Establishing Your Personal Value Proposition

Whether we care to admit it or not, we live in a world that is driven by the value which we’ve placed on the rectangular pieces of paper we’ve officially adopted as legal tender. As someone who is active in the field of the finances, I know that it goes even further than that, becoming quite a bit more mystified with money that essentially only exists over the world’s network of computers. I can never even begin to try and change the system – certainly not by myself, so the next best thing is to try and master it, which is a lifelong quest of mine. It’s also another reason for the entire existence of this blog.

So anyway, money comes and goes, especially when you consider it from the point of view of handling physical dollars and other currencies. The important thing to consider with regards to that is how much value gets transferred during the process of the money representing that value being exchanged. Are you getting the dollar equivalent value for each dollar you spend?

Chances are you aren’t, which is why enterprise exists in the first place. It’s not such a nice thought to have to entertain because then it means for anybody to ever make any profit and for anyone to ever get into any sort of business in the first place, they would engage in an exchange which has THEM gaining more value in order to account for the profit. That’s not entirely the case though, because of the existence of perceived value!

If someone charges me the equivalent of 50 cents extra to deliver a fresh loaf of bread to my door each morning as opposed to me having to drive or walk to the bakery to get it, I’m definitely getting value out of the arrangement – value which I’m more than willing to pay that extra 50c for. Meanwhile the guy who is doing the deliveries probably has this arrangement with my neighbours and many other people, so the costs of him offering this service are lowered considerably, to the point that they actually make a profit.

That brings into focus how to establish your own, personal value proposition and it goes way beyond your official academic qualifications and your work experience, although those things count a lot, admittedly.

If a group of people in your network will gladly come to you for advice on pretty much any topic or on a specific topic for instance, that’s some value you can monetise – personal value that’s worth something. For example, I could very easily have thrown my hands back and said I know nothing at all about planning weddings, when my sister was planning her wedding, but instead I contributed by suggesting some save the date templates which could be used in the designing of their save the date postcards which were to be circulated to announce the big day.

This is the kind of personal value which pretty much costs nothing to acquire and yet it’s personal value which people will feel they need to repay you for, once you share it with them.