Standard

Starting up my own business is a huge contextual leap for me. You may as well be asking me to perform open-heart surgery or change a windshield wiper. I need heaps of support and hand-holding from people I barely know. I am fundamentally ignorant about financial stuff and 'infrastructure' is this nebulous concept that I *kinda* understand...and yet suddenly, I find myself daily embroiled in intense conversations about cost and yield and passive income and, and, and...leverage.

In the last three days, I have also had three conversations with three different men and they have all essentially told me the same thing: I am grossly undervaluing myself. I wrote a book, and it was one of the easiest things I have ever done in my life. Not everyone thinks that writing books is easy. I can show them how, and then charge them for it. Essentially, the general message has been: I have a huge talent and if I want to get anywhere, I need to market that talent.

One of these men in what I am now going to start referring to as My Holy Trinity asked me:
“How much do you think it is worth to people to become published authors?”
I picked the most outrageous number I could think of:
‘I dunno—5,000 dollars?’
(Look who's being all grandiose and big-for-her-britches.)
He looked at me and said, “I paid close to $50,000 to write my book, have it edited and published.”

Silence.

"When all was said and done, I paid my editor close to $20,000."

I looked at him blinkingly.

Another of my HT did the math and showed me how much money my publishing company is earning from all of my hard work. I am not upset by this. My first book was an opportunity, a stepping stone and I would have done it for free. It is also one of the greatest pieces of leverage I have. (There's that word again.)

Then he said that if I didn't negotiate a better deal for myself for my next book, that he and I could no longer be friends. I kind of thought he was kidding, but he wasn't. His reasoning is as follows: The more we as creators or artists or musicians undervalue ourselves, the more we are giving permission for that to be alright. We are setting the Standard. So we have got a responsibility to come to the table believing and understanding at the very core of our being that what we do and who we are has value.

I have also been thinking too small. I mean, I thought I was being audacious by charging people $100 for a one-hour initial consultation fee. I am now realizing that if I repeated the exact same thing that I did on my own for my own book for other people that I could charge them twenty times that price. I could actually charge someone $20,000 to edit a manuscript. Twenty thousand. I am still trying to wrap my head around that figure.

There is this great quote about business from the book "The Trick to Money is Having Some" by Stuart Weil, which I think may become by Gold Standard: “Do what you love and this will raise your Vibration. Through your raised vibration, you will attract people. When they show up, bill them.”