Do You Feel Worthy of Being Paid for Advice?
Low self-worth is a problem that most of us have to deal with at some point in our lives. For others, it can be a nagging problem that affects your entire life. It can keep you from achieving important goals and becoming all that you can be.
The results are that you’ll be decidedly unhappy with your life. There are several things to keep in mind and constantly work on if you don’t feel worthy of being paid for your work.
You may feel that you’re not good enough at your job for people to pay you for anything you do. Or, you may underestimate (or overestimate) the work you do. Many of our unworthy feelings may come from what we experienced in childhood and others from negative life experiences as an adult.
Whatever the reason you feel you don’t deserve a fair price for your work efforts – it can be overcome. Make it a practice to replace those negative voices with positive ones so that you feel worthy of earning and gaining wealth.
You Don’t Have to Be an Expert to Earn Money
This is a problem that’s especially true with beginning entrepreneurs. You may not have the same amount of experience under your belt as some of the successful gurus, but something led you to this place of wanting to build a business and helping others.
Rest assured that you’re at least a rung ahead of others climbing the ladder – and with time and experience, you’ll be sought out by those who need your advice and expertise if you chose to provide it.
At first, you may think you spend most of your time proving yourself. But if you’re helpful and display a strong intent to help people solve their business problems, you’ll gain trust and a loyal following.
There’s actually no such thing as an expert in entrepreneurship. A heart surgeon is an expert as an electrical engineer is. They worked hard and received an advanced degree in their field, so you can call them experts.
But entrepreneurs don’t need degrees to be successful. They simply need a passion and the desire to learn as much as they can about a chosen niche. You come by that expertise gradually and with experience, others will see you as qualified to advise them with information they need.
Being honest with people who seek your advice is another virtue that entrepreneurs need to have. Don’t pretend to know about things and make up an answer. Say you don’t know, but offer to find the answer to the problem.
This strategy alone will propel you forward and let people know that you don’t just say you want to be helpful – you actually live it. And remember, you only have to know a small amount more than others to help them with content and information.
Get to know others who are further up on the success rung than you. Interviewing an entrepreneur on a podcast or having them write a piece for your blog is a good way to draw others to yourself and your site because their audience will come listen or read it.
And it helps them expand their list, too. Find ways to learn and get the word out that you offer helpful and succinct information that others can depend upon and you’ll keep moving up the ladder of online success.
Don’t Overestimate What You Can Do for Others
You may be the type who underestimates the value of your work and your true worth, but you also need to be cautious about overestimating how much you can do. Underestimating your value can hold you back from success, while overestimating it can let your customers down and cause a rift that will never heal.
The trick is to find a healthy balance in what you project – and what you know you can deliver. If it’s a matter of pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, it may be worthwhile to accept more than you’re used to.
But if you know you’re incapable of providing certain information within a grueling timeline, it’s not worth the stress and the possibility of letting your customer down. Perhaps you could recommend someone you know who has the expertise and experience the customer is looking for.
The customer will appreciate your honesty and will likely reach out to you again for another issue. You may truly believe that you can do the job and then find out later that you underestimated the magnitude of the project or overestimated your ability to do it.
That’s why it’s necessary to think through any project you may want to take on and make sure that you’re up to the task before you embark on it. You don’t want to ruin your reputation by announcing a project you know you can’t complete or engage in properly.
If you’ve ever worked for a company where periodic performance appraisals are the norm, you may have had the experience of receiving an average rating when you thought you had done a stellar job that deserved praise – and a raise.
Or, you might have been confident you turned in a perfect essay for an English project and received a C or D. In both cases, it’s possible that you overestimated your ability to achieve in a particular situation.
Honest feedback on your job performance is helpful for you to work on the areas where you may be lacking. If overestimating your ability happens too often, take time to step back and reassess your talents or the time you need to accomplish certain tasks.
It’s always possible to improve and work on your shortcomings so that you have a good idea of your competence in every aspect of what you do. A healthy balance of confidence and caution can help with any problem of overestimating your worth.
Has Your Past Impeded Your Feelings of Worth?
When self-esteem takes a nosedive in childhood or other times in your life, you may have difficulty in overcoming it and realizing true success. Self-esteem problems often begin in childhood when you may have been ridiculed or made to feel inadequate.
These problems can haunt you forever if you can’t heal yourself, let go of the past and be there for others who may need your advice and help. Negative thoughts about yourself may be the norm for you and may have become a bad habit.
Getting rid of those thoughts of inadequacy and replacing them immediately with thoughts of what you have accomplished or what is truly good about you can give you a self-confidence boost. It just takes practice.
When in doubt about a project or question you’ve been asked, ask questions until you feel secure that you know what you’re up against and what’s expected of you. When you have the necessary information, you’ll be armed with what you need to do your job well.
Life sometimes gives you lemons, but when you’ve been subjected to something traumatizing, it can also make you a strong person – when you make lemonade from it. Letting go of the anger and resentment you may still be holding tight in your heart and mind can help you get on with the future and the happiness and accomplishments ahead.
Surround yourself with people who support the person you’re striving to become. Negative people will only foster negative thoughts. Create a new you by taking care of yourself, learning something new and begin to love and accept yourself again.
When you do accept a difficult project, go above and beyond what is expected. The appreciation you’ll receive from a job well done can boost your self-confidence and make you want to take on even more toward your quest for success.
Above all, don’t ever give up. You may find yourself falling back into despair or doubts during down days. The old self sometimes has a hard time giving up on making you miserable.
Meditate, exercise or do things that you know have the effect of boosting your self-esteem. Take care of yourself and do what you need to do to lift yourself and your mood up again.
Put Your Focus on Helping Others
Focusing on your own inadequacies and inabilities will only make you feel more unworthy for the payments you receive for helping others. When your focus is skewed, it’s easy to drown in self-destruction and sabotage your efforts to achieve success.
When you’re in the business of providing people with advice and guidance, it’s imperative that you turn your attention to the needs of your customers and the solutions you may be able to provide.
If you’ve made the decision to become an entrepreneur who offers a product or service which will help others succeed – and boost your own earnings – it can be the most rewarding time of your life.
You’ll learn more, be more fulfilled, become truly engaged and passionate about what you’re doing and begin to realize all of your dreams and desires. As you begin to add to your growing list of customers, your business will begin to grow.
Self-confidence and feelings of empowerment will give you the boost you need to build your business even more by focusing on how you can better serve (and add to) your list.
When you put the needs of your audience first, you’ll begin to branch out and success will come naturally. It’s easy to become distracted by other things like our own problems and concerns, but when your thoughts are mainly focused on sharing knowledge and helping others, your own needs will automatically be taken care of.
Sharing knowledge is one of the easiest and best ways to help others. Your expertise and experience can be a gold mine of information for those attempting to make their own businesses successful – and also a gold mine for you, because it enhances your reputation and increases your own knowledge base.
Discovering what valuable information needs others have is the single key that can propel you to a level of success you may never have thought you could achieve. Ask your customers about their wants and needs and then seize the opportunity to find and share what can help them most.
Recognize your customers when they succeed in part by taking your advice. A mention of a newly successful client or customer in a blog post or podcast will not only make the customer feel appreciated, but will boost your own reputation of offering stellar information to others.
Success Doesn’t Require You to Suffer
You don’t have to sweat buckets and work 24/7 to make a success of your business as an entrepreneur. The key is to work smarter rather than longer and harder. Customers don’t care how hard or long you worked on a solution for their problems – they only want good advice.
It may only take a minute or two for you to find exactly the answer they need to solve their problem, but because of your expertise and experience, you were able to find the solution and translate it to the customer in record time.
When you focus on what will help your customers and know your advice is the best, others will be willing to pay for it. What is the advice worth to them? That’s up to you to decide, based on research you can easily find online. Set your price and stand firm, but offer more than they expect.
You may compare yourself to other entrepreneurs who seem to brag about staying up all night to work on a project or who went to great lengths and spent a great deal of time solving a problem.
But you don’t have to suffer constantly to make your business a success – or to help others turn their businesses into successes. Your goals and dreams naturally take time and effort to achieve, but when you decide what your main goal is and know how to achieve it, you’ll take less time to get it all done.
All success takes time and effort, but if you plan wisely and schedule your time to reflect your best efforts, you’ll soon develop trust in yourself that you can ultimately achieve what you want without having to give up anything or anyone you enjoy.
Remember that success is like planting an apple tree. You have to wait for the fruit to appear, but watching it grow and flourish is part of the fun and fulfillment. You’re gradually planting seeds of success among people who ask for your advice and your efforts will eventually bear fruit.
Also, make sure you focus on what you want to achieve rather than possible failure. Time will fly when you’re working on something you’re passionate about. The accolades you’ll receive from your customers as you work to help them solve problems will help you realize your own self-worth and set your prices accordingly.