Being an independent Salesforce architect, there’s only so much I can do in a week. This means I spend most of my time advising and consulting clients, rather than doing implementation work. This means clients are usually paying for access to my expertise.
A few years ago, I switched from hourly billing to fixed-prices for projects and monthly billing for on-going work. This had a tremendous positive impact on my time management and annual income. I’ve written a lot about this before, so if you’re curious, you can read about fixed pricing.
Between advising and fixed billing, I’m able to sustain my business with only 2-4 active clients, while working less than 40h/week. My preferred spread is two monthly clients and up to two project clients. Of these, one is a larger project and the other is smaller.
Another important part of my business wass specializing. When I started working with Salesforce 11 years ago, I took every project available. More recently, I realized my favorite projects were working with nonprofits. So I specialized in nonprofits.
This makes my marketing significantly easier, as I know who my people are. And nonprofits attract talent that are not usually ego-driven. Instead it’s about the mission and helping the community.
The takeaway
The three biggest positive impacts in my career were:
- Favoring consulting over implementing
- Providing fixed prices over hourly billing
- Specializing over generalizing