All in Pricing your products and services
A while back I spoke about what ease looks like to me in my business and today I wanted to share how healing money trauma is linked to ease and increased income.
So how does the inner work that we do in the #MoneyMagic course impact on our ability to make money with ease?
I really love village life because of the communal aspect of things. They were in this with us - helping out as much as they could - the young men and women did a lot.
I worked 3 jobs to pay for my undergrad at the University of Cape Town (UCT).
My mom was unemployed and had no money and my uncle was going through financial difficulties.
My dad could have helped me pay for university but we’d had a fight about something (can’t remember what) in my first year and I was proving a point that I didn’t need him in my life.
And since he was the only adult who could help me; I ended up working 3 jobs to pay my bills.
I won’t lie, times were hard - I barely had money for food (I would skip meals to save money for rent and transport) and was always sleep deprived.
At some point, one of my friends forced me to go to the financial aid office to ask for help and it turned out that I was on the Dean’s List and was able to get a little bit of funding for my studies.
My friends had to beg me to take money from my mother and to apply for a student loan.
I only took the money from my mom because I was at the end of my tether; I remember feeling so ashamed that I took money from my mom, like I’d failed in some way.
Even in all my financial struggles, I had a very hard time receiving money.
This inability to receive money and allow money into my life has been one of my greatest entrepreneurial challenges.
It was a huge contributor to the collapse of my first business because it’s not enough to ask for money from clients and the universe, you also need to be energetically open to receive the money you asked for.
Why do people pay others X and someone else Y for the same kind of work?
I used to ask myself these questions all the time.
Of course, now that I do the work I do, I know that what we get paid has a lot to do with the system (patriarchy, racism etc), our mindset and our deep understanding of the value that we bring to clients or to a job.
We can’t change the system of patriarchy and racism overnight, but we can change ourselves.
People are constantly responding to our vibration, our body language, the way we treat ourselves and how we show up for ourselves.
It doesn’t matter how great we are at negotiating or “faking it till you make it”, if we don’t feel comfortable with the amount that we’re charging or the salary we’re requesting, people won’t pay us that amount.
If you don’t believe that your work or your service is worth X amount; something in your voice, body language or your response will give that away and people will be able to sense it and it will feel false.
Why should people trust you with that amount of money when you don’t even trust yourself with it?
Charging what you’re worth has nothing to do with convincing people of your value; it’s about our self perception and what we think about the money we’re requesting.
A few weeks ago I had to ask for money owed to me from my former school in South Korea.
I literally just went back and forth with them and reminded them that we had reached an agreement 3 weeks ago on the payment amount and date and that date has passed.
A few minutes later the money was transferred to my account and I was like: Thank you.
But then it hit me - there was a time when I would have waited and waited before asking people to pay me money they owe me. I would have created a long story and twisted myself in knots at the very idea of asking for money.
My message a few weeks ago was literally 2 sentences long and to the point.
I’m actually shocked by how much I’ve changed when it comes to asking for money that's owed to me or invoicing.
I wanted to take a moment to re-visit the topic of working for free or for people that don't pay us.
This is even more intense than being undercharged.
This has a lot of spiritual implications for us as well.
According to the laws of the universe whatever energy goes out must come back to us. So there's a constant flow of energy to and fro.
