Ditching Hourly

Hello and welcome to Ditching Hourly. I'm Jonathan Stark. For my entire adult life, I've weighed within like five pounds of 190. That is until my daughter was born, at which point I shot up to roughly 205 and stayed there. When she turned three, the extra weight was still not gone and I was getting really sick of it. I had done all the things that I used to do to keep my weight in check, but none of it did the trick. I don't know if it was how old I was or my metabolism or maybe new lifestyle that comes with parenting two little kids, but whatever the case, it was clear that the old methods were not going to work and I needed to do something different. So for the first time ever, I hired a personal trainer. When I went in for the preliminary interview, something happened that I think you'll find interesting. When I first met with my prospective trainer, his name was Adam, he asked what my goals were and I said to lose 20 pounds. He nodded politely, but he kept asking questions. He asked things like, why do you want to lose the weight? And I'd say things so my clothes would fit better and I don't feel like such a slob. He asked me, do you have any injuries? And I said, oh yeah, I've got some lower back pain that is chronic. It comes and goes, but it's chronic. He asked, do you do any regular athletic activities? And I said, yes, I take karate class twice a week. So speed, flexibility, and balance are all really important to me. I don't want to get all muscle bound. He asked, with this program, you'll lose fat, but you're also going to gain muscle. So if we got you down to say eight or 10% body fat, but you still weighed 205, you'd look and feel like a professional athlete. Would you be cool with that? My reaction to this was, heck yeah, professional athlete? So in this short conversation, Adam achieved a few important things that we software developers can learn from. First, he pushed me past my simplistic surface level stated goal, which was simply to lose weight. Second, he revealed that my stated goal was not my actual goal. What I really wanted was to look and feel more athletic. I didn't really care if I weighed 190 or 290. If I looked and felt athletic, I was gonna be stoked. And number three, we reached conceptual agreement on what a home run outcome would be like. If I truly, literally just wanted to lose 20 pounds, I could chop off a leg and I'd be done with it, right? Of course, losing 20 pounds at all costs is not my goal. Adam knew that hitting some arbitrary number on a scale was not my real goal. In order to satisfy me, he needed to identify a more specific success metric, which he was able to do in about five minutes of simple questions. After about two months of working with Adam, there was a noticeable improvement in my athleticism and appearance, which I loved. As predicted, I did not lose any weight and I don't care about this fact, even though it was my stated goal. Had Adam not uncovered my actual goal, it's quite likely that I'd be disappointed when I step back on the school because I'd be tracking the wrong thing. So the moral of the story here is that when prospects reach out to you with a punch list of tasks or features that they want you to build for them, that's like me saying, I wanna lose weight to Adam. It's just too simplistic. If you push past your client's self-diagnosis and get to the actual desired outcome, you'll have done them a huge favor by identifying an attainable goal that will absolutely delight them once it's achieved. A more valuable outcome for which they'd be willing to pay a premium. That's it for today. I'm Jonathan Stark, and thanks for listening to Ditching Hourly. See you next time. Hey folks, just wanna let you know that I recently upgraded my mentoring program to include six months of unlimited 24-7 access to my private Slack community. So in addition to unlimited email and phone calls, you can now ping me in Slack at your leisure. You can find out more at expensiveproblem.com slash mentoring. 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.