Let’s Get Personal: Knowing Your Self Worth

 Last week I shared one of my most personal posts to date. I talked about that dreaded thing called comparison and wondered if you could be too nice to run a business. The response I got was more than I could have imagined. Comments, emails, Facebook messages, and Twitter messages – my heart was so full! I didn’t write the post for that sort of self-indulging response, but it’s always nice to hear things like “you are doing the right thing” and other forms of assurance. I also got another response that wasn’t like the others, but was probably even more important than the rest. One that was brutally honest, (in a good way!!) with one key message: “You are worth every bit of what you deserve. We all are.”

Let’s Get Personal: Knowing Your Self Worth

The emailer was zeroing in on the point I made about not needing to make financially based decisions because of the crutch of having a full-time salary through my day job. She said:

I walked that line a few years ago of having income that meant I didn’t need to “rely” on that money and I made poor business choices financially (like charging $750 for day-of services and thinking that was enough). Ultimately, I wasn’t respecting myself or my business enough to charge what I was worth and I would hate for you to be doing the same. But you deserve more than “SOME” compensation for your time. You deserve full compensation for your time, your expertise, your personality, your brand and overall what you bring to the table.

I’ll be the first to admit that I have a very hard time knowing what I am worth. As a blogger, you are behind a computer screen, so cut off from your readers (that only show up as hit counts & views in an analytics tracker). Sure I get emails from readers that express their gratitude for the resources & information I am sharing, but it’s difficult to truly calculate or know what my “services” are worth! I do know a few things though: I know that I spend A LOT of time on this blog. It takes HOURS, every day, to answer emails, gather content, lay it out properly in WordPress, insert all the necessary hyperlinks, tags & categories, and eventually hit publish. It then takes even more time (probably double the publishing time) to market my posts. Facebook albums, twitter, Google+, Pinning every image, and uploading to a few other websites. This takes up a significant amount of my time, and my time is worth being compensated, and not at only a partial rate.

To put it another way (thanks to our email responder):

If you went to a restaurant and was constantly only being charged for “some” of the meal, initially you might be excited but after a few visits, you might start to wonder what’s wrong with it. Was it being dropped on the floor and they weren’t telling you? Maybe it was old moldy vegetables? You’d start to think something was up, right?

This is such a true statement, and I really love the way it was laid out. But what does that mean for me and for Capitol Romance (moreso the blog in this instance than my coordination business)? Well, it means that I need to do some serious soul searching and find out how to better compensate myself for the time, effort, and resources I am providing. Which means, yes, there are going to be some changes to Capitol Romance soon (hopefully for the better) and hopefully my readers will understand. And if they don’t? Well, that’s just something I am willing to sacrifice to realize my true self worth :)

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