If You Do Not Know Your Number, You Will Waste Your Life on Things That Do Not Matter

Over the years of helping my wife and her peers start and build their healing practices, one question always comes up.

The simple answer does not help but it is the key to the whole issue.

Charge whatever you want.

And what that answer reveals is how much you value yourself and how much the marketplace values you.

The Number

As a union electrician under a collective bargaining agreement, I did not have complete control over how much I got paid.

I had a bare minimum that was set by our contract.

That contract would be up for negotiation and a vote roughly every three years. I still get all the mailed information from my union.

This year the negotiations are not going well and the members have voted to strike at a 75 to 25 split.

LOL, even when I am not trying, I cannot escape the 80/20 rule.

But I could negotiate for higher wages.

• If I was working as a foreman, did the offer include a work truck?
• Did it include a gas card?
• Back in the day, did it include a shop phone or was I expected to use mine?

Toward the end of my career, when I had unlimited minutes, I preferred not having a shop phone. It was one more thing to carry and look out for. I just used my own.

When I was interviewing for a foreman position, I would give my requirements because of my busy life:

• I had a 30-minute drive radius
• I wouldn't work overtime as a norm only for emergencies
• I would not work more than 4-5 projects at the same time, I knew that I would be less effective

If that didn't work for them, that was fine, it was win-win or no deal.​

I had a buddy who negotiated that he would work forty hours per week but the paycheck would show forty-eight hours, even before working any overtime.

That way he was adding more hours to his pension and annuity accounts.

Damn that was a smart move. I wish I had thought of that.

The reason this matters is because we live in a barter society and for most people the means of exchange is dollars.

How you value yourself is important.

Not just for your physical quality of life but for your mental and emotional well-being.

If you feel you are being compensated fairly, you will want to continue that relationship.

If you do not, you will not.

It is that simple.

But dollars are not the only thing you are exchanging.

There are a bunch of studies that show for the average person in the US, when they make somewhere around $100,000 per year, more money does not usually mean more satisfaction.

That is where the other factors come in.

Stress. Autonomy. Responsibility.

The mission, either personal or professional.

Flexibility. That is big with the work from home crowd.

Funny that was never an option in construction.

And any of a host of other values on which we determine our quality of life.

Knowing your dollar value and your personal values is integral to creating a life of happiness.

That is why most people are miserable at home for the simple reason they will not hire housekeepers to keep their sacred space clean and clutter-free.

They complain about whose responsibility it is to keep whatever clean in the house.

So much stress would be relieved if you just knew how much an hour of your time was worth and hired someone for less than that number to keep your home clean.

It would free up so much physical, mental, and emotional bandwidth in your home.

Me knowing my number was why I was able to charge and make $30,000 my first year as a coach with two clients working a couple hours a week.

• I knew my expertise
• I knew what I was good at
• I was able to communicate their problems and how I could help them overcome those problems

And when they asked how much, I was able to comfortably and confidently give them a number.

Granted, I had learned this because I had spent years helping my wife develop this skill with her business.

I was easily able to apply it for my own.

The Simple Formula

Here is how you figure out your number.

Take your present job.

Add up everything you receive.

Not just what shows up on your paycheck.

Everything.

• Insurance
• Pension
• Annuity
• 401(k) match
• Any other compensation your employer provides

For me, when I left construction in 2020, that was roughly $175,000 per year.

Plus the quality of life factors.

Working with good people on good projects.

Those matter too, but start with the dollars.

Then divide that number by 2,000.

That is fifty weeks of work at forty hours per week.

Two weeks off for vacation or sick time or life happening.

For me, that came out to about $87.50 per hour.

That was my baseline. My floor.

The number I knew I could command based on what the market was already paying me.

That is your base number.

You can modulate it up or down depending on how much you want to work on a particular client, project, or job.

But you need to know the baseline first.

Because without it, you are guessing.

And guessing means you will undervalue yourself more often than not.

Most people never do this math. They know their salary.

They have a vague sense of their benefits.

But they have never added it all up and divided by the hours.

So they do not know what their time is actually worth.

And when someone offers them a side project or a consulting gig or asks them to do something outside their regular job, they have no anchor.

They pick a number out of thin air.

And it is almost always too low.

The Question You Need to Answer

How much are you worth?

• Do you have the numbers to back it up?
• How much are you currently getting paid?
• Are your employers, customers, or clients happy to pay that?

If not, one of two issues.

You are either fooling yourself on the value you bring to the marketplace, or you are marketing to the wrong people.

I learned to network with general foremen and project managers on the job.

The journeymen and the foremen did not have the power to get me hired as a foreman.

The general foremen and project managers did. They were my audience to market to.

And I was able to demonstrate my value on the job, which they could see. That is how I got headhunted on a couple of jobs.

Leaving one shop for a better position with another shop on the same project.

I gave the first shop the opportunity to match the offer.

Sometimes they would. Sometimes they would not.

That is business.

But most people never do this.

Most people just accept whatever number is offered and never ask for more.

They never negotiate. They never test the market.

They never find out what they are actually worth.

And then they wonder why they are miserable.

The Three Numbers You Need

If you do not know your number, you will waste your time on things that do not matter.

You will say yes to opportunities that pay less than your time is worth.

You will spend hours doing things you could pay someone else less to do.

You will undervalue your expertise and overdeliver for people who do not appreciate it.

You need three numbers.

Your baseline hourly rate. What you are currently getting paid per hour. Use the formula. Add up everything. Divide by 2,000.

That is your floor. The number you know you can get because the market is already paying it.

Your target hourly rate. What you want to be paid per hour based on the life you want to live.

Not the life you think you should want. Not the life Instagram tells you to want.

The life you actually want. Do the math backward.

How much does that life cost per year? Divide by the number of hours you are willing to work. That is your target rate.

Your "nom thank you" rate. The number below which you will not say yes.

The rate that makes you feel resentful, taken advantage of, or undervalued. You need to know that number so you can say no when someone offers it.

Most people do not have these numbers.

They have a vague sense that they should be making more.

They have a feeling that they are being underpaid. But they do not have the metrics to prove it.

And without the metrics, they cannot negotiate.

They cannot make decisions.

They cannot build a life that aligns with what they actually value.

Why Most People Stay Stuck

When my wife’s peers ask how much they should charge, what they are really asking is permission to charge what they are worth.

They want someone else to tell them the number so they do not have to take responsibility for it.

Because if someone else tells them to charge that much and it does not work, it is not their fault.

But that is backward. The market will tell you what you are worth.

The market is everyone who has ever paid you or declined to pay you.

The market is the feedback you get every time you name a price and someone says yes or no.

If you are charging too little, people will say yes but they will not value the work.

They will cancel. They will no-show. They will treat you like a commodity.

Because you priced yourself like one.

If you are charging too much for the value you are actually delivering, people will say no.

They will shop around. They will ghost you. They will hire someone else.

If you are charging the right amount for the right people, they will say yes and they will show up and they will stay.

That is how you know.

But you have to test it.

You have to name a number and see what happens.

You have to be willing to hear no.

You have to be willing to walk away from people who do not value what you do.

And most people are not willing to do that.

So they stay stuck charging too little for people who do not appreciate them.

The Housekeeper Test

The fastest way to know whether you value your time is the housekeeper test.

If your household income is above $75,000 per year and you do not have a housekeeper, you are wasting money.

You are spending hours every week cleaning toilets and folding laundry and vacuuming floors when you could pay someone $25 to $40 per hour to do it for you.

And if your time is worth more than that, which it is, you are losing money every time you clean your own house.

But most people will not do this.

They will say it feels indulgent.

They will say they cannot afford it.

They will say they should be able to keep their own house clean.

And they will spend every weekend stressed and resentful and fighting with their spouse about whose turn it is to scrub the shower.

That is not about money.

That is about not knowing your number.

If you knew your hourly rate and you knew the housekeeper’s hourly rate, the decision would be obvious.

But because you do not have the metrics, you make the decision based on guilt and shoulds instead of math.

The same principle applies to everything else.

• Mowing the lawn
• Doing your taxes
• Scheduling your own appointments

Any task that someone else can do for less than your hourly rate should be delegated.

And any task you keep doing yourself is costing you the difference.

How to Use Your Number

Once you have your baseline, you can adjust it based on the work.

If a project is interesting and you want the experience, you can go lower.

If the client is difficult or the work is boring or the timeline is tight, you go higher.

If you are building a relationship with someone you want to work with long-term, you can discount the first project knowing you will make it up on the back end.

If someone is wasting your time or does not respect your expertise, you quote high enough that they either say no or the number makes it worth dealing with them.

My friend in Sydney, already had a reputation for being "expensive" but worth it to his 9 and 10-figure clients.

Through word-of-mouth he a potential client he didn't want to work with approached him, he quoted him four times his already "expensive" quote.

The guy accepted it and the extra money was worth the extra headache for my buddy to deal with him.

But all of that only works if you know your baseline.

Because the baseline is the anchor.

It is the number you use to calibrate everything else.

Without it, you are just throwing darts in the dark.

When I started coaching, I knew my baseline was about $87 per hour for a fulltime 40 hours per week "job."

I also knew that coaching required less physical effort than running conduit and less risk than working on a live panel.

So I could charge more per hour and deliver more value in less time.

I set my rate at a base number (never per hour!) for a specific goal, not a vague, "get better."

Two clients at a couple hours per week of work.

$30,000 my first year. The math worked because I knew where to start.

Most people do not have that anchor.

So they pick a number that feels safe.

And safe always means too low.

Because safe means you are afraid to hear no.

And if you are afraid to hear no, you will always undercharge.

Another thing I tell my clients to do, is charge more than you're comfortable with, that way, not only do you appreciate the work but you make sure that you're bringing your A-game with you.

The Real Cost

If you do not know your number, you will waste your life on things that do not matter.

You will say yes to projects that pay too little.

You will spend time with people who do not value you.

You will trade hours of your life for dollars that do not move you toward the life you actually want.

And at the end of it, you will look back and realize you spent decades being compensated unfairly and you never did anything about it.

That is the cost.

Not the money you left on the table.

The life you did not build because you did not know what your time was worth.

So do the math.

Add up everything you make.

Divide by 2,000.

Write that number down. That is your baseline. That is your floor.

That is the number the market has already validated.

Then test it. Adjust it. Build from it.

But start with knowing it.

Because if you do not know your number, you cannot build a life that respects your time.

And if you do not respect your time, nobody else will either.

⚔ The Dojo Drill

Today’s training:

The Reputation Drill

Ask yourself:

Adjust behavior accordingly.

📚 Leader’s Library

Book I recommend this week:

​​Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card​​

Why?

To find out how even the smallest weakest little kid can become the greatest leader and the most badass fighter in all the world.

P.S. Know a martial arts gym owner who’s stressed about money or student numbers?

Do them a favor: send them to The Leader's Dōjō, my website where I help owners get more students and keep them longer with simple systems.

One forward from you could change their gym: The Leader's Dōjō​

Chuck