Page 9
09/03/2026
Ebro Darden, and the ELR Show have a bit they do called, 'Doing the Dance' ..
It's an honest take on the reality of having to make a living - we all have to do a dance of some kind, for someone, at some point.
At the start of the year especially - the advice I always see popping up, 'raise your rates', 'know your worth', 'the right clients will find you' ..
Empowering stuff - until you get stuck in a slow patch, and that all important opportunity you were hoping to land goes to someone that's just dropped their rate.
.. And then on the flipside of this, the advice that's usually getting kicked around .. Try lowballing your quote to get a foot in the door .. Just accept the scope creep as part of the process .. Don't push back on the impossible timelines .. Treat the exposure as payment ..
Not exactly what you'd call a sustainable strategy - these are more like survival tactics dressed up as 'career advice'.
And sometimes they totally work! Underquote, and maybe you buy yourself access you wouldn't have otherwise .. Work for free, for the right person, and maybe a door opens - and stays open. But these success stories always tend to do the rounds without the actual context that made them survivable in the first place - financial runways, existing connections, timing, or sometimes just a little luck.
I've heard it on podcasts multiple times - 'free work for a wealthy client becomes the foundation for an entire business' .. Except it's rarely told as, 'I took a calculated risk that just so happened to pay off' - instead the narrative gets simplified to, 'this is how you build a career' ..
And for every time it works out, there's hundreds of times it doesn't - but those people don't tend to be the ones that end up on podcasts.
.. I'm definitely not saying don't charge what you're worth, but the advice only works if you can afford to wait it out - and that's the disclaimer that always seems to be missing when these statements are treated as universal principles, instead of what they truly are - gambles.
There's always going to be a dance .. Just make sure you know whose music is playing before jumping all in, and committing to those moves.
It's an honest take on the reality of having to make a living - we all have to do a dance of some kind, for someone, at some point.
At the start of the year especially - the advice I always see popping up, 'raise your rates', 'know your worth', 'the right clients will find you' ..
Empowering stuff - until you get stuck in a slow patch, and that all important opportunity you were hoping to land goes to someone that's just dropped their rate.
.. And then on the flipside of this, the advice that's usually getting kicked around .. Try lowballing your quote to get a foot in the door .. Just accept the scope creep as part of the process .. Don't push back on the impossible timelines .. Treat the exposure as payment ..
Not exactly what you'd call a sustainable strategy - these are more like survival tactics dressed up as 'career advice'.
And sometimes they totally work! Underquote, and maybe you buy yourself access you wouldn't have otherwise .. Work for free, for the right person, and maybe a door opens - and stays open. But these success stories always tend to do the rounds without the actual context that made them survivable in the first place - financial runways, existing connections, timing, or sometimes just a little luck.
I've heard it on podcasts multiple times - 'free work for a wealthy client becomes the foundation for an entire business' .. Except it's rarely told as, 'I took a calculated risk that just so happened to pay off' - instead the narrative gets simplified to, 'this is how you build a career' ..
And for every time it works out, there's hundreds of times it doesn't - but those people don't tend to be the ones that end up on podcasts.
.. I'm definitely not saying don't charge what you're worth, but the advice only works if you can afford to wait it out - and that's the disclaimer that always seems to be missing when these statements are treated as universal principles, instead of what they truly are - gambles.
There's always going to be a dance .. Just make sure you know whose music is playing before jumping all in, and committing to those moves.
