What’s the Value of Your Time?
Realizing value isn’t just financial — it’s intellectual, emotional, and human.
A few weeks ago, I hired a coach.
The agreed-upon rate was $150 per hour.
Four sessions.
$600 total.
At first, my motivation was straightforward: I was in the in-between.
I had left Tesla. I hadn’t yet started at SpaceX.
And I wanted to use this window to figure out how to monetize my experience, expand my impact, and grow my mentorship work.
This coach came recommended by a trusted mentor from my research days. Their profile stood out: top-tier tech experience, academic credentials, and a rare blend of engineering, creativity, and spirituality. All things that feel deeply relevant to my life right now.
After a free introductory call, we both agreed to move forward.
What I Thought I Was Paying For
I went in expecting playbooks and tactics:
How to launch a website
How to structure a business model
How to scale mentorship into something sustainable
I thought they’d give me answers.
But instead, I found something different.
What I Actually Paid For
Each session began the same way, with simple but open questions:
“How are you feeling?”
“How was your weekend?”
“What’s been on your mind?”
At first, I thought: This feels more like therapy than coaching.
But slowly, I realized that was exactly the point.
I wasn’t paying for blueprints.
I was paying for space.
Space to think.
Space to reflect.
Space to be seen.
And in that space, I began to uncover answers I didn’t know I had.
The Unexpected
During our very first session, something happened I didn’t anticipate.
I cried.
Not because I was weak, but because I felt safe. Safe enough to admit the weight of the burden I carry in wanting to mentor others. Safe enough to share that my father means the world to me, and that part of my legacy is wanting to make him proud.
This person resonated with me. They saw me — not just my words, but the heaviness behind them. They quickly identified that they were going to walk the path with me.
The same path I had carried alone.
And that was validating. To sense that somebody wasn’t just listening, but willing to walk beside me — to carry a piece of it, to help. I could even visualize it: us walking side by side.
Sometimes, that’s all we need.
A partner. A friend. A coach.
Someone to walk alongside us in this strange, complicated journey.
Because when we feel alone long enough, loneliness creeps in.
And the simple presence of someone beside us — that changes everything.
Value Beyond the Transaction
On paper, each session was - $150.
A financial loss.
But in reality, the balance sheet told another story. I was gaining:
Intellectual clarity
Emotional grounding
A renewed drive to create impact
All things no spreadsheet could ever capture.
By the third session, I found myself asking my coach a question that had been sitting in the back of my mind:
“How do I bring value into your life?”
Their answer surprised me.
They said they found true curiosity through my intellect. That our conversations sparked new thought for them as much as for me.
That was validating. To realize that what I carried inside — my curiosity, my reflections, my willingness to dig deep — was itself a form of value. Something to contribute to the world.
It made me ask new questions:
What is the value of my time?
What do I offer to others — beyond money, beyond output?
How should I measure my worth, not just to friends who know me, but to strangers who are just meeting me for the first time?
And I began to see that building a personal brand, or even pricing your time, isn’t only about business. It’s about understanding that every hour of life is finite.
Sometimes that hour has financial value.
Sometimes it has intellectual value.
Sometimes it has human value — joy, presence, connection.
And sometimes, it’s simply sitting and watching the sunrise.
That, too, is priceless.
The Lesson I Learned
I came in expecting to learn how to launch a business.
Instead, I learned something far more important:
Every hour with another person is an exchange of value.
Sometimes it’s financial.
Sometimes it’s intellectual.
Sometimes it’s emotional.
Sometimes it’s simply human.
And once you start viewing life this way, everything shifts.
You stop measuring worth only in money.
You start measuring it in growth, in presence, in connection.
That realization alone was worth more than $600.
It was worth everything.
A Question for You
Think about the last hour you spent with someone.
What value did you exchange?
What buckets did it fill — financial, intellectual, emotional, human?
And maybe more importantly:
What value are you bringing to the hours you share with others?
Because when we stop measuring life in dollars, and start measuring it in value — we realize how rich we already are.