Ep 306 Hourly Billing Is Nuts: How to Boost Profits with Value Pricing with Jonathan Stark
Profit Answer Man: Scaling with Profit First & Beyond
Release Date: 01/27/2026
Ep 333 Why $2M to $5M Is Where Owners Lose the Most Cash with Brad Sugars
Profit Answer Man: Scaling with Profit First & Beyond
Why $2M to $5M Is Where Owners Lose the Most Cash with Brad Sugars Find Rocky Lalvani @ or email him at Make more, work less video: You just had your best revenue month ever. And somehow, this morning, you were still moving money between accounts to make sure payroll clears. If that describes your week, you're not bad at business, and you're not alone. You're standing in the exact stage almost every growing owner hits somewhere between two and five million in revenue, the stage where cash and profit are supposed to show up and instead go...
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Ep 504 Why Your Business Won’t Let You Go - Letting Others Take Ownership with Jason Henneberry
Profit Answer Man: Scaling with Profit First & Beyond
Why Your Business Won’t Let You Go - Letting Others Take Ownership with Jason Henneberry You have hired good people. You have tried to step back. And yet, every time something important goes sideways, it still lands on your desk. Jason Henneberry says that is not a people problem or a systems problem. It is a dependency problem, and it has a specific structural cause. Jason is the founder of Dependency Design, a senior partner in a national Canadian mortgage brokerage with more than 600 professionals, and the author of "Why Your Business Won't Let You Go," which you can download free...
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Ep 332 Why 88% of Companies Leave Money on the Table with Per Sjöfors
Profit Answer Man: Scaling with Profit First & Beyond
Why 88% of Companies Leave Money on the Table with Per Sjöfors Find Rocky Lalvani @ or email him at Make more, work less video: You ran the math on a price increase once. It worked on paper. You still didn't pull the trigger. That hesitation is not a character flaw, and you are not the only owner who has frozen at that exact spot. Per Sjöfors, the Price Whisperer, has spent decades studying why owners who clearly should raise prices behaviorally cannot, and what it costs them every month they wait. In this episode of Profit Answer Man, Per...
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Ep 331 Problems Scale Faster Than Revenue. Here Is the Fix with Nick Avaria
Profit Answer Man: Scaling with Profit First & Beyond
Problems Scale Faster Than Revenue. Here Is the Fix with Nick Avaria Find Rocky Lalvani @ or email him at Make more, work less video: You hired people so you could step back. Instead, you are more in the weeds than before, the business feels harder to run than it did at half the size, and profit is somehow lower despite the growth. That is not a people problem. That is the missing middle, and it has a structure, a cost, and a fix. Nick Avaria has bought and sold seven agencies, all profitably. He has watched founders hit this wall time after...
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Ep 330 Why More Sales Won’t Fix a Broken Business with Doug C. Brown
Profit Answer Man: Scaling with Profit First & Beyond
Why More Sales Won’t Fix a Broken Business with Doug C. Brown Find Rocky Lalvani @ or email him at Make more, work less video: You had a strong year by every number that shows up on a dashboard. Revenue up. Team growing. More clients. And you still moved money around to make payroll, or woke up at 3am doing math that did not add up. This is not bad luck. It is what happens when a business is built on revenue logic instead of profit math, and the gap between what comes in and what goes out is not being measured, tracked, or managed. ...
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Ep 329 You're Losing Profit When Your Competition Uses AI with Peter McCarroll
Profit Answer Man: Scaling with Profit First & Beyond
You're Losing Profit When Your Competition Uses AI with Peter McCarroll Find Rocky Lalvani @ or email him at Make more, work less video: It is 9 am. You have a ChatGPT tab open in your browser. You have had it open for six months. This week you used it to write a follow-up email and summarize a vendor contract. And in the back of your head you have been telling yourself: we are doing the AI thing. You are not doing the AI thing. You are paying for a receipt. Peter McCarroll has built AI into the actual operations of a 15-year accounting...
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Ep 328 Your Best Customers Are Quiet-Quitting. Here's the Proof with Ethan Giffin
Profit Answer Man: Scaling with Profit First & Beyond
Your Best Customers Are Quiet-Quitting. Here's the Proof with Ethan Giffin Find Rocky Lalvani @ or email him at Make more, work less video: You haven't lost the account. The customer still picks up the phone. But somewhere in the last 18 months the reorder volume dropped, and nobody flagged it because the relationship still looks fine. That's how B2B quiet quitting works. Your customers don't cancel and don't complain. They just route their consumables to whoever made buying easiest, while keeping your account open for the orders that...
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Ep 327 The Messaging Problem Draining Your Marketing Dollars with Malcolm Reid Sr.
Profit Answer Man: Scaling with Profit First & Beyond
The Messaging Problem Draining Your Marketing Dollars with Malcolm Reid Sr. Find Rocky Lalvani @ or email him at Make more, work less video: You hired the marketing company. You approved the budget. You watched the invoices come in every month. And the calls from the kind of customer you actually want are still not coming. That is not a platform problem. That is not a volume problem. That is a messaging problem, and it is sitting inside your business right now costing you buyers who researched your category, decided who to trust, and...
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Ep 326 The $1.4M Pricing Gap Most Owners Never Find with Emily Bowie
Profit Answer Man: Scaling with Profit First & Beyond
The $1.4M Pricing Gap Most Owners Never Find with Emily Bowie Find Rocky Lalvani @ or email him at Make more, work less video: You pull up the P&L at the end of the month. Profit looks fine. Revenue is up. And you still moved money around to cover payroll. You’re not mismanaging your business. You’re making decisions off an incomplete report, and nobody told you what it was missing. Emily Bowie spent years auditing companies inside Big Four accounting before she started helping business owners see past the P&L. What she finds most...
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Ep 325 How to Grow a Flower Shop from 600k to 9 Million with Michael Jacobson
Profit Answer Man: Scaling with Profit First & Beyond
How to Grow a Flower Shop from 600k to 9 Million with Michael Jacobson Find Rocky Lalvani @ or email him at Make more, work less video: Most business owners think their profit problem is a sales problem. It often is not. More often, the real issue is waste, weak systems, and not knowing where margin is leaking out of the business. In this episode of Profit Answer Man, Rocky Lalvani talks with Michael Jacobson about how he took a struggling flower shop and transformed it into a multi-location business by focusing on supply chain, technology,...
info_outlineHourly Billing Is Nuts: How to Boost Profits with Value Pricing with Jonathan Stark
Find Rocky Lalvani @ www.ProfitComesFirst.com or email him at rocky@profitcomesfirst.com
Most business owners don’t realize the hidden cost of hourly billing.
It’s not just that it can feel annoying.
It’s that it can cap your income, misalign incentives, and create friction and distrust with clients—especially when estimates blow up.
In this episode of Profit Answer Man, Rocky Lalvani sits down with Jonathan Stark, former software developer and author of Hourly Billing is Nuts, who’s been on a mission since 2006 to help experts stop selling time and start pricing for outcomes. Together they break down why hourly billing creates an “artificial ceiling,” how fixed pricing changes the client relationship, and how to protect yourself from scope creep by tying everything back to outcomes.
In This Episode, You’ll Learn:
- Why hourly billing creates an artificial ceiling on income (even at high hourly rates).
- Why clients hate hourly projects when estimates go wrong—and how it destroys trust.
- How fixed pricing rewards efficiency (and why hourly pricing financially punishes smart shortcuts).
- The difference between selling inputs/deliverables vs selling the outcome.
- Why most people think “value pricing won’t work in my industry”—and what’s really missing (the “why” conversation).
- How to handle “scope creep” by using the agreed outcome as a filter—and parking non-essential requests.
- A practical bridge for hourly billers: offering an estimate vs a higher fixed-price option to shift risk and provide certainty.
The Big Takeaway:
Hourly billing isn’t just a pricing method.
It’s an incentive system—and it often incentivizes the wrong things.
When you price by the hour, you cap your upside and risk creating tension with clients when projects run long. When you price for outcomes, you align incentives so both sides win when the work gets done faster (without sacrificing quality), and you create a healthier, more trusting relationship.
Bio:
Jonathan Stark is a former software developer who is on a mission to rid the world of hourly billing. He is the author of Hourly Billing Is Nuts, the host of Ditching Hourly, and writes a daily newsletter on pricing for independent professionals.
Links:
Website: valuepricingbootcamp.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanstark/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheJonathanStarkShow
Conclusion:
Hourly billing feels normal in a lot of industries—but as Jonathan explains, it often creates an artificial ceiling on your income and puts the client in the risky position of betting on an estimate that may not hold up. That’s when trust erodes, projects get contentious, and both sides lose.
A fixed price (and ultimately value-based pricing) changes the game: incentives align, efficiency gets rewarded instead of punished, and you can protect the work by filtering scope decisions through the agreed outcome—parking anything that doesn’t contribute until after you “declare victory.”
If you’re currently billing by the hour, this episode is your reminder that the goal isn’t just to charge more—it’s to price in a way that supports better relationships, better results, and a business model that doesn’t depend on maxing out your calendar.
Ready to stop selling time and start selling outcomes?
Explore Jonathan’s work at https://jonathanstark.com/ and check out http://valuepricingbootcamp.com to learn practical ways to move away from hourly billing.
#ProfitAnswerMan #ProfitFirst #ValuePricing #HourlyBilling #PricingStrategy #Consulting #ProfessionalServices #BusinessProfit #CashFlow
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Music provided by Junan from Junan Podcast
Any financial advice is for educational purposes only and you should consult with an expert for your specific needs.