Though I realize this is sexist, this message is for the ladies and some of the gay men. Charge what your expertise dictate.
I had a conversation with an amazing, super-smart female engineer. She has 25 years of experience and an incredible track record. She told me about a particular client that specifically brought her on board to fix an automated conversion project. The design was done by a different engineering team, that did not work. When negotiating the contract, this client explained that they had already spent £90 million with the previous company. So they could only offer £3 million for her to redo the project.
By some miracle, she pulled it off with their unrealistically tight budget. However, she was extremely frustrated. She often is the one that comes in to fix projects, but she is never hired as the lead in the first place.
In our discussion, I noticed a lot of pushback around money, and how much she can ask for. I could hear that ingrained pattern of, “Do not ask for too much, hold back, wait for your value to be recognized”!
Do Not Downplay Your Expertise
There are so many amazing, super-smart women in business who undervalue what they do, downplay their skills, and do not ask for the same amount of money as their male counterparts. Even I have been (and sometimes, might still be) guilty of this very thing! The reality is… In business, we, as women, are often the ones creating the gender and wage gap — we are doing it to ourselves.
To be fair, a lot of this is due to our genetic programming. Women have only really been part of the workforce within the last hundred years. So, it is fair that we are still finding our strength and making our Bambi legs less wobbly. We can, however, push forward! It just takes some inner work, working through the emotions, to get to the place that I call the inner dominatrix. It takes that quiet confidence, the willingness to stand in your expertise, and the willingness to be judged.
As we try to rise up in business, judgment often triggers our emotional state, and things from our past get poked. Here is my example. Having grown up in a cult that said, “Women are second class citizens,” every time that I tried to uplevel my business, other things would fall apart. So, I had to change all the programming that said I am a second-class citizen and I am not allowed to go for what I want or be successful! (Of course, I did this the hard way via the DIY method. But it is so much easier if you work through this with someone.)
Judgments: Use It to Fuel Your Success
Over time, I have healed the programming from the core and it has become easier and easier for me to grow my business, get out there, get visible, and say what it is that I do without fear of judgment. Am I perfect? No! I am still a work in progress. However, it has changed dramatically.
Do note that you do not need to have grown up in a cult to have these kinds of programming. Media images, and the messages that we grew up with as kids, did a fine job sealing in these ideas, thus making judgment very scary.
Being comfortable with the willingness to get judged is the biggest thing that you can be working on for both your business and yourself! Why? Because you are never going to not be judged! They are going to judge you because you are blonde or because you are brown, black, or because you are not green. It does not matter who you are, what you are, or how you show up. There will be something somewhere that someone has a judgment of! So the moment that you can just take that deep breath, let yourself create some space. Welcome in that judgment, the easier it is going to be for you to stand in your expertise.
Do That Inner Work
So, to move forward and grow your business, it is critical to do the inner work. My Self-Clearing Guide is available for you to download to guide you on clearing those minor resistances. The inner work will allow you to look at and evaluate:
- what is it that I deliver?
- What is the value?
- What are the results?
Then you can honestly determine, “What am I saving people? What am I allowing them to make?” And finally, you will be able to stand in your inner dominatrix and state “These are my fees!” without fear of being judged.
You can find a related article that I wrote here.
So, there is your nugget for today! I want you to breathe into that and expand out. Imagine welcoming in peoples’ judgments, allowing them to fuel your business forward, faster! If you need help with this, I would love to have a conversation with you and discuss the next steps to get you into your body, into your growth and have fun in your business! Head over to bookDana.in to schedule a consultation.
