Waking up to Money

In this first episode of season 5 we talk about setting strong intentions about money to help us be more intentional about our prices. As Ben says, money in and of itself is a poor motivator for most. What motivates us are the things that we can do with the money. Money is a facilitator for acquiring and experiencing these things. The question is then what are these things for you? What would you do with more money? Are those things really important to you? This leads us to talk about how you decide what the things you really want are. Sometimes we can be sidetracked by what friends, family and society say are the things we should buy. But they're not always that things that we need. And so we explore the idea of understanding our own needs better and how we can use that understanding to decide what we really want. Once we know what we really want we can then work out what that means in terms of money we need and therefore how much we need to price our work for to get that money.

On this episode of Waking up to Money we want to help you help your customers buy YOU. We all love choice. It makes us feel in control. When it comes to pricing, providing options gives your customers some control. But too many options will confuse them. And unrelated options will confuse them even more. The more confused they are the more likely they'll not buy from you. When it comes to pricing if you're able to provide a manageable number of options that make sense you're going to increase the likelihood that people will buy from you. To help you think about how to present your options we talk about the 5 Ts: Turnaround - pricing based on how quickly the customer needs the work done Terms - pricing based on how any instalments they want to pay in Team - pricing based on who does the work Tailor - pricing based on how personalised the service or product is Teach - pricing based on whether it's done for you or done by you (and how you learn) If you can, never give your customer just ONE price. Let them choose from a range of prices and empower them to make the right decision for themselves.

Getting paid what your worth isn't about accurately itemising your time. It takes acknowledging what your customer says they want, understanding what they need, articulating why they need it and helping them figure out how valuable that is to them. The same outcome can be of different value to different people. And it can be of different value to the same person at different times. Pricing based on value is art that requires skill and an understanding of the science. On this episode Ben and I cap off our 3 part mini-series by talking about authentic and ethical Value-Based Pricing… or what we like to call the Happy Pricing way.

Most projects a priced based on people's time. The proposal, as well as containing lots of justification for choosing you as a supplier, is essentially a shopping list of project member's time and how much their hourly rates are. This is helpful in terms of being transparent and making feel the client is informed. But IS it really helpful? More information doesn't necessarily mean more power. Unless your client is empowered to make a choice and believe that the price you're giving them is worth paying then it doesn't matter how granular and transparent you are about your pricing it won't help them. In the end you're providing a number and your client needs to able to make sense of that number and explain it to others. Also, when it comes to doing work that includes some inherent uncertainty, such as creative work or developing an innovative app, then defining price based on time isn't necessarily helpful either. More than anything clients want certainty about what they're going to get and what they're going to spend in order to get it. And they want to avoid any regrets about how much they spent (i.e. they want to feel good about spending more money). They want definite outcomes without feeling like they've been conned. They want solutions and good feelings. How does you project pricing help create these?

Earlier in the week I found this article on Medium entitled "What to charge as a freelancer: does value-based pricing live up to the hype?" You can read it here - https://medium.com/free-code-camp/what-to-charge-as-a-freelancer-does-value-based-pricing-live-up-to-the-hype-1af1d4d88ef7 It's a really interesting take on the challenges freelancers face when it comes to pricing. What Benek talks about applies to most people in the service industry, particularly if you do work that can't always be easily packaged and defined. Creative work. In summary, Benek says hourly pricing is the easiest way to go because everyone does it. Customers understand it and there's a level of clarity that comes from "you pay for what you use". However, this can also mean that you either count every minute you work or you lose out by doing some work for free. Hourly based pricing can also put you into the commoditised category of "selling time". Everyone can sell time and so it's easy for customers to go for the cheapest rate. Another challenge with hourly based pricing is there are only so many hours in the day and so your income has a natural ceiling. What are the alternatives? Project based and value based. But they also have their pros and cons. Listen to this episode as Ben and I explore the idea of "selling our time". It's the first part for a 3 episode series. The next episode will be about pricing projects.

Do you want to make money while you sleep? That's the promise of passive income. And anyone who doesn't make as much money as they'd like selling their time is attracted to this promise. According to Tim Ferris' Four Hour Work Week passive income brings promise of freedom, adventure, ease and wealth. But is this always the case. Does pursuing a passive income model actually bring less you happiness because you then become a slave to click funnels and spreadsheets? And, given your interest in pricing well, what does it take to find the right price for a passive income product? On this episode of Waking Up To Money Ben and I covered a couple of core ideas. Firstly, what's your intention for starting your business? Is it purely about creating a passive income business? If so, your only metric of success will be money and your focus will be about maximising passive revenue. However, if your intention is to maximise impact then creating a product or course that many people can get value from without the need for your time might be the best way to go. And so passive income could be your revenue model of choice. But in this latter case you'll be focused on the impact and not just the income. Pricing well is about understanding what your customers consider valuable. This requires you to be in conversation with them. But this doesn't have to be just one-to-one. This can be done at scale through your marketing. Particularly through social media. Then the job of marketing isn't to just tell people that you have something to sell. But to engage with people you want to work with and listen to what they think is valuable. You can then set your price accordingly. And to get to the right price you need to iterate by putting a price out there and then changing it (or your target audience or your offering) if no one is buying.

Pricing for serviced based businesses is such a dark art and many agency owners, coaches and consultants have had to learn it the hard way. But why should it be so hard? There should be more courses about this stuff out there teaching things like: What is a good price? How do you know what your competition is charging? Do you charge by day, by the person or by value? How do you write/build a proposal? What split is there between services and product? Premium and mass market? How does that work across territories? Do you charge differently online vs offline? These are the words of David McQueen, executive coach and public speaker, that he shared on LinkedIn over the summer. We thought it would be a great opportunity to talk about what such a course could do for people like him and what is it that might be stopping people from seeking out this kind of help. David McQueen is a speaker, coach and advisor who is passionate about leadership. Over the last thirty years he has honed his experience in leadership. This includes leading teams in his early career, starting his own companies, sitting on the advisory board of companies across all sectors and his work with organizations across the private, public and third sector. David is the host of Leadership Decoded, a podcast focusing on leadership communication, and is also writing his first book on the power of leadership coaching.

Focussing on pricing in isolation isn't going to help you get customers. If you don't align how you price with how you market you can waste a lot of time selling to the wrong people. On this episode we talk about how pricing, marketing and selling can fit together and why that's important. Here's a summary of the points that we cover: pricing well is only one component of getting people to buy from you how do you think about the journey of your customer to you? how clearly do you understand who you're selling to? don't waste time selling to skeptics sell to the converted and reserve your energy for the people who are aligned talk about the good feelings and solutions people are looking for not only when you sell but also when you market connect the what of what you do to the good feelings and solutions don't try to persuade people to do things they don't want to do understand your customer through dialogue (through useful conversations on social media) selling isn't a battle of wills with a single winner selling isn't about needing to be liked recognise that it doesn't matter how good at selling you are if the person isn't ready to buy selling to the right people is key to running an effortless business how does our relationship and need for money influence our interaction with customers? the extent we feel the need for money can undermine how we talk about the value of what we do how can the exchange of money be a sign of a commitment to the outcome? always price from the outside in as the most important person in the conversation is the customer and their perspective pricing well is about having a choice about whether you want to work with a customer or not how do some businesses sell the same thing for so much more? timing and context can have an influence on the value of the same product or service value is subjective and when someone buys something from you there are many motivations that influence whether they buy price is an important signal that links to an emotional driver in the buyer how does the love for your work influence its perceived value how do you make sure that you're not over-pricing or short changing yourself? don't let your customers benchmark your prices invest your time in understanding your customers motivations to help you define value the lower limit is define by what you need to live the life you want to live most people are worth more than they think and their customers will agree

On this episode we tackle the challenge of trying to earn more when you don't like talking about money. The bad news is that it's impossible. The good news is that while you can't get away from ultimately talking about money you can start by talking about clarity and commitment. What is it that more money will help you do? It isn't about the money in itself it's about what it can help you to achieve. Picture a vision of the change and impact you want to make and be clear about how the money will help. You then need to commit to making that change. Not only intellectually but you've also got to feel like it's something that you really want to happen. You don't need to know exactly how it's going to happen but you need to be motivated enough to push through whatever obstacles come your way to make it happen. Once you're clear and committed you'll be more likely to have the difficult money conversations and understand how to talk about money in away that helps you move towards your intentions. We also share some thoughts on how to get clear and committed.

On this episode of Waking up to Money we were joined by Nicola Forristal, a People Talent specialist. She has a service that weaves the threads of her corporate career as a People & Talent professional, her therapeutic career and her passion for energy psychology and medicine into a programme that will support and help people languishing in the workplace. Given the current situation where employees are being invited to come back to work she believes employers could make this transition more energising and less scary by focussing on their wellbeing. She has developed workshops to address this specific issue as well as ongoing wellbeing needs but is trying to work out how best to price these offerings. With the support of Ben Johnson we explore how she can go about tackling this challenge and offer strategies for her to price that is powerful, authentic and allows everyone to share in the value.

Welcome to the new season of Waking up to Money. This episode is the first one after our break following the second Happy Pricing course we ran in April. We learned a lot during that course. Not only about how to run it even better but also about the challenges and struggles you face. During this episode we share some of our learnings from the last cohort and also talk about why it's important to make yourself easier to buy (and how).

Ben and I talk about what we've learned about pricing by launching a course about pricing.

While you may feel like selling something is difficult remember that buying is difficult too. Our customers are always conscious about whether they're making the right decisions. When choosing a product or service they're always looking for signals that reassure them that they're making a safe choice. One of those signals is the price. It's an unfortunate rule of thumb but most people think that high price equals high quality and low price equals low quality. That doesn't mean that just by doubling your prices customers will come flocking. What you need to do is understand what is going through your customers mind and which signals they are sensitive to. It could be that one of them is price. We don't advocate over-charging in order to con a customer. We just want you to be aware that the price you set shouldn't be about what you think the value is, but what your customer thinks… and how that price makes them feel. During this episode we talk to this at length and answer some questions from our live viewers. These include: Should I charge wonder 450€, 750€ or 900€ for my course? When selling my course should I set a lower price in order to get more customers? Is pricing a service harder than pricing a product?

In the episode we talk about the invisible ceiling we create around money. This ceiling limits how much we're willing to charge for the work we do and therefore how much money we're wiling to receive. In reality this ceiling doesn't exist and is of our own making. We talk about two of the things that contribute to this ceiling: Focussing too much on the work we do and less about the outcomes our clients are wanting to achieve Anchoring are prices to a fictitious number of our own creation that we rationalise as the market rate or a fair margin. If you'd like to learn how to get rid of these constraints and how to price more confidently then make sure to listen.

On this episode of Waking up to Money we're joined by Sarah and Saskia. They run different types of businesses but had similar challenges: how to be more confident about pricing. Sarah runs a service based business and she was sending out proposals without first talking to her client about money. Ben says that proposals never sell. Proposals are there to reassure the customer they're getting what they asked for. Your job is to have money conversations upfront so that you can confidently put the right numbers in your proposal and your customer is in the right place to receive them. The pressure isn't on the proposal, the joy is in the conversation. Saskia runs courses and an online community. Because there's so much free content on the Internet she gets a scary feeling when thinking about putting a price to her work. It's the same feeling she got when she first did abseiling and jumped off the edge. Ben reminded her to think from her customers perspective and the solutions and good feelings they're looking for. There's value in curating content so that people waste less time making progress. There's also value feeling part of a community when you're trying to do things on your own. Having conversations with potential customers and framing the value of what you do against something more expensive (i.e. 1 to 1 coaching) then helps them get more comfortable with the prices you offer. You can find out more about these stories and hear all the feedback we gave Sarah and Saskia by listening to this episode.

In this episode we talk to the energy and mindset we bring to our pricing and selling conversations. When we feel like money is slipping through our fingers we can get into a scarcity mindset that then creates the feeling of fear. When we feel fear we're less able to see opportunity and less open to exploring new possibilities. Happy Pricing is all about exploring opportunities, particularly with your clients. Your job is to explore where the real value is in the work that you do for them and then price accordingly. In this episode we talk about gratitude and abundance versus resentment and scarcity. We also talk about how we can be transparent with our clients about how we price and also how to think about imposter syndrome. If you're confident in your abilities and the change that you can make in your clients' lives but are unsure what price to put on your work then this episode (and our Happy Pricing course) is for you!

Our emotional relationship to money impacts how we work with it. And so we're never going to develop our ability to price or sell if we don't also develop our personal attitude to money. On this episode we talk about the 3 toxic myths about money from the book the Soul of Money: There is never enough More is better That's just the way it is We're also joined by listener David Holloway to talk through how our past relationship to money affects us as entrepreneurs.

In this episode we talk about the reasons why customers really buy from you. It isn't about the things (i.e. coaching, training, website widget) but something else. These something elses are usually rooted in two categories: good feelings and solutions. Listen to learn more. We're also joined by Mark Steadman, founder of the podcasting platform Podiant, who shares his situation of launching a new offering and we talk about the role of trust in creating this new thing. If you'd like to learn more about how to price and sell more authentically and more powerfully (without feeling slimy) then check out our website - http://happypricing.co

When we first thought about the the title of this episode we thought it would be "When pricing goes wrong". What we ended up talking about was when "selling" goes wrong. Amongst other things we cover the role of timing, alignment and understanding your client's budget. The key message we want to get across is that Happy Pricing is about creating more ease in your business. And that the price in your head isn't important. It's about the price in your customer's head and finding out what that is.

In this episode we talk about what you need to do find out the price people will pay for your high value product/service.

On our webinars we invite people to ask their questions about how to price better with their clients. Some people might think that this might put their clients off. We don't! Listen to this episode to learn why.

On this episode Ben and Carlos talk about how we can feel more confident when having conversations about price.

On this episode Carlos and Ben talk about how their own money stories limited their growth and how these stories fit in with the rest of what they teach on the Happy Pricing course.

In this episode we talk to Beccie, a facilitator and mediator from Brighton. We learned that Beccie knows her work is valuable and important. She excels at it and it's also her mission. It's her contribution to making the world a better place. We also learned that her background is in the charity sector and has a lot of charity clients/contacts. This makes her feel guilty about having high prices. As her main motivation has always been to make the world a better place so she can feel guilty about having high prices because some people/organisations wouldn't be able to afford her. She's got a generous heart and doesn't want to appear greedy. But she also knows that giving away her work cheaply is compromising her ability to offer it ever more widely. Mindset is a huge part of pricing well. There are many stories between us and the prices we might charge. Like “I don't want to be greedy”. Etc… On the call Ben helps Beccie begin to see a route through. Some organisations can pay more, so should pay more. And if they do, it means those people and organisations who have less can be supported too, which is important to her. Making the shift from pricing nervously to pricing well, happily, joyfully, is a choice. It's a choice based on clarity and intention as much as skills and tactics.

We want to help you protect (and hopefully increase) what you earn during these challenging times. We know you're doing purposeful work (otherwise you wouldn't be a Happy Startup follower). And so we need YOUR BUSINESS to still be around when we get to the other side of this crisis. So we're going to try and share what we know about Happy Pricing to help you weather the storm. For this first Happy Pricing Clinic we've invited Lina Patel, a facilitator and collaboration designer from Melbourne, to join us so we can answer her question live: "What do you do when everyone around you is reducing their prices or giving stuff away for free?" If this question resonates or if you have your own questions then please check us out at http://happypricing.co

This podcast is for freelancers and founders doing purposeful work that want to have creative and confident conversations about pricing with their customers. We'll be sharing our thoughts as well as the recording from our Happy Pricing Clinics. If you're interested to learn more then go over to http://happypricing.co and download the FREE manifesto and Happy Pricing Canvas,

This podcast is for freelancers and founders doing purposeful work that want to have creative and confident conversations about pricing with their customers. We'll be sharing our thoughts as well as the recording from our Happy Pricing Clinics. If you're interested to learn more then go over to http://happypricing.co and download the FREE manifesto and Happy Pricing Canvas,