Thursday, August 12, 2010

The Time-Based Ceiling

I was told ten years ago that the difference between a consultant and a contractor is that a contractor bills by the hour, a consultant by the day.

I believe that to be true.

I can sell my services at $110 per hour, or at $1,000 a day, and yes, the daily rate is better.

Here’s the catch: I have a fixed number of days left in my life.

If I billed out every day from now until then, there’d be an upper limit to my revenue, and I wouldn’t reach it until, quite literally, the day I die.

Even pay-by-day consultants at $2,500 per day have a time-based ceiling. Their maximum annual revenue cannot exceed one million dollars.

However, a solution-based service or product can easily exceed that ceiling. In fact, the sky is the limit.

When I package what I do in a day and sell it as a self-contained solution, I can sell it to multiple clients in one day.

If I can package my training material I can license it to other instructors, or charge a fee for a download from my web site.

Although it took me, say, seven days at $2,500 per day to develop the software product, I can sell it as a software package as many times as I like for $15,000. Or for for $1,500. or for for $150.

With next-day delivery!

Talk to Me!

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