I answer? But I felt, I felt that we had a good handle on what we were doing. We were— we studied this space of analytics at the time really well, so we knew our craft really well. We were very responsive. We were also, from a, from a level of service, we provided white glove service. We really took care of our clients. So I I, in my mind, after all the thoughts or maybe the negative thoughts, I came to a conclusion that I can defend this rate, so we went with it, but I was still hitting refresh, hitting refresh, you know, the feeling to see what the client would say, whether they would negotiate or potentially just reject the whole proposal. But I got that email eventually. It says, hey, Feras, looks— this looks great. When can we start? And that 5-second moment changed a lot in my mind. It was, it was a big shift because it wasn't about the $250 an hour or the $275 an hour or $200 an hour, you know, depending, depending on your service, depending on your market, you might be offering different rates that work, that work for you. But it's not about the specific hour, but the specific hourly rate. It was really about us having that confidence that I have something to offer that people appreciate and value, and they're willing to pay me money for that. And that was really important. And that was, that was the shift. And it was something that I had, and that was, that I was afraid of showing to people and making assumptions and how they react. And that just led for us, led us to delay upping, you know, hiring our rates. So, so if you're in that same boat, if, if you're not ready to up your rates, if you're not ready to charge $250 an hour, I understand. Maybe you're just starting out and you're not sure. You just want to get in and get your first few clients at a lower hourly rate. I get it. But the idea about pricing and being nervous about, about it, being stressed Stress about it. You're not sure how high, how low, what what is involved. All of that is something I hope we'll cover today, and if we don't cover today, and if you're joining us, if you're joining us later, feel free to comment on whichever channel you're on: YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, on on X. We're there. We're we're there. I read all these comments and I reply. If it's something very maybe specific, something personal, you don't want to share that question publicly, email me at feras@startupwithferas.com. I read all these questions, I answer them, I keep it all confidential, so if you have a question, you don't want to put it out there publicly, just email me at feras, F-E-R-A-S, @startupwithferas.com, and I'll be more than happy to answer. And one more administrative thing before we wrap up. Get to the 26th question— questions, and that is about this live stream and the live streams that I do. I cover a business topic and then I answer all the questions that I get from the community. So if you have a question on your mind, pricing or otherwise, email me, comment here, let me know, leave me— connect with me on LinkedIn, wherever you are. I'll be more than happy to take all these questions And address them in these live streams and help you start and grow the business that you are dreaming on building and scaling. Good, good, good. So let's now move into the questions. And I should be able to put them all here on the screen for those of you watching so you can see it. And again, for those of you who are just joining us, I'm here to answer questions on pricing for, for this session. If you have something else beyond pricing, business related, go ahead and add it as well. I'll see if we have time at the end of the session. I'll be more than happy to answer, or maybe I can answer you offline. But let's talk about pricing. So where is the first one? Right here. I have them all ready to go. Okay, what is wrong with fixed price, uh, fixed pricing? What is Why is fixed pricing risky early on? Very good question. Well, fixed price, fixed project-based or fee-based pricing, or fixed fee pricing, all of those mean the same thing. Basically, you go to a client and you say, I will build a website for you for $5,000. I will do a financial audit for you for $10,000. I will do a broad— I will rebrand your company for, you know, $10,000. That's just a fixed fee price. So it's a good model, fixed fee, project-based. That is a good model to use initially. Initially, I do not want you to use fixed pace— I initially, I don't want you to use fixed-based— can't say it today— fixed-based pricing. Why? Because when you are just starting out, or let's say you launch a new service line and this whole area, the new area that you're launching, it's new to you. So you won't know, you will not be able to discern all the details, all the nuances of what you have to do and what the customer is looking to have. There'll be a lot of nuance that you just haven't been exposed to. So there's a huge risk of something called scope creep, where you're thinking you're building something this big and the client, in their mind, they have something this big. You want, you know, you're thinking of doing their financial audit for this customer and he's thinking him and his wife and his business, because things are— the contract or the proposal or the discussion is very high level. So again, project-based or fee-based, fixed fee-based pricing is not a bad model, but initially focused on hourly and be very specific in, in, in terms of what you offer, what you offer in for those hours. So for example, you can say for, let's say you're a social media marketing consultant. So you can say, I will go in and I will audit 3 of your channels. I will look at Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, and I will do a full audit, and I will provide you with an audit report and recommendations. I'll do all of that in 12 hours. Okay, so that is— that's what— and then maybe specify the specific handle because they might have 3 YouTube channels and 3 Instagram channels and 4 TikTok channels. So, so again, be, be very specific in any, any, any kind of pricing model. In general, you want to be specific around scoping and framing, packaging what you're solving for the client. So that is in terms of what's wrong with— there's nothing wrong with fixed fee pricing. It is just initially there's just a lot of unknowns. You don't know what's included, what's not included. You don't know what is it the customer will be doing. You don't know if you have payment milestones. It might take forever. For these milestones to be accomplished. So if you said, okay, I will do this work for 10 hours, I'll do it in the next couple weeks, and here's what I need from you, client. And that is just much, um, uh, much more optimal for you as a consult— as a new consultant. And then the beauty of this is that let's say halfway, halfway through, you, you've, you've identified that the client has other channels that you did not— let's say in the case of the marketing consultant and the customer hasn't really brought that up, you can let them know, hey, Mr. Customer, this is the scope of the work I was— I'm planning on doing, completing this work for those 3 channels that we discussed in 10 hours. I found you have other platforms, other channels. I can also do them for another $5, for another 5 hours. So, so you can— you can— the client doesn't know you yet. He doesn't know what to expect. I, I think that hourly incremental Hourly approach will help you solve the problems for the client right away and then start building that trust that you are charging for the specific amount of time you're working for them and for their, you know, for the problem that you're trying to solve. So that is on the first question in terms of risky, the project-based being risky. Let's move on to the next question. Question. Is hourly pricing outdated in 2026? I don't think it's outdated at all, actually. I don't know if it will ever be outdated. I don't know. But for now, it's not outdated. I did read some articles, including one on the, um, on the— where was it— on the WSJ, Wall Street Journal, that I think the title was a bit provocative, that Hourly pricing is gone, is outdated. For new consultants, you really have to be careful what advice you get and who you get it from. Of course, Wall Street Journal is a very established newspaper publisher. They know what they're talking about. You might not agree with some of the stuff they say, but it's an authoritative source of information. No doubt, but does that apply to you as a new consultant? That's what I want you to, to question when you hear advice from other people. Some of these gurus on, on the internet, they say hourly pricing is awful, is terrible, doesn't work. Use value-based pricing, use performance-based pricing. Yes, those other pricing models exist, but for you as a new consultant, or if you're struggling with selling struggling with margins, stick with hourly. It works really well. So it's not outdated. Now, of course, in the age of AI automation efficiency, if it used to take you 2 hours to do some research that you can now do in 5 minutes, you have to be transparent with the client if you're doing hourly. You can't just go and run a quick prompt, a sloppy prompt. Sometimes I see you know, ChatGPT or Gemini and take that and package it and give it to the customer. Use AI. I use AI. Use it responsibly. But clients are savvy, they research. So you as a consultant, you, you want to be efficient, you want to be— you want to, you want to use automation, you want to use AI to support what you're doing. And anything that's mundane, that's repeatable, something that you can automate, why not automate and do it, do it quickly so you can apply more of your thinking, more of the client care, more, more of the strategy, strategizing, doing some of the things that AI cannot do for you on your behalf. So this way you still charge hourly, you still leverage AI, and you'll be the consultant that this client who will be happy with your performance, he'll— you'll be the one he or she will refer to other people because you are very efficient. So you might have quoted 10 hours and you've used AI responsibly to help you research and automate certain things, while another consultant who's doing things manually or maybe is not using AI, he could be— he or she could be using billing 15 or 20 hours, where you with your efficiency and using AI and automation, all of that will make you stand out, will make you differentiate. So keep that in mind. But good question. So moving on to the next one, why is hourly pricing the right starting point? So I, I just covered this actually a little bit ago, but hourly work— hourly, hourly pricing works at all, at all phases of a business and across small, mid-sized, large organizations, and I've seen it work. I've seen it work really well. But initially— and actually, before I go that, I have a pricing matrix. So when you go to my pricing model video, the 19-minute video I mentioned, I do have at the end of that video, I have a pricing matrix where I show all the pricing models and and where they fit depending on your journey, and I used 2 dimensions there. One is the level of sophistication with your tools, your processes, your— the way you manage the customer, and also your level of proficiency in your own domain. So if you're a novice, if you're just starting out, again, hourly is what I recommend, but as you gain more experience, as you become very proficient and start to reach mastery in your domain and also have, have elaborate and have, have systems and processes, you can do performance-based, you can do tiered pricing, you can do other things that require more, a bit more of knowledge in the domain and also knowledge of the domain of your client and also ways to track your results and, and report those results to clients. So, so again, I think from a, from a, for a new consultant or someone who's just debating and struggling with which pricing model to use, stick with hourly for now. And, and there's no issue. I've seen small organizations and I've seen organizations with thousands of employees use hourly pricing. Now, as you get, as you get bigger as a business, you need more systems, more processes. You will need people to manage all this back end of hourly reporting and to maintain profitability and make sure you're using the hours that— and this whole, this whole thing, the whole back end system has to be in place. But initially, when you're starting out, you don't need a lot of sophistication. A system, a spreadsheet will be your system to track things for you and maybe the first couple of hires you have, or maybe the first contractors that you have. So keep that in mind when you are Deciding which, which, which pricing model to use. Stick with hourly initially. Next question: What expense— this is a good one too— what expenses should be included in pricing? So to give you an example, so you offer someone to do, let's say, let's say an HR consultant. and you want to go in and improve employee morale and you want to improve the whole, the entire process they use for performance evaluation and feedback. So you might, you know this stuff cold, you're a consultant, you know the system, you know the tools, but let's say the client is using another tool that you haven't worked on before, and for you to do that job, that project effectively, you have to learn that tool, the customer, the one that the customer is using. So is it, do you charge the time for you to learn that tool to the client, part of your hourly project, or do you put that time against your own, on your own dime, right? I don't know if there's a hard and fast rule there, but basically I would say I would— I wouldn't charge the time to research the client's tool. I would not put that in my invoice because that's just me as a consultant. I'm the consultant. I'm expected to know a lot of things about the industry that the client is in, about the systems, the processes, the technologies around HR consulting, right? So people are, are hiring, hiring me because of me being a consultant, a knowledgeable person. So, so anything to do with the client, with the project, they— if they specifically ask you to go and research their competitors, all of that I think is, is valid to be, to be invoiced against the hours that you have. But anything that are more industry specific, or you want to acquire more knowledge about the domain of the client or about the tools that they're using, I think that is something that you want to do on your dime, on your own dime, not, not build a client for. And the best thing here is to be very transparent with the client. Clients don't like surprises, so especially when they have to pay for those surprises. Oh yeah, by the way, we need 5 more hours. Oh yeah, we need 10 more hours because of this, because of that. Or hey, I use all the hours researching, learning your new tool. Imagine, put yourself in their shoes. You're paying someone to do something for you to improve, help you improve employee morale and the performance, employee performance process, and then you, you spend most of the time learning the tool and then billing them for it. I don't think they'll— it will land really well with them. So the best thing is to be clear in what's included in your hourly billing and what's not included. So clarity is really important, especially as a new consultant. Your reputation is really important. So if you establish a reputation where, where you are nice to work, you're knowledgeable, easy to work with, you don't nickel and dime, you're— the most important, you are reliable and also that reliable, dependable, and of course trustworthy. That is, earning someone's trust is hard. So, so as I think, yeah, Warren Buffett, he, he said your reputation is like fine china, so expensive and hard to get and so easy to break. So as a new consultant, especially if you're, you're working maybe in, in a domain, in a specific niche, and people talk, right, you want to be known in that domain that, that this person is reliable, dependable, knowledgeable, and they are trustworthy. They don't— they bill you for the time they work. That's the reputation you want to establish, and that is the DNA you want to have for your own business and with the employees and the contractors that you work with. Good, good. Moving on. What percentage of time is realistically billable? So that's a really Good question, because when I was working on that video that I just mentioned earlier, the hourly pricing sort of ultimate guide there, I covered a lot of details and I did a lot of research online and I noticed a lot of the new consultants assume, you know, I work 40, 50 hours a week and then I can, hey, if I can bill at $100 an hour, times 50 hours a week, that's $5,000 a week, times 4, that's $20,000 a month. Well, the, the math looks nice on a spreadsheet, always, always, but you have to, you have to spend time selling. Well, you have to spend some time marketing, selling, networking. Be— you have to, if you're working, if you're just starting, you might have to do some paperwork with lawyers, you want to set up your accounting system. So even if all that back office is set up and established and it's functioning well, you still have to spend time on non-billable work. So I would say use initially, use, I would say 60%, that is the factor I would use. So if you work 40, let's say you work Um, 160 hours a month. So, so, and I have, I, I have those cards from the video that I worked on the other day. So if you have 160 hours, time, uh, divided by, uh, or multiplied by 60, 60%, you basically get 96 billable hours. So I would start, I would start with 96 hours. Assume you have 96 hours to bill. So that is, that is the pool of hours you have. Now, of course, If you're the ambitious type and you want to put in more time, you want to work 60 hours a week, so you have an extra 20 hours a week. And let's say half of those are billable because you're spending a lot of time out there networking and getting leads. So instead of having, um, just 24 hours a week, now you've increased that 24 96 hours a month, 24 hours a week. Now you have 24 plus 10, 34 hours a week. And if you're selling this at $100 an hour, that's another $1,000 a week that you can get, assuming there's demand, assuming there's, you know, you're able to sell that. So keep that in mind. The number of, I would use from a planning perspective, if you're in this phase of thinking of, taking the leap and you're putting these nice financial plans and sales plans, I would use 0.6, 60% as a factor for determining how many billable hours you'll have in a given month or in a given week. All right. So that is, that is, that's what I would, again, you can increase that amount by putting more, more, more times, um, by putting more time in, more billable, more hours into the week. Now, some of you might say, wait a second, I have obligations. I have this. I have that. I thought I can become a millionaire and work 30 hours a week. It doesn't happen. It does not work that way. If you want to establish a sustainable business, a profitable business in consulting and services, it takes blood, sweat, and tears. It takes a lot of commitment. There's no overnight success. Overnight success has taken Years of preparation and work and hard and experience. So, so there's no other way out. You have to put more time. I'm not saying you, you sever the relationships. I'm not saying you don't take care of the young ones at home or the spouse or the, the aging parents, or if you have committed to a nonprofit. Yes, and obviously I want you to be healthy and active. But something has to get— something has to give. So, so when I'm saying here work 60 hours a week, I'm saying something has to give, meaning you tell your business partner, you tell your life partner that for this phase, for this season, you will be putting more time at work. So get their buy-in and then cut down on maybe hobbies, cut down on leisure time, cut down on TV, cut down on things, on some social activities. I'm not saying don't have, don't have a social life, but something has to give, especially when if you want to build and grow a very profitable business, you want to have a company that you'll be proud of, you want to, you want to leave a legacy It requires a lot of hard work upfront. Later, in later phases, in future seasons, you'll have time. You can, you can slow down a little bit. You can hire people to help you. You don't have to work crazy hours your entire life. But if you want to building something worthwhile, it does take a lot of commitment, a lot of time. There is, there is no ifs, buts, ands about it. None of that. There is hard work, there's learning, working smart, working hard, learning from others, learning from our own mistakes, but it does take time to— it does take time and commitment and effort to build something worthwhile. All right, went off on a tangent there for a little bit. All right, but I get these questions all the time. Someone— anyhow, said enough about it. Moving on to the next question. How do you calculate your How do you calculate a minimum hourly rate? So that's another related question. So we talked about, let's just for now assume 40 hours a week times 60%, that gives us 96 hours a month, right? Now what I want you to do is to have, you can use this formula, and again, I have these cards from the last video, is on the hourly rate is your total number of total monthly revenue, the amount of revenue that you need, and I'll go into what goes into that number, and you divide that by your billable hours. So the total monthly revenue that you want to have, you divide that by the total monthly billable hours, okay? So if our goal, our target monthly revenue is $10,000, we divide that by 96, so $10,000 divided by 96, we get $104. Let's round that up to $110, just sounds better. So that's our hourly rate, $110. Now, how do we get to that $10,000 number, the total revenue? So you have to think of— I think I have an example here as well. You have to look at your business expenses, 3 things. First, business expenses, office rent if you're renting, internet, phone, networking, all of that stuff, right? Let's say it's $3,500. And then what you take home, your, your take-home pay, let's say including taxes and Social Security and all that, let's say it's $5,000. So $3,500 for business expenses, $3,500 for your take-home, and then let's say $1,500 for profit, for your margin, because you have to have a cushion. You have to have a profit in the business so you can reinvest, so you can buy tools to automate, to streamline, to hire people. So if you add those up, $3,500 plus $5,000— so expenses, take-home pay, and then a profit margin— you get $10,000. Now you can do this formula in different ways, but this is, this is the basic idea. If is add all these 3 things up and you get to $10,000. Now in your area, maybe $5,000 will be just fine. Maybe you need $15,000. So all of that will determine an hourly rate and also the amount of hours you have to sell, right? Every week, every month for you to get to that target. So with our 96-hour a month example, we have to be able to sell 96 hours and also charge at $104 or $110. That will give us the number. So that is how I would calculate it. And again, if you're just starting out, you might not be able to sell 96 hours a month. You might not be able to sell at this minimum billable hour, but that's your target. And initially it's okay. Initially you're learning. I'm hoping you've watched some of my other videos on how to build a 6-month financial runway. The financial runway is going to be really helpful for you to make sure the finances are in check and the finances are in order so you can focus on growing the business. So check out my livestream. I have a livestream on a 6-month financial runway that every entrepreneur needs to have. And if you have that in place, then you'll have a bit of a cushion if you can't sell all the billable hours that you have, and if you cannot sell at the hourly rate that you aspire to have initially, it's okay because you're still learning, you're still building, but you can't be in that, in that, uh, space for the, for the, for the rest of, of your journey because you'll run out of, out of money. So, but initially it is okay. Good. Uh, why profit Must be part of my rate. I just explained this. Those are all related questions. I had them here in order by design. Basically, I do want to emphasize, when we did the math in terms of your target monthly revenue, again, business expenses, take-home pay, and then profit. You must have a profit margin. If you don't have a profit margin, you can't invest in the business. You won't have a cushion when there is famine, as it's known in consulting and services. There's feast and famine. Sometimes you have a whole lot of leads, a whole lot of customers, and then you're working 60, 70 hours a week and you're barely catching up. And then at times you have no leads, all customers are just slowing down their spending, or it's the holiday season, or what have you. So So having a cushion, having a profit is really important, and it builds up. And if you have $1,500 of profit every month, obviously by the end of the year you have almost $20,000 in your bank. That's a nice cushion, especially if you're just starting out and, and you're not ready to hire. That gives you a lot of, a lot of peace of mind. That's really important for entrepreneurs. So the financials are in order, my family will be provided for, I can start investing in the money. I can, I can, I can upgrade my computer now that's slow. I can hire a part-time contractor to help me with certain things. So that profit is really important initially. Again, there's always an exception early on, like the first few clients, don't worry about profit. I want you to be out there knocking on doors, closing deals, profit, profit margin, all that good stuff is for later. Initially, number one goal is revenue. Number one goal is to grow the marketing and the sales muscles because that will give you confidence that will prove, validate your business idea, your business. And then from there, you'll learn from the first few projects that maybe did not have an amazing margin, Maybe you lost your shirt on those projects, but you learn from them and you build that muscle of being out there and you're selling. And I remember that, and if you follow my channel, you've probably heard this story before, that first sale we had to a small Greek restaurant here in Santa Clara, California, it's called Athena Grill, still thriving. That was 20+ years ago. That $1,400 project, And that 50% upfront payment, $700, that was one of the best moments in my professional life because it validated that I could sell. It validated that someone out there has a problem I can solve. And that gave me a whole lot of momentum, a whole lot of energy to go out and keep selling and then up our price from $1,400 $2,000 for our second client, my dentist. So, so very grateful to the dentist and the owner of that Greek restaurant. They're still around. But, but when you sell, it just— when you start selling, it builds a lot of confidence. So I want you to do that initially. Don't worry about profit, just sell, sell, sell. All right, next one. How do you explain hourly pricing to clients? It's very straightforward. You say, I will give you 10 hours and you will bill me— you'll— sorry, yeah, I'll invoice you for $150 an hour and then you pay me $1,500. It's— that's really it. There's no— not a whole lot of complexity to it. When it's value-based or performance-based or these other pricing models, there's just a lot going on. and you have to be very specific, but with hourly, you tell them, here's what I do, I'm an HR consultant, I will come in, in 10 hours or 20 hours, I'll do these 3 things for you, that's it, or it could be even a bit more open-ended and say, use me as you wish, I will come to your office, I will look at the records, but I will spend 10 hours working on your project. If you are a video editor, if you are a branding person, if you are an HR consultant— if you— we mentioned HR consultant— if you are a financial advisor, all of that can be packaged. All the services that you have, you can package in, in, in, in an hourly fashion. And you tell the clients what— the way I like to do it is, after I learned the hard way, of course, is I would give ranges. People, clients, don't like vagueness. And again, expectations— there are always missed expectations when people communicate. So I would say tell them basically, I'll charge, I'll do— here's my hourly rate, and I estimate around 10 hours for this project, and then I'll keep you posted. And if more work— you send more work my way, or the scope is larger, we will need to put more hours. So be upfront about it and explain it to the client. And give them the details on what you'll be billing them for and what is it that you will not be billing them for. And again, don't make things up. Build trust, establish credibility, make sure integrity is hard, is important, it's really important. That's your reputation as a business owner, as a consultant. Your team members in the future, they'll see how you work with clients, how you deal with the clients. And if you're doing cutting corners here and there and not transparent, and if you're playing games with clients, what sort of DNA you'll be creating for your business. Keep that in mind when, when these thoughts come, come, come to you. So, so that's on, on, on explaining to clients. Now when it comes to clients asking, the next question here is how do you avoid open-ended engagements? Because yeah, I've seen it where, yeah, I'll do, uh, these are my services and I, I charge $150 an hour and it's all open-ended. So, so me as the client, when I receive this proposal, okay, the hourly rate is fair, $150 an hour. They've got their credentials, they have, they have the logos, they've helped clients like, like me. So I'm happy, I'm okay with that, but I have no idea how many hours they're going to be spending. Is it going to be 10 hours? That's $1,500. Is it going to be 100 hours? That's going to be $15,000. Like, I don't know, right? So, so put yourself in the seat of the client, and I would say that's my recommended approach, is give the client a range. If you're just starting out, it might be difficult because you don't know, but you can research. This is— this would be a good time to check with ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude. Just put, put together a very thorough prompt, not a sloppy prompt, and, and get a range. A project of this scope for a client this size with these parameters, what is an average? What is the average number of, of hours to do something this from someone who's new to consulting? So look around, maybe do some competitive research. If you network, and you should be networking, if you have access to people in your field, you learn from others, suppliers who put provide maybe adjacent services, see how they're pricing the range of something like this work that you're about to propose. So, so this way you go back to the client, you say, here's my hourly rate. I estimate it's going to be anywhere from 15 to 20 hours, or maybe 15 to 25 hours, because a lot of times clients don't have and don't provide all the details. We as consultants, over time, we learn what questions to ask to define the scope for the client so we avoid, again, mismanaged, or, or we, we avoid having issues with expectations. But early on, we don't know what questions to ask. We don't know how to scope things properly. We don't know what the range is. So initially, I would say, again, do your own research, competitive research, check with GPT, Google those questions, and then go back to the client and say, here's my hourly rate, and here's the range, and to the best of your ability, stay within that range. Even if you have to put a few more hours, even if you have to do more work than maybe what you understood needed to be done initially, getting that client happy, making that client delighted is really important, is the difference between making it and and make it, or it's going to help you make it or potentially close shop, because if you don't have initial happy clients, you'll be losing some of that momentum. You won't feel good about it, and then they will not be sending you new business, and they will not be sending you referrals, which typically repeat business and referrals from existing clients is a very key source of stream of revenue early on. So, so that's why don't nickel and dime. Be generous with your hours always, but especially initially. A couple hours, and if you're, if you're, if you're bidding on a 20-hour project and it takes you another hour or 2, do something, you know, let them know. Maybe ask them for a testimonial, for a case study. Say, you know, it took us 5 more hours, happy no extra charge, would you be kind enough to leave a testimonial for me, right? Or do maybe be on my podcast or do a case study, right? So those are things I would recommend to do so that you don't nickel and dime with the hours. Over time, you want to be very disciplined with the hours, but initially, again, it's a different setup, different environment. Next, what does T&M really mean? Okay, T&M probably came from government or engineering or construction. Time and materials. Basically, people might ask you, bill me or quote me T&M. They mean basically hourly, but you want to differentiate your hours from other third-party hours or materials. So for example, let's say you're an accountant, so you charge hourly, and then you will bring in a few systems to help you manage this, the client's back end, maybe QuickBooks QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Online, or maybe you have Expensify. I don't have any affiliations with any of these tools, by the way. I'm just mentioning those as examples. So you can bring all these systems to the client's environment. The client has to pay for those systems, that's material, and then you just charge for your time. So T&M is time and materials. It's basically your hours, are in one bucket, and then you have third-party costs, licenses, other people, other people's time, or maybe tools or software. All of that will be in addition to your hours. So that's what T&M is. Next question: why efficiency— why does efficiency hurt hourly pricing? Okay, so this is one— this one goes for It's a good point, valid point for the proponent of fixed-based pricing or fee-based— sorry, or performance-based pricing or value-based, all of that good stuff. So if the opponent of hourly pricing, they always mention this, if you as a consultant, as a talented expert, you go into a situation and you solve it in 20 minutes, So what do you do? You charge for 20 minutes. So if your hourly rate is $180, then yeah, you're going to charge $60 and that's it. So if you do fee-based, say, hey, I'll come in and fix this for $1,000, whether it takes you 20 minutes or 200 hours, it doesn't matter. The client agreed to pay you $1,000 for fixing this problem. Now, if you charge by the hour or in in 20 minutes here, you obviously, you're leaving a lot of money on the table. I get it. There is a place and there's time for value-based pricing, but initially you won't run into this issue because you're still learning how to sell, how to deliver, to implement, to understand the client's requirements. So it's a very highly, highly, highly unlikely scenario for new consultants and those who are struggling with selling and pricing So I would say it's a valid point that if you're very efficient, you're getting sort of, you're getting punished for that, but as I said earlier, if you're very efficient in certain things, see where you can add value, even if you're using AI or automation to provide that efficiency, you always want to identify value, other areas where you can offer value that you only, you the consultant can offer to the client. Good. Next. And we have a comment here. Let me go to the comment. Uh, I believe I want to be successful. Okay, so this is from, uh, Baby Jesse 963. I believe I want to be successful. I think, I think it— you have to lie. I think the question, maybe if I'm reading this right, if I believe if you want to be successful you have to lie. I don't think so. I don't believe so. In marketing, I mean, sales and marketing is not making things up, is not lying. Of course you want to look good. You want to look your best. You want— it's okay to embellish a little bit. If you're going to meet— going on a date, you want to look good. If you're going to meet your future wife, you're going to look good. If you're going to your graduation ceremony, you want to look good. Of course. But it doesn't mean that you're faking it or you're lying. Same thing in business. I think from a sales perspective, let's say if you have skills and you're solving problems, of course that, that is essential. That's what you have to have to be a consultant. You have to have some skills, some knowledge you can build. If you don't have a whole lot of skills yet, a whole lot of experience in a specific area, you can learn it. So this applies to those who don't have skills a specific area yet. You can learn those, but once you have it, it's really a matter of presenting what you have as a solution to the problem that the customer has. So you don't have— yeah, I mean, lying is a big word. I don't think that works well in general in life. You'll get exposed. You'll have a reputation that you're maybe inflating your numbers, you're making things up, you make false claims. I mean, there potentially could be legal ramifications, but just even from a reputation perspective, yeah, I wouldn't say— I would not agree with that unless I'm misreading what you have there, um, Baby Jesse 963. So feel free to elaborate, and I'll be more than happy to, um, to, to read it again and, and see, see what, uh, what you are, um, what you meant. All right, so when— the next question: when should you move beyond hourly pricing? So as I said earlier, I am not saying hourly is the only model. I am saying initially I'm highly recommending that you use hourly initially. At one point— and I'll pull— I believe I have a— I'll find it, I'll put it on screen here in a second if I have it. I believe I'll show it before the end of the thing. I have this matrix. Actually, let me pull it. Let me pull this here. One second. Pricing, pricing, pricing. I believe I have it here. I can't find that link right now, so But if you go on bbsu.net/pricing, I believe that's the URL. I should know this because I use it all the time. Um, you'll have that matrix. I will definitely include a link to it in, um, in the description after the live stream. But basically I show the 7 models and where they fit, um, for your business. So in no way I'm saying stick with hourly. You can stick with hourly. from now till you retire. I've seen companies— when we merged with— when Dentsu bought us and we merged with their systems and their processes, they had a very elaborate system of tracking hours. We did not. We were not selling hourly at that time. I love value-based, and we had— by that time, we had specialized, and we knew our craft really well, and we We were selling 6-figure contracts, so I was big on selling value-based selling. When we merged, you have to go, you know, they have 63,000 employees, Dentsu had, and they have systems and processes we had to comply with. But they invested in tracking hours on a project, you know, by individual on projects, and that they had a very, very nice margins and, and, and profit margins. So I know, I know it works well with the right infrastructure when you're larger, and initially it works well. Just like I said, just like I said, it's optimal because it's easier to sell, easier to package. You avoid issues that come, come up with these other, other models that require a bit more sophistication. All right, how do I handle Sorry, where's the next question? So when should I move beyond hourly? Again, I will find this matrix. I think that will help. And then check out this video on the ultimate guide to pricing models. I go over all the models, pros and cons, and when one is more optimal than another. Okay, next question is, and we're going to go a bit quicker here. Okay, can you raise hourly rates later? Of course you can raise hourly rates at will, whenever you want. You're the business owner, you're the CEO. That's why you started this business, because you can make those decisions. Now don't feel bad about it. If you just— if let's say you completed, completed 3 projects for at $150 an hour and you felt good about it, the clients are happy, You solve the problems, you got the testimonials, the clients are singing your praises, my friend, up it to $175 on your next proposal. Because now, now the, the lead can call your customers and they'll sing your praises right now. If you stumbled and you failed, and we all stumble and fail, and, and, and it's just part of the process, and you're still not sure how to deliver a good solution, yeah, I wouldn't compete on price at that point. I would— I wouldn't compete on, on, on the quality of the work and the premium level of service because I'm still learning. So you can start with whatever rate that you can sell at initially, and then later, 6 months down, a quarter down the road, or, or 6 months down, down the road, you can definitely up your price. You can change— you can have different prices for different services. You can have different prices for different clients. So, so all of that pricing is fluid. It's up to you. You don't have to stick with one price forever. You don't have to stick with one price for the same service or for this— for the same price for different clients. So that is just as a sort of a general statement. There's some, some nuances I think we'll get to here before the end of this stream, but in general, the answer is yes. List my hourly rate on my website. Okay, I've done it in, in some companies and we didn't do it in other companies. I don't think I'm neutral on this. It's really up to you. If a lot of your competition is listing their hourly pricing on their website, then of course go ahead and do it. I would say be competitive, or if you're higher, you're, you're pricing higher, show why, why you stand out. You've got the credentials, the certifications, the experience, the logos. You've You're responsive, you're bent over backward for clients, stand out. If you're charging higher than the rest, you have to stand out, you have to differentiate. This is the psychology of selling and buying. Buyers want to know why. Buyers, a lot of times, it's not about the amount they pay you, they want to make sure it's fair. They want to make sure, okay, it's 10% higher, 20% higher, it's okay. They want to make sure they're not paying double. for something that they can get from someone else for half the price. So in general, so, so keep that in mind. Uh, so no issue in, in putting that on your website. I think look also what others are doing. If you are promoting your services on platforms like Upwork or Fiverr, the hourly rate is open. So I go in there and we use, we use Upwork all the time. Um, I see things at $10 an hour and I see the same service From someone who's top rated, I see from another person, I see for $150 an hour. I'm not kidding you, but they're different credentials. They're different maybe language fluency, they're different knowledge of the specific market, the number of years of experience. So look, if you are going to list your services on something like Upwork, then make sure you can, your rate is defensible. Making sure you can defend that rate because people do compare. Buyers, a lot of times, especially in B2B, 60-70% of buyers do a whole lot of research before they even reach out to a lead. There's data on this. So you want to be able to present yourself in the best light. You want to show everything that supports why you are such an amazing consultant that clients want to work with you. All right, next one. Let's see. How do I handle clients who demand a fixed price? A very good question. Some clients refuse to buy hourly. Say, I don't want to deal with it. I don't want you to come back and say I need more hours. I underestimated, I overestimated. Just give me one amount and tell me what is involved. You can walk away from that, but that's not what I'm saying. I am emphasizing and recommending for new consultants and those who are struggling with pricing is to use hourly. But if you have a client who's ready to buy and he wants to have a fixed price quote, my friend, sell initially. I want you to sell. Now a couple of quick notes on project-based or fixed, fixed fee pricing, and we can spend another entire episode on that maybe later. But for now, make sure the scope is very well defined. So I recommend you have 2 sections in your proposal, and we're about to launch the ultimate guide on writing winning proposals, so check out the channel And it should be coming out in the next, in the next little bit. So basically the scope section, like here's what's included with some level of details, and then add the section that most people don't include. Have this section that says what's not included. And then another section, what is it that the client is supposed to be doing? I think if you do a good job in defining the scope with a lot of specificity, and then you say here's what's not included, and then what you want the client to do, then you'll be in a safer position. So let me give you an example. If you're building website, designing websites, so you can tell them I will design a 4-page website, I'll give you 3 design concepts, I will have one for the home page, one for the, for the supporting pages, and then I'll give you everything in WordPress and we'll have one form on it and that's it. One simple form. What's not included? E-commerce was not included. Online payment was not included. You can have a long list of things not included. Any custom development— customers might not know what custom development is, so put in parentheses. That means I will not create any, any, um, calendars or any, uh, any product listing based, you know, in a database, whatever, whatever. I'm not a web developer. But list what's included very clearly, list what's not included, and then— and I expect the client to provide picture images, videos, also the content for the website, the, the text. I want the client to do it, and if you want me to do it, I can sell it, but here's, here's what— how much it will cost. So I think if you are forced— I want to say forced, but if you're going that, that path of fixed Fixed fee or project-based, I would say do this and you will— that will solve probably 80-90% of the problems with project-based. Good, good. All right, next question. Can I use different— hold on, what's the question? Yeah, right here. Uh, uh, nope, sorry, my bad. Can I use different hourly rates for different clients? Yes, you can. You may, you should initially, maybe not, not, not initially, but if you have, let me give you an example. You have a client who is across town, you have to drive an hour and a half to get to them, and, and they demand, they want you to do the work on site. And then you have a client, client next door, and they want to do things virtually. So it's okay to charge more for that client who, you know, you know, every, every week you have to do this one trip. That's 3 hours of downtime. So if you up the price, the hourly rate for that person, and he's going to tell you, I don't want you to bill for the time you spend coming back and forth from, you know, from my meetings, right? So, so it is okay if a client is expecting 24/7 support, if a client is expecting a response time within 2 hours, and another client, you could get back to them in 2 days and they'll be super happy. So, so there are always ways to differentiate and to defend why. Not that somebody will ask you or somebody will find out, but in your mind, I think have a system where if it's a client of this type, we will sell at this rate. If clients of this other type, we will sell at a higher rate. So, so you can definitely use different hourly rates for different clients. It gets difficult if you put stuff on the website. If you put your hourly rate on the website, it'll be hard to have different rates, but maybe he can have different packages, standard and premium, and then you show the difference. But there's no issue, and hardly ever clients will compare proposals and notes. If you live in a— if you work in a niche and everybody talks about pricing and contractors and vendors, yeah, you have to be more careful. But in general, totally okay to differentiate and, and keep track, um, keep track of it so that you don't quote different prices for different people. And then when comes time for renewal, you give them a price that is lower than the previous contract. So keep track of what you're pricing. All right. How do I track without micromanaging myself? That is a good question. How do I track without micromanaging myself? I think it comes down to discipline. It's building that habit. So after I'm done with this project, this client work, so after I'm done with client work, I'll go in and document it. You can do it midday. I think don't wait till the end of the week. I made that same mistake when we implemented timesheets in one of our companies. Okay, I'll just do it on Friday night. Well, Friday night, you've forgotten what you've done Friday morning, let alone what happened earlier in the week. So I would say make it a habit. Even if you're just by yourself, set up a spreadsheet, a Google Sheet. You don't have to buy a tool initially. And then just list especially billable work, like here's what I've done. Now it comes— okay, some clients, some, some consultants charge in 15-minute increments, like accountants, lawyers. Sometimes they, they charge by 6-minute increments. So, so come up with something reasonable. Again, initially the goal is not to make a fortune from these first few clients. Initially you want to sell You want to deliver, you want to get happy clients, delighted clients. That is the number one goal in the first few weeks, few months, is to sell and to make the clients happy, even if you have to spend a bit more time or effort. But as you are growing the business, these questions become very, very important. So build that DNA, build that habit, build that muscle to track your hours. And then at the end of the week, even if it's just you, your own business, where did I spend time this week? There are a lot of other benefits. I have another session, an entire video on how founders— it was on delegation and how you can identify where you should be spending your time as a founder depending on the phase of your business, so I have this tool called the Founder Founder's Focus worksheet. And, and if you do it for a couple of weeks, and you'll see where you're wasting a lot of time and not selling, not marketing, not delivering. And then you end up— and then you might be complaining, how come my business is not growing? So, so it's important to track. You don't have to track at the 6-minute increments unless maybe, again, you're in a field like lawyers who do that. It's common. Not that I like it, but that's just how they work, some of them. A lot of them, but I would say maybe do it like in 15-minute increments. If you quick— maybe quick reply to an email, it's fine. But if you're spending more time on a specific question or you're on the phone or you're meeting, obviously those are all trackable and all trackable. Okay, what tools should I use? And for those of you who are with us, I probably have another 10 or 15 minutes to finish all the questions, but if you have questions that I haven't answered yet or something else, if it's not pricing related, go ahead and put it in the comments. I'll be more than happy to answer those at the end of the session. But for now, let me go through the rest of the batch here. So how do I track time? We talked about that. Okay, what tools should I use for time tracking? So there are a lot of tools out there. If you are just starting out, use a Google Sheet. Scrappy. Spend money on things, but tools, software helps. So if you're using Asana or Notion or Basecamp, see if there are plugins that plug in, that connect to a system that you are already familiar with. So I wouldn't recommend you go and get another system for time tracking, but if you are— you don't have any tools yet, I mean, there are a bunch of them. I think we used Everhour, we used Again, I don't have any affiliations with any of these tools, but they're ClickUp, Everhour, Toggl. There are a few of them out there. Toggl Track, I believe. Check them out. Most of them have free trials or like $10 a month per user. So get one, see if you like it, use it. But I would say from an efficiency perspective, see if the tool that you're already using, or maybe a tool you're about to select for your task management, if it has a time tracking element, a component, or plugs in another software that does time tracking, use that. It's very helpful. I know also a lot of the accounting systems, they also have time tracking and they make it easy for contractors to build their hours from within the accounting system. How do— okay, we're— let's see, we have, uh, we have 7 more questions, 8 more questions. All right, uh, how do retainers compare to hourly pricing? So retainers Basically, a client says, I want to retain you to provide services on an ongoing basis. Typically, it could be a 3-month retainer, it could be a 6-month retainer, it could be a 12-month retainer, depending. So it could be month to month forever, you know, until the client decides to stop the service, or you tell them thank you. Um, so, so retainers— I've seen retainers where it's, let's say, $1,000 a month, I'll do these things, or It could be hourly. So there's not, I wouldn't say there's no contrast between retainers and hourly. Retainers could be based on number of hours. The client says, you know, you tell the client on a monthly basis, I'll put 5 to 10 hours to support your business. Let's say you are an email marketer and you help clients send out emails and set up that entire marketing automation for them. So you've charged them $5,000 for that initial setup. in HubSpot or Kit or one of these tools or Constant Contact, and now on a monthly basis, you send their monthly newsletter and you say it'll be anywhere from 5 to 10 hours at $150. Client says, okay, you're good. At the end of the month, you send your invoice. So that is a retainer that's based on an hourly, or it could be you know exactly what needs to be done and you say, you know what? I'll do this for $750 a month. So there's no really— there's no contrast between the two. It just Retainers could be hourly or it could be fixed, you know, depending on the relationship. So, um, but I, I love, I love the idea of, of having retainers, of building a recurring revenue stream. That is the best thing you can do for your business after selling, of course. But from a revenue stream perspective, anything that is recurring is gold because it helps you build that recurring revenue. It helps you It helps you focus on, you know, every month you have this amount of revenue coming in, and now if this is your target, if this is the baseline, this is your target, and if I have 30% recurring revenue covered, then I only have to bridge this gap of new business. So recurring retainers, all that is good, good to have. A question here is how do agencies use hourly rates? How are we pricing internally? So in the last company, the one we sold to Dentsu, there were 45 of us, and we used, at the time I believe we used Basecamp, and we started to, I think we added, plugged in Everhour or one of those tools, and we basically, as a business owner, as a founder, as a CEO, you have to lead by example, so you have to track your time, And you have to make this process, this new process of tracking hours, you have to make it just part of how you do work, and you have to lead by example, and you have to dedicate time to it for everyone around you to implement. So if you have people, it's just like any change, change management, right? You have to define the benefits of the change, you have to implement it, train people on it, and then lead by example initially, If it's just you and maybe just maybe your first hire and maybe a couple of contractors, you can just use one of those systems that I mentioned earlier, or you can use a Google Sheet. It's really fine. But I would say I've seen it, like I said, in small agencies who are very strict on time tracking, and I've seen it with companies with 63,000 employees, and they have the entire backend system, and they have a team called resource management that supports the entire company to track hours, those work on client projects, of course, and also for internal projects, tracking where the time is spent is really, really important. So I believe it was Peter Drucker who talked about time is the most important asset. If you can't control it, you can't measure it, you can't manage it, you can't manage anything else. So keep that in mind. All right, uh, what tools? Let's see. Should I discount my rate to get my first client? Yes, yes, and yes. Get that first client, whatever it takes to get that first client. You don't want to sound desperate, but get that first client. If you need to discount by 50%, go for it. If you need to discount by more, go for it. Because I want you, I need you to close that first deal. It's really, really important. Now, of course, if you're doing a service that takes 6 months to implement and it's $50,000 worth of work, be more careful with this recommendation, right? Because you don't want to do $200,000 worth of work for $50,000. That could bankrupt your business. But I'm talking about smaller projects. So if, if you're, if you're planning on, on charging $5,000 and the customer wants to, to buy it for $4,500, negotiate. That's fine. Do it. Don't worry about it. Close that deal. Close that deal. Money will come later. And but do, do that all the, all the best practices that I've shared so far. Properly scope, define the requirements, make sure everything is clear. Tell them when, how you'll track, how you, how you where you spend the— where you'll spend the hours, where you'll be, what is billable, what is not. So do all of that, and then if they're looking for a discount to get you that first signed contract, go for it, right? Next one is, how do I handle scope creep with hourly work? Well, if you define, like the client says, okay, we can use the HR consulting example. If you told them that you'll go in and audit their system, their performance review system, and maybe interview a few employees and interview a few managers, I mean, define all of that and you say it'll be hourly. And again, as I said earlier, recommend— I recommend a set of a range. I recommend a range of hours to complete the work within. But now you and the client You both know that if they need more work from you, then they know your hourly rate. So, so there's really no issue whatsoever in terms of, in terms of, um, sorry, where's that question here? I want to make sure. Yeah, in terms of scope creep, because it's hourly. If they want more work, you tell them, okay, I think it'll be 5 hours. Okay. Or a lot of times you're not sure how long it will take. And this is a good— here, good shortcut, a tip. If you're not sure how many hours it's going to take, but, but you know if you spend 2 more hours or 3 more hours, you can determine with a high set— with a high degree of probability, and, and you'll be almost certain, uh, a high degree of certainty, sorry. Then you can say, you know, I'll bill you for 3 hours to go and dig in and, and understand what's going on, and then I'll give you how many hours it's likely to take, but always hourly. The, the base of hourly is that you'll spend 2 hours, they'll pay you for 2 hours. You'll spend 3 hours, they'll pay you for 3 hours. So the concept of scope creep is more typically associated with a project-based or a fixed fee pricing model. Again, tell them what you'll do with a number of hours, and if they need more done then they know your hourly rate, so you should be good. Let's see, 3 more, uh, 4 more questions. So what is the difference between junior and senior hourly rate? Another good question. Well, let's say you have 10 years of experience in your domain and you hire someone with 2 years of experience. So your rate will be $200 an hour or $250 or whatever you like to charge, and And then the junior consultant will be at $125. So I've seen it in different ways, but I've seen it where it's a bundled rate. It doesn't matter who's working on the account. Of course, the senior consultant will be there to support and the junior consultant might do more work, but I've seen it where clients ask, show me your rate for junior consultants and then for senior consultants. So especially if you have a team initially, you are the senior consultant, so this is not applicable, but if you have started to have a team or maybe you have some contractors supporting you behind the scene, so you can have different billing rates for different people. Again, transparency is important, showing the credentials of the senior people, you and others, and then also the credentials of the junior people. All that is important and the client knows, and if something that the junior person can do, then why would you want to have the senior person do? So be transparent, be clear with the client on how you bill, and show, show the rates separately if that's what they're asking for. If not, I wouldn't, I wouldn't bring that up and just use a bundled, bundled rate. All right. How do I transition clients from hourly to retainer? Typically, typically a retainer is after you've done that initial implementation work or the audit, or you've done, you completed a project and now they need this ongoing maintenance, ongoing support, ongoing improvements. So you've done your work hourly in the project, they like you, they like your approach, they like, there's chemistry, they love the outcome, and then you can do more for them and that will be the retainer. So, If the client doesn't want to commit, sometimes the client, you know, I don't want to commit. Again, give them a range. Say it and tell them, be upfront with them. Say, you know, I can dedicate— I will— I'm, I'm a professional growing my business. If I know that you have needs and if we commit to a 3-month or a 6-month retainer, you will have priority response time from me. So show them what they're getting for their commitment. They are making it, the client is making a commitment by signing a 3-month or a 6-month retainer agreement with you. So show them that you will take care of them a bit more because they've done that commitment. So that is where I think, again, transparency, most people are reasonable. Most people will appreciate that. Say, okay, you will give me faster response time. You will be there for me. Tell them, I'll keep an eye, I'll read about your business, about your competitors, about your market. It's a strategic relationship. A lot of people, a lot of people, most reasonable people, they would appreciate that. So that's how I would address it. Okay, the question, the one before last, what hourly rate mistakes do most consultants make? I think if you followed what I've covered in the video on hourly pricing, and then also if you followed this this session, you probably avoid— you probably avoid 98, 99% of all the mistakes because that's, that's what I've covered after all the research. But I would say a few things. One is what I emphasized during this session is that initially, as you are building the sales muscle, like, don't worry too much about the hourly rate or the pricing model in general. Just sell. So hourly rate, in a way, again, within context, is irrelevant initially. 2, don't feel nervous presenting, especially if it's a higher hourly rate or you're upping your pricing. Like, don't feel nervous. You got to say it with confidence. You are a skilled, knowledgeable person. The client has a problem. You are solving that problem. And you, as a consultant, you are— you're going to be Hopefully they're the client's trusted advisor. So say that with— say it and mean it. Like, it's not just— it's not— it shouldn't be just transactional. Yes, it's not family. Yes, it's not relationship, but business— people buy from people. So say, say it with confidence that you care about them, about their bottom line. You want to help them, you want to service them, and that, and that you, you know, say it with authority and, and credibility. Authority, I don't mean, I don't mean it in a way that you show off or you teach them how to do things and they're not worth, worth whatever. No, just your knowledge, your track record, your experience, your, your passion to help, you know, for helping others. That is, that, that shows when we talk to people. So, so believe in it inside. I think it's believing it is important that I really want to take care of this client. It shows up in the way we talk, in the way we smile, in the way we write. So, so have that. I think that's important. And the other things I see mistakes— you don't differentiate. You want to up your pricing, but you're not differentiating. You're— every— everyone else in your competition, they have a bunch of credentials and you don't have any. My friend, you, you got to keep up with what's going on in the industry. You got to get the AI certification. You got to get CRM certification, you got to get the marketing certification, whatever it is that is important for you, get that. Okay. Um, and then, and then, and then, you know, and differentiate. And then the last mistake here, don't nickel and dime. Be generous initially. Every once in a while, you'll, you'll run into someone who could abuse the relationship, someone who is a jerk, someone who wants to get more, squeeze more out of you, that's not the norm. And over time, you'll learn how to avoid these types of leads. And I have a video, the 5 Leads to Avoid, so, so check it out. I'll put the link in the description later. But, but in general, don't nickel and dime. People appreciate generosity. People— most people reciprocate, and, and you'll learn from that. And once, once that project is done they'll remember you and they'll come back to you for more work, or they'll refer you to others. And then the last question for today is on what pricing changes matter most this year. I'm not the prediction guy, but I think anything to do with AI automation efficiency, if there are ways for you to incorporate that into your delivery into the way you deliver services to clients. Do learn it, do adopt it, do adopt it and adapt your processes to automation. Clients will start asking if you, if you show a proposal with a list of things that can be easily automated by AI and you charge 5 hours for that, they'll question that, and then you lose your credibility and you lose— you'll, you know, there's this again, the whole integrity thing. So So I think keep an eye on learning automation and AI and how to be efficient in your domain in whatever is it that you're doing and apply that within your business and apply that in your delivery. And then also be aware of outsourcing. So there are a lot of great talent in other geographies that is typically less expensive than maybe where you are. Let's say I'm in the US here, in US and Canada. So, so, so there are a lot of, there are a lot of talent, global talent today is available and flexible and very, very inexpensive. So, so how do you differentiate is going to be really important. Potentially you're in the time, in the client time zone, you fluency in language and culture in terms of potentially if you have clients where you can visit in person, a lot of clients wants to have that in-person connection with, with their consultant. So find ways to differentiate from what can be outsourced, not just in terms of the type of work, but also in terms of the quality of the work and also the human aspect of it. I think that always will have an edge. Consultants will always have an edge in that. So that is, that is it for today. We covered 26 questions and we had 1 comment. And then if you have any other questions on pricing or on entrepreneurship in general, don't hesitate to reach out, and if you, again, if you haven't, if you like this content, you can follow me on LinkedIn, linkedin.in/ferasalhlou, and of course, I would love for you to go to YouTube and go to the channel @StartupWithFeras and click subscribe if you're not a subscriber already, and like this video and other videos if you're liking the content and if you're benefiting. I hope you are. If you're not, let me know. I'm happy to answer your questions, things I've learned from my own mistakes, and then things I've learned from working with 250+ founders over the years. Thank you so much, and we will see you. And oh, of course, you can, you can join our newsletter on my website startupwithferaz.com, and you'll get it every Saturday with tips and strategies on how to grow and scale your business. That's it for now. See you next time.