Ditching Hourly

Hello and welcome to Ditching Hourly. I'm Jonathan Stark. Today I've got a reader question from my mailing list, which is how do I avoid scope creep on a value priced project? List member Jonathan Q wrote in to ask this. Hello Jonathan, thank you for your daily emails and help setting a young designer slash developer like myself onto the right path. I had a question. How do you avoid scope creep in a project that has been priced according to value? I've priced according to the client's business objectives and essentially the business objectives are the deliverable. However, if the client asks late in the project for something like an additional webpage or a custom search bar, how should one handle that conversation if you think it would help you deliver the business objectives but is making the project unprofitable? Thanks so much, best, Jonathan. Other Jonathan that is. So I can't quite tell from this message if JQ is conflating objectives with outputs, i.e. business objectives are the deliverables. So just to be clear for everyone's benefit, here's a list of things that are deliverables. A blueprint, a style guide, a white paper, a software feature, a portrait, like a painting. These sorts of things are business objectives. Those were deliverables, these are business objectives. Decreased cost of construction, improved brand reputation, increased number of job applicants, increased customer satisfaction, increased speaking fees. Notice that the deliverables, also known as the outputs, are things and the business objectives, aka the results, are changes. Once you know the desired business objective, you do your best to keep everyone laser focused on reaching it. If the client requests something that is unlikely to contribute to the desired outcome, the business objective, you shouldn't do it. Not because it's out of scope, but because spending time and money on distractions will jeopardize the success of the project. It's in the client's best interest for you to say no to distractions. On the other hand, if the client's request will likely contribute to the desired outcome, the business objective, then you'll want to do it because it means you can declare victory sooner, and the sooner you finish, the more profitable you'll be. Okay, one last thought here. If you're able to keep the client focused on the desired outcome and you still feel like you're losing money because it turned out that it was more work than you expected, then your price was just too low in the first place. If you had doubled your price, I doubt you'd still feel like an additional web page here and there was like you losing money. Of course, the client might not have agreed to a price that was twice as high, but that is actually a different problem. Okay, that's it for this time. I'm Jonathan Stark, and I hope you join me again next time on Ditching Hourly. And by the way, if you'd like to jump on my mailing list to send me questions like this, you can go to jonathanstark.com daily to sign up for my, you guessed it, daily mailing list. Hope to see you there. Hey, Jonathan again. Do you have questions about how to improve your business? Things like value pricing your work instead of billing for your time, or positioning yourself as the go-to person in your space, or maybe productizing your services so you never have to have another awkward sales call or spend hours writing another custom proposal. Book a one-on-one coaching call with me and get answers to these questions and others in the time it takes you to get ready for work in the morning. Best of all, you're covered by my 100% satisfaction guarantee. If at the end of the call you don't feel like it was worth it, just say the word and I'll refund your purchase in full. To book your one-on-one coaching call, go to jonathanstark.com slash call, C-A-L-L. That URL again is jonathanstark.com slash call. Hope to see you there.