The Three Numbers

This is the core of the framework. Everything in Module 1 set it up. Everything in Module 3 protects it.

The premise: you don't quote a price until you've extracted three numbers from the client. Not your estimates of their numbers. Their numbers. Said by them, in the conversation, using their own language and their own math.

When that happens, your price isn't something you're asking them to evaluate. It's something they can calculate themselves — and a number the client calculated is a number the client believes.

---

Number 1 — Time Cost

The question: "How many hours per week does your team spend on this problem?"

Ask it. Then stop talking.

Let them think. Let them do the math out loud. If they're vague — "a few hours, maybe" — follow up: "If you had to guess the total across everyone who touches it, what would you say?"

Once you have the weekly hours, you have enough to run the formula:

Hours per week × fully loaded hourly rate × 52 = annual direct labor cost.

You don't have to say this formula out loud. You do this math in your head while they're talking. But if the client is comfortable with numbers, walking them through it together is even more powerful — because they're the ones arriving at the figure.

From the Sara Chen call: Sara estimated 45 minutes per day routing leads manually. That's roughly 3.75 hours per week. At her loaded rate as a founder, that's not trivial — but the bigger cost showed up in Number 3.

---

Number 2 — Opportunity Cost

The question: "What could your team be doing with those hours instead?"

Then pause. Don't fill the silence.

This question does something the Time Cost question doesn't: it forces the client to name the value of their own time. When a founder says "I'd be closing deals instead of routing leads," they've just told you what their manual process is actually worth — not in hours, but in revenue.

You don't need to quantify this one precisely. The goal is to get the client to name the opportunity themselves, out loud. Once they've said it, it exists in the conversation. When your price comes up later, it's competing against that number — not against some abstract notion of "how much does automation cost."

From the Sara Chen call: Sara didn't answer this question directly, but she gave you the answer anyway. She said they missed a $14K retainer because she didn't see a form submission for two days while traveling. That's the opportunity cost made concrete. She named it herself.

---

Number 3 — Error Cost

The question: "What happens when this process goes wrong?"

Every manual process has a failure mode. Someone forgets a step. A lead falls through the cracks. A wrong account manager gets assigned and the prospect goes cold. The client knows exactly what the failure looks like — they just haven't priced it.

This question asks them to.

The answer is almost always more dramatic than the Time Cost number. That's why it comes last. You've already established that the process costs them time. Now you're establishing that it also costs them money when it breaks — which it does, regularly, because that's what manual processes do.

From the Sara Chen call: "Last week we missed a $14K retainer because I didn't see the form submission for two days." One sentence. The failure mode, the frequency, and the cost, all in one breath. That's your Number 3.

---

The Quote

Once you have all three numbers — or a reasonable estimate of all three — you do the math.

Add up the annual cost: Time Cost + Opportunity Cost + Error Cost.

Your project fee is 10–20% of that total.

If the client's broken process costs them $72,000 a year in time, missed revenue, and rework — a $7,200 to $14,400 project fee pays for itself in the first one to two months. Even at the conservative end, the math is obvious. You don't have to sell anything. The numbers do it.

From the Sara Chen call: Sara estimated losing three to four more deals like the $14K one over the next six months if nothing changed — she said it herself. Call it $40K in projected miss. The offer was $4,800, a three-week build. That's less than 12% of the projected cost of doing nothing. She'd already confirmed a $5K budget. The close wasn't a close. It was a confirmation.

---

The question you'll get before you finish

"But what if the client says they don't have any numbers? What if they can't tell me how many hours they're spending?"

They always have a number. They just don't know they have it.

If they say "I don't really track that," your follow-up is: "Take a guess. If you had to estimate the total hours per week across everyone who touches this process, what would you say?" They'll give you a number. It might be rough. That's fine. A rough number is enough to anchor the conversation — and a rough number the client said is more persuasive than a precise number you invented.

If they genuinely can't estimate, work backwards from the failure. "You mentioned this breaks about twice a month — what does it cost to fix when it does?" That's your Error Cost. Start there and build up.

The full paid course goes much deeper on this — it covers the ROI Estimation Ladder, a step-by-step proxy question sequence for extracting numbers from clients who claim they have none. But for most discovery calls, the three questions above are enough to build a defensible price.

---

Before you move to Module 3

Run the three-number sequence on a past client right now.

Pick the last project you delivered. What did it cost them in time? What were they not doing because of it? What happened when the process broke?

Add up the annual cost. Multiply by 15%. That's what you should have charged.

If the number is higher than what you quoted — and it almost certainly is — you now know where the gap came from.