The D of Data · the 5D Method
Below this number you're not selling. You're paying.
A designer sells at 25 euros an hour and even feels expensive. Then he does this math and finds out his minimum was 35: for years he had been giving away ten euros with every hour sold. Enter your numbers and in three minutes you know yours, by the hour, by the day or by the package. Everything stays on your device, no email, no account.
Why this number
The hours-revenue trap.
Forty hours a week for 52 weeks make 2,080 hours a year. On paper. In real life people who work alone bill 50-60% of them on average, and the good weeks are about 45, between holidays, sick days, public holidays and gaps between clients. Yet almost everyone divides the pay they want by all the hours, and the price that comes out keeps the shop going with water up to its neck. That is what the Data of the 5D Method are for: before you negotiate, know your number.
The cursor blinks on the quote and you lower the figure before the client even breathes. We all do it. With your number in front of you the game changes: below that number you don't negotiate, you say no.
When the price is below the minimum, the only lever you have left is working more. More clients, more hours, less life. The right price is the lever that gives you back the wheel.
The calculator
Plain math, in three steps.
Put in honest figures, even rough ones. The result updates as you type and arrives in three steps: how much has to come in, how many hours you can really sell, then your price. You read it by the hour, by the day or by the package.
The sources
Where this math comes from.
The calculation is the standard one for the minimum price of people who work for themselves: personal needs plus business costs, grossed up for taxes, divided by the hours you can really bill. It is the same approach as the tools freelancers use most, like the hourly rate calculator by Clockify: start from what has to come in, and only then look at what the market asks.
The utilization rate, meaning how much of your worked time ends up on an invoice, usually sits between 50 and 60% for people who work alone: that is what the utilization benchmarks collected by Runn say. The rest of the time is sales, quotes, admin, email. Real work, that no client pays for. That is why the default here is 55%, and the sellable weeks are 45 and not 52.
This is not tax advice: the rates are working estimates, the real numbers come from your accountant on your case. And the market price matters, of course. But below your minimum it is not a price, it is a subsidy you pay to the client. Knowing the number is exactly what lets you decide when to say no.
What now?
You have your number. Defend it.
Who is behind this
Dr. Donato De Tullio. I have a scientist's head and my hands in operations: for more than ten years I have been managing budgets and projects in large European multinationals, and today I manage 8 logistics centers across Europe. I recognize below-cost prices from the numbers, before the feelings. It's all on my LinkedIn.
Alongside my job as a manager, I help people who run their own project decide and move, with the 5D Method: data, direction, decision, destination, desire. If you want a steady partner at your side, there is Decision Lab, the one-on-one decision-making program.
Got your minimum?
Now let's learn to defend it.
30 minutes, free, over a virtual coffee. You tell me your price, your minimum and the quote that makes you tremble, and we prepare the first move together. In English, Italian or German.
I stopped asking for email addresses in exchange for resources: the calculator is yours, the result too, no contact details required. If it helped, have a look at the English home, browse the book Stay or Leave?, or the full site in Italian, and we can always talk over a coffee.