I was charging a buddy $30 an hour to do his sidework. He buys and sells cars and trust me he complained about having to pay me that much because he could get some cheap mexicans in the area to do it for basically a case of beer and a couple bucks.
Eventually he stopped using me because he wanted me to be at his beckon call at any time and get right on things when i worked a full time job. I finally stopped giving in and said no, ill work on what i want to work on when i want to work on it. If you dont like it and dont like paying me $30 an hour then take it to the cheap mexicans.
Well he did and then regret it ever since because not only did they usually just jack things up worse, they couldnt solve even the simplest problems and fix them without ghettoing it.
I know $30 sounds cheap but again I had to compete with people like that. For everyone else and any type of build work, swap, tuning, electrical repair or diagnostics, I would charge $50 an hour.
Needless to say, I was so relieved when me and my buddy went our separate ways and stopped doing work for him. He was wearing me out and heckling me all the time. He knew I was damn good at what I do and the work I performed and after eventually the mexicans were costing him more because they were taking longer, breaking other stuff, mis-diagnosing he tried crawling back to me but that wasnt happening. Bridge was burnt