Ran into a retired accountant at a coffee shop in Austin who said my whole pricing system was backwards

He told me I was charging by the hour when I should be charging by the value of the finished job, then scribbled his formula on a napkin. Has anyone else gotten unsolicited advice from a stranger that actually made you more money?

3 comments

3 Comments

oliviabutler4d ago

My buddy runs a small landscaping company and some old guy at Home Depot told him he was losing money on trimming jobs because he charged per tree instead of per hour. He switched to an hourly rate for detail work and made 30% more on those jobs within a month. That napkin advice probably saved his whole season.

the_faith4d ago

Oliviabutler’s buddy got the good end of that Home Depot encounter, but my unsolicited advice came from a guy at a taco stand who told me my freelance writing pricing was "charity work, not business." He was right. I used to charge $50 per blog post, and after switching to a value-based rate based on how much traffic the post could drive, I started getting $200 per piece. Still feels weird taking that much, but my bank account stopped laughing at me.

troyc174d ago

Read somewhere that value based pricing works best when you can actually prove the results, like with traffic or sales numbers. That coffee shop guy sounds like he knew what he was talking about though, since accountants usually have a good handle on what stuff is actually worth. I've heard a few people say the key is figuring out the number that feels too high but still fair, and that's usually the sweet spot. Your writing rate jump is wild, $50 to $200 per piece is a huge difference just from changing how you think about the work.