Rate Report Amuse-Bouche
The report isn't ready. Here's a taste anyway. Plus: the worst advice we got when we started.
Responses to the 2026 rate survey have been rolling in, and I’ve been close-reading them like Pittsburgh Pirates box scores, though without the multi-decade trepidation or long-burning anger at our cheapskate billionaire owner. Ok, rant over. Here are a few little teasers of what we’re finding.
First, it’s chaos. Travel time has no rules. Some of us bill it at full rate, some at a reduced one, some not at all, and the largest group says it varies. About half of us absorb client expenses as overhead rather than passing them through. The list of things we hand clients for free from between-meeting Slack access to quick calls to introductions would make a respectable line item if anyone billed it. And when scope creeps, most of us just eat the small asks and flag only the big ones.
These are all new things in the 2026 survey that we didn’t collect data on last year. I’m excited to share all the new stuff with you!
→ Take the survey! ←
Now, the rates themselves are interesting. Two consultants in the data have ten-plus years of experience each, but one’s effective hourly rate is three times the other’s. How you structure the contract correlates with what you take home per hour in a direction hourly billers will want to see. And the early effective rates have moved off last year’s $250 median, but not in the direction I would have guessed. I’m holding the figures for the full report, because the sample is still growing and I’d rather the benchmark be as complete as possible.
Which brings me to my ask. The specialty-level rate breakdowns are the thing you asked us for most after last year’s report. They get better with every response, but some slices are still thin. If you haven’t taken the survey yet, it takes about five minutes: Take the survey → here.
Full report, with visuals, in a few weeks. While the numbers finish cooking, let me share another thing I’ve been collecting.
The worst advice we got when we started
“Just say yes and then figure it out after.” That was Ben’s entry when I asked our community for the worst advice they got when they started out.
Everyone who goes independent keeps a small collection of advice good and bad. Some folks shared the story of the friend who suggests lowering your rate “just to get established,” and another talked about the mentor who says take anything that pays. We publish a lot of advice in this newsletter, so consider this the control group.
Salim came in hot about the “S Corps Made Easy” industry: services that promise to bundle your entity setup, bookkeeping, and taxes into one tidy monthly subscription. His verdict: “a bunch of BS.” Accounting is not something you can outsource to people who won’t speak with you once a month, unless your business is incredibly simple. The alternative is a real accountant who knows your name and picks up when something weird happens, which is probably most of our day-to-days.
Mine is a cousin of Ben’s. Early on I went after any engagement out there, including ones where I had no domain-specific expertise. Challenging yourself is good, and engagements should push us to grow. But I took on work I wasn’t qualified to do, and the learning curve meant more hours back in the kitchen just to deliver for the client, which crowded out everything else I wanted to be doing.
The second version arrived as a drop in the stomach every time I refreshed an empty inbox: I was scared no one would hire me, ever. So I took whatever was offered, because I needed proof I could get work at all, and every offer felt like a verdict on whether I had a business. I wish I had spent that energy interviewing prospective clients and assessing whether they were the right fit, instead of treating selection as something only they got to do.
And I would have gone superlightweight on the startup apparatus. I built a website almost nobody visited and set up tracking systems for the scale I assumed was coming, when the whole time I was building a bespoke practice. Every one of those hours should have been a coffee with a former colleague.
What’s yours? Hit reply with the worst advice you got when you started — the friend, the mentor, the podcast, whoever. Name the advice; leave the advisor out of it. If the replies are as good as I suspect, we’ll round them up in a future issue.
P.S. Five minutes, if you haven’t already: Take the survey →