Earn Your Worth
That’s the catchphrase made popular by Mikelann Valterra and her Women’s Earning Institute. Mikelann gave a talk a whle back at a luncheon Working Girl attended and said some good stuff:
- Look for a “pattern” of underearning–that’s the key to see if you have a problem or not.
- Underearning comes from not only setting fees too low or underbilling or accepting a too-low salary, but from giving away your time.
- If ending the pattern of underearning is hard for you, break down the process into First and Second Successes. First Success is simply asking for what you want. Second Success is getting it.
- When someone asks you what your fee is, or what kind of salary you’re looking for, never answer right away.
- Don’t base your fee or salary requests on “what you’re worth” or, worse, what you think you’re worth. Do the research. Find out the market price.
- Find your “resentment number.” This is the dollar amount you need to charge to not resent the work. Mikelann says to double this figure and ask for that (Working Girl says to triple it!).
- For self-employed types: Don’t discount your services. Better to do it for free than for less than your full fee. (For more inspiration, here’s a great post from Freelance Switch on how to set your dream rates.)
Inspiring talk! The Women’s Earning Institute offers a whole program to help women break the cycle of underearning.
SUBSCRIBE
Great post, Karen! You are absolutely right that it’s better to work for FREE than to undercharge, too. (even better is to be paid market rate at all times, of course, but we can’t have everything
It is too dangerous and too easy to discount the value of our work otherwise.
Another way to assert-your-value-while-also-having-to-live-with-real-life-compromises might be this: a friend contracted with a nonprofit to do some event-planning for them. Since they could not pay her nearly what she deserved, and since SHE still needed the work, she took the job but very carefully logged and accounted for every hour of work she did (showing both how valuable she was AND how well she used her time!) She also carefully prepared a final invoice that included columns for the market-rate value of the hours she worked, the hourly “discount” she was giving them, and the actual hourly charge.
Hey, Elizabeth, so nice to see you back in the blogosphere!