Market Value
You probably have very valuable skills and experience worth a great deal to other companies but do not realize how much value. Your value could be deep enough that you could begin your own business.
Discovering and uncovering the market value of your strengths at the halftime of your life is absolutely life-altering when deciding what to do next. Why? When you become aware of your value to the marketplace, your mind is unleashed and you can more accurately paint a viable picture of a new, rewarding future.
Many women transitioning to start their own entrepreneurial endeavor realize that a lot of their skills came from their experience, their specialized study and their wisdom and abilities they’ve developed over the years. Those things by themselves have market value and that is we're going to approach here. However, the value should be packaged right before being offered to the marketplace. It may surprise many as to what the value of those abilities are worth.
Percentages
If you make $80,000 a year, a question we might ask is, How much would investors need to set aside to generate $80,000 a year? If we assume a 2% interest, the answer is $4 million.
So one way to look at your market value is that you are worth $4 million investable assets. Not bad! If we looked at it in another, but similar way, we could ask, What kind of output is worth $80,000 a year?
When answering the question, we need to put you in a package of sorts, kind of the way a bond fund bundles lots of different bonds together and their combined yield determines its market value.
For example, you run an IT department. Your skills and experience may include: a number of level certificates earned, identifying and eliminating certain bugs that continue to be problems for other firms, you've learned how to manage employees who tend to be loners and somewhat defiant in their quest for independence, and you keep the whole troupe on time with schedule tracking.
When you bundle those characteristics together, they are much more valuable than any one skill set by itself and certainly more valuable than a generic IT Officer.
Market value usually comes down to what people are willing to pay for. For instance, I've been a musician for a number of years and know lots of likeminded artists who exclaim to themselves, I've got this great project... I’ve got this great album! and then no one buys it. That kind of experience begs the question, What is it really worth? Many people have great ideas…but only for enterprise destined to be a nonprofit! If we want to make money, we have to uncover the market value.
What are People Looking For?
So we start with what people are looking for. Google AdWords is a great place to see what keywords (searchable terms) people are searching for.
Knowledge and expertise are heavily sought out terms. Take a moment to do a Google search on the word expert. My search uncovered over four Trillion responses! How does one cut through in that flooded marketplace? To drill down on this a bit further, let’s approach a marketable skill that doesn’t get talked about as much: relational skills. If you talk to any person running a business, what they would probably tell you is that 20 or 30% of their problems have to do with sales, manufacturing and marketing and about 70% of their problems have to do with people.
So as an exercise, start by writing down your own skills and developed relational skills and expertise. Once you have this list, do a Google search on the terms. You will be fascinated by the results. Some are looking for those skills, but many others are marketing skills just like yours. Where do they see the value? How are they posturing themselves? How much to they say they are worth? Could you be worth as much or more? Try it. I can almost guarantee you will be blown away.
What are Your Skills?
When creating the list of your skills, make sure you include what are called soft skills. These are the relational management and human resource skills we develop along the way as we build our careers. In a technological and analytics driven market, soft skills are growing exponentially in value.
As I mentioned above, many surveys have reported that somewhere north of 80%, all CEO or business owners confess that 70% of their problems at work involve not delivery problems nor problems created by competition, but by having to deal with people in their organizations.
Individuals, who over the course of their career have developed relational skills have a value, if packaged correctly, that can be marketed in a tremendous way. This is a soft skill that is not merely knowledge based. We don't go to a university to get a certificate and it’s not a retail product you can purchase. However, it’s a very real and valuable skill the marketplace is more and more willing to pay for.
A growing need for this skill is especially apparent in family owned businesses. Many of those businesses are falling apart because of diverse personalities. This makes creating an exit-plan extremely difficult. Bringing in an outside person with relational soft skills, along with mediating tools, is of extreme value and has the power to save the company. This is not to discount the value of also hiring an attorney, but if there is no effective communication, there is no workable plan.
Research is another valuable skill that has huge market value in today’s entrepreneurial society. As aspiring authors write books, they need research. As speakers craft speeches, they need research. A typical researcher has the capacity to sit, study and put together disjointed facts into a coherent train of thought. The whole medical insurance industry needs help communicating to corporations the best plan for them. This takes research and interpretation of the laws. As we know, even Congress doesn’t understand them! As artificial intelligence is growing by leaps and bounds, business applications, along with research is extremely valuable and something a corporation will pay pretty big dollars for.
Here are Four Short Takeaways
Takeaway One: Define a Unique Strength of Yours that Others aren’t using yet, or good at. If you can figure out how to make money at it, you’ve got an opportunity to create a stand-alone business.
Takeaway Two: Put transferable Skills into a System that can help Others. Put it together in a process. (Like Hero Mountain®) Selling a one-off product is great for cash flow, but creating a system is sustainable for the long-term benefits and will pay off.
Takeaway Three: Use Automation. Figure out how to automate part of your business with a structure that will help you manage not only your business, but your life. Also, don’t back off from technology. Learn enough to be able to hire and manage the right people.
Takeaway Four: Determine Your R.O.I. This may feel impossible at first if you are starting a new side business or even launching a startup. It usually takes money to make money, although not always a huge amount! Look at the numbers and see where you are, but don’t get stuck there. Give yourself some time and a little grace to build! I just know you can do this! Invest in yourself enough to create leverage for a greater R.O.I.
Speaking of R.O.I., I have a new resource that will cost you absolutely nothing! The Side Business Template will help you get started, or even scale your present business! Download it here now! https://goalsforyourlife.com/sidebusinesstemplate/
1,277 words
