Hello! Travel/Home schedule and relationships

[Lanette Creamer]

Hi Lonely Coaches,

I'm approaching my first anniversary as an independent consultant. I became and Indy coach because I had an amazing opportunity, not because I really wanted to be my own business, handle all of the accounting, taxes, contracts, and potential future work at the same time as working a current job. So far, I love the freedom to work for people who I respect. I dislike learning that I'm bad at accounting, contract negotiation, and saying no to clients, friends, and others who want my time.

My first assignment, I stayed for 3 months, which is when the contract ended. I told him that I needed to find out if coaching or teaching was the right career for me, and that I'd come home at the end of the contract if he wanted me to. I believe I disappointed the client, as they wanted to renew the contract, which I hadn't considered. I set them up with a great replacement, who is still working with them now. With the travel, it was difficult for my boyfriend who I own a home with. We've owned a home together since 2007, and he would prefer it if I just got a job locally and did not travel for my job anymore. When I got home he seemed to understand that I'd still go to conferences, meet with clients, present, and teach classes as part of my job. He asked that I try to set up my schedule so that I'm not gone for more than 3 weeks at a time.

I set up my conferences and made preparations to offer courses hoping that some clients would want me to come teach a class for a few days, work with the team, perhaps speak locally, and then head home. It seems likely that he just doesn't enjoy me being away from home. He points out that I could get a local job, or even try harder to find clients in the Seattle area, and he reminds me that we didn't agree to have a long-distance relationship. I do care about how he feels, I'm just not sure what, if anything, I can do at this point. I've tried to compromise, listen, and limit my travel. I've tried staying home and even went down to one client where I can work from home most often. I'm taking classes on how to give better workshops and even working hard to get the Seattle Selenium meetup going again so that the community here keeps growing/learning.

I miss being part of a team that I see in person. I miss having a mentor like I used to. I miss seeing other people beyond just the phone. There is something about working with other people that makes me happy, and being 100% remote just doesn't do it for me. I mean, I can do a good job of working remote, but I start to feel limited and frustrated. I have no ideas when I consider what I can possibly do to keep my relationship going well, be fair, and still have a fulfilling career. Any experiences to share that might help? Any advice for me?

Thanks,
Lanette

p.s. For those who don't know me, I'm a practicing agile tester. I test every day, and love doing testing. I also help testers collaborate with developers and business people. I'm a fan of automated acceptance tests with CI, and having enough automation in place that testers can actually DO end to end workflow testing, and ET rather than just manually run functional tests on stories and cover regression.

[Dave Rooney]

Hi Lanette,

I tried travelling for work a number of years back, but it just didn't work for my family situation at the time... my kids were 5-6 years younger and it was tough on my wife.  So, my work travel has been minimal, although as the kids get older it has been increasing a little.  I've also been blessed to have been able to find good coaching work in Ottawa since 2008.  Back in early 2007, though, I just had to bite the bullet and accept that travel was verboten.

All that said, a strategy that the Industrial Logic folks used when I was with them was to have two coaches work with a client on alternating weeks.  We would also only be on-site for 4 days of the week so we would minimize weekend travel.  Of course, that's only feasible if the travel time allows you to do it, but perhaps you could pair up with a couple of other coaches like yourself and see if clients will accept the alternating weeks approach.

Hope that helps!

Dave...

[Michael Hill]

Lanette...

First, welcome! You came to the right place.

I have no special advice to give. For myself and Virginia, I think a
lot of it was happenstance. I started teaching for Learning Tree,
after having a bad few years with my depression. At that point, we
were so rooting for me to have a win, there wasn't much question about
being home vs hotel. I think we were also helped by the nature of our
jobs. Virginia is a master teacher, and as I was learning my way into
coaching and teaching both, I relied very heavily on her advice. I
de-briefed on the phone with her virtually every day for 45 minutes or
more.

I spend slightly less than half of my time on the road. I usually max
it at three weeks, though every now and again I do 4 or even 5. The
current gig is 2-on 2-off, which is excellent. The prior gig was in
Finland and every trip was at least three weeks. That was double-hard,
because of the isolation you get living and working in a place where
english is a second language. My teams there were *awesome*, but it
still took a pretty serious toll.

Nowadays, we both tell people that we start to miss each other after
about a week and a half. At first it just feels good to be "on my
own". But it doesn't last too long. I did do a 9-month contract in
Annapolis, MD, about four hours drive. We tended to alternate
weekends: I'd come one Friday night, she'd come the next. That was a
time I'm glad is past.

Anyway, good luck with it. Maybe some of the others can come up with
more useful thoughts.

Seeya,
Hill

[Malcolm Anderson]

Lanette

I don't have any great words of wisdom as I am in about the same boat.  I have a wife and 2 daughters (7 and 2) at home, so 3 weeks is about the max I'm ready to take on.

I am excited to finally find a group of people who are willing to talk about "working on your business" rather than just talking about "working in your business."

I know that I need to improve my marketing.  I don't have enough clients so I'm not working as much as I'd like to. 

More importantly, (currently) as one engagement comes to an end, I have no idea what I'm going to be doing next.  I find myself either too busy to do marketing, or I've got nothing but time (and feeling desperate).

Malcolm

--

Malcolm Anderson
http://MoreTimeWithYourKids.com

[Jon Kern]

wow, i am impressed at how you opened your heart here. not sure i have
much to offer up, other than war stories.

i should prolly ask my wife for advice... she's the one that can most
likely commiserate with your BF. except she's off with her girlfriends
skiing in Utah all week, dammit!

from 97-2007, i traveled a good deal, including 2.5 years commuting to
St. Pete, Russia, 2 weeks a month. Kids are now 17,17, 22. When I was
doing USA mentoring gigs, I often worked them out to be more heavily
weighted up front, then started alternating weeks, then stretched out
the visits further until letting the client go.

Typically, being on the road, i was very heads down and totally consumed
with the client's project. Often doing research at the bar with beer, or
otherwise staying one step ahead of the engagement. That's easy compared
to our other halves/family being at home doing the same routine -- only
without us.

Next was a 1 year gig 45 minutes away, but we formed a remote team and
worked mostly from home. Then I got a 2 year gig spooling up a company,
mostly located within 1 hour to the east and 3 hours to the west, so
commuting was easy, and i didn't have to spend too much time away from
home. Now I am doing a startup or two, again, mostly from home and
traveling only a few days at a time.

part of me misses the excitement of traveling and working with lots of
clients -- and the massive FF miles that I built up and used to fly the
family all over the world. part of me is content to solve my own team's
problems and be at home more.

so your BF has a point, I suppose. there might be work in your backyard
if you start dialing for dollars. with modern technology, skype might
help reduce the distance factor when you are away.

another common tactic is the 4-day consulting week. Fridays you are
home, for example.

also, nothing says you have to stay independent... you are free to
change your mind, change your employment status, it doesn't define you.

also, maybe you can hook up with a great consulting team? LeanDog?
IndustrialLogic? etc?

jon

blog: http://technicaldebt.com
twitter: http://twitter.com/JonKernPA

Lanette Creamer said the following on 2/25/12 10:06 PM:

[Keith Ray]

Like Mike and Dave, I also worked for/with Industrial Logic and did 3-week stints in distant lands (sometimes co-coaching with Mike Hill). Traveling got old after a while, though traveling business class proved pretty nice (thanks to co-coach Naresh Jain for insisting on that).

(BTW, I'm actually looking for full-time programming employment now, no travel, good benefits, more money... Kind of burned out of the "agile coach" business.)

One piece of advice I've heard is to dedicate 20% of your time on marketing. It sounds like you are working on that. You might want to consider 4-day week whenever you have a client taking 100% of your time; use the 5th day on marketing activities, even if you're not in your home city.

One weird thing about consulting clients: I have found myself on the opposite side of the world, and then discovered that a consultant local to THAT area has traveled to my home town to work with clients where I live. Old saying or Bible verse: "A prophet is without honor in his home country." Clients in those foreign lands didn't want the local talent (they did TRY to local talent, Industrial Logic has training material that few others do.).

I live in the SF Bay Area, but only had local work about 50% of the time, in spite of there being more software companies per square mile here than most anywhere else.

As for relationship advice, the book by Gary Chapman, "The Five Love Languages" probably would have helped my marriage a LOT if I had taken its advice, but just talking to my wife ABOUT what's in the book has helped some. She's VERY supportive now that I'm unemployed (maybe there's a little guilt she's feeling for being less supportive when I was traveling.)

"The Secrets of Consulting" and "More Secrets of Consulting", by Gerald Weinberg gave me a lot of value, though others have not liked those books. They are two VERY different books, so I would advise checking out each of them before judging them. Jerry has a lot of tester-consultant-friends. Getting to know him and them could lead to referrals. Google him, consider attending AYE and PSL.

I notice that Jerry's friends partner up while remaining independent: Esther Derby with Diana Larsen, Esther Derby and Johanna Rothman, Dale Emery and Elizabeth Hendrickson, and so on. There could be someone you can partner with, either local or not.

C. Keith Ray
http://agilesolutionspace.blogspot.com/
twitter: @ckeithray

[Adrian Howard]

Hey Lanette,

Thanks for starting off such an interesting thread.

I'm a newbie to this list - and fairly new (a shade under 20 months now) to "officially" coaching as part of my business, and that role is not the majority of my working time - so take the following with appropriate levels of salt.

I'm also in a different situation from you in that my partner and I are in business together. We've been together (personal relationship-wise) for nearly 17 years now, and this is the second time we've started a company together, so we've been through some of the bumps before (first business crashed and burned for example :-). We've also had times previously when I've been working on-site for companies and only ever been home a day or two a week for months at a time. Which. Just. Sucked.

Currently I too don't have many local clients (mostly due to living in a fairly rural area of the UK) and for various reasons I'm the only one of us who can visit clients on-site, and neither of us much like being apart for longer than a day or two.

As for tips and advice...

* What's most helped me with finding and keeping local clients is to spend a bunch of time with the local business/technical community. Emphasis on the "business" community (you need to be where your clients are). I attend, and have been involved with setting up, several local meetups. I helped organise the local BarCamp a couple of years in a row. Give local talks. Etc. Don't get me wrong - my primary motivation is that I like this sort of stuff - but it pays off business wise too.

* Others have mentioned keeping time aside for marketing/sales. I usually try and spend a minimum of eight hours a week doing that (usually spread out during the week rather than one big chunk).

* I try and wean clients off on-site working, rather than cutting them off at the end of the contract (going from onsite all the time, to onsite once a week, to never onsite, to only being available one day a week remotely, to having a booked in slot to chat for an hour on skype once a week, to having the option to have a one hour skype once a week).

* I've a bunch of workshops and tutorials of various lengths that I can run for clients so I've got a stack of "half day" and "one day" things I can encourage them to participate in with very little effort on my part.

* When it can be done at home, I do it at home. Even when it would be more "efficient" to do it wherever I happen to be at the time (some remote dev work for clients, some in-house product development, the general admin, sales/marketing, etc.)

* If you end up trying hard to be at home as much as possible, you'll find yourself travelling more. Budget for that. Also find ways to be productive while travelling (e.g. for me taking public transport more rather than driving might be slower, but offers more opportunities to work on stuff, catch up on reading, etc.).

* As alien as it seemed to me initially we now block out time to be with/available to each other when away - and that time is as sacrosanct as any business meeting or event. Work gets scheduled around it - not vice versa.

* We've found just leaving Skype video running in the background during the morning/evening in whatever room we happened to be in at the time helps to keep a connection going while we're apart. We nearly always manage to have breakfast "together" for example. Having something "always on" with video is interestingly different experience from making phone calls. It's not about having a conversation, it's about being together. I might be goofing off reading hacker news, K might be reading a book, but we can react when one of us snorts with laughter over something.

* It's easy to do some things "together" even when apart (watching a film/tv for example) - take advantage of as many of those as you can. Make your own where possible. It sounds dumb, but it makes me feel nice knowing we're both watching Doctor Who at the same time, even if we're in different cities.

Hope this is vaguely useful :-)

Cheers,

Adrian
--
http://quietstars.com adr...@quietstars.com twitter.com/adrianh
t. +44 (0)7752 419080 skype adrianjohnhoward del.icio.us/adrianh

[Jon Kern]

oh no, a Doctor Who fan? <g>

great advice in your post ;-)

jon

blog: http://technicaldebt.com
twitter: http://twitter.com/JonKernPA

Adrian Howard said the following on 2/26/12 10:51 AM:
> Doctor Who

[Adrian Howard]

On 26 Feb 2012, at 16:35, Jon Kern wrote:

> oh no, a Doctor Who fan? <g>

Well I am.... K tolerates the affliction :-)

[George Dinwiddie]

Hi, Lanette,

Welcome to LCS! Having a network of fellow coaches is an important part
of the independent consultant business.

For now, I'll leave aside the marketing, contract negotiation, and such
technicalities that I don't always do well. The important thing I hear
in your message is not how to stay home, but how to maintain the
relationship.

It can be very hard on the non-traveling spouse. (The fact that you're
not married makes no difference.) The issues are often expressed as
about the situation (e.g. "prefer if you got a job locally," "didn't
agree to a long-distance relationship") but are essentially emotional.

It's often hard for us techies to understand these emotional issues when
we're immersed in what we're doing. It's even harder to understand
what's happening inside others and foresee the consequences of our actions.

One tool that helps me a lot is the Satir Congruence Model. While I
encountered this years ago, it was at the AYE Conference and subsequent
interactions with Jerry Weinberg and others who have known him that I
learned to incorporate it into my life. At it's core, it's a balance of
self, other, and context. When these get out of balance, the situation
deteriorates. Two of the most common stances are blaming (where the
significance of the other person is ignored) and placating (where the
significance of yourself is ignored). Keeping a balance is a dynamic
process. It takes constant attention.

Another thing that helped us was John Gottman's book, The Seven
Principles for Making Marriage Work (http://amzn.to/w9uydv). This book
was recommended by a counselor we saw when we were going through a rough
patch.

Another little tip: when you come home from a conference or engagement,
you're still caught up in things you've done while you've been apart.
That can be extremely disconcerting for the person you've left behind
who didn't experience those things. Put these things aside and
concentrate on being in the present with your spouse when you first
return. I first learned this from Jerry, but also from John Gottman's book.

I'd be happy to go into more detail on any of this. I wish you happiness
and fulfillment in both your professional and personal lives.

- George

--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
* George Dinwiddie * http://blog.gdinwiddie.com
Software Development http://www.idiacomputing.com
Consultant and Coach http://www.agilemaryland.org
----------------------------------------------------------------------

[J. B. Rainsberger]

On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 05:06, Lanette Creamer
<lanette...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Lonely Coaches,

Hi, Lanette. Nice to finally have a non-Twitter exchange with you.

People here might say that my story is different. Think of this as a
description of what's possible. You can read some more background, if
you like, in Matt Heusser's interview of me at
http://link.jbrains.ca/wVdDnE

I went independent in 2001 and traveled without Sarah for work about
16 weeks in one year in 2002-2003, which wasn't so bad. Then I only
traveled about 12 weeks in 2 years, which was hardly a sniff. Then
starting mid 2005 until early 2007, I was gone almost 50% of the time.
That wasn't always easy, although Sarah did hang in there quite well.
My longest trip away was 3 weeks, but there was a period of
alternating weeks, then when I decided that was too much, I did 2
weeks there, 2 weeks home…

It really did start to cause a strain, but we'd had a common goal that
helped us see the light at the end of the tunnel: serial retirement.
(I discuss this in the interview.) Maybe the serial retirement model
would work for you and your boyfriend: the goal is to work intensively
for a while, then stay home intensively (?) for a while. As your
career grows, one hopes that you work roughly the same periods of
time, but stay home for ever longer periods of time. We had that plan
as early as mid-2001, but it didn't start becoming a serious option
until after I published a book and my career took off in the summer of
2004.

After that, we got lucky. I won't bore you with the details now, but a
combination of luck and drastic life change meant that Sarah could
stop working in 2007, which meant that she and I started traveling
together everywhere. We originally planned to travel 4 weeks per year,
but then Europe started inviting me, and Europe was too much fun to
ignore….

So, a few concrete questions:

* Would your boyfriend travel with you if the money situation weren't an issue?
* Does the serial retirement model sound attractive to you?
* Do you /want/ to travel? Do you like traveling? Do you at least like
/being/ other places, even if you don't always like /going/ there?
(That's me. Love Tallinn. Love Toronto. Love Bucharest. Could live
without flying.)
* Are you prepared to do anything drastic to improve the situation? (I
was. Few are.)

I hope this helps in some small way.
--
J. B. (Joe) Rainsberger :: http://www.jbrains.ca ::
http://blog.thecodewhisperer.com
Author, JUnit Recipes
Free Your Mind to Do Great Work :: http://www.freeyourmind-dogreatwork.com
Find out what others have to say about me at http://nta.gs/jbrains

[RonJeffries]

Hi Lanette,

I have no ideas when I consider what I can possibly do to keep my relationship going well, be fair, and still have a fulfilling career. Any experiences to share that might help? Any advice for me?

Commiseration, mostly, I guess.

At one point some years ago, I got a job in Milwaukee. We'd have moved (glad we didn't), but there was talk of moving the group to San Diego, so I held off.

The original plan had been to fly home every weekend, which was at least feasible between Milwaukee and Ann Arbor, but it was grueling. I'd get nothing done at my apartment and still be flying around on Sunday afternoon etc. So visits home would get fewer. I'd take three-day weekends and stuff. Ricia would come up there. But it was hard.

It was no fun, but I don't recall it as having been threatening to our relationship. I suppose there had been much more threatening things in the past ...

Then I got the XP gig and was home for the four years that went on. Much better, though I hated the 90 minute drive to work and back. But hey, we were inventing XP!

Then it came time to go more independent. I knew I didn't want to be away for long times, so I have always set up coaching gigs to be one week, at most two weeks, even when doing things for large companies where you could in principle go from group to group week after week. If it was near by, I'd do single week, then back in a couple of weeks. Out in Seattle, say, I might do two weeks in a row. I don't think I've ever done three in a row.

International trips are harder, because it's harder to make up for the travel time and money. However, Chet and I were in Holland a couple of weeks ago. We had had a course set up in Sweden the week after, which fell through. Frankly we were glad to be going home. A week on stage is a long time. 

You're probably more gentle than I am. No one can take more than a week of me anyway. So it works best that way.

Now I have some advantages, maybe. I'm famous in this tiny fishpond, so it is credible that I wouldn't spend weeks with anyone anyway. And I have simple tastes (BMWs, no Ferraris) so I can live on a week or two of work a month. And now, we're mostly teaching courses and such, which have a nice beginning and end sort of thing going.

But there's no reason you couldn't move more and more to doing your world-famous Lanette Creamer Here's How The Hell You Really Do This course, fly in, do it, fly out.

Courses are not an easy answer, though. It's hard to get the word out, hard to get a public one to work. Our experience is that if someone local sets it up, it can work. We have had almost uniformly bad experience with setting up public courses on our own. Of course, our idea of marketing is to post some tweets and wait for the phone to ring. It has worked for us but there's that fish/pond thing again.

People have mentioned joining some company. Even then you may be sent all over, and my experience is that some companies wind up sending you just anywhere to do anything someone will pay for. That's not my preferred way to live. YMMV.

The situation may stress you, Craig, the relationship, all kinds of things. In the end, you have to find your own way, and I am quite sure that you will.

Ron Jeffries

www.XProgramming.com

Wisdom begins when we understand the difference between "that makes no sense" and "I don't understand". -- Mary Doria Russell

[Jon Kern]

LOL

jon

blog: http://technicaldebt.com
twitter: http://twitter.com/JonKernPA

RonJeffries said the following on 2/26/12 5:54 PM:

[J. B. Rainsberger]

On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 00:54, RonJeffries <ronje...@acm.org> wrote:

> Courses are not an easy answer, though. It's hard to get the word out, hard
> to get a public one to work. Our experience is that if someone local sets it
> up, it can work. We have had almost uniformly bad experience with setting up
> public courses on our own.

I have the same experience. I work with local folks in various cities,
and they organise everything for me. I do mass, credibility-based
marketing (articles, conferences) and they sell in the local market. I
often do a talk at a company during one visit in order to plant the
seed for selling a course in my subsequent visit. It's not too onerous
for me.

I've tried to set up an Eventbrite page and sell myself long distance.
No successes on that score.

[Angela Harms]

Hi, Lanette! Welcome. :)

This is hard stuff, and important. I'm really glad you brought it up. Thanks for sharing so openly!

 

Tracy & I are really close, and enjoyed about a decade of being near each other a lot of the time. It even included working together from about 2007-2011. That was really wonderful for us -- exactly what we needed.

In September, I came to LeanDog in Cleveland, for my dream job. Not sure how we decided it was time for us to do this, but we did. Now we see each other on weekends, but not during the week. I can't tell you how weird that has been.

Our situation's different, though... we have weekends together. Nothing like three weeks for us, let alone months.

But here's the thing -- why I decided to put my two cents in:

For us, we have learned so much about ourselves and our relationship since September. Embracing this separation has meant finding out what we love about each other, what we want from life, etc. 

Each of us has spent some time sitting with what it feels like to come home to nobody at the end of the day. We've talked about close relationships each of us has formed in our separate places, and how those relationships change us and our connection with each other. 

I'm enjoying my life immensely, and enjoying Tracy in ways I didn't know about. But our relationship doesn't look very traditional these days. We've been redefining it every step of the way.

Totally not practical advice, but maybe another, kinda weird, perspective.

Wishing you all the best -- glad to hear you paying attention to your heart in all this.

Angela

Angela Harms
cell or text: 541-337-8088
http://twitter.com/angelaharms

[mheusser]

Hey Lanette! Welcome! *Waves*

Great comments here. A couple things, mostly playing off ron's
comments, but starting with you:

>
>I dislike learning that I'm bad at accounting, contract negotiation, and saying no
>to clients, friends, and others who want my time.
>

Quickbooks is your friend; the cheapy edition is only $12.95/month and
scales to 20 clients. Still only $29.95 or so for unlimited clients,
or you could buy it and install it. (Not Sassy, but cheaper long
term. By that, I mean SAAS-y)

On Feb 26, 5:54 pm, RonJeffries <ronjeffr...@acm.org> wrote:
>
> But there's no reason you couldn't move more and more to doing your
>world-famous Lanette Creamer Here's How The Hell You Really Do This course, fly in, do it, fly out.
>

+1;

> Courses are not an easy answer, though. It's hard to get the word out, hard to get a public one to work.
>Our experience is that if someone local sets it up, it can work. We have had almost uniformly bad
>experience with setting up public courses on our own. Of course, our idea of marketing is to post
>some tweets and wait for the phone to ring. It has worked for us but there's that fish/pond thing again.
>

+1;

Another thing to mention is conference talks, which, unless you are
headlining, won't pay the bills. Heck, at most test conferences,
getting to keynote+tutorial is a heckuvaclimb, and you *do* keynote
and tutorial, you can likely make more money with your current client
just billing 40 hours on-site. (You can make a little more at dev
conferences, or so I'm told, but most of the big for-profit dev
conferences have gone away, and getting to keynote/tutorial those is
an even bigger climb ...)

Conferences are about marketing, which leads to the question: Do
conferences generate leads that materialize into work? I think that's
a challenge, and a different thread. :-)

I'm starting to do more training, but it's a challenge. We should
talk. (And invoice me for that thing you did in December. It's
okay. We can partner on stuff and I can still recognize when you are
the one adding the value and compensate you. It's cool.)

> People have mentioned joining some company. Even then you may be sent all over, and my experience
>is that some companies wind up sending you just anywhere to do anything someone will pay for.
>That's not my preferred way to live. YMMV.
>

Yes. Lanette was with Sogeti for awhile; I suspect she could go back.
But I suspect she chose to be an Entrepreneur for a reason.

Also, I think Thoughtworks is a grand company, but if you work for
'em, you'll be on-site 40 hours a week, every week. In a thoughtworks
office when you aren't. There's a price to pay for that.

Right now, the three biggest companies I'm likely to partner with are
LeanDog and Industrial Logic; IL because of it's aforementioned
sustainable pace in travel, LeanDog because of Barcomb and Cheesy.
Also in our space there is Qualitest. (Pillar is on the list too.)

Oh, and SparkQuality. I'd like to partner with SparkQuality on some
training.

All my best; I'm sure there will be more to come.

--heusser

[mheusser]

PS: On negotiation, Several people have told me they get a lot of
benefit from having a second person negotiate for them, and vice
versa.

So you find someone else in your area - it might be a coder, it might
be a graphic designer, whatever. You negotiate on their projects, and
they on yours.

I've been reluctant to do this, mostly because unless the person is
highly in-demand, it is always possible I bingo a negotiation and lose
a sure thing.

Just a thought.

--heusser

[RonJeffries]

Hi Matt ...

Yes. I do sometimes think someone else might be able to name a really high number without giggling. I can't.

I just state my rate, which is not unreasonable. They say yes, or they say no. Rarely, they'll ask if I can do better. Rarely^2, I say yes.

If a lot of people say no, I state a lower rate for a while. If a lot of people say yes, I consider raising it.

But I'm probably a different kind of animal. Possibly a hippo.

Ron Jeffries

www.XProgramming.com

If it is more than you need, it is waste. -- Andy Seidl

[mheusser]

That's pretty much what I do, Ron. Sometimes I raise the rate if I'm
asked to do something I dislike; I'm likely to go in at a lower rate
if it's something I personally consider fun or rewarding or "cool
people", etc.

I was just throwing ideas out there. There are a /lot/ of ways to do
price negotiation, which we might or might not want to discuss on
list. :-)

thanks,

--heusser

[Adrian Howard]

On 28 Feb 2012, at 03:01, mheusser wrote:
[snip[

> That's pretty much what I do, Ron. Sometimes I raise the rate if I'm
> asked to do something I dislike;

[snip]

I usually regret doing that - since more often than not people pay and I still get to do the thing I dislike... and somehow the extra money doesn't seem worth it...

Bit perhaps that's me being a grumpy SOB again :)

[mheusser]

It depends on how much your raise it, Adrian.

I went 4x on a ghostwriting assignment once and they bought it. Not
much fun, but you know what? The Caribbean is nice this time of year.

regards,

--heusser

On Feb 28, 12:20 pm, Adrian Howard <adri...@quietstars.com> wrote:
> On 28 Feb 2012, at 03:01, mheusser wrote:
> [snip[> That's pretty much what I do, Ron.  Sometimes I raise the rate if I'm
> > asked to do something I dislike;
>
> [snip]
>
> I usually regret doing that - since more often than not people pay and I still get to do the thing I dislike... and somehow the extra money doesn't seem worth it...
>
> Bit perhaps that's me being a grumpy SOB again :)
>
> Adrian

> --http://quietstars.com    adri...@quietstars.com     twitter.com/adrianh

[Adrian Howard]

On 28 Feb 2012, at 17:55, mheusser wrote:

> It depends on how much your raise it, Adrian.
>
> I went 4x on a ghostwriting assignment once and they bought it. Not
> much fun, but you know what? The Caribbean is nice this time of year.

I guess I've just used a silly price as a polite way of saying "no", and occasionally be unpleasantly surprised ;)

Adrian
--
http://quietstars.com adr...@quietstars.com twitter.com/adrianh

[J. B. Rainsberger]

On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 19:20, Adrian Howard <adr...@quietstars.com> wrote:
>
> On 28 Feb 2012, at 03:01, mheusser wrote:
> [snip[
>> That's pretty much what I do, Ron.  Sometimes I raise the rate if I'm
>> asked to do something I dislike;
> [snip]
>
> I usually regret doing that - since more often than not people pay and I still get to do the thing I dislike... and somehow the extra money doesn't seem worth it...
>
> Bit perhaps that's me being a grumpy SOB again :)

If you dislike it, then the extra money is never "worth it". It simply
provides slightly better compensation for your misery.

[RonJeffries]

Hi Joe,

On Feb 29, 2012, at 3:17 AM, J. B. Rainsberger wrote:

If you dislike it, then the extra money is never "worth it". It simply
provides slightly better compensation for your misery.

Mostly, I agree. I might find it "worth it" to pay for a long trip for a gig I'd otherwise not undertake. To raise daily rate for sucky days, yes, I agree there.

Ron Jeffries

www.XProgramming.com

Sometimes I give myself admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it.

-- Mary Wortley Montagu

[J. B. Rainsberger]

On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 13:22, RonJeffries <ronje...@acm.org> wrote:

> Hi Joe,
>
> On Feb 29, 2012, at 3:17 AM, J. B. Rainsberger wrote:
>
> If you dislike it, then the extra money is never "worth it". It simply
> provides slightly better compensation for your misery.
>
> Mostly, I agree. I might find it "worth it" to pay for a long trip for a gig
> I'd otherwise not undertake. To raise daily rate for sucky days, yes, I
> agree there.

As usual, never trust "never". I find that when I depend on more money
alone to make up for the crappiness, the crappiness, ever determined,
eventually wins. :)

[Jon Kern]

yea, unless you have to put food on the table, i would agree better to
just say 'no' up front.

jon

blog: http://technicaldebt.com
twitter: http://twitter.com/JonKernPA

J. B. Rainsberger said the following on 2/29/12 3:17 AM:

[J. B. Rainsberger]

On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 15:54, Jon Kern <jonk...@gmail.com> wrote:

> yea, unless you have to put food on the table, i would agree better to just
> say 'no' up front.

I can't imagine a situation in which being able to say/feeling
comfortable saying "no" is bad.

[Jon Kern]

is that Canadian speak? LOL

i think you are concurring with me by saying:

• I can't imagine a situation in which being able to say "no" is bad.
• I can't imagine a situation in which feeling comfortable saying "no" is bad.

for me it is hard to read... maybe too many negatives <g>, "can't," "no," "bad"

jon

blog: http://technicaldebt.com
twitter: http://twitter.com/JonKernPA

J. B. Rainsberger said the following on 2/29/12 1:46 PM:

[Dave Rooney]

That's odd... I understood what he said perfectly. :)

Dave...

[Jon Kern]

rof,l (eh?)

jon

blog: http://technicaldebt.com
twitter: http://twitter.com/JonKernPA

Dave Rooney said the following on 2/29/12 2:39 PM:

[Andreas Leidig]

To me it was also perfectly understandable (almost like German) :)

Yours is a little bit more redundant. - Copy and Paste?

Andreas

[Jon Kern]

yes, i denormalized it <g>

jon

blog: http://technicaldebt.com
twitter: http://twitter.com/JonKernPA

Andreas Leidig said the following on 2/29/12 4:52 PM:

[J. B. Rainsberger]

On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 21:33, Jon Kern <jonk...@gmail.com> wrote:

> is that Canadian speak? LOL

Yes.

> i think you are concurring with me by saying:
>
> I can't imagine a situation in which being able to say "no" is bad.
> I can't imagine a situation in which feeling comfortable saying "no" is bad.
>
> for me it is hard to read... maybe too many negatives <g>, "can't," "no,"
> "bad"

Yes.

In my opinion, for all situations that I can imagine, there exists no

situation in which feeling comfortable saying "no" is bad.

[J. B. Rainsberger]

On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 23:52, Andreas Leidig <derl...@web.de> wrote:

> To me it was also perfectly understandable (almost like German) :)

I can't imagine a situation in which it is bad to "no" to say be
able/comfortable feel.