Kalzumeus Podcast 3: Growing Consulting Practices, with Brennan Dunn

Being an ordinary iOS and Android freelancer paid by the hour or the day (based in Europe), can you give advice on how to get known as the guy who delivers value? How to become visible?

Also, does this kind of value-driven work also work remotely, or do you always travel to customers?

Good point! Thanks Tom.

I assumed it was for one person but now you've mentioned it, that is probably for them both. In which case I guess it's less extreme on my brain.

Just as a minor PSA: I get that certain consultant types around these parts are always saying "raise your rates", and I get that a lot of people who work freelance do undercharge and often significantly, but the advice has very limited value unless it has some sort of quantifiable element attached to it. Otherwise, with due respect to those consultant types, it sounds a lot like "We're obviously smarter than you, because we charge enough and we're sure you don't" without any real data to back up such a claim.

Obviously rates vary dramatically according to many factors other than the desire of the freelancer/consultant/whatever who wants to charge them: location, industry, level of experience/credibility/relevant specialist skills, and so on. But without even a general indication of how much the poster child consultants of HN have succeeded in putting their own rates up before dispensing this advice endlessly to everyone else, it's hard to take seriously the idea that an average freelancer who isn't Internet famous is going to jump from their normal rate to something on a different kind of level, at least not without fundamentally changing the way they're working in a lot more ways than just the cost per unit time on invoices.

Let me ask a very simple question, which hopefully those consultants might be able to answer without giving away anything sensitive about the specific rates they are personally charging right now: if the going rate for freelance software development work in your area is typically in the range $x-$y, and you have moved via successive rate increases and repositioning what you offer to $z, approximately what are the ratios between x, y and z? For extra marks, since in the podcast a comparison was drawn with the way lawyers charge, how would z compare to a typical range for lawyers working in the same area and with the same kinds of clients?

They do mention in the podcast (rather at the end) that internet famous is not customer famous. Patrick is well-known only to HNers and then some, but not to all CEOs in the world. Much seems to come from word of mouth.

Do you think Patrick or Brennan are übermenschen? Can they program 30x as good as you? They focus on bringing value to clients, discarding pride in technical perfection (well maybe they do, but your customers don't want to hear it anyway). It's taking development focus from "how you do" it to "what you do". Once you do that, your methods change over time - at least that's what I got out of this podcast. Of course you can't demand 100k for an app from a bootstrapped startup - but you can demand 100k for an app which makes a bank some more millions per year.

Bits that were not obvious in retrospect and not previously covered in Patrick's writings or just obviously really important.

1. Patrick's consulting rate has more than septupled since he began consulting (or possibly just this year, can't remember.)

2. The longest he has ever waited to get paid by a client he would be happy to work with again is nine months.

3. On a related note: The bigger your client is the more bureaucratic BSthey will have so they get the special “I expect dealing with you on a business level to be hell” surcharge.

4. Becoming a consultancy is a different deal from being a consultant, even an extremely high end one. Brennan made less as yhe principal of a consultancy than as a consultant for the first year and a half. If you take the commendable attitude that making payroll is sacred you should have $30K set aside for “Despite cashflow issues, we made payroll” purposes.

5. On a related note: When the business has a bumper year employees get a 3-5% payrise. When things are looking like shit they still get paid what was previously negotiated, on time. Most people are, quite sensibly, risk averse. If they want the upside they can take the downside too.

There is a great deal more that's very valuablr in the transcript, like the discussion of the change in attitude that comes with charging more nut those struck me especially. Oh, and there's a link to a tptacek ccomment that is step by step guide to making LOTS AND LOTS OF MONEY.