Summary: Keith Perhac and I recorded our 3rd podcast episode with special guest Brennan Dunn. Listen to it (or read the transcript) for: why you should increase your freelancing rate how to discuss your value with your clients such that they're happy to pay your increased rates how to scale to a multi-employee consultancy, without being bankrupted by poorly timed receivables three stories from successful consultants on three very different trajectories in their businesses how you can use drip email to sell more product (and consulting gigs, too) a bit about the business of selling info-products: pricing anchors, marketing tactics, list building, and more If You Want To Listen To It MP3 Download (~90 minutes, ~211 MB) : Right-click here and click Save As. Podcast format: either subscribe to http://www.kalzumeus.com/category/podcasts/feed in your podcast reader of choice or you can search for Kalzumeus Podcast in the iTunes Store. Transcript: Running a Consulting Business, With Brennan Dunn Patrick McKenzie: Hi everybody. My name is Patrick McKenzie, perhaps better known as patio11 on the Internet. This is the, I think, third episode of the Kalzumeus podcast, with my buddy, Keith Perhac. Keith Perhac: Hello. Patrick: And our special guest, Brennan Dunn, of Planscope and "Double Your Freelancing Rate." Keith: Woo! Brennan Dunn: Hey there. Keith: That was our live studio audience. Last time, we had a theme song. But I don't know. Do we have a theme song this time as well? Patrick: I think we are totally theme‑song‑less. Keith: OK. Patrick: This is still a third‑rate podcast. So, Brennan, recently you had a product launch. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that, and we'll segue into the discussion about it. Brennan: Absolutely. So, for the last few months, I'm been thinking about putting together an info product, specifically one that is targeting, really, a passion point of mine, which is freelancers who undercharge for their services. It's something that really came from my own experience. For way too many years, I charged dramatically less than what I was worth, and only recently have I fixed that. And since I've fixed that, not only has my income gone up, but the caliber of client that I work with has gone up also. And I really wanted to just not only spill the beans as to how I got there but also back it with pricing research that I've done. So I've done a lot of reading of really executive‑level books on the science of pricing and really targeting factories and massive companies that produce products, and I wanted to find a way to distill that into something consumable for an independent service provider. So I took that knowledge. I took my background. I interviewed, I think, six or seven what I deem "premium" freelancers, people who either charge a lot or have, really, a very good business around themselves. They're not just developers. They're not just designers. They're true businesspeople. I condensed that into a book that I launched last week. Three Very Different Consulting Businesses Patrick: So, feedback that I frequently get from people when trying to tell them similar things is that "That's great for you, but you are a coding übermensch. I am merely a PHP coder. How would I ever make that transition into being a business kind of guy?" So I think that's maybe something that's worthwhile for us to discuss. Just for background, for those of you who don't know, all three of us do consulting work on a semi‑regular basis. And without revealing anyone's rate cards, they're pretty up there, versus the, say, $20‑an‑hour commodity PHP coder that you might know or perhaps have in your household somewhere. A good portion of our business success has been that we started out there when we were young and stupid. [Patrick notes: I run a solo consultancy focused largely on selling more software for B2B software/SaaS companies,
