Upgrade

Many years ago I went to a stonework conference in Seattle. I was so tired and groggy by the time I got to the rental car counter, somehow they convinced me I couldn’t afford not to upgrade to something sportier. That car turned out to be a little too fun to drive. I checked out of my hotel after the first of three days at the conference, deciding on a whim it would be more fun to drive down the coast of Washington, through Oregon, and into Northern California.

Two things from that trip still stand out clearly in my memory. The first: the audible gasps of awe I made walking alone amongst the redwoods.

The second: some sage advice from a master stonemason during the one day I managed to keep my butt planted at the conference I’d paid for and flew all the way across the country to attend.

Richard Rhodes has done some impressive things with stone. Among them, he apprenticed with an ancient stonemasons’ guild in Italy, salvaged a stone village in China before it was flooded for dam construction, and ran multiple successful stone businesses. It was a real privilege to listen to him talk about the craft. I think about his advice on pricing every time I’m about to hit send on an estimate.

That advice sounds simple. Don’t assume you know other people’s financial situation. Or, said another way, don’t let your relationship with money dictate the price of the job.

This is easier said than done. When you’re putting an estimate together, the numbers can get big pretty quickly. It’s easy to think, Wow, this is a lot of money. Is that too much? Maybe I should shave it down a little. Our hangups about money can lead us to doubt the value of our work. But, what feels like a lot of money to you may be exactly how much your client wants to invest in quality stonework. There’s no way to know until you hit send. The best thing to do, according to Richard that day, is to charge what the work actually costs and not what you think is too high or too low.

When I write it out here it doesn’t sound like earth shattering wisdom. But its timing and its source really hit home for me. It made the conference, even one day of it, worthwhile. The redwoods were ok, too.

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Read more about the 3Ps (of which Pricing is one) here.