blonde poker forum

I was asked an interesting question the other day.

"Would you continue to do a job you are bored in for an above average salary of £500 a day?"

I have often found myself in contracts where I could complete the task at hand in 4 weeks, but my contract is for 12 weeks. So the question I ask myself is, Do I not collect 8 weeks salary? Or do I stretch out the task and look after myself financially? The latter leaving myself bored out of my mind...

What would you do?

Depends of any alternatives, otherwise I get bored

Not enough info!

Is the extra money going to help pay the bills, look after family etc or are we going to just gamble it?  ;)

Hard to know what kind of people you are dealing with but surely long term your best plan in your example is to split it?
Drag it out for an extra 4 weeks getting you paid, but finishing the project 4 weeks early so they know you are awesome and can save them money.
This only works if they are the kind of people who are going to recognise this and let you start to increase your day rate as they know you will get it done well and in a shorter time period than the next man.

For me it would be to pay the bills, look after the kids, and perhaps a holiday away over the winter.

i would also, most likely play some poker too!

£500 a day? Sign me up. I wish I had a shilling for every day I've worked for a pound. Oh wait....

Bored schmored. Try cold, hungry, exhausted and desperate, bored is a luxury.

Rant over. Sorry. As you were.

Yeah I guess so.

I always have drive to be busy, engaged, striving for completing a task.

10 years ago I couldn't do the job I do now.

5 years ago it would take me 24 weeks.

Now, it would take me 3/4 weeks.

And of course over that time, My salary has increased accordingly.

I'm 30 and I'm already bored of the grind.

The WPT is back in town, and the Luton Leg of the GUKPT in a few weeks.

Maybe I can retire on 100K and run a small coffee shop.

Sorry for just thinking (and typing) out loud.

Nothing to see here!

Thanks for being so easy going. I thought you were going to tear me a new one for being such an old fart.

£500 a day though. What do you do, disarm bombs?

Stop companies from going into liquidation by increasing cash flow.

Often companies have excellent processes up to the point of sale and delivery. But lack an Order to Cash process, which is what I design and implement for them, from an system, resource and process point of view.

Oh even I think that's worth £500 a day.


Looks like Thomas Cook missed a trick.

If it's £500 a day for 12 weeks and they're happy to pay that, why not just quote the £30,000 for the service and not quote a number of days?
Could you not then deliver the service in 4-6 weeks and move on?
Presumably they want the results ASAP

Or could you run two contracts side by side, so still deliver both in 12 weeks for the quoted service and double the income?

Depends on the company and resource available. I need to get better at marketing myself and growing a better network on Linkedin. They do want it ASAP, put often have no idea what they need or how long it will take. So the CEO/CFO will just pick a time frame that sounds right.

Day rate would also depend on location.

Over the last couple of years I charge on average around 325 a day.

Running two at the same time.. Hmm never thought of that. good idea! 

You're fired. I'm hiring Adam.

One off topic but interesting point.

Company I'm working with provides the betting companies with the software for stuff like bet builders, in Play betting, that type of thing.

I used to think that was all in house. Most companies in the industry outsource it.

Your work embodies the truth of the expression "Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity, but cash is king." I would definitely look to do more than one job at a time. If your system can be built and implemented in 4 weeks, it's results can't be demonstrated until their credit cycle has been run through at least once. Lots of firms out there still wanting 60-90 day terms I'm sure.

Maybe sell them a design build and implement at the top rate, and a review and refine x weeks later at a marginally lower higher rate, noting that they have saved the cost of x weeks.

Surely you just fill your time with other stuff, on the sly. A previous role I was in could be done in two or three days per week so the rest of the time I was browsing the internet, devising get rich quick schemes, writing a novel, applying for better paid jobs etc etc etc. So it was a no brainer to stay there until something better came along.

It varies from sector to sector, but the basic structure remains the same. A lot of these companies don’t enforce, or can’t enforce strict payment terms, or the commercial team has agreed to the customers payment terms to close the sale. The entire end to end fix can’t be completed in 4 weeks, but I can set out the structure by documenting processes and streamlining them, automate processes, review contracts and pass them back to commercial with key points to renegotiate with their client, identify resource required and recruit all within 4 weeks. Once in place the CFO can ensure his team continues to work under those guidelines and in the correct framework required. The biggest change is moving the processes from being reactive to proactive.
 

Of course, the issue I have is I don’t feel like I’ve made the most of my day. Which is what I struggle with.

First world problems 😄😄. Milk it for what it's worth and enjoy the downtime

Thinly veiled 'I'm on a monkey a day' brag ITT :D

It sounds like a really interesting and worthwhile project for the first four weeks, or however long it takes to set up.
Do you have difficulties in finding clients? Because, if not then maybe you could aim for a six week timescale at an increased per diem (still saving the client money, but not putting yourself under undue pressure) and work happier and with more variety since you would be changing location and maybe sector more often.

Isn’t this what we all do ?
Spend 75 mins of pure work to complete our tasks or 6.5 hours of drag out homes under the hammer lunch at parents afternoon nap ?
That’s what I was doing
But recently I started doing some courier work 8-14 hour days full on with 75 mins of other business’s obligations.

If you know you have another contract speed up
If unsure slow down and drag it out ?
Surely you want the money to keep flowing

Over my head lol

I think you are missing a trick, you should sell your services as a package offering for a set price. The set price should be based on what you know these companies are willing to pay and what you want to earn from it. For example for this current contract they are prepared to pay £30k for a certain outcome by a certain date (or sooner) and you think you can do this in 4 weeks (£10k). Agree to charge them £20k, as a whole not a day rate, for no longer than 8 weeks. Deliver it in 4 and earn £1k per day. They wont care that you delivered it early but they will be impressed that you delivered for £10k less than they were expecting.

Hey Bob,

It would mean switching from using recruitment agencies and working on building a brand and marketing my product services. Its a good idea, but it would mean changing the avenue of supply that I currently have.

At the moment, I get at least one phone call from a recruiter a week asking if I'm available to go to X and help out with Y for Z amount of weeks. If I agree and my initial meeting with the company then we agree a day rate. Quite often I don't even negotiate it, i just agree to what day rate that is offered, they will come back and say "They are looking to pay between 375-425 a day, what would your day rate be" I Just say i'll take the top end. Probably missing a trick there too.

I totally get that as I operate in the same way but with IT consultancy. For a specialised service like you provide I think I would be doing as much networking as possible such as attending local business clubs and LinkedIn such as you are already doing. One good one that I found was attending local rugby club dinners where a lot of local business men usually hang out.

Pretty good idea Bobalike, Thanks for the advice.

One other idea is to speak to all the agencies that you have dealt with in the past and come to some arrangement where they introduce you/your company to the end customer for a fixed fee. This way they could get commission from the hirer and a bit from you and you would be able to charge for your services in a block.

Definitely this. There are some good Reddit threads where day rates for IT contractors (usually devs) are discussed. The bottom line tends to be that where upside for the client is massive (either potential profit or general urgency), you should just charge accordingly if you can be picky about the work.

Also the referrals comment is spot on too. Once you have a backlog satisfied customers and case studies you really shouldn't need to rely on recruitment agencies.