What Are You Worth?

• Tweet
• Sharebar

• Tweet

As of either Sunday or Monday (and I’m sorry I can’t be more clear on that, but we have some issues to clear up) we’ll have approximately 750 first edition signed copies of How To Be Rich and Happy to pre-sell.

They will retail at $19.99 rather than the $25 we will be charging on full release and we will pay worldwide shipping on any orders of 3 copies or more. The money we raise from the pre-sale will go back into re-ordering more free copies to give away. I’ll go into more detail in my next post, I just wanted to give you a heads up.

What Are You Worth?

The first half of my sales career was blighted by frustration and mediocrity. I hit targets and quotas most of the time, but it was usually a question of flopping over the finishing like a man running the Los Angeles marathon dressed in a Sponge Bob Square Pants costume.

My issue wasn’t that I didn’t understand the selling process or had wasn’t able to build rapport, it was the unconscious belief that it was my job to decide what my customers could afford to spend.

In terms of career no-nos that’s right up there with hair-stylists that use a basin to cut their hair with, neurosurgeons with ADHD and priests with anger management issues.

There are a number of reasons why it’s if not necessarily doomed to failure, it’s certainly not designed to ensure success.

Firstly, it was a disservice to my employer. I wasn’t paid to try and judge based on brief conversations and glancing round offices how much a client could afford. After all, few businesses have their latest bank statement nailed to the wall for visitors to peruse and we all know wealthy people that appear otherwise and vice versa.

Secondly and probably even more importantly, It was also a disservice to my clients. Sometimes I held back on a large pitch thinking they couldn’t afford it when they probably could. Or maybe the return on investment was likely to be so high for them they may want to look at financing a deal?

Fortunately, I got over that hurdle and found that by pitching larger accounts I actually wasn’t pissing off my customers, but giving them options they were genuinely happy to know about, and at the same time demonstrating my belief in my products and services.

When I started A Daring Adventure a year or so before moving here to the US I thought long and hard about the name of the business. I had always liked the Helen Keller quote;

“Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing”

And it seemed a fitting name. Then again something was nagging at the back of my mind that it was actually a crap name that meant very little until I explained it.

Sure if I was running a white water rafting, rock climbing, bungee jumping adventure vacation company it would have been super cool. For a Life Coach though, not so much, because in my experience nobody hangs around online waiting for you to explain how clever your name is.

A few years ago when I set up a newsletter I wanted to give it a separate identity from my blog and that’s when I came up with the name The Discomfort Zone.

I love this name which is why I bought the domain for too much money and migrated it over to the blog. But again it doesn’t really tell people much about what I do until they stop and really think about it.

Most people online know me by my name. On Twitter I’m Tim Brownson as I am on Facebook, Reddit and almost every other website I frequent. Yet here I’m Tim Brownson from A Daring Adventure that runs The Discomfort Zone.

WTF is that all about? Even I don’t understand it!

I’m telling you this by way of explaining that even though I often know the ‘right’ thing to do, like a lot of people I don’t necessarily do it. It’s almost as if I think the rules don’t apply to me.

As I look back over the last 5 years I realize that I’ve treated my job as though it were a hobby. I’ve presumed because I love it so much and because I’m so good at it (come on, I have to believe that or shouldn’t be doing it, right?)  it wouldn’t be right to be charging more than the bare minimum to scrape by on.

Yet if a client came to me with that attitude and business model I’d be incredulous, and rightly so.

Sometimes we have to show belief in ourselves for others to adopt that belief, and whereas I have complete and total confidence in my own abilities as a life coach, I’m not sure I’ve demonstrated as such.

So this is a long-winded and slightly crap way of saying I’m putting my prices up on June 1st. There’s an entire re-design going on behind the scenes that I’d like to coincide with the increase, but if I can’t it’s no big deal it’ll happen anyway.

I’m not totally sure of the pricing structure yet, but I do know there will at least a 20% increase possibly more like 30%. So if you have been thinking about working with me and getting your ass into gear, now may be a good time.

This will also free me up to carry on my pro bono coaching for 1 or 2 people per month and I’m hoping to have an application process set up for that soon.

To be honest it’s a pain in the ass trying to work out from an e-mail who the best candidates are as I found out when I did my Free Life Coaching Offer over at How To Be Rich and Happy. I am full on that front until September, so if you’re interested please hold fire until the new site is up and running.

I’m somewhat wary of writing a blog post like this because it may come across as way too salesy and smug and that’s not my intention, so my question to you is this, forget what I’m worth and tell me:

Are you being paid what you are really worth? If not, what or who, is preventing that from happening?