Getting Paid your Worth

“I want to be paid my worth,” is an admirable goal. Who doesn’t want to be paid for their hard work and effort? Allow me to share a story with you. 

Imagine a freelancer who is starting out. They want to be “paid their worth.” They learn that it’s about adding value. More value = more money = getting paid your worth. So they spend a lot of time crafting their core skillset and they’re offering this skillset to the market.  

Eventually, there comes a point where the freelancer needs to delegate various tasks. One can’t do everything alone. The freelancer then fields various virtual assistants. Virtual assistants are affordable, and you can get a bunch of them with very little overhead. Great! Let’s keep costs as low as possible. 

The freelancer also needs a website. You don’t exist unless you’re on the internet! He goes to see the prices for website development. Wowie!! It can get expensive. But he’s diligent and does research on his own on how to create a website for cheap. He finds that it’ll take too much time. So he goes on Fiverr to find the least expensive option. He’s able to negotiate a really good rate on his website. Perfect.  

The freelancer then gets a great opportunity if he’s able to land a client account. He negotiates with the client but takes less than what he would like. I guess he needs to work on his negotiation skills. He figures he’ll be able to wow them and bargain for a higher rate once they know how awesome he is.  

Was the freelancer paid his worth?  

Possibly. It’s hard to say. The “market” made its decision. 

What about the virtual assistant? What about the website developer? Were they paid their worth? 

What if… 

• Since he used an inexpensive virtual assistant all the e-mails representing him had very poor grammatical errors and confused potential clients? 
• Since he went with the cheapest website developer route, his website doesn’t work on all platforms seamlessly, various links don’t work, and potential clients were never able to contact him?
• These small things signaled to potential clients that he would accept a lower payment? 
• The freelancer was lying to himself when he talked about value and, instead, he actually only cared about dollars?
  

What does it mean to be paid your worth in the context of your mindset, network, and culture? Let’s chat about that next week.