Rates:

I get occasional requests to freelance. People ask me "what do you charge"?

When I tell them, there tends to be choking noises and some mumbling about getting back to me later. It appears that there is an assumption that what I'm doing is either, easy (Hey you got "talent" and can just "pop these things out")... or it's Magic.

Since I'm fully employed by the Boeing Company, and it's my first priority, it's a little tough to be consistent with these jobs, so I don't do many of them, but I nurture the hope that one day I'll be able to cast loose, be my own boss and do this work on a wider scale.

With that in mind, here's myprice list/flyer/offer page as it stands today (click for a full size view):

Why is this a "good deal"?

Understand. This is not your typical graphic design or art/illustration work. This is business consulting that is intended to "figure things out" that are important at the time. What I'm really dealing with here are stories. Stories of real people, in real situations, telling "the truth" as they see it.

This is NOT easy work (in spite of the rumors of magic).

First off, we have the issue of FEAR. Most of us have bought (to one degree or another) into the notion that if we share our knowledge, someone will take our job. This notion had it's origins in the medieval trade guilds, and it's simply NOT the truth. We actually GET MORE business, understanding, knowledge and wisdom, when we share what we know, and work together with people, but that's another story that has to be proved by living... My job is to work around this fear.

We all know that pictures are worth ten thousand words, but cartoon art, because it tends to hit close to home. Many people fear that if the truth be known they would be ridiculed, or found not to be valid in some way. Visual depictions being as they are, so viseral is often among the most feared way to tell the truth, so people avoid it rather than used to advantage.

Finally, people FEAR being laughed at. "We're not a cartoony company" they say. "We can't afford to have our systems, situations, ideas and the like depicted in a cartoon form. Our people would lose faith in us!"

Well, What if you could get the story straight?

Ask yourself these questions:

• How would a business decision change, if the participants could see what they were saying, instead of being beset with a snowstorm of bullet lists and words (cognitive dissonance)?
• Wouldn't it be great NOT to be wrapped around the axle with overwhelming facts and data, especially when you can't agree on the proper terminology (analysis paralysis)?
• How would it be if you could look at your work or problem in a radically different way, and begin to see creative solutions (synthesis)?
• What if you could get a larger piece of the story early in the project instead of making surprising discoveries long after the fact (this is where the real money savings shows up)?

The true cost of a system

Below is my "cost chart". It's a concept cartoon. It doesn't track any specific project. It does however, describe what generally happens when people try to get a cheep solution to their problem.

First they grab a few resources and some people, put them in a room and have them "quickly" come up with something, that is quickly coded or put into practice. It seems fairly straight forward until one reaches the "maintenance" phase. Suddenly the costs climb vertically right out of the chart.

It seems that once one of these "quickly" worked out solutions become entrenched in the beauracracy of the system, they become notoriously difficult to change, fix, or even keep functioning, much to the delight of some technical nerds who see their job security in this business of system resusitation.

A much cheeper solution

I propose that you spend a little larger sum up front, to get everyone talking together about the same thing, having created a shared understanding of WHAT you are building, what it's supposed to do, how it effects the people who have to live with it, and how it will grow and adapt as the world changes.

One part of that cost is to allow me to spend the actual time with you and your team that it takes to sort out:

• The human element, (the invisible furniture-or hidden agendas)
• The emotional dimension (fears and enthusiasms)
• The context (or perspective) that answer the "why" questions

You will find my charges to be comparable to that of most other quality business consultants, and I will be careful not to waste your resources, but I also won't waste you time and mine doing a halfway job. While I admit to having talent, I am certainly NOT magic, and will have to work at figuring out how to depict your world just as hard as YOU will have to work to describe it.

You can expect my material to:

• use humor and familiar situations to incite dialogue rather than argument or debate
• openly portray the "human foibles" that beset us without getting personal or accusing toward anyone
• gently deflate the overly serious feelings we have, allowing us to get at the serious and the challenging, in a more relaxed and consequently more effective manner.

Cartoon illustrations SHOW what is going on in language everyone understands. They reduce or eliminating the intellectual fog generated by the Jargon and lets people see what they are saying-or not saying as the case may be. Cartoons allow people to talk about hard things using enough humor to soften the blow, and help people face the invisible furniture we all struggle with.

Cartoon representation showing emotional people can help us see ourselves in the systems, problem or the design that we've built, and unleash in ourselves the creative thinking needed to make genuine change actually happen.

Please e-mail any comments, questions or suggestions to
Michael Erickson
Page Last Revised: Saturday July 09, 2005