By Amy Nielsen

Lately I have been struggling with deciding what to charge for my services. I have a unique set of certifications and degrees and am in the process of starting my Master’s degree. I teach several different programs all of which have suggested retail prices associated with them.

The program designers have determined what they think is a fair price for a teacher to charge for the materials, time, and effort put into presenting their classes. However, I live in an economically depressed, hard-working, rural community and those prices are not going to fly when measured against something like purchasing oil to heat the house.

Why am I struggling when I have clear guidelines to follow? Because I want my clients to be able to afford my services. However I have recently discovered this can be a two-edged sword. Let me explain.

I ask a lower price for my services in an effort to be affordable, but the perceptions is that either I am still a student and therefore not fully trained, or perhaps that my services are not worthy of more. How much is my attention worth to me and to them? How does one value time?

I am running a bit of an experiment tomorrow night when I offer my first workshop at my new space. I only advertised it by posting flyers on the front window and in the waiting room of the office I share. I posted that the class is free, but I also posted a suggested donation of ten dollars. So far I haven’t gotten any firm registrations but I am going to run the class as an Open House of sorts to show there is new activity in the building and hopefully build interest.

Many of the folks who teach similar kinds of classes and coaching do so on a specific rate scale that seems to be similar across the board in this area. There is a low and high cap of what people choose to charge. It differs by region and season a bit, but I think I have figured out the system. If I want to be on par with those folks who have it going on, I need to up my prices, but the population I want to work with may not be able to come up with that amount as easily.

The community is changing in a way it has not seen in a few years. I can see the new up and coming grass roots farmers and merchants digging in and pulling together in some very interesting coalitions that I want to be part of.  It’s going to take the next couple of years while we all bump through the next two winters before the big projects get fully operational. But if we can hang on and not disintegrate into our own hill town factions, we will survive to a bigger and better place.

I, of course, have to figure out how to not only make it through my Master’s academically, emotionally, and physically – it’s a partial residency course in Maryland and I live in New York – I also have to figure out how to come up with the remaining $1,500 not covered by loans each semester.

There in comes the need for financial abundance from my burgeoning business. Alas, it takes money to make money. And I don’t have enough time or money to make it happen immediately. So back to what to charge that is fair to my clientele, will pay honor to the level of education and learning I have already achieved, and help me meet my financial goals to further my education.

The hardest part of this whole discussion for me is learning to understand that asking for financial payment for my services isn’t dirty, underhanded, or somehow improper. I was raised to be a good girl and good girls don’t ask to be paid, we take what we are given. Hence the problem in the gender pay gap. Only bad girls ask for money. There I said it.

I have a distinct financial goal in mind now and I have to really think about the financial “gobdigookyness” that I have internalized as not something good girls do. Except that my mother was the ultimate in opposites for this, she was the CFO and the President of a multinational business for almost 20 years. She did one helluvah job at it too. I am absolutely conflicted as to how to go about solving this one for myself.

I am out here working for myself for a living, for the first time ever really. Even as an independent contractor in a previous career, I still was working for organizations with specific structures in place to deal with contractors. Now it’s just me and my client in a relationship. I have to figure out a fair wage for myself and a fair value for my time and the time of my client as well.

So I am back to thinking about how the value of my client equals the value of my time and somehow that equals the value I place in our relationship added to the time and effort I have spent educating myself to walk beside that client on a journey to a better self. The last piece of the equation has to be the financial restrictions people in this area currently live under.

Ugh, I hate math. Philosophical ethical math stinks even worse.

I have the gift of the next two years of my Master’s program to charge a lower yet still reasonable rate while I am in fact still a student, again. As the community grows and we see the benefits of the new opportunities in the area, I can raise my rates to be commensurate with the rising disposable income.