The Desert of Arizona
Sunny 40 Degrees
At different points in your work with clients, you’re going to have way more to do than time to do it.
It’s at this point where the fees you charge take on a very different character inside your mind.
When you WANT the business, there’s always that pressure to charge just enough but not too much.
I imagine at some point, that goes away completely. Until then, you simply learn to resist that brainwashing the best you can.
But there IS a way to hasten the death of this little voice that keeps your fees on the lower end. The way you do that is by completely overloading yourself with work.
Not forever… just temporarily. It only takes a short time to learn the lesson.
When your plate is full and another prospect comes along, the thinking in your mind regarding fees really changes.
You go from trying to find that “sweet spot” where they say YES (which is a terrible habit) to asking yourself…
“What does this fee need to be to make it worth my time?”
This is a question that you use as a survival tool when you’ve overloaded your plate.
It has nothing to do with value of the project, or with how you’re “supposed” to charge or even what is “fair.” It simply has to do with what you want, where you’re trying to go, and whether a particular project and fee make sense in that context.
This, of course, is the way you should be thinking all along… whether or not you WANT the business.
Over time, you develop the confidence to reject things simply because they don’t make sense for YOU.
That’s when a simple response like, “These numbers just don’t make sense for me…” becomes very useful.
It’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation really.
Do some service providers get high fees because they’ve earned them? Or do they simply get them because they refuse to accept less?
Look at it this way: your behavior is training the universe. If you accept low paying stuff, that’s what you’re going to get more of.
The change begins with your behavior and ripples out from there.