When I started thinking about the characteristics of the people I wanted to serve, one of the things I noted was that most service providers struggled to earn money consistently for themselves because they:

• Didn’t view their solutions as anything special
• Lacked trust in themselves and their own ideas
• Often felt like failures or frauds not always deserving of the remuneration or recognition they received
• Didn’t like talking about themselves or tooting their own horn

I wanted to work with service professionals who were dealing with low self-worth, undercharging and as a result not attracting great clients but who wanted to create impact and achieve both recognition and validation for their work. They wanted to be understood and to have a proven track record and a tangible process to illustrate what they could do.

One of the most pressing pain points and most obvious was the question of money which is when the name Well-Paid Pro™ was born. I didn’t want to speak about my client’s current situation, I wanted to see them where I already saw them: being paid well for the services and solutions they were providing.

Today, to be Well-Paid™ means to get paid generously for your solutions. But while getting paid is important, equally if not more important is to live a “well” life – a life of structure, harmony, joy and fulfillment.

Have you ever heard of Gary Keller’s book the One Thing?

In it Gary, asks a very important question:

What’s the one thing you can do, such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?

GARY KELLER

In answering this question, I have always logically focused on earning consistently, and that figure has changed as my needs have changed over time.

Today I began contemplating what it would mean for me, not just to be well-paid™ but to live a well-life.

Everything is super important until you get sick.

Then you realize, there was only ever one thing that was important – your health. But nonetheless we borrow from the bank of our health, taking loans on stress and sleepless nights to pay for something that doesn’t really matter.

UNKNOWN

I got sick over Christmas – Christmas Eve to be exact, and didn’t recover until last Thursday. I had great plans, let me tell you, and so getting sick was quite the inconvenience – yet I had no other choice but to wait it out – impatiently at first, but with a little more grace as time progressed.

We can’t always prevent everything that’s going to happen to us, but I do realize that I need to pay a hell of a lot more attention to moving this aging body of mine and watching what I’m putting in my mouth.

Without good health we have nothing, so I encourage you, as I encourage myself today, to make your health and well-being your priority. Embrace the true spirit of being a Well-Paid Pro™!