Looking back on the first six months of 2025

This post was published on July 23, 2025

I can’t believe that it’s July already, in fact, we’re three weeks into July when I write this. In this blog post, I want to take stock of the first six months of 2025, especially the professional side of it. There will also be some more personal subjects I’ll talk about, though. I’ll also look ahead towards what the rest of 2025 will be like, or what I’d like it to be like.

Moving away from hourly billing

The biggest thing that has happened professionally, or rather, what is happening at the moment, is me moving away from hourly billing and towards writing offers for my consulting and training services based on the value they provide. It has taken me a while to get where I am now, and I have definitely done quite a bit of work that was billed by the hour this year.

Right now, though, I am not doing any of that, and I have no intention to start doing it again. For the reasons behind this decision, feel free to read the article I just linked to.

Surprisingly, the people and companies I talked to have responded in a really, really positive way when I said I don’t do hourly billing anymore. I expected more pushback, simply because hourly billing is so ingrained into the way of working of these companies, but it looks like people love to know exactly what they will be spending and what they will receive in return.

One thing I did have get comfortable with, and that’s still work in progress, is talking about these high-ticket proposals, and especially the money that is involved with it. With hourly billing, it’s only a matter of saying ‘my rate is EUR 120 per hour’ (my most recent and hopefully last ever hourly rate).

With value-based proposals, you’re easily talking about 5-figure, sometimes even 6-figure amounts, and getting comfortable proposing those amounts is something that takes some time getting comfortable with, and for me, that’s definitely still work in progress.

The good news is, I am learning so much in the process, and that alone has been invaluable. Did I do all of that by myself? Definitely not. I’m receiving support and guidance from two absolutely wonderful consultants.

I’m really excited to see what the second half of 2025 and the years to come will bring in terms of work and business.

Training

So far, I have delivered about the same amount of training sessions as I did last year around this time, and the pipeline for the second half of 2025 looks pretty good, too, so I’m right on track there. One thing has changed, though: I’ve done less online training, in favour of more in-person sessions.

I consider that a good thing. While I am more than happy to run online training sessions, in my experience, they are just not as effective as when I am in the same room as the people who are learning from me. Providing support is much easier. People can pair up and help others more easily. And finally, I can get a much, much better feeling for whether people are enjoying themselves and actually learning something new, because I can see their body language.

And while I don’t have a lot of sample data, it looks like clients agree with me and are willing to take the extra effort and ask their people to come into the office for a training session. A few of them have even taken the effort of flying me into their office, leading to me traveling to Romania and North Macedonia for training sessions with clients.

In the months ahead, I have a good amount of training sessions scheduled, with even more somewhere in the pipeline. There’s always room for a few more, though, so feel free to have a look at my training page for an impression of what I do. I’m more than happy to have a chat and create a bespoke training session for you.

Public speaking

Looking at the numbers, here too I am on track to equal the amount of talks I did last year (30). I’m currently at 14, with several planned for after the summer holiday break. Exactly half of those (7) have been in-person, the other half were online talks.

Given everything else that I am working on, I won’t be focusing too much on public speaking, but I’m always happy to talk options if people reach out. I am standing by my decision not to travel just for a conference anymore, though.

Speaking of travel, public speaking did bring me to two places abroad so far: Denmark (for a company event with Q Nation) and Scotland (for EuroSTAR).

What else is in store for 2025?

For my professional life, the above pretty much sums up my plans for the rest of the year, and probably for 2026, too. Moving towards value-based consulting, regularly delivering training sessions, plus a bit of public speaking here and there.

What I do want to change, though, is the amount of hours I am working. While I wouldn’t call myself a ‘busy’ person (in fact, I resent that word), I want to free up more time for things outside of work. More specifically, I want to spend more time working on my physical fitness, riding my racing bike, as well as getting back into long-distance running properly. Those things take time, and I would love if part of that time spent was during weekday business hours, so I don’t have to do everything in the evenings and on the weekends.

One of the reasons I started working as an independent consultant was to have a more flexible lifestyle, and it’s time to start walking that talk. Of course, I can only properly do that once my schedule, and more importantly, the amount of work and the revenue it will bring in, is in order, but the outlook is pretty positive. I am looking forward to the months to come.

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