The theme is this: I don't get paid enough for the work I do.

Outright, that is not because people don't have money in their pockets, it's because you do not know how to get the money out of their pocket (or you spend time with people that truly don't have money).

About a year ago I had an exchange with a Partner and I wrote him something that I would like to share with you now. It's about finding the right opportunities and passing on the bad.

Getting out of the famine cycle and into the feast by picking the right projects and clients. Getting out of the "scarcity" mindset that your next prospect might be the last or something. Get into the "abundance" mindset to know that there is always something else better.

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Keep a balance, don't overwork. By working less and passing on opportunities you are going to let your subconscious weed out those those projects that you probably shouldn't be taking in the first place.

Almost error on the side of always saying NO to a new project. Let your prospect CONVINCE you why they would be a good client.

You don't have time to work on your own website / marketing / messaging because you are taking jobs for too cheap. By charging more for the projects that you want to work on, you will make more money in the same amount of time and you won't have to take on additional projects to make ends meet and take up more of your time.

When you are working on one thing, you are inherently not working on something else. Think about it. When you take that project for $2,500 (which is dirt cheap for site + branding), you are not pitching that other project for $5,000 that might come along or you might seek out.

Lets think about this together. Take an opportunity like that and propose that it is going to take 100 hours to do the sale, logo, website, and followup. At $2500 you are going to get paid 25 per hour. Lets propose that by charging more you either have to work harder to get that client by spending more time with them building value for yourself or you have to pursue another client that is a better fit for that budget.

Lets propose that you put in an additional 10 hours; either pitching that customer longer or looking for another client that is a better fit. At 110 committed hours at $5,000 you are at $45.45 per hour even counting the over hours. Lets go farther to assume you put in an extra 25 hours to get a customer that will pay you $100/hour for the same amount of work, so $10,000. Even counting the extra 25 hours you put in to find that client or sell them longer, you are at $80/hour.

You need to figure out what you want to be making per month. Lets say you want to make $10,000 per month and there are about 140 productive hours in a month (35 hours per week). Some of that time needs to be reserved for your own marketing and selling of customers. If you can figure out how long it takes to get a client that will pay $10,000 for 100 hours worth of work, you can basically assume that your cap is 40 hours and then try to work it down from there.

I hope this is making sense. Basically, you have 40 hours per month to spend on your own marketing, skill development, networking, etc, in order to book 100 hours at $100/hour to reach a $10,000 per month revenue goal. Part of you should be saying, well, that is only working 35 hours per week, that seems too little. Its not, you will be balanced, healthy, focused, and enjoying life.

In the model where you are getting $2,500 for 100 hours worth of work, to make that same end goal of $10,000 per month, you would need to work 400 hours per month on projects . . . no marketing or sales time there. Or if you are selling or marketing you are rushing the process, you aren't building the right value which is why you end up with $2,500 deals. 400 hours can be done in a month, it really can be, you work about 14 hours per day 7 days a week. You will crash though and you will then not be able to work for a while or your work will be crap.

Work less, charge more. Its that simple.

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Now back to replying to everyone's emails :)