Stop Charging by the Hour — Your RPEH Is the Only Number

A solo strategy consultant in Vancouver charges $150 per hour, books 18 hours per week, grosses $140,000 per year. Another in the same niche charges $900 per 90-minute session, books three per week, grosses $140,000. Same revenue. One works 936 hours per year. The other works 234. The difference is not the hourly rate. It is RPEH — Revenue Per Engagement Hour.

RPEH is simple: total revenue from a client engagement divided by total hours spent, including prep, delivery, follow-up, and admin. Charge $600 for a 90-minute session but spend two hours preparing and thirty minutes on the action plan? Your RPEH is $600 ÷ 3 = $200. Not $400 per hour. The gap between what you quote and what you earn.

Strategy session pricing in Canadian metros follows a clear tier. Early-stage solopreneurs: $250–$500 per 90-minute session. Established solopreneurs (2+ years, revenue above $80K): $500–$1,200. Packages of four at $1,500–$3,500 are standard for six-week sprints. The tier depends less on credentials and more on three variables: diagnostic framework precision, output clarity, and ability to name the specific problem in the first five minutes.

The Solo Strategy Canvas increases RPEH by compressing preparation and delivery time. The canvas structure — seven fields mapped to the founder's single bottleneck — replaces the open-ended discovery interview that takes 60–90 minutes. A structured canvas cuts discovery to 15–20 minutes. RPEH jumps from $200 to $350 on the same $600 engagement.

A real calculation: Alberta-based solopreneur coach charging $400 per call, five calls per month. She spent 45 minutes preparing per call, 60 minutes on the call, 30 minutes writing notes. Total hours per call: 2.25. RPEH: $178. She was not undercharging. She was over-preparing. We restructured her session around a one-page diagnostic framework. Prep time dropped to 20 minutes. Notes replaced by a live-filled framework shared at session end. Total hours: 1.5. Same $400. New RPEH: $267. A 50% increase without raising prices.

Raising prices is the second lever. The ceiling in Canadian solopreneur advisory for established clients is $1,200 per 90-minute session. To command that rate, demonstrate three things before the client books: a track record solving similar bottlenecks, a named framework, and a concrete deliverable at session end. Clients paying $1,200 are not buying time. They are buying clarity on a decision costing them money every week they delay.

Package pricing changes the calculation. A four-session retainer at $3,000 over six weeks, two hours per session including prep, totals eight hours. RPEH: $375. Lower than a high-ticket single session but more predictable cash flow. BDC reports that Canadian solopreneur service firms with package structures retain clients at 2.3x the rate of hourly-billed firms.

The most common pricing mistake: anchoring to living expenses. "My rent is $1,800, therefore $100/hour for twenty hours." That logic produces $100/hour regardless of value delivered. RPEH breaks that anchor. A founder choosing between two pricing models is betting $15,000–$40,000 per year on the right answer. Your session fee should reflect a fraction of that. At $600, you take 1.5–4% of annual value. That is underpriced.

The revision rule: every six months, calculate RPEH for the previous quarter. Below $300 with established clients? Your preparation process or framework is the bottleneck — not your rate. Above $600 with capacity? Raise rates by 15% and track retention. Most advisors find retention holds up to a 25% increase.

The takeaway: you do not need more clients. You need a higher RPEH.