I was in this full Zoom Room, and I had just been teaching, training, and coaching. I was working with some people, and one of them paid me a very, very nice compliment. I was so excited at the moment, and I was like, “yes, and I’m gonna keep doing this because I am so worth it.” Later, I got to thinking about that moment. And I realized that, that was the first time those words had come out of my mouth.
I often struggle with what I am worth. What should I charge? Is it worth it? Am I worth it?
That’s something that I deal with. One of the little Gremlins that runs around in my head.
If you were an outsider looking at my life, you would say, “She’s so successful. She’s on fire. What a mover & a shaker. She’s got it all!”
I had someone a couple of weeks ago say, “You are the ultimate, supermom. The amount of things you can handle and the things that you can do and get them done successfully just absolutely blows my mind.”
When I look back on my life, what I see is a history of being left out. Purposely left out. I see a history of using my gifts, skills, and talents to help someone else get what they want, then once they got it, they just kind of brushed me aside. It’s kind of like, “thanks. Now I’m done with you.”
I see a life that was what you might call enough, but not necessarily worth it. “I’m enough to do this, this, and this, but I’m not really worthy of your unconditional love, your unconditional gratitude, or whatever that was.”
It wasn’t until after that event I thought, “that’s the first time I’ve ever said those words out loud. I’ve never believed it. I’ve never really felt it before. Iit came from years of personal growth and development, training, and work to get there. And still, when the words came out – It took me by surprise.
So when I hear people talking about, what am I worth? How do I charge what I’m worth? How do I know what my worth is in the marketplace? I think there are two different things to consider.
The first part is we have to separate our worth as a person from our worth in business. If you’re running this business to give yourself some sense of worth, we need to do a hard check on that. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be doing your business because that’s not mine to judge. What I am saying is that, if your sense of worth is coming from your business, things are going to be a mess. Things are going to be a struggle.
Your business will not give you a sense of worth because business comes with challenges. There’s always something that is left to do. There’s always a challenge along the way. We can’t derive our sense of worth from our businesses just like we can’t derive our sense of worth from our jobs or our titles or anything else. Our sense of worth has to come from a different place.
The only person who can tell you what you’re truly worth is the One who created you.
The world will try and tell you…
- Where you fit and don’t fit
- What it finds valuable
- Whether you’re worthy or not
There are all kinds of voices. From a very core – foundation standpoint, the only voice that can tell us who we are and what we are worth needs to be the voice of our Creator.
The Creator says:
You are his masterpiece.
He knows the number of hairs on your head. And he cares enough to count every single one out. He knows every single one of them. Can you imagine? As much as you love your own child, have you ever sat down and counted the hairs on their head? That seems like an impossible task to me. But our creator says he has numbered the hairs on our heads.
He says you are fearfully and wonderfully made. You are wonderfully made. Not sloppily made. Not brokenly made. You are wonderfully made.
You are chosen.
You are called.
You are worthy of a ransom. There was a price that was paid for you. And he was happy to do it because you are worthy. You are worth more than rubies and you are worth dying for. That’s what he says you’re worth.
So it doesn’t matter what those other little voices say.
Keep these in front of you every single day so that you can remind yourself that you are worthy.
Lock it in your heart.
Now let’s talk about the worth in the marketplace and keep it separate from your worth as a person.
When we look at worth in business, it comes down to pricing, packaging, and problems solved.
Let’s look at what the actual costs are to you.
These are some things that a lot of newer entrepreneurs, new coaches, and speakers don’t factor in and where they get stuck. If somebody tells you to charge $5,000 for your program, and you have no context or basis for why that is it’s going to seem like an arbitrary number. If you’re not used to charging those numbers it can feel really awkward, scary almost, to tell somebody that they’re going to have to pay you $5,000, $10,000, or $20,000 for the service.
We need to be objective, so what I do is I have my clients list out everything that’s in your program or product, and let’s look at what is the real-world value of that. Then, we need to look at other things like marketing, internet fees, phone lines, etc.
All of that has to be factored into your package price, this gives us the actual cost. Another thing we can do is we can look at the market as a whole. What’s the market doing? What are other people who are offering a comparable service to mine? What’s the ballpark figure that they’re charging? This can give us a basic idea of what our pricing structure should look like.
Next, we look at the value you bring. What is the problem you can solve that saves people time, energy, and/or money? If you can demonstrate how you can help them save time, energy, money, or make them more time, energy, or money, then we can assign a value to that as well. Also, don’t be afraid to start small.
This is something that we’re going to talk about at the Spark Your Success event. I want you to be able to start your business on a firm foundation and to be wise about how you’re starting your business.
Then when you have done all of these things, you will start to see the value and the price of your program emerge. By understanding the numbers behind a price, you’ll be more confident in sharing it and charging it with integrity.
I just want to go back and reiterate this one more time, your worth is not tied to how successful your program or product is. Once you finally get that price and put it out there, don’t tie your worth as a business owner to how well that thing sells.
The reason I say that is there is a lot that goes into it. Maybe the offer is off; maybe the marketing is off. Maybe you have a great program or product that is just not getting in front of the right people. There are a lot of things to diagnose, test and tweak along the way that can lead to something not turning out quite the way that you wanted it to.
I hope that helps you see that there are different types of worth and gives you a place to start. What was your number one takeaway?
If you are struggling in any way, if you don’t have the income that you want, if you don’t have the influence that you want, if you’re not in front of your ideal clients and cannot figure out why it’s not working, then you need to be at the Spark Your Success event.
