6. The Esoteric Necessity of Well-Paid Home Service Founders

Okay, I know you saw the title on this and we're like, what the fuck is this chick going to talk about?

Exactly.

I love it.

You're going to have to allow me because I'm a woo woo babe.

Okay, an esoteric chick.

You can take the girl out of the metaphysical shop.

There we go.

But you can't take the metaphysical shop out of the girl.

Okay?

So this might sound absurd.

It might sound histronic and dramatic, and I love it.

I love it.

If this is not your cup of tea, please feel free to continue on on your journey.

Come back for a little bit less of a woo woo episode.

No hard feelings.

But for those of you who like to dabble, dabble in the unseen and get a little crazy, this is for you.

So just a caveat, this for me is fun, is a fun way to reframe the way we look at work, the way we look at money, the way we look at what we do.

I don't think that we need to ascribe spiritual importance for something to be important, for something to be special, for something to be worthy of being honored, paid well, et cetera.

But just the way my brain works, I do love diving into what seem to me to be spiritual principles.

And there is something that I feel like nobody is talking about in the home service industry.

And that is that the work we do is deeply spiritual, deeply esoteric, and as such deserves to be deeply and richly compensated.

I think personally that being well paid in the residential construction business is not just a nice goal, it's not a nice to have, it's a necessity.

Just as social workers, therapists who are helping us heal collectively deserve to be paid well and need to be paid well for the health of our collective, just like trash collectors need to be paid well because of the tremendous work they're doing.

I believe that you need to be paid well.

It is a matter of spiritual priority.

So here's the mechanics of it in my mind.

You are an alchemist.

You are doing high caliber alchemy.

You are taking cold, dead materials like wood, once it's been sawn, all that stuff, wire, pipe, and you are transmuting them and helping build a literal sanctuary.

We can't even put words around the importance of the home and how it is for walls and a roof and also so much more.

You are turning these houses into homes.

You're turning these houses into memory keepers, good, bad, ugly, generational in some instances.

That is high voltage magic.

You cannot run though high voltage magic through a low voltage wire if you are stressed, broke, and scraping by the circuit blows.

I don't know, I won't say I'm sure, I know I have had my low voltage seasons where I'm not being paid well, where I'm stressed, where I'm broke, and it shows up in the way that I show up in my work and life in general.

When I was in these spaces, the magic is not magicing the way it does when I am being amply paid, when I am flowing, when I am just in my zone of genius.

And a big part of all of this is money.

We like to pretend it's not.

We want to pretend that we're all altruistic, that only if I would do, I don't even, I wish I didn't even have to charge money, dah, dah, dah.

And you know, that might be true, right?

But money matters.

And money is a way that we sustain ourselves.

It gives us choices.

It gives us the ability to help others.

It gives us the ability to heal our world.

Honestly, money is just an exchange of energy.

It's just a, almost like a translation of energy and time and intention.

So to kind of drive this whole concept home, I want to get into what you actually do.

So you might tell me, Edie, I'm a roofer.

I climb up on there.

I tie myself off because I'm safety conscious.

You can't see me, but I'm wagging my finger and I replace the shingles and I do X, Y, Z. You may say, Edie, I'm a remodeler.

I go in and I remove that flooring.

I strip the flooring that's remaining and I put on new flooring and I knew the trim and dah, dah, dah.

And you might say, Edie, I'm a landscaper.

I chop that grass.

I put in some plants.

Okay.

Yes, you sure do.

But you also do so much more.

Take a plumber for example.

You aren't just fixing a pipe.

You're definitely not doing that.

You're not just fixing a pipe.

You are restoring the lifeblood flow of the home.

The movement of water and liquids through the home.

Without you, the system rots and it stinks and it stagnates, right?

Quite literally.

The electrician, you aren't just wiring a circuit.

You're bringing light into the darkness.

You're a conduit for the energy that allows a family to see each other, to gather, to live.

I mean, when we think about parts of the world increasingly less and less that have access to electricity and I was going to say the night and day difference quite literally, no pun intended, no pun intended, but she's got a South African accent right there.

No pun intended, but the quality of life, the change we see there and I'm sure we have all experienced having power outages and what a big difference that makes.

Even an hour, the things that we are so used to doing, the ways we gather, change.

For the remodeler, you aren't just knocking down walls.

You're reshaping the stages of human memory.

You're building the kitchen where they laugh over dinner and the room where they grieve their losses.

At the heart of it, you guys are keepers of the threshold.

I really believe in previous times in different communities when we were more rooted in our indigenous communities, you would have been revered as craftspeople and sages and these keepers of the memories and shapers of the memories, shaping our homes and the places that we live for celebration, for grief, for gathering, for the ebbs and flows of the very human experiences.

I told you I was going to get a little woo-woo, get a little poetic, but you've got to let a cyst wax poetic from time to time, okay?

Thank you.

But you are truly entering the most vulnerable energy field a human being has outside of their own bodies, their home, and you're restoring order to chaos.

You're bringing safety, thinking about trees.

You're bringing calm.

You're bringing openness.

That goes so far beyond just physical labor.

It is, in my books, sorcery, this really cool blending of the scene, the tangible, the nails, the planks, and the unseen, what you've created at the end of it.

And this kind of sorcery requires a specific kind of vessel to hold it.

And so, what is that container?

There are so many different kinds of containers that hold energy.

As you have probably gathered or knew before this podcast, right, the home is a container for a particular kind of energy, right?

We, ourselves, are a particular kind of energy.

I'm sure we've all interacted with somebody and we're like, ooh, that was interesting energy or ooh, that was interesting, more of that.

You and your business, I will say your business specifically is also a container and you as the steward of it.

Your business is facilitating all this beautiful magic, but when you're underpaid, you are operating from survival mode.

That is a painful, and I'm going to say low frequency, that's a term, if you're familiar with it, that's thrown around a lot, that can almost be condemning, like condemning of the person, like, oh, you're low vibe, get high vibe, level up, energy, da, da, da, da.

But no, I'm saying it in the sense of the reality.

I'm sure, I will say, I'm sure we've all had, even if it's just a moment, months, years, or have seen others in that state where they're in survival.

We are tired, we are stressed, and it's crazy because so often we're actually working so hard, right?

All this golden energy, this alchemical power, the care that you bring when you come into these houses, it's still there.

It's still there, yes, but the energy leaks a bit.

It feels different, right?

When you've worked a long 12 hour day, you're going home to go finish up the admin on top of that, and your bank account is staring at you, emptily, hungrily saying, I want food, right?

It's so different when you've given up your weekends for your craft to help people with their homes, and you don't even have enough margin to get the work done on your house that you are doing for other people's.

It's a kind of energy that infects the rest of our lives and infects our business.

The vibe becomes off.

The vibe is not vibing.

Jobs go sideways.

We feel frustrated.

Our relationships suffer.

We don't know why, but it's because you are doing high frequency work.

You are doing intensive healing work in homes, but you are operating in a low frequency situation.

That lack of cohesion is felt.

Being well paid, when I'm saying these things, being well paid isn't only about buying nice things.

That's nice too.

I like nice things.

Nobody's going to ever shame me for liking nice things, but it is about maintaining the frequency, the integrity, the cohesion required to do the work that you're doing.

Your wealth is a tool in your toolkit, just like your hammer or your multimeter or any of these other tools, right?

If your tool is broken, you can't build as effectively.

If your container is cracked by financial stress, you can't hold the magic.

I want to reiterate again and again and again, because I never want my podcast to be a place that derives, that heaps on shame, that is a place where you go and then you leave and you start self-flagellating.

None of that.

I'm not saying that you are bad, that you are wrong, that you are failing if you find yourself in this place.

All I am saying is that you deserve more.

The work you're doing is so freaking powerful and I'm here to just affirm that, because sometimes it can feel like it's not affirmed.

Absolutely, the market is better and better and better about paying us what we deserve.

Often, it's not even about the market.

It's about us owning that and being willing to walk away from jobs where somebody doesn't want to pay the value of our work.

Often, it's us who are capping ourselves with what we can receive for our work, because we are not, whether it's we're not seeing the value, whether we have some money trauma, whether we're just new and green to business, whether we haven't literally calculated what we need to charge for this to be sustainable, we are so often selling ourselves short.

This is my message to you to just remind you that even beyond the nuts and bolts of the work you do, the energetic impact is tremendous.

One final piece of the importance of your work that I want to emphasize is the energetic cost.

I've spoken about the work you're doing being profound and weaving in the unseen when manipulating the scene tangible products and tools to influence unseen.

I want to also talk about how the unseen affects you.

I mean, think about this is not even energetic.

This is emotional.

When you think about the panic calls, the 2 a.m. emergencies, that takes an emotional and physical toll that needs to be factored into the fee that you're charging.

Think about how you get invested in your client's lives.

For some of you and the work you do, it is deeply intimate, and you are in their homes absorbing some of that energy, getting to know their story, the ups and the downs, and that's good and beautiful.

It's not a bad thing, and it's a toll.

So many of you are doing actual emotional labor and energetic work.

When you come into these houses, you're designing the interiors, and you're learning about their hopes and dreams for their family.

You're learning about their artistic child who needs more accommodations, and that's why they're rearranging their kitchen to be more accessible so they can join in with the family.

You're learning about the single mom who's left an abusive relationship and is getting back on her feet and is so thrilled that she's been able to save up enough to get some landscaping done because it makes her feel human after having been in survival for so long.

You are talking to the retired gentleman who has lost his wife, and she always wanted this tree cut down, this sunroom, and it feels like a little too late, but at least it's getting done, and he feels like this project is a way to connect with her.

Oh my goodness, I'm literally tearing up saying this, and I don't have anybody in mind when I'm saying this, but this is a weight.

Just even thinking about this is making me emotional, but there is a weight to the work you're doing that we so often don't even think about.

I'm sure there are clients of yours that it's been years, and you still think about them.

You might not have had another job from them in years, and you still think about them.

Again, that's so beautiful, so human, and you're so connected, and you deserve to have the resources to support yourself knowing that the work you're doing goes far beyond just the physical realm.

So what to do with all this?

One, just sit in it.

Sit with it.

See if it resonates.

Visualize.

Let yourself, let your mind, let your imagination play with what it would look like if you more fully embodied your sacred power.

What would it look like?

How would you make quotes?

How would you talk about your work?

How would you do your work if you recognize that yes, people are calling for an unclogged drain, and a lot of your work is so much beyond that?

Simply allow your inner wisdom to bubble up.

I would also say cast a critical eye to your pricing.

Now, this is a whole series that we could do on pricing, because it doesn't have to just be an intuitive, and it shouldn't be just an intuitive practice, but outside of looking at your financials and quite literally looking at, okay, cost of goods sold, cost of services provided, and what you need to make to cover this and that X, Y, Z, cast a critical look, cast a critical eye, and say, okay, more deeply embodying this understanding of the powerful alchemical work I do, what number can I joyously give where I can show up more fully in that energetic space, feeling like I'm operating in a high frequency of reverence for my craft, reverence for their home, reverence for the memories I'm helping make, reverence for what I'm stewarding, honestly, not just for them, but for the next person in that house, and the next person, and the next person.

There are houses, I'm here in Indianapolis, Indiana, and I mean, I've been in houses that are over 100 years old, right?

Man, somebody did work in that house 126 years ago that we are still feeling the impact of, like, oh my God, it's just mind-blowing, right?

Take the time to see, and embody, and feel what it feels like to move, and to quote, and to operate your business from that place.

I want to re-emphasize as we bring this home that this isn't about greed at all, at all.

I haven't done any episodes on this yet, but I will, on conscious business, sacred exchange, etc.

I'm all about regenerative business, regenerative money-making.

This is not about extraction, but this is simply about making sure that you're receiving what you need to joyfully continue doing the amazing, richly human, generationally impactful work that you're doing.

So when you go into your next quote or quote meeting, site visit, walk in like you own the magic, because you do, and charge like the universe depends on it, because it does, period.

Thank you so much for joining me today, for coming along this little esoteric ride, choo-choo.

I hope you had a blast.

I hope you were amused, entertained, moved, all of the things.

As always, would love to hear from you at any of the platforms in the show notes.

And as always, until next time.