The 4-Day Work Week For Consultants

My guest today is an American running a consulting business from the mountains of Switzerland. He takes every Friday off and skis many mornings in the winter before his clients even log on. This is not an accident; it is by design. I am talking to Paul Koetke, who is a consultant that mastered the art of building a business that serves his life, not the other way around. He consciously chose to sacrifice his ego to gain more freedom.

You are going to want to stick around because we are going to break down the practical decisions that Paul made to put his lifestyle first and how you can do the same without your revenue taking a hit.

In this episode you will learn:

• How to implement a four-day work week without sacrificing productivity.

• Using constraints and deep work to achieve peak output in less time.

• How to leverage time zone differences to enhance your lifestyle and productivity.

• Why a solo expert model can be more fulfilling than scaling a large team.

• The power of sacrificing ego to build a business that aligns with your life goals.

• How to productize a one-page discovery offer to streamline client acquisition.

• The critical shift from hourly billing to fixed-outcome, value-based pricing.

Welcome to the Consulting Success podcast. I’m your host Michael Zipursky, and in this podcast, we’re going to dive deep into the world of elite consultants where you’re going to learn the strategies, tactics and mindset to grow a highly profitable and successful consulting business.

Before we dive into today’s episode. Are you ready to grow and take your consulting business to the next level? Many of the clients that we work with started as podcast listeners just like you, and a consistent theme they have shared with us is that they wished they had reached out sooner about our Clarity Coaching Program rather than waiting for that perfect time. If you’re interested in learning more about how we help consultants just like you, we’re offering a free, no pressure growth session call. On this call, we’re going to dive deep into your goals, challenges and situation and outline a plan that is tailor made just for you. We will also help you identify where you may be making costly and time consuming mistakes to ensure you’re benefiting from the proven methods and strategies to grow your consulting business. 

So don’t wait years to find clarity. If you’re committed and serious about reaching a new level of success in your consulting business, go ahead and schedule your free growth session. Get in touch today. Just visit Consulting Success – Grow to book your free call today.

As the lead consultant at Koetke Consulting LLC, Paul Koetke is dedicated to building dynamic work processes. His career includes projects in a variety of industries, from construction management to healthcare and retail. Prior to founding his own company, Paul was a Customer Success Manager at Smartsheet, where he operated in a hybrid sales and consulting capacity. Inspired by his passion for helping clients achieve significant business transformations, he established his own consulting practice. Paul earned an MBA from HEC Paris and a Bachelor’s in Industrial Engineering.

Connect with Paul Koetke

Discover more about Koetke Consulting LLC

Hey, Paul. Welcome.

Hey, Michael. Thanks for having me on.

Yeah, and I am excited for our conversation here. I know we had a few technical issues we went through, but we are back at it again, and this is going to be even better than the first one. I have had the pleasure of watching you and seeing your business grow over the last little while. When we met in Germany at one of our events, you shared some things about how you have optimized your business, your lifestyle, and how you have created more freedom and success along the way. I think that others can benefit, and really should benefit, from hearing some of the things that you have done and that you have figured out or put into practice in your business. Let’s start off, and I will frame that up. When we were together in Frankfurt, you told me that, “Hey, one big thing that I have now done that I feel very good about in my business is I take Fridays off. I work four days a week.”

Yep.

Walk us through why you started to do that and why you made the decision to do it. Just what was going on in your business, in your life, when you made that decision?

The prior two years had been very, very busy for me, and it is kind of one of these traps that I fell into. I did not realize how busy I had gotten until things slowed down. I was working eighty hours a week, just constantly online, talking to clients, and delivering work. Then I just had a drop in work for a bit of time, and it gave me this time to just be like, “Hey, I can go out for a walk. I can go breathe. I have time to go get groceries and not have to rush back home.”

I kind of snapped out of this feeling of overwork and just burnout and just always chasing the next thing. I decided, you know, “I am happier. I am doing better work now. I can focus and have better conversations.” I decided I want to try and preserve that. My idea was, “I will just take Fridays off.” That is my day for me. Maybe I will go out mountain biking, maybe I will go out for a long walk with my dog, or maybe I will spend that time to just have some uninterrupted time to work on my business or work on a client project.

What is the impact of that? What have you found? By doing it, does it mean that you are getting less done than you were before? Are you the same? Is it more? What would you say has been, beyond actually being able to go for a hike or having uninterrupted eight hours just to work on your business, what would you say the other outputs are? What is the result of that for you and for your business?

[03:28] – Use Deep Work and Constraints for Peak Output

I don’t think it has really had much of an effect on my total output. If anything, it has improved it because I am able to show up now to work and be 100 percent in, not just running on fumes and just trying to make it through the day. I am actually here. I am engaged. I am focused.

But then also a big piece, too, is the time off on Fridays. In one sense, it is time off, but it is also dedicated time for deep thinking. I can go bike up a hill and spend two or three hours just biking up the side of a mountain, and I just get into this zone and start thinking and thinking and thinking. I do not have two or three hours in the middle of my workday just to think. That has really opened up new ideas for me.

When you ask people the question, “Where do you get your best ideas?” or think about one of the best ideas that you have had and where it happened, where it came to you, you will almost never hear somebody say, “When I was at my desk, staring at my computer.”

Never.

Right?

Never.

“I am mountain biking. I am walking along the beach. I am taking a walk through the forest. I am walking the streets. I am in a cafe. I am in the shower,” right? At my yoga class or at the gym. It is not in your usual day to day. What you are hitting on, the importance of making time for deep thinking, making time for innovative thinking, making time for yourself, for I think for so many people, it can feel self-serving. It is like, you know, you almost feel bad taking that time. But when you do it and you understand the power of what it unleashes and the potential it provides, you recognize that it is actually- it is good for your business.

Yeah, it really is.

Yeah, it helps you to grow. For you to be able to say that your output has not decreased, in fact, it is the same as working five days, but now you are getting that done in four days, or you are actually getting even more done, I think is a testament to the power of this. I remember I saw this firsthand many years ago when I was in high school. I was competitive in track and field and was thinking of getting a scholarship to go to university through that program. I do not know if I ever shared that with you or not, but it was like six days a week, training, training, training. I had no time for studies, and I was not into education when I was in high school, or really in any of my education. It just was not my thing. I always wanted to get out into the quote-unquote “real world”.

Right.

But I had less time when I was doing that, and I got better at academics, which to me was like, “How am I actually studying more, getting better grades, but I am doing it in way less time than I have ever had before?” It is because there is that theory of constraints, right? It is like whatever the time you give things, you will fit into that. I think it is Parkinson’s Law, if I am not mistaken. There is some name for this, but if you define and reduce the amount of time that you have for any one thing, you will generally be able to fit it into that because your mind will have to find ways to make it happen. Whereas if you give yourself a lot more time, it is just easier to put things off, to delay, and therefore it will take more time.

That is so true. That is absolutely spot on. I think that goes as well, like whenever I set up client calls, if we schedule an hour, it takes the whole hour. If we schedule thirty minutes, we are able to accomplish it in thirty minutes. It applies there on the small scale too.

That is a really important principle, I think, for everyone to look at. You could apply that to all areas of your business, right? So how are you approaching meetings? How are you approaching project planning? I know even like when I work with our team, I will often challenge some, like we are rolling out some new things right now. I remember I said to one person on our team, “Okay, like you are saying it is going to take three months. Could we get this done in two months?” She came back and said, “I like that challenge. I think we can do something on this.” That is a small thing, right, to put that out. Again, you could look at and say it is very similar to saying taking time off for yourself is maybe selfish. It is not going to help you to grow the business. Is that good for you, for your family, for your team? But when you realize that no, like having a constraint actually creates more positive outcomes than not having that constraint, it is something that you can really start to lean into and appreciate. How scary was that for you to think, “I am going to take a day off. I am not going to be working?” Was that a relatively easy decision, or did you really kind of struggle with it and think about it for a period of time before doing it?

[08:10] – Block Fridays: Clients Will Flex Around You

Oh, yeah, it was definitely scary. I have always been that guy who was bringing his laptop on vacation, checking emails multiple times a day, and I felt like I had to be available 24/7 to my clients. After kind of this realization of, “Oh, man, I need a little bit of breathing room and some space here,” I just quietly just put it on my calendar, just blocked off Fridays. I was expecting to get some kind of feedback or a whiplash back from my clients, and no one said anything. People just started saying, “Okay, that is fine. We will just meet on Monday.” It was that simple. It was a total non-event.

It is so common that the concerns or worries that we have as business owners are just worries in our own mind, and they are not reality. What you are sharing right now is something I have seen time and time again with consulting founders that we work with where they will structure their business putting their business at the forefront, which means that they are not living the lifestyle they want to have because they are making sacrifices in their lifestyle to support their business. But when you make some of these lifestyle decisions first, then what you are able to do is to have your business make the sacrifices or the adjustments, right, the improvements, the optimizations to support the lifestyle that you want. But if you are too scared to allow yourself to enjoy that lifestyle, then you are never going to have it. You are going to keep finding reasons to delay it. And what you said is something that I, again, have seen so many times over the years where when you just make that decision, “I am taking Friday off. I am taking Monday off. This half day is when I am working on my content or my intellectual property development and frameworks or whatever,” and you block that out, if a client says, “Can we meet at this time?” and you say, “I have another appointment,” or, “I am busy,” or whatever, it is not a big deal. Because to the client, not everyone is always available 24/7, and the fact that you are saying you are busy, you have some other things that are already in the calendar, signals to that person that you must be good at what you do. You are in demand. You are not just freely available at all times.

[10:24] – Sell Outcomes, Not Hours

I think this is the big difference between being an employee versus being a consultant. When you are an employee, you are full-time available for your management, for your company. When you are a consultant, you are there to deliver on a scope of work. So how you deliver on that does not really matter. You do not have to go sit in the office five days a week. You might not have to go in the office. You might not have to work five days a week or do anything that is specifically outlined as long as you deliver the end result. That gives you the flexibility to say, “Hey, I am going to deliver this for you on my own terms, and you get more of that balance.”

That is probably one of the biggest distinctions, or I should probably say an important distinction, about being a business owner and especially in the world of consulting, that clients are paying not for your time; they are paying for the outcome. But I think the bigger and more important concept, because it covers a lot more ground, is that value is not about time, right? It is about the overall outcome and that the amount of time that you spend doing something does not equal the value that is created, right? It is, what is the actual outcome? That is what the value is.

I remember a personal example many years ago. If my wife heard me say this, she would probably laugh, but she used to say, like, I would go in the afternoons for a meeting. So Sam, who you have met, my co-founder here at Consulting Success, we would go for a lunch and we would finish working at lunchtime, and we would go to a restaurant and have some food or drinks or whatever. I would finish the day, so I would finish the day at 12:00 or 1:00 or something like that. She was like, “What? What were you doing? Why are you not working?” I am saying, “Well, I was working, but I am just not working in the typical way.” When we are having conversations, I am thinking about things, and also as a business owner and entrepreneur, you need to have this balance of time to decompress, to unwind. You cannot be always on the clock, right, because as a business owner, your mind is always, or generally very often, thinking about business.

Right.

That is the difference again between the employee and the business owner mindset. The employee in general goes to work, clocks out, comes home, and is not thinking as much about work. They might be thinking about how good or bad their day was or how their boss is someone that they do or do not like, you know, politics, but they are not actively, generally thinking, “How do I grow the business?” and, “How do I-?” Whereas the business owner, you are always thinking about, “What improvements can I make?” and, “What is going on?” and there is just so much more that tends to consume the mind. So having that balance and being able to find time when you are not as engaged allows your mind to, I think, reach those places where you can start to have breakthroughs or at minimum come back to when you are working and have a lot more energy and focus.

[13:29] – Set Strong Work-From-Home Boundaries

That is a really dangerous trap to fall into being self-employed, especially for a lot of us who are working at home. Because I sleep one room over from where my office is, and I eat downstairs. It is kind of one of these things, you are never that far away from work. It is not like I am going to the office and I clock out and I come home, and there is a complete physical separation. Some people do go to the office; some people also work from home at larger companies. But it can be tricky to navigate sometimes, and being aware of it is really important.

Definitely. So you are an American, but you are living in Switzerland.

Correct.

First of all, what took you to Switzerland? And then I have got some questions about how you operate your business from there.

It was one of these things where my wife, she was working in a major consulting firm, and they have got a global network of subsidiaries or, I guess, partner firms, as they call them. The opportunity came up for us to move to Paris and take a transfer with her company. We decided, “Hey, you only live once. Let’s go do it. We will do it for a couple of years. We will just see what happens.” We got to Paris, spent a year there, and then got another opportunity to move to Switzerland. We are big mountain people, skiing, hiking, all of that. So it is like, “This is an even better option for us.” We got here and just have not come back. We are loving the experience abroad, and if you get a chance to do that ever with a company or just on your own, I highly recommend it because it has been a wonderful experience living abroad.

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What has been the best thing about running your business, being an independent consultant, a consulting business owner? What has been the best part of that?

[16:47] – Turn Time Zones Into a Productivity Edge

Oh, man. You know what most people think would be the worst, which is the six-hour time difference from Switzerland to the East Coast of the US or a nine-hour time difference to the West Coast, has actually been one of the best pieces. Because when I was working in the US, I was working regular nine-to-five hours. Especially in the winter, you get out of work, it is already dark outside. In Seattle, where I was living, it is rainy as well, and you just go home and cook some dinner and go to bed, and there is nothing really to do.

What I have realized here is actually that time difference works into my benefit because in the wintertime, before having a kid, things are different now. But before having a kid, I would go out skiing every day and get a whole bunch of runs in, up in the mountains, up in the sun. Then I would come down in the afternoon, log onto my computer around two or three in the afternoon, which is eight or nine a.m. Eastern time, work the Eastern time zone. It gets dark and cold outside. I am in here working. Go to bed and do it again. Being able to take advantage of that outdoor time and the sunlight has really been nice.

Awesome. That is great. What would you say has been the hardest part or maybe the biggest challenge of running your business from there?

[18:07] – Prioritize In-Person Touchpoints for Trust

I think the biggest challenge is not being able to spend as much time physically in person with clients.

Most of your clients are US-based?

Yes. Yep, great question. So almost all of my clients are US-based because it is a very large market. I am American, I understand the market, and so it is easy for me to address. I try and do a big trip every year and go out and see a couple of clients, try and see them at Smartsheet’s user conference every year. But if I were closer, I would probably get to see them more often. I feel like you can never replace an in-person relationship. Everything these days is moving online, and the ability to go meet someone in person, to spend time at their company, see their manufacturing facility, there is just nothing that can substitute.

Yeah, I think that is very, very true. That is why we try and do these events with clients. It was really great to meet you in person and a whole bunch of other clients from around Europe and from other places, in Frankfurt when we did that. I am interested in maybe having you describe a little bit more about the way that you have structured your business. You have a very lean business. How do you think about hiring or not hiring and using automation? How have you gone about making those decisions of when to hire somebody or not to hire somebody and just thinking, “What does growth mean to you in terms of other people or not bringing other people into the company?”

[19:48] – Build a Solo Expert Niche Over Hiring

That is a really great question. Early on, I had come in with this assumption of, “Hey, I want to grow this business. I want to hit million-dollar, multimillion-dollar numbers in revenue, and I am going to see where it can go. Space is the limit.” As I started going down that path, I realized what really makes me happy is spending time with clients, is doing technical implementations in Smartsheet, really getting my hands dirty on that.

I tried hiring someone for a period of time and realized that moving into a management role for me is less fun. It is not where I want to be. It is not what gives me energy. Then on the other side of it, too, is there are a lot of other consulting firms in my space who have larger teams, or Smartsheet has their own internal services. What I have realized is there is definitely a market niche for companies that are saying, “Hey, we have gotten passed between multiple different junior consultants on the same project. Then when we need to extend that into a new scope of work, we get someone completely new, and they are staffing based on capacity and optimizing utilization, all of that.” When I tell them, “Hey, it’s just me. You are going to get me for your sales process, you are going to get me for your implementation, you are going to get me for the ongoing hypercare and support thereafter.” That has really resonated with the niche of clients. So it was a bit of aligning of the stars there.

Do you feel like you have had to make sacrifices in your ability to generate greater revenues? What I mean by that is by not growing beyond, not hiring more people, not thinking about ways to scale and grow the business because you have recognized that you really want to be directly involved in the implementation. A more, call it maybe standard path when people think about growing a consulting business would be to hire people to do the delivery, right, teach them your frameworks and all that kind of stuff. You initially are bringing in the business, maybe at a later time you bring somebody in to help with business development. Do you, have you actively in your mind said, “Yeah, I have made a trade-off. I recognize I am capping my earning potential,” or do you see it as, “No, I just-” how do you view the model you have selected?

I had to sacrifice my ego. I had to come to terms that I did not want to build a multimillion-dollar business because that is truly what I wanted. I wanted to build a multimillion-dollar business because other people have done it, and I wanted to prove to myself and them that I could do it, too. So, back to your earlier point of balancing your life with your work and making sure that that is a symbiotic relationship, I have realized that in this model I can generate the revenue I need to live the lifestyle I want. And hey, that checks all the boxes. So if I get more time to go mountain biking, I am all happy about it.

You know, it reminds me of, this is actually why one of the main reasons I wanted to have you on was to share this message because I think it is a very important one. Very often people define success as, “How much money are you making?” They go, “Oh, you are generating millions of dollars or tens of millions of dollars or whatever the number is,” and society makes that impressive. Don’t get me wrong, I am a capitalist at heart. I am interested in making money, but mainly for the purposes of the freedom that it creates and looking at it as a way of seeing how we are progressing and as a challenge. But it reminds me of the story of the – I mean there are multiple version of this – but I learned many, many years ago about the Mexican fisherman.

Yeah.

Who…You know this one?

Yes, I do. It is fantastic.

If you have not, I will just share a very brief version of it. An American tourist goes down to Mexico, sees this Mexican fisherman, and he comes in with a big haul of fish. It is still very early in the morning. The American businessman is like, asking, “Why are you not out there more, fishing more, getting more fish? I can help to fund you, and you can have multiple boats, and you will make millions of dollars.” The long story short is that the Mexican fisherman says, “Okay, Señor, what would I do then?” He is like, “Well, you would get to end your day early. You would be able to have a siesta. You can drink wine and play guitar and be with your friends and have a meal.” He is like, “I am already doing that now.”

Yeah.

So it is, I have always found that so interesting that money is just one measure. You hit the nail on the head that often decisions that people make are driven by ego, not driven by what truly is most fulfilling or important for them. Getting really clear on what is important for you as a human being, as a person, and then reverse-engineering that and figuring out, “Okay, well, what is the business model that I need to have to achieve that?” It does not mean that just because somebody is not as focused on growing their business to multimillion dollars or again, whatever that metric is, it does not mean that they do not have to work hard. It does not mean they do not have to think about what are the pitfalls or the dangers, what are the risks. You still need to be strategic, you still need to take action, and you still have to be a business builder. But the way that you keep score is a little bit different, and some of the actions you take or the decisions that you make of what you say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to become different, and I think often will become more aligned with what you truly want and care about.

Yeah. Yeah, spot on.

Okay, so, Paul, what I want to do here is, I am conscious of the time that we have, and I know that we had a bit of a tech fumble earlier on, but we are back on track and making good progress. I wanted to, if it is all right with you, I know you shared with Jaclyn on our team your one-page discovery offer. I want to bring it up and have you just explain this. Let me see if I can pull it up here properly. Yeah, here we go. All right, so can you see that?

I can see the top half here.

Okay. Yeah. So I will scroll just real quick so that everyone, for those of you who are just joining in with the audio, head over to the Consulting Success YouTube channel, and you will see the full video of Paul and I, and you will see what we now have pulled up on the screen. This is a very, I would call it a simple, in terms of the structure of it, it is a one-pager. What is this document? If you were just to describe it in a summary form, what is this? What is the purpose of it? Why did you create it?

[28:30] – Productize a One-Page Discovery Offer

This is a prepackaged introductory offer for a Smartsheet PMO build. What I use this offer for is oftentimes for newer clients whose project management organizations are not fully matured yet and are saying, “Hey, we are feeling some pain points. We are managing projects maybe in Excel, and our business is growing, and we are at the point where this is no longer sustainable. We need to do something, but we are not ready to dive into the deep end on this big, full solution. We need an interim option that we can start to ease into, learn about, and that will also help shape our future growth.”

What I came up with here was basically a prepackaged option. It is limited in scope. It is limited in timeline. It has a defined set of items in here which are all then fully customized to that client’s particular needs. But rather than spending several hours and multiple different meetings to go through and design out a custom scope that is going to need a lot of discovery and development and then is going to come with a higher price tag, just saying, “Hey, here is the entry offer. You can start here. This is the easy step. Then when you are ready, we can dive into the next step afterwards.”

Paul, how well has this document worked for you? What kind of opportunities has it opened up for you? What have you found, or are you still testing? Just for somebody who is looking at this or hearing you describe this one-pager that you are using, how effective has it been?

It has been super effective, especially with that segment of the market where companies do not yet have a mature project management process built in to say, “Hey, this is the standard. Go this direction.” They are not maybe quite sure what they want or what they need, and you just say, “This is where you start.” It’s also opened the door for a lot of follow-on work together in that we say, “Hey, let us start here. Then when you outgrow this basic solution and you have got some experience in Smartsheet, you have got some experience running your organization with a dedicated tool in place, then let’s have that conversation about what it looks like to build out a fully custom solution with all the bells and whistles that you need.”

I really like the way that you structured this. So just for those who maybe are not seeing this right now, again, head over to YouTube, and you will be able to see the example. But you have a nice headline, some simple text, you have a diagram which makes it very easy to see what the process is that you are going to be taking clients through. It also, I believe, really instills confidence with clients when you have a formal process laid out because it signals to them that this is not your first time doing it, right? You have thought through what creates success. Then a little bit about yourself, very brief but powerful language. Then you have three testimonials from very well-known organizations and people that are senior, C-suite level people from those organizations. So really well done on this, and I am very glad to hear that it has just created a whole bunch of opportunities for you. So let’s jump back. I want to ask you a little bit more since we are talking about your business right now. What are you doing today? Or what have you found are the channels or the methods, the tactics that work best for you to generate leads, to build your pipeline? Essentially, how are you acquiring clients or building that pipeline?

[32:18] – Diversify Lead Gen with Partnerships and LinkedIn

Historically, it’s been working really closely with Smartsheet. As a Smartsheet partner, I used to work at Smartsheet, and then I have been in the partner organization here for the last seven years and developed some really close relationships with the sales organization there who are working directly with the end users of the product. That has led to a lot of great conversations.

I am also now trying to generate my own pipeline as well too and getting some really good traction on LinkedIn, doing a lot of posting, reaching out to people, and specifically when I am doing outreach, not just blasting the whole world, but coming in with hyper-targeted lists and then hyper-targeted messaging towards each person to make sure that I understand who they are and respect them for that. It’s been opening up a lot of really good conversations and getting some really high response rates from that outreach.

I think it is very smart what you have just described for others that, whether in your case your main lead source was the ecosystem of the software company that you support, in this case it is Smartsheet. But even for those that are not working that kind of relationship, it is always smart to think about how to diversify your marketing channels or your lead generation streams. Because if you have too many eggs in one basket, and especially in the case where it is a basket that you do not control, right? So if you are counting on getting leads from another company or from another source, if all of a sudden there is a big change there, it means that you are almost starting from scratch. So having that channel, right, having LinkedIn, having direct outreach, three channels together is much more powerful than just having reliance on one. I think that is a great reminder for people.

Yeah. And to have your own direct pipeline is essential. That is something that I have really put a priority on building this year. It is my number one priority because the winds do shift, and as much as you can be in control of the winds themselves, that is just going to build a lot more security for your business.

All right, before we wrap up, I do want to ask you one more question, and that is in hindsight or with the benefit of hindsight, is there one thing or a couple of things that stand out to you that you wish you would have known earlier or you just think back or maybe just even thinking now that, “Wow, I really think I would have benefited in some form or fashion by knowing this much earlier?”

[35:07] – Switch from Hourly to Fixed-Outcome, Value-Aligned Pricing

Oh, man. That is a phenomenal question. I think one of the biggest things that has impacted my business is switching over from that contractor mindset of just saying, “Hey, I am an hourly contractor. Here is my rate. I will just be there.” This goes back to our earlier conversation around the difference about being responsible for being present or being responsible for delivery. Being able to switch over to delivery has both increased my margins but then also brought a lot of great benefits to my clients in that they are not just hiring me for time and just saying, “Hey, we will see when this gets done.” They know exactly how much they are going to pay up front, when they are going to get it, and the deliverables that they are going to get out of it. It has given them a lot more confidence and has just really worked out for everyone much, much better. I wish I had made that change years ago.

Yeah, I think very often it is a very common one that we see with a lot of consultants that we work with, yourself included, in terms of just experiencing that status quo initial mindset of trading time for dollars, right, hourly fees to, “Oh, there is actually maybe a better way of doing this and one that creates more value for clients and creates more value for you, not to mention more revenue, more profits.” It is always great when you can find those win-wins, right? It is a win for everybody.

To be fair, it is a really hard jump to make, especially earlier on because early on you are not sure, “Am I going to get absolutely hosed by proposing something that is too low, or am I coming in way too high and it is just going to get laughed out of the room?” I think once you have got a couple years under your belt, then it is like, “Okay, I know what this is going to entail. I have experienced this previously. I can say with confidence it is going to take us eight weeks and cost us X number of dollars.”

Yeah. I mean, generally what I share with people and share with clients, and I know you have heard this kind of thing before, but to your point, which is very accurate, getting into value-based fees, right, or focusing your pricing around ROI is not the starting point or not where somebody who is brand new to the world of consulting should start, unless they are prepared to take a couple of projects that may not be as profitable as you want and just think about that as a learning experience or think about the loss of potential revenue as the cost of education. So you are essentially paying for that, if you will. But there is nothing wrong, and in fact, what most people tend to do is have your first initial few projects and engagements as being on an hourly basis so that you can understand what is actually involved, how much time something takes. Then once you have that structure, that knowledge and understanding, you can be much more confident to go in and talk to the client and focus on now the value, not the time. Because if you can see that you can create a great outcome and result for the client and you can capture or receive part of that compensation but still deliver a really powerful and compelling ROI to the client, then they get great upside. You get more compensation than you would if you were just charging on hourly fees. Then the real winning part is that in so many cases, you can deliver that project in significantly less time than it would take if you were just thinking from the hourly perspective, right? Because if you know that you can get it done in less time and you charge on an hourly fee basis, it generally means you are going to make a lot less money or that you are going to need to extend the amount of time in order to earn more, which is I think a real disservice and just not the right way to engage and work with clients.

[39:12] – Redefine Success Beyond Revenue to Freedom and Fulfillment

The hourly bit is always a bit weird for all parties involved because if you are really good at what you do and you work faster, well, you are getting paid less. If you are not good at what you do, the client is paying you more to deliver something that is not as good. It just does not make sense. But if you can remove that ambiguity, everyone knows what the outcome is going to be and feels good about it, then it is a win-win across the board.

And I think just to add for people that this is not going to necessarily fit every single situation. There are organizations out there that will be very opposed to value or ROI-focused fees because they have not done it before; they do not understand it. That then becomes a question for you. Do you want to invest the time to educate them, to try and work with them, to get them to be comfortable with it? Or maybe you just decide they are not the right client for you and you move on to working with those that do understand it. But these are all things that you want to be thinking through. So, Paul, I want to thank you for coming on. I know we have just really started to talk about some of the things you have done. There is so much more that you have accomplished and that you continue to work on. Where is the best place for people to learn more or to connect with you if they would like?

Come find me on LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/paulkoetke/. Search for Paul Koetke, K-O-E-T-K-E. Or find me on my website, www.koetkeconsulting.com/.

All right, thanks again for coming on.

Thanks for having me on, Michael.

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Paul Koetke
Koetke Consulting LLC
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