Midlife MavericksLast week I applied to work with someone I’ve admired for years. A creator I rate, running the kind of business I pay real attention to. They had a mastermind and a one-to-one programme, I couldn’t pick between them, so I filled out the long application, asked my questions, took proper care over it. The programme cost serious money. You don’t half-fill a form like that.
A text arrived, warm and full of what might happen. A few days later, a pre-qualifying call. Fifteen minutes, more questions. Then complete silence. No proposal. Nothing. In dating terms: he’s just not that into you.
A few years ago that would have flattened me for a week. I’d have replayed it, decided the quiet meant something about me, turned it into a verdict on my worth. This time I caught myself before the spiral started. If I’m not handing that money and that energy to them, where do they go? In Scarlett O’Hara’s words: what shall I do?
Quote of the Week
Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.
Warren Buffett
A non-answer is still an answer
When someone you admire goes quiet, the temptation is to make it mean everything. That you’re not ready. That they spotted the thing you’ve been quietly worrying about for years.
Most of the time the silence is about them and their capacity. It rarely has much to do with you. What it actually changes is small and practical: a chunk of money and attention you’d lined up for one door has just come free. That’s a redirect, and redirects are worth more than they look.
So I sat down and followed the money
I did the thinking properly. Garden, feet up, iced coffee, laptop. I talked it through with Claude, which eighteen months ago would have meant days lost in a spreadsheet, and I got somewhere calmer and clearer than I expected.
The questions weren’t gentle. Who do I actually want to serve? What work do I love, and what am I doing out of habit that quietly eats my hours? What moves the needle most for the least effort? What’s the shortest, sanest route to the revenue I want, without the hustle theatre or the working weekends?
Your version of this might sit differently. But the questions work the same.
The money I’d have handed that programme is going to work after all. It’s buying help and the systems that take the jobs which don’t need me off my plate. And it’s going into my own skills, the one investment nobody gets to decline.
The more I hand off, the clearer it gets
I’ve outsourced a lot this year already, and the surprise is what it taught me. Every time I hand something over, I see more sharply which few activities actually earn their place, and how much of my week was going to things that don’t.
Content repurposing is the latest to go. I’m good at the thinking, the original piece, the argument. Turning one newsletter into nine posts is not where twenty-five years of experience earn their keep, and it was eating my evenings. So it’s leaving my plate.
If something on your plate stopped being worth your hours, you already know it.
What people are actually paying for
This is the same question wearing different clothes. What is my time worth, and to whom.
Earlier this year I put my consulting rate up. A couple of clients said something. Most didn’t blink. People pay me for the twenty-five years behind the hour, and for the five minutes it takes me to see what would cost someone else ten hours to find. That’s the product. The hour is just the wrapper around it.
Maybe it should be higher. I don’t know yet. What I do know is the number puts some people off, and I’ve stopped minding. Price too low and you don’t get taken seriously anyway. Cheap reads as unsure.
Your price sorts the room before anyone walks in
An investor told me years ago: “Claudia, you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.” Crude, and true.
Think about how you behave when you’ve paid a lot for something. A specialist, an appointment that actually cost you. You show up ready. Prep done, there to wring every drop of value out of it because it came out of your own pocket. The price changed how you turned up before you sat down.
That’s who a serious number brings you. People who arrive aligned and willing to do the work. I’ve started rebuilding my offers around that, and resetting what Linda Evangelista called in the 90s her get-out-of-bed price. The clients I want lift the level and are already moving under their own steam. Not the ones who need endless hand-holding because they can’t be bothered to do the work themselves. Set your price low to be liked, and you’ll spend your week mothering people who were never going to do the reps.
What you do while the door stays shut
If you’re waiting on a yes right now, from a mentor or a programme you’ve decided you need, look at what you’ve put on hold while you wait. All of it sitting there, pending someone else’s reply.
You don’t have to leave it there. The most useful thing a non-answer gives you is permission to stop waiting and back yourself instead. Your own skills, and a price that reflects what you actually know. The work only you can do, done properly, with the rest handed off.
So this is what I want you sitting with this week: what are you charging to be liked rather than to be valued?
Hit reply and tell me. I read every one.
See you Wednesday,
Claudia
