 There's a common saying this has been years ago and when I started my business, that you should charge what you are worth. Charge what you're worth. It sounds good, right? I mean, why wouldn't you charge what you're worth? Are you playing small? Are you underselling yourself? These terms all have this foundational assumption that your worth or your self-esteem is connected to your rates or your fees. I think it's a very dangerous assumption and I'm calling it out. I'm bringing forth to light because I needed to really look at this in order to find a way to price my services that felt authentic and sustainable and disassociated with my self-worth because, hey, if someone charges five times more than you, are they worth more than you? Now, you might say, well, their bank account is worth more than my bank account. Fine. Their time seems to be worth more in the market than my time. Fine. It's so dangerous and it creates an unhealthy dynamic between your pricing, your customers, and how you think of yourself when you start thinking, oh, as I, you know, someone who charges more is worth more. Even to say their time is worth more is, I think, dangerous and unnecessary because what are you worth? What are you worth? No one can say. As a human being, you are worth infinity. No one can put a price on you. Now, you say, George, that's fine and good, but what does that mean for how I charge? Well, the most common alternative that's better than charge what you're worth is to charge the market rate. That's better because you look around at other people who offer the same kind of services you do to the same kinds of people that you do and that's your market. Your market is the group of transactions from people offering something similar to you with a similar background to the customers that are similar to your customers. That's your market. And whatever the rates are being charged in your market, that's the market rate. And it makes sense to charge the market rate because, well, your market, your customers or your potential clients expect a certain range for what these kinds of services are charged by people like you. So charge the market rate is, if you want to just make a real simple rule of thumb, you can move on from here. That's fine. Now, what I've noticed though is a lot of people in my industry of business coaching, they teach you how to, you know, make money and do your marketing. What they tend to do is charge what the market will bear. And they might even teach that to you. In fact, that's the common economics theory is to or the economic observation is that companies firms charge what the market will bear. And I just think that is so adversarial between the business and the customer. It sets up this situation where, as a business owner, I'm going to try to take as much money from you as possible. And as a customer, you are supposed to buyer beware, you know, just to be suspicious of every business and go, I'm going to pay you the least, I'm going to pay the least possible to the business owner as I can. Right. It's an adversarial relationship. And it's not how most of us here, heart based solopreneurs want to relate to our clients and our potential clients. I mean, you wouldn't want me to be charging the most that you can bear. That doesn't make doesn't make you feel good doesn't make me feel good either actually. I feel like I'm getting away with something and I'm like, you know, being devious or just not community oriented. Not doing business from love from compassion. Another common teaching is to charge what your work is worth. What is your work worth charge that amount of money. That's very similar to charge what the market will bear. Because let's say you are a, I don't know, let's say you are a relationship coach. And you help you help a couple, a married couple let's say to stay together, instead of divorce. Well how much is that worth. How much is that worth that could be worth, or whatever the couple makes you know in their in their, that could be worth tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. Do you charge that. No, that's ludicrous. You don't charge what your work is worth. Because your work is actually worth more than you can, you can then then you realize you can't even calculate what your work is worth because the ripple effect that it creates on customers, a client's life, and then they go on and create ripple effects in their life to all the people that they interact with. How can you possibly charge what your, you know, your, your, your work is worth you can't mean it's it's worth way more. So, what should we do. Like I said we come back to charge the market rate. I think it's a fair assumption, because you are simply doing what is standard with the others around you. Here's the thing though I several years ago. I came to this realization that I want to take as little money from my clients as I possibly could. So instead of charge what the market will bear. I charge the least that I can bear. That's what I started doing in 2014. That's been that's kind of started that experimentation. So back then. My courses were, were less money. My one on one time was less. I was charging the least I possibly could bear and still provide my service. Some of you are probably going to be, you know, some of you probably disrespect that and say now that's that's that's, that's a bad business move George because then you're not making as much money as you could. I know, because my models in my heroes. Peace pilgrim. Some of you may have heard me talk about her. If you don't know about peace pilgrim I recommend that you go online and search for peace pilgrim audio book, peace, like world peace pilgrim like pilgrimage peace pilgrim audio book and listen to it. It's free to listen to. And this is one of my biggest heroes in life. She was really affected by her story and her teachings. When I changed my business back in 2012 2013 2014. And so I started charging the least that I could possibly charge. I, what that forced me to do was to really look at what was enough for me. It's not something you usually hear from people who teach you business marketing pricing. I've already said what they typically say charge with the market will bear charge of market rate charge what your charge what your worth charge what your time is worth charge what your work is worth all that stuff right. What I say is look at what is enough. What is enough for you, which is, which is a constant inquiry it's not a one time. Okay this much amount of money per month me up inflation and your life changes your needs change. But without looking at what is enough. And if you just keep on studying business and marketing, you're going to keep, you're going to keep the, you're going to feel pressured to inflate your prices more and more and more every single year, every six months, every three months. Every month, some people might say, and doing that what does that do continuing to inflate our prices consistently beyond what is enough for us. Okay, now, I'm going to say, I'm, what I'm not saying is that you shouldn't save for retirement, I save for retirement of course I'm. I'm not specifically safe for retirement, not. I'll say more I don't. What I don't do is what some people, I've noticed, try to do is like, they try to make a bunch of money in just a few years, so that it can retire and then they can say well now I don't find this pressure I can provide my service or free or low cost or whatever. I admire. If that was the intention I admire that but what typically happens is, during the years of making a lot of money they turn into a shark. Because how you make money shapes your character shapes your character, it shapes your habits of thought and relationships with others, how you look at people. So we need to be aware of that. Like I said, most of the people you learn from in my industry will turn you into a shark. It will turn you against your own values. And what I'm trying to bring you back to is to, is to invite you to observe your own values again and say, Okay, I don't need to try to take as much money from other people as possible because when we when we take more money from others, others have more financial pressure. Right. And then we tend to what happens, the hedonic treadmill, you can look that up as well the hedonic treadmill means that when we take more money in, we tend to increase our own lifestyle if we're not very conscious about managing our money, which most people are not. So we tend to increase our lifestyle costs, rather than decrease them. Yeah, what I've done recently which I've been dreaming of doing for five years, which is to move to a cheaper country. I just made the move from San Francisco, California, one of the most expensive cities in the whole world. It's really top 10 most expensive city to live in. And I'm here because you know my wife, my wife's work was there and you know we couldn't leave because of the her livelihood circumstances. But finally, the pandemic and you know she was able to work online a lot more and now we we had the freedom to leave. So finally now we made the move to Mexico, where right now, the costs are are you know, trying to settle into a new home and there's there's additional costs there that we didn't usually have but I'm expecting that in the coming year, the cost of my lifestyle will go down dramatically, dramatically, probably at least a third if not half, and maybe even more than half. So what does that mean. Does that mean I can save more money and in retire sooner and so this is what I'm trying not to do now. Bear with me here, if you don't mind the typical teaching from guys like me is make as much money as fast as you can, so that you can retire to Mexico or Thailand or, or some tropical island or whatever wherever you want to go you retire somewhere, where you can just live off your savings your investments and live a good life. I talk about this elsewhere where a good life in my opinion is not sitting on the beach, you know sipping your favorite drink. You could do that of course to rest and relax and renew and take as long as you need to but, in my opinion, a good life is about challenging ourselves on a daily basis. Of course you balance it with rest and renewal and, you know, all that stuff but you a good a truly good life is to continue challenging ourselves to explore what is most authentic to our calling, which usually means always almost always means to serve other people more impactfully more deeply. And, by the way, money is not evil. It's so important. If you come from the assumption that money is the root of all evil, just like the Bible says George money is there. No, that's a misconception. Money, if I have a video about that by the way go to YouTube and search money is the root of all evil. You should find one of my old old videos where I talk about what I understand to be the true biblical for those of you who are biblical or the true biblical interpretation of that. Set that aside. Not all of us are take the Bible as the as the word of God but what I believe is money is not the root of all evil, but the greed greed is the root of many kinds of evil. Right. So that and that by the way is so we are also susceptible to it, especially. It's kind of like you, if you get desperate, whether you're desperate or you are less desperate and making a lot of money, like financially desperate or the other side greed can grab you at both ends of the spectrum. And like it just seeks into you and when you learn from people from guys like me. You will get greed left and right it will be like seeping into and you won't even realize it. So what happens is what I try to do. Okay, which I've done now I'm showing you right like in through my own lifestyle is I have, I have what do you call it downsized. That's the right word. I have nothing in storage. I have no storage fees that we sold or gave it we gave away most of our stuff. Most of our furniture most of our stuff we donated it. We try to sell a few things that very cheap and then we unfortunately some things had to be trashed because we had to leave leave the home. So we downsize tremendously so that in the next year or so our financial situation will become easier, less pressure, which means guess what I'm that guess what my business. I'm not going to, you know, I probably will work a little bit less because I've been working quite a bit over the last 10 years, but I'll probably work a little bit less hours per week but but still working, probably more focused time than most solopreneurs, more focused hours per week than probably most solopreneurs with them. I practice joyful productivity for many years so anyway, I'm going to keep working. And you know where I'm going to do with the money. I'm going to give it back to you. Yeah, that's my plan. I already have those of you who are in my affiliate program know I have 300 affiliates at any given time something like 50 to 100 are active affiliates and the active affiliates are the ones I'm sharing profit with so let me say this again. The money I make has a profit sharing component where I share 40% I share 40% of my online course revenue which is most of my revenue, my online course revenue I share 40% with my affiliates every month. I share 50% directly from whatever they sold but another 15% where I just distributed among all the active affiliates so I try to give money back to my affiliates, which are my by the way, most of my affiliates are you just my clients and custom my students who signed up for the affiliate program you can go to George cow.com slash affiliate single word George cow.com slash affiliate to see what the affiliate programs about anyway. And as I reduce my living expenses. I'm going to keep investing in retirement but I'm not going to here's what I'm not going to do. I'm not going to do this thing where I'm like, I'm going to make as much money, invest as aggressively as I can so that I can then retire early, you know, retire young. No, I'll tell you why, because during during my money making years. I can either like I said become a shark, or become super frugal and like stingy essentially right become a shark and become stingy and try to like save as much money I'm not. Am I criticizing the fire movement, financial impending this retire early, I kind of am. I know some of you are really into that movement, but here, hear me out. I think retirement. I think it is healthy. Let me say that I think it's healthy for the soul to be working as much as possible. Now you said George are you a Puritan. Maybe I have a little pure Puritanism in me maybe I do but here's here hear me out a little bit here. Why is working healthy for the soul, because work. Okay. Let me be clear, working for money. Working for money. Okay, I think it's healthy for the exploration of our calling. Why is that why we explain why. From my perspective, our calling our work calling like what we are called by a higher power to do for money is this the where our interests and our skills on the one hand, intercept with what the world is yearning to pay for. What's the what is the world yearning to pay for your world is re yearning to pay for what cannot come for free. You see what I mean, if if I can get something for free I'm not going to pay for no one's going to pay for what they can get for free, but they will pay for what cannot be gotten for free. And so, in other words, the something that they want, and they can't get for free. The circle of what the market wants and to pay for and what your skills and interests are that intersection right there in the middle is your work calling is the higher purpose of your money making work life. And that I believe really is more authentic and true about souls career calling your soulful career calling than just volunteering volunteering of course it's beautiful it's wonderful. You do things for free, you know, but again, there are things that people that not enough people are volunteering for that people want to pay for, let's say, and when you are able to charge for it. Okay, people are willing to pay for it. It's a beautiful intersection. And that's what money, I think is, that's where money makes the world a better place. That's where money connects humanity. It's to say, you know what, I really want this service I really want this program I really want this event I really want this product, and I can't easily get it for free. No one else is, I can't find it for free. Okay, or it easily can't find, and you're charging for it I believe in you. You've been, you know, you've given me free content or whatever. I'm going to pay you for it, because you're charging for it. So, okay, back to back to what what the topic at hand is. I try to charge based on enoughness like I said, as I reduce my lifestyle expenses, I will either charge less, or I will give more profit back to my back to my affiliates which is people like you, you can anyone can sign up for my affiliate I might give, give money back to my active affiliates, and I'll probably also either charge less for my stuff, or take on or launch less launch fewer courses so that I can spend even more energy making the existing courses better. That's my plan. So I charge based on enoughness and based on compassion. I look at you and I go I don't want to take more money from you. I mean I don't buy, I'm going to take as little money from you as I can bear for the way my business model setup. And as I get my lifestyle expenses less, and it's my business model improves, I should be able to take less money from you and give you as much if not more value. That's my intention. So I hope this is this discussion helps you see the pricing and money question, such an important one in a different light. And I look forward to seeing of everything I've said what resonated with you. And if you have anything else to add of course feel free to comment below. Thank you so much.