3,000$/h - from free value to my insane hourly rates
Product-led Growth in action, naked and uncomfortably raw
Hi, my name is Leah. I specialize in honest and realistic, scaling go-to-market motions of tech companies in B2B in a no-bs way that understands growth as a holistic executive challenge, not a marketing or product function.
I’m all about product-led growth and sales to build trust with markets as cost-efficient and scaleable as possible.
I have transparent pricing on my substack for almost everything I do.
Two things have happened since then, and they are all around the 3,000$/h rate that I list for my advising side of the business:
I got cursed out on social media: “This is a total lie; nobody is worth that much, and no one will pay that, ever.” (They used stronger language than that)
My inbound got a bit quieter (and I’m okay with that)
Let’s look at this and other numbers a bit more in detail and why I wouldn’t want to run this business by charging businesses 300$ an hour. And why the entire conversation is a bit useless and not that simple at all.
So let’s be even more transparent about this side of the business: why I can charge this rate and why the rate doesn’t matter in the way you might think.
It’s a case study of a B2B enterprise business (me) that teaches product-led growth by doing it herself. And a good line to impress the techbros on LinkedIn.
The market view
I look at my advising business in different segments. I have different types of “customers” in each segment, and you could visualize it in this way:
Lower Market: In the high # of “customers” and low LTV (Lifetime Value) or ACV (Annual contract Value) end are Founders & practitioners who are paid subscribers of my blog; some of them are becoming workshop participants. → < 1,000$ ACV / LTV
Medium market: Companies hire me for on-site Workshops or simple coaching gigs with multiple people/employees and teams simultaneously. < 10,000$ to >100,000$ ACV / LTV
Higher market: This is the equivalent of an enterprise deal. This is where I work with individuals, usually CEOs / Boards of B2B Scaleups or simply in an interim position to establish their growth motions > 100,000$ ACV
I structure this in the same way that I help companies understand their markets:
Lower market: Gets no high-touch interaction from me (meetings etc.). Everything is done through content and “self-serve,” which is my blog, etc
Medium market: Get high-touch interaction from me but only in a scaled way, having multiple students; it’s a hybrid motion where they get some exclusive self-serve material (pre-recorded material) plus time and individual working sessions tailored to their needs
Higher market: Very high touch; all is individualized and tailored to a business in weekly client calls (usually ~1 hour). These get my most personalized attention.
So far, so good, but this picture is incomplete. It obscures two key components.
Free content
Trust and competition
Chapter 1: Free content
This is the unspoken side of a “B2B influencer” or whatever you want to call me; there’s a huge blob of free content that I’m putting out that is not getting monetized.
It’s happening on LinkedIn, podcasts, and my favorite platform, Substack.
And in true product-led growth fashion, the numbers are uncomfortable to look at on two dimensions:
Conversion rate
Time investment
Conversion rate
Let’s discuss simplified but roughly accurate numbers in the pyramid:
Per 1,000,000 substack views or 10,000,000 Impressions on LinkedIn
→ converted into 20,000 Subscribers → 2%
→ of those convert into paying subscribers 200 → 1% → 100$ LTV per
Per 20,000 (free) Subscribers
→ converted into 100 Students of my paid Workshops → 0.5% → 1,000$ LTV per
→ converted into 10 advising gigs → 0.05% → 100,000$ LTV per
The 0.0001%
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