I recently read a short story that helped me get my head around just how much my time is worth, and it has nothing to do with $ per hour. The story went something like:
A large shipping company had one of it's ships in doc for an engine repair. The cost of keeping it out of the water, as you can imagine is somewhat high. Their mechanics and technicians, although well trained and well qualified, could get the engine to run. They ordered the engine removed so that they could work on it further. Despite their combined knowledge, they still could not get it to run. Finally, they called for help.
Albert, a 70 year veteran mechanic turned up, walked around the engine (remember they had already taken it out of the ship), tapped it gently a few times with his glasses, smiled, walked over to his tool bag, pulled out a hammer, gave the engine an almighty bang, and asked them to try again. It ran, they tested it, ran up, ran it down, stopped it, started it. It worked fine. Albert sent his Invoice in to be paid. The next day he received a phone call from the boss of the shipping company. "$20,000? you were only on site for 10 minutes! Send me an itemized bill". Albert, without getting in to an argument agreed. The next day, the boss received the itemised invoice it read
Knowing where to hit $19,990
He got paid!
The moral of the story, customers rarely don't pay because of the cost, it's because they don't understand the value. Your job is to help them see the value, that starts with seeing your own value!
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