Charge for the Engagement, Not the Hour

Imagine a college admissions consultant named Winifred Thursby who helps families choose colleges and write applications. She charges $300 an hour, billed at the end of each month, as she has since she started.

In February, Mrs. Aldane hires Winifred for her son, Jasper, who is a junior. In the spring, they meet twice a month to build his list of colleges. Over the summer, Jasper drafts his main essay, and Winifred reads each version. The August bill comes to $3,300 for 11 hours.

Mrs. Aldane writes back the day it arrives. “Could we keep it to four hours a month from now on?” Winifred agrees. At dinner, Mrs. Aldane tells Jasper to save his drafts for the meetings, because every read goes on the bill.

In October, Jasper applies early to the college he wants most. He sends Winifred his main essay. He does not send the short essay that college asks for, because it is only 250 words. In it, he reused a paragraph from another application, and the paragraph names the other college. He sees it the morning after he submits.

At school, a friend asks Mrs. Aldane about Winifred. “She’s good,” Mrs. Aldane says. “But every email was on the bill, so we used her as little as we could.” The friend hires a different consultant.

Suppose instead that Winifred works by the engagement. At their first meeting in February, she tells Mrs. Aldane how she works. “I work with a family from now until the last application goes in, in January. We’ll build Jasper’s list this spring, and I’ll read every essay as many times as he wants. Jasper or you can text or email me any day, and I answer until nine at night. The fee is $24,000, paid in three parts, in February, June, and October.”

Mrs. Aldane asks how many hours that comes to. “Whatever Jasper’s applications take,” Winifred says. “Most families see me twice a month in the spring and every week in the fall.” Mrs. Aldane signs that week.

In October, at eight in the evening, Jasper texts Winifred the short essay for the college he wants most. She reads it before nine and finds the paragraph that names a different college. Jasper fixes it, and the application goes in two days before the deadline.

At school, the friend asks Mrs. Aldane about Winifred. “Jasper sent her every draft, even the short ones,” Mrs. Aldane says. “It was all in the fee.” The friend asks for Winifred’s number.

Winifred knew the same colleges both times, and she would have read every essay with the same care. In the first version, every read had a price. So Mrs. Aldane cut the hours in the fall, when the applications were written, and Jasper kept his short essay to himself. In the second version, the fee covered Jasper’s applications from February to January. Every draft between meetings was already paid for, so he sent them all.

So price the client’s question as one engagement, from the first meeting to the date it ends, for one fee. Here is why a bill by the hour holds a family back. Here, too, is what an admissions consultant in New York, a coach who teaches other coaches, and a New York tutor found.

A bill by the hour puts a price on the help between meetings

Here is the course’s view of how this trade’s work runs. A coach, a tutor, or a consultant is hired to help with a question, and most questions come with a date. A student’s applications go in by January. A new chief executive faces her first board meeting in June. The client wants the question answered by then.

Much of the help comes between meetings. It is the draft read the night before it is due, or the call before a hard conversation. A bill by the hour puts a price on each of those. A charge for each small request teaches a client to ask for less. So a family paying by the hour saves its drafts for the next meeting. The help it hired you for comes late, or not at all.

The unit you charge by can be a cycle the client already uses. In this trade, the cycle is the question, from the day the client hires you to the date it is answered. An engagement, as this lesson uses the word, is the work on one question for that whole time, at one fee.

A fee for the whole question also tells the client what you think the work is worth, because price creates belief. An hourly rate says only what an hour costs. A family can set it beside every other tutor’s rate.

A New York admissions consultant charges by the years, and answers a text at 11 p.m.

Christopher Rim is a college admissions consultant who runs Command Education, a firm based in New York and Miami. He started it in 2015, in his dorm room at Yale. Back then, Fortune reported, he charged high school students $50 to edit an admissions essay.

In 2023, he told Insider how his firm charges, though he said later that the top fee was a one-off. The firm gives students one-on-one support “24/7,” he said. “They can contact me or one of their mentors whenever they need us.” A family that hires the firm when a child is in seventh grade pays $750,000 for six years. From the first year of high school, it is $500,000 for four years.

He gave one night as an example. The son of one of his clients, a 10th grader in New York City, texted him at 11 p.m. on Memorial Day. “Chris, I have a final tomorrow. I need a math tutor,” the boy wrote. By 11:30, Rim had a math teacher ready, and the class ran for an hour and a half. The next day, the student texted that he felt “really good about how it went.”

Two years later, Rim told Fortune that the $750,000 fee covered one student, who started in middle school and had unlimited access. Families pay him close to $100,000 on average, the magazine reported.

Measured against this lesson, Rim went from a fee for one essay to a fee for the years before college. A family that has paid for those years does not weigh a late text against a charge. So the boy’s text at 11 p.m. was part of what his family had bought. Rim’s firm has 34 mentors, which is how it can answer at any hour. A consultant who works alone names the hours she answers instead, as Winifred did, and tells every new client once.

A coach whose clients paid by the session or the month watched them disappear

Rhonda Hess is a business coach who teaches other coaches how to find and keep clients. In 2019, she wrote up a session with David Smith, a career coach based in Washington, D.C. Smith had been charging session by session. Sometimes, he told her, clients disappeared without notice.

Hess had seen the same in her own first years. “When I started as a coach, I charged for monthly coaching and I had similar challenges where clients would suddenly disappear,” she wrote. “You’re going along, thinking you’re doing good work together and then suddenly the client doesn’t show up or respond to emails.”

She put it down to the structure, not the coaching. Coaching by the month or by the session “isn’t positioned well,” she wrote. “It’s not oriented around big enough outcomes for clients. So they aren’t motivated to keep it up.” Her answer was a program built around what the client wants, with milestones, paid for in full at the start. Then, in her words, the client no longer thinks, “Okay, I’ve gotta pay for another session with David.” Smith left the session, she wrote, with his mind “buzzing with ideas” for a program of his own.

Hess’s monthly clients disappeared too, so a month is not the answer in this trade. A month suits work that is a weekly routine, such as training, where the routine is what the client wants kept. Coaching and tutoring are aimed at a question. A fee that names the question gives the client a reason to keep going until it is answered, as Hess argues. A fee by the month or the session does not.

A New York tutor’s aim is to tutor himself out of a job

Jesse Liebman is a tutor in New York City who has worked with students for nearly two decades. In 2024, he wrote an essay on his newsletter that compares a tutor to a doctor. A doctor wants to cure a condition, and a tutor hopes to “heal” a student of a particular problem with schoolwork.

In his view, “the tutor’s goal is to tutor herself out of a job.” That rarely happens in a session or two, he wrote, “but it always remains the long-term goal.” He also warned tutors to watch for “learned helplessness.” It is when a student pretends to know less than she does, “in the hopes of maintaining tutoring as an ongoing therapy and not as a precision surgery.”

Liebman wrote about teaching, not fees, and the step to pricing is the course’s own. Here is the step. A fee that runs for as long as the family keeps paying has no end for the work to aim at. An engagement ends on the date the question should be answered. So the tutor and the student both work toward a day when the student no longer needs the tutor. Fewer meetings near the end let the student show that they are ready.

Why a retainer with no end date goes wrong

Imagine a calculus tutor named Perpetua Gaskell who teaches high school students in their homes. In September, Mrs. Dorrance asks her to help her son, Barnaby, who is 17 and behind in calculus. Perpetua has moved her families off hourly bills, and a retainer is the quickest arrangement to explain. “Tuesdays and Thursdays, for as long as you’d like,” she says. “It’s $1,600 a month.” Mrs. Dorrance agrees that evening.

Each Tuesday and Thursday, Barnaby brings that week’s problem set, and Perpetua walks him through it. His homework comes back with good marks. By February, he does not start a problem set until she arrives. In March, Perpetua is away for two weeks, and Barnaby gets a D on a test.

Mrs. Dorrance ends the retainer that month. At a school event, she tells another mother, “Barnaby couldn’t do his homework without her.” The other mother calls a different tutor.

Perpetua’s mistake was a fee with no end. Nothing in it said what the tutoring was for, or when Barnaby should manage without her. So the sessions became the place where his homework got done. That is tutoring that goes on because the student seems to need it, the “ongoing therapy” Liebman warns about. Nothing in the fee pulled the other way.

The version that works names the question and its end. “Let’s aim for Barnaby to start his problem sets on his own by March, and to be ready for the AP exam in May,” Perpetua says. “I’ll come twice a week until March, then once a week, with a practice exam in April. The fee is $11,000, paid in September and January.” By November, Barnaby starts each problem set before she arrives. In March, while Perpetua is away, he gets a B on a test. In June, Mrs. Dorrance asks Perpetua to teach Barnaby’s sister.

How to price a client’s question as one engagement

1. For each client, write the question they hired you for in one sentence. Then write the date it should be answered, taken from the client’s own calendar, such as an exam or a deadline. For example, an executive coach might write, “Lead her first board meeting as chief executive, in June.”
2. Write how often you will meet, and plan fewer meetings as the end date comes near. That is the course’s suggestion, drawn from Liebman’s aim, so the client can show they manage on their own. For example, an ACT tutor might write, “Twice a week through February, once a week in March, and a practice test two weeks before the exam.”
3. Write how the client reaches you between meetings, and the hours you answer. Put the drafts, messages, and calls inside the fee. For example, a negotiation coach can write, “Text or email me any weekday, and I’ll answer by six. The night before the meeting, I’ll keep my phone on until ten.”
4. Set one fee for the whole engagement. Start from what a similar question took at your hourly rate, and add the time between meetings. Then round it to a figure you meant. For example, a test-prep tutor whose last three students each took about 40 hours at $200 might set $9,000.
5. Agree the whole fee at the start, as Hess does. You can take it in two or three parts, on dates you set then. Then no payment asks the family to decide again. For example, a book coach can write, “The fee is $18,000, paid in three parts, on March 1, June 1, and September 1.”
6. Offer the engagement in a sentence or two. Name the question, the date it ends, and the fee, and then stop. Leave out the hours and any saving. For example, an educational consultant can say, “From now until Mia starts at her new school in September, I’ll handle the search, the visits, and the applications with you. The fee is $15,000.”
7. When the question is answered, end the engagement on its date. If the client brings a new question, offer a new engagement with its own end date. First, agree what the work is for now. For example, a reading tutor can say, “Ada reads on her own now, so our last session is June 2. If fourth grade brings something new, call me.”
8. Start new clients on engagements from a date you choose. Current clients finish their present question on their old terms. Their next question starts on an engagement, as when you raise your price in stages. For example, a Spanish tutor can write, “Your hours run as usual until the exam in May. For next year, I’ll quote one fee for the whole year’s work.”

Next: You will see where referrals come from among parents and among executives, and what makes each group pass your name on.