Ditching Hourly

Hello and welcome to Ditching Hourly. I'm Jonathan Stark. Today I've got an audio excerpt from an answer I provided on my YouTube channel. You can check it out at thejonathanstarkshow.com and it'll redirect you to YouTube if you're into watching videos. Otherwise, you can just listen to the audio here on the podcast. Enjoy. Hey, Jonathan here. I've got a question from Eugene Gordon who writes in to ask, how do you deal with a client who is also your former employer? They request quotations by project, however, try their utmost to reduce your fee to what your hourly calculated rate was when you were still an employee with them earning a salary. Additionally, when I'm on site with them, they involve me with all kinds of other items that weren't on the itemized purchase order. As much as I still want to assist them out of loyalty toward them, I somehow feel that my business is not being respected and that they still see me as an employee. How do I get them to respect my business without damaging the relationship? Yeah, I would agree with the question asker that the employer doesn't see them as an outside consultant, doesn't see them as a trusted partner, and sees them more as like an external employee, a contract employee. And as Eugene noticed, that has a downward effect on pricing pressure. It puts downward pressure on his ability to price. And he gets sucked into all these out of scope sorts of things. It's a really hard thing to get someone to change the way they view you. It's like being in the friend zone and trying to become a romantic partner with someone. It's a really hard thing to do. So my advice would be to reconsider, not reconsider your loyalty, but look for, you know, of course, it's nice that you have a good relationship with them and that they're loyal to you and you're loyal to them. But I would consider taking a break from them and looking for some other clients that you could work with, that you could deliver amazing results for. Over time, you'd be able to focus down and become clearer about your value proposition and what you offer to clients. And then reach back out to your ex-employer after you've got a little bit more world experience under your belt. And you could say, hey, you know, how are things going? I wonder if there's any way I can help you grow your business. This is what I'm doing these days. And just be a little bit more, you know, polite but firm about what it is that you offer, what your prices are, and, you know, just sort of, I think the easiest thing to do is just go away for a little while and then perhaps rekindle the relationship later. Now, in the meantime, you might not want to leave them high and dry. So you could start having a conversation with them about maybe handing them off to, you know, a junior developer of whatever it is that you do, a junior version of you, maybe a colleague that wants to just be a pair of hands and go by the hour or something like that. You could make an introduction or you could suggest that they hire someone internally to replace you but that, you know, you're going to be moving on to more specific things in the future and, you know, like I said, just take a break. Okay, I hope that helps. If you have a question, you can hashtag AskJonathan on YouTube, Twitter, or LinkedIn and we will find it and add it to the list. See ya. Would you like to learn how to get paid what you're worth? How about selling your expertise and not your labor? We work through all of this together in the Pricing Seminar. Pre-registration starts soon and you can sign up to be the first to know when early bird pricing is announced at ThePricingSeminar.com. That URL again is ThePricingSeminar.com. 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.