Creative Wayfinding For Ambitious Optimists.

Remember What You’re Getting Paid For

February, 19, 2020

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

It’s important to remember what people are really paying you for.

While it often looks like they’re paying you for something else, in the end, they’re paying you to do the work for them.

It’s not always a straight-up time for money exchange, and if you’re smart it will almost never be.

Sometimes you’ll be paid for your knowledge or opinion on an issue in which case you may get paid for a few hours of “work” imparting knowledge that took you a year to gather and understand.

For most of us running our own businesses, the work our clients will pay us the most for is our knowledge, insight, opinion, and ability to connect dots in new and interesting ways.

It might be tempting to say “I just got paid a whole bunch of money to deliver a three-hour workshop! If I fill up my calendar with more workshop bookings I’ll be set!”

While you have to share your knowledge at some point in order to capitalize on it, remember that sharing that insight is only a small part of the work you’re getting paid for.

There are dozens of ways of sharing your insight, each with its own price point, reach potential, method of delivery and effort required on both your part and your audiences to implement it. It’s important to think through which method makes the most sense for you, given your audience and goals.

Most important of all, remember that the real work is connecting the dots, solving problems in interesting ways, developing an insightful and defendable opinion.

This work doesn’t have an audience. It takes time, space, and perseverance to complete, and the bigger the idea you’re pursuing, the more of each you’ll need.

Leave space for the real work to happen.


Want to hear more about building an audience around work that matters? I think you might enjoy these reads!

https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/getting-paid-getting-reps-418c770245dbhttps://medium.com/@jeremyenns/getting-paid-getting-reps-418c770245db

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Hi, I'm Jeremy, I'm glad you're here.

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