2019 Announcements!

The text below is a transcription of what I announced on Facebook Live. It may not be exact, but the vast majority of the content is the same. Enjoy!

Your fearless advocate in his home office.

Hello everyone. Welcome to my first live announcement of 2019 for Nelson Advocacy. This is a big one for me, because one of my major goals in starting this business was helping folks who cannot afford me. Today I can do that, at least for one lucky family.

Starting last February, I raised my rates. In doing so, I dedicated $5 of every hour I worked to place in reserve. I did this in order to prepay for services that I could then give to families that could not afford me.

The reason this is important to me is that I have been in that family. For years we spent all of our time and money focused on our son, learning about his disability and advocating for his needs. We drained our savings, cashed out retirements, and ran up credit cards getting the things we felt he needed. I know how expensive this process can be from experience, and I wanted to be in a place to help someone else avoid some of those costs.

Today I’m happy to announce that I can do that. I am offering the community at large 14 hours of my time! That covers my initial 10 hour bundle as well as one additional meeting! I would typically charge $700 for this service, but since my community has supported me I am now able to offer this to you.

The rules are up on my website, NelsonAdvocacy.com, but here is the short version. To qualify you must need advocacy services for a child with a disability in public school under the age of 22, your family cannot earn more than $100,000 per year, and you must be in the Fredericksburg area. Specifically you must be in Fredericksburg City, Spotsylvania, or Stafford.

Another component of this program that I chose to include was the ability to give back to my current clients. In this business as in my real estate business, I believe that loyalty is a two way street and that if you invest in people, they also invest in you. I’m not interested in customers, I’m interested in community. To that end I have two 4 hour scholarships to give to my current and past clients. In order to apply for this, the only rule is that you have to be a current or past client of mine and you have to use my services within the 2019 calendar year. Email, call or text me if you want to be considered for this and I will add you to the list. This will be a random drawing, probably also done on Facebook live so folks can bear witness. I have a few more hours to give away, but I’m going to save them until this spring.

There is a bit of less good news for my clients. I find that I have to raise my meeting rate from 3 hours to 4 hours. Unfortunately, school systems have been taking more time to meet this past year than in my first year, and while I have not been charging retroactively for that time I now find I need to compensate my fees for it. However, the same rule applies as before in that the meeting fee includes our interim communication so I don’t have to track time for every email or short phone call.

Finally, please like my Facebook page and sign up for my newsletter. I’m committing to quarterly newsletters this year, so I’ll have a January, April, July and October edition for your edification. Sign up on my website with the newsletter sign up button. My facebook page is facebook.com/nelsonadvocacy. And if you or someone you know needs my help, call or inbox me. I still do a free half hour consultation for folks, and I promise that you will get something helpful even if you don’t hire me. This post is public so feel free to share it. I look forward to your responses, and have a great day!