When you take a job and find out you undercut someone.

Re: When you take a job and find out you undercut someone.

Did the lighting guy doing sound charge as much as you do?

What would have happened if you didn't take the lighting gig? What would they have to pay?

Good luck, life is a negotiation, and an education opportunity.

JR
 
Re: When you take a job and find out you undercut someone.

Per Søvik said:
That's the thing though, there are lots of people in the industry insisting that the customer should always pay for a renowned Michelin four star chef even when the customer only wants a burger flipper at Macdonald rates :twisted:

Keep it up, you are as entitled to try to make a living as the guy charging twice your rate
Click to expand...

In this industry, it's quite common that the customer wants the steak, but thinks the budget for the burger is enough.

As far as what rates you are charging, in a free market, you should be charging as much as your customers are willing to pay. When you price yourself too low, all you are doing is hurting yourself. Now, if you charge too much, you probably won't get as much work, but if you can double your rates and cut your workload in half, is that a bad thing?
 
Re: When you take a job and find out you undercut someone.

I think it was Johnny Carson that advised young comics that if you give a price to do the gig and don't first get a "No", then you've priced yourself too low.

Also, a friend of mine always says, "If you double your price and get half the amount of work, you're ahead of the game."

- Al
 
Re: When you take a job and find out you undercut someone.

Experience does not equal quality. I know guys with 30 years of experience that are newbies compared to guys with 5 years of experience

Sent from my XT1060
 
Re: When you take a job and find out you undercut someone.

If the person you undercut was a friend,I would have a problem with that. If not, it's competition. A few years ago the band I work for did a job for a 4th of July festival. We were under the impression were providing our own sound and lighting. When we showed up at the job, sound and lights were already set up. I talked to the owner and told him we thought we were to provide. The guiy made the comment " you wouldn't have enough PA to cover the gig".This was without having a clue what I had in the trailer. So the owner goes to mix another stage.He leaves his employee to run monitors, but after the owner leaves, the employee tells me he didn't know how to run monitors and asked me if I would run them while he ran FOH. After the first set,one of the band members wife came up and said it sounded terrible and told her husband I should mix FOH. Talked to the guy and he was ok with that and I ran FOH the rest of the night. Next year, the group running the festival asked me for a quote. I gave them one based how much time and equipment I needed and got the job. I was told I was about 25% cheaper than the other guy. I didn't feel bad at all for " undercutting" the guy because I didn't know him, and because of his attitude and leaving us with an employee who wasn't up to the job. The group running the event was very happy as were the bands that played the festival. If it had been a friend or someone who helped me in the past,I would have turned the job down.But it wasn't. I had a better price for the same service and provided for the festival for the next 3 years.
 
Re: When you take a job and find out you undercut someone.

Mistakes happen. You weren't purposely trying to undercut.

When I was younger, I was told it was inappropriate to ask someone what they earn. What I've learned in the past few years is that this is that by asking, you learn how to not be taken advantage of. It's also how you prevent yourself from accidentally undermining the current going rates for certain gigs.
 
Re: When you take a job and find out you undercut someone.

Lost in this thread was just what do you mean by 'cheaper'? I see you said 100.00 cheaper.... but from what? Did it pay 500.00 to other guy and you did it for 400.00? No big deal there... except 475.00 would've still been cheaper...
Did it pay 150.00 and you did it for 50.00? That would be foolishness.

You can't compete with someone who has a business model that has them losing money, treading water, or going bankrupt.

It shouldn't be a race to the cheapest rate possible.
 
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