Around p. 97 there's this metaphor of a mountain. When freelancing the ultimate decision lies with the freelancer himself. Work can be accepted or rejected, sought out or left out.
Church likens this to a person lost in a forest. The terrain may be unknown and unknowable, but a distant mountain on the horizon can act as a polestar. Even from a long distance, the traveller can tell whether he is choosing to get closer to the mountain or move further away from it.
The freelancer (or any independent agent / captain-of-their-own-ship type person) can do the same with the ultimate goal. Choosing the ultimate goal takes some work, but there is some form of work or creation each of us is searching for the means to pursue. When choosing a new client, job, career, etc. that choice may not be discernable 'locally' due to the unknown. However, looking to that distant mountain, a person can evaluate whether a choice takes them closer to or further from their ultimate goal.
For me, it always comes back to a brick machine shop...
Around p. 102, Church discusses the number of priorities a person or organization can have. Jim Collins in Good to Great finds that the companies which excel tend to have only three priorities. This is a pretty specific number. He says "If you have more than three priorities, you don't have any".
I'd like to get a copy of Good to Great and read this for myself. Church sites another source (Gino Wickman, Traction) that too many priorities is a real problem.
This is obvious, but like Clausewitz says:
Everything in war is simple;
but the simplest thing is very hard.
Church doesn't really tell us how to choose only three, but that's beyond the scope of his work anyways. I'll link from here if I ever read Good to Great and find more.
From page 189 to 191 Church proposes a model which I've translated into the below axioms:
Therefore, the worth of a thing, or the price a salesman can command, is more a function of how it is sold (swagger, reputation, context, packaging) rather than the literal value of the object or (more interestingly) the price charged by the competition.
A theme that surfaces a couple different time in the book is this quest for the "correct" buyer. That is, a buyer who understands the value proposition of the product or service they are buying. The price itself can act as a sort of high-pass (or low-pass) filter on the kind of customer that you'll wind up doing business with.
Church puts it succinctly:
Optimize for the ideal buyer, not everyone else.
Starting on page 200, Church lays out seven different pricing models for freelancers. I'm not documenting these yet as this is not a lesson I'm trying to learn right now; however I'm leaving this thread here to pull on later in case I need it.