APPENDIX D

The Rate & Pricing Worksheet

A structure for setting prices you can live on — built on your real costs, your time, and your worth.

This worksheet turns the money chapter into a tool. It won’t hand you numbers — prices depend entirely on your market, your costs, your experience, and your goals, and no book can set them for you. What it does is walk you through the questions that lead to prices you can actually sustain: what your work costs you, what your time is worth, and when it’s time to raise your rates. Fill it in honestly, revisit it yearly, and price from reality rather than guesswork or fear.

Step One: Know Your Costs

You cannot price well until you know what your work actually costs you. Total your real, recurring costs — the money and the time — so you never price below what it takes to keep going.

Venue costs (rent, split, or fees), per month:

Music / band costs, per month:

Equipment, supplies, and upkeep:

Promotion and marketing:

Insurance, licenses, and professional fees:

Your hours — prep, teaching, travel, and admin — per week:

Total monthly cost to run the thing at all:

Step Two: Value Your Time

Every hour you teach also cost you hours you don’t bill — planning, travel, promotion, recovery. Price the whole job, not just the visible hour, or you’ll quietly work for far less than you think.

For every hour I teach, the hidden hours around it total roughly:

What one genuine hour of my professional time is worth to me:

The income I need this work to produce to be sustainable (see Chapter Seventeen on pricing and Chapter Twenty-Six on wellbeing):

Step Three: Set Your Offerings

Price each offering against your costs and the value it delivers, not against your fear of charging. Record your rates and revisit them.

Step Four: The Free-Lesson Math

The free intro lesson is marketing, not charity — but only if it converts. Track whether it actually pays off downstream, so “free” stays a strategy and doesn’t become a leak.

Roughly how many free-lesson attendees become paying regulars:

What a converted regular is worth to me over time:

Is the free lesson earning its keep? What I’ll change if not:

Step Five: Raise-Rate Triggers

Rates should rise as your value does. Decide your triggers in advance so you actually raise them instead of undercharging for years out of discomfort.

☐ My classes are consistently full or waitlisted

☐ My skill, reputation, or experience has clearly grown

☐ My costs have risen and my prices haven’t kept up

☐ I’m turning away work or booked far in advance

☐ It’s been over a year since my last increase

☐ I’m resentful about what I earn — a sign I’m underpricing

My next planned rate review date:

Step Six: Diversify

A resilient teaching income rarely rests on one stream. Note the mix you have and the mix you want, so a single slow night never sinks you.

My current income streams:

Streams I could add (privates, workshops, events, online, etc.):