No one will ever pay you what you're worth, No one will ever pay you what you're worth. Then'll only ever pay you what they think you're worth. And you control their thinking, not like this, although that would be cool. That would be really cool. Instead, like this: clearly defining and communicating your value are essential to being paid well for your excellence.
Anyone here want to be paid well? OK,good,then this talk is for everyone. It's got universal applicability. It's true if you're a business owner, if you're an employee, if you're a job seeker. It's true if you're a man or a woman. Now, I approach this today through thelens透镜、镜片；（眼球的）晶状体of the woman business owner, because in my work I've observed that women underprice more so than men. Thegender性别wage薪水gap is a well-traveled narrative in this country. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a woman employee earns just 83 cents for every dollar a man earns.
What may surprise you is that this trend continues even into theentrepreneurial创业家的、企业家的sphere. A woman business owner earns just 80 cents for every dollar a man earns. In my work, I've often heard women express that they're uncomfortable communicating their value, especially early on in business ownership. Thsy say things like, " I don't like tootoot（喇叭、哨子、etc）嘟嘟声，Vmy ownhorn号、角." "I'd rather let the work speak for itself."
"I don't like to sing my own praises."
I hear very different narratives in working with male business owners, and I think this difference is costing women 20 cents on the dollar.
I'd like to tell you the story of a consulting firm that helps their clients dramatically improve theirprofitability盈利能力.That company is my company. After my first year in business, I saw the profit increases that my clients were realizing in working with me, and I realized that I needed to revaluate my pricing. I was really underpriced relative to the value I was delivering. It's hard for me to admit to you, because I'm a pricing consultant.
It's what I do. I help companies price for value. But nonetheless, it's what I saw, and so I sat down to evaluate my pricing, evaluate my value, and I did that by asking key value questions. What are my client's needs and how do I meet them? What is my unique skill set that makes me better qualified to serve my clients? What do I do that no one else does? What problems do I solve for clients? What value do I add? I answered these questions and defined the value that my clients get from working with me, calculated their return on investiment, and what I saw was that I needed to double my price, double it. Now, I confess to you, this terrified me. I'm supposed to be the expert in this, but I'm not cured. I knew thae value was there, I wasconvinced确信、坚信the value was there, and I was still scared out of mywits智慧、机智. What if nobody would pay me that? What if clients said,"That'sridiculous笑柄.You're ridiculous."
Was I really worth that? Not my work, mind you , but me. Was I worth that? I'm the mother of two beautiful little girl who depend upon me. I'm a single mon. What if my business fails? What if I fail?
But I know how to take my own medicine, the medicine that I prescribe to my clients. I had done the homework. I knew the value was there. So when prospects came, I prepared the proposals with the new higher pricing and sent them out and communicated the value. How's the story end? Clients continued tohire雇佣me and refer me andrecommend建议、推荐me, and I still here. And I share this story because doubts and fears are natural and normal. But they don't define out value, and they shouldn't limit our earning potential.
I'd like to share another story. about a woman who learned to communicate her value and found her own voice. She runs a successful web development company and employs several people. When she first started her firm and for several yearsthereafter此后, she would say,"I have a little web design company." In this and in many other small ways, she wasdiminishing减少、减小her company in the eyes of prospects and clients, and diminishing herself. It was really impacting her ability to earn what she was worth. I believe her language and her style communicated that she didn't believe she had much value to offer. In her own words, she was practically giving her services away. And so she began her journey to take responsibility for communicating value to clients and changing her message.
One thing I shared with her is that it's so important to find your own voice, a voice that'sauthentic真正的and true to you. Don't try to channel your sister-in-law just because she's a great salesperson or your neighbor who tells a great joke if that's not who you are. Give up thisnotion观念that it's tooting your own horn. Make it about the other party. Focus on serving and adding value, and it won't feel likebragging.What do you love about what you do? What excites you about the work that you do? If you connect with that, communicating your value will come naturally.
So sheembraced拥抱、接受her natural style, found her voice and changed her message. For one thing, she stopped calling herself a little web design company. She really found a lot of strength and power in communicating her message. She's now charging three time as much for web design, and her business is growing. She told me about a recent meeting with agruff生硬的、冷淡的and sometimes difficult client who had called a meeting queationing progress so search engineoptimization最佳化. She said in the old days, that would have been a reallyintimidating胆怯的meeting for her, but hermindset观念模式was different. She said , she prepared the information, sat down with the client, said this isn't about me, it's not personal, it's about the client. She took them through the data, through the numbers,laid out安排、规划the trends and the progress in her own voice and in her own way, but very directly said," Here's what we've done for you." The client sat up and took notice, and said." OK, I got it." And she said in describing that meeting," I didn't feel scared or panicky or small, which is how I used to feel. Instead I feel like," OK, I got this, I know what I'm doing. I'm confident."
Being properly valued is so important. You can hear in this story that theimplications含义range far beyond just finances into therealm领域、王国of self-respect and self-confidence. Today I've told two stories, one about defining our value and the other about communicating our value, and these are the two elements to realizing our full earning potential. That's theequation方程.And if you're sitting in the audience today and you're not being paid what you're worth, I'd like to welcome you into this equation. Just imagine what life could be like, how much more we could do, how much more we could give back, how much more we could plan for the future, howvalidated确认、证实and respected we would feel if we could earn our full potential, realize our full value.
No one will ever pay you what you're whorth .They'll only ever pay you what they think you're worth,and you control their thinking.
