Focusing on Value

The market analyses I’m reading these days all recommend value investing, focusing on fundamentals and not getting carried away with the glitz and glitter of high-priced buzz stocks, or trying to ride the tide of the broad market which seems more likely to trend down before it trends up.

In my own consulting practice, I’ve been thinking about the Value of my own work, the fees I charge, and the situations I am “selling” into or being asked to invest myself in. Jill and I had an excellent dinner with John Cottrell this week, talking about the selling process and proper valuing of the work we do.

Then this came through from my old buddy Zelle Nelson, as follow-up to the conversations we had a couple weeks ago while he was visiting London…

�How much are your notebooks?�

�How much do you want to pay?�

�How much do you charge?�

�I don�t do it that way.�

Marea cocks her head. �What�s that mean?�

�You need to decide why you want it. That way it will have more value to you � and then whatever you decide to give me for it, it will have more value to me as well.�

�You support yourself this way?�

Read more… from Kate Wenner’s Dancing with Einstein. This is more elegant, but essentially not so different from how I’ve been selling my work for some years now. Focusing afresh on value and thinking that the last of the four practices might be called just that — valuing. This seems consistent with the making, sustaining, realizing, appreciating, acknowledging and rewarding dimensions of that fourth practice of open space.

© 1998-2020 Michael Herman. All Rights Reserved.