How to Get Paid What You Deserve (Without Doubting Your Worth)
Because I work with a lot of coaches, entrepreneurs, and visionaries, one of the ways the Imposter Complex often rears its ugly head is with questions around pricing, charging for services, and how to get paid what “you’re worth”.
It’s no surprise to me that the Imposter Complex has something snarky to say when we try to attach a dollar value to our work. (And, if you’re curious, we say Imposter Complex instead of imposter syndrome because it’s more accurate, as I discuss in this article.)
Because it feels like one thing to put the work out there for free (or for a very low fee) — but it feels like something else entirely to say, “I’m worth this (much higher, much scarier) dollar amount.”
In fact, this is so prevalent for my people, that this is just a sample of what people have said when they join my Facebook group around how Imposter Complex is holding them back:
"I think that others don't think I'm worth paying"
"I’m comparing myself to others who use their gift & get paid well for it"
"I doubt the value of what I'm doing"
"I always undercharge"
"I can never get paid what I deserve"
"I don't make the money I should be"
"I’m not asking my worth"
"I’m allowing offers below my value"
"I give away too much"
"I question the true value I can bring"
Ouch.
This frequently shows up as the behaviour of diminishing that keeps you playing small and questioning the value of your work.
Or you might find that you fall back on perfectionism: to prove your “worth,” you dig in with over-preparing, refining, polishing, perfecting and never delivering.
(Curious about which behaviour of the Imposter Complex is standing in your way? Click here to take the free Imposter Complex quiz.)
So what can we do about it?
How to determine “what you’re worth”
The first part I want to unpack is the “worthiness” discussion — and the fact that what you charge or how you value your work actually has little if anything with your intrinsic worthiness. That's why I’ve put getting paid “what you’re worth” in quotation marks.
You are worthy, no matter what you charge. Period.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t answer the question of what rate to put on your website or how to answer when someone asks what you charge.
From a purely economic standpoint, it seems much easier to assign a value to a physical product than a service. With a product, there are tangible costs one can tally up: cost of raw materials, labour and production, distribution and shipping, marketing and advertising, research and development, and so on. One can add together those costs, add on a percentage for profit, and voilá! There’s the price.
Except, it’s rarely that simple.
There’s the question of supply and demand. If you’ve got the last roll of toilet paper in the city, well… We found out during the pandemic how much value people will place on that.
There’s also the question of profit margins. Did you know that typical retail prices are fully double the cost of production or more? Fine jewelry typically retails at triple the cost to the designer. Luxury items can be even more than that — which is how you get plain white t-shirts that cost hundreds of dollars versus a pack of six that cost just a few.
With services — and luxury services at that — it gets even more complicated.
There’s a wonderful maxim in the freelancing world that says, essentially: when a customer pays an hourly rate for, say, coaching or graphic design or copywriting, they’re not just paying for the hours it takes the vendor to complete the work; they’re paying for the years of education and experience that person brings to the job as well.
If you’re in business, you’ve probably noticed that you can hire service providers at a wide range of prices. Someone might pay anywhere from a few hundred to tens of thousands of dollars for a new website, as an example, and everywhere in between. And, like a nice bottle of wine, you can often get good quality and value at a variety of prices. The $300 bottle is not necessarily intrinsically better than the $30 bottle.
My point is that your “worth” is not a fixed value — and it’s not something you can determine by comparing yourself to what the rest of your industry is doing.
Pricing, value, worth can all start with external factors, like what other people are charging, but then have to take into account that one totally unique and irreplaceable element: you. Your education, years of experience, insights, and so on.
Because there are so many factors involved in deciding pricing, value, and “worth” in any industry, hopefully you can start to detach your personal self-worth from the dollar amount you place on your work.
Deciding what you’re “worth”
Deciding your “worth” and the value of your work is essentially a very personal question and decision, but I’ll share just a few ideas to help you arrive at a dollar amount:
Consider how much you want/need to earn and work backwards.
This is, in essence, a supply and demand problem. Start with the monthly or annual amount you want to earn, work out how many clients you can manage or hours you want to spend working, and then divide. That’s your rate. Alternately, take your current rate and multiply out how many clients or hours you need to reach your earning goals, then decide if that’s realistic. Remember: gross revenue is not the same as take-home pay. Consider what you might want to earn to do more with your business as well, like hire more team members, help more people, or create more freedom or income for yourself.Move up incrementally.
Of course, when people do the exercise above, they frequently realize their rates will not realistically get them to their goals — and that can trigger fear around raising rates. One of the simplest ways to work through this fear is to make an agreement with yourself to raise your rates incrementally. For example: if you’re currently getting paid $25 per hour, you agree with yourself that once you’ve signed 3 new clients, you will raise your rates to $35 per hour, and will continue to raise your rates by $10 an hour for every 3 new clients you sign. You’re welcome to tell yourself that if it ever becomes necessary, you can go back down to your old rate — but I would bet you will find that won’t be necessary.Do your research.
If you’re new and completely unsure where to start, it’s OK to do your research to see what the “going rate” is for what you do — just remember that you don’t need to stay at that introductory rate forever! See number 2 above.Test what the market will bear.
Of course, there is sometimes going to be a ceiling or natural limit to what the market will bear. For example, if you are a coach for beginning business owners, and you would like to charge $50,000 an hour for your services, you may struggle to find clients — not because you’re not “worth” that amount, but because the pool of brand new business owners who can afford your rates will be smaller. This has nothing to do with your worth and everything to do with product/market fit. And usually the only way to determine this is to test it.
How to raise your rates — without doubting your worth
Once you’ve made the decision to raise rates, all the negative self-talk and naysaying saboteurs/gremlins/inner critics will almost certainly start to show up for a feeding frenzy. They’re your first obstacle — not the clients! And they hate nothing more than clarity.
So that’s what you must feed them: a steady diet of straight talk.
Say this, loud and proud:
I am raising my rates because:
I know the value of my worth and it’s time that I was compensated accordingly. (This may mean saying “no” to brain-picking or “trade” offers, too… your call).
I know what I need to do to grow my business, and raising my rates will allow me to create more. (More of what is up to you).
I have done my due diligence and I know what the market will bear. (Because you HAVE).
I know the value of my worth and it’s time that I was compensated accordingly. (This bears repeating… saboteurs like to pretend they didn’t hear you the first time).
The other tool I like to rely on is the Yum & Yay folder. Essentially, it’s the list, or folder, or place in your computer where you save all the wonderful things people have said about you and your work
(You do have a place for that… right?)
Revisit as needed when the self-doubt gremlins would have you questioning if you’re really “worth” what you’re charging for your work. Chances are, your people will have had quite a lot to say about that — even if you need to be reminded that they said it.
Finally, remember that other people’s opinions are just that. A friend of mine, a copywriter, charges $300 per hour for projects, and had someone actually say to her, “That’s how much I pay my lawyer. How can you justify prices like that?”
The point is: She doesn’t have to justify it. Her work speaks for itself, and she’s found plenty of clients more than happy to pay it. That person simply wasn’t her ideal customer.
In short: Charging what you’re worth is an inside game much more than it is about other people. Confront those voices of the Imposter Complex and you will be well on your way to the compensation you want and deserve.
Click here for my free training:
Five ICONIC shifts leaders use to overcome Imposter Complex.