Should You Take the Personal Financial Hit
and Reduce Your Fee When Clients Ask?
By Lynda Curtin, The Opportunity Thinker

To answer this question you first need to understand what your fee covers and then what you are going to have to give up once you reduce your fee. This also needs to be communicated with your client who is asking for a fee reduction to help them understand what goes into your fee and what you need to consider giving up. 

The following is a list of some items that your fee needs to cover if you are going to have a viable speaking business:

1. Health Insurance
2. Long Term Care Insurance
3. Life Insurance
4. Professional Liability Insurance
5. Long Term Disability Insurance
6. Office Insurance
7. Sep/Ira Retirement Fund
8. Accountant Fees
9. Attorney Fees
10. Consultant Fees - Speaking Coach, Business Coach, Web Master, Publicity Service, etc.
11. Social Security Taxes
12. State and Federal Taxes
13. License Fees
14. Office Equipment
15. Office Supplies
16. Office Rent
17. Phone/Fax/Cell/DSL/Website/Email/PDA/E-Zine, etc.  Monthly Services
18. Marketing
19. Advertising
20. Postage
21. Subscriptions/Books/Audio/Videos
22. Dues/Memberships
23. Travel - Professional and Business Development
24. Professional Development - Education/Conferences
25. Product Development
26. Product Production 
27. Car Expenses
28. Charitable Contributions
29. Support Staff
30. Your Salary
31. Bonuses
32. Profit        

Should you take the personal financial hit and reduce your fee when a client asks? It all depends. Only you can answer that question. Just be sure you understand what you will have to give up and that your client understands what you will be giving up if you reduce your fee. If you don't, you won't last long in this business. It is much more expensive to operate successfully than most people realize. This is one of the major reasons why the failure rate in this business is very high. Be careful.