The Pricing Strategy That Doubled This Solopreneur's Income in Year One

Watch on YouTube

If you're a solopreneur billing by the hour, you might be stuck in a trap you don't even realize exists, one that's capping your income, straining your client relationships, and actually encouraging scope creep. In this episode of The Aspiring Solopreneur, we sit down with Jonathan Stark, the creator of Ditching Hourly, to talk about why hourly billing works against you and how to replace it with a value-based pricing model that benefits both you and your clients.

Jonathan isn't just theorizing. He made this switch himself early in his career, doubled his income in the first year, and has spent the years since helping other solopreneurs and consultants do the same. What surprised him most? It wasn't just his own life that got better; his clients became calmer, more trusting, and easier to work with almost immediately.

What Is Value-Based Pricing and Why Does It Matter for Solopreneurs?

Value-based pricing means setting your project fee based on the business outcome your work creates for the client, not the number of hours it takes you to deliver it. Instead of quoting an hourly rate, you determine what the result is worth to the client's business and price your services as a fraction of that value.

This matters for solopreneurs because hourly billing creates a direct conflict of interest. The faster you work, the less you earn. Your brain never turns on the creative problem-solving that would help you find efficiencies, because those efficiencies would punish you financially. Meanwhile, your client is pressuring you to go faster because every hour you spend is money out of their pocket. It's an adversarial dynamic baked right into the pricing model.

When you switch to a fixed project price rooted in value, that tension disappears. The client stops watching the clock. You stop feeling guilty for thinking. And both of you can focus on what actually matters — getting to a great outcome.

How Do You Figure Out What Your Work Is Worth to a Client?

This is where Jonathan's framework gets really practical. He uses what he calls the "why conversation" — a series of strategic questions he asks during the sales process, before he ever writes a proposal. The questions fall into three categories.

The first is "why do this at all?" You want the client to explain, in their own words, why this project matters. What business problem does it solve? What happens if they don't do it? Jonathan will sometimes try to talk them out of the project on purpose, asking things like "this is going to cost a lot of money and eat up your team's time, so why not just skip it?" If they can make a compelling case for why they have to move forward, you know there's real value on the table.

The second category is "why now?" Maybe they could wait six months, study the market, or do more research. If the answer is that a competitor is closing in, or a window of opportunity is shrinking, or the problem is getting worse every month, you've confirmed urgency, which is a key ingredient in value pricing.

The third is "why me?" Why hire you specifically instead of outsourcing it, doing it in-house, or having someone less experienced handle it? The answers here help you understand your unique positioning and what premium the client places on your specific expertise.

By the end of this conversation, you should have a clear picture of the business outcome the client is chasing and a rough sense of what achieving that outcome would be worth to them. That number becomes the anchor for your pricing.

How to Structure a Value-Based Pricing Proposal

Jonathan uses a three-option proposal format he originally adapted from consultant Alan Weiss, author of Value-Based Fees. It starts with a situation appraisal: a few short paragraphs that describe the client's current state, their desired future state, and why they're considering you for the job. This section is important because it should make the value of the project obvious to anyone who reads it, even someone unfamiliar with the business.

Below that, you present three options at three different price points. Each option builds on the one before it, offering increasing levels of engagement and business benefit. The prices are all set as a fraction of the value you identified in the why conversation. The client isn't choosing between you and a competitor, they're choosing which level of engagement makes the most sense for their situation.

A critical detail: Jonathan defines scope last, not first. He figures out the value, sets the prices, and then decides what he'd be thrilled to deliver at each price point. This is the opposite of how most solopreneurs price, and it's the key to making the model work.

How Does Value-Based Pricing Prevent Scope Creep?

One of the biggest fears solopreneurs have about fixed-price projects is scope creep. Ironically, Jonathan argues that hourly billing is what actually causes scope creep in most cases. When you bill by the hour, you have no financial incentive to find faster, smarter ways to deliver. Your brain simply doesn't look for shortcuts, so projects balloon in size and everyone ends up frustrated.

With value-based pricing, you handle scope creep by tying every request back to the agreed-upon goal. If a client asks for something new mid-project, Jonathan asks one simple question: how does this contribute to the goal we defined at the start? If it does, he's happy to include it at no extra charge because it gets him to the finish line faster. If it doesn't, if it's a shiny object or a nice-to-have, he logs the request for a potential future phase and keeps the project on track.

He also tells clients upfront, right from the first conversation, that he'll say no to anything he believes will jeopardize the project's success. Setting that expectation early makes it much easier to enforce later.

When Does Hourly Billing Still Make Sense?

Jonathan acknowledges that hourly billing isn't always wrong. If you're brand new to your field, still building skills, or in a cash crunch and need to take whatever work you can get, billing by the hour is low risk and easy to sell. Clients are used to it, and you won't lose money on a project the way you theoretically could with a bad fixed-price estimate.

But he's clear that it's a temporary strategy. If you're experienced, you have happy clients to show for your work, and you're good at what you do, staying on hourly billing means you'll eventually find yourself in a race to the bottom, undercut by younger, cheaper competitors with lower costs of living.

How to Raise Your Prices Without Losing Clients

For retainer clients, Jonathan's approach is simple: he doesn't raise prices on existing clients. Retainer engagements naturally taper in value over time as the big strategic decisions get made and the client moves into implementation and maintenance. Eventually the engagement ends on its own. New clients come in at a higher rate, and the cycle continues.

For project-based work, there's nothing to raise because every project is priced individually based on its value. There's no hourly rate for the client to see or compare. You simply price the next project based on what it's worth to that specific client at that specific time.

About Jonathan Stark

Jonathan Stark is a pricing consultant, author, and the host of the Ditching Hourly podcast. He helps solopreneurs and small firms replace hourly billing with value-based pricing so they can earn more while working less. His free email course at valuepricingbootcamp.com is a great starting point for anyone ready to make the switch. You can find him at jonathanstark.com.

If you found this helpful, subscribe to The Aspiring Solopreneur on your favorite podcast platform and leave a five-star review. Share this episode with a solopreneur friend who's still stuck in the hourly trap — it might be the nudge they need.