Joel Miller - Nine Years After Ditching Hourly

In 2017, Joel Miller came on Ditching Hourly episode 33 to talk about his recent switch to value pricing. Nine years later, Joel and his identical twin brother Alan still run The Sky Floor as a two-person shop. They do all the client work themselves, their average client has been with them for eight years, and they haven't hit a famine cycle in a long time, so they're not hungry for leads. Best of all, Joel has gone from working 80-hour weeks and making “a hilariously tiny fraction” of what he makes now to working normal hours and turning off his notifications at night and on weekends. 00:00 - Meet Joel Miller 00:46 - The Sky Floor Then and Now 02:00 - The Why Conversation in Practice 06:12 - Building Client Lifetime Value 08:50 - The Client Who Came Back 10:48 - Value-Based Monthly Retainers 12:26 - Scaling Without Headcount 16:03 - Indirect Word of Mouth 18:08 - What Keeps Clients for a Decade 25:25 - Spotting Hidden Opportunities 29:01 - Think Like a Business Owner 37:22 - Curiosity and the Entrepreneurial Spirit 41:53 - People Over Profits 44:51 - Never Stop Asking Why 48:36 - Where to Find Joel Joel Miller is the co-owner of The Sky Floor, a digital problem-solving agency he runs with his identical twin brother Alan. They started the company about 18 years ago as a web design shop in the Chicago area and now handle everything from websites and LMS systems to Google Ads and CRM replacements. Joel and Alan do all the client work themselves and have built long-term relationships averaging eight years per client. Joel appeared on Ditching Hourly episode 33 in 2017 to discuss his early experiments with value pricing. Try his free Capacity Tax tool to see whether a client is blocking your next growth move. ---- Sales Conversations That Don’t Feel Sleazy — live Oct 20 at noon ET Learn how to structure sales conversations so the buyer tells you what the outcome is worth without feeling sleazy or trying to manipulate them. The live 90-minute Zoom workshop is $450 and includes the recording, transcript, summary notes, and a practical worksheet. Learn more and register » https://jonathanstark.com/sgs