Happy to answer questions, as always.<p>Ramit and I recorded three of these interviews on starting consulting businesses, although we have poor message discipline so we couldn't resist talking product as well. The next one is about pricing. (It could be "Charge more!" for an hour, but isn't, although I hit that theme a few times.)<p>On a related but unrelated note, my usual podcast with Keith Perhac (and special guest Brennan Dunn next time) also is going to be a consulting-stravaganza next time. We talked the origin stories for our three consulting businesses (I run a sole-prop consultancy as roughly a 20% time project, Keith runs a small practice, and Brennan runs a fairly large many-people-at-full-time-utilization consultancy) and what we've learned along the way about hiring, pricing, cashflow management, chasing invoices, pipeline, and all that fun stuff.<p>My totally subjective opinion is that, if you're a freelancer or consultant, any one of these will be <i>probably</i> more useful than the entire rest of my blog put together. If you liked any of that, you'll like these, probably a lot.
"Statistical significance is irrelevant when you’re doing customer research."<p>There is a time and a place for carefully-written Likert surveys with control questions and large samples. Psychological research, election polling.<p>Customer research is about learning the realities of someone else's world. What you're aiming for is more a structured conversation than a statistical survey. Are you both speaking the same language, are you overlooking any major cultural or procedural factors, what <i>emotional</i> <i>responses</i> occur repeatedly and what triggers them?
When establishing a consulting relationship with a client, what do you typically do contract-wise? Do you call up your lawyer and have something prepped on a per-client basis, do you use a slightly modified template, or do you operate on a more casual handshake sort of agreement? How specific are the terms you generally work out?