I remember it well. A high-end photographer came to me for business advice as he did not know what to do and wanted to look at options.
In the meeting, he recounted how he had submitted a proposal to do photography for a Finance company who were creating a brochure of their services which sold for thousands of pounds.
After presenting the proposal, he became nervous, called them back, and offered to lower his fee. I couldn’t believe what I heard and asked, “Why did you do that,” he said I was desperate for the work and was afraid they would say no.
That’s an all too familiar story. I remember driving to a client’s site, unhappy because I had reduced my fees (again) before submitting the proposal.
I was afraid, and it felt like I was paying them to work for them. I was tired of losing money or leaving money on the table.
I was tired of the beliefs that kept me stuck, which matched what I heard from others:
“I offered a discount because I didn’t want to lose the business.”
“Asking for more seems greedy.”
I think it’s best to go in low, secure the business and increase fees later – often never happens.
A client like that would never work with us
It got to a point where I knew I had to do something different. I had to change.
Know Your Value was born.
It took a while for me to get the confidence and self-belief, but I received coaching, devoured books like Value Based Fees, Implementing Value Pricing, and Price Manifesto and listened to podcasts.
I started to understand that knowing your value was having high-self-esteem, and confidence, removing self-doubt, and feeling less like an imposter. And from a client’s perspective, it’s understanding how much your work improved your client’s situation.
My clients started to get better results; They would stop charging by the hour, offered packaged services, had better conversations in meetings, asked for more, and get no resistance.
Here’s the thing – I realised that even with all the knowledge, experience and qualification, you can still undervalue yourself.
So now, when asked what I do – “I help clients to get clear and plan a way forward. Remove self-doubt, have greater confidence, feel less of an imposter and be able to communicate what they do clearly and make more money.
Most importantly, they focus on improving their client’s situation rather than being concerned with processes or methodologies.
Getting to the place of knowing your value takes time and effort. It takes trial and error and commitment to overcome beliefs, fear of rejection and imposter thoughts like who do you think you are, but you must persist.
If you’re in a place where you are very good at what you do but prone to self-doubt or someone in your team has tremendous potential but lacks the confidence to fulfil their potential and feels stuck – let’s have a conversation.
I’m confident I can help.
