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Your Worth is About More Than Dignity

With the cost of living going, I hear a lot of talk about personal dignity being the baseline reason for people needing to stand up for themselves and demand to be paid more. I disagree, but not because I think dignity is worthless, on the contrary. I just think that there is a better baseline because it requires less faith in the rest of humanity acting… humanely.

The truth: Your clients get a lot more out of your work than you do.

At least 60% of the value you produce is practically invisible to clients. And if the remaining 40% of the value isn’t worth significantly more to the client than the price you are asking for, nobody is going to buy it.

If people are buying your services, you are obviously creating enough value to survive all that, and still keep customers.

No matter how easy, how basic, and boring it all looks to you now, or how little time your job actually takes you to do it these days. Objectively, you quicken change, or forestall it, and make things happen.

You should not ask for money because you need it or deserve it as a decent human being, which of course you do, but it’s not what this particular client should pay you for. Ask to be paid on the grounds of the transformational power that you dish out every day on your client’s behalf and the value that creates for the client. You thank them, they thank you, and that’s what the happy end looks like.

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