selling a thousand and selling a hundred thousand cost the same

the call, the doubt, the follow up, the silence, the nudge, the decision. that sequence is the same whether the number at the end of it is one thousand dollars or a hundred thousand.

we said it out loud on an internal call this week and it landed on the table like a rock. same energy. same calendar slot. same three weeks of waiting. the only thing that changes is what the yes is worth when it comes.

most founders price from the cost of delivery. you add up hours, add a margin, and land on a number that describes your effort rather than their outcome. then you spend the same week of your life closing it that you would have spent closing something ten times bigger, and you call the result a busy quarter.

the trap is that small deals feel safer. they close more often, so they feel like progress. but the scarce thing in your company is not demand and it is not the product. it is you, in a chair, having a conversation that only you can have. every hour of that spent on a deal that cannot move the year is an hour you cannot get back.

here is the second half, and it is the part that stung more. my calendar is booked a week out. which means the whole company is capped at the width of one man's week. i am the person who opens and the person who closes, and the closing is what is eating the opening.

so we are splitting it. somebody else takes the close. i stay on the part nobody can do for me, which is the first conversation, the curiosity, the room where the relationship starts. it feels like giving away the good part. it is not. the good part is the one that compounds.

there is a litmus test underneath all of this that i have started using for anything we build. can a person who did not build it run it, alone, without asking me a question? if yes, you have a product, and it can be priced like one. if no, you do not have a product. you have you, at a premium, forever.

that answer decides your ceiling more than pricing strategy ever will.

so look at your last ten closes. how many needed you personally, and what did that actually cost you?