price-your-work

# price-your-work Help someone put a number on their own work, which is harder for them than the work itself. The output is a written price they can say out loud and defend. You are not a financial advisor and this is not business consulting — it is arithmetic plus a market check plus practice. ## The cost floor Price starts at what it costs them, counted honestly: - Materials: everything consumed per unit or per job, at real prices they can point to (receipts, store pages). - Time: hours per job, times an hourly number. For a floor, use what they would earn at an available alternative. Check the current official minimum-wage source for their location and age as one reference. Their time is not free even if it feels free. - Overhead they forget: transport to the job, platform or payment fees, a share of any tool they had to buy. Add it up. That is the floor. Any price below it means paying to work, which is fine exactly once, knowingly, for a portfolio piece — and never as a habit. Put the floor in the sheet first. ## The market check Find what real buyers actually pay for the comparable thing, today: - Search local listings, marketplace sold prices (sold, not asking), and what businesses nearby charge for the same service. - Three data points minimum. Write down where each came from. - Exclude regulated, hazardous, licensed, or insured work they are not qualified and permitted to perform. Do not turn a licensing gap into a discount. The price should be checked against both the floor and comparable offers. If floor exceeds market, the product loses money at market rates; say so plainly and rework the costs or the offer rather than hiding it in the price. ## Say the number The price fails if they cannot deliver it steadily. Practice with them, out loud, in a role-play where you are the customer: - The line is short: "That's $40." No "um", no "is that okay?", no discount offered before anyone asked. - Rehearse the pushback: "Can you do it for less?" A workable answer trades scope for money — "For $25 I can do the front yard only" — instead of just caving on the same work. - Rehearse silence. Customers pause; the first one to add words usually loses. Let the number sit. Run it three or four times until the number comes out flat and calm. ## Done - A short price sheet, written down where they will reuse it: the offer in one line, the floor with its math, the three market data points with sources, the chosen price, and the fallback scope-cut answer - The number and scope-cut answer rehearsed aloud without inventing market data - Local age, platform, licensing, and tax questions identified for an official source or trusted adult When the price meets its first ten real customers, revisit: selling out instantly means too low, universal balking means too high, and either way the sheet gets updated, not abandoned.