Asking for more money as a long-term subcontracted freelancer THOUGHT DOWNLOAD

After the messy imperfect action call I phoned my boss and said “it’s about time I ask for more money”. We’re having a meeting on Thursday to discuss it. I am self employed but he runs a business so up till now he has dictated the rate he deems his company can afford to pay me – at the moment he charges £21+VAT per hour for me. So the customer is paying £25per hour and I get £16per hour. I’ve worked for them for 5 years and I now run a small team, but have started taking my own customers and reducing the number of days I do for them because I charge my personal customers £25 per hour and I’m not VAT registered so I get all of it.

We’ve had similar meetings every couple of years since I started working for them. Last time I advocated for my staff getting a pay rise too, and they got it.
I know that I bring value to the company – I bring work in by suggesting things to customers that will make their gardens better and getting them to agree to more work. The company would have to recruit someone else to offer design without me, and they refer to me as their “plant specialist” when it comes to customers asking about best practice in plant care. Which they wouldn’t be able to offer either.

If I was acting from enoughness and the excitement and curiosity that comes when I think “lets see how wrong I can get this” I would just go straight in and say that I need to charge them what I charge my other customers, and if they can’t pay that, then they can no-longer afford me. But with them I get opportunities to do garden design work laid out on a platter with support around me to learn as I do, as he sorts out the landscaping and the project management. Also there is work year-round with them that there might not be with my own private customers. So how much value to I put onto that?

I mean if I was acting with “lets see how wrong i can get this” I would decide that the charge to the customer ought to be £40 per hour for design work. For a garden designer I am very cheap on an hourly rate. But most garden designers charge per garden.

I guess they could just use me better, and get me in to do garden consultations, write down everything that needs to be done, and pay less experienced people to do it. That’s what I’d like I reckon, alongside gardening my favourite gardens and doing some design.

The idea of asking for this feels right, but I am already imagining (causing myself to experience) the nervous system activation that I will have if I get anything other than a positive response. My Mum is at the beginning of the process of dying and so my nervous system is already in quite an unusual state.
How can I be brave enough to go through whatever nervous system response I have when I say “you can’t afford me any more” or “I want to do this job for this amount of money for you” without spiralling into all of the negative self-talk that has been so painful since Mum started deteriorating because having “negative” emotions is something I shame myself for and I’ve been having quite a lot more of them recently and haven’t really felt like I can move through them all.

 

Answer:

What if you don’t need to be brave at all? You have an underlying belief that you are going into some sort of battle with your boss that requires courage. Byron Katie says “defense if the first act of war.”

Give yourself compassion for the parts of you that are scared and activiated. Wrap the part of you that has lots of feelings about your mum in a warm blanket of love.  Then use the tools you have here in TFC to recognize that you are creating a story about this conversation based only on your fears and your past. That rarely serves us. Your brain is actually disregarding the parts in the past that you have gotten exactly what you asked for. Why is it easier to advocate for your team than yourself?

Explore these questions: What could I be wrong about? Who do I want to be? What is your best case scenario outcome? If I believed in myself 100%, how would I feel? Spend your “spoons” there and see what you can come up with.