Highly Skilled but Underpaid? 3 Ways to Fix It

Do you have valuable skills, but they don’t translate into more income?

I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time and money exploring this topic. If you’re not making as much money as you deserve for your skill level, here’s what you should look at.

WHERE YOU SHOULD START

Focus on the outcome. This applies whether you’re a business owner, salesperson, or employee.

If you’re a project manager, don’t sell your project management skills. Sell your ability to help your boss get out of the weeds, have a life, have happier customers, get money collected sooner, cut costs from followup work, and more.

Fill a bigger need. If you’re a business owner, focus on the businesses who benefit the most from what you have to offer. Sometimes, you can find adjacent markets where you can make a few changes and have a much higher demand for what you offer.

If you’re an employee, this can be as simple as taking your exact skills to a company that’s in growth mode.

Know your realistic worth and ask for it. Sometimes we’re underpaid simply because we don’t know the market rate and don’t ask for it.

If you’re an employee, consider your local job market, as well as your true business value to your employer.

BUT WHAT IF YOU GET STUCK?

When you get stuck, I’ve found the following important places to look:

Are you afraid? Do you feel inferior? The game inside your head will keep you from taking advantage of great opportunities. If this is you, know that your brain is hardwired to keep you safe. You will need to lean into the discomfort.

If you’ve had bad experiences with unhealthy bosses or clients in the past, you might need to take some time to recognize it, embrace forgiveness, learn your part in the journey, and question the beliefs you formed from it.

Is your skill non-transferable? If so, you need to look 1-2 layers beneath your skill. Some people might call you a “tech person” or a “secretary” or a “manager”. All of those might be good. But what is the deeper talent beneath that?

• Is it an innate ability to motivate people?

• Can you take what’s in place and optimize it?

• Are you able to bring two different people on the same page?

• Do you instinctively bring order out of chaos?

The clearer you are about the underlying talent, the more opportunities open up to you.

Do you feel like you’re operating at 50% of your potential? If so, it’s possible that you haven’t tapped into your true talent. Many of us settle into life—we take a job, we get married, we buy a house, we have kids. Before we know it, we feel like we’ve got golden handcuffs. We’re doing okay, but we know we’re not really tapped into our zone of genius.

No need to take wild moves, but even small steps into that zone of genius will help your day-to-day.

WHAT ABOUT YOU?

I want to share some examples of what this looks like.

I’ve had the privilege of helping someone leave a nonprofit and go into sales. When we edited their resume, they said, “Wow, that’s impressive!” (We didn’t lie or exaggerate—we just showed the true impact they had at their places of employment.) In their first year of sales, they sold $2MM of furniture, twice their quota. (This isn’t a financial guarantee. Your situation m

I’ve helped people discover unconventional sales methods that worked for them—from first class tickets for single day outings to road trip for a dinner organized by a friend. Each of them custom-tailored to the person and their situation. (Yours will be different.)

I’ve helped a nurse who loved having her hands in the dirt see the value of that, leading to her giving herself permission to spend more time there. This fueled the often-grueling day-to-day service she gives to her patients.

I’ve helped a business owner make a simple tweak to meetings with his team members that felt like a deep weight fell off his shoulders.

And probably many more that I’ve forgotten about…

In short, I’ve got a knack for seeing what makes people come alive, and helping them spot opportunity that they’ve overlooked.

But what about you?

What valuable skill do you have that’s not making as much money as you’d like?

Drop a comment below and let me know!