Sorry Before The Number

You cannot say a price without putting something in front of it.

So sorry, it is going to be. I am afraid it comes to. I hate to say it, but. Sorry, is that all right? Every single time, for years, and not once have you heard a price come out of your own mouth on its own.

And here is what you know and have never said out loud: the apology is doing the same job a discount does. It tells the other person that you expect them to object, and a person who is told that will often oblige.

You are not timid in the rest of your life. You tell the children off. You sent food back in a restaurant last year. It is this one sentence, and only this one, and it has a little word stapled to the front of it.

I am not going to tell you what to charge and I am not going to give you a phrase to use instead. I am going to talk about one word, and about taking it off.

Worthy of his meat

There is a line in Matthew where Jesus sends people out with almost nothing and tells them what they can expect, and it is startlingly unembarrassed.

No money, no spare coat, no second pair of shoes. And then the reason, which is not about poverty at all.

Nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves: for the workman is worthy of his meat. (Matthew 10:10, King James Version)

You are worthy of your keep, and that has never once been a thing you needed to apologize for. Matthew 10:10 gives the worthiness of the worker as the reason they can travel with nothing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that into a bedroom corner with a phone pressed to somebody's ear.

Notice that the worthiness is the ground they stand on. They can go with nothing precisely because a worker is worth their keep. The sentence is load bearing.

And there is no apology anywhere near it. Not a hint. No sorry, no I hate to ask, no is that all right. A fact, stated, and then they set off.

You have a fact to stand on, and standing on it has never once required a softer voice. The Spirit of God is the one who makes an instruction for traveling preachers reach a woman with a notebook open on a desk, and Matthew 10:10 states the worker's worth plainly and moves straight on.

What the sorry is for

Let me say what the apology is doing, because it is not manners.

It is a flinch, out loud, in advance. You are braced for the other person to think it is too much, so you get your response in before their reaction. And then, whatever they say, you have already agreed with the criticism they had not made.

You were answering an objection nobody raised, and you have never once had to. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a woman what her own first word is doing, and the written word makes the worker's worth the ground of the whole instruction in Matthew 10:10.

And there is something else, and it is the part that matters. An apology asks the other person to comfort you. It puts them in charge of how you feel about your own price, and they did not ask for that job and they are not qualified for it.

Most of them will do it anyway, because people are kind. And now the price is a thing the two of you got through together rather than a piece of information.

You are not asking for a favor when you name a price, and you never were. His Spirit is the one who takes a flinch out of a woman's voice without making her cold, and Matthew 10:10 puts the worker's keep down as a settled fact with nothing hedged in front of it.

The number first

So here is the whole exercise, and it is about word order.

Let the number be the first thing out of your mouth. Not the last thing after a run up. Not the middle of a sentence that started with an apology. First.

You are able to lead with the figure, and leading with it has never once been rude. Matthew 10:10 names the worker's worth and then moves on without a single cushion, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a bare price sayable for a woman who has never once let one go out alone.

You can be warm. Warmth is not the problem and it never was. There is a whole world between warm and apologetic, and warmth is already yours, because it is how you are with everybody about everything else.

And you will hear the sorry trying to get out. Let it arrive and do not say it. That is the entire technique.

You were never required to apologize for honest work, and you are not required to now. The Spirit of God carries a plain figure past the flinch that has always gone first, and the written word has the workman worthy of his keep in Matthew 10:10 and says it without a trace of embarrassment.