Best advice I’ve ever received

Following another internet meme, this time from the Web Professor - I'll attempt to choose and blogcast the best advice I ever received. This is a tough one but worth the introspection. Of course the wise words of Miss Piggy immediately come to mind: "Never eat more than you can lift". But I think I can do better than that. When you undervalue your work, you do a disservice to the entire industry you work in. This advice was given to me by a marketing director at a company I used to work for around 2002, when I was trying to come up with what I should charge for freelance work. I had recently been laid off from my employment there due to lack of work available (long story), and found myself in a pretty good position with solid leads for freelance work to fall upon when my employment ended. That company also wanted me to be available for occasional work when the odd job came up. But what to charge? I hadn't been unemployed for a long time and was out of touch with what the going rates were for a freelance designer/programmer/dba/webmaster. I had to come up with a price sheet describing types of work and what I would charge. It was quite a struggle - I wanted to be competitive (this was after the .com bubble burst, and competition for freelance web jobs was fierce), but also needed to make sure I was charging enough to make the work worth my while and pay my rent. There was a director at the company whose advice I trusted, so I approached her to ask what prices she would consider fair and reasonable. Her answer was surprising, I guess. It turned into a conversation about how the freelancer with their greater freedom to set prices wherever they choose, are essentially defining the market price for their goods. Those were tough times; for many years "Web Designer" and "Interactive Media Director" were the hottest jobs on the planet, then "Boom" and thousands of us were out of work trying to trade websites for meal tickets. And there were so many people practically giving it away for free. Hundreds of them, streaming out of community colleges with the ink still drying on their "Web Designer" diplomas, desperate to leave their job at the Foot Locker and establish themselves in a pitifully saturated industry. And they too were competing for small business tenders against the receptionist's 9 year old nephew who "makes web pages too" in their parents' basement using a pirated version of MS Frontpage. It was important to elevate myself above that crowd, but still difficult to find work when the low-hanging easy-money fruit was being gobbled by desperate newbs. If I set my prices too low, I was telling prospective clients that my time was not worth the big bucks. The advice I got was to keep my prices where they deserved to be considering my professional experience and not succumb to the market recession by undercutting. Hang in there, stay firm, stay expensive. It turned out to be excellent advice. Sure, I missed out on some contracts that might have lubricated my finances were I willing to grunt up yet another 5-page online brochure with a contact form. My next few freelance jobs were good medium-profile, high-paying gigs. The companies I found that were willing to pay my prices knew that their needs were greater than the average company, and they needed someone of my caliber and skill driving their web presence. My number was kept on a short list at a couple of local agencies. I was offered a few consulting jobs, coming in to teach the employees at another web startup how to embrace new media (at the time, Flash MX was a huge deal). Then I landed a long term gig stateside managing a huge site run by a tiny company who were getting deep into huge traffic numbers and wanted to go deeper. The companies that couldn't afford me, remembered me. So, good advice. But there's another spin on it: if I offered really good work for less money, then some other schmoe will also have to lower his prices. And if I'm doing it and he's doing it, then many others will have to follow. Then in aggregate, the value of my services goes down, because everyone is doing it cheap. Now how would I feel if someone was undercutting me that way and making it seem like my work was worth less than it is? I wouldn't like that. So I shouldn't do it to someone else. An industry is a community, and those in the community have to maintain quality and value for themselves. Until a Walmart comes along and pisses it all up. BTW, this phenomenon is happening all over. Right now the digital camera revolution and Flickr has put the stock photography profession into big trouble. Open-source software kicks the crap out of businesses that made/sold proprietary apps. Wikinomics is taking over, like it or not. But that's a topic for another day. If I had lowered my standards then, I don't know where I'd be now. Probably not where I am, doing what I do. So "don't undervalue your work" is probably the best advice I ever got. Now I hereby pass this meme along to: Bentley007 Sugarrae Werty Hooley