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by spotman
4039 days ago
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Agreed. If you are going to be a healthy (to yourself) consultant, you have to learn the art of saying no. I used to be very paranoid about saying no. I actually recall the first time I did. I was running very low on sleep, and had been for some time. I needed a breather, but I just couldn't risk losing my reputation for always-being-there-and-always-getting-it-done. After I (politely, but firmly) said no for the first time. It was a breath of fresh air. No one criticized me, or stopped hiring me. In fact, I think a few people close to me started working with me more, probably because I was getting more sleep. So, don't be afraid to say no. It takes some practice, but you'll get used to it. |
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(a) Fixed Bid (b) Fixed Scope (c) Fixed Deadline
You're going to continue to find that clients almost never know the full scope they want upfront, and once you've got a contract in place they'll always try to get more done without paying more.
For me, the most stress-free way to do this is by doing it as an hourly rate, with a ceiling on the number of hours before you need to ask for authorization to do further work.
I know some people say to price on the value to the customer, and do fixed prices per week, and so on. I personally find this hard to do because it's so difficult to accurately gauge upfront how much work a project will be.
Usually I explain it to clients like this, depending on the situation:
- If we make the project fixed scope, we will have to deal with renegotiating everything if they find they want just a bit more. The overhead involved in $1k-5k projects is just not worth doing the project at all at that point. Plus they'll have to develop a very specific scope ahead of time, instead of just letting me start work that can cause delays of months.
- If the project is fixed bid, I'll have to make the price based on the worst case scenario rather than the median, and they'll almost certainly end up paying more than just paying me hourly.