Sell the thing, not the hours

Sell the thing, not the hours syllabus

The difference between selling time and selling a thing, done with margin arithmetic rather than with encouragement. Includes the honest case for staying a service business.

The arithmetic

Three numbers decide it, and two of them you have never measured.

  1. Where your hours actually go — Measure a real fortnight. The billable fraction is the number that explains why growing felt like standing still. (25 min)
  2. Find the genuinely repeatable part — Your last three jobs felt similar. Audit them properly and find out how much actually was. (30 min, paid)
  3. What it costs you after the sale — Support load per customer, projected to ten and fifty. This is where productisation usually dies. (30 min, paid)