Ask a room of independent consultants that question and watch what happens to the room.
Most of them already know the answer. They just haven't said it out loud.
Your rate isn't the problem
Everyone wants to talk about rate. Rate is the lever people reach for because it's the only one that moves this afternoon.
Job Bank puts the top of the Ontario band at $86.54 an hour. Work a genuinely full year at that and you land near $156,000.
Now double the rate. The number moves. The shape doesn't.
You're still multiplying one number by a second number that has a hard limit, because there are only so many hours in a week and you have to sleep in some of them.
Your rate isn't your ceiling. Your calendar is.
What that actually means
It means there is no version of working harder that gets you past this. Not a better rate card. Not a productivity system. Not waking up earlier.
There's a second problem hiding underneath, which is that hourly billing punishes you for improving. Get twice as fast and you earn half as much for the same result. I've watched good people quietly stop getting better because the model made getting better expensive.
The ways out are all different businesses
- Sell something that isn't your time.
- Put other people's time between you and the work.
- Charge for the outcome, so speed stops costing you money.
- Own something. Assets don't take holidays.
That's the part nobody says. Each of those is a different business, with different problems, and you don't drift into one by being excellent at the business you already have.
Which is fine. But it's a decision, not a gradient.
Where to start
Not with pricing. Start with the ninety-day question and sit with the real answer for longer than is comfortable.
Then pick one thing that would still be earning while you were gone, and build it badly before you build it well.