Know your anchor rate before you price anything
Your anchor rate is the minimum average hourly rate your practice needs to earn — not what you charge clients, it's the math behind your retainers, projects, and intensives. Because here's the scoop: time is finite. You only have so many working hours in a day, week, month, year. Your anchor rate is how you stop guessing and start pricing with confidence — so you can take a vacation without spiraling, stay booked and busy without burning out, and actually feel good about the money in your bank account instead of wondering how you can be this busy and somehow still this broke.
A note on hourly charging: this is not a pitch to bill by the hour. It's a pitch to know your number — so you can scope a retainer, price a project, or structure an intensive with math behind it instead of feelings.
How many hours per week do you have — and want — to spend working? Split them honestly between client work and running your own business. Client work is the time you spend on deliverables and outcomes you're billing for. Running your own business includes everything else — business development, drafting proposals, creating content, admin, filing taxes, and so on.
Account for holidays, slow months, sick days, and actual time off. Be honest.
Total billable hours/year: 960
This is the cash that actually lands in your pocket — after taxes, social charges, healthcare, retirement contributions, and operating expenses. Not your total revenue. Not what hits your business account. What you personally take home to live your life. The number that, if you earned less, you'd wonder why you even did this.
Annual equivalent: €72,000
Taxes, social charges, tools, savings buffer, reinvestment. 50% is a reasonable starting point — but know your actual number.
Your anchor rate
This is the math behind your pricing — not what you quote clients. Use it to sanity-check retainers, scope projects, and price intensives without guessing.
Gross revenue needed
€144,000
Annual take-home
€72,000
Overhead cost
€72,000
Billable hours
960/yr