How to Charge More Money for Your Time: A Guide for Introverts & Nice People

IS THERE PEE RUNNING DOWN YOUR LEG? There is, isn’t there! Well, first thing’s first, let’s get you a towel. Second, let’s get you a smoke. Just kidding, don’t smoke. Is this excellent business advice so far, or what??? So, here’s the schtickity lick: I’ve been working for myself for the past 3,000 years, which in normal human “I actually took a shower today, you scab” years, is fifteen (15). Do you like how I put that in parentheses? Just wait until you see what else I can do.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Forwarded this email? [Subscribe here]() for more [How to Charge More Money for Your Time: A Guide for Introverts & Nice People]( There are no rules about what something should cost, only decisions. SO LET'S MAKE GOOD ONES. [Ash Ambirge]( Oct 17 ∙ Preview   [READ IN APP](   IS THERE PEE RUNNING DOWN YOUR LEG? There is, isn’t there! Well, first thing’s first, let’s get you a towel. Second, let’s get you a smoke. Just kidding, don’t smoke. Is this excellent business advice so far, or what??? So, here’s the schtickity lick: I’ve been working for myself for the past 3,000 years, which in normal human “I actually took a shower today, you scab” years, is fifteen (15). Do you like how I put that in parentheses? Just wait until you see what else I can do. In fifteen years, you can make a lot of mistakes. You can miss deadlines. You can work with boneheads. You can suck. You can get behind. You can gain weight. You can eat cheese. You can wear embarrassingly big undies. AND—you can charge such little money, that you will eventually start buying drugstore lipstick and frozen DiGiorno pizza pies, and we all know it’s a slippery slope from there. (Next comes the jumbo-sized bottle of Tums.) This affliction—something I lovingly refer to as “Shoulda Added a Fuckin’ Zero to That Invoice”—is especially common amongst newbies to the freelance scene, but also people who are chronically insecure about this whole business of “placing a numerical value on me, myself, and my ideas, thus triggering an existential crisis the size of a hurricane” thing. IT IS UNCOMFORTABLE. IT IS THE WEDGIE OF THE BUSINESS WORLD. And, it all goes back to one little problem: price is subjective. There are no rules about what something should cost, only decisions. Most people really want there to be a rule. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were rules?!?! Photographers make this much, and writers make this much, and interior designers make this much, and the people who jerk off Bert & Ernie on TV make this much. How relieved would you be? Because you know what that would be called? A salary. We are used to jobs paying a set amount, based on our experience, and based on the job description: Senior Analyst I, II, III, IV??? Senior Cupcake Designer I, II, III, IV??? Senior Bullshit Artist I, II, III, IV??? But, when you work for yourself, there’s no set pay rate. No salary range. No guidelines, no instructions, no one telling you what you’re going to earn. You have to decide. And, that’s what I’m going to teach you today: what you charge is a decision. Here’s how you make a good one. --------------------------------------------------------------- In my past life, I worked in advertising sales, when getting clients to spend a hoo-hah of money was my actual job. I won very weird awards for this job. Honestly I would have preferred an award for my excellent hairdo at the time—the famous asymmetrical razor bob, which made my jawline look like ice (or maybe that was the elixir known as ‘youth’ and ‘cheekbones’). But, you take what you can get, and what I got were these weird awards for having the most contracts signed on first meeting out of all of our staff across the nation. This was rare in my industry, where you’re selling big ticket items with big ticket price tags and lots of big ticket important people who all have big ticket egos, all competing ideas for how to spend the budget. Then, you compound that with the OTHER problem—a problem that you definitely have, too: nobody knows what things cost. That’s because of one teeny tiny fact: most people are not in your industry, and that means that (a) they probably eat less [mediocre tuna fish sandwiches at lunchtime]( and (b) they can be classified as an “uneducated consumer.” An uneducated consumer is someone who’s interested in buying your stuff, but has no idea what this stuff actually costs. For example, just the other day I called a guy about sanding and refinishing some of my hardwood floors. Some of these bitches don’t match, and it bugs me. ([Maybe I]( OCD]( So, anyway, I’m thinking, like, how much can it really cost to run a floor sander and slap down some stain? Honestly, I could probably do it myself—AND HERE I GO THINKING ARROGANT THINGS, JUST LIKE YOUR CLIENTS PROBABLY THINK ABOUT YOUR WORK (THEY DEFINITELY DO IF YOU’RE A WRITER)—but I’d rather have it professionally done, because I CaRe AbOuT InTerIoR DeSigN. I care about these floors! So, I’ll let some guy named Frankie have a look. Well, Frankie is a VERY nice man. Like, I kinda love Frankie? We text and he uses the giggle emoji (I love when people use emojis, soothes my soul) and I send him photographs and I even send him all the dimensions just like a good little homeowner (I used my iPhone’s measuring app, I am a champion) and I wait with bated breath until how long it’ll be that Frankie and I are skipping off into a sophisticated walnut-hued sunset. (I’m obsessed [with this kitchen]( and am mimicking it as much as a weiner like me can.) Then, Frankie texts me back. There’s a number with dollar signs on the screen. I don’t like the number with dollar signs on the screen. The number with dollar signs on the screen makes me feel like someone just dumped hot tar down my ass crack. Of course, I don’t let Frankie know that. Instead, I play it super cool. I feel like I owe him the dignity of not balking at his price. The number is $5,500, plus tax. My first instinct, of course, was “that’s the cost of a four wheeler” which is apparently the benchmark against which I measure everything now. And then I thought, “shoot, I could re-tile the Taj Mahal for that price,” which is obviously an exaggeration but my whole personality is an exaggeration so please enjoy the ride. Now, whether or not refinishing my hardwood floors should cost $5,500 is irrelevant (just kidding, is this reasonable?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!)—the point is, I’ve never done this before, and have no idea what these kinds of things cost. In my brain, I was thinking around $2K-ish, which is a completely made up number that has no basis in fact and is entirely unfounded. But, that’s the figure I had in my head, because I AM AN UNEDUCATED CONSUMER WHO KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT WOOD, and therefore! Anything that comes in over the $2K mark is going to give me sticker shock. It is not rational, but it’s how brains work. We’re all operating on a made-up narrative. That narrative is entirely imaginary. But, it’s what we imagine that things “should” cost. (Just yesterday I was all up in arms about how much faux florals & greenery cost. Why are these like [$34 per stem]( And you’ve used twelve to create the bouquet in the photo?!?! Please explain why these do not cost $5 per stem, which is what I have in my brain from the time I was twelve years old and roaming around an A.C. Moore.) Frankie then sends another text. “Everything has to be removed prior to our arrival. We’ll be in the space for about a week.” And now I really have anxiety. Where am I going to put it all? How can I do that? Do I have to hire the movers again? The floors I want refinished are all the ones downstairs—am I supposed to move the furniture upstairs??? How am I going to make all this happen??? So, now we’ve got three factors at play: - Holy shit, it costs what?????? - Holy shit, I need to do what??? - Holy shit, it’s going to take what??? These are called objections. What’s funny is, I didn’t have these before the conversation. They only came as a result of the conversation. And—here’s the secret—more than the money, it was the anxiety of the other two combined with the price tag that really made me decline. I want to talk about this, because this, right here, is not selling: it’s telling. And, this is the difference between being a struggling freelancer, and having so much money it’s coming out your eyelids... Subscribe to The Middle Finger Project with Ash Ambirge to read the rest. Become a paying subscriber of The Middle Finger Project with Ash Ambirge to get access to this post and other subscriber-only content. [Upgrade to paid]( A subscription gets you: Access to Subscriber-Only Posts (Weekly) Access to Full Post Archive Access to Comments   [Like]( [Comment]( [Restack](   © 2023 Ash Ambirge 177 Huntington Ave Ste 1703, PMB 64502 Boston, Massachusetts 02115 [Unsubscribe]() [Get the app]( writing]()