If you’re like me, when you first started out (or if you are just starting out now), we took on many less than desirable projects to keep food on the table. Well, once you’ve put in a few years, you’re going to have to learn to say “No” to projects you don’t want to take on anymore, no to slaving away under scope-creep, and most importantly, no to prices that aren’t fair!
It might be tough at first, but what’s the point of having money if your sanity is no longer intact? You know what you’re worth, raise your prices. You know what projects you enjoy working on, turn down the others. Going on 5 years in, I must have turned down more projects now than I’ve taken.
Granted, we’re not digging ditches, so our work is not physically difficult. But, the time and mental stress that is consumed by a project often goes completely unknown to or under-appreciated by the client. They just see the end-product, not all the time that went into it. This sometimes creates such a barrier for proper expectations of work:pay ratios.
So, learn it now and learn it well: No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No!