Jack Canfield spent years undercharging for his work, starting at $300 a day for speaking fees. He eventually learned to charge what the market would bear, raising his fees to $30,000–$60,000 and beyond. His advice: quote high and let clients negotiate down rather than underselling yourself.
Hi, I'm Jack Canfield. My URL is www.jackcampfield.com and I hope you'll come visit us. The biggest mistake I ever made in business is a long standing mistake of undervaluing myself and not charging enough for my time. Not believing that what I had to say was that valuable questioning. You know, I remember the someone Suggested I charge $100,000 for a coaching program, and I thought they were out of their mind. And yet there are people who will pay that. And I remember we did our first luxury retreat. We charged $15,000. It took my staff probably a month to talk me into charging that much. And I've always wanted. I think it came out of partially being a teacher. Teachers are undervalued in our society. Public school teachers. And so as I moved into the corporate world, I think I brought that mentality with me. And so I think it's a mistake, and I hope you won't make that same one. So really, what I tell people now is to charge more than you think you're worth. Just double it. Let the marketplace respond back. What are you, nuts? We only have so much. And I'll tell a quick story about this. I remember when I first confronted this, I had a friend and I said to him, how much are you charging for speaking in schools? And I was charging $300 a day. And he said, $800. I said, $800? Are you crazy? How do you get a hundred dollars? He said, I asked for it. And my big fear was that everyone would see me as greedy and not caring about kids and education. So my image was at stake in my mind. And so the next. I remember practicing for weeks, going, what's your fee? $800. What's your fee? $800. And so someone called me and said they wanted to have me come speak. And they said, what's your fee? And I went, $600. And they said, no problem. And I said, no sweat. I said, what would have been sweat? They said, we had $1,200 in the budget for the speaker. So the next person that called me and asked what my speaking fee was, I said, $1,200. They said, we only have eight. I said, I'll take it. But literally today I get $60,000 of speech. When I go overseas, I get 30,000 or more in America, and I do trainings that cost $15,000 and so forth. But it took me years to get there, and I could have got there a lot faster. So I would really encourage you to believe that what you have is valuable and to put it out as valuable and then let people push back against you rather than you pushing against yourself. Don't negotiate against yourself. Let the world do that.
