What should you charge for your service, £80, £150, £250 or should you do things for free?
It’s 6.15 am here in the Pan Pacific hotel in Toronto and I just woke up with this in the forefront of my mind, after day 3 of the fabulous 5 day architecture of hypnosis course with Mike & Chris, and the MMHA team.
And as I’m waking up, I recalled the story of a large ocean bound container ship, stuck in port with an engine problem, this was in the 1990’s..
The ship was destined for departure and it had a technical problem with the electrical system that was failing to enable the engine starting procedure to commence.
The onboard engineers tried their best to find and fix the fault without success as time crept on.
The captain ‘Stephen Wilson’ was under pressure to meet connections at transatlantic ports for the onward passage of the containers to their final destinations, it was a well connected puzzle all depending on ‘just in time’ delivery schedules.
Delays had onward compounding issues with failed delivery slots, so being on schedule was vital. In fact it was so vital that the shipping company was at risk of suffering fines of $22,000 for each delayed hour of departure.
It was a tough decision to overrule the capabilities of his trusted onboard engineers, but the Captain decided to get external help. He knew of the chief engineer ‘William Giles’ at the original ship yard that helped design his ship, in fact he knew him from school as they grew up together.
Stephen reached out to William for help and unfortunately, William was chuffed to hear from his old mate, but was also up against his own schedules.
As William was driving home from work that day after chatting with Stephen the Captain, he wasn’t really paying attention to his driving, actually he was thinking about the problem with Stephen’s ship.
He had a moment of inspiration, pulled over and rang Stephen to say he had an idea and was on his way.
4 hours later he arrived at the port with an electrical test meter and a packet of electrical components.
The clock was ticking with the potential delays and by sunrise the first fine would kick in. Time was against the shipping line.
William passed through security and was escorted aboard the ship, with his test meter and bag of electrical components.
He entered the engine room and carried out 3 tests within the secondary control panel and identified a resistor that was faulty. This component is the size of your little finger nail and prevents an unsafe engine start by measuring resistance.
Within 20 minutes of arriving onboard, the resistor was changed, the problem resolved and the ship was able to depart.
So back to my question.
What is the value of the solution?
Was is the cost of Williams time, 4hrs 20 mins and a resistor costing $4.25
Or was it avoiding $22,000 per hour
So what did William get paid? I’m going to leave that to you to work that out!
And remember please…..
Clients do not pay you for YOUR time. They are paying for YOUR expertise to solve THEIR problem….. that’s priceless because it’s not your problem, it’s theirs.
And that’s why I charge based on the value of the problem I’m solving for my clients, and not on MY value of MY time.
Have a fab day everyone
Dr Ant
