Pricing for a life, not just a living
What if you set your prices around the life you want, instead of stacking bookings until something breaks? A gentler way to think about the numbers.
Most pricing advice starts with the market: what everyone else charges, what you can get away with, how to inch it up. Useful, but it skips the only question that actually matters — how much life do you want this work to leave you?
Start there instead. Decide how many weddings a year you can shoot and still be a good partner, parent, friend, human. Then work the numbers backwards from that. It's a very different sum, and a much kinder one.
Your calendar is a budget too. Spend it like one.
This is exactly why I built the time-tracker that's coming to The Co Lab — not to squeeze more billable hours out of you, but to show you honestly where your time goes, so you can price in a way that protects it.
A note: this is a sample piece written to set the tone for the journal. The words are a starting point — edit, rewrite, or replace them with your own.