I live in Barcelona, have been for almost two years now. In order to find out a little about this city, I picked up a book, called Barcelona. It talks about the history and the architecture of the place.
Since Barcelona is on the sea, the culture has been influenced big time by sea and sailing.
One of the oldest churches in the city is Santa Maria del Mar.
The patron saint of Barcelona is St. Eulalia, also the patron saint of sailors.
And according to the book I’m reading, the locals have a saying:
“If you want to learn to pray, learn to sail.”
I wrote that down when I read it. It’s very practical advice, even if you don’t want to learn to pray.
It reminded me of my attitude from day zero of my copywriting career, back in 2015.
I started out charging $15/hour.
I told myself that after five jobs completed at that rate, I would raise my rate to $20/hr.
And I did so.
Then I repeated the process, over and over. $20, $25, $40.
While I was still on Upwork, around 2018, I eventually got to $150/hr.
Then I got off Upwork, and started charging clients still higher effective fees for the work I was doing.
At every step of the way, my mindset was lacking. I had zero inner game. I was emotionally sure that the work I was doing would not be worth the new price I wanted to charge.
And yet I raised my prices. My mindset and my skills and my deliverables caught up. They had to. I was working with clients who were suddenly paying me lots more money.
So if you want to learn to pray, learn to sail. And if you want confidence and the skills to back it up, raise your prices.
This applies beyond copywriting, and beyond client work.
That’s why pricing will be something I will talk about on the free presentation I will host tomorrow, about how I write and profit from this newsletter that you are reading now. But that training is only open to people who are signed up to my list. If you’d like to get on there, click here.