1.  Learn how to break free from hourly billing and earn more for your expertise
2. Discover how to price your work based on results, not just your time
3. Get a practical action you can take today to start making more money
4. Find out Jonathan Stark’s unique daily productivity habit that keeps him on track
5. Access Jonathan’s free 6-day value pricing course to transform your business

Jonathan's Valuable Free Resource (VFR):

valuepricingbootcamp.com

Join Jonathan Stark on GoalBusters as he shares how to ditch hourly billing and switch to value-based pricing. He reveals tips for improving productivity and how to start pricing for results. Plus, discover his free 6-day bootcamp that will help you transform your business and income!

02:19 Ideal Client: Freelancers, solo consultants, and small firm owners stuck in hourly billing, ready to scale without hiring.
03:05 Problem Solved: Helping you work fewer hours, make more money, and price based on results instead of time.
04:50 Valuable Free Action (VFA): Price your next project instead of billing hourly—stand behind your price!
06:45 Valuable Productive Action (VPA): Use a daily recurring to-do list to move closer to your goals every single day.
08:10 Bonus Material
10:05 Valuable Free Resource (VFR): Sign up for Jonathan’s free 6-day Value Pricing Bootcamp

(Note, this was transcribed using transcription software and may not fully reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Welcome to the Goalbusters Expert Peak Productivity Tips podcast, where top business experts get just seven minutes to answer five rapid fire questions about what they do and how they stay productive.

Each episode is packed with actionable insights to help boost your efficiency and achieve your goals. Let's dive in and unlock the secrets to peak performance.

00:22 ROBIN

Well, hello, everyone. My name is Robin J. Emdon, and I'm the creator and author of the GetResultsology system and a dedicated accountability coach. My mission is to empower solopreneurs to unlock their true potential, boost their income, and achieve extraordinary success by maximizing productivity, streamlining their businesses, and aligning their goals with their authentic vision and purpose.

If you're ready to turn ambition into action and transform your goals into reality, you're in exactly the right place.

And speaking of being in exactly the right place, I am delighted to say that our guest expert today is Jonathan Stark. Jonathan is a leading expert on value based pricing, helping professionals earn more by selling their expertise instead of their time. With a background in software development and consulting, Jonathan's the author of five books and has worked with global brands like Staples, T Mobile, and Cisco.

Jonathan's mission is to help you escape hourly billing and build a more rewarding business.

Jonathan, welcome to GoalBusters!

JONATHAN
Thanks for having me, Robin.

ROBIN
You're very welcome. Whereabouts in the world are you, Jonathan?

JONATHAN
Providence, Rhode Island, which is about an hour south of Boston on the East Coast of the US.

ROBIN
Oh, fantastic. About an hour south of Boston and about five hours behind me. And as I often say and nobody ever laughs, because it's not funny, but it's a what's called a dad joke. If you wanna know what's gonna happen in the next five hours, just go talk to me afterwards, and I'll let you know

Alright. Moving swiftly on. Shall we do the questions instead of that nonsense?

JONATHAN
Sure. Let's do it.

ROBIN
Okay. Let me get the clock up on the screen.

And there it goes. Jonathan, could you tell me, please, who is your ideal client?

02:19 JONATHAN – Ideal Client
My ideal client is, either a freelancer, solo consultant, or a small firm owner, some kind of independent professional who is in a profession that traditionally builds by the hour.

And even more specifically, it's someone who's really good at what they do. They've been doing it for a long time, and they are starting to feel like something's wrong something's wrong with the business model. They've been making the same amount of money for the past three or four years, but they're working harder than ever, and they can't quite figure out what it is. So those folks are the ones that I, usually help.

One of the ways that I help is that I help them ditch hourly billing.

ROBIN
Excellent. And you've segued nicely into the second question, which is what is the problem that you solve, but I'm sure you solve more than just that one problem. Please enlighten us.

03:05 JONATHAN – Problem Solved
Broadly speaking, I guess, if you're gonna generally say what I do, I help solo experts scale up their business without hiring.

More specifically, I would say that, you know, you can work fewer hours, make more money, and not have to turn yourself into a manager or a boss.

And there's a a variety of things in my framework, I guess you'd call it, that work together to make that possible.

The biggest one is switching from billing for your time to pricing for your results or based on your results.

That's huge.

And once you disconnect your time from your money like that, then, you know, you can… you're just out of that trap of, you know, maybe two hundred and fifty thousand dollar ceiling of what you can probably make per hour in a given year working a lot for clients.

ROBIN
Yeah. Absolutely. And that is huge. That is huge. Thank you. I totally agree. Thank you.

So, Jonathan, what is one valuable free action that the audience can implement that will help them to solve the problem themselves?

04:50 JONATHAN – Valuable Free Action
I mean, just price something.

Most people I work with have never priced anything. They could have been in business for ten years, and the only thing they've ever priced is an hour of their time. And to me, that's not really pricing.

That's like if I asked a roofer for a price for what it would cost to reroof my garage, and they said, well, single shingles are ten cents each.
Like, that's not a price. Well, I've given you a price for a shingle. It's like, I want a price for a roof. You know, I want my garage to be dry.

I want no squirrels in there, and giving me a price for shingles doesn't give me the information I asked for. So clients, generally speaking, do not like hourly billing. They don't want it. It's a sort of variable cost.

They never know how much you're gonna work in a given week or month. Could be a lot, could be a little. The you send them an invoice. It's always a different amount.

They never know when you're gonna be done. I've had peep you know, what back when I billed by the hour years and year decade over a decade ago, I just remember it was the dreaded comment from more than one client where we'd be, you know, fifty thousand dollars into a project, you know, billing by the hour. And they say, I've spent fifty thousand dollars, and I've got nothing to show for it. You know, when is this gonna be done?

This you know, you get to a certain point where the amount of money that you bill them isn't is more than what it was worth to them in the first place, but they're so buried in it that they either have to cut the thing off and start over with someone else or just give up on the whole thing or keep their fingers crossed and hope that one more invoice and we'll be done, one more invoice and then we'll be done, one more month or one more week or whatever it is. They hate it.

So the piece of advice is price something.

You know? Get a when a next time you have a small project come in, put a price on it. If you're so good at what you do and you're great at it, stand behind your price. Say it's gonna be ten thousand dollars, it's gonna be twenty thousand dollars, whatever. And if it turns out you're wrong, well, get better at estimating.

ROBIN
Yep. Definitely.

Very good advice. Thank you. Alright. So now we have a much better understanding of what you do. Let's dive into GoalBusting, the purpose of our podcast today, which is focusing on how to maximize productive time to achieve business goals. So, Jonathan, could you share any tips or advice for someone looking to improve their productivity habits?

06:45 JONATHAN – Valuable Productive Action
Sure.

One that works for me that I think is pretty unusual is well, first, you wanna know what your goal is. So let's say you have some idea of what your goal is, and then you come up with a system that you believe will reach that goal. Once you've got that in place and that's two huge big conversations right there, But once you have that, there's something unusual that I do that I haven't seen a lot of people do, which is I have a daily to do list, which, you know, using a an application called Remember The Milk, but you could use whatever one you want.

They all have this feature where I have about twelve or thirteen to dos that reoccur on my list every single day. So I have to do these things every single day, seven days a week. And they're a mix of personal and business things.

But once you know what your goal is and you set a system to reach them or you have a list of tasks that you believe will ultimately reach to that, do a little bit every single day in that direction, and you'll build a daily habit that results in you getting closer to that goal.

ROBIN
Absolutely. Be very much outcome focused or result focused.

In fact, that's a a recurrent thing coming through your whole talk today, you know, talking about billing based on results, not billing based on hours worked. It's the result is what the client really is after them.

JONATHAN
Yeah. Exactly.

ROBIN
Not, rate per hour. Yeah.

JONATHAN
Exactly. Yeah.

ROBIN
So on that note, what should I have asked you today, Jonathan, that I didn't? And your answer, please.

08:10 JONATHAN – Bonus Material
About my daily mailing list, probably, speaking of daily tasks. So I've been writing a daily mailing list since July of 2016.

And if the kind of business that you run is based on your intellectual property or your thought leadership, then I have never encountered anything that crystalizes your thinking more clearly than writing about it every day and publishing it for an audience.

ROBIN
Wow. And that's an amazing discipline. 2016! So there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds in the sequence.

JONATHAN
Thousands. Yeah. I think Yeah. Over three thousand.

ROBIN
Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's hundreds, but it's thousands too. Absolutely.

JONATHAN
Good point.

ROBIN
Yeah. Actually, you were saying earlier about, child billing by results and not by the hour. I always remember I had a guy that did a job for me once, quite a big job over many, many months. And it is back in the days when people used, you know, paper and not just spreadsheets on computers. And he said, I've got a file here. It's six inches thick of all the work that I've done for you. And he said, do you want me to bill you by the inch, or shall I just think of a price?

And I thought, okay. Let's go for the price, and thank God I did because he was very fair, very fair. But Absolutely. I think I had a feeling the inches would be a lot more expensive. And Okay. The result would have been the same, but I would have been poorer.

Yeah. Okay. So that was brilliant. Thank you so much, Jonathan. That has been an absolute masterclass.

I anticipated it would be, and it was. And you I completely agree with what you're doing and how you're doing it, and I think that's hugely valuable, a very important resource indeed.

Speaking of which, how can people reach you, Jonathan? And also, is there, like, a valuable free resource they could get from you, which I always think is a neat way of people finding out more about you, by getting a little taste of your work?

10:05 JONATHAN – Valuable Free Resource
Yeah. I would send people to valuepricingbootcamp.com. That'll redirect to my website, jonathanstark.com. It'll redirect you to a page on my site that, will let you sign up for a free six day course that will teach you about my approach to pricing projects, which is to use value of the result instead of the hours that it's gonna take you to do it. And if you're good at what you do and you get clients who really, really want to work with you, this can have a dramatic, positive effect on your prices.

ROBIN
Yeah. Absolutely. That sounds brilliant. And I cannot stress enough. I mean, I'm gonna go and look at that myself because the psychology behind all of this, people not valuing what they do enough in their own minds, You need to break through that if you if you haven't already.

And so I'm sure you cover that. And I'm sure just immersing yourself in what you teach is a hugely valuable thing. So thank you for sharing that with us today.

JONATHAN
Sure.

ROBIN
And on that note, we must finish, but it has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you again, Jonathan Stark.

JONATHAN
My pleasure. Thanks, Robin.

ROBIN
And remember, keep GoalBusting and make your future self proud.

And bye bye.

OUTRO
Thanks for tuning in to GoalBusters. If you're enjoying it, please subscribe, rate, and review it on your favourite podcast platform.
Your support is very much appreciated!

And if you're ready to boost your online profits, skyrocket your productivity, crush procrastination, and see a positive change in your bank balance all within just thirty days, this is your opportunity

Take my free five day challenge at skyrocketyourproductivitychallenge.com

Robin J. Emdon is the creator of GetResultsology®: The Science of Getting Stuff Done!, a research-backed system that helps solopreneurs beat procrastination, build momentum, and follow through on what matters most.

Robin was one of a small, invitation-only group selected for an intensive life-coach programme taught by Tony Robbins* and his faculty in 2001. The training was meant to prepare them for roles at his organisation in San Diego, but when that opportunity changed Robin stayed in the UK, launched his own life-coaching practice, and later stepped back to raise his two young sons.

Known to clients today as The Procrastination Slayer, Robin had a face-palm moment in 2019 when he realised it had taken him ten years to finish a six-year degree. That wake-up call launched his mission to master procrastination.

During the Covid lockdowns in 2020 he discovered that researchers had published more than 900 studies on procrastination in a single decade and pulled the most practical lessons from the strongest research and leading books to shape his momentum formula:

Do it today, Profit tomorrow, Repeat.

Peer-reviewed research from the Dominican University of California shows that working with an accountability partner can raise goal-achievement rates by up to 33 percent, a finding woven into every GetResultsology® plan.

Robin hosts The GoalBusters Podcast, now past 100 episodes, where he talks with fellow solopreneurs and uncovers the real-world productivity tactics behind their success.

From South Devon, England, he coaches clients worldwide, helping solopreneurs, creatives, and other no-boss professionals turn scattered effort into consistent progress and profit.

Want an engaging guest who sparks action or an accountability coach who keeps you on track? Book Robin for your show or request coaching details.

*Tony Robbins and Robbins Research International are not affiliated with, and do not endorse, GetResultsology® or its services.

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