OK, you’ve made the leap. You’ve decided that the best way for you to be able to carry out the design for your life is to become an entrepreneur. Honestly, if you’ve been reading my blog posts, you know that I not only want to motivate and empower you, but I also believe that entrepreneurship is the vehicle that helps you to design the life of your dreams. So what’s the problem?
The problem, the BIG problem, is that most of us don’t believe that we’re worth it, starting out. Here’s what I mean. For a VERY long time in my business, I made a distinction between what I was contracted to do and what I was just doing to help out. In my mind, helping out meant that I shouldn’t get paid simply because I was sharing information. What I was contracted to do meant that I was actually building or “working.” Therefore, I should get paid for it.
Stay with me here. Now, I wholeheartedly encourage you to volunteer whenever you can because it helps provide you a different perspective on life and diminishes the whole idea of dependence on money for happiness/satisfaction. What I am getting at here is that I was also a master at diminishing my own value.
Looking back, here’s how I know that I didn’t believe in my worth.
1. When people asked me for information on how to fix something, do something online or how to begin their business, I just gave the information and didn’t offer to help them further. I was SETTING THEM up! They were now going into business, thinking that info should just be given away, not realizing their OWN value and then getting frustrated when they couldn’t sustain the business and didn’t make money.
2. When I got a call for a contract, I was usually asked for my rate. When I stated my rate, I usually got, “oh, that higher than our budget. We were hoping to pay $xx for this job.” And, I usually responded, “Oh, that’s fine. I’ll do it for that much.” Ughhhhhh!! Desperate, needy, creepy, willing to settle, didn’t believe I was worth it! Of course, that then got me in trouble some times because I then couldn’t afford to pay some of the people who were doing work for me and of course that snowballed.
3. I believed that I could help everyone. I thought that everyone was my client. I thought that as long as I accepted the job, then THEY were going to be committed to excellence. Nope! Totally different mindset. I could tell some horror stories where I did jobs for less than 1/5th of what I should have done them for. But, I’ll save that for another day.
The main point here is that many of us have a certain weirdness around money that doesn’t serve us in our business. Our value is not wrapped up in how much we get paid. It is so much more than that. But the thing is…money is the method of exchange that society has created for us and the way that we create life sustenance. When I help you create life sustenance, I’m showing you that I value YOU and what you have to offer! Disagree with me?? Just try paying your electric bill with a bag of self worth!
My coach shared with me a few years ago that I personally had created weirdness around money and asking for it. So, what he had me do was write a number that I would like to make per hour on an index card. I posted this on my bulletin board and then I said it out loud as often as I could. “My rate is $xxx per hour.”
It worked! I no longer charge per hour but the idea was that I needed to get MONEY out of the space.
Does money get in the way for you? What are YOU worth? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
P.S. – If money DOES get in the way (or conversations about money) and you want to get rid of that, I have a solution for you. Simply CONTACT ME FOR A STRATEGY SESSION and I will share how you can beat this.