Are you being paid what you’re worth?
When I was in college, I had a lot of artists in my life. They all had their own challenges, but there was one complaint that seemed like a pretty common theme – why do so many people want my services but don’t want to pay me for them?
There seems to be a fairly universal theme here.
People will pay full price without question for tangible, solid things like groceries and car repair; but when your product or service includes a cost for the intangible and ever-elusive qualities of time and experience – people think it isn’t worth paying for.
Because, of course, that is really what you’re paying for when you pay for art – the cost of the time that it took the artist to make it.
The irony here is unmistakable. Time is the only asset we can never produce more of, and thus it should be the most valuable thing on the planet…yet it’s one of the only things that many people will balk at paying for.
It doesn’t just happen with art. Most people who offer a product or service that requires a lot of time to produce have similar struggles. People seem to think that your time isn’t really an expense they should have to pay for. That your experience doesn’t factor into being paid what you’re worth…
Short term rental management is no exception – especially if you’ve also started coaching others.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people reach out to me “just for a few tips,” but they don’t want to pay for them. They think it’s just a simple question, it should be easy for me to answer, so why should it cost them anything to get an answer from me?
What they don’t realize is that, while it might take me just a few minutes to answer their question, that’s only because I’ve had years of experience in the business. I’ve learned the answers to their questions the hard way.
They’re not paying me for the 5 minutes it’s going to take me to answer their “quick” question. They’re paying me for the years of trial and error I had to slog through in order to be able to know the “quick” answer to their question. If it was really a quick and simple question they’d be able to answer it themselves.
And of course, they don’t have to pay me if they don’t want to – there’s always the option of learning the hard and long way as I did.
There’s such a strong disconnect here, it boggles my mind. People just don’t see serviced-based businesses this way.
Regardless of whether most people are willing to pay you for your services and knowledge or not, you have to learn to shift your mindset so that you don’t give away your knowledge for free, but rather charge for it.
You have to be able to see the value that you offer and be willing to ask people to pay for it.
And if they’re not willing to pay, you have to be willing to walk away without helping them.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating for heartless and greedy extortion. Of course, there are times when it’s appropriate to help people just because they need help.
But if that’s all you ever do you’ll never make any money. No one is going to pay for something they can get for free – even if it’s worth paying for.
You’ve gotta be willing to charge what you’re worth. And you’ve got to realize that experience is worth something. Isn’t it time you got paid what you’re worth?