By the Ocean
Sunny 79 Degrees
10:01 a.m.
After I walked out of the world of full-time employment forever (I quit working at a bank by sending a fax!), my first contract gig was working for a computer training company. “Company” makes it sound like it was more than me, another trainer and the owner. It was a SMALL business.
I didn’t have to do the selling back then because I just showed up and taught the lessons to people who had no idea how to get around a computer.
I’m guessing that I was probably billed out at about $60-$120 per hour. The details are a little fuzzy now, but I was probably getting paid $25/hour. I put in quite a few hours at that rate.
When I went out on my own, after moving to Chicago, I started my own computer consulting business working for myself.
My first rate was $40 per hour. This felt “good” because it was more than I had been making before and people’s eyes lit up when they heard me say the number. Experiencing ZERO fee resistance from anyone should have been a clue about something, but back then, I wasn’t paying attention! Plus, to a validation-a-holic, it was an amazing feeling to be liked!
As it turns out, I wasn’t running a business for fun and profit, I was running a business for acceptance, validation and to prove I could do it. These are terrible reasons to do anything, but I had no idea about that.
I hated working for other people. I wanted to make a lot of money. My religion said rich people were going to Hell. And I knew nothing about running a business. What a combination!
The programs that were running inside me, the same programs that had led to straight A’s in school, to become valedictorian, to get into the National Honor Society (I can’t even remember what that was about), were about to be applied in the business world. As you might imagine, it was a very bumpy ride.
The goal of a “VALIDATE ME” business is to hear the word YES as many times as possible. It is the “grade” from the “teacher” (the outside world) that soothes the general anxiety created by programming that makes you think you are “less than” on every level.
Even though the former company I worked with was probably charging $60-$120/ hour for my time, my comfort zone, the zone that didn’t trigger the protective alarms of my self-worth programming, was right around $40 per hour. That “program” cost me a lot of money those first few years. I had no idea it was there. I had no idea it wasn’t ME. I had no idea I had the power to change it. I had no idea I hadn’t been the one who put it there. It was a mess.
My sense of value had no connection to reality. Even worse, my sense of value was not serving as an internal, unshakeable foundation on my journey to success. My sense of my own value was not the SOURCE of my success, it was going to be the byproduct of my success.
My sense of value and self-worth was set and controlled by the conditions and people around me. And I was super excited for the world to show me how great and valuable I was!
If you’re looking for the problem that leads to more struggle in business than anything, THIS IS IT.