To Fee or Not to Fee; Steve Sims

Hey, how are you doing? This is Steve Sims. Got a question that you should be asking yourself, to fee or not, to fee? Now you know I’ve plagiarized a fellow Brit, but that question has never been more relevant now within the world of free advice on the internet. But before I get into that conversation a little bit more, I want to expose to you my incredible comedic skills by telling you a joke. You ready?

So there’s this guy at home, wife’s gone out to work. Yes, it is 2016, and he hears a bang in the basement. So he goes down in the basement and the washing machine is erupting, it’s puking water all over the place and he’s sploshing around in it. And he does what all men do. We kick it, throw a couple of towels down and hope it’s all going to go away. He goes back upstairs. Goes down a few minutes later, all of a sudden the water is above his ankles. He’s like, “Shit.” He doesn’t know what to do. He can’t find anything, he’s flapping around and that water, baby, is rising up. So he goes upstairs and does what we all hate to do. He phones help. He phones up a plumber.

So, 15 minutes later, plumber turns up, knocks on the door, comes through, goes down to the basement, looks at it, he goes … Yeah, he’s got his tool belt on and he looks around all over and he’s just stood there. Water is just under the knee caps now, walks over and he sees a pipe, starts wiping his wet finger down the pipe. Stops. Pulls his ball hammer out of his pouch … donk … water stops, okay? Pulls the plug up. Water starts seeping away.

Pulls out his invoice, “My son there, that’ll be 500 bucks.” And that guy’s like, “Are you kidding? 500 bucks. You’ve been here for like 10 minutes. All you did was lick your finger, touch a pipe and hit it with a hammer. That’s 500 bucks?”

“No, no, no, no, no.” He said, “For hitting the pipe with a hammer, five bucks. For knowing where to hit it, $495.” Now I’m not going to quit my day job, but the point should get across that you’re not paying for what you do. You’re being paid for what you know. People take you on to actually help them save time. Now I work in the luxury industry and I have the world’s greatest concierge firm and a consulting firm. There’s nothing that I do that absolutely everyone out there couldn’t do. Maybe not you, but the rest of you could do it, if you had 20 years, tenacity, balls, was willing to get out there and actually fail, to learn what not to do along the way. You see what you’re doing is you’re paying people that have done that ahead of time to save you all of that. Let’s be blunt, you need to start charging for what you know. If you don’t value it, how can someone else?

So it brings us back, to fee or not to fee? Value your time. A good friend of mine, Joe Polish, said “The most expensive information in the world is free misinformation.” Now the internet’s out there where you can Google how to do this, how to do that. But just because you can Google how to do brain surgery and you’ve got a tool cabinet with your Black and Decker over there, does that mean you know how to do it? No. So value your time, value your knowledge, value you. And when you’re talking to that person, value yourself enough to charge accordingly. And if they don’t value you, they’re not your client. They’re what’s called a waste of time. Anyway, this is Steve Sims. Go out there and be amazing. All the best. Bye.

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