Bringing Value and the Altered Mindset

In class today we were talking about a local company that makes medical equipment that allows patients to not only further their healing but improve their quality of life. Usually the discussion begins by analyzing the value proposition, but the professor wanted to skip over that. “They are obviously providing value in what they do.”

It’s standard to analyze a company’s value proposition – what are the benefits of its goods or services, and why would a customer want to go to them instead of go elsewhere – and standard to create that value proposition as someone builds a business. We don’t necessarily think about or, just inherently know it as a consumer.

So it never occurred to me that I as a person could bring value.

I recently took the leap into freelancing after twenty years of timesheets and hourly pay. How that all came about is another story for another blog or a round of drinks (and includes grand jury duty as an inciting incident). But where it all began was when I found myself doing research on what it meant to be a freelance writer. I learned quickly about commodity versus premium pricing, and how you should never charge by the hour but charge by the project.

Wait, how does that work? That doesn’t make any sense. The world works on hourly wages, doesn’t it?

As I dug further, I came across the idea of bringing value to your clients. That value can be in the work you provide – writing, web design, social media management, etc. – but value can also be found in the size of the problems you can solve. In fact, the higher you rise up from simply turning in work to actually solving your clients problems, the more value you bring, and the higher you can price. And that’s where (apparently) successful freelancers reside

The converse to this? Commodity. Content mills, Upwork, places where there are a lot of indistinguishable writers who race to the bottom. The clients there might only be looking for that (I regularly see clients on Upwork who will only pay $5 for a blog post, or are looking for a writer who will work for $10 an hour…uh??). At the same time, there are writers out there willing to churn out $5 blog posts or work for $10 an hour. But what is the value they’re providing? Just some words slapped together.

Then the question was: Could I provide value? What value could I provide? Do I even have value? It’s a hard mindset to shift, after two decades of clock-in/clock-out. Value often isn’t communicated through pay, but through yearly performance reviews and maybe more stuff to do. At my last position, I did command a lot of responsibility, tasks, connections, and respect, and I brought a lot of value to what I did. But I found that my skillset and level of competence will actually command a much higher price than my salary was paying me.

Could I think in a value proposition mindset – especially after twenty years of writing with $0 earned – in order to make freelancing happen? I’m still working on it, especially at this early stage. But once you start thinking in terms of you yourself having the ability to bring value, it changes your orientation to your work, your confidence, and – hopefully – your earnings.