It is important that you know your worth. Otherwise, you could end up accepting business deals well below your value, find yourself in unhealthy relationships, develop low self-esteem or never reach your full potential.
As an entrepreneur, you may encounter individuals that did not want to pay your fee. Based on my experience and the experience of other skilled entrepreneurs, there are people who try to convince the business owner to lower or alter their rates to meet their budgets. I have two opinions on this:
- If a business has established itself as providing quality services, meet deadlines, sells a great product, and has ethical characteristics, there is no reason to lower the rates. Clearly, if rates/prices are set by a principled business, the product/services are worth its due. Hence the rates.
- My second thought is that when a potential customer decides to go an inexpensive route, generally they receive lesser quality in return. The saying, ‘you get what you pay for,’ has merit.
The above two opinions apply not only in business, but as basic life principles. If that guy or that girl wants you to alter yourself in order to meet their own wants, in my opinion they may not be the best match for you, in particular if they persist. Such scenarios place you in a position of ‘settling’ and boarders tampering with your worth, your value.
So how do you determine your worth? How do you know if your rates/prices are too high or too low? Below are a few things that stand in the way of determining your true worth:
- Fear: For a long time I was afraid no one would want to use my services due to the cost and I would end up with no clients. I had to move past this fear.
- Lack of Self-Confidence: As I continued to develop my skills and produce quality that not only measures up to my competitors, but stands apart, my self-confidence grew.
- Peers: I found that when I surrounded myself with a different group of people, I saw beyond the limiting, comfortable horizon of the status quo.
- Mindset: As I did research and listened to other successful people in my field, my mind opened up to how it should be versus how it is.
It takes courage to move beyond the comfort of familiarity into unfamiliar territory where others are getting a whole lot more for doing the same things you’re doing. When I attended business conferences and summits in New York City, I was amazed to see the mindset and success of these people. I’m sure they had days when they were down, but overall they had made it way beyond what I considered to be success. That first conference I attended really opened my mind and drove me to improve everything, including my target market.
More important than this is becoming aware of what I should be receiving versus how things in my life are. Surrounding yourself with people that are not limited in their thinking, and who refuse to settle for mediocre or the status quo, has an amazing impact on your life, in all of its aspects. There’s nothing like interacting with people that live on a higher, more intense level and/or with real strength of principle.
When these things happen, it helps you determine your worth. Additionally, it’s difficult to settle for what others want you to do. You begin to replace fear with confidence, and refuse to settle for anything less than your real value.
How to get what you are really worth:
- Set your rate/cost and stick with it.
- Do not allow others to convince you to lower your rates/standards.
- Surround yourself with people that help you build confidence.
- Do market research to discover and develop what the true cost is.
- Determine your target market and promote your product or service to that market.
- Learn as much as you can.
- Read books that promote improvement; reflect on and evaluate that material.
Information, understanding and execution are three instrumental components to moving forward. When you have the information to know what you are really worth, you should go for it.