I’m back in the podcast studio officially today. It’s been quite a while. We took quite a hiatus, we had a whole bunch of podcasts batched, then we repurposed a few podcasts and over the next few weeks, you’re also going to be getting some podcast episodes that I recorded with guests because I needed a break and I needed something to be easy on my energy. Before we get into the reasons to pay yourself like an expert, I want to be transparent about this because I get a lot of questions around, “Tara, you have chronic illness. How do you do it? We’re looking at your business from the outside and it doesn’t seem like anything has changed or that you’re doing anything differently. You seem to be just kind of cruising along.” Yes and no.
I have intentionally built my business around my health issues that allow me to take as best care of myself as possible while also keeping the business moving forward in a continuous and consistent fashion. It has a lot to do with systems. It has a lot to do with just being consistent for many, many, many, years. It has to do with where I put my focus. It has to do with me being able to pay myself and pay my team. I have people here who help me do that. That is one of the things that we are going to be talking about today because we are going to be chatting through why it’s so important to pay yourself like the expert that you actually are.
I’m so excited to say this, but this podcast episode is sponsored by our Revenue Goal Calculator, which helps you identify how much revenue you need in your business in order to pay yourself a specific amount of money. When you download this revenue calculator, you might even be surprised to find that you’re already making the amount of money you need. It’s not that you need to generate more revenue per se but you need to learn how to use what you are making better. Or, because there are two categories here usually, or you’re going to realize that you do need to go and make more money, and hopefully by seeing it in black and white, by seeing it in front of you, by knowing exactly how much you need, that clarity is going to go a long way to giving you an attainable goal that you’re motivated to hit.
While this episode might seem like, “Duh, Tara,” for some people because you are paying yourself and you feel like you’re paying yourself enough, the large majority of women business owners just aren’t paying themselves enough. Each week, I speak to women who are self-employed and I hear the following: I hear, “I’m a penny pincher and save as much money as I can,” which actually is not a good thing. I’m going to be talking way more about this through my emails that I send. Again, another reason why you’re going to want to go download that Revenue Goal Calculator.
I hear, “I don’t want to take money out of my business because then I’m going to have to pay taxes.” I hear, “I’m angry and resentful that my business takes so much of my time but I don’t have much to show for it.” I hear, “I know I’m over-delivering and undercharging. I want my work to be more accessible,” which is code for cheap. Let’s just be honest. I know you all think you’re going to be helping and making an impact but that is just a recipe for cheap, angry, resentful business. I hear, “I’m reluctant to put a price on my work because people are struggling and I want to help them.”
When I ask women why they do what they do, “What are you so excited about in your business? What made you so excited to be self-employed and running your own business?” Women always lead with their mission, the people they want to help, why they think their work is important to the world, the people they want to impact, but nobody ever says to me, “To get paid,” “To make sales,” “To grow revenue.” That’s a problem because we need to do all those things so that we can have an impact, so that we can have the resiliency and the rest, and the recovery to go forth with our big missions in the world.
Even some businesses that you see out there who might be offering services for free and having a big impact, I don’t know, like NPR or maybe other podcasts out there with really big audiences, they’re actually not doing that for free. They’re getting funding from grants. They have angel investors. They have some kind of backing sponsorships that are allowing them to get paid. We really, really need to be honest. We need to talk about these things.
Getting paid is really important.
When I ask women why they want to make the money they make, here are some of the answers I get: They say, “For the extra,” the icing on the cake. They say they want to give to causes that haven’t meaning for them, for the luxury upgrades and lifestyle improvements for their family. This is interesting because it doesn’t always square with the data that says 75% of women are up at night worrying about money and their biggest money worry is their financial future. Why is there this disconnect when I ask women why do they want to make money and they tell me for the extra, the icing on the cake, or for causes that have meaning to them or luxury upgrades, but when they go to lay their head on a pillow at night, their biggest fear and worry is their financial future? Why do we have this disconnect?
If women are worried about their financial future, why aren’t they stating that when asked? Why do we still see women defining their contribution as extra or icing on the cake, diminishing it in that way? Why is it socially acceptable to want to give away money and to make an impact but not keep money for themselves? We have to really be asking how we’re contributing to a system that is keeping women financially small, and in some cases, doing financial harm to women.
Now, I’m not going to spend time unpacking the many intersections and systems of why women are where they are with money. While I believe in acknowledging those things, that’s important. It’s important to acknowledge that women and marginalized groups have less access to this type of information, that it’s intentionally complex; that social norms and expectations that women provide unpaid labor or engage in unpaid labor, both physical and emotional, that there’s trauma, that there’s generational money stories. I acknowledge all of that.
If you really start to unpack some of those things, which I have spent quite a long time doing, years and years, and decades doing, one can get really lost in the weeds of all those factors and I see women doing that too. They want to understand, they want to educate themselves on some of these deeper issues, then what happens is it pulls them into the weeds. I don’t want us to get lost in the weeds. It’s my job to stay solutions focused and to keep women moving forward. I want to acknowledge all those things exist and I want to keep us moving forward because the reality is two things can be true at one time.
We can acknowledge the systems that have held women back financially and move forward. We can have trauma around money and move forward. We can want to do better, we can want to educate ourselves and understand, and take steps to move forward but it’s going to take a collective effort. I can’t do it alone. It’s going to take each of us showing up in our communities, small spaces, and businesses, and making different choices than what we feel compelled to make. That’s not going to be easy. It’s going to require deep levels of courage and it’s going to be fatiguing.
I know women are already fatigued but this is why we have to do this because so much of that fatigue comes from not being fairly compensated, from being up at night with worry, from engaging in unpaid labor, whether it’s physical or emotional. We really have to find the collective courage to have honest and transparent conversations about money. This is really why I’m here to encourage all of you to consider what your reasons are for being paid, for needing to be paid, for needing to make money and to pay yourself like an expert.
What No One Is Taking About
I just want to share this with you before we get into some of these reasons because I know when I go and do guest workshops, and I know when I speak, this is very validating for women and they get a lot of head nodding because I think 80% of women small business owners probably more fit into this category, yet I don’t think anybody’s really speaking to them.
When women enter into entrepreneurship, it’s not for a glitz and glitter business that generates millions of dollars in revenue. It’s out of necessity. It’s out of a lack of childcare or affordability of that care. It’s because a job that they have has become overly stressful as work is piled on, mainly due to them being the most skilled and competent at what they do. It’s always that most competent person that gets all this extra unpaid labor to do. There’s a lack of acknowledgement that is attached to that. There’s feeling undervalued that is attached to that.
There’s even feeling underutilized when we are given so much unpaid labor, whether it’s emotional or physical because usually, that unpaid labor is a labor that nobody else wants to do. It’s not the thing that we’re actually really great at. It’s not our gift. It’s not our strength. It’s not something that feels meaningful and purposeful to us. It’s not something that we feel is challenging and allows us to really sink our teeth into it. It’s usually the admin work or the grunt work or the things that nobody else wants to do.
Also, that leads to typically watching less competent people get the promotion because of some kind of advantage that you didn’t have. In the workplace, it can look like seniority, it can look like a relationship, it can look like proximity, and these are all reasons—plus more, especially if you’re a marginalized group—that you’re going to be passed over. But then also, there’s the other portion of women who turn down promotions because they would rather be overqualified than look like they don’t know something or like they don’t have it all together.
Then the third reason that I hear women leaving jobs out of necessity is chronic illness. I raise my hand to this. This was a huge reason why I left my corporate job when I did. My initial intent, my original intent for this business was to build a business that was in service to my health and that would allow me to replace my corporate income. Maybe you had a chronic illness that would not or could not be accommodated due to the demands of the job and what corporations think is productive but really is the antithesis of what is productive, so women leave, confident that they can improve upon their situation if they could just do things on their own terms.
The original intent for so many, like I just said, my original intent is to spend more time with family, to focus on their health, to do meaningful work. This is such a huge one for women. Women are really motivated by doing good work, by doing meaningful and purposeful work in the world, and to replace the income they were making out of their traditional nine to five. That is the original intent. Because they’re experts who know their stuff and have some network of people around them, who think that they’re awesome, they do start making money.
Some women can really start making money very quickly. Usually, within that first year of starting up, they have been able to prove the concept. They know how to get people’s results because they have been doing this for their entire careers. Then some realizations start to kick in, like there is no guaranteed paycheck. When you worked for somebody else, there was a job description. You completed those requirements, plus some, as we all know, and a check automagically wound up in your bank account on typically a Friday, weekly or bi-weekly.
There is a fairly large knowledge gap when it comes to business and the learning curve is steep. I hear this from women. This is a huge problem. They invest in a lot of courses and info products in a way to try and figure out what their blind spots are and what they need to know. But as experts, women are also really uncomfortable being seen as a beginner, being seen as somebody who doesn’t have it all figured out, who doesn’t have their sh*t together, who might not have all the answers.
That is one reason why I think women tend to buy a lot of courses that don’t get them the result that they’re looking for is because they watch you hide in their learning. They don’t want to be seen as beginners. They don’t want to be seen as not having this information. They don’t want to be seen as not having it all figured out. That is really some conditioning that we need to undo because it is costly. Then you get sucked into this steep learning curve and it can get really overwhelming.
Another realization is that making money isn’t a one time or one year event. It’s an ongoing day after day responsibility that winds up feeling like a lot of pressure. Whether it’s men or women in small business, when I am working with them, when I’m coaching them, and we’re going deep behind the goals, and the reasons why and what they’re trying to accomplish, at the bottom of it, peel back enough layers and it is this feeling of white hot pressure. So much pressure.
Another realization. The small business education space is a noisy industry. People are coming at you with marketing messages and they are pulling on your emotions, and they are promising you the world. They are promising you clients now that’s actually not possible because the only person who’s responsible for whether or not you get a client now or not is you. They can give you the tools. They can give you the education and know-how. If it’s a marketing agency, they can present you with leads, but nobody is going to convert those leads unless you convert them. This whole concept of, “Oh, I’m going to get clients now because of this,” is in my opinion a bit of a myth that women really get sucked into.
The small business education space is a noisy industry. There are specific realities that need to be addressed like 88% of women, there’s a report done by Amex in 2018 that talks about 88% of women small business owners are generating less than $100,000 a year in revenue. I honestly don’t see that statistic changing much now even though we are quite a few years after that. I will look to see if I can find a more updated statistic. But listen, that’s not going to have moved the needle much; and 83% of business owners are living paycheck to paycheck. That makes a lot of sense to me.
All of this becomes very confusing and chaotic but it doesn’t have to be. That’s what I’m trying to resolve with my content, with this specific podcast episode, and my programs. The point at hand, let’s talk about your reasons for paying yourself because as you can see, you’re going to need a lot of intrinsic motivation for doing so. I hear people say all the time, “Well, money isn’t motivating.” Yeah, it’s not. Money is an external motivator, an extrinsic motivator and it isn’t particularly motivating, not even if you were getting a raise in say, your traditional nine to five job that is shown to be way less of a motivator than other forms of reward.
I’m going to give you some reasons, your reasons why you might ultimately be different than these. I encourage you to come up with some of your own reasons, but there’s also a good chance you haven’t considered some of the reasons that I’m going to bring up. It’s my hope that maybe this shifts a perspective for you, just one, it doesn’t need to be like a whole big wow moment but just like a tiny, tiny perception.
Understanding why we need to be paid like an expert takes us one step closer to actually getting paid like an expert. The step after this would be to download the Revenue Goal Calculator and to put in some of your personal information, and to let that calculator give you a custom revenue goal. It will also tell you where that revenue gets allocated to, so how much of it gets allocated to profit, how much of it gets allocated to your pay, how much of it gets allocated to taxes, and to expenses, and all of that stuff. It’s a very, very beginning stage of implementing Profit First in your business. Do not hesitate. Do not delay. Do not think twice. Just go into the show notes and get the link, and download that calculator.
No matter where you are in your business, no matter if you are just starting out, I have worked with people who haven’t even made a dime yet with this calculator and it gave them the plan they needed to go out, and decide what they need to sell and how much they need to sell it for. I’ve worked with people who have been making hundreds of thousands of dollars in their business, they don’t know what to do with it, it is just sitting there piling up. Again, that is actually really not good for your business. This will get that money moving and tell you where it can go, and what you can be using it for.
Reason 1 to Pay Yourself Like An Expert
Number one, the first reason to pay yourself like an expert, nobody else is going to do it. It’s on you. When you choose to be self employed, you choose to A, be a commissioned salesperson, B, not be guaranteed a paycheck, and C, take full ownership of understanding everything that goes into being able to pay yourself on a consistent basis, nobody else is going to do it for you. I’m going to teach you how to do it in The Bold Profit Academy.
Your accountant can help you understand some more of the nuances around paying yourself such as, “Would it be better to be an LLC or an S corp or a sole prop?” Some of those more technical things. They might even be able to help you decide whether or not you’re going to give yourself a paycheck or a distribution or any of those things. But even knowing the questions to ask them is your responsibility. Nobody else is going to do it for you. I think that’s an excellent reason.
Reason 2 to Pay Yourself Like An Expert
Reason number two, things cost money. Period. I’m going to say more but things cost money, which I think that women really sometimes forget. When they are selling to people and they’re like, “Oh, can you give a discount? Oh, that’s so expensive. Oh, I can’t afford that,” whatever, and they’re like, “Oh, I’ll just reduce my rate and I’ll just give a discount, and I’ll do a beta version of–” things cost money.
I had a client who wanted to do a beta version of a retreat and like, “Listen, I’m all for testing things. I’m a voracious tester. I test all the time in my business but I still get paid for it,” because testing costs money, R&D costs money. That retreat that she was testing as a beta version, costs money. Are you saying I’m going to do a beta because you’re afraid to charge the actual price? We need to really watch where we’re creating excuses and crutches for ourselves, and letting ourselves off the hook because things cost money. Food. Shelter. We forget about these needs that we have, these basic needs because the internet, social media is hell bent on selling you self actualization, that top part of Maslow’s pyramid, but there are all those steps below in this pyramid that are required before you get there.
We have inflation now. You might have kids that you want to send to college. You might have medical bills. You might have dream vacations that you want to go on. You might have any number of things that you want in your life and it’s going to cost you money. It’s going to cost you a lot more than you think. That is one thing that I noticed about women is they seem to want all the things but not actually tally up how much that’s going to cost them.
Reason 3 to Pay Yourself Like An Expert
Here’s the third reason. The current workforce is undergoing significant changes. I’m seeing professionals get paid great salaries with increasingly more flexible benefits than ever before. In my previous role, I was responsible for the compensation function in human resources. I would do all the data analysis, I would look at salary reports and surveys, and I would crunch the numbers and we would put together a plan, a strategy for how people were going to get paid in the organization. I managed all of the merit increases. I managed all of the bonuses. I managed a lot of the total cash compensation.
Helping people, getting people paid was my job. I actually still see it as my job today. I haven’t been in that environment in a while, although I do have clients that I consult with. But I was watching an Instagram of a personal finance Instagrammer and she had surveyed her audience as to how much money they make. What was really interesting to me was to see how many of those people were making a six figure salary and not a heck of a lot of years of experience, and also not all of them degreed.
There were a lot of people in that audience who had maybe three to five years of experience and a technical Google certification, and they were breaking into the six figures. I was like, “Wow, my women that I work with, like real experts.” I mean, when I left corporate a gazillion years ago at this point, in 2015, I was making well into six figures. We need to really take this into consideration that would we be better off with less stress if we were to go back and work for somebody else, especially with the labor shortage and all those things? That’s number three.
You get to decide. If you want to be earning income independent of an employer, then you need to be taking that seriously and you need to be making sure that you are getting paid something that is commensurate with the experience, and the expertise but not only the experience and the expertise because in corporate, we say, “Okay, salary commensurate with experience,” but when you’re running your own business, there’s a lot of effort. Making sure that you are getting paid something commensurate with your expertise, your experience, and the effort that you are putting in behind the scenes here.
Reason 4 to Pay Yourself Like An Expert
Reason number four, this might ruffle some feathers. I’m just going to put it out there first. It might ruffle some feathers. I’m okay with that. I’m ruffling a lot of feathers lately. I’m getting a lot of DMs on Instagram. Some of you don’t like my cursing. Don’t tell me about it. This is marked E on iTunes at a minimum and it is supposed to be marked E on Spotify. I’m not going to apologize because this is my platform of self expression. I’m going to say things that y’all don’t agree with and that’s fine. That’s fine. You also don’t need to announce your exit. We’re not an airport. We don’t need to announce our departure here.
Four, women are less risk tolerant than men, I mean like just look on the playground to see how we were socialized. Women have a tendency to play it safe. This shows up in them over saving money, not investing in themselves, not investing in other cash generating assets, not taking bigger leaps because they crave safety or security. But lots of women are willing to put all their eggs in their spouse’s financial basket, especially if it’s a male spouse. I know there’s some gender stuff here but I noticed that specifically with women married to men, they’re willing to put all their eggs in their husband’s financial basket.
Now, when women say their money is the extra, that means that they’re relying heavily on their spouse to cover living expenses. I don’t know but when you look at the data around women being better investors than men and women caring more about almost every financial decision, leaving this up to the men seems a risky AF, ladies, risky AF. Let’s get in there. You don’t have to necessarily earn equal. I have this whole big thing for a while that I needed to out earn my husband. That was very competitive, probably not coming from the healthiest place.
I was really pissed off for a really long time that I had more education than him because that’s the other thing, ladies. Women are more educated than men, especially we’re starting to see that really shift. It really would piss me off that I was more educated than him. I invested way more in my education and he would earn more. My husband’s amazing. He’s got a really unique skill set and I understand why people tended to compensate him very highly for his skill set. He was also a workhorse, like he would run other people’s businesses like it was his own. He made himself incredibly valuable to them, but that doesn’t mean that I was any less valuable. I was really annoyed about that.
I had a pretty unique skill set in myself but I spent a lot of time and energy working to promote my husband’s career, taking on more at home so he could go and work those extra hours or to be at certain meetings or what have you. I put a lot of time and energy into helping him strategize increases in pay, and negotiating and asking but I didn’t do the same for myself. That was my big takeaway. I had a goal for a while to out earn my husband. I can say we pretty much earn the same right now and that need to out earn him dissipated.
I’m not saying that’s what you need to do. I’m not telling you how to do anything. I’m just asking that you can maybe take a look at this for yourself and look at if you’re somebody who is like, “Oh, well, you know, I’m nervous about risk. I’m nervous about that,” look at where you’re actually taking on risk in your finances. That would be one of those places, especially if there aren’t protections in place if something happens to your spouse, if you get divorced, or if they lose their job, or any number of those things that could be coming up.
Reason 5 to Pay Yourself Like An Expert
Number five, you get to invest in yourself and reap the benefits of those investments over and over again. That’s a reason to pay yourself. You take that money and you invest it in yourself, and reap the benefits of those investments over and over again. When I first started my business, coming out of corporate and we had a training budget, I was also responsible for the training budget and training development, and interestingly enough, my training requests would always fall to the bottom of my boss’ inbox. They wouldn’t get any attention, certainly if they were maybe a little on the pricier side.
But the male engineers, the male engineers got whatever the hell they wanted. They got it quickly. They were really willing to invest in the male salespeople, in the male engineers. When I started my own business, I was going to invest in myself because nobody else is going to do it for me. I invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into my education, into my health, into being the best at what I do and that has paid itself forward tenfold.
Adding value to yourself adds value to your clients. Adding value to how you think, getting value to your education, as long as you’re not using it as an excuse because we do know that sometimes, women need one more certification, as long as you’re not using it as an excuse and that was a huge part of my why in my first few years of my business because I want it to be a woman who invested in herself at this level, who took herself seriously and put her money where her mouth was, and showed up for that way of being in the world to be in command of this part of my life. That was hugely, hugely meaningful and has paid off in a really big way for me. It’s still to this day a huge reason why I pay myself and why I take profit in my business is to invest in me.
Reason 6 to Pay Yourself Like An Expert
Reason number six for paying yourself like an expert. You have a valuable skill set, you’ve invested, you’ve already done some of that investing. You’ve been to college or you’ve gotten certifications or you’ve spent time and energy honing your craft over years, getting qualifications and you deserve to be compensated for it. Period. People deserve to be compensated for their work.
Reason 7 to Pay Yourself Like An Expert
Number seven, when you don’t get paid, that’s playing a zero sum game of economics. You have a resource and you’re allowing someone to take it from you for less than that resource is worth. Not less that you’re worth, the resource, the service, the product. You’re not for sale but how you then take that intellectual property and turn it into a service or a product or an offer of some kind, that is for sale. You have a resource and you’re allowing someone to take it from you for far less than that resource is worth.
That serves nobody. You’re allowing people to steal from you. Positive sum games of economics are when there is a fair equitable exchange for goods and services, you decide how much it is that your good or service is worth and you find somebody who values that good or service at the price that you want to sell it for. That is a positive sum game of economics.
Reason 8 to Pay Yourself Like An Expert
Reason eight, tied to this one. When there is a positive sum game and you financially benefit, you then get to go and engage in other positive sum exchanges where there is mutual benefit. Entire economies are created this way. As a matter of fact, this is how we have to be creating an economy going forward, that there is a positive exchange for everyone involved.
Let me give you an example. I pay myself, then I take the money that I pay myself, and I first take care of my financial foundations. I’m making sure that I’ve saved enough in my emergency fund. I’m making sure that I have life insurance. I’m making sure that I am saving for my financial future. I’m making sure that I’m putting some money away for my kids to go to college. I’m taking care of my financial foundations first, then I go and do the mundane things that are just done on the last day: the vet, the dog groomer, the driving instructor, the landscaper, the hairstylist. These are all people that I’m contracting with and engaging with, and having a positive sum experience with them.
The CrossFit gym, the dentist, the orthodontist, the therapist. If my livelihood comes into jeopardy because I’m not valuing my services or I’m allowing people to take from me in a way that doesn’t feel fair and equitable, if my livelihood comes into jeopardy, all of these businesses suffer too. There’s nothing left to give the dog groomer, the driving instructor, the landscaper, the hairstylist, and the CrossFit gym. I’ve got to now go and pull back my spending with all of these businesses, which is why I don’t ever stop making money.
It’s not because I’m a greedy bae. It’s because I’m creating economies. It’s because I’m being a positive force. I’m being a force for good in these economic exchanges because I don’t say to somebody, “That’s too much.” I don’t say to somebody, “Give me a discount.” I pay people a fair and equitable amount for what they are asking to charge. If I don’t think it’s fair and equitable what they’re asking for, I let them know that I think that their value is way greater than what they’re charging me for, then I let them make a decision about what to do with that information.
I had the air conditioning guy. My air conditioning broke. I love this guy. We’ve been using him for a long time. My mom uses him. We refer to him all over. He was here a few summers ago. It’s always in the dead heat. We’re always in the middle of a heatwave when the air conditioning breaks without fail and this guy comes, and he’s dripping in sweat and I think he spent pretty much the whole day here. We did it apart. He had an employee with him. He wrote me a bill and I looked at the bill and I said, “This is not enough money. You have not charged me enough money to make sure that you’re profitable, that the gas in your truck is paid, that the maintenance is done, that you are paid, that your employee is paid, that you have health benefits. You haven’t charged me enough.”
He just looked at me. He’s like, “Wow, nobody’s ever said that to me before.” I said, “Well, of course, everybody’s looking for a f*cking handout.” See. I say things. He says, “I don’t know if people would buy from me if I raised my rates.” I said, “Well, that’s something that you’re going to have to reconcile.” Why does he have to sacrifice his livelihood, his family’s financial protections for somebody else’s comfort in what they will or won’t pay? That’s not okay. That’s not a positive sum game. Sometimes, it’s not even a negative sum. It’s zero sum. It’s a negative sum when you’re having a harmful effect on somebody.
This is just something, and I know that Tara is talking about economics and everybody’s like, “Nobody wants to talk about economics,” but it matters. Think about that, think about all the good and the impact without giving your money away. We don’t always have to give our money away to make an impact. I think I make a really big impact on my local community by engaging in fair economic exchange with them. The tutoring center where my kids go, the local restaurant, the liquor store, these are all places where I have an economic impact because I pay myself like an expert.
Reason 9 to Pay Yourself Like An Expert
Number nine, as a small business owner, you have a very powerful wealth creation tool at your fingertips. You can create whatever income you want if you have the skills to do it. With that earned income, you have the ability to create other income producing assets. You can invest in real estate, you can invest in dividends, in stocks, and ETFs. Continue to invest in your business so that it grows and it produces even more cash. But when you are in your business and you are working for that money, that is earned income.
We want to take earned income and put it into places where it produces income for us without us having to work for it. I just want to say that because small business owners, especially in this online business space, they’re all about the hard work and the hustle. Even their passive income ideas are not passive at all in my opinion. We have to really reevaluate our relationship with earning our income. Yes, you need to earn income, then what choices can you make about that income that allow you to work less hard?
Now, you have the same ability in that way as someone who works for someone else that is a traditional nine to five. They are earning income, they can take money, they can put it into a 401(k), some of them will actually even get a 401(k) match from an employer but they are still limited. They don’t get to decide how much of a raise they get, they don’t decide that they have specific financial goals, so they’re going to go out and sell something so they can reach that financial goal. They don’t have the ability to dial up and down their income the way we do.
We have a dial on how much we can generate in revenue to meet our goals or scale back. Go download the Revenue Goal Calculator because that is what you use that calculator for. You use that calculator to help you decide what is your minimum target, just a target that’s above minimum, then what’s that outrageous, what’s that outrageous target where if you just went all in, what’s possible?
That Revenue Goal Calculator will help you do it. You have an exponential way of making money. You decide. If you approach your business with curiosity, it will provide you with a tremendous education in economics, finance, entrepreneurship, sales, marketing, communication, and all those skills compound over time.
Reason 10 to Pay Yourself Like An Expert
Now, let’s talk about this. We’re going to lead this to number 10, 10th reason you want to be paying yourself like an expert: generational wealth. Fastest way to create generational wealth, yes from paying yourself, but more from the actions required, the lessons you learn along the way, the knowledge you gain in the process of paying yourself. That is where we create generational wealth, not in the actual money but in the lessons and the knowledge we pass on. That generational wealth is not about money, it is about the knowledge that you pass on.
You gain that knowledge by overcoming adversity, by doing hard things, by getting out of your comfort zone, by learning how to pay yourself, by understanding how to communicate your value, by marketing, by sales, by finance, by economics. You take all of those lessons that you learn and you pass that on to the next generation. That’s how generational wealth happens.
But if you’re going to sit there in learned helplessness or victimhood around not charging appropriate amounts of money or telling yourself you don’t know how or being unwilling to do the uncomfortable things, you’re never going to get that knowledge, you’re never going to get those lessons to pass on. That is a reason to pay yourself like an expert. It’s the process. It’s the learning. It’s less about the actual paycheck but it’s, “Am I willing to do the things that will in theory get me paid at this level?”
Reason 11 to Pay Yourself Like An Expert
Number 11—just because I’m feeling generous today and I wanted to give you a bonus—when you pay yourself well, you buy yourself out of working. You have to really look at what motivates you around money. For me, it’s convenience. Convenience and making my life easier is a huge motivation for me to earn money, whether that looks like hiring a team; I found a driving instructor. I didn’t even know this was possible. My son is learning how to drive. Talk about anxiety. I want to buy myself out of this anxiety but I only felt like there’s driving schools. I didn’t realize you can hire a personal driving instructor who will come and assess your child’s driving, give them a personal plan, take them for the appropriate amount of driving lessons that are needed for your child where they are in their learning, then schedule them and take them to the driving test.
I was like, “This is utopia. This man will get all my money but this is utopia.” He teaches race car drivers how to drive. I’m like, “Oh gosh, my kid is going to be a really awesome safe driver with really good reflexes and really understand how this piece of machine works.” For me, the convenience of all of those things: he’s going to come to my house. He’s going to create the plan. He’s going to tell me exactly what I need.
You know what it’s like to have kids. I don’t know, for those of you who have teens, nobody tells you the teens are more work than the toddlers. Nobody tells you that. If you have toddlers, I’m telling you, just wait, buckle up. All the calls that I have to make during the day for all the different things, if this guy can take this weight off of my shoulders, that’s amazing. I pay for convenience. I pay to make my life easier. When I pay myself like an expert, I get to do those things.
I hope that this list is helpful and that by listening today, you have gleaned one insight or a shift in your perspective. If you have, I would love for you to head on over to iTunes or your podcast player and leave us a review. Those reviews mean so much to me. I consider them a fair and equitable exchange for my time here that feels like it’s worth something for me. It also helps more people find us. It really speaks to the quality of the podcasts and the content that we put out. I think we really do put out a good quality and content podcast. I think that we deserve to have more ratings for this show.
If you have an extra spare minute or two, I would really love it if you were to share this episode with a friend who needs to hear it. This podcast has been growing phenomenally over the last three to six months. I’m really excited to see that continue. It is hugely motivating for me to see that we are making a difference in the lives of small business owners with their money, with investing. Please do me a favor and just share it, at least, with one other person. Now, do not forget to download that Revenue Goal Calculator, which is the first place you’re going to want to start so you can pay yourself like an expert.
