What is your real value or worth?

Your value is not about how much you are actually paid, that's your end result. Your real value is about your skills, knowledge, abilities, and experience but above all its about your self confidence. Are you using yours to your advantage? If you've never thought about yourself in this way before, now is the time to start. We are moving rapidly into the age of 'information wealth', and you need to manage your personal capital by taking what you know and making it pay for you.

The dictionary has quite a few definitions of the word 'value' the more relevant ones to us in this business context are:

The quality (positive or negative) that renders something desirable or valuable.The amount (of money or goods or services) that is considered to be a fair equivalent for something else.The degree of importance you give to something.

Value, generally speaking, is based on perception, either yours or someone else's and at the end of the day, you are probably trying to get that other person to accept your perception whether it be monetary or otherwise. But how do you feel about your value?

Abraham Maslow described two kinds of esteem needs - the need for respect from others and the need for self-respect. Self-esteem entails competence, confidence, mastery, achievement, independence, and freedom. Respect from others entails recognition, acceptance, status, and appreciation. Without the fulfillment of these needs, we feel discouraged, weak and inferior. Both of these types of respect have a big impact on our ultimate business success both in getting the right type of work and being paid what we are really worth.

I discussed some of this in Have You Got Your Price Right? but in this article I want to focus on the Law of Attraction and how you can use it to build your value. It is really a five step process necessary to build your self esteem and thus your value.

Step One

Think Big and then Think Even Bigger. Imagine yourself achieving everything you want and more. Don't allow your logical mind to limit your thoughts by analysing them and giving reasons why you can't have them. When you have these big dreams in your mind, let your thoughts go to even bigger ones.

Step Two

Do Your Homework, don't just pick figures out of the air. You need to know what the current climate is in your business but this is only a basis of what you can charge. For example in every profession there a people earning millions of dollars from that profession and people doing it for nothing. What is making the difference? Find out, do your homework but I would suggest it is based on their self-confidence.

Step Three

Challenge your Comfort Zones in all areas. The best piece of advice I received many years ago was to break a comfort zone every day. It is a fantastic way to learn. While ever we remain in our comfort zones doing the same thing we are not learning and of course learning builds our self confidence and our value.

Step Four

Daily Visualisations and/or Affirmations. Can you see yourself already achieving your dream? How does it feel? Developing the real emotions of having attained your value is an important part of the process and self-talk in the form of daily affirmations will allow your mind to become comfortable with the idea and motivate you positively to make it happen.

Step Five

Act As If you already have it. When you do this it is only a matter of time before you actually achieve it.

When you follow the five step process and see, feel and imagine your real value, you will experience the joy of your true worth.

Whilst selling yourself in business is vital, self-promotion for the introverted entrepreneur can be particularly difficult. We live in fast paced world where so much business advice is built around extroversion; to be heard you need to be loud and visible, finding comfortable alternatives to this type of self-promotion can be challenging. For the quiet achiever those noisy networking functions can be difficult, you feel that you have to be there, but you end up standing in a corner on your own feeling very uncomfortable.

An introverted businessperson is not shy; they just don’t like small talk and like to reserve their energy. In fact the good news is there are actually more quiet achievers than extroverted ones. Successful people like Bill Gates, J.K.Rowling, Warren Buffet, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page and the list goes on.

The trick is to self-promotion is by harnessing your natural strengths. As an introverted entrepreneur you have excellent researching skills, a natural affinity for writing, are very creative and have great problem-solving skills. For you, building deep, genuine relationships on a one-to-one level is very important and therefore your ability to ask meaningful questions and empathetically listen is a virtue. You also have good time management, are well organised and punctual. By using these natural strengths you can promote yourself very effectively, especially with the explosion of the powerful tools provided by the Internet.

Proven Promotion Strategies for the Quiet Achiever

1.Make your networking opportunities more comfortable.

It is important to attend some networking events in order to promote your business but you can make them more bearable by doing some of the following:

Seek out one to one interactions – look for others standing on their own, they are probably quite achievers too. Ask questions to find out what they are passionate about and you won’t be able to stop them talking.Volunteer to help out at networking events – this is a great way to meet everyone especially if you are on the front desk and you won’t have to think what to say.Take time to recharge. It’s OK to sit quietly in the corner or pop outside for a short time.Set goals around connecting with people (only have a goal to meet 3 or 4 people).Write a thank you note after each encounter.Practice your elevator pitch beforehand.

2. Use the Internet to your advantage.

The Internet is a fantastic way for quiet achievers to put their ideas and words out there. Websites, blogs, emails, newsletters, podcasts, videos and an active presence on social media are all activities that fit in nicely with the introvert’s skill set. They are crucial for you to market yourself and increase your business following and network.

3. Create a strong personal brand

As an entrepreneur, you should use your skills to provide your market with something that will solve their problems and make their lives easier. As an introvert, you can use your attention to detail, one-on-one people skills, aptitude for listening and intense empathy to find out exactly what the problem is and then promote your solutions using the same set of skills.

Finally, the best bit of advice I received was You’ll feel a bit uncomfortable at first, but it will be worth it!

Please call me for more advice to build your business 'Contact'

Are you being paid your real worth? What is holding you back? It’s a staggering fact that two in five business failures are directly attributed to undercharging or the over use of credit – specifically slow collections and bad debts.

So many people in business never really get paid their real worth. They put the energy into their products and services and deserve to be paid fairly for them. Unfortunately, most of us have been brought up in an environment where money was a taboo subject and to ask for money was considered to be out of place or even rude. This has led to two problems in business, we don’t charge enough for our products or services in the first place, and we don’t like to ask for the money after we have delivered the product or service and a customer drags out payment. I think it’s partly due to our self confidence and not wanting to break those comfort zones again.

In business, there are three pricing emotion barriers you have to overcome. The first is your own price resistance. Do you feel that you are providing a worthwhile product and service for your customers and do you think it is value for money? Then why do so many of us feel that we have to justify our prices or even put them down?

Unfortunately, a lot more salespeople these days do try to sell on price and the advertisements on the television and in the press don’t help. They are also becoming more price focused which is tending to educate the buying public to buy more on price, but I still think most people actually buy on perceived value. Of course, if all they have to go on is the price then that will become their main buying motive. But most people still want quality and service and are prepared to pay more to get it.

You should never sell, tell, reveal or demonstrate your product or service until you understand your customers’ specific needs. That means asking a lot of questions to find out what the customers’ problem is; what they really need and of course that builds the vital relationship and trust. You have a solution to your customer’s problems but you need to know about their problem so you can show them how the benefits of your product or service will help them. That’s the second pricing emotion barrier you have to overcome; the customer’s price resistance. Your line of questioning should take them away from the price and when the customer realises that you have their cost effective solution, price becomes insignificant, you just have to point out their savings and they will be happy to pay you.

Price in any business is determined by reviewing three areas, the cost to the business of making the product or delivering the service, the price that the competition charges, and how much the customer is prepared to pay. Often, when we are setting our prices or fees we don’t always take these points into consideration and we should. The result is our customers often value our service more than we do, we undercharge and end up working much longer hours than we need to just to make a living.

The third pricing emotion barrier is getting paid of course and in our next post "Show Me the Money" we will talk about the importance of getting your credit management right. If you can develop that self confidence to ask the right price at the start you should find it easy to get paid your real worth!

You can view my interview with Dale Beaumont on "Getting Paid" at Birn.ai

When you hand out your business card do people take a step back and say "Wow"?

Do you have people clamouring for your card because of its value?

If not then read on.

Your business card is your most powerful marketing tool and yet in most businesses it is sadly overlooked. In most instances, your potential customers need four important pieces of information which should jump out from your card

Your nameYour phone numberYour email addressWhat you can do for them.

Everything else, such as:

Fax number

mobile number

address

business name

logoemail

web page address

are important but secondary to the main message and should be treated accordingly.

The phone number on the average business card is so tiny and often jumbled up with other numbers. How often have you rung a fax number by mistake? You need to remember that a large percentage of the population either wear or should wear glasses, and those that do often can't find them when they need them! Make it easy for people to read your phone number.

The next thing to consider is making your card so attractive that people are compelled to read it. Careful use of colours, your photograph, logos, paper texture and the readability of the lettering style all add to the initial impact of your card and thus your business!

Next, remember there is a reverse side to the card.There are two schools of thought in this regard. Some believe it should be left blank to write notes on. However, you should realise other people will also write notes on the back of your card and then toss it away when the note is actioned.

I believe the reverse side of the card is a potential gold mine. It can be printed with information that makes your card so valuable, people want to keep it. In fact they will be eagerly asking for your card for themselves and their friends because of the value of that information.

The back of my own card has 10 tips which guarantee business success; the result - my card is constantly in demand.

You must be sure to have your business cards with you at all times. Have you ever missed an opportunity because you did not carry your business card? A few weeks ago, at a network meeting I asked somebody for their card and believe it or not they didn't have one with them. They promised to send one as soon as they returned to their office: I'm still waiting!

Finally, use a promotional outlook, ask everyone for their business card. Then ask these three questions.

How can I help this person?How can this person help me?Can I network this person with someone else?

The answers will provide wonderful opportunities!

Remember that it doesn't cost any more to plan your business card carefully, but the results can be astounding.

Next time you are printing your business card, spend that extra thought and really make your business card work for you - Wow!