Balance & Beyond Podcast

Are you tired of feeling undervalued and underpaid?

Discover the transformative power of believing in your own worth, and unlock the secret to achieving the financial success you deserve. In this episode, we unpack three pivotal reasons why many of us fail to earn what we’re truly worth, often leaving significant amounts on the table over our careers. Through compelling success stories from our community, we illustrate how overcoming self-limiting beliefs can lead to remarkable financial gains. By understanding the fundamental concept of money as a neutral exchange tool and addressing the critical issue of self-perceived value, you'll learn actionable strategies to shift your mindset and start realising your true earning potential.

Tune in as we expose the hidden impact of your money mindset on financial freedom and abundance. Limiting beliefs about money, acting like persistent weeds, can resurface at every new level of financial growth. We explore how to align your self-worth with your financial goals, moving beyond the traditional association of money with time and effort. This episode also empowers women specifically, offering mindset shifts and practical strategies to take control of their financial worth and career progression—independent of external factors like the gender pay gap. Ready to stop leaving money on the table? Join us and kickstart your journey to earning what you deserve!

Join us for an exclusive workshop on June 26th to Finally Earn Your Worth. Secure your ticket at www.balanceinstitute.com/earnyourworth

Episode Transcript

INTRO: Welcome to Balance and Beyond, the podcast for ambitious women who refuse to accept burnout as the price of success. Here, we’re committed to empowering you with the tools and strategies you need to achieve true balance, where your career, relationships and health all thrive, and where you have the power to define success on your own terms. I honour the space you’ve created for yourself today, so take a breath, and let's dive right in…

Would you like to earn more money? Who wouldn't? Today, I'm going to be pulling back the curtain, and giving you three reasons why you are not earning money. That's right. You are leaving money on the table, and I see this time and time again. We're not just talking about a little bit of money that is being left on the table. We are talking about tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, which, over the course of a career, can end up being millions. That's right. You could be leaving millions of dollars on the table. 

Now, what you do with your money is up to you. But, I want to ensure that you are paid your worth, and that you aren't inadvertently stopping that money from flowing, that you rightly have earned and deserve, coming to you now, in a blatant plug. Before I talk about these three reasons, we want to encourage you to register for a workshop I'm running starting Wednesday the 26th of July. Sorry, the 26th of June. Let's get that date right in 2024. And this is teaching you how to finally earn your worth. 

So, over the course of 90 minutes, I'm going to reveal everything I know about what's stopping you, what's the framework you need, how do you negotiate and actually get the money that you deserve, and stop leaving all of this on the table. So, details will be in the show notes, but you can visit balanceinstitute.com/earnyourworth. This is a paid workshop, but I guarantee you this is going to be critical in unlocking tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, if you follow what I share. 

So, let's talk about not just the money in itself, and we're going to be doing another episode on money mindset. But actually, what is stopping you from earning what you are worth? Let's first off, talk about money as an inherent thing that we have in our lives. Money, believe it or not, is not good or bad. We all have a money story, and it's the meaning that we give money that actually creates all the emotion and all the charge about it. 

Money is simply something that we use in exchange for goods. Before we had money, we used to barter. So, things have always had an inherent value, and we've used money as a way of forming a currency to better reflect that. Instead of saying, “Well, I'll give you one pig for your cow”, we've now gone, “Well, I don't have a cow to give you, but I want to get your pig, all right?” Well, let's introduce this thing called “money” as a way to make it easier for goods and services, and everything in our world, to be exchanged between individuals. 

When we talk about money, and what is possible when you unlock this, I want to give you some context. We have had some massive, massive wins in our community lately. We've got Annie, who's talking about an extra 50k, when she got a new job. We've had Rachel, who got an 11% pay rise within three months of finishing our program. Karen doubled her salary, and took on an executive position. 

So when you unlock this information, and when you stop these blocks, I am telling you that there is serious money here waiting for you. And this isn't just if you're a senior executive. I'm seeing this across all industries, everywhere. So, let us talk about what actually is going on, and what is stopping you from earning what you deserve. 

So, the first piece that I need to start off with, and of course you’re going to learn more about this in the workshop, is you don’t believe your own worth. And by that, I mean, we are very often paid in alignment with where we see our own value. So, if we value ourselves at 50k a year, there’s a pretty good chance we’re going to earn 50k a year. 

And, generally speaking, you can never actually earn more than you’re able to tolerate. And wealth is all about not only just making money, it’s about receiving it. And I see so many women hit their money ceiling, and believe it or not, they self-sabotage, or they spend it, or they give it away.Because they haven’t done the work to actually expand how much money they can hold, how much money that they can receive, which is all a really big part of this. 

So, money, when we start talking about it, I need to flag, is going to bring up a million and one weeds in your garden. This is why, as part of my Blissful Alliance, and some of my follow-on programs after my 12-week signature program, we do work on money, because it shows up everywhere. And the beauty of money work, is it's a limiting belief, it’s a huge weed in our garden. It continues to share the love. 

And by that you think, “Right, I've done this work.” “I'm raising my money ceiling.” “I'm stopping myself, I'm not holding myself back, I'm taking what's on the table.” Then, you hit a new level and you go “Whoa, here comes some new limiting beliefs I have about money.” So, it's work that we continually get to do. 

And if you want abundance in your life, if you want financial freedom, if you are not doing money mindset work, then anything that you're doing around budgeting, or investment management, or reading books like the ‘Intelligent Investor’ or ‘Barefoot Investor.’ If you're not doing the work on yourself at the same time around your money mindset, you're going to find that you're getting very, very little traction. 

So, we talk about not believing in our own worth. We have to be in alignment, I mentioned before that we've got to raise our money ceiling. We've got to see the value that we bring and I've gotten so good at working this out. If people are in alignment, I can have somebody say to me, “What's your worth?” And put a monetary value on it. And this could be a salary, this could be if you're a business owner, maybe it's a profit number, or revenue number, and I'll say
“What salary do you want?” And they'll go “120 grand.” “Nope, I don't believe it.” 

And I can play with them, and I can get them to say other numbers. I go, “You believe that one.” “You don't believe that one.” So, until you actually believe that you are worth whatever number you are saying, you will not get it, because you are not in alignment. And by this you might go into a job interview and say, “I'm worth 250 grand.” 

And logically you're like, “Yeah, I should be able to get that.” Well, if your insides are going, “Oh no, oh no, oh no, but what about … ?” You will not get that money, and they will offer you something much lower. And they will lowball their offer, because they will realize that you are not ready to receive that amount of money. 

What shifts in how we show up, when we don't believe our own worth, is a really important piece here about external validation. And as we grow up as kids, we're always looking for approval. A “yes”, or permission from our parents. “Can I have a drink?” “Can I have a snack?” “Yes, you can.” And particularly for many women who are listening to this podcast. Well, you've grown up as a high achiever, and you've been someone who strives for excellence, and strives for perfection, in all its various forms. 

However, there's never a ceremony where we're pulled aside and told, “Hey, you know that thing where you're always asking everybody else for feedback?” “You're always asking everybody else for permission?” “You're wondering what everybody else thinks?” “Yeah, you need to stop doing that, and it's time to trust yourself.” 

Instead, we lean harder and harder into, “What does society think I should do?” Or “What does my friend think I should do?” Or “What do the mums at the school gate think that I should be doing?” So, we project all of this uncertainty we have about ourselves. and we've completely lost access to our intuition. And we forecast it, or we almost vomit, or project it onto perceived others. And then we wait for feedback from someone, and it never, ever comes. So this is a really big part of what we need to learn to do is actually start valuing ourselves. Because if we don't believe it, nobody else is going to either. 

Second piece is, it’s really important for you to share, to understand, about why you are not earning your worth, and you are leaving income on the table, is that you probably have your identity, you have your values, you have a belief that connects money with time. And again, this stems from our childhood. 

Even when we first enter the workforce, most of us are on “trading-time-for-dollar” type work. I was a checkout chick, as we call it here. I worked in a supermarket, and then I worked at a bar, and I was paid by the hour. So, I would do an hour's work, and I would get an hour's money, and it was all about extending my day, if I wanted more money. 

And then when I was casual, I was hourly, I was timed, and so it was never about being efficient, it was never about outcomes, it was always just about time. And once again, there's never this ceremony that says, “Hey honey, you're beyond the time-for-dollars transaction.” “Now it's actually time for you to trade time, for influence, and time for impact.” And those things aren't necessarily a one-to-one ratio. 

I know that I can get on a coaching call with somebody, and I can turn around, and in that one hour I can save them years, months, weeks, whatever it may be. I can have them make a shift that would take them years, or months, or weeks to do by themselves. And that's really hard to put a price on. I can't just say, “Oh well, that hour equals that amount of money.” No, you have to learn to transcend that, and this is really where shifting your identity away from thinking about output, and hours, and how much you've done, and that “get-shit-doneness” about ourselves, that we too often are attached to. Because that is all a variation of attaching our worth to time, or to hours, or to output. 

So what happens then, is if we feel like we want to earn more, then there's this automatic link that says, “Right, if I want to earn more, I have to work harder, and I have to work longer.” And I hear this so often. “Well, I'd like to take the promotion, but I'm already working 60 hours a week as it is, and I can't work anymore.” All I hear when I hear that comment is “ding, ding, ding, ding, ding” limiting belief, money equals time, and that is fundamentally not the case, but it is until you stop believing it, until you learn to unshackle it, and start seeing your worth from a different perspective. 

Because, until you unshackle that belief as well, what you're going to find is that you will sit at work, and things will take longer than they need to, because maybe you feel like you haven't done enough. Or, you know, rather than clocking off at three, and being super productive in the morning, you feel like you have to sit there until 5pm, or 5:30pm, or 6pm, because, “Oh my gosh, my staff are working later.” “What do they even think?” “Think of me, I'm not pulling my hours.”

If you're listening to this, I have to say there's a really good chance you've pulled in way more than your fair share of hours. And if I was to look at your hourly rate, as I do with many women who come to me very often, they could earn more working at McDonald's. They might be on a super big salary, but they're working evenings, they're working in the morning, they're working on the train, or the bus, or in the car, they're making phone calls, they're thinking about work on the weekends. 

If I was to work out your hourly rate for every hour that you're thinking about work, you turn around and go, “Oh my gosh!” “I could literally go be a checkout chick, and probably earn more money, and have less stress.” So, this is the big, big, big thing that we need to do. You need one of the last pieces. You've got to disconnect this “dollars-from-time” mentality. 

If you still have this belief, and if you still think that it's all about working hard, it's all about hard work, these are some limiting beliefs that you have probably inherited from your parents. And, yes, I'm all for a strong work ethic, I am all for working hard. However, you deserve to be paid for the outcomes and the influence that you have, not your output. 

You are not making widgets. If you're in my world, you are not working in a factory where you are paid. You work “x-money-hours” and you get paid per-widget that you produce. The things that you produce are largely with your mind, and they are very, very difficult to measure. You're improving procedures, you're leading teams, you're delegating, you're driving change. The exponential impact of all that, when you really hone in on what it is, and how it works, everything can change when you dismantle that belief. 

And finally, the last reason that you are not earning more money is that you have a scarcity mindset around money, and again next week, I'm going to do an entire episode on redefining money. However, along with some of this conditioning that we have, is the belief that there is not enough money to go around. And there's never enough. You don't have enough, and it's going to run out. All of that comes from a place of fear. 

Now, women come to me and say, “Jo, how can I not have that belief?” “Have you not seen my mortgage repayments?” “Have you not seen how much it costs to live right now?” “Have you not seen my bank balance?” And I get that it can be very difficult to understand that money actually is infinite. It is not finite. But, we very much live in a scarcity driven mindset, because it encourages more consumption. 

And this is where, a lot of the time, our beliefs about how money works are fundamentally wrong. And meanwhile, women say to me, “Oh Jo, I want to manifest more money.” Yeah, but if you are spending your entire life vibrating in fear, it is not going to come to you, my friend. It's absolutely never going to come to you, because you are living in fear the moment that you feel like you need more money. What does that say about your current situation? It says you don't have enough. That's lack, that is fear. 

Because if we drill into that, if you don't have enough, what happens if you run out? “Oh well, I'm going to have to lose my house.” “I'm going to be on the street!” “I'm going to be homeless!” “I'm going to die!” Sounds dramatic, but that's where your subconscious mind actually goes. And so, now it feels life or death, that you need to get more. You get more, because you don't have enough. And yet, that just builds this perpetual cycle of, “I don't have enough.” 

And then I tell you, as somebody who has grown a business exponentially, how money works. And you will know this if you've ever had a pay rise. It's never enough. Because, the goalposts keep moving. Your income will rise along with your expenses, and you can say to me, “Yes, Jo, I'm disciplined.” But, you start moving up in terms of your wealth. You'll have different holidays, maybe you end up buying different cars, you send your children to different schools, and so it will always never be enough. 

Which is why it is so, so, so important for you to learn about what an abundance mindset, when it comes to money, actually is. How do you vibrate in this state of gratitude, and love, and abundance, knowing that it will come? And I'm not talking about sitting on the couch, and putting your hands together and going, “I'm going to have a million dollars.” It doesn't work that way, but you've got no chance of unlocking more money, of earning more money, of being offered that promotion, or being offered that pay rise, if you are perpetually living in this cycle of fear, and not-enoughness. 

So, these are the beautiful three reasons why you are not earning more money. I could go on for hours about this topic. And there are many, many, many other reasons why you aren't earning more money. But for now, I feel like these are a really good introductory taster. And what you will see is, I'm not talking here about the gender pay gap, I'm not talking about unconscious bias, I'm not talking about quotas. All of these are external factors. 

But I want to really focus on what are the things that matter to you, and that are more within your control. And, yes, we are all working to close the gender pay gap. And, yes, we need legislation, and we need reform. All of these things. I'm fully in support of those things, but I want women to take more control of what's going on in between their ears. 

So that when those opportunities come up, so when the promotions come up, so when the negotiation comes up, you don't shrink, you don't cower, you don't think that in you having a pay rise, you're taking it away from somebody else, as much as work will turn around and say, “There's only a bucket.” “If you take that, then there's nothing left for so-and-so.” 

This isn't about it being a “dog-eat-dog” world. This is about recognizing your worth, and what you deserve. And there are many, many ways to ensure everybody around you gets to enjoy equal amounts of abundance. So that, my friend, is what I want to leave you with today. I want you to think about, “What is your worth?” and “How much do you actually believe in any of the numbers that you are saying?” 

I want you to ponder, “Do you have a belief linking money-to-hours, or time, or output?” And, “When you think about money, are you often vibrating in fear?” “Is it not enough?” “Is it never enough?” And imagine what you could shift if you change them, I look forward to seeing you at our workshop. 

That link again is, you can visit balanceinstitute.com/earnyourworth. I'm going to be giving you practical, tangible strategies. This is everything I love here about how we can actually stop leaving this money on the table and get you your worth. I look forward to seeing you there.

OUTRO: Thank you for joining us today on the Balance and Beyond Podcast. We're so glad you carved out this time for yourself. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend who might need to hear this today. And if you're feeling extra generous, leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice would mean the world. If you’re keen to dive deeper into our world, visit us at www.balanceinstitute.com to discover more about the toolkit that has helped thousands of women avoid burnout and create a life of balance, and beyond.Thanks again for tuning in, and we'll see you next time on the Balance & Beyond Podcast.