The 3 Things I Learned This Week — May 31st, 2026

Sundays are the day I take inventory. Not the spreadsheet kind. The honest kind. The kind where I sit down with a cup of coffee and ask what actually happened this week, what it cost, what it gave back, and what I want to do differently next week. Most weeks the inventory is small. A few small lessons, a few small wins, a few small embarrassments. Some weeks the inventory is bigger.

This was one of the bigger weeks. Three lessons in particular have stuck with me hard enough that I want to write them down, both for my own memory and because I think they might be useful to someone else doing similar work. None of them are revolutionary. All of them cost me something to learn, which is usually the test for whether a lesson is going to stick.

Here they are.

Lesson One: When I price from fear, I almost always undervalue the work.

I had a proposal go out this week for a project I really wanted to land. The client was the kind of client I have been trying to attract for months. Right industry. Right size. Right level of operational complexity to be a meaningful engagement instead of a transactional one. The fit was strong on every dimension I cared about.

When I sat down to price it, I felt the fear show up. Not loud fear. The quiet kind. The kind that whispers…