3 builders who never spoke to each other
Hold your price after you have named it
Decide your floor before the conversation starts, refuse to agree to anything live on a call, and keep money out of the discussion until the buyer has settled on you. Reading back your own hardest results beforehand is what makes the number come from your record rather than your nerves.
The method
- 01
Keep a file of your hardest client outcomes and reread it immediately before any sales call, so your pricing comes from your record instead of your nerves.
- 02
Refuse to agree to anything live on a call: make your standard reply that you will check your schedule and come back inside 48 hours.
- 03
Decide the smallest deal you will accept before the pricing conversation starts, then hold that number when the buyer says you are too expensive.
- 04
Raise money only once the buyer has settled on you as the person for the job, and be prepared to hold that line even when you are not talking to whoever signs.
- 05
Bill travel to the client and travel like a professional rather than absorbing the cost to seem agreeable.
What it returned
- 2020
Welsh adopted this default in 2020, his second year of advising.
- $1,000
Chris Do role-plays a buyer asking for a $1,000 video while holding a $4,000 floor on engagements.
Welsh kept a wins folder in Google Drive holding revenue lifts, process gains and cost savings, deliberately excluding notes that merely said he was pleasant to work with.
On his first business trip he used his own airline points, paid for an Airbnb himself and turned down the client's offer to reimburse him, which he calls a mistake.
Sources
- Student Success Story with William Durkin - Double Your FreelancingWilliam Durkin · doubleyourfreelancing.com · What are some specific strategies, tactics or pieces of advice that helped you grow? · 2015-06-19
- Act like you've already won.Justin Welsh · justinwelsh.me · How to actually make the shift · 2025-09-13
- 🎯 Scientific Goal Setting 🤝 Negotiation Tips ⚡ Fast Startup Validation - Trends.vcChris Do · trends.vc · 👀 Watch This · 2023-10-09
- Bits of Consulting AdviceGreg Kogan · gkogan.co · 2020-05-06
the second source
Three plays a week, for the phase you are in
No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.
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