Podcast appearances and mentions of taylor wells

Fantasy Baseball Live – September 3, 2023 @ 3 pmSegments 1 and 2 – Review Weekend GamesAdditional Questions:1.With Wander Franco out indefinitely, the Rays are turning to Taylor Wells. What are your thoughts on a possible pickup?2.Ronny Mauricio is hitting everything in sight with crazy exit velos 117 MPH and has already stolen a base. I'm assuming you will recommend him as a pickup.3.Blake Snell pitched another shutout. Call me cynical, but I've seen his story so many times. A player who is entering his free agent year puts up an unsustainable year and then gets overdrafted the next year only to crush fantasy manager's souls. Is this what we will see with Snell?4.Trea Turner has woken up. Is he back to being in the first round next season?5.Aroldis Chapman has been brutal of late, losing another game on Saturday. Will he get taken out of the closer role?Segments 3 and 4 – Waiver WireSegment 5 – Closer Report and Two-start pitchersCloseThis show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/3306394/advertisement

Welcoming Taylor Wells from Oregon State. We chat about a life of guiding, from Alaska to California. Chatting about how we learn from others, and all the lessons along the way. Taylor has been a life long angler and reformed fishing guide. Steelhead and trout have consumed his life. His current life includes hunting, fishing & building power lines.•Instagram https://instagram.com/taylerw?igshid=MmJiY2I4NDBkZg==

Fecha de Grabación: Lunes 30 de enero de 2023. Algunos temas comentados: Los muchos sellos y subsellos editoriales de Marvel y DC Comics. ¿Qué fue de los Supermanes sustitutos de Reino de los Supermanes? Futuros alternos e historias divergentes más allá de los cómics de Marvel y DC. Los mejores cómics de Ed Brubaker para DC Comics. Algunas recomendaciones de entre la extensa bibliografía de Matt Kindt. Adaptaciones live action, ¿qué funciona y qué no en iZombie y Cowboy Bebop? La excelente Sandman Mystery Theater, iniciada en Vertigo por Matt Wagner y Guy Davis. Buenas series publicadas por Vertigo y que no son tan conocidas o populares. Portadas variantes, ¿cuántas dirían que son demasiadas? Además: la Black Widow de Marjorie Liu, Hellcat, Larry Stroman, Codeflesh de Joe Casey, Darkhold, ¡...y mucho más! Comentario de cómics: Farmhand, cómic escrito y dibujado por Rob Guillory, con colores de Taylor Wells y rótulos de Kody Chamberlain. (Image Comics) Spider-Man, serie escrita por Dan Slott y dibujada por Mark Bagley, con tintas de John Dell, color de Edgar Delgado y rótulos de Joe Caramagna. (Marvel Comics) Public Domain, cómic escrito, dibujado, coloreado y rotulado por Chip Zdarsky. (Substack/Image Comics) Do a Powerbomb, cómic escrito y dibujado por Daniel Warren Johnson, con colores de Mike Spicer y rótulos de Russ Wooton. (Image Comics) Pueden escuchar el podcast en este reproductor: Descarga Directa MP3 (Botón derecho del mouse y "guardar enlace como"). Peso: 109.7 MB; Calidad: 128 Kbps. El episodio tiene una duración de 1:59:10, y la canción de cierre es "The Game" de Motörhead. Además de nuestras redes sociales (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram), ahora tenemos una nueva forma de interactuar con nosotros: un servidor en Discord. Es un espacio para compartir recomendaciones, dudas, memes y más, y la conversación gira alrededor de muchos temas además de cómics, y es una forma más inmediata de mantenerse en contacto con Esteban y Alberto. ¡Únete a nuestro servidor en Discord! También tenemos un Patreon. Cada episodio del podcast se publica allí al menos 24 horas antes que en los canales habituales, y realizamos un especial mensual exclusivo para nuestros suscriptores en esa plataforma. Tú también puedes convertirte en uno de nuestros patreoncinadores™ con aportaciones desde 1 dólar, que puede ser cada mes, o por el tiempo que tú lo decidas, incluyendo aportaciones de una sola vez. También puedes encontrar nuestro podcast en los siguientes agregadores y servicios especializados: Comicverso en Spotify Comicverso en iVoox Comicverso en Apple Podcasts Comicverso en Google Podcasts Comicverso en Amazon Music Comicverso en Archive.org Comicverso en I Heart Radio Comicverso en Overcast.fm Comicverso en Pocket Casts Comicverso en RadioPublic Comicverso en CastBox.fm ¿Usas alguna app o servicio que no tiene a Comicverso? En la parte alta de la barra lateral está el feed del podcast, el cual puedes agregar al servicio de tu preferencia. Nos interesa conocer opiniones y críticas para seguir mejorando. Si te gusta nuestro trabajo, por favor ayúdanos compartiendo el enlace a esta entrada, cuéntale a tus amigos sobre nuestro podcast, y recomiéndalo a quien creas que pueda interesarle. Deja tus comentarios o escríbenos directamente a comicverso@gmail.com

Today's episode is a bit like Part B or a follow-up from our last episode a couple of weeks ago, where we introduced our new project, which we're calling Value Culture.   TIME-STAMPED NOTES: [00:00] Introduction [03:05] Why do not all companies have specialised pricing experts or teams? [4:35] What can Value Culture do? [10:19] What can clients benefit from Value Culture? [11:17] The Ultimate Objective And The Essence Of Value Culture   What is Value Culture?   Aidan: Hello, and welcome to another edition of Pricing College with your hosts, Aidan Campbell. And    Joanna: Joanna Wells.    Aidan: Today's episode is a bit like Part B or a follow-up from our last episode a couple of weeks ago, where we introduced our new project, which we're calling Value Culture. But I suppose in this episode, I wanted to ask Joanna, really, why is this sort of project happening? What did we see?   Why did we think companies needed this sort of product? Like, what is the need or what is the problem that a lot of businesses, smaller businesses and, you know, medium-sized businesses, are facing?    Joanna: Yeah, that's right. I mean, primarily, what we are doing is creating and implementing an essentially commercial platform called Value Culture, which is really aimed, as you said, at small and medium-sized businesses and enterprise businesses too.   And the reason that we have done this, and we're calling it a platform; it is a tech platform and not traditional consulting, is because we saw the mass need, the scale of the need of smaller, medium-sized businesses. Considering that about 98% of all businesses in Australia are small to medium-sized businesses.   In terms of the problem, we've seen consistently when we're speaking to startups, SMEs, medium-sized businesses, privately owned businesses, and then your ASX listed and Fortune 500s' very common problems with pricing that we want to solve.   And ultimately, as you know, the problem was quite simple.   People feel that price can be something that is added at the end of a list of commercial tasks. For instance, when you're launching a new product, often the assumption is that it's okay. We can just set any price and then adjust that price later without really understanding the data inputs required to set pricing, the different pricing methodologies out there, and the metrics that they need to prepare and track along the way. And as you know, customer price response has a significant impact on your ability to change prices. Essentially, once you have your prices out there in the market, it's very difficult to change prices.   And often when people do that, companies small to large, when they just do that guesswork pricing or cost plus, they regret it because they end up essentially either overcharging their customers or losing revenue and volume.   You know, even selling below cost when they've got such great businesses essentially means they're undervaluing their proposition.   Aidan: I suppose, you know, here at Taylor Wells, one of the things I'd be very aware of, you know, on this podcast we've spoken many times about how getting a pricing person in really will give benefits to a company. But I think, you know, we're realists as well, and we're completely aware that if your business is doing a million Australian dollars in revenue, you know, you probably cannot afford, like, let's be honest, to go out and pay someone a hundred grand who's a high performer in pricing.   So I think, you know, there's a real gap in the market there. The vast majority of companies are small. As you said, Joanna, and I agree with that, there's a real gap whereby, in smaller companies, people tend to be doing multiple tasks. People tend to not be specialists, and the people often put their hand up and suffer the most stress and go, “Oh, I need some guidance on pricing. Can somebody help me today?” They fall into a trap, a gap, I guess, whereby they're not big enough revenue-wise to finance. A specialist, and to be honest, they're also, you know, there's not much point in getting consultancy for them either because there's nobody internally who could be dedicated.   Joanna: Oh yeah. Look, that's a great point, and that's a big part of the problem too. Pricing then just becomes this quite onerous task that puts real pressure on people who are really out of their depth and don't know where to start, what to do, or how to move forwards with pricing.   And really, what Value Culture does is give them that start, that ability to forge ahead when things are very unclear, the starting point, and then moving forwards, learning things step by step, getting the simple things mastered first before tackling the bigger, bigger things.   And then, step by step, feeding the right information in the right direction, whether that's in terms of getting the right inputs, data inputs, and information inputs together for price analysis and cost analysis or what, or whether it's more, okay, we need to learn different types of pricing methodology to set pricing, whatever the key area of the problem is.   Value Culture can give that first start and then move people along their journey.   So all of the pricing plans are customised to a roadmap that makes sense for that business. Those roadmaps are very closely aligned with business strategy. And then, if there are requirements to pressure test business strategy, Value Culture can go back to basics with strategic plans too, just to make sure that they're actually resonating in terms of the market and are indeed right for the business.   And then again, once that's solid and done correctly, we can start the process with pricing, get the roadmaps in order, get the individual team plans, get the individual plans, and then before you know it, it's different people in the business, say if it's a medium-sized business, or knowing how they're feeding into pricing, whether that's a price rise implementation or a new price for a product or even a tenderer, or even if it's thinking about how to simplify a very complex legacy system to make more revenue and to ensure pricing above costs.    Aidan: Just listening to you there, Joanna, it sort of reminds me of the Pareto principle, which I think I'd heard of once, and don't quote me on what that actually means, but I believe it's like the 80/20 rule or the 90/10 rule.   You know what I really do think? There's a real gap in the market whereby people will get a huge amount of benefit; they'll get 80% of the benefit, by doing the simple things first.   Like there's a whole echelon of companies out there who are doing no pricing, right? like zero. And I don't think we're proposing that these companies will be jumping on day one to perfect pricing and apple style, you know, maximising profitability.   But I think you will get 80% of the benefits with small amounts of work, but where I really see the value, you know, in the way you're describing it, there is, it's just a format, it's a structure. It's like when people go to the gym and have no idea what they're doing. Oftentimes, they can just waste their time, for years.   If somebody sensible gives you a very simple programme, it's better to take simple steps that are concrete and get you in the right direction, and you're making real progress. And I think, you know, if this project can do that, I think there's a real, you know, benefit.    Joanna: Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, when you were speaking there, it just reminded me of numerous case studies where people go, and what we need, is to fix pricing. Get me that right price.    And they just focus on that because they actually don't want to get into the bigger problem, which could be not enough volume, not enough leads coming through the website, which could be a mess.   There aren't the right online quote tools to really inform and educate customers on the pricing. There's no value proposition. It's an ill-conceived value proposition. So rather than think about that, there's no understanding of pricing and its impact on the P&L. Costs could be everywhere. There's no sort of understanding of different cost centres. So often they go, "Okay, but that's too much of a difficult problem to solve." What we need is just the right price. Because if you increase pricing, we'll make a significant profit improvement.   And that would be enough to save this quarter and keep the business afloat. But not necessarily, because you've got to think of the pricing and its impact on the customers. You can't just overcharge customers because you haven't got enough of them to lose the very customers that you've already got.   Does your offer really warrant that price increase? Or are you underpricing? So Aidan, when you say that, yes, you've really got, when you start with pricing, what we find is the big epiphany, um, with both small and medium and large businesses, is that pricing is bigger than the price point that you set, right?   You can't just make it up. You've really got to think about your whole business. From costs to marketing online. You've got to think about your positioning and approach. You've got to think about your business strategy. And you've got to get all your ducks in order. You've got to know how many leads you're getting. You've got to know your quote-to-book ratios and things like that. And these are highly valuable inputs to a price model, so it's not wasting time going through each of those things in detail or as much as you can as you get that information through. Because remember, you can't do it all at once.   It is a journey, but each of those steps is valuable, and in the end, you will get a price model that is absolutely customised for your business. And you probably think, wow, at the beginning of this journey, I've had so many people say that at the beginning of this journey, I never thought I'd be covering so much ground.   I just didn't realise it. And look at this. Now we've got a price model that I understand and can clearly articulate to the directors and the board. It's making money for the business. There's ongoing recurring cash flow. I mean, this is a good news story, and it doesn't happen over and over. But each of those individual tasks and successes helps and gets you that one step closer to that peace of mind, feeling less pressure, and feeling good about what you've done and what you've done for the business because you actually generated value for the business and even more so value for your customers.   Aidan: Yeah, look, I think just the way you're describing it, what I'm looking forward to seeing is just keeping it simple. Giving people who are coming in, who are time poor, who are, you know, often, maybe they're owner-managers, maybe they're people who are running their own business, maybe they're feeling the pressure and it's on their to-do list that they got this year.   Take a look at the pricing and take this system. Hopefully, you can help them do that. So yeah, I'm looking forward to that. Do you have anything else to add, Joanna?    Joanna: Yeah. I mean, again, keeping it simple is so important because yeah, people are very busy and especially from a small business and you're tasked with pricing, and you really are out for your debts, but you want to pursue that.   You need to keep it simple. And with Value Culture, this is what we've done.   As I mentioned at the beginning, it's an online platform. There's a highly sophisticated project management system that we can use for businesses to make decisions and plan. Simple. So everybody knows what they're doing at what time, and if they don't know what they're doing, there are templates.   There are guidelines and dashboards, and for each different stakeholder, there are dashboards, tracking dashboards and results, price, and performance dashboards. So every step of the journey. Full visibility, absolute simplicity. And then, at the end of the quarter, you can see the results.   Aidan: Super. When is this available? I want it right now. He says...    Joanna: Oh yeah. Look, it's been a process of hard work getting this together, but yes, look, it's available. It's been created, and we're implementing it with our clients. So look, if you want any more information about Value Culture for small and medium-sized businesses or if you're interested at an enterprise level, we can certainly give you a demo, run you through it, and talk about it in more detail. But, yeah, look, we're super excited about Value Culture. We highly believe that's serving a great need in a core market. And we just look forward to sharing that all with you. Thank you for listening.    Aidan: Thank you and have a great weekend. Bye for me.    Joanna: Goodbye.  

We can build courses and do webinars, but these actions don't guarantee success. Adrienne Taylor-Wells speaks with Michelle Jackson about the need to be authentic and vulnerable with our audiences and the importance of seeing people and not just sales. https://plutusfoundation.org/2022/adrienne-taylor-wells-purposelessness/ Notes and summary from this episode Adrienne-I'm the founder of Tailored Wealth Saver and our goal is to help Millennials live a life on their terms. I help people figure out their financial intentions while reaching your financial goals. Michelle-How did you get into this space? Adrienne-When I was in college I was a chemistry major. I transferred schools at the end of freshman year in 2009 during the Great Recession and was an interesting time to be in finances. Personal finance has always been pretty interesting to me. Michelle-How did you grow your brand and what your intention was behind the type of work you were looking to do? Adrienne-Every week I recorded on YouTube. I cringe at those videos now. Right before COVID started I moved to Houston and I noticed that Instagram Reels was starting to pick up. I started making Instagram posts and stayed consistent with that. I would do fun money reels. “How to fly first class without paying” went viral Michelle-How did you translate that traction into paying clients. We've heard the stories of folks unable to convert their followers to purchases. Adrienne-I actually had a failure like that. I launched the Wealth Saver Planner. A lot of people booked consultations with me (10 minute free consultations) out of the free consultations I may have converted 20% of those people who became clients (I didn't have clear intentions behind it) when I launched the planner I actually didn't have a lot of sales. What I realized was that the audience wanted to learn about flying first class, I didn't have the intention to convert them into understanding the financial content (and the “why”) behind what you're talking about. The importance of finances. I had to get a marketing team for the planner because it wasn't selling. Michelle-Why do you think your audience didn't understand what you were trying to do. How do you share what you're doing without being disingenuous? Adrienne-I still struggle with this because I don't like selling. I realized that everything we do we're being sold to. One of the greatest things we can do is have authentic conversations. Sometimes we forget that people are people. Let people know that you actually care for them. When we first talked about intent I thought about compassion. Michelle-How did you know that your product was a product your audience wanted? There's intention, purpose and service. Sometimes a content creator designs a product with purpose but it may need to be repositioned. Adrienne-The planners at first were a failure. I thought I would sell thousands of units of this planner. I laughed at myself. What I did was I realized that the planner could be used as a supplement and offered it to my clients. You can buy them separately but I focus on the planners being a supplement to what I'm working with clients on. Once I stop working with clients after 3 months they still have a tool to use for their goals. I was one of the winners of the Plutus Grant and because of that I was able to reposition the planner. Michelle-What are some tips that you would share with other content creators building out their brands in relation to intent. This is a BROAD question Adrienne-Be intentional about your purpose with your audience, be vulnerable. I had emergency surgery in May. Be vulnerable about some of the things you normally wouldn't share. Your audience will connect with your authenticity. Also, do market research. Ask your audience-What do you want from me. Follow Adrienne Tailored Wealth Saver Podcast-The Wealth Saver Podcast

In today's episode, we want to explore the world of startups and I supposed at Taylor Wells we got asked or approach by quite a few startup businesses and the early stages of development with questions about pricing advice and pricing strategy and how start-ups should price. And I suppose we just really want to explore some of those ideas today and maybe just discuss some ideas. TIME-STAMPED NOTES: [00:00] Introduction [03:00] What's our advice on issues regarding pricing for start-ups? [12:19] How can we advice start-ups in discovering value in pricing? [16:57] Would you advice implementing various pricing strategies for start-ups? [22:01] Pricing Advice For Start-ups: Don't lose data. Keep learning, testing, and trialling.   Pricing Advice for Start-ups to Kick-start Their Growth   Especially quite recently. We've had a number of questions and inquiries from startups. And we're talking about startups, people that are literally coming up with new business ideas. And often, it's the first time that they've done that and they're trying to launch either a new product.   Now, this could be ranging from, you know, an FMCG good product or you know even a Saas type product and you know, they come with legitimate concerns often they've heard the podcast and there's thought, you know what, I never really considered any other approach to pricing, other than thinking about costs and putting a markup on the cost to give me that margin that I need to cover my costs and get revenue in through the door.   And I never really thought about value-based pricing but it really did change my viewpoint, not just on the price point, but also it gave me a new perspective on what I'm trying to do in the market, my business model, how I'm going to generate revenue, what the sources of value are that are going to help me do that and cover my cost, how I'm going to work with suppliers who my target customers are.   All these new and very important ideas came almost flooding in people's heads after thinking about value-based pricing and, you know, we just going to explore today, you know, a little bit more about pricing for startups and a few techniques just to help people make those first few steps because it doesn't have to be a difficult journey or long drawn-out journey, you can start pricing immediately, even though sometimes you think “God I've got so much else to do. I'm just going to get money through the door”, type of approach.   It's clearly, you know, we're not gonna go into cost-plus pricing on this podcast, but clearly for a start-up, it's even more exacerbated.   You know, if you make one item, you know they're your cost base is going to be higher than if you make a thousand. So, you know, as you grow in scale, do you intend to reduce prices? So, that makes no sense.   But clearly a start-up even number of issues that will make pricing more difficult: A) there is no right price for your product. At the beginning, you don't know what a value provides to your customers you might have an idea, you might have you know obviously you've got your pitch deck and you've got your ballpark figure and your idea, your elevator pitch let's say, you know and you thought about why you're getting into the business and where you fit in the niche. But realistically what's that old saying?   Everyone's got a plan until they're partially on the nose. I think Mike Tyson said and you know until you go out there and made customers and really get into the market you don't really know, you look at statistics, how many companies, how many start-ups pivot?   How many really hit a niche and really make money it's limited obviously we don't want to put people off from starting up but you know those things have to be borne in mind and when you're looking at pricing, that is the issue.   They are, you don't have enough information at the beginning, there's no saying that trying to get some customers, trying to get out there with some customers. Realistically, I don't think the price of the beginning, we'll get into this a bit later, but just winning customers is very important. Because then, you can explore value, it's a value discovery process.   Almost look at it as a subsidized value discovery process where a customer is almost paying you, it may be too much, or it maybe too little, but hopefully they're paying you and then you can explore and learn about your own business. So that's the first thing I'd say, clearly, It's very important to get customers on board. The second thing I say, unless you have funding and we'll talk about, you know, series A or a large amount of funding, it is highly unlikely to have a pricing manager.   Let's be honest. Most startups at the beginning have very limited revenue, and a good pricing manager's salary probably will be quite expensive. So, you're going to be doing an ad hoc, you'll be doing it in-house. Probably the startup. The founder would be doing the pricing and so, you know how much attention you can really give the pricing at the beginning is limited.   I totally disagree with the point that, you know, people often come into the business with a really good plan.   In my experience even consulting with major corporates, medium-sized businesses, even you know, blue chip companies, often the surprising point is they don't even have a plan when it comes to pricing or even their business strategy.   What they've actually got is a very flimsy outline of what they kind of want to do. Often the key question of, Why are we selling this product? How do our customers value this product? How do they perceive and value us? What are important in the eyes of our customers? How good are we at delivering what customers value? Are things that are hot, not addressed in, I would say, 98% of business strategies, even though that's the most important questions you should be asking.   So, I would say, most startups don't have a plan either to be fair. And really, there's a little bit of hope and a prayer that this product, this new business is going to solve a gap in the market without actually, as Aidan said, approaching customers and seeing, you know, giving it that, you know, testing our assumptions.   Pricing Advice For Start-ups: Testing out, let's call it a hypothesis about what we think we've got and how valuable that is, in the eyes of our customers.   Because essentially, if you're going to get investment from private equity, seed investors, they'll be asking that. I mean, because it's the central aspect of a business, a new business model and operation system or it should be.   And if you haven't got clear answers on that, you're not going to get the funding and that brings me back to what I was saying before. You know, a lot of startups have come to us and even with you talking about value-based pricing, it made us think about value.   And it made us think that there was that major Gap in our business thinking, and our strategy, which has, in turn, delayed other things, not just pricing, but even you know, how we go and approach, our customers, our pitch, what do we say to them? You know, what is that compelling message?   All of these things, you know, were sort of underbaked and then have been preventing people from launching. So like Aidan was saying, let's go back to basics.   Let's ask and turn these questions into hypotheses and start going back and thinking about who our target market is.   Can we think about the personas of these customers, that would want to buy the products we're trying to sell? How are we going to communicate that offer to them? How are we going to make it easy for them to buy from us? Now, these are the questions, like you're not going to have the answers and don't fear not having all of the answers.   When you approach your customers, the key here is to have some hypotheses in mind about what you're doing, and what the value of the offer is, right? When you go in to speak with a customer. But then ask the questions and then listen. Listen, very very carefully to what they're saying to you. What you will find, is that some customers that you're talking to are really not your target market.   Even though you thought they were whereas other people really are potentially changing your viewpoint on your initial business model and plan and then iterating from there. This is the fundamental aspect of value-based pricing and as Aidan mentioned we call it a value discovery process, but really it's essential. It's an activity that leads to profitable revenue growth and it's one that's often ignored and skipped but it's the central aspect of any pricing model and of any business strategy.   Pricing Advice For Start-ups: Let's be honest at the beginning.   For anyone who's ever started a business, every single interaction with a customer, feels like life and death. You know, you stressed about them.   You dig into too much, you know, all those are those interactions statistically valid, you know, is it over time when you scale up your business, you know, will that apply across a larger number of customers? Those questions have to be decided. I suppose at the beginning you have to have a ballpark figure.   As to what value you're providing, you know, are you aiming to be the cheapest in the market and undercut traditional operators because of your cost of operation, you know, is that your model? If that is the case, likely, then you probably will be cheaper if you're cutting costs; if you're value-added or you're cutting costs? If you're value-added that you're offering, we're more features and benefits, you know, then you probably can be charged more than other people. Big questions.   Should you be going into the SAAS situation?   So many startups, Online businesses try to get onto a subscription. There's a huge movement towards recurring revenue, showing recurring revenue. You have to really think. Does that suit your business? Is that really the type of business that you want to be operating? It gives investors confidence but you know, is it actually plausible into what you're doing?   So that also has to be considered. I suppose you're fundamentally, you have to really dig into what your business do. And what is the best way to charge for it? Just pick the best that you can think of at the beginning. Over time of course you can optimise, you can go into it once you get more professionalised, once one customer becomes ten, becomes one hundred and hopefully becomes thousands.   Then over time, you can start to optimise potentially bringing pricing expertise and pricing analyst over time and optimise that stuff. But you know you really got to think about what you know, I suppose companies will go through different strategies at different periods of their life cycle and development, you know, at the beginning.   Are you trying to grow your market share? Are you trying to get some sort of like give us good network effects?   I'm assuming that you'll be wanting to try and grow the business and potentially to try and grow. You might be offering freemiums, or you might be offering lower quality, you know, tester versions of that. So again, all have to be considered, but you have to be, I suppose you put on the old saying a cart before the horse.   You know, what are you actually trying to sell? That's the fundamental thing, pricing is not, it doesn't separate, it is your commercial strategy. And the point I'm trying to make is, what is your business trying to do?   In an ideal world, let's say, obviously you're not going to do everything perfectly but is trying to do something and then once it's doing that and a customer is, you know, bought into that and want that service or product or whatever it is, you know, how are you, what's the best way to charge that customer for that while some shaving, your objectives of growing, you know, over kidding solvent until your next funding round? You know, that is the question.   I mean, you make a good point that you know, is a value discovery for one or two customers statistically valid? Obviously not, it wouldn't be, but it gives you a starting point. And I think it's an important point to note here, that value discovery is ongoing, it never stops. You've constantly got to do it.   Pricing Advice For Start-ups: So it's important that you don't lose track of the data and the insights that you learn from different customers, as you approach them, in terms of understanding value.   So actually, in a way, it's a very scientific approach to understanding value and has to be set up as such for it to be meaningful in a statistical way.   And to give you insights that inform your strategy over time in regards to, when I was listening to Aidan there, you know, I agree, though there is certainly an evolution of pricing methodology that Startups and even big businesses, go through, starting with the rudimentary cost plus, knowing your cost and adding a simplistic markup going through that competitive benchmarking scenario.   When you line up all your competitors' prices and then you go, “I think I'm going to be somewhere around here”, so you go, you pick lowest-highest and you go, “All right, I'm going to be here in this bit in this price bandwidth”. That's what they call it. I'm not going to evaluate these methodologies will do that later on. And if you listen to other podcasts, you probably have heard us evaluate them.   I just talked about evolution and then I think Aidan was going on about SAAS businesses, using subscription models, now that's a revenue model.   But the pricing methodology that tends to be adopted within that revenue model is called attribute-based pricing where they do look at the features and benefits of the product or plan and then they set their different price tiers.   You know, good-better-best essentially or decoy pricing based on those features and benefits, you know, evolution from there, you know, obviously got Dynamic pricing looking at, you know, inventory and capacity utilisation and demand and forecasting, and things like that.   And then in terms of evolutions of the subscription model, they go into like consumption-based pricing, where basically, you charge customers for how much they use different plans, that's becoming particularly popular at the moment, and then from there, you know, a more sophisticated one is based on outcome-based pricing, but basically what a customer gets from using your service, your plan, your product.   Now, that's a newer one. And all of these as Aidan says, it's not like “Oh, that sounds good. I think we'll just use that .”, even though 90% of SAAS businesses do that, they just go with trends.   Pricing Advice For Start-ups: You have to be very careful which one you choose because each have their limitations and it takes a hell of a lot of time and effort to integrate them successfully within the business model.   And if they're out of sync with the market and the business model, they're not going to generate profitable revenue growth, then, in turn, you're actually going to lose probably more money than you make and overtime. So you've got to be right.   And this is why Aidan was talking about pricing expertise. It's quite important to get that pricing expertise on board, but obviously, as a startup, you've got to be aware of the strengths and weaknesses of these different pricing methodologies. And what we're trying to say is, the best way of doing that is, understanding your business model, thinking very closely and how it connects with the market.   And then thinking about, how you're going to capitalise on the value that you're offering based on the perceptions of the market, your customers and how they perceive and use that value. What do they get from working with you, in a very simplistic way.   From buying your product and working with you, how did they perceive value?   And what value do they actually generate in terms of, you know, do you help them lower cost, do you help them generate more revenue, I'm using your plan, your products, whatever. Are you helping mitigate some risk in a way for them? And those sorts of questions really give you a head start, when it comes to evaluating the best pricing model for your business.   I think everyone when you're starting a business clearly you have to be a jack of all trades. You want to know a little bit about everything. But the thing about pricing is, I suppose people come and they go “Oh tell me, a pricing strategy” and we hear that a lot. The reality of it is, there's no right or wrong pricing strategy.   There are many potential strategies you could implement. Some may be better than others clearly, obviously, how you implement them. There's some science behind that, there are approaches, but you could have meant for many businesses.   Pricing Advice For Start-ups: You can Implement various strategies particularly when they were a very early stage.   When they haven't proven anything you could tweak certain things in the trajectory that business will go in that are very different. So you could pick different ones at the beginning. Clearly, because they're not tested by the market, they haven't got many users and you haven't got feedback. Clearly, some are more likely to be successful than others. And you have to visit.   There's an art to picking that one. You know, the actual pricing strategy that commercial strategy used. Clearly, a lot depends on so many moving parts, you know your funding, you know, do your funding, or do you have to actually make profits from day one and grow boost route. You know, you look at MailChimp.   I think they never took on funding and grew pretty much organically by being profitable and then adding additional features over time, but not, you know, jumping massively, just growing gradually, Canva, probably the most famous Australian unicorn, fundamentally they grew at the beginning, by giving free service to huge numbers of people.   I don't know what percentage of people who use that platform actually pay for it, I read, I think it's in the papers this week, that it seems implausible, but apparently is true.   Every month over 1% of the world's adult population uses canvas which does seem unbelievable. But apparently, those are statistics. So clearly they're not all paying for this service but a significant proportion are.   So you know you're thinking clearly they had funding and a lot of these startups are clearly lost making for many years. You're thinking, Amazon, you're thinking Uber, they're clearly lost making for a very long period of time.   Pricing Advice For Start-ups: Until you know, the investors are confident that market share, skill, efficiencies, economies of scale all that stuff will factor in later, you know.   So those questions have to be asked and if your business needs skill to operate, to be profitable in three years time, then clearly you need to grow that scale and potentially, it could be, you know, using pricing strategies such as you know, skimming or like being even a loss leader or, you know, going in cheap and then over time adding additional services.   And you know upselling, so really look, the answer is,it really depends, but it all stems back to the beginning to having a clear view as to what your business does, having a rough idea is to what potential value it has and the longer term business model, focus on the business model.   And once you have that and confidence and backing in your team behind that business model, then you start charging forward and working out, putting in place, a model that can: a) keep your business solvent long enough until that's achieved and, b) making as much profit as possible along the way. I think those are my comments today.   Bottomline: Pricing Advice For Start-ups   I like that. Don't be afraid to try new pricing methodologies and revenue models. You've started your business now with a great proposition, you went with it, you're already going in with an experimental sort of mindset, and you're keen to learn. So just do the same thing with your pricing. I actually say, even in big businesses, it's much better to learn quickly and fail quickly.   It's okay if you make mistakes, as long as you learn from them, same applies, with startups, just learn and do exactly what you do when you're passionate with your own product when it's very the same mindset apply, so keep doing that and I hope along the way, we've given you some overview of all the different types of approaches that you can take.   That value-based approach mixed in with more of the technical sort of methodology that potentially is out there for you to utilise as you experiment and learn. Key to all of this is if you've got a number of different products and plans often, that means there would be different types of pricing approaches and models.   You don't always use the same type of approach for everything, that's sort of like when markets are more stable. So, having that creativity and thinking, a very granular level, when you have time about different products because every product has a different type of price sensitivity, and different value profile.   Pricing Advice For Start-ups: So you'll find over time that different plans will require a different approach, but you'll learn this. If you just keep on learning and testing and trialling but do so, you don't lose that data.   You don't lose all that learning. You apply it, feed it back and you continually update and learn and test and tweak, that really is pricing like it is with product development. It's the same type of thing and same approach. I think overall I'll leave it there. But feel free to ask any more questions about some great feedback from you guys recently. So keen to hear more, well thank you for listening.

Taylor Wells is the Sr. Director of Demand Gen at Botkeeper, an accounting software company with 300 employees and Series C. Taylor dons B2B SaaS buyers' flip flops to share buying preferences for Marketing + Sales: ✅aware of vendors via peers/referrals/WOM/influencers via content/social/communities/podcast (tks to Marketing + Marketing's influence on peers) ✅learn about vendors via peers and website (tks to Marketing) then Sales to customize complex products/use cases ❌Turn off + tune out: telemarketing, email spam, LinkedIn spam (Sales Development)

Interested in doing an IT Project with Pearson-Kelly Technology? Check out our website for more info: pearsonkelly.com

Adrienne Taylor-Wells shares how her life-shifted due to a traumatic health report in her mid-20's and why she focuses on reaching fellow millennials, health and wealth. Story 50/100 Highlights: 1. A devastating journey that changed how she eats, moves, and shares with others 2. Connecting her Mindset, Faith, and Action to Live Better 3. Power of supportive groups to be well and build business 4. Earlier personal debt story and government resources (ie, www.investor.gov) 5. Having the right doctor; sharing details to help them "practice" medicine better on you (rate and review) 6. Combatting imposter syndrome  .. and much more

“A great member experience is going to be holistic and involve everyone.” - Taylor WellsThank you for tuning in to episode 32 of The CUInsight Network, with your host, Lauren Culp, Publisher & CEO of CUInsight.com. In The CUInsight Network, we take a deeper dive with the thought leaders who support the credit union community. We discuss issues and challenges facing credit unions and identify best practices to learn and grow together.My guest today is Taylor Wells, Experience Director at On the Mark Strategies. The core mission at On the Mark Strategies is to guide credit unions in their strategic planning, branding, and building their member experience so they can succeed. The team has many years of credit union experience and truly believes in helping credit unions thrive in a competitive environment. On The Mark Strategies differentiates itself through its  core values, the three E's: Engage, Educate, Entertain. In this episode, Taylor discusses the significance of the member experience and how On The Mark Strategies can help credit unions create a customized, authentic, and consistent experience for both employees and members.  Taylor shares the ways his team works with credit unions to understand and improve their member experience across multiple channels. He explains that the team starts with data collection and demographic work to understand the current state of the member experience and hosts multi-day workshops for the credit union team to recreate their ideal member experience. During our conversation, Taylor speaks to the disconnect between front and back-office employees and ways to generate buy-in from all levels of the organization.  He also shares the effects hiring, growth, and retention can have on the member experience. Taylor recommends credit unions also look outside of the industry to bring in new talent, while not overlooking ways they can promote from within.  To maximize ROI and brand impact, Taylor advises credit unions to align their community involvement and charitable donations with their brand values and target audiences.  As we wrap up the conversation, Taylor calls out the importance of actionable strategic plans, organizational health, effective marketing, and more.Tune in to hear Taylor talk about his growing hat collection, his favorite Michael Jordan quote, and the book he recommends everyone read. Enjoy my conversation with Taylor Wells!Find the full show notes on cuinsight.com.Connect with Taylor:Taylor Wells, Experience Director at On the Mark Strategiestaylor@markarnold.comhttps://www.markarnold.com    LinkedIn | Instagram | Twitter 

In today's episode,  we're looking at SAAS pricing and tiered pricing - the good-better-best option.   What is the impact of tiered pricing on market segmentation and consumer behaviour?   In today's episode, we are surfing the web. We are joining the information superhighway. We're looking at, I suppose the very common method that pricing is shown on many software as a service, SaaS style businesses. I think we're all used to seeing them by now. Three options: When some on a month to month you're shown very often a cheap option; Which doesn't have all the bells and whistles. Something like a beginner or an intro or something like that; Then you often have the one in the middle. That very often seems to be highlighted and pointed out. That tends to be most of the benefits kit seems to cater to the vast majority of people. Then you tend to have a third option. A bigger option with even more benefits that maybe doesn't suit everyone and that can be the enterprise value. So I think we'll just talk around this today. In terms of pricing, you may be aware that this concept is often referred to in terms of the Good-Better-Best Pricing, or Tiered pricing. Can even be explained in technical terms as Differentiated pricing. So you can differentiate pricing based on product attributes, features of the products. Some people look at the features and benefits of the products to differentiate into a good-better-best system. Other companies alternatively look a little bit further and they think, “how do our customers view these products? How do they use these products?”.Looking at an example there would be like a mobile phone company. Looking at good-better-best in terms of data usage. How much data a customer would use? Then would cut off those pricing tiers based on data usage. Obviously, if we look at the evolution of the mobile phones' tiered pricing, we can see now that got a little bit more sophisticated with their tearing. One reason for that was because customers didn't really like the fact that they were tearing the pricing, capping pricing and limiting their data. So what they did actually is increased and made most of their data unlimited. And used other things to other features and benefits to entice customers to buy different phone options. So obviously here now I've even touched upon that word entice. What is tiering all about? Well, underlying all of that is that is a deep-rooted sort of psychological pool using pricing to draw people's attention to different options.   I think there's there are two topics that are Joanna's discussed and I think they're both very relevant. The first one is clearly segmentation. You're not using a sales team. You're not using the customer's service team, maybe making phone calls. But you're selling predominately through a website, online, low human interaction in many instances. So the classic knowing your customer, understanding their value drivers that aspect is harder to do. And so, the segmentation strategy, the tiering is segmenting that market. So that you can charge different amounts for fundamentally the same thing with slight nuances obviously. But you're trying to tier it by stripping away certain aspects to cater to certain customers. Clearly, with that, I think we'll get to this a bit later. That means you really need to know what the value drivers are and that involves understanding why your customers use your product. Understanding who they are. Trying to categorise them in a way that's optimal. Because you can't charge you kind of infinite numbers of variations on this online format. It has to be reasonably simple and I suppose that is the classic three. That's positive, that aspect. The other thing Joanna touch on there, obviously, the other stuff, the psychological aspect of stuff. I think we've covered this in previous episodes stuff like Cialdini I think his name is who did stuff like influence and they're pushing you towards the centre. Something like menu pricing they're often pushing you towards the central one. That potentially could be pushing you to request more services than you may be needed. I think the example Joanna give off of the telephone thing. I think we've read in the past or discussed in the past that people often choose phone plans that give them way more data than they'll ever use and pay more. So there is there's a psychological aspect where sometimes you can be pushed into a category that maybe you don't need. And once you get used to that, you may not downgrade to a lower quality plan. But it's yeah, there's those two aspects. There's the first one which is a rational segmentation strategy and then the second is also psychological. How does the human brain work? And you tend to go for the one in the middle often. You think maybe the lower quality, the cheaper one maybe isn't suitable for you. Do people even buy the higher price one? I don't really know. Or, is it just purely there to make the middle one more enticing? Those are questions also that from a psychological perspective that is interesting.   The distance between the pricing between those price tiers is called something called price relativity analysis. And it looks at, what the optimal price is at each of those tiers? Moving aside from that though, if you think about price relativity on its own in isolation of how customers buy. Then it doesn't matter how much analytics you do. You'll never really find the optimum price because you've got to see, you've got to base that price on customer usage. It can be now you can look at sales per sales data. How did the customers use that data now we've got much more data disposal than ever before. But it takes some time to come through that you can look at past sales history. What options do they buy more of? But the question is, it does not answer the question of, why did they buy it? So that requires more customer base research, more external research. Then your internal benchmarks of customer usage. So I think often when I see pricing teams that work on tiered pricing. They're overly concerned with the what because it's something that they can control. It's easy, it's data that's at their disposal, they can just go okay, and often they make assumptions based on that. Now that's okay if you do it in a formalised way and you use hypothesis testing to then test those assumptions. But often I would say that those hypotheses aren't followed through and tracked and monitored well. So what the actual is really the business ends up with price points that are sort of out of sync with the market. And often they go back to default cost-plus to get a margin target. Because understanding the nuances and changes in customer preferences can be difficult. If you haven't got your price architecture and customer research set up correctly to inform your price architecture. In terms of the psychological aspects of tiered pricing, they work very well. But it does depend on what I've just said. You've got to have that research, documented and you've got to track because people change, we all change. Now looking at the mobile phone example that was an interesting one. Because they used to actually limit your customer data and put limitations on that to build the price options. And in so doing it created some kind of risk aversion. Because people would run out of data, and people would then sort of fear running out of data and sort of each month “gosh, where am I at with my data?” And there'd be a backlash against that as I've already mentioned. So then as Aidan mention there, what they did just go well, obviously, data usage is something that's of big concern. It's highly valued by our customers, but we're ending up negatively impacting our customers and they're switching because of it. So why don't we just give them an infinite amount of data? Because to a customer, nobody really knows how much a gigabyte really is in terms of real-time usage. So we're sort of as Aiden said, it's nudging us to buy more because of what we experienced before with the phone plan. So that's an ironic sort of use of they're actually benefiting from past failures in their mobile phone plan, usage and tiered pricing strategy. The mobile phone company has learned from it and is now enticing people to get more data that they don't need at probably higher price points. And the customer doesn't mind because they don't really understand the data. The amount of data that they're using, and they just feel oh, well, at least I'm not going to run out which is the biggest risk driver to them. So I suppose an example how of how you can build psychological drivers like risk usage into your tiered pricing to really optimise your revenue.   I saw when we started this conversation, I thought this was a reasonably simple topic, but clearly, there's a huge amount to it. I think, again it's the old classic of strategy versus tactics. Obviously, without an actual pricing strategy, what is your product or service, whether it's online, whether it's SAAS, whether it's a classic traditional business. You need to understand those value drivers and that's your strategy. The tactics clearly, with data, as Joanna mentioned. The huge amount of data it's sometimes it's the old wood for the trees thing. People can be blinded by the amount of data that there is. But without a strategy, that makes sense, logically that can't be explained to a human, no aspect of data is really gonna change that. With data, you can run AB tests on these pages, even very simple methods like Google Analytics will help any website do that. There are obviously a lot of companies now in this space, people like price intelligently and a huge number of new entrants are coming in Silicon Valley, focused based on optimising pricing. With websites, you can run A B tests or you can run infinite numbers, given a certain volume of traffic. Semrush will help with that as well other websites. You can optimise colours, click through rates, everything to optimise your pricing. It's a 49.99 and your middle option on a month by month versus 60 bucks, whatever that optimal price ranges. And you can optimise those things around the edges. But I suppose fundamentally you need to set it up in a sensible manner. You need to set that up with an actual proper pricing strategy. I often wonder about the enterprise versions that are on these things that the third option, the highest option. I wonder how many people even choose the enterprise option. If you're IBM or if you're a major corporation, do really just book online? I'd highly doubt it. I imagine you'd be going in and getting specific services and pricing. So I often wonder, even showing that online to some extent, I think it's just a psychological approach to drag you up. The low one in many cases, say this like I even use the example of sem rush. We used that on Taylor Wells for website optimisation. Originally, I think we went with a middle option which was the classic, you're always defaulted into. Later I realised we didn't need that and downgrade it to the cheaper option. So in many cases, there are rules that are there to be broken to some extent. But I think it's the old classic workout, the pricing strategy first and that's your strategy. Then it's down to implementation and tactics. I suppose I would put this SAAS on implementation and on tactics and there's always an overlap between pricing and marketing. And I think definitely when we get into this area of online, showing things you're getting into, certainly, with websites, you're very much into the marketing pricing overlap. And that's when really your pricing departments should be integrated with your marketing team, with your website team and it shouldn't be sitting siloed. Because clearly, in this instance, we know here the colour schemes, the highlighting of words, the word usage, all those things factor into how people convert. It's not just pricing. Pricing is fundamentally the commercial approach of your company. So it's not just the numbers is what I'm trying to say. It's the overall menu really. It's the overall approach.   Interestingly, for uninformed customers that don't know about the product, use that same sem rush example when you're sort of new to a particular product, especially a technology product. People kind of know that they need it, but they don't know why or how they're going to use it. So what do they do? They go, Well, I know I need it. That's not an option. This one supposedly is good. So how they came about knowing about Sem Rush is an important factor. So that's a marketing poll driver. And then the ultimate decision, it's still ambiguous. So what do people do with it? We've got three options good-better-best. Is the cheapest one gonna be right for me? I hedge my bet so go for the middle. That's why people often go to the middle and then upgrade as they become more informed about the product and about more informed about their needs. Because as a customer, you go actually the middle option for sem rush, it's just not enough. I need to I need more capability. I need to look at more search terms. I need more analytics. I need to know what the competition is I need to know what the saturation is in the market. I need to then decide on what the selection of secondary keywords is. Those are things that you learned over time, but with that learning and using the actual tool, then you're educating yourself. Then the company gets their premiums over time and before you know it then you're using the best version. And then as your business builds, then you go into the enterprise version. Now, this is actually quite interesting about the enterprise version. So they put it as an option on online,good-better-best is the better one. But then they go through often through a very old fashioned fixed pricing negotiation, discussion with clients at the enterprise level. Then we go all the way back to what we've discussed before how they set prices usually cost plus. So on the facade, it's using decoy pricing and tiered pricing. But eventually, the end product is often the same fixed pricing based on cost-plus. So there's still a lot of work for technology companies that are using SAAS and tiered pricing models.

This week the guys are joined by Major League Soccer's Manager of Player Engagement, Taylor Wells. They discuss Taylor's journey from LA to NY to pursue a career in sports, Prepping MLS players for success off the pitch, juggling law school and work full-time, working on music and dropping an EP, and more.For Trending topics, Amobi and Taylor give their thoughts on MLS' new partnership with the National Black Bank Foundation. Tap In!!Grab your 2Cents FC Merch: https://2centssports.shop/Support the show: https://supporter.acast.com/2-cents-fcSign up for 2Cents Weekly: https://2cs.tv/subscribeShow Credits:Host: Amobi Okugo | @amobisaysProducer & Co-Host: EL Johnson | @elchereikGuest: Taylor Wells | @twellsmaberryFollow on Instagram and Twitter: @2centsfcVisit the 2centsfc.comSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/2-cents-fc. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Today's episode will be probably a little bit different than usual, as we're going to discuss a new project here at Taylor wells, which we are launching. I suppose, to some extent we've already done a soft launch of it with particular customers. That is our project called Value culture. I let Joanna speak in a minute. But I think just a brief intro as to what it is. On our podcast over the last year or two, you probably hear us talking about lots of similar themes. Those themes are pricing settings between different departments. Pricing is a technical skillset, but also a people business. The difficulties in really getting trashed in a corporation. Make sure that our pricing transformation takes hold and runs and isn't just a set and forget but constant iterations and improvements. I suppose we've come to the conclusion that we categorise that as building a value culture in your company. The Value Culture Program through Taylor wells really will address that need.   I mean, as you're all aware, it can be extremely difficult to implement, execute a pricing strategy into the market. And not only that, interpreting that pricing strategy from a higher level, or interpreting higher-level business strategy for pricing. There's always often a disconnect there. We have a business strategy, but sometimes it gets lost in translation when it comes down to pricing, even sales, marketing activities. So, that's just one of the problems we've been seeing in the market. Our customers told us, how can we help with that? Miscommunication, as well as that age-old problem of implementation and executing strategy in the market. As we all know, over 70 to 80% of most transformation and major price change products fail. A lot of people argued that because of the complexity of the strategy itself, or the complexity of execution. We in our work, have seen that often that's not the case at all. It's because there's no system in place to build an embed capability across departments and within teams.   I think anyone who's worked with Taylor Wells will know that we're different to I suppose this podcast is a bit different because we're actually talking about ourselves for once. But usually, we don't do that. But I think it's an opportune time to do so. I think with Taylor Wells, you're always aware that we're helping build capabilities in your business. So that sooner or later you can run it by yourself. It's the old teaching a man to fish routine, isn't it? That's almost a cliche by now. But actually, I think it's the definition of a cliche, isn't it? But I think when you really embed that value culture in your business, it will keep going. You won't need external help at all times. It's something that will grow by itself through iterations as the market changes as you become more mature and your pricing focus as the entire business starts pushing in the same direction. A lot of this stuff is just helping companies get started. Helping people know what they're doing. One thing we're aware of is that you have a pricing department. Everybody in the company has a role to play in achieving commercial results. They don't need to fully understand the entire pricing approach. They don't need to fully understand the pricing technicalities, how things are happening? But they do need to implement and they do need feedback and they do need to feed into this process. I supposed the entire value culture program is making that happen. Building the system, building the structure so that every department whether it's your sales team, whether it's your marketing team, whether it's you know your finance team, your support team, your product development, product research, whatever it is. They're feeding into and running alongside and going in the same direction as the commercial strategy as the value culture in your business.    That's right. I mean, often the teams don't know how to feed into pricing. A new pricing initiative is announced at quite a high level by key sponsors. Often done quite well as a big bang. People are excited, they're wondering what it is. Then there are sorts of a gap. There's a gap not just in communication. People go “okay, well, we heard that announcement once, what's happening with it now?”. But there's also a gap with “okay, what do we do next?”. Although Aidan mentioned that not everybody needs to know what the overall plan and strategy actually means higher level. I actually think that's very important to engaging teams in the overall process. So even though people need to know exactly what their piece is in the play, they also need to know why they're doing it. That's very key as well. That can be communicated by, not just for executives. It's done through line management. And also done through coaching and enabling and this various different types of coaching and reminding and nudging. Just keeping people in the right direction. Reminding them why they're doing it. Every step of the journey, because people forget. It can be new when there are new concepts. New ways of doing things you need to be reminded to break those older habits often sort of cost-plus. So this value Culture Program does all of that within one system. Utilises obviously project management. Utilises structured change management and people talent management systems, as well as a more technical sort of coaching in pricing and sales. So all within one system and just letting simplifying it down by person. So they know exactly what they need to do to get things done to achieve an overarching business strategy.   I think we're not gonna say too much more about it. We've already done a soft launch with two ASX listed companies. So it's out there. It's happening with companies who I suppose are probably innovative. Also, a word I find hard to say. And yeah, it's happening and it's been very successful. It will be rolled out obviously at different levels for different customer sizes. But I suppose people, anyone any listeners interested, maybe even doing better testing based on this for smaller companies. We'd certainly welcome you to come and chat with us.

  If you are an avid listener to our regular appointments or regular podcast you may be wondering where we were over the last month or two. The answer is we were too busy with Taylor Wells to record a podcast. So I don't know how you coped without us and all our grid pricing information. So here we are back today. We are covering the typical question that is in the press relating to white goods. The pricing on white goods such as washing machines, fridges, that sort of thing is increasing apparently for the first time in almost a decade.   Yes, seems like everything's in crisis, prices are increasing at the moment. It's in the press a lot across the board. But we were particularly interested in white goods because as Aidan says they haven't increased for a number of years now but a decade. So why now? I think just to sort of start off, Why didn't they take the price increase? I think, looking at it in terms of often businesses look at this in terms of their costs. I think it's much easier to reduce costs, through manufacturing. A different type of input cost material cost reductions those sorts of things. Then to increase the retail price to customers. So often that has been the general way of maximising margins. I think, though over the past few months that hasn't been possible with fluctuating input, material costs, effects changes, and also changes in customer preferences. People want different types of fridges and all those white goods they don't want the same old. So that changes the manufacturing process, as well. But starting with that first one, let's just really examine that sort of cost implications. There has been very much a focus on that. And as a response, not really thinking much about the customer and moving with the times.   I think with inflation kicking off something people have forgotten about clearly that explains why these companies are pushing prices up. One of the things though that surprised me when I read these news stories were the prices had not increased in 10 years. I'll be honest, I actually doubt that that's true. Just from visiting Harvey Norman is one of the big retailers here in Australia that sells those sorts of white goods. It's actually very interesting to walk around those areas where you're seeing the washing machines, dishwashers, microwaves, all those sorts of items. And what I will say is the just the quality of these machines has improved. The water efficiency, the electricity efficiency, the features they're through the roof. So they're infinitely better than what was standard 10 to 15 years ago. To some extent, I was very surprised to hear this. I actually doubt the prices have stayed static. I actually think that significantly increased. Even items such as televisions, which I'm not sure if they fall into the white goods category. But if we stick even to fridges 10 or 15 years ago, a standard fridge it was a white good. It was not very many bells and whistles. Now they have icemakers that are reasonably standard in many, you can chill water dispensers. You have the American style fridge which is still reasonably new in Australia. Where the large, almost designer style fridges. You have ridiculous new aspects such as touchscreens and temperature monitors. Aspects where you can change category compartments from freezer to just chilled. So the actual features and benefits of the product have increased many times over. They're infinitely better than they used to be. I also personally think the prices have gone up significantly also. So I do think I'd like to look a bit more detail into, what that actually means? How they're categorised is pricing static? And, if it actually is accurate?   I think in regards to that, I know you're saying I think that has to do with range. They are changing their product strategy by using a sort of like good, better, best, best plus or most ultra-premium by introducing all the bells and whistles with these almost computerised fridges. Whether or not yes, the prices are much higher than the standard fridge. But I actually speculate, are they high enough for what they actually offer? Or are they putting those premium sorts of fridges out there to test demand? Because I just can't imagine there's a huge demand out there for an 8000 grand fridge. But have as we have seen in other industries at the moment since COVID, there have been bubbles of demand in that middle-class population who want premium goods. So, actually, what we could be seen as a raging strategy. That is keeping up to date with demand for absolute premium and luxury. However, we haven't got any past data on that. So how long would that bubble last? But there aren't huge amounts of premium fridges in the market to know that. I think overall still you've got your standard fridges on the bulk of the market. That is where I think they're keeping their cost and price competitive. And that's where the stability has been with a price. And that's where the major price increase, the controversial price increase is occurring now. So overall, the whole category of fridges is being moved up. And I think that's been dragged up by this ultra-premium range.   You're not going to hear any argument from me on that one. I think that hits it. I think, yeah, you've got your standard fridge that chills food and then you have it's almost a status symbol. And I think maybe COVID is exacerbated the way we live. Again, my views here could be based on watching 1950s and 60s television shows. But I think in which that's where everyone's education comes from. But I think that most people had dinner parties in that era. The guests didn't congregate in the kitchen from what I've watched in those sorts of TV shows. People had their dinner in the dining room and people the hosts will bring the food through. Whereas I think no, and again, this is based on watching TV shows. I think people are entertained more in these luxury kitchens than they have. The kitchen is always a focal point in the house which is a change in living style. You have granite tops. You have an island in the kitchen. You have designer sinks with two sinks, and the ovens and all these sorts of things. It's almost like an entertainment entertaining space. It's almost like a status symbol were to show how much stuff you have. It used to be, here's my car, now it's looking at my fridge. I think if you have this fancy kitchen, you do need to have a fancy fridge. You want your ice compartments and you want something to show off. So yeah, I think these things used to be, the white goods used to be stapled, they used to be utilities or basics. Now I think as Joanna mentioned I think you have obviously you still have that and that's where cost-plus and inflation is kicking in. But I think you've probably got the Bugatti and the Rolls Royces or fridges now also that those people caught up for. Then you also have some of these, I think they're washing machines somewhere that as German manufactured. Where they're so high tech, they're almost like chocolate cheese.   The interesting thing will be when they find as I was saying before, that there's not a huge demand for that ultra-premium now they're still more demand for the standard offer. So the manufacturing is still done around that. But if that demand does shift, so to operations and all that value manufacturing will have to change. Then it'll become interesting. And then there'll be more price changes with that as well I suppose. But I think it really is a trial. I am quite interested to see how they've calculated prices for the ultra-premium range. Have they just the conventional skimming strategy start high. It's novel, we've got a computer that basically almost speaks to you. We think that as a manufacturer of those ultra-premium goods is going to be novel. People don't really fully understand it. When people don't fully understand it, research shows more likely to spend more money on it. But as the market matures and they understand the offer, then it decreases. I wonder if they're using that as their main guiding principle to pricing or whether they're using more sophisticated value-based approaches and thinking about as Aidan was going on about like those specifications of the product. What does that mean to the customer? Has the market research on customer usage really been explored? And how's that been interpreted into the price calculations? So those sorts of things are intriguing to me as a pricing expert in that space. But at the same time, I think it's pretty much a wait and see. Markets changing hugely now COVID restrictions are lifting people are travelling. Disposable income in household goods probably will decrease, what does that mean? Well for white goods, innovation in that space, slow down and will be ranging change back to normal. I don't think obviously now we've got introductions to new premiums that offer. There's always gonna be people that are going to buy it. But, at what pace is the question?   I just got one more point to make. I think it's related to this idea of the internet of things. And I only became aware of this in relation to white goods when I was browsing as mentioned in the shop. I think some of the fridges now can check what's in the fridge. They're hooked up to the internet and they can suggest recipes or meals that you could make from y those five items in the fridge. They can tell you food is expiring if it's going off if you need to buy more. What almost inevitably will happen there will be tie-ups between the white good companies, between the fridges, between unconstrained fridges here. But it will apply to others also. But you'll have the fridges they'll be linked up to online shopping through the supermarket or through delivery companies, Marley spoon or HelloFresh or one of these sorts of companies. And I think you're only a couple of years away really from an integrated food provision service. Whereby your fridge is more of this network concept where rather than just buying a fridge to store food, you are buying a meal delivery. It's almost like just in time sort of delivery process or logistics almost to get the food straight to your belly, almost. Let's be honest. So, I think that's the way it will go. I think you'll see these companies tie up more and more. There'll be automatic ordering. It'll probably automatically learn, How you ate? What do you like? How do you consume quickly? It'll order stuff in advance for you. It might even give you treats on your birthday by ordering birthday cakes. All that sort of stuff is just around the corner. And yeah, when you get into that the pricing equation changes.  I don't think we'll be talking about costs plus. 

In today's episode, Joanna and Aidan discuss the return of inflation and how it impacts the price rise strategy in 2021. Inflation affects businesses and consumer purchasing power In today's episode, we want to cover something that has been in many news articles in one way or another and that is I suppose the return of inflation which was a monster we associated with maybe times like the 1970s in the 1980s but inflation appears to be back. A lot of the financial press is talking about it and from a pricing perspective it's leading obviously to cost or price increases for nearly all products and in the pricing community, I'm sure some quite tough conversations with customers. I know from a B2B consulting work, a number of clients are dealing with the impacts of inflation in terms of pricing but you may have even observed this in your day to day life in terms of food price hikes over the last few months. It's not just food, it's clothing, it's B2B, it's everything. It's across the board now and it's quite a significant problem for both businesses and consumers. I suppose to keep it simple, inflation basically means that the price of goods and services is going up and when that happens, there's a tendency that people and businesses lose their purchasing power, which basically means that you're not getting as much for your money. So, in turn, a lot of businesses are in a way panicking with this and finding that they have to implement quick sharp price increases to align with this new inflation but not really knowing if their price increase is correct, or whether they're applying their price increase in the right part of their product portfolio.  I think we've been through a historical period probably from the late 80s to the early 90s, wherein Western countries become used to an inflation rate of a negligible rate of like 1%, 2% that sort of thing. I think a recent study I saw was forecasting maybe next year up to 5% in the US, and the old saying, if the US catches a cold the rest of the world gets the sniffles, which probably isn't appropriate at the age of COVID, etc. But we're not in a position where if you're a B2B business or any business that's selling to customers but in B2B, it's more appropriate where you have input costs. It could be petrol, it could be timber, it could be sugar cane, it could be anything really. If you're input costs and then you're selling to a customer, you could be caught in the middle. At the end of the day if your cost basis is rising, at Taylor Wells we often talk about value-based pricing as a way to avoid cost-plus pricing, obviously, but in this scenario, value-based pricing fundamentally you will have to increase your selling prices, as the value of money decreases. As your cost base rises, that rising tide if you don't want to be caught in the middle, if you don't increase your prices to customers you will face declining margins, and obviously, threaten your business continually. The big difficulty is we've been coming through a period where procurements drive down prices, you're signing multi-year contracts, your price rises are capped at a certain level. It's more and more difficult to push through those price raises. To be honest, because of the fact that it hasn't been a big issue over the last 5 to 10 years, people haven't paid that much attention to it. I've seen contracts where your price rises capped at X or capped at 1% per annum but let's be honest if your cost base has gone up by 5% per annum and you can only push up a 1% price rise. You're in some trouble. I'm seeing just that with clients at the moment,  they used to have very robust price variation formulas in place, and they worked quite well in more stable times but then recently, in the last few months, in particular even though they're still good price variation formula they're not having the impact financially that the businesses need and they're losing money, quite significant money, which means it isn't necessarily your price rise formula or price rises that's going to help you here, it's getting understanding on three very important things. You've got to understand inflation and the banking monetary system and be prepared for those changes. It can be something that hits you between the eyes and is a surprise. You've got to understand and have room to move when there are fluctuating costs because that seems to be with us now especially with all supply shortages, COVID etc. is putting pressure on the supply chain. But the third thing and an important thing that a lot of businesses forget are understanding the value of your product portfolio. Often, businesses try to improve margin through price rise or price adjustment strategies without understanding the value of the product portfolio at an SKU level. Generally speaking product hierarchy, price structures, discount levels are a mess even before inflation hits and when inflation hits and you haven't got all of your price architecture in place that's when you see massive declines. This is at the heart of value-based pricing. It isn't just a nice fluffy concept. It's something that really posts together both your costs, market pricing, customer value and economic trends and does in a scientific and very rigorous manner. I'd touch on that point that Joanne has mentioned. I think we look back at the last few years before COVIDis the good times when we thought inflation was gone forever, etc. I suppose in those times people took their foot off or their eye of what was important, they stopped thinking about it and there's an entire generation of people who are not used to inflationary pressure. They're not used to what happened in the 80s, the 70s whereby mortgage rates were 20% and this sort of thing, and people became used to stuff and when you become used to things and see that not as a risk you don't look at them but this stuff exacerbates all the problems. If you don't invest in a value-based function if you don't understand the value of the product you sell if you're getting hammered by procurement teams day in and day out, if you're cutting costs, if you're discounting, if you're doing whatever the procurement team, jumping through those hoops that they're set for you. You're probably setting yourself up for even more hardship, now when there's the other side, you're between a rock and a hard place. You've got the procurement team if they're used to winning, they're not going to really stop and if you're used to giving in to that, it's gonna be a very hard turnaround for you. It's very hard for people to change their personalities or change their negotiating style and then you have the tide of the pricing pushing you from the other side. So it's a very tough scenario for sales teams, for pricing teams but I think in the longer term, from an economic perspective, keep in mind that we talk about real pricing and monetary pricing. So in real pricing, the pricing isn't actually increasing, but you need to push through a price rise. If you want a price rise of 2% and inflation is 5%, in real terms, you need to push through a 7% price increase and to do that, I think you really do need some form of value-based pricing, understanding your value, understanding what you offer, your clients value drivers, and it's all the work you should have done in the good times now it's the time to use it. It's almost like Muhammad Ali stuff, you train hard and the fight becomes easy. Have you done the work? Have you done your value discovery? Have you done the training of your sales teams to know where it will pay off? I agree with that. I think businesses that haven't got a price architecture that brings in all those different elements will really find and continually find that they'll have to do these ad hoc price rises guesstimates as inflation builds and the margin pressure continues to build, it's just going to be inevitable, which means that's the majority of the businesses. Because there are very few businesses that I still see today with a very good price architecture and I'm still talking about leading businesses because those are the people I'm working with. And I'm often quite surprised to see the lack of alignment in their price architecture. Sometimes it's just literally a bare-bones priceless, that's not the price architecture. But saying that so, what do you do if you don't have that price architecture? Well, you have to have a more considered and planned price rise and not be shy with price rises, because as Aidan says, increases in inflation require a considerable price increase. So what do you do? You have to plan it, you've got to consider what way you're going to focus on your product portfolio. You cannot do blanket price increases across the board that creates much more damage than good. You have to work with sales, ultimately, highly advise hiring a pricing manager if you don't have one to coordinate all these efforts, and to come up with a very robust price variation formula. I do stress that this price rise approach is only a tactical approach. The most strategic thing within that will get you through is building that product price architecture, and ensuring that's in place and then working with sales, the product team,  pricing to align everybody to this new way of pricing in a very margin pressured industry and time. I think one final point I'd make and this is reminiscing back on when I was B2B sales. A lot of contracts would have in there, CPI adjustment once a year cap and CPI etc. CPI is an Australian based inflation measure but it's a basket of goods and anyone who's looked at inflation in the past certain areas are much more subject to inflation than others depending on drivers. Is it imported? Petrol prices could be going through the roof and raw materials may not go through the roof. So, CPI may not be a defense in some way for you and may not be appropriate for your contract. So even just to protect yourself, a final point I'd make is to really understand what you're selling and if CPI is not appropriate to defend yourself from inflation, picking up these things aren't that important when inflation is 1% across the board. But you could have sectors now with inflation of 1%, but other areas could be 10% and if you're a cap of CPI limit at 2, again, you're just in trouble. So this is really understanding of what you're selling? How are you selling? what you're subjected to? What are your risks? your continuity of supply? Those aspects of the insurance concept behind what you're supplying and have complete confidence that you're not committing yourself to a longer-term contract without that protection for you. So that's just what I would end on today. I think that's a really good point. I think it hits the heart of the problem. People, businesses don't understand what they're selling, they don't understand the value profile of their product portfolio. So then they do this blanket price increase that often tends to be too high or too low creating disruption in the market, and ultimately, doesn't give them the financial impact ongoing that they wanted. I think Aidan summed it up quite nicely before and I note in the newspapers today that Unilever, Dollies, Pepsi is not shy with advertising that they've taken considerable price increases in response to inflation. Albeit I'm not sure how well they've increased in exactly where, but I'm sure they've got dedicated pricing teams in their businesses looking at inflation, looking at price rises very carefully, I'm sure. One final point I make and I just noticed this on the streets recently. This affects businesses of all types and sizes. I've even seen local restaurants, Thai restaurants, who've had lunch specials probably between 10 and $12 for the last 10 years. I see a lot of them now even have signs in their windows talking about the cost of materials of food and in particular seafood, prawns, etc. and the same prices are rising for this reason. So even from the smallest local neighbourhood businesses seeing these issues, but okay, we will leave it there today. 

In this episode of Pricing College -  Joana and Aiden talk about the Mercedes Benz fixed pricing model. What it is and how they're going to execute this in the Australian Market? Hello and welcome to pricing college with your hosts Aidan Campbell and Joanna Wells. You may have noticed that this is our first podcast in quite a while and you might be asking, why? Fundamentally, the reason is that we were too busy, and we were caught up with work at Taylor Wells. And so now we are back on track and we've made a few adjustments basically to speed up the process. You may notice we don't have an intro because some people said they didn't like it and it delayed getting into the good stuff. So I suppose we're stripping away some of the superfluous stuff and hopefully leaving the good stuff. To get down to it. What's the first topic we're going to speak about today after such a long time of not being on there? We've decided to take a topic that we probably all have read a bit about as pricing sales professionals and that would be the Mercedes pricing model change moving to a fixed pricing model and sales model. Before I suppose the recommended retail prices were just that and the franchisees could obviously use that as a benchmark but could negotiate around those prices. Now, since a couple of weeks ago, they have launched a completely new model where the franchisees cannot do that and the salespeople in those franchisees are not happy about it because they've lost I suppose the compensation benefits and all of that negotiation power that they had in one fell swoop. I think there's a lot of stuff going through the court at the moment because obviously, the dealerships are very unhappy, dealerships I believe it'll cut their margins that aspect of the actual structure of the pricing we're not too sure about, but the dealerships are very unhappy. They've obviously invested in fancy showrooms, etc. and feel they're getting all their hard work has been taken away. But I suppose some of my thoughts on this are from a value perspective, you can look at it in very many different regards. You can make the argument that Mercedes is so confident in their value that they think they don't need salespeople in theory that the product sells itself that the marketing, the advertising, the brand image those things are selling the product and literally the showrooms are distribution centres, it's a shipping model to get them to the place, that's one aspect. I would say to some extent might undervalue the value provided through the selling experience, the differentiation of answering questions. If you've been to the Audi dealership, and then you pop in to see the Mercedes dealership there's a lot of value that if you'd have questions you'd want to be answered, you might even trust the salesperson, you might know them previously, you might be a repeat buyer and that gives you confidence in them where they're a good dealer, they're not selling lemons as the old saying goes. And also thinking that a car is just a single item is to me it's a bit foolish. There are so many slight differentiation, leather seats, colours, trims. Is it available today? Is it available to drive away? Is it a demonstrator model that's been sitting on the forecourt for a while? Is it something you know, there's a lot of little intangibles, I'm all for canning and cloning and selling through websites, but when you are when you're going into something as tangible as a car, there's a lot of stuff in there. I agree with that and when I read Mercedes' response to that very point about the value and the different attributes of their cars and range. They came back and said, Well, we considered that within the fixed pricing. However, the sales teams don't agree with that and they argue that the number one value driver for customers is the ability to negotiate and search for high-value cars through different franchisees. So, they're claiming that yes, on a product level, i.e the car, that may be the case or may not, but from a customer perspective that they're missing out on a very important value driver and that is customers want to negotiate the price on the car within a certain range and highly value that. Now look, when you think about that in itself, it's a little bit of a grey area and I could see that, that might trouble head office and Mercedes that having that grey sort of wide price range and ungated value proposition in the hands of sales and franchisees and maybe that was a reason in itself to go to a fixed price model where they could control that. Maybe they were hearing other sorts of market intelligence feedback from their customers that was contrary to the sales team that was actually saying they didn't like the wide price bandwidth for high-value cars and if you're going to pay a lot of money for a car, you want to know what the price of that car actually is. I can see a lot of the point in protecting margins, protecting the brand image and this sort of stuff, but there's so many on this podcast, we often talk about the tradables, the intangibles, the little things people don't think about. When it comes to cars, there are so many things.  There's, you know, if you do a trade in your other vehicle that the dealership will take it away for you and give you a bit of money off. People like the concept of haggling and negotiating and even that they like to feel they're getting a little win here and there. Is the dealership near to your house? Has a dealership invested in a place that's super local that you can go to easily? Even then, the dealership, is there a car that they just want to shift to get off the forecourt they've invested in that stock or do they need to move it? We move into concepts such as clearances, people like the 2022 model versus the 2021 model, all these sorts of things. Can this be run from Germany when we're talking about the Australian market where there are these differences? The Australian market is significantly different to say the European market due to the size, the geography, the temperature, all this sort of stuff. The other thing I'd say is, on the Internet, yes, you can get all the information you want but oftentimes when you go to a dealership you want to know information that the salesperson knows. They know what will get you across the line, fuel consumption, what your value drivers are? being able to tailor the offer to you. Even getting to down to like financing, how many people go in and buy a car in cash? Can you trade and price for the financing aspect? All these sorts of things that I think there are just too many things around it that in theory, you could be stripping away and damaging your sales force. On this podcast, we often talk about centralizing, you know, centralizing the strategy, but then decentralizing the implementation and I think what we're doing here is we're over centralizing, but you're damaging the actual skills salespeople that in any market are vital. Yeah, I suppose that itself it's a fixed model, not just a fixed pricing model it's a fixed business model and an inflexible by definition being fixed. It's inflexible with execution implementation and getting those regional and local differences. From a stock management perspective, interestingly, with this new model the franchisees no longer own the cars. Sales teams, franchisee owners are saying there's no incentive for them to shift old stock, new stock or any stock saying that they don't own the vehicle which is going to have, which I suppose was the very lever that they were using during sort of the long negotiations to prevent this new pricing model over the last few months. From a pricing perspective, I did notice that prior to the fixed price model changes Mercedes Benz had implemented a number of price increases prior six months before introducing this new fixed model. I imagine that they use those price increases as the usual covering costs in a fluctuating cost environment. But I also imagine they did a little bit of modelling on those attributes but I do believe a lot of those value attributes were based on the product and as Aidan was saying, have missed out on the tradable the other things that people value, not just the price, the product, or even the brand, it's everything else around it, which is the pricing system that architecture piece. So, yeah, in a way, maybe looking beyond that, what could be a broader business strategy implication of this new price model change? It could be that they are thinking of deranging certain cars in Australia, potentially introducing a completely new look and feel and modern Mercedes feel that there's a more aligned to the electronic car, the Tesla type idea phasing out old, bringing in new thinking about demand as well as supply thinking about that in itself. At the moment, there are huge supply issues with cars. Maybe they took that into account when they're doing a prior price increase over the past few months. But demand is high at the moment and supply is short, which means that maybe they've kept their own revenue opportunities right now because there's a huge demand for these cars and just not enough of them. So with a new fixed price model, they've kept the revenue opportunity but in so doing maybe they've got broader business implications for making these decisions, which I'm thinking is probably deranging and thinking about business strategy. Yeah, I think one of the things we look at here is, on this podcast we often say never piss off your sales team. As a pricing department, one of the worst things you can do is get the back off of people on the sales team who need to implement the strategy. If you get the back off, it will often backfire on you. That's the first thing I will say and the second thing I would say is often we're very against discounting, you find strategies not to discount but often sales If you discount you might get a sale in the door where someone is shopping around the competitor to an Audi or BMW or a Lexus, or whatever it is, and maybe they just want a little bit of knocked off the price to get them across the line to match another price or something like that. So in that instance, I think it could be a foolish thing. The only thing I'd say is, what is the impact this will have on the second-hand market? If you're keeping the inflated price for brand new cars, what happens to a car that was sold two months ago, when someone needs to sell that will there be a significant difference in pricing in those in those different markets? So I think it's a very interesting one, there could be the concept of a change in the model, the Mercedes model completely and some newspapers have reported that potentially they're moving to electric engines and their entire model will change. Who knows? But the alarm bells for me will be annoying a sales team that has built up expertise over time and can you centralize something as passionate about such as a car? Yeah, I think we're yet to learn the real answers to all of this. I think there's going to be a lot of work done locally to make this work, but which in itself seems hard to imagine because it's a very much centralized German strategy. So how they're going to execute this realistically in the Australian market is yet to be seen that it's probably going to be quite difficult. But an interesting topic, and we'll probably circle back as we learn more and provide you with those insights. But up to this point, I hope you've enjoyed our conversation about Mercedes and feel free to let us know your thoughts about this topic. If you know more, let us know. If you've got any questions, happy to answer them. All right. Well, thank you very much for listening. Thanks again. Bye

Taylor Wells, Operations Manager, and Tyler Stilley, vCISO, sit down with Pearson-Kelly's Executive Vice President, Lee Flood, to talk about hiring technical talent. Both talk about how they vet technical talent during the interview process, what makes a technical candidate a good "fit" and much more.

The past year and a half has posed many challenges, but it has also brought about a lot of conversation around mental health, the importance of getting support and supporting others, and being able to practice self-care. Taylor Wells Maberry is in a job that has demanded creativity during this time in this area as she is the Senior Coordinator for Player Engagement for Major League Soccer.  Her passion for helping others be the best version of themselves is a perfect fit for this position.  In this episode we talk about many things including how to engage and support athletes in areas of mental health, working as a woman in a men’s league office, and how social media comments can be damaging to an athlete’s mental health.

Hosts Brian Avery and Shelley Lyle, with the University of Florida Department of Sport Management, Office of Engaged Learning interviewed Taylor Wells, a Senior Coordinator for the MLS. Taylor received her bachelors from Concordia University Irvine and her masters of business administration from La Sierra University. Her work experience includes PR/Communications for the L.A. Clippers, Client Service Rep for Bank of America, Marketing and Global Outreach Coordinator for the Grover Corner Counseling and Community Center. Taylor has worked for the MLS for over 3 years serving as the Executive Assistant to Deputy Commissioner and Executive Vice President, Communications before taking on her current role as Senior Coordinator of Player Engagement. She is also attending Law school at Fordham University of Law. #UFSPM #GoGators #UF

Taylor Wells of Create Successful Webinars gives tips on creating and running successful webinars to achieve your business goals.GUEST: Taylor Wells of Create Successful Webinars | LinkedinHOSTS: The Video Marketing Value Podcast is hosted by:- Dane Golden of VidiUp.tv and VidTarget.io | LinkedIn | Twitter | YouTube- Gwen Miller  LinkedIn | TwitterSPONSORS: This episode is brought to you by our affiliate partners, including: TubeBuddy, VidIQ, MorningFame, Rev.com, and other products and services we recommend.PRODUCER: Jason Perrier of Phizzy StudiosREAD THE TRANSCRIPT

Taylor Wells of Create Successful Webinars gives tips on creating and running successful webinars to achieve your business goals.GUEST: Taylor Wells of Create Successful Webinars | LinkedinHOSTS: The Video Marketing Value Podcast is hosted by:- Dane Golden of VidiUp.tv and VidTarget.io | LinkedIn | Twitter | YouTube- Gwen Miller  LinkedIn | TwitterSPONSORS: This episode is brought to you by our affiliate partners, including: TubeBuddy, VidIQ, MorningFame, Rev.com, and other products and services we recommend.PRODUCER: Jason Perrier of Phizzy StudiosREAD THE TRANSCRIPT

What a crazy ride it's been. Hard to believe that three years have passed since starting this podcast, but here we are. Come celebrate with us this week, as Andy and Alasyn are joined by one of the founding members of The Champions' Cast, Taylor Wells, to reminisce and tell some stories of covering Zelda throughout the years. We're going over all of the announcements that the Zelda series has given us since we started the podcast, so come take a nice trip down memory lane as three friends do what they do best: talk Zelda! Thank you to everyone who has supported and listened over the years! The podcast has grown bigger than anyone could have ever imagined, and we're just getting started! Follow the Champions' Cast on Twitter: Andy Spiteri – @Spiteri316 Alasyn Eletha – @AlasynEletha Taylor Wells - @GIF_Bluehawk

What a crazy ride it's been. Hard to believe that three years have passed since starting this podcast, but here we are. Come celebrate with us this week, as Andy and Alasyn are joined by one of the founding members of The Champions' Cast, Taylor Wells, to reminisce and tell some stories of covering Zelda throughout the years. We're going over all of the announcements that the Zelda series has given us since we started the podcast, so come take a nice trip down memory lane as three friends do what they do best: talk Zelda! Thank you to everyone who has supported and listened over the years! The podcast has grown bigger than anyone could have ever imagined, and we're just getting started! Follow the Champions’ Cast on Twitter: Andy Spiteri – @Spiteri316 Alasyn Eletha – @AlasynEletha Taylor Wells - @GIF_Bluehawk

Mike, Brian, and Nick discuss our Goodreads Book of the Month: Farmhand Vol. 1 by Rob Guillory, Taylor Wells, and Kody Chamberlain.

With the rise of the BLM movement, many wonder how schools will address racism going forward. Today, we hear from two students who attend one of Jacksonville's highly regarded institutions, Episcopal School of Jacksonville. Olivia and Taylor give insight to their racist encounters with administration and students, how they believe the school can better serve Black and Brown students, and also what changes they anticipate for the 2020-2021 school year.

Taylor talks about the Law if Attraction and the importance of gratitude, health, and being positive. Taylor also talks about her book, Create the Best Life Ever and her affirmation cards. Our conversation also includes her experience with an eating disorder, yoga, and being grateful. She does a demonstration on how to clear your body's energy. Book: Create the Best Life Ever - https://amzn.to/2UPdQsL Inspiration Cards: https://amzn.to/34lJX6g Website: https://www.taylorwells.me ScoutandCellar.com/TaylorWells TaylorWells.JuicePlus.com My Website: noizviol8ion.com --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

This week Taylor Wells is on the podcast.  She is an author, entrepreneur, and founder of Prana Power Yoga™, United Nations Yoga Peace Ambassador, Clinical Psychologist, Master Yoga & Spiritual Teacher, Creator and passionate about educating people about clean wine! She is a happy Super-mom of five, including twin nine-year-old boys, and resides in her happy place, Barrington, Rhode Island. Taylor’s best-selling book—Create The Best Life Ever:  Real Life Stories to Get Inspired, Inspiration Card Deck, and DVDs are available at TaylorWells.me, Amazon.com and selected stores.   TaylorWells.me ScoutandCellar.com/TaylorWells

Taylor Wells and Paulette met in Nantucket during the Nantucket Yoga Festival while Taylor was teaching and Paulette was soaking up the sun and the vibe. Taylor blew Paulette away and the two have been friends and sisters ever since. ✨ Happy SuperMom of 5✨ ✨Graduate of Brown University and Columbia University.✨ ✨Founder of 5 Prana Power Yoga Studios✨ ✨Author✨ ✨Entrepreneur✨ ✨United Nations Yoga Peace Ambassador✨ ✨Founder of Prana Restaurant - the first raw vegan restaurant in Newton Massachusetts✨ ✨Juice PLUS+ Sales Coordinator✨ ✨Law of Attraction Mindfulness based Coach✨ ✨Law of Attraction Mindfulness based Therapist✨ ✨Scout and Cellar Consultant✨ ScoutandCellar.com/TaylorWells TaylorWells.me TaylorWells.JuicePlus.com BostonHerald.com Taylor Wells, M.A., M.Ed., RYT Founder of Prana Power Yoga™, Author & Entrepreneur Taylor speaks, teaches, and inspires at conferences all over the world, including The Nantucket Yoga Festival, The Young Presidents’ Organization, Prana Fest, Women’s Wellness, Longevity Now, The Yoga Chant Fest, and Yoga for Peace. She is an author, entrepreneur, and founder of Prana Power Yoga™ (5 studios in Massachusetts and New York), United Nations Yoga Peace Ambassador, Law of Attraction & Mindfulness Based Therapist, Law of Attraction & Mindfulness Based Coach, Boston Herald Columnist, Boston Herald Blogger, Master Yoga & Spiritual Teacher, Creator and sole writer of Super-mom.com, Wellness, and Healthy Lifestyle Activist with Juice PLUS+. A graduate of Brown University (A.B.) and Columbia University (M.A., M.Ed.), Taylor trained over 100 yoga teachers a year in her renowned Prana Power Yoga™ Teacher Training Program in both Massachusetts and New York and taught 25 times a week at all of her PPY locations for 16 years. She is a happy Super-mom of five, including twin nine-year-old boys, and resides in her happy place, Barrington, Rhode Island. Taylor’s best-selling book—Create The Best Life Ever: Real Life Stories to Get Inspired, Inspiration Card Deck, and DVDs are available at TaylorWells.me, Amazon.com and selected stores. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thriving-in-chaos/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thriving-in-chaos/support

This week is all about ingame currency a d how it seldom works, but when it does it can really enhance a game, tabletop or video format! This week we are joined by a special guest! Taylor Wells of the Zelda Dungeon Champions' Cast (@GIF_Bluehawk on Twitter and Twitch) sat down and shared a dram with us, and we had a grand old time. WINNER, WINNER! Congratulations to our winner, Chipz N Sticks! He was one of our first twenty-five subscribers, and as such has won a free beer! I will reach out to him for delivery, and in the meantime, check him out on his YouTube channel!

Top 10 July sales, Sandman Universe, Supergirl 21, Fantastic Four 1, Spider-Man Annual, Hey Kids Comics!, Hot Lunch Special, Black Badge, Blastosaurus, Dinosaucers, Riptide, Long Live Pro Wrestling 0, Norah, Oddwell   Reviews: Ant-Man and Wasp, The Meg, Maniac, Gravity Falls episode 1   News: Dark Phoenix and New Mutants movies, Supergirl movie, Negan Techen, Black Mask is Birds of Prey villain, new Greg for s4 of Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Bautista and Guardians 3, Ruby Rose is Batwoman, Fury and Hill in Spider-Man: Far From Home, Oscar stuff, Jackpot movie, Silver Sable and Black Cat movies, Cyborg cast for Doom Patrol, Cassandra Cain casting, X-Men Disassembled, Lois Lane by Greg Rucka   Comics Details: Sandman Universe 1 by Neil Gaiman, Nalo Hopkinson, Kat Howard, Si Spurrier, Dan Watters, Bilquis Evely, Max Fiumara, Sebastian Fiumara, Tom Fowler, Domo Stanton, Mat Lopes Supergirl 21 by Marc Andreyko, Kevin Maguire, Sean Parsons, Fco Plascencia Fantastic Four 1 by Dan Slott, Sara Pichelli, Elisabetta D’amico, Marte Gracia, Simone Bianchi, Marco Russo, Skottie Young, Jeremy Treece Spider-Man Annual by Bryan Hill, Mark Bagley, Nelson Blake, Alitha Martinez, Roberto Poggi, Carlos Lopez Hey Kids Comics! 1 by Howard Chaykin, Wil Quintana Hot Lunch Special 1 by Eliot Rahal, Jorge Fornes Black Badge 1 by Matt Kindt, Tyler Jenkins, Hilary Jenkins Dinosaucers 1 by Michael Uslan, Andrew Pepoy, Jason Millet Riptide 1 by Scott Chitwood, Danny Luckert Long Live Pro Wrestling 0 by James Haick, Branko Jovanovic Norah 1 by Kasey Pierce, Sean Seal Oddwell 1 by David Clark, Acacia Rodarte   Comics Countdown, 08 Aug 2018: 10. Bloodshot Salvation 12 by Jeff Lemire, Doug Braithwaite, Jordie Bellaire9. Hawkman 3 by Robert Venditti, Bryan Hitch, Andrew Currie, Paul Neary, Alex Sinclair 8. Oblivion Song 6 by Robert Kirkman, Lorenzo De Felici, Annalisa Leoni7. Long Live Pro Wrestling 0 by James Haick, Branko Jovanovic6. Relay 2 by Zac Thompson, Andy Clarke, Donny Cates 5. Shadow Roads 2 by Cullen Bunn, Brian Hurtt, AC Zamudio 4. Eternal Empire 10 by Sarah Vaughn, Jonathan Luna 3. Farmhand 2 by Rob Guillory, Taylor Wells 2. Outpost Zero 2 by Sean McKeever, Alexandre Tefenkgi,Jean-Francois Beaulieu 1. Sandman Universe 1 by Neil Gaiman, Nalo Hopkinson, Kat Howard, Si Spurrier, Dan Watters, Bilquis Evely, Max Fiumara, Sebastian Fiumara, Tom Fowler, Domo Stanton, Mat Lopes

  I could have the health that I was desiring. It was up to me. If I believed it, I could have it. And I didn't have to do it alone. On this episode of the Plan Simple Podcast, I'm doing something a little different. I celebrated my birthday recently, which is a time of reflection for me, and I decided I wanted to share my story in a different way. Nine years ago, I was an exhausted, uninspired, fat, workaholic mom of three kids under five. I hit a wall and knew something had to change. I had no idea how profound the changes in my health, happiness, family, spirituality, and work would be. Today I'm focusing on three key lessons I've learned in the past nine years, and talking with two of the people that I've learned from and with too! These are the core lessons I've learned: Change starts with me, but I can't do it alone. I have a lot to learn – and there are so many people who can help me. Accountability by friends can make a huge difference. I'm going to talk about all of these today because I think we all need these lessons, and even if we've learned them, we need reminders. (Myself very much included!)   Believe in the Change You Want When you're ready, you know it. And all you have to do is take the first step. I had no idea how I was going to change, all I knew was that I was ready to do whatever it was going to take to not be tired, not feel yucky, not feel like a bad mom, not have so much extra weight on my body … I met one of my mentors, Taylor Wells, the next day, and she gave me my “last diet.” She had me eat real food. Lots of fruits and veggies, nuts and seeds. But besides the food, Taylor taught me a bigger lesson: That I could believe that I could have the health that I was desiring. That was up to me. If I believed it, I could have it. Taylor shares these bits of wisdom: I believe that when you feel something in your heart and it resonates ... go with that. What you focus on, grows. Choose to focus on things that make you feel good. Stop arguing with your limitations. Tell me what you can do, what you love, what you want. Whether it's creating a vision for yourself or starting a morning routine, start where you are, any way that you can. Just start.   Mentors Matter After Taylor got me on my path, I got really excited about learning. I found so many teachers and mentors (you'll find a lot of them in the links). Nina Manoloson taught me to cook. And she taught me the 10.10.10 Method. The idea that scheduling 10 minutes for something for you makes a huge difference. From there it was like a web of meeting people. One person led to another, and I found that what I needed kept showing up in my life when I needed it. I learned so much about food and family (and bringing the two together). As I explored the idea of bringing kids along for the ride, I found Kim John Payne and integrated a lot of his simplicity parenting ideas. I learned about blogging and organization and abundance. And just when I realized I was creating an expensive hobby, I found Marie Forleo and B-school and learned how to love marketing. She also taught me that everything is figureoutable. Through B-school, my circle continued to widen.   Get an Accountability Buddy I eventually ended up doing a year-long program with Fabienne Fredrickson. My big takeaway lesson: I need to be personally responsible for everything that happens in my life. This is the cornerstone of having a great life. What's interesting was that this lesson wasn't very different from what I had learned from Taylor but I had, at this point, spiraled up. I was at a new place. I could hear new things. Fabienne gave me this great tool to actually take personal responsibility —  an accountability buddy. Somebody who we check in with regularly. Somebody else going through similar work, similar stages in their business or life. Someone who encourages us to stretch, while we do the same for them. One of mine was Kelly Grimes. Kelley and I agree that the structure of an accountability buddy is important. Accountability isn't about judgement or striving. Accountability is a place to  show up honestly and authentically and have a commitment to yourself to grow. Accountability can be so motivating, and it's a give and take. Right now, I have an accountability friend for exercise. We have committed to walking every morning at 6:00. I can tell you that I did not want to walk this morning, but I went because I said I would.   Find Your Mentors For the past three years, I really searched for mentors wherever I need to upgrade an aspect of my life. It started with food and wellness and parenting as those topics got folded into my work, I needed to learn various aspects of having a business. I learned about crowdfunding and then public speaking. I kept finding the next little step, the next person. It's Hansel and Gretel following those crumbs. I keep putting myself out there and finding the people I needed. I've made amazing friends and found new teachers and mentors and coaches. I learned: How to crowdfund from Patty Lennon The need for practice with public speaking from Alexia Vernon To change my money mindset from Kisstina Wise The difference between a coach and a consultant, and how to show up as a coach from Jenny Fenig And so much more… instagram, photography, pinterest, facebook live, how to bake a chicken… Have you all seen what you can learn online? And to be clear, I invested in myself on this journey because I really needed to be all in that way. But it does not always have to cost money. I have worked in 12 step fellowships. I have done free challenges. I have read books from the library.   Flow 365 In the same way that I had to learn that changing my food wasn't just about weight, or really about weight at all, I've learned that as I talk about food, it's really about time. Making the time to show up on dinner, making the time to move throughout the day, figuring out how you're going to get groceries into the house in the most efficient way, figuring out whether it's relaxing to go to the grocery store, whether you need to have a different philosophy for that or different system for that … Mentorship and accountability buddies have made such a huge difference in my life, and I've brought them together in FLOW365. Go to http://www.plannsimplemeals.com/flow365 to get the details. If you know this is a great move for you, you can email me at mia@plansimplemeals.com and we'll figure out how we can hop on the phone and talk about whether this is a good fit for you. LINKS Taylor Wells Taylor's Create the Best Life Ever cards Plan Simple Meals Facebook page Podcast with Nina Manoloson Nina Manoloson Dolores Hirschmann Podcast with Kim John Payne Simplicity Parenting Kim John Payne Holly Becker Marie Forleo B-school Podcast with Desha Peacock Desha Peacock Amy Pearson Podcast with Anna Kunnecke Anna Kunnuecke Jill Hope Donna Cravotta Fabienne Fredrickson Podcast with Kelley Grimes Kelley Grimes Podcast with Patty Lennon The Crowdfunding Book by Patty Lennon Podcast with Alexia Vernon Podcast with Stacey Martino Bari Tessler The Art of Money Jenny Fenig Podcast with Jenny Fenig Podcast with Sarah Jenks Whole Woman Doable Changes from this episode: CHOOSE YOUR FOCUS. What you focus on grows, so choose to focus on things that make you feel good. Write inspiring quotes or your own mantras and goals on notecards to look at throughout the day. Or write them on a sticky note and put in on your mirror. Make it a wallpaper on your phone. TAKE 10 MINUTES FOR YOU. In the morning, plan three 10-minute slots, to do something super nurturing. You might make a green smoothie, you might stretch, you might go on a walk, you might take a nap, you might talk with a friend, you might read a book, you could jump rope, you could hula hoop, whatever feels really great on that day. Plan the 10 minutes into your day … and then do it! REACH OUT. What do you want in your life? Find one person who is doing something related to that and reach out to them. Post on their social page. Join their free (or paid) class. Email them and tell them why a particular podcast or post meant something to you.

In this episode, we discuss branding, common brand misconceptions and how to avoid them, and how to overcome brand gaps. Taylor is communications director at On the Mark Strategies and speaker at CUES School of Strategic Marketing I & II.

Successful entrepreneur and life-style columnist Taylor Wells wants us all to create the Best Life Ever. A parent of five, Taylor uses real-life examples to inspire us in every chapter. Her fun, easy, and effective approach makes the Best Life Ever accessible to all. Her book, Create the Best Life Ever, is available on Amazon at: http://www.amazon.com/Create-Best-Life-Taylor-Wells/dp/0985708409 Her website for inspiration and Yoga tips is www.Super-Mom.com. Taylor was United Nations Yoga Peace Ambassador.  Taylor trains over 75 yoga teachers a year in her renowned Prana Power Yoga Teacher Training Program in both Massachusetts and New York.  She is a happy Super-mom of five, including twin two-year-old boys, and resides outside of Boston.