Who Would Pay THAT much for YOU?!?

A few years ago, I was talking about my business with my friend and mentor, "Infoguru Marketing" creator Robert Middleton, who works with independent professionals (check out his generous, and complimentary, informational offerings at www.actionplan.com). Robert suggested that I start packaging my services to offer more value to my clients as well as to earn more money. "What if your absolute minimum price to any client were $500?" he asked...at which point I literally fell off my chair.

At the time I only offered group and individual sessions of The Work of Byron Katie, the self-inquiry process I facilitate. The workshops are attractively priced in order to allow many people to attend and get a taste of what I offer. A number of attendees go on to hire me privately after experiencing group facilitation with me. However, I had come to the (insane) conclusion that no one should hire me for more than three sessions, since the work I was doing was designed to foster skills that clients would ultimately use on their own.

$500 is not a huge amount of money; many life and business coaches get that much per month from each client they work with, often for years. "But I'm not a coach, or a therapist," I reasoned, "I am an educator. And as such, I am not doing my job if someone still needs me after three sessions."

Translation: "I'm not worthy."

Over the past couple of years I've worked with clients who are dissatisfied with their careers. They aren't making the amount of money they'd like to, they aren't attracting the kinds of clients they'd like to work with, they don't feel fulfilled. What is stopping them? They provide excuses, as I did. Nine times out of ten, when we scratch an excuse (I call excuses "yeahbuts" and "whatifs"), we uncover an underlying belief about unworthiness.

Feelings of unworthiness affect our emotional well-being as well as our business, even for those of us who are incredibly successful. I remember a Barbara Walters interview with Barbra Streisand years ago, when Streisand was about to embark on a concert tour where tickets cost upwards of $1000. On a TV show broadcast to millions of people all over the world, Streisand admitted to feeling devastated by her mother's cutting question: "Who would spend $1000 to see you?"

Hundreds of Barbra's fans would, and did, pay that much, and gladly. Why, then, would this question throw a wealthy megastar into publicly confessed self-doubt? Because if they say it, and it hurts, they're right -- but only according to us. "No one can hurt me," Byron Katie says. "That's my job. I do that."

When I believed I wasn't worthy, my business had to follow the dictates of my mind. I couldn't see clients beyond three sessions because that would have meant, in my convoluted thinking, that I had failed them. What if a client wanted and needed six sessions, or 12, or twice a week for three years? They would have had to take their business elsewhere. Subconsciously, I was banishing my clients and giving my business away to people who had no such self-limiting beliefs.

When I examined my beliefs about my business, I discovered that in attaching to my feelings of unworthiness, I was entirely in my clients business, deciding for them what they needed and predetermining how much they thought my services were worth. I could never really empower them because I was not considering their individual needs. At the same time, I was ignoring my own need to earn a decent living in the name of "shouldn'ts" and "shoulds," "yeahbuts" and "whatifs."

Unquestioned, feelings of unworthiness can run our careers and our lives. Met with understanding through self-inquiry, our fears, doubts and resistances reveal wonderful information about the real world, and its real possibilities for us and our work.

© 2005, 2006 by Carol L. Skolnick. All rights reserved.