Ramit Sethi talks with freelance designer Hilary Gillespie about pricing her work as solutions rather than services. She could bill $10,000 to $12,000 monthly at full capacity but chooses part-time work for flexibility instead.
About 10 years.
Between $10,000 and $12,000 per month.
February 15, 2011.
Alright.
Hi everybody. I'm here with one of my earn 1k students, Hilary Gillespie. Hillary. How are you?
Yeah, I'm really good, thanks.
Alright, thanks for being here. So basically we just met about two minutes ago and I have heard some awesome stories. In fact, I have your picture on one of my marketing pages, which is awesome. And you're a freelance designer, so I just wanted to hear your story. If you can tell us about what you do and then maybe we can talk a little bit about earn 1k as well.
Okay. I am a freelance. I originally started as a web designer and a graphic designer about 10 years ago and more recently I've moved more kind of into development and doing more coding, but I still do some design on the side.
Talk to us about earn 1k and how it helped change your thinking to focus on solutions. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Yeah. The word solution ultimately makes people throw money at you. In my experience so far, I think it's a word that is not really used very much, especially with my market, which tends to be small to medium business, because they don't think in those terms. They don't have a huge chain of command that are demanding answers for things and they don't require approvals. It's one or two people, maybe 10 people in a small business. And it's just not a word that's thrown around a lot. So as soon as I started using the word solution and presenting ideas that potentially could be finished basically immediately, really quick fixes, small victories. People see the value in the work that I do and my thought process and that they feel like I value what they do as well, that I'm actually concerned that I'm not just offering them. Here is a website. It's going to be exactly the same as all the other websites that I do, but different colors and have your logo. And the feedback that I've had from people is that I start to relate to their product a bit more because I've done the work and I'm offering them essentially fixes that they may have not thought of before.
I heard a little rumor that if you worked full time, you could make quite a bit of money, but you choose not to. I'm curious, how much could you make if you worked full time? And also tell us about your decision not to do that.
If I worked full time and billed all the hours that I could potentially work, I would make between 10 and $12,000 a month at best. I love to work, don't get me wrong, I'm a total Workaholic, which is probably not great, but I get really sucked into what I do and I like doing it, but I much prefer pursuing hobbies, honestly. And I like being able to do my errands and things that I like to do when I want to do them. Seven years I lived by myself and I could do whatever I want whenever I wanted. And I was very comfortable. And you know, some, some months were slower than others, but I was never really concerned. And I can go to the gym at 2 in the afternoon and I can sleep in if I want. I can go grocery shopping at like 4 in the morning if it's 24 hours or in the middle of the day when there's no traffic. It's awesome. Okay. And I choose not to because I like to do that stuff. And over the years I've taken several other part time jobs, actual jobs and stuff that I was interested in because I wanted to do it and I felt that I was financially stable enough that I just could.
Awesome. Two more questions for you, by the way. I totally agree. I love going to a movie theater at 1pm on a weekday or a restaurant at 4pm it's so weird. The only people there are other weirdos like you who you immediately assume are unemployed or old people. So it's like, yeah, all right, I could be a senior citizen today. Hillary, thank you so much for the time. I love chatting with you. It's the first time we met via Skype and total thrilled to meet you. Thank you so much for the time.
Awesome. All right, thanks so much. Talk to you soon.
Take it easy. Talk to you soon. Bye.
