"Give more in value than you take in payment" - John Alan Turner

My friend John is a reliable source of wisdom condensed into concise one-liners. This one is a profoundly simple heuristic for running a successful business:

"Give more in value than you take in payment"

Any time you accept someone’s money, you are accepting a challenge. The challenge is to provide more in value than you took in payment. No matter how much or how little they paid, the job simply isn’t done until they’ve received more value in return.

Of course, there are always edge-cases where this is made impossible (usually that the client themselves won’t contribute what’s required to make the arrangement a success), but as a simple heuristic for making your business a success, I reckon this is a non-negotiable.

Every single client should receive more in value than they pay in money. Hopefully by a multiple in a range between two-and-ten. (Any higher than that, your price should probably go up).