I didn't say that it was counterintuitive, or that you can't turn down clients.

I was observing the reality that most freelancers are more likely to find themselves absolutely starving for business, and shouldn't look at this and wonder what they're doing wrong. Telling a client to keep their money because it's an "ego project", when they're your only client over a month period, is a quick recipe for bankruptcy. It doesn't magically make other clients come knocking.

Once you get to the point where you're reaching saturation, sure you start to evaluate engagements for most reward/utility/etc. Many if not most freelancers will never come anywhere close to that.

One alternative is to live below your means and build up some savings so that you are not living paycheck to paycheck as a freelancer because that is even more of a recipe for disaster.

Look, $30k/week does sound ridiculous to me too, but Patrick doesn't strike me as a bullshitter either. He's just a great combination of programmer, businessman and marketer. As far as I remember, he never claimed to have a continuous stream of $30k/week projects lined up, those are words you're putting in his mouth to make it appear more embellished than it actually is.

The very terminology you use—"saturating" one's freelance schedule—is a mindset I've been in before, and I now think is dangerous. If you are overworked and stressed about money and billable hours, there is no free time or headspace to move up the food chain. Even worse, the quality of your work can slip due to minor hiccups like scope creep, unforeseen rabbit holes, or just getting sick for a few days; then you are undermining your future pitches and word-of-mouth!

Admittedly it's not easy to start charging more, you need to find the right clients, and you need to shift to a value-based billing where you take more risk on yourself. This is phenomenally difficult for anyone with expenses and wage-earner's mindset. However I wouldn't write off Patrick as being too privileged, lucky, or any other excuse—those things may be true, but that doesn't mean there aren't lessons that can be applied to people grinding it out at a lower level.

Saturated means that you've filled (or can fill at will) the time you've allotted and targeted, not 100% of your possible time. e.g. 100% of 50% of available time.

>he never claimed to have a continuous stream of $30k/week projects lined up, those are words you're putting in his mouth

He claimed it was his so-called "rack rate". His standard rate. Over a year long period. The prior year his "rack" rate was 20K/week. He didn't say "I put out a ridiculous rate and wouldn't you believe it this one guy bit!", but claimed that it was a ongoing day to day rate that saw continued success. That was sort of the whole, rather odd, basis of that part.

Extraordinary claims, as they say, require extraordinary proof. Yet we don't know a single client, or a single project, that paid these grossly out of the ordinary rates, and I can tell you that I don't know a single organization that would even consider such a rate for an individual freelancer (respected consulting shops -- the sort that you hire because no one ever gets fired for hiring them -- with armies of bodies yield less on their contract). People can wave their hands and say that it's because it saved so much but that sort of argument leaves me agape, wondering if a bunch of people just discovered the business world.

It just doesn't work like that.

I have absolutely no fundamental reason to believe Patrick a "bullshitter", or to accuse him of being so. On the flip side, I have absolutely no reason not to consider that he might be. Because it turns out that a remarkable number of people are -- particularly when they're trying to get attention for something -- somewhat aggrandizing. And we all know how important signalling is, and how if you act the part, maybe, the myth goes, you'll become the part. It plays a part of quite a few HN front pagers.

> The prior year his "rack" rate was 20K/week. He didn't say "I put out a ridiculous rate and wouldn't you believe it this one guy bit!", but claimed that it was a ongoing day to day rate that saw continued success.

But how many weeks do you have to work at that rate to constitute "continued success"? He came off a salaryman job, if he kept his expenses in check he would only need a couple of those jobs per year.

> (respected consulting shops -- the sort that you hire because no one ever gets fired for hiring them -- with armies of bodies yield less on their contract)

The type of companies that hire those consultancies are generally big slow and bureaucratic. They have plenty of money, but they don't have the agility to hire a single consultant and effect quick changes that move the needle. A corollary is that they also have established tech staffs and probably have some reasonable level of optimization.

By contrast there are a lot of mid-tier companies that have revenues in the 6-8 figure range which are generally not operating their tech with an enterprise level of sophistication. They fly under the radar of the tech establishment because they aren't tech-focused and they aren't really attractive to the big consultancies, but they are profitable because of domain knowledge and relationships in small niches. In these companies a hybrid technical/business consultant can move the needle far more than he can in a large company.