Monday Spark: When estimating for a freelance project, don’t think about your own checking account.

writing a checkJust a short tip this week. It’s about your mindset when you sit down to write an estimate for a prospective client.

Often a freelancer will write the estimate, look at the total they want to charge, and begin to feel nervous about it.

$1,500? $3,000? $7,500?

Ouch, sounds like a lot of money. Maybe your client will say no.

OK. Now let’s reframe how you think about estimating.

Any sum of money over about $1,000 is going to feel like a lot of money to charge, but only because you are empathizing with how it would feel to pay that amount from your own family checking account.

But that’s the wrong way to think about it.

The money you are charging isn’t going to come out of anyone’s family checking account. It’s going to come from a company’s business account.

In addition, the marketing department will have been allocated a budget to spend each month or each quarter. This is money they have to spend. It’s part of the budget. If they don’t spend it on you, they’ll spend it somewhere else.

Also, while you might find it painful to write a personal check for $1,000, the marketing director or manager in a company won’t find it in the least bit painful to sign off on a few thousand dollars from their allocated budget.

So next time you find yourself feeling nervous about the total figure on your estimate, ask yourself whether it’s because you are thinking about how YOU would feel if you were writing that check yourself.

When that happens, give yourself a hefty slap to the side of your head and remind yourself that you are going to be billing a company and not an individual…a company account, not a personal or family checking account.

Related Resources:

My ebook – Affirmations for Freelancers

My coaching service for freelancers…

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach.

 

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