The Happy Pricing Podcast

Understanding your value can help you price more confidently, without being brash. When we understand our target audience and what they need, we can create a perception of value that resonates with them. But we need to be prepared to handle rejection and understand that a "no" isn’t necessarily the end of the conversation.

If we don't communicate the value of our work properly, we undervalue it and risk missing out on valuable client relationships.

This week, Carlos is joined by Frances and Simon from the Better Bolder Braver community, who help coaches market their work with more ease. That involves having tricky conversations around pricing, and being able to clearly communicate the value they bring.

This episode is perfect for you if you

• Want to learn how to confidently set prices
• Are interested in understanding how to convey your work’s value to potential clients
• Need advice on dealing with rejection and building confidence in pricing conversations

• Join the Happy Pricing course
• Join the conversation live
• Pricing Philosophy – Derek Sivers
• Better Bolder Braver
• Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on it, by Chris Voss and Tahl Raz
• Chris Voss Teaches the Art of Negotiation – Masterclass

Storytelling is a powerful tool in marketing and selling. It lets us connect with our audience on a deeper level and create a sense of trust and authenticity. By understanding our own journey and values, as well as those of our ideal customers, we can craft compelling stories that resonate with them and help them see the value in what we offer. It's not just about selling a product or service, but about creating a meaningful experience that meets the needs and desires of our audience.

This week, Ben’s on holiday so Carlos is joined by Better Bolder Braver co-founder, Frances Khalastchi. She emphasises the importance of understanding our own journeys and values, as well as those of our ideal customers, in crafting compelling stories that resonate with our audience and create a sense of trust and authenticity.

• Connect with Frances via LinkedIn
• Better Bolder Braver – marketing community for coaches
• Join the Happy Pricing course
• Join the conversation live

If you’ve ever felt guilty spending money on things that are important to you, the solution is to work on understanding and acknowledging your money stories, and find ways to flow around them. Here are the steps we need to take:

1. Become aware of our money stories.
2. Practice acknowledging and accepting them.
3. Find ways to flow around them, rather than letting them block us.

Unaddressed money stories will continue to get in our way, affecting our ability to sell and spend effectively. But by working on them, we can find more freedom and ease in our relationship with money.

What beliefs and perceptions do you have around money? How do they affect your ability to sell and spend? Start by becoming aware of them, and practice acknowledging and accepting them. And always remember, we can find ways to flow around them, just like water.

• Join the Happy Pricing course
• Join the conversation live
• Work with Source: Realise big ideas, organise for emergence and work artfully with money, by Tom Nixon
• “Be like water” – Bruce Lee quote
• Peripheral Thinking – Ben’s podcast

If you’re struggling to charge enough for your work, you're not alone. The solution is simple: raise your prices. It's the easiest way to increase your earnings. But lots of us face resistance and doubt when it comes to actually doing it.

To tackle this problem, we need to first understand our beliefs around pricing and money. We may have limiting beliefs that are holding us back from charging what we're truly worth.

To overcome these beliefs and raise our prices, we can follow these steps:

1. Conduct a mental audit of our clients and identify who values our work the most.
2. Decide on a new price point and communicate it confidently to our clients.
3. Practice talking about money in a non-threatening setting to build our confidence.
4. Keep in mind that price is a signal and can attract new, higher-paying clients.

If we don't tackle our pricing hang-ups, we risk staying trapped at our current earnings level and missing out on opportunities for growth and investment in our work.

Start today, by conducting a mental audit of your clients and identifying who values your work the most. Then, consider raising your prices and communicating the change confidently to your clients. Remember, the more we talk about money, the easier it becomes.

• Join the Happy Pricing course
• Join the conversation live

Bringing play and experimentation into pricing can lead to more positive and valuable conversations with clients. Approaching pricing with ease helps us create a space for dialogue, rather than showing up with tension or desperation.

This is an invitation to challenge your limiting beliefs and fears around pricing, and to start experimenting to see what unexpected results you can achieve.

• Join the Happy Pricing course
• Join the conversation live

Pricing is not just a number, but a signal that sends messages to customers about the value, safety, and reassurance of what we offer. Positioning plays a crucial role in how pricing is perceived, and it’s important to be confident in the value we offer and not negotiate with ourselves by offering discounts.

In this episode, Carlos and Ben discuss how pricing and positioning overlap, and how we can inject a little experimentation and play into our pricing.

• Join the Happy Pricing course
• Join the conversation live

How comfortable are you talking about money? That, along with what you sell and who you want to sell it to will dictate whether you want to – or should – put prices on your website.

As ever, the answer is never black-and-white, so Ben and Carlos are joined by community leader Frances Khalastchi to unpack the options.

• The Vision 20/20 programme
• Join the Happy Pricing course
• Connect with Frances via LinkedIn
• Better Bolder Braver – the coaches’ marketing community

Pricing well means understanding the value of the work to the customer, and being willing to have open conversations sensitivity. We need to tell a story about the value of the work and the expertise of the person or business providing it, rather than just focusing on time and materials.

It also means being willing to challenge our own assumptions about what is a fair price and being open to exploration and dialogue with the customer to arrive at a mutually satisfactory agreement.

• Pricing Design Work & Creativity - Stop Charging Hourly
• Join the Happy Pricing course

When pricing feels like guesswork, that uncertainty can damage the trust we’re hoping to build with our clients. If we explore the change we’re helping our clients achieve, we can gain a better understanding of what’s important to them and tailor our pricing accordingly.

Pricing is a product of what we sell and how we sell it, and being curious is key to understanding the value of our work and helping clients make informed decisions.

• The Vision 20/20 programme
• Join the Happy Pricing course

There are four layers of goals: the crazy layer, the control layer, the concrete layer, and the everyday. To work effectively towards a goal you need to break it down into output you can control and create steps you can build upon.

As entrepreneurs, we have to do things every day to get to our goals. But if “more money” is your goal, what will more money buy you?

Carlos and Ben explore setting financial goals that do more than help us meet our core needs, but actually excite us to do our best work.

• Will it Make the Boat Go Faster? Olympic-Winning Strategies for Everyday Success, by Harriet Beveridge & Ben Hunt-Davis
• The Web of Meaning, with Jeremy Lent – Episode 1of Peripheral Thinking, with Ben Johnson
• How to triple your income, lose it, and get it back again – Episode 34 of the Happy Pricing podcast, with David Papa
• Join the Happy Pricing course