Paid discovery callsare normal now.
“Love your work, can we jump on a call?” You do the call. You spend an hour hearing about the project, four hours writing the proposal, and then the budget turns out to be a third of it. Two-thirds of six-figure freelancers now charge for that first call. This is how: a “Work with me” form that asks for the budget and the timeline before anyone sees your calendar, a €150 discovery hour credited to the project, a €79 roast for the people who just want a quick look, and a monthly letter that keeps the ones who are not ready yet.
Free to start. You keep 80%. No monthly fee for the form, the calendar or the CRM.
No calendar yet. Leo reads every inquiry and sends a booking link if it's a fit.
The form they fill in
before the call.
Scope, budget band, timeline, decision-maker, files. Eight to fourteen questions, multi-step so people finish it, and the budget band is required. That one field is the difference between a proposal that takes four hours and one that takes ninety minutes, because half of them you never write. Every inquiry lands in the CRM as a card with the files attached and the contact on your list.
How Leads & CRM worksA booking link,
a roast, or a kind no.
Three replies cover every inquiry. Budget and timeline fit: the €150 discovery-hour link, credited to the project if you go ahead. Budget too small but the problem is real: the €79 roast, which answers the question they actually have. Not a fit: a two-line decline, and they stay on the letter for when they are. The pipeline moves the card; you never open the spreadsheet again.
Scope is clear, files attached, one decision-maker. Fits October.
“Book an hour this week. We'll scope it live and you'll have a fixed quote 48 hours after. The €150 comes off the project.”
Not a project yet. Sent the €79 roast; he took it.
Sent to 41 contacts tagged “not now”: “Two project slots open in November.” Three replies so far.
Four products,
switched on in this order.
The intake first, because it costs nothing and replaces the spreadsheet. Then the paid discovery hour, then the roast for the quick looks, then the letter. The project itself is quoted and paid off-platform, with your deposit and your contract; a 20% take on a €8,000 build would be a bad deal and we say so.
- 1Day one · Leads & CRM
Work with me — budget, timeline, files free
Scope, budget band (required), timeline, decision-maker, attachments. Pipeline: new → contacted → qualified → won → lost. Tags by budget band and month; email a segment when a slot opens. No Stripe needed to publish it.
- 2Day one · Bookings
Discovery hour, credited to the project €150 · 60 min
Sent by hand from the CRM, never linked publicly. The intake pulls the inquiry answers forward so the hour starts on scope. Meet link, reminders at 24 h and 1 h, 24-hour cancellation policy. Credited against the quote when they sign.
- 3Week two · Forms & Requests
Roast my landing page / quick code review €79 · 3 days
URL or repo link, one question, a Loom or written notes within three days or an automatic refund. For designers a portfolio or landing-page roast; for developers a quick code review of one module. Cap at five a week.
- 4Week six · Newsletter
Monthly behind the build free
One project a month: what you built, the number that surprised you, the pricing decision, one tool, when you next have room. Free; the agent drafts from your month, you edit.
Behind the build #9 — the 12-page site that should have been 6
A marketing site and docs for a dev-tools startup. Quoted at 12 pages in Astro; shipped 6 pages and a docs template, three weeks, live two days before their launch.
Their old Notion page converted 0.9% to sign-ups. The new site does 2.4% with half the pages. The pricing page did almost all of it.
I quoted fixed, not hourly, and it was 30% more than the hours would have been. Nobody blinked. Project pricing has been the rule for me since March.
The intake form now asks for the budget band before the call. Proposals take ninety minutes instead of a Saturday.
Two project slots open in November; one in January. The intake is at applyform.app/c/leo/work-with-me. Roasts are €79 and take three days.
What the monthly issue
actually contains.
One project a month, told honestly: what you built, one number that surprised you, one pricing decision, one tool, and when you next have room. The whole letter is free; there is no paid tier in this stack because the money is in the projects. Its job is to keep the forty people who said “not now” warm until their budget shows up, and the availability line at the bottom is how they come back.
The agent drafts the issue from the month's CRM activity and your notes; you spend ten minutes editing instead of an evening writing.
A rhythm that fits
around client work.
No community in this stack, on purpose: freelancers who are not coaching other freelancers rarely sustain one, and the free Slacks already exist. What the setup needs instead is a weekly rhythm that keeps the front door open while you deliver. Everything below fits in about three hours a week, and two of them are paid.
- MondayReview inquiries, 20 min
Six cards at “new”. Booking link, roast, or a kind no. Tag the not-nows by the month they might be ready.
- Tuesday & ThursdayDiscovery hours, evenings
Two slots a week, €150 each, intake already read. Quote within 48 hours, from your usual template.
- FridayRoasts
Up to five Looms or written reviews, batch-recorded in an hour. The inbox sorts by nearest deadline.
- First FridayThe letter and the availability email
Send the issue; email the “not now” segment when a slot opens. The two together fill the next month.
Numbers from
the market.
Paid first calls are the norm at the top of the market, not the exception. The €150 is credited to the project, so for clients who sign it costs nothing.
$50–150 mid-level, $200–500 for senior consultants and fractional executives, $500+ with a written brief. Web designers and developers sit at $75–200.
Software developers $140, UI/UX designers $120, copywriters $85. A €150 discovery hour is one to two billable hours, paid.
A 14-question form with budget, timeline and success criteria, completed before the calendar link goes out. Completion is the qualifying filter.
Retainers and fixed quotes out-earn hourly billing across design, development and copy. The discovery hour is where the fixed scope gets agreed.
Typeform or Tally, Calendly, Notion and an email tool. ApplyForm takes €30 on a €150 call and nothing in the months you have no calls; the CRM, the intake and the refund rail are what you are paying for.
Market figures from published industry and platform data, September 2026, rounded. Your prices, volume and retention will differ.
“Won't a paid call
scare clients off?”
It scares off the ones who were never going to sign, which is the point. The form has already told you the budget and the timeline; the people you send the link to have a project and a number. The €150 comes off the quote, so for them it is a deposit, not a fee. The one thing to say clearly on the booking page: what they get in the hour and that the quote follows within 48 hours.
They do. Say so on the form: files stay theirs, you use them only to scope or review the work, and you delete them if the project does not go ahead. For roasts, ask for a public URL or a repo you can be invited to rather than a zip of their codebase; it keeps the boundary clean and the reply fast.
Most of your clients are businesses, and the EU 14-day withdrawal right does not apply to them. For the occasional private client, the booking checkout asks them to agree to start within the window, and your cancellation policy is on the page. Roasts that you do not deliver in time refund themselves.
Keep them if they work. What they do not do is ask for the budget before showing your calendar, put the inquiry, the call and the roast behind one link, or refund a buyer automatically when you are late. The month you have no calls, this costs nothing.
Ask for the budget
before the call.
Tell the agent your portfolio URL or LinkedIn handle. It reads your work, proposes the intake questions, the discovery hour and the roast with prices from your field, and sets them up when you create the account.