I was on a fairly long drive today and I was looking for a good book to read.
And one of the books that I.
Came to came to mind.
One of the books that I enjoyed reading before that.
Sort of popped in the mind and I kind of led books choose me when I'm ready
to, to pick a book for whatever reason.
I always know that either a new book or something I've read before is going
to be calling my name and I should just sort of pay attention to it.
And that's always worked out well for me.
And I'm sure you've got that feeling as well.
When you walk into a bookstore, the books choose you.
And not the other way around, in most often.
But one of the books.
The book that came to mind for me was a book called the
passion economy by Adam Davidson.
And I first read it maybe a year or two ago, and I remember
really kind of stuck with me.
And.
You know, and something about it was calling me to read it again or
listen to it again on my drive back.
So at about an hour and a half, and I only got through one or two chapters,
I actually listened to chapter.
I believe it was three, a few times in a row.
Because it was just chock-full of these good rules.
I can't remember how many of them there were, but there was.
I don't know, 10 or 15 kind of rules for the passion economy
kind of, uh, businesses.
And so I highly recommend reading it.
It's kind of about craftsmanship.
It's about.
Doing work at a small scale at a high quality versus trying to produce.
In fact, he advocates against doing any kind of commodity work, but.
It's kind of the anti scale, small craftsmen sort of work craftsperson.
Uh, sort of work.
And I really enjoy that kind of mentality about working on something
that you're really interested in.
Long enough.
And you know, I'm reading another book, um, by Craig mod and he's doing these
walks through Japan and he talks about the craftsmanship of all these things
and, and, uh, and you know, the Japanese business culture is often very much the.
You've got these businesses.
That have been around for a hundred years, doing one thing
and really enjoy kind of that.
So that's the ideal, like idealist sort of side of me enjoying this sort
of crafts, craftsmen craft person.
I use that interchangeably, I guess I'm just sort of that way of thinking.
And applying to my business.
And so if you're in that kind of mode, Uh, definitely check out
the book, the passion economy.
And there was one book that came up and it was about hourly work on
one quote that came up in the book.
And I'll share that with you.
And then we'll just have a little quick chat about what that sort
of means and how it relates to.
Uh, hourly and commodity sort of work.
So the quote from the book says, I recently hired a lawyer who told me that
he would not charge me by the hour, but he would instead agree to a fixed fee for
the work we were going to do together.
He explained that by charging by the hour.
Uh, he explained that charging by the hour, contradicted his core values.
Of serving as clients, it would create an incentive for him to do more time,
even if it wasn't strictly necessary.
Or on the other hand might even choose to rush some work to save me some money.
He preferred not to think about time at all, but instead focus on
providing me with the greatest service.
I found this comforting.
I totally agree with this kind of a mentality and a quote.
I don't want to be once we're engaged, I'm engaged for an outcome.
Not for hours because I don't want to be thinking, well, I need to do this well.
But this is going to cost the client twice as much.
And this other thing could maybe be fine and good enough, but then I, you know,
But do I charge.
You know, ours screws up in my opinion.
Uh, the hard work that we do.
And I think hourly work is, is fine in some cases, I think
it's okay when you're doing.
The support level work when you're doing say website tasks
or the odd sort of design.
You know, iteration on a brochure or something where there's nothing, you know,
maybe it's ongoing and it's kind of light.
Uh, you know, On demand sort of stuff.
But what I've noticed is that the stuff that requires hourly,
whether it's those kinds of support tasks, and again, I have nothing.
I actually have nothing against doing supportive maintenance level,
hourly work per se, but I think it should also come with sort of a
red or not a red, an orange flag.
It should kind of tell you that.
Well, when we're in this mode of doing.
Support level or hourly work where there's no better way.
You're not, it's not a meaty enough project to scope an outcome and
therefore offer a fixed price, which I think is just the best experience for
everyone, because it just reduces that.
Tug and pull of well.
You know, Maximizing your income versus, or saving the client money.
And really it's about doing the job right for a fixed fee.
So the type of work that typically is best on hourly is commodity work.
It's task oriented it's instruction.
And reaction it's that kind of thing.
And I think that's, it should come with an orange flag so that if it's a big part
of your business, Uh, I would consider whether you want to be doing that.
Long-term.
And it doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.
I have an, in some cases still do some light.
Maintenance work.
I have a team.
I have an assistant who handles correspondence from a few legacy
clients from when I ran my agency.
And they was, they still send my assistant emails.
And who've passes it onto my developer who gets the job done.
And then she corresponds then with the client and that can produce.
Between, I don't know, seven to 15,000 a year.
In profit and that's a good little kind of something.
So it's not nothing.
And it doesn't take any of my time or very rarely does.
So, I'm not saying don't do that.
These are things that you have the option to do.
It should just come with an orange flag.
You know, if it required my personal time, it would be gone off my plate, but
because I'm able to leverage their time.
And the infrastructure that I've had built up from a long time ago and these
old clients that I don't take on any new clients in that sphere, in that sphere,
but it's still, you know, A few thousand here, a few thousand there kind of adds up
and I don't have to touch it most times.
So, I'm not saying don't do that.
That would be hypocritical of me.
And, but I, I will say that my time is not, I never, I don't have an hourly rate.
At best, I've got a strategy call, which is anywhere between, you know, an hour to
90 minutes, more or less than a little bit of preparation, a little bit of aftercare.
And that's the closest thing I have to an hourly rate.
Otherwise, everything is fixed fee, fixed scope.
And that's why I like it.
And that way, I'm not thinking about hours of my clients.
Aren't thinking about hours.
Or as Alan Weiss would say.
When talking about his fixed fees.
Uh, two clients and selling them.
He would say, you know, I don't want your staff to be making value decisions every
time they pick up the phone and call me.
Which is another thing.
I don't want my client to get off a call with me and be like, wow.
Was that worth?
Into my effective hourly rate is around 500, 500 bucks.
Give or take.
And so does that, like, I don't, you know, I don't want to be like, well, How
much, how much is that guy getting paid?
Was it worth it for me to pay 500 bucks or whatever the thing is.
Uh, I don't want them thinking that because that's, that's then focused on
widgets and not non values and outcomes.
So, uh, I really like this, this quote and that the book is chock-full of them.
I could effect I could have.
Frankly, thrown a dart at the least the first few chapters.
And then the rest are all stories, but definitely pick it up.
And consider yourself if you're doing much hourly work, if that
represents much in your business.
Uh, I'm not saying don't do it, but I would definitely try to steer
away and work on projects that are meaningful and meeting media enough.
Have enough.
Enough value and enough tangible.
Enough quantity of it that you can price the outcome, not the individual
tasks and do hourly and stuff.
Cause it's, it is really a conflict of incentives and, uh, not a great
experience, which is the main thing.
So nothing wrong with it.
Just not the best way to live.
And you know, this book would argue, not doing any kind of commodity level work.
And I think anything that requires that hourly.
Hourly billing.
Is close to commodity work.
It's just an observation that I've, that I've noticed in the past.
So.
Uh, just want to share that with you.
And this is going to be a blog post, and then the longer version.
Comes in the audio and that's for people who like the audio.
And I don't know how often I'll do both audio and text, but
today I was going to do an audio.
So I wrote the outline and then I made it into an article.
Here we are.
We're doing both so hope you enjoyed this.
Let me know.
Email me, kevin@kevin.me and just say hello and tell me what you're thinking.
And tell me if you prefer audio or you prefer these, these, uh,
in written, in written format.
Um, and we'll, we'll take it from there.