Dan Mall argues that telling agency owners to "get paid what you're worth" is toxic advice. The problem: it makes you assign an arbitrary personal worth number that's usually too low. Instead, price the opportunity and the value of the work, not yourself.
Get paid what you're worth is one of the most toxic ideas I've ever heard from design agency owners. Now, I love the sentiment. Don't settle, charge more. Yeah, I agree. But the phrase itself is the problem because the first question that it raises is, how much are you worth? Most agency owners just pick a random number that they feel comfortable with, which is usually too low, and they call it their rate. Here's the reality. Your price is not a representation of what you're worth. It's a representation of what the work is worth. So stop pricing yourself, start pricing the opportunity. That is the number that your client should be paying.
