Your Worth and Your Network

Last week, I shared a story about the freelancer who said, “I want to get paid my worth.” However, I challenged whether or not he was paying the virtual assistant and the website developer their worth. It connected to the possibility that these actions prevented him from getting a good result from the prospect. But there’s more to what I want to share. Let’s get into it. 

“I want to get paid my worth,” is a very ego-centric concept. It focuses on you and only you. There’s nothing wrong with the concept. However, ego-centric concepts are not very powerful when interacting with the broader society. Society does not care about your ego-centric considerations. 

We live in society and within that society, we have established relationships with a smaller subset of that society. This smaller subset is our “network.” We exist within this network whether it grows or shrinks. This network dictates what we have access to whether it be abstract things like friendships, love, emotional support, or concrete things like investors, business opportunities, etc. People with a rich social network have more opportunities to be successful. The opposite is true as well. 

Getting paid your worth is not only a function of your effort and skills. It’s a function of the social network you operate in. However, it’s also a function of how well you treat your social network. Let’s look at three scenarios. 

Scenario 1: If you are the type to haggle over every dollar, then you will hire people who are part of the haggling culture, and people who also enjoy a bargain will haggle with you. This is the culture you subscribed to. Your network, therefore, consists of people focusing on the dollar above all else, ignoring value. 

Scenario 2: On the flip side, if you are the type to be very generous all the time, then you will be generous to the people you hire. But if you don’t keep people accountable, then the money will run out. If this is the culture you subscribed to, then it’s unsustainable. This network cannot exist in the long-run. 

Scenario 3: Let’s say you focus less on the dollar and you focus on the business model, value within the business model, and the relationship of value to dollars. A $10,000 website that brings in $100,000 contracts is worth more than a $100 website that brings in $0 contracts. In this network, people focus on value and only strong business structures remain. What does this look like? 

Which of these 3 scenarios appeals to you? Which of these 3 scenarios are you most likely to be “Paid your worth?” Can you think of other scenarios? Which culture did you subscribe to? Is there an ideal scenario? Is there a Utopia of social networks? Does Religion give us a clue about what that looks like?