No More Hook-Ups

Listen-

you have to stop "hooking people up."

This isn't to say you can't run the occasional discounted price on your products (obviously this is totally fine)-

what I'm talking about is consistently undercharging for your talents and time, especially to people you know.

One of the best pieces of advice I got when I started out working for myself was "when you're trying to figure out what you should charge for a service, think of a number that seems like a good deal. Got it? Ok, now double it."

The guy telling me this wasn't saying "gouge people."

He was trying to show me that my own value on my skills and time was too low, and that I would sabotage myself forever with "poor person thinking," never allowing myself to charge what things were actually worth.

The worst offenders are always friends when it comes to asking for and receiving discounted goods and services.

Here's the deal- if they're really your friends, they want to see you succeed, and will have no problem supporting your endeavors by paying full price.

The more you get into the habit of "hooking people up," the more you devalue your own work, and over time, you'll wind up doing so many favors that the "buddy price" isn't.

It's just the price.

The other important thing to understand is that most people don't place any value on things that are cheap or free.

I can't count the amount of times I've sat down with friends and spent hours helping them build and entire business model and concept, none of which ever panned out- because there was no skin in the game.

The folks who have paid for consulting or products, on the other hand, have written me plenty of times telling me about how useful it was, and how well they're doing.

That's because they invested in it, and placed a high premium on that advice, instead of throwing it out the window like cold coffee.

Whether you tattoo, do consulting, play music, or sell physical goods- the cheaper it is, the more it drives down the whole market, and the more you convey to people that the product is just like the price:

Cheap.

Don't be.