Before I rebuilt everything, I was charging $150 an hour, working 60-hour weeks, and genuinely thought I was doing well. Then one night I sat down and calculated my actual effective rate.
Net income divided by real hours worked. Not what I billed. What I worked. It came out to $40 an hour. The gap was overhead, admin, scope creep, and a pricing model that paid me to stay busy rather than deliver results.
Chapter 5 of The Balanced Millionaire gets into exactly why hourly billing breaks firm owners. Not just financially, but in terms of how you think about your own worth.
When you charge by the hour, you've wired your business to grow only one way: more hours. So you add clients, extend your availability, and grind through seasons that never seem to end. The revenue goes up. Your life doesn't.
The ROI Method changes the math entirely. You price on the value you deliver, not the time it takes. If your advice saves a client $80,000 in taxes, a $20,000 fee isn't steep. It's a 4x return. Clients who see it that way don't negotiate. They sign and refer people.
Calculate your real hourly rate. Take last quarter's net income and divide it by the actual hours you worked. Write the number down.
Pick one client and estimate your financial impact. How much did your advice save or earn them this year? Tax savings, strategies implemented, cash flow protected. Put a dollar figure on it.
Compare that to what you charged them. If the gap is uncomfortable, that's the whole point. That's the conversation Chapter 5 is built around.
This week's move
The complete ROI Method, including the CURB scoring framework and how to walk a client through a value-based proposal, is in The Balanced Millionaire. Most advisors say Chapter 5 is the one that changed how they talk about money with clients.
— Jackie