Transcript

Transcript is autogenerated and may contain typos, errors, omissions etc.

[00:00:00] Let me ask you something. Have you ever heard the phrase charge what you’re worth or making what you’re worth? It sounds empowering at first, doesn’t it? Like it’s telling you to believe in yourself, stand tall, claim your value. But if you’ve ever tried to actually apply it, you might’ve found yourself stuck or overthinking your pricing or doubting yourself even more.

That’s because this idea of charging what you’re worth is actually a myth. Let me tell you about Sarah. She’s a talented home cook I’ve worked with. She’s been cooking for years and is amazing in the kitchen. People love her food. She dreamed about turning her passion for cooking into a personal chef business, but when it came to figuring out her prices, that’s when she froze.

She told me that she just didn’t feel She wasn’t worthy enough of charging what other chefs did. She didn’t go to culinary school. What if other people don’t think she’s good enough? Could she even call herself a personal chef? [00:01:00] What if they don’t think I’m worth it, she said. And that broke my heart.

Because here’s the truth. Your worth as a person has nothing to do with what you charge. Nothing. When people say charge what you’re worth, they’re unintentionally blurring the line between who you are and what you do. It ties your self esteem, your identity, your sense of worth to how much someone’s willing to pay you.

And that’s not right. That’s actually kind of dangerous. Think about it. If you price low, does that mean you’re not worth as much as a person? Of course not. If someone says no to your price, does that mean you’re not valuable? Not even close. Your worth isn’t up for debate and there’s no price on it. It’s not something that can be measured, right?

In dollars and cents. Your worth was, is, is not measured. Your worth is [00:02:00] intrinsic. You are born with it. And no price tag, no client, no paycheck can ever change that. You are worthy and worth more than you could ever charge. And if you struggle with this, if you struggle with feeling worthy, think about this.

Think about a newborn baby. How worthy is that baby? They don’t even do anything. But sleep, and eat, and poop, and cry. But yet we know a baby has worth. You are a kind, loving, productive member of society. So how far beyond that are you? Now let me take you back to Sarah for a minute. She wasn’t struggling with her pricing because she didn’t know how to crunch the numbers.

It wasn’t because she didn’t do her research on how much personal chefs charge for meal prep services, including her geography and her experience and everything like that. She was struggling because she was tying her prices to her self worth. She thought If she charged higher [00:03:00] prices, that would mean she was proving her value, but she was terrified that would mean if people said no, it would mean she wasn’t good enough, so she priced herself lower and then felt like she wasn’t worth as much.

Does this sound familiar? Here’s what I told her, and what I want you to hear loud and clear. Pricing is not about. You, it’s about the value of the results you deliver. So I asked her, what’s the real value of what you’re doing with your personal chef services? And she kind of hesitated. Like a lot of people, she was really so close to her own skills that she couldn’t get her mind around how valuable they were to someone else.

It’s just cooking. It’s just making dinner. I do this all the time. I’m good at it. It’s not that big a deal. Anybody can do this. So we broke it down together and I said, look, you’re saving busy families hours of [00:04:00] stress a week. You’re making dinner something they actually look forward to instead of dreading.

You help them sit down together, eat together, connect as a family. You’re bringing peace to their home. That is the kind of thing you’re offering. Not meals, not dinner, not food. It’s solutions to problems in their life that they care deeply about and value. That perspective shift helped change everything for her.

And she realized that her pricing isn’t about her personal worth at all. It’s about the transformation she was creating in her clients lives. And with that Now, shift, she stopped feeling guilty about charging what her services were worth.

She started pricing confidently and her clients didn’t just pay her, but they raved about how much they loved her work. Now let me be clear. Your work is valuable. It solves a problem, it [00:05:00] meets a need, or it brings joy, right? That’s what we do when we cook. But the value of that is separate from your value as a person.

You don’t need anyone’s payment, approval, or validation to prove that you are worthy. You already are. So let’s retire the myth of charging what you’re worth and instead, add it. Focus on the value you bring to your clients and ask yourself, what problems am I solving for them? How does my work make their life easier, happier, or better?

What results are they going to get because of what I do? And when you price your services based on those answers, on the transformation you’re providing to them, not on what you think your skill is worth or an imaginary calculation of your personal worth. Remember, pricing’s a skill. It’s something you learn at and improve over time.

It’s not a judgment on who you are. So let me leave you with this. You’re already [00:06:00] worthy. You always have been, you always will be, whether you’re charging a hundred dollars for a cook day or a thousand dollars for a cook day. Whether your potential client says yes to hiring you or no to hiring you, your worth doesn’t change.

So the next time you hear someone say, charge what you’re worth, I want you to smile and think, I already know my worth. It’s infinite. Now let’s talk about the value of my work instead. So what do you think? Has the idea of charging what you’re worth ever tripped you up? I’d love to hear your thoughts or stories in the comments.

Let’s talk about it, because this is something that so many of us culinary entrepreneur and business owners wrestle with. And it’s time to change the narrative. Just remember, your work has value, you have worth. The two are not the same.

Recent Posts