Do You Feel Worthy to Earn?
— By Brooke Crosley
Do you feel worthy to earn? Or, is your relationship with money capping your earnings potential?
I teach something called money scripting. Money scripting can be described as how you feel about and talk about money. How you feel about money is determined at a very early age. Thing back, maybe for you there wasn’t a lot of money—there was never enough. Or, maybe in your house, money was never discussed. You personal money script, how you are wired to think about money, will determine how you communicate pricing, how you fill your funnel, whether you feel worthy to earn.
My money script
In an earlier life, I trained to be a dancer, blew out my knees, and went into the logistics business. My dad had always been in that business, and he said, “You know what, you should just try it. If you hate it, I’ll never talk to you about it again, but I think you’ll love it.” So I took a job in the operations side of the business—doing data entry, working out on the dock, dispatching drivers—and loved it.
Through that career, I met the president of a company who said, “You should think about being in sales.” I didn’t really know what that meant, but I had this idea of what a salesperson was and thought no, I really don’t want to be one of those guys. So, the persistent president of this company kept calling me, and one afternoon we had a conversation. I decided to go for it. So, I started at this sales job making a base salary of $35,000 a year. I started in the Caskey training and had no tools, so really grasped on to what was being talked about.
I watched my income go from $35,000 to $50,000 to $100,000, and I started to freak out a little bit. It was more money than I ever thought I would make—more money than my parents had ever made. And it kind of made me a little uncomfortable.
But then I started finding myself surrounded by people who were making $150,000, $200,000 and started looking at them and thinking, you know, they’re not really any different than me. I work hard, I have the best intentions, and people seem to like me. Why aren’t I making that? So one day in class I raised my hand and said to Bill (Bill Caskey), “I’m kind of stuck. I don’t understand why I’m not earning what I want.”
And he looked at me and said, “You need to be ready for it. You need to be okay with making that amount of money. Until you can create a story in your mind that connects where you are now, to the dream you want for yourself, you’ll never be able to do it.”
Coming to terms—”getting okay”
I felt I needed permission from my parents to earn more/have more financial success than they did. In my house, we were always open about what my parents earned, and that number was in my head. When my earnings approached that number and passed it, I was worried about their acceptance and approval. I didn’t need to worry—I just needed to “get okay” with making that amount of money. A lot of my resolution came from just talking to my parents about my fear. (And, of course, my parents said, “Go make money, you fool. Don’t worry about us. We’ll be fine with our daughter making a bunch of money!”)
If you’re wondering, “Is this me? Is this my problem?” take some time and work through your personal money script. Go hang out with people who make a lot of money or have a lot of money. Ask them how they made the shift. Honor money—stop worrying about money, starting worrying about helping people.