A client came to me on a Wednesday needing finished renders by Friday.
Two days.
A job that normally takes a week.
I knew what to do.
I gave him a discount.
I told myself it made sense.
He was in a bind, I wanted to be helpful, and a lower price felt like the decent thing to do when someone's under pressure.
That's exactly backwards, and it took me years to see it.
A rush job is not a discount situation.
It's the one situation where a premium is most justified.
Think about what a rush actually costs you.
You drop the other work on your desk.
You cancel your evening.
You absorb the risk of delivering fast without the buffer to fix mistakes.
The client isn't paying for two days of work.
He's paying for the fact that you can do it at all, on his timeline, when he has nowhere else to turn.
That's the moment your time is worth the most.
And I was handing it over for less.
Now the rule is simple.
Normal timeline, normal rate.
Compressed timeline, the price goes up, not down.
The last time I said "the rush makes it 40% more, not less," I expected pushback.
He said "that's fair" and paid it the same day.
Because a client in a genuine hurry isn't shopping on price.
He's shopping on who can actually save him.
Urgency is not the moment to get generous.
It's the moment they need you most.
Price it that way.
– Moritz
Tiny tactical tip:
Write your rush surcharge down before you ever need it - a flat percentage you add when a client wants normal-timeline work on a compressed deadline.
Having the number decided in advance is what stops you from caving to the instinct to discount in the moment.