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 Ronald Cato who asks, do you think a polarizing ideology is a good test for one's positioning? For example, women without pitching or hourly billing is nuts. I mean, it can be. I think a better test is, is it interesting? Is it memorable? Does it start a conversation? Does it make you think? You know, polarizing, taking this polarizing approach can make you think. It could also be super off-putting. So I think you have to be careful with it. In general, something like a contrarian stance can be, I think it's good if you can support it, if you can really support your argument and you're not just trolling. It is really easy to just troll and say something that you know is going to outrage people or inflame them and just get them screaming sort of a, but I feel like it will backfire on you if you can't support it with real good reasoning. So if somebody comes to me and says, oh, what's really so bad about hourly billing is nuts? I can talk for 60 minutes and give 12 reasons why hourly billing is crazy. Like I really can support, I can point out why it's bad for the person who's selling, the person who's buying, and the project itself. So I can really support it. The other thing about both of these, hardly anybody loves hourly billing. I don't think anybody likes pitching. They're both kind of like cost of doing business. They're both sort of necessary evil, I would say. So both Blair and I, I think certainly inadvertently on my part, have created some drama by pointing to an enemy who nobody loves anyway. So it's not like I'm attacking Democrats or Republicans or something like that and like all of those people are bad or whatever. I'm not attacking anyone. I'm attacking a thing that no one likes anyway, but they just think they have to put up with. So it doesn't feel to me like it's too negative feedback I get from people. No one's like, oh, I love hourly billing. How could you? And I imagine Blair's had the same experience. Blair Anz with Women Without Pitching has probably had the same experience where people just don't like it. They just feel like they have to do it. So when someone hears like, oh, wow, there might be an alternative, which both of these titles tell you, both of these positions say, it's like you don't have to pitch, but you can still win business. There's another way besides hourly billing. Hourly billing is crazy. I think those kind of thread that needle between being a little bit – I don't even think they're outrageous. I think that they're probably thought-provoking and it makes you interested. It makes you want to learn more, and that's the point. I think the position should be or the ideology or your mission or your big idea, whatever your thing is, I think it should be interesting enough that people want to hear more. And they immediately get the idea. It's not confusing. It's not clever or cute. It's something that they like get it. It's not a riddle, and they can then ask you questions about it. Like, well, sure, maybe hourly billing is nuts, but what are we supposed to do instead? Well, productized services and fixed prices and value prices and all these other things you could do to package up your expertise and sell it in other ways. It's like, oh, really? Yeah. Well, but I'm a personal trainer. It would never work for me. Wrong. So the idea is I think the point of it is to get people interested and have a conversation and even better, make it memorable. So this sort of polarizing way or contrarian stance is certainly a common way to do it, but I do think it can blow up in your face if it's too negative or if it's attacking a group or a person or something like that. I think that's too far for me. I mean, certainly people do it. They have feuds online and that sort of thing, and maybe it works for them, but I couldn't sleep at night if I was doing that. So I suppose that's a good place to end it. You want to do something that you're comfortable with. It's within your comfort zone, but it isn't boring. That's the problem. That would be a problem if it was just boring and everyone was like, when they hear it, they're like, oh, whatever, and move on. You want to start a conversation. Okay. That's it for this time. I'm Jonathan Stark. If you have a question for me, hashtag AskJonathan on YouTube, Twitter, or LinkedIn, and we'll find it and add it to the queue. See you then. 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.

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.