192. Charging Your Worth as a WOC and Being an Imperfect Ally
What Is Your Worth?
“Charge your worth.”
It’s a common refrain, but it can carry a different weight for members of the BIPOC Community in ways that make it difficult to resonate with.
Unpacking what worth means, how it relates to your ancestry, how it relates to your identity, and how it connects with your values isn’t an easy process.
In this replay from Elaine Lou Cartas’s Color Your Dreams podcast, Erica, India, and Elaine unpack what it means to charge your worth as women of color and allies, the importance of women of color and allies working together, and how charging what you’re worth impacts how you can give back and be accessible to your community.
Listen on your favorite podcast player or keep reading to learn:Defining individualism and interdependence
DefiWhy “charge your worth” gets complicated for members of the BIPOC community
Why accounting for your needs in your pricing is about more than literal costs
How being clear on your values supports your offers, content, and knowing when it’s time to make a shift
How “cancel culture” misses the nuance in accountability and Imperfect Allyship®
Creating Opportunity Through Authentic Relationships
Elaine Lou Cartas (she/her) is a business and career coach and speaker, serving clients in 23 different countries.
Elaine specializes in helping women of color entrepreneurs and industry leaders land their dream career and create business opportunities through authentic relationships both online and offline. As a result, clients have made multi 6-figure and 7-figure incomes, received $25k raises, earn 6-figure corporate salaries, transitioned into new careers and created their own global businesses.
Elaine has over a decade of experience as a political grassroots organizer, and nonprofit fundraiser. One of her proudest accomplishments was raising $1 million in student scholarships in 6 months, providing 200+ scholarships. Today, Elaine is the founder of the Color Your Dreams Movement™, an initiative to inspire and support women of all colors to create their dream business and life.
She has been featured in Forbes, Business Insider, Badassery Magazine, and Pasadena Magazine, and Good Morning La La Land. She has spoken around the world including Sweden and Indonesia, as well as Universal Music Studios. She leads monthly community events in the Los Angeles area. She lives in Pasadena, California with her boyfriend, and loves boxing.
Values and Visibility
On the Color Your Dreams Podcast, Erica Courdae (she/her) introduces herself as a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion coach and consultant, and co-founder of The Pause on the Play® Community and podcast.
In her coaching and consulting work, Erica supports leaders and individuals who want to “be better” as they navigate how to be an Imperfect Ally.®
India Jackson (she/her) says she works in branding and visibility through a values-centered lens, making sure that branding and visibility efforts align with a company’s values and are expressed with integrity and intention.
Erica says that her coaching and consulting work has been a natural progression of the DEI work she’d been doing unconsciously.
“A lot of it was done previously, and I just didn’t realize that that was what I was doing. I didn’t realize that I was coaching people, I didn’t realize that I was consulting people on what matters to you and whether or not you’re actually showcasing that.”
Her long-term friendship with India and the work they’d done together over the years led them to form Pause on the Play® together.
“As we continued to evolve and have more and more ways that our work intersects, we really just hit this point of like, hey, this additional thing that we’ve realized that we are both extremely passionate about and is showing up in this iteration, this needs to happen.”
India adds that for her, she was witnessing businesses changing the way they presented themselves publicly, but there was sometimes a missing piece in terms of company culture and how those stated values were expressed internally.
“I really realized there was this need for the side of what Erica does simultaneously happening with what the public [witnesses]."
Charging Your Worth as a Black Woman
In her work as a business coach, Elaine says pricing structures are a frequent topic of conversation. She also says that she does get pushback on her rates from fellow women of color. Her typical response is to note that she is the CEO of her company and she has a team that she values and pays them what they’re worth.
She asks Erica and India for their thoughts on what it means to charge your worth as women of color.
India says that when she started her photography business in 2008, she never knew what to charge. She didn’t come from a background where she knew business owners, her college photography program didn’t cover how to run a business, and she would see advice about pricing, but “I also had to take into account that I am a woman and I’m a Black woman…[and] that played into things.”
She says that the phrase charge your worth didn’t resonate with her in a way that made her comfortable charging more for her services, so she continued to underprice and undervalue herself for a long time.
Eventually, she was introduced to two women, business coach Karen Graves and financial behaviorist Jacquette Timmons who inspired her and helped her dig into why “charge your worth,” didn’t resonate with her.
“They both presented the idea that when you look at charging and worth being in the same sentence, and you put that in the context of being people of color, you have to recognize that many times you’re asking someone of color to attach their worth to a dollar amount.”
For India, that meant grappling with the ancestral trauma of slavery, knowing that her ancestors were literally bought and sold for less than she was charging for a photo shoot, and interrogating “how does that play into my mindset about what I charge? How does that play into my identity of my worth as a human being?”
She continues, “When I say I’m going to charge my worth, well, I’m worth so much more than anyone could ever pay as a human.”
Charging to Meet All of Your Needs
Erica says that for her, the biggest thing that comes up when discussing charging what you’re worth is limiting beliefs around money.
“That puts us in a place to where there are all these lies about who has money, who doesn’t, who can afford things, who can’t, and it all gets convoluted…We have all these limiting beliefs that come up to the party that are all ‘itty bitty shitty committee’ and they’re lies.”
Those lies get in the way of assessing what your needs really are. “If we’re talking about charging my worth…we can’t have that conversation until we start being honest about what are my needs? And we have to be honest there first. And a lot of us aren’t giving ourselves space to want or need.”
Elaine adds that in addition to meeting their basic needs and lifestyle goals with what they’re charging, she also witnesses women of color not accounting for the emotional labor and output their work requires and ending up burned out.
Erica says that part of creating balance is being “brutally, scathingly honest with yourself about what you’re doing that has a value attached to it. Because we are doing a lot of things that we’re not attaching value to that we should be compensated for.”
In her coaching and consulting business, Erica notes that she has to account for the time it takes to set and hold her boundaries. “Because I used to have a story of well, I’m just talking. And the reality is, I get paid to talk. You want what’s in my brain…and that costs money.”
She continues, “I have to be honest with myself of where am I laboring and where have I chosen to work for free and where am I not okay with that?...Too often as a Black woman, we are taught to give even to our own deficit and so then I have nothing. I can’t support anybody that way…And those are the things that you have to have awareness of when you think about ‘charging your worth.’ Because the reality is, you can’t afford me.”
Creating a Financial Legacy
India adds that when she began to rethink her pricing, in addition to the emotional labor piece, she considered what kind of financial legacy she wanted to create. “I didn’t want to just be here to make money for myself,” which means her compensation includes giving back to her community, offering award seats to programs, and working to create financial equity.
Erica says that many people think about giving back or donating, whether it’s time or money, from a place of it taking away from what they have, but “you should be pricing to include your generosity and your give backs.” When your pricing doesn’t account for that, giving back from a place of deficit won’t feel joyful or satisfying.
India says that is part of why it’s so vital to be clear on your values before you create product or service offerings. “If you know your values and you know what your goals are as a human, as well as your goals as a company or a brand…you can factor that in,” to your pricing and your schedule.
Elaine says when she got pushback on her pricing at a free event, she not only explained that she’s a CEO who leads a team, but also that her pricing allows her to do free events, and allows her to create free content like the podcast, while also paying for quality production. She adds that she is shifting away from providing free events and focusing on the podcast because it’s a more accessible and less energetically intense way for her to continue giving back.
Erica says she also thinks of the Pause on the Play® podcast as part of her give back, and adds that comments like “why do you charge so much” or asking what’s “enough” are difficult to address because too much and enough are so inherently subjective, and can change at any given moment.
India lays out the realities of producing a podcast, from the hours it takes to plan content, to recording time, to paying the production team for the audio editing and articles, “those things add up…you could be looking at anywhere from $500 and $3000 a month to produce a weekly podcast.”
Elaine says that her first in-person event–which was free to attendees– cost her $10,000 to produce and she had to put it all on her credit card. “I was like, I believe the universe is just gonna bring it back.”
She’s now pulling back from these events because the emotional labor they require and how she was feeling energetically about them was no longer in balance.
India says that “ensuring that when we show up for our readers and our listeners, that we’re showing up with a clear intention of what they can learn or take away to enhance their lives. And that requires space to take care of ourselves.”
Having Clear, Intentional Values
When it comes to creating content with intention, whether it’s a podcast, a newsletter, or social media posts, Elaine asks if Erica and India have advice on how to assess whether your content is servicing your values.
Erica responds that so many people make decisions about their content, their businesses, their give backs, how they spend their money, etc. without connecting it to their values and the impact they want to create.
So the first step is making sure that you are clear and intentional about your values.
“There’s just too much of this push to do the next thing, be the next thing, put out the next fill-in-the-blank, and it’s like, what fire are we rushing to? What is so urgent about this? What are you trying to do with this push for something that has no roots?”
India adds that in our current culture, “values” is overused to the point of abstraction. “But if your values are not rooted in what you will do and won’t do because of those values, then you need to revisit your values…How are we gonna back that up with actions?”
When It’s Time to Move On
Elaine shares her story of how she gradually pulled back on her free events over the course of a year. After her final event, which wasn’t as well attended as previous ones, “I just had to be honest with myself, I’m not having fun with this, and I’m pretty sure me promoting it, people could feel that energy. So this needs to stop.”
She’s also decided to end a program to focus on a different one and she says, “it’s really hard to realize that the business model I’ve created, I’m grateful for it, but it no longer aligns with me.”
And she’s noticed a lot of people expressing the same sentiment and talking about pivoting in their businesses or careers.
India says that if your energy around an offering doesn’t feel right, a good first question is to ask yourself if something is misaligned or no longer in alignment with you.
And she’s noticed that process in Elaine’s work and how she’s shifting from hosting events to hosting the podcast, knowing that Elaine strongly values presenting an example of a business led by a woman of color that charges a premium price and offers high-quality, accessible content as well.
Erica says the first thing to do when you have a product, service, or event that no longer serves you or your clients at the highest level, “is to not consider it your baby.”
Having that kind of emotional attachment to your offering makes it hard to let go when it’s time and can get tied too closely to your sense of self. And “if you do kind of have that thought in your head of it being a child, then you have to remember that children grow up…We cannot have codependent relationships with our businesses in ways that we also keep our own identities from being able to evolve.”
India adds that it’s worth rewinding and asking yourself why you started your business in the first place and what you wanted that to be, what you wanted it to feel like, how you wanted to spend your days. “It’s so important to reconnect with that and to hold space for the possibilities…Part of that pause is reconnecting with that and breaking up with the system that you may have come from in your past work to create a better and more improved and more equitable system today.”
Cancel Culture and Accountability
Elaine shifts the conversation to discussing Imperfect Allyship® and how that may play out with online cancel culture and calls for accountability.
Erica says she finds the framing of cancel culture challenging because on the one hand, there are incidents of “you have done something wrong and so therefore you are trash and you must be thrown out,” but that people also use the term when what is actually happening is a call for accountability.
She says we have to acknowledge that people make mistakes and not make that mistake their whole identity. “It’s a scarlet letter, so to speak, and that means we don’t believe in redemption, which is not what Imperfect Allyship® is.”
But, she notes, intent does not erase impact. “And where cancel culture is being branded wrongly is when people believe that my intent is enough, that you should now ignore how you feel or what happened.”
She says the important thing when we make a mistake is what happens next and that there is a lot of opportunity for nuance that gets lost when we’re using the term cancel culture.
Elaine brings up instances from 2021 and 2022–Joe Rogan’s COVID misinformation scandal at Spotify and the disparate responses to Olympic athletes Sha’Carri Richardson and Kamila Valieva’s substance testing results–as recent examples of cancel culture.
Erica disagrees that those athletes’ decisions were examples of cancel culture. “Those are about shitty systems of oppression that do not favor people that don’t look like the people that came out winners in the end of those situations.”
White Russian figure skater Valieva was allowed to continue to compete and will be able to return to future Olympics, while Black sprinter Richardson was suspended from competition by the US Anti-Doping Agency, and lost her opportunity for the Tokyo Olympics.
And Erica says the issue with Rogan and Spotify isn’t about cancel culture, but about “a lack of boundaries, a lack of clarity, a lack of what happens when a boundary is being violated, and a lack of understanding of what is and is not okay in a space and things being really gray and not dealt with until they had to…When you don’t deal with things until you have to, you made a clear decision.”
From her position as a Black woman, Erica says “we have to make our own decisions around what we choose to cancel or no longer participate in, and where we choose to stay, even if we don’t agree with it, because we want to…change what’s happening. We want to have more people that look like us to be able to be a part of it. We want to shift the dynamics that are happening. Because if everybody runs and it just turns into the misinformation space, how does that help?”
India adds that part of being an Imperfect Ally® is acknowledging when mistakes are made and trying to correct the mistakes, but also asking yourself, “is your allyship showing up in a place of pointing the finger at someone’s identity and [saying]...you’re a racist…versus saying that this specific behavior was racist, or the specific behavior was harmful, let’s figure out what to do about it.”
She also notes that in the midst of so many social media callouts of brands and individuals, “nowhere in the mix of that is a conversation happening about here’s what you can do to actually be supportive [of people of color.]”
Erica adds that it is the responsibility of an Imperfect Ally® to ask how they can provide support, “it is not for the people of color to have to do the work, to give the pass to the Imperfect Allies that I want you to feel good about yourself…You are the one that needs to be coming to me. I do enough labor.”
Elaine notes that she has had instances where something she has said or written has come across the wrong way, and she’s had her audience, community, or friends tell her that she made a mistake and been given the opportunity to fix it, and that’s why she pauses and runs content by others before she posts as part of her process.
Erica says that none of us can account for or address the experiences of every type of person before we put things out into the world, and that’s the progress not perfection piece of Imperfect Allyship®.
“We have to be open to understanding that we’re not always gonna get it right, but that there is a place to make amends. There’s a place to apologize. There’s a place to be able to learn.”
India adds that at some point, you are definitely going to get it wrong, and you’ll get it wrong more than once, regardless of your gender, race, education, industry, etc.
“When we can accept the fact that when you are digging into things like charging your worth, when you’re digging into things like being an ally, that you are going to make mistakes. And to acknowledge that, you then give yourself the opportunity to say, okay, well if I’m gonna fuck it up, I might as well fuck it up spectacularly because I was trying to do something amazing…instead of being in fear and doing nothing.”
On Working Together and Imperfect Allyship®
Elaine says that a good thing that came out of 2020 is more people acknowledging that they need to share their values and be more transparent about who they are and who they serve.
What she hasn’t liked observing is groups siloing off and “wanting to push diversity but not understanding [that] you have to work together to really celebrate and honor the differences.”
She asks Erica and India for their thoughts on people of color and allies working together and what it means to be an Imperfect Ally®.
Erica says there’s a place for both spaces where diverse groups come together and groups where people who share an identity to come together to process and work through things that “only people that maybe identify as you [do] can fully understand because you are living it. And then from there you have to figure out how it is that you feel comfortable, how it is that you feel safe to then combine with people.”
Challenges can arise when there are allies who aren’t actually quite ready and collaboration is forced too soon.
“We have to be able to have this place of…I have to figure out me before I can figure out how to combine. But when that possibility comes up, there are very powerful opportunities there. But we have to give people the place to get there in their own time.”
India agrees that it’s a both/and situation. In particular, she references Black people needing their own spaces to process the trauma of seeing footage of the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and other instances of police violence and brutality. “That is not the space to process trauma among allies. Some of those people needed a space of their own and then a space to come together with their allies to decide, how can we create change together?”
Elaine says she also experienced needing a place of her own to process as a first-generation immigrant, in her case, both in therapy and in community with people from her background.
At the same time, she notes that social media can get us stuck in viewing only “the same people that have the same things” and not having people with different backgrounds, beliefs, or viewpoints appear in your feed.
She mentions her background as a Democratic grassroots organizer and fundraiser, but when she moved into the nonprofit world, she was working with fundraisers who had worked in Republican politics, and being able to connect despite their different beliefs and trying to find common ground to move forward.
Erica says that part of Imperfect Allyship® is understanding that you are on a journey concurrent to other people’s, “and we’re all trying to figure that out while still understanding that even with what we’re doing separately, it may at some point impact someone else.”
It’s a journey of continuously trying to be better and do better, and staying open along the way. “You have to navigate that on a day to day, moment to moment basis.”
Two Questions to Ask Yourself
Elaine closes her episode by asking Erica and India for reflective questions that listeners and readers can ask themselves after taking in this episode.
Erica suggests starting by asking yourself what you want and what you need and being as honest as possible.
India recommends asking yourself what you want to be remembered for or what legacy you want to leave behind, and how that intersects with what you want and need.
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