The Multiplier of Presence
- Gil Rosa
- 8 hours ago
- 2 min read
The arithmetic of being fully here.
Someone asked me yesterday what my multiplier was.
They were talking about rates, formulas, the math of doing business.
A simple question. A predictable one.
But it stayed with me longer than expected.
Because there is a strange belief in this industry that you can buy expertise the way you buy materials.
As if wisdom can be priced per unit.
As if judgment can be measured like labor.
As if the worth of a lifetime can be reduced to an hourly rate.
Most people walk through a space thinking value is measured in time.
They believe your expertise arrives in sixty-minute increments,
delivered as neatly as a pallet of gypsum.
They assume a multiplier can explain the depth of a career.
But work does not unfold that way.
Guidance does not show up in even slices.
Insight is not something you turn on and off.
A builder may bill by the hour, but he does not think by the hour.
Presence does not clock in.
Experience does not compress.
Awareness does not follow a schedule.
You can pay someone for their time.
What you actually receive is everything that made that time possible.
The mistakes they survived.
The patterns they learned to see.
The instincts shaped by years of listening to rooms before the rooms spoke.
A pipe hung wrong takes seconds to notice, but decades to understand why it matters.
A wall a quarter inch off its mark whispers only to the one who has lived through the cost of ignoring it.
This is why no multiplier, no rate, no formula can ever define true value.
A number can tell you what an hour costs.
It cannot tell you what that hour is worth.
Worth is presence.
Worth is clarity.
Worth is the quiet influence of someone who shows up fully, without dividing themselves into billable pieces.
Nothing moves faster because you rush.
Everything moves cleaner because you see.
This is the real multiplier.
Not the one that raises a rate.
The one who lifts the work.
Field Note:
A multiplier can set a rate. It cannot define your worth.