Ditching Hourly

Hello and welcome to Ditching Hourly. I'm Jonathan Stark. Have you ever seen a Japanese maple? If not, I can tell you that they are absolutely beautiful ornamental trees. Like most trees, Japanese maples prefer to stay put and therefore strenuously resist any attempt to move them. I can attest to this fact firsthand. This week, my wife requested that I move our Japanese maple approximately three feet north of the spot where it had been chilling quietly for the past five years. Neither the tree nor I were particularly enthused about this prospect, but we both soldiered on undaunted, as one does when orders come down from the top. After forty-ish minutes of exhausting and clumsy shovel work, our Japanese maple was sitting pretty in its new, sunnier uptown location. I, on the other hand, was suffering from blisters, drenched in sweat, and covered with bug bites. I say covered in bug bites, but really they were mostly just on my face. Okay, so why am I telling you this? Here's the thing. Moving that Japanese maple was by far the hardest thing I did all week. Heck, maybe even all year. It was painful, laborious, borderline humiliating, and just generally distasteful. And what was all that effort worth financially? Obviously, I wasn't going to get paid for moving my own tree, but my landscapers probably would have done it for about twenty bucks. In contrast, I probably made thousands of dollars this week sending helpful messages that I love writing to people that I like from the air-conditioned comfort of my home office. So what's the moral of the story? Just because something is hard doesn't make it valuable. In fact, I would argue it's usually the opposite. If you believe that what you do has to be hard for it to be valuable, then you are doomed to a life of eternal toil where you barely scrape by every month. Fortunately, you can change this belief at any time. That's it for this week. I'm Jonathan Stark, and I hope you join me again next time on Ditching Hourly. Bye. Hey, Jonathan again. Do you have questions about how to improve your business? Things like value pricing your work instead of billing for your time, or positioning yourself as the go-to person in your space, or maybe productizing your services so you never have to have another awkward sales call or spend hours writing another custom proposal. Book a one-on-one coaching call with me and get answers to these questions and others in the time it takes you to get ready for work in the morning. Best of all, you're covered by my 100% satisfaction guarantee. If at the end of the call you don't feel like it was worth it, just say the word and I'll refund your purchase in full. To book your one-on-one coaching call, go to JonathanStark.com slash call. C-A-L-L. That URL again is JonathanStark.com slash call. Hope to see you there.