I was recently getting my nails done at my favorite salon with my favorite nail technician and partway through my right hand he said something very surprising to me. He was telling me about how his air-conditioning had gone out. "Cindy" he said, "it cost me $125 for 7 minutes of work" he exclaimed. I sat silent for a second, then responded. "No, no, no," I began. "It wasn't $125 for just 7 minutes of work! It was $125 for 7 minutes of work that included his at least two years of schooling, his apprenticeship, his years of experience and the countless times he has dealt with that same problem and it took him hours." I paused for a second then continued, "Would you rather have spent hours without A-C??"
"You're right" was his only response.
When professionals are able to work quickly, its not because they aren't working hard; they've spent years educating themselves, training themselves and gathering knowledge and experience to help them be experts and efficient at what they do. Time is valuable. What do our hourly fees include:
Education:
Schooling isn't free; in fact, its getting incredibly expensive. An full-time student pays an average of $12,000 a year for tuition and fees! "Ouch" is right! Thats a lot of time and money spent in order to learn what we need to know in order to do what we clients want us to do.
Apprenticeship/Internship:
Nowadays, experience is a must before getting hired. Most internships, including my own, are unpaid. While you are learning invaluable lessons that can't quite be taught in the classroom, thats working for free!
Experience:
We spend years honing our skills and perfecting what we do. Countless times we can't charge for the amount of work that we do because it is part of our learning curve so that when the same situation arrives again, we know exactly what to do.
So why sell yourself short?
Posted on
Fri, July 2, 2010
by Cindy Aplanalp