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I was charging by the hour for creative work and it was killing our best ideas
We had a project for a brewery in Austin that needed a full rebrand. I quoted 80 hours at our standard rate. Halfway through, the designer had a breakthrough concept that was perfect but would take another 20 hours to execute right. I saw her hesitate and scale it back to fit the budget. The final deliverable was good, but not great. That moment showed me billing for time puts a ceiling on quality. We switched to value-based project pricing six months ago. How do you structure fees to protect creative time without going over budget?
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simon_chen29d ago
Our Austin brewery project thrived with a 20% creative buffer in our fixed fee.
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briannguyen29d ago
Honestly I always thought fixed fees were too risky for creative work. Like you'd get stuck doing endless revisions for no extra pay. But that 20% buffer is a game changer. It keeps the project on track financially but still gives room to try new things when a good idea pops up. Makes the whole process less stressful for everyone. You've totally changed how I see pricing for this kind of work.
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