Do you know your value?

Do you confidently charge clients for your professional worth?

Are you surrounded by relationships that truly value your personal worth (and you in return?)

By now some of you, particularly business owners, may already be cringing… thinking, “Yeah but if I charged what I’m worth (financially or emotionally) no-one would want or afford me”.

WRONG.

But I understand where you come from, because I used to be like that.

I used to think, no-one will want to do business with me if I charge that price. No-one will want to (INSERT WHATEVER HERE) with ME. Why would they – who am I to think I’m worth that much?

Well, I’m here to tell you that people DO want to do business (and life) with you. And if you never really understand your value, you will always be underselling the person who matters most — YOU.

When you know your value, you own your worth. Read that again. When you know your value, you own your worth.

Figure out your financial worth

This is a simple process for any business owner. Start by working out your hourly rate.

To do this, simply take your total income (annual preferably) deduct all the expenses (all of them) and what is left is yours, so I suggest you divide that number by 52 (weeks in year) then divide it down by the hours you work per week. You may be shocked at what you find, I hope the shock triggers a pain point, which will challenge any negativity you attach to why you shouldn’t confidently charge $X amount per hour.

Think about the service you offer. When you engage with a client they will want to pay you what you’re worth because you are that good… and the next time someone tries to question your worth or value, you’ll remember that pain point and stop discounting. You’ll stop giving away your time or doing cheap deals which ultimately reflect badly on and undervalue your business.

Figure out your personal worth

Measuring your personal worth in life is a little harder because we aren’t talking about traditional currency — money. We are talking about the currency of emotional debt or surplus.

Take a minute here to think about YOU. Who you are and what you bring to the table in your relationships. And what do the people in your relationships bring to the table? Are you a bucket filler? Are you filling your emotional needs bucket, and are you filling the buckets of those around you? Is your bucket being filled by those around you? If so, great, you know your emotional worth and have managed to fill your life with relationships that are give and take (i.e. mutually beneficial).

However, if your bucket is rusted and rotted and the bucket has so many holes it cannot be filled – you might need to think about your personal worth. Emotional debt can impact our feelings of self-worth, it may be our own, or worse, the debt might come from those around us. Sometimes we find ourselves surrounded by people who are draining our buckets, which, in time, drains our personal value. Detach from the drain, understand the value of what you need and want, and attach to those who fill you up. Not everyone can see your value and not everyone knows how to fill your bucket. So, stacking your squad is crucial – and you can only do this (you guessed it!) when you know your worth. Knowing your personal worth means you’ll more easily build yourself an A-grade squad.

Calculating your personal worth

So how do you calculate your worth? Self-care and self-worth come from examining and then adjusting the hard stuff – our internal thought processes and patterns of self-sabotaging behaviour. Ask yourself some questions, do I deserve love (the only answer is ‘yes’ here), do I deserve to have my bucket filled (again ‘yes’ is the only option) and, do I deserve to have a mutually beneficial bucket-filling arrangement – YES!

Next, look at your circle, your squad… do you want to fill their buckets, and are they filling yours? If the answer is no – adjust accordingly*.

*side note, we cannot expect to have our bucket filled, and refilled if we are draining value from our own bucket or, worse yet, from other people’s buckets.

Your time is a valuable commodity, I know I want to spend the precious time I have with people who want to fill my bucket and whose buckets I want to fill. When we embrace our value, we spend it wisely. Happy bucket filling.

Join the conversation by commenting below.

Love, Jess xx