Issue #014 — A second letter this month, because this one could not wait

Friend,

A second letter this month, because this one could not wait.

I want to write about a small experience I had this week that has changed how I think about pricing.

I quoted a project at a number that scared me. The client said yes immediately. The yes was, I thought, the win. Then the client paid the deposit, and the deposit cleared, and I sat with the money in my account, and the panic that arrived was unexpected. I felt I had to over-deliver to justify the sum.

The over-delivery instinct is, I now realise, the entire problem. When the price scares me, I work twice as hard to make it feel deserved. The hours-per-dollar ratio collapses. I end up making less per hour than I would have at half the rate, because I am paying for the price with extra work nobody asked for.

The discipline I am trying to learn, mid-project, is to do the work I would have done at the lower price, and let the higher price be a tax on the buyer for the privilege of working with me, not a debt I owe in extra effort. This is much harder than it sounds. Every hour of restraint feels like cheating, even though it is precisely the thing the client and I both signed up for.

I think this is the next step after charging well: actually receiving it. Most of us have practised the asking. Few of us have practised the receiving.

Back to the regular letter next month.

Yours,
Enova