Have you ever lowered your price before anyone said it was too high?

In this episode of The Quiet Game, Jo gets honest about one of the most expensive habits a solo entrepreneur can have: the pre-emptive discount. The one nobody asked for. The one that happens before the proposal is even read, before the client has said a word, before anyone has given you any reason to lower the number.

This is not an episode about pricing strategy. It is an episode about projection, geography, and the belief underneath the number that is quietly doing most of the work.

Jo shares the specific moment she realised she had enrolled in a programme costing thousands of dollars that was delivering less value than the twelve euro monthly membership she was already running. And the uncomfortable question that raised about her own pricing.

She also talks about being Portuguese in a North American market, and the belief she carried for years that her location somehow affected the value of her expertise. And one practical change that shifted everything: sending the price before the discovery call.

Honest, specific, and uncomfortable in the best possible way.

Want to go deeper?

The Anti-Hustle MBA is a free 30-day email course for service business owners who are done running on empty. One email per day. One honest idea you can actually use. No hustle, no 6-figure promises.

Join for free at https://www.jobeldade.com/theantihustlemba

Let's work together: https://forms.gle/KHyedhSYSVeesgur9

Connect with Jo:

Instagram: @thequietgame
Website: www.jobeldade.com
Email: [email protected]

Subscribe and leave a review:

If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe so you never miss a new episode. And if you have two minutes, leaving a review on Apple Podcasts helps more women find the show. It means more than you know.

What do prisons, Antarctic research stations, submarines, conflict zones and working from home as a solo entrepreneur have in common?

More than you might expect.

In this episode of The Quiet Game, Jo goes somewhere she has never gone publicly before. She shares the academic research that quietly shaped everything she does, a master's thesis on human wellbeing in isolated, confined, and extreme environments, and a PhD she began on the design of habitats for long-duration space missions, including contact with a NASA researcher and an invitation to work on the habitation module for future Mars missions.

And then she connects all of it to the solo entrepreneur working alone from home.

This is not a dramatic comparison. Jo is clear about that. Working from home is nothing like being stationed in Antarctica. But some of the structural conditions are surprisingly similar. And the research on what keeps people well in the most extreme environments on earth, and beyond it, might have something genuinely useful to tell us about building a sustainable business alone.

Research referenced in this episode:

 Wilson, E.O. (1984). Biophilia. Harvard University Press.

 Kaplan, R. & Kaplan, S. (1989). The Experience of Nature: A Psychological Perspective. Cambridge University Press.

Beldade, J. R. B. (2014). As plantas e o bem-estar humano em ambientes extremos [Plants and human well-being in extreme environments] [Master's thesis, University of Algarve]. Faculty of Sciences and Technology.

Want to go deeper?

The Anti-Hustle MBA is a free 30-day email course for service business owners who are done running on empty. One email per day. One honest idea you can actually use. No hustle, no 6-figure promises.

Join for free at https://www.jobeldade.com/theantihustlemba

Let's work together: https://forms.gle/KHyedhSYSVeesgur9

Connect with Jo:

Instagram: @thequietgame
Website: www.jobeldade.com
Email: [email protected]

Subscribe and leave a review:

If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe so you never miss a new episode. And if you have two minutes, leaving a review on Apple Podcasts helps more women find the show. It means more than you know.

Disclaimer: This episode contains personal stories about pregnancy loss, a traumatic birth experience and postpartum depression. If any of these topics are sensitive for you right now, please take care of yourself first. It's okay to come back to this one when you're ready. Or not at all.

What do you do when you finally build the business you always wanted and then walk away from it?

In this episode of The Quiet Game, Jo shares the most personal story she has ever told publicly. 

But underneath all of that, it's a story about a business decision. The decision to walk away from a model that was working.

This episode is not a cautionary tale. It's an honest account of what happens when life arrives without asking permission, the choices we make in those moments, and why building a business that can hold when you can't is not a luxury. It's the whole point.

If you have ever stepped back from something that was working and told yourself it was just temporary, this episode is for you.

Want to go deeper?

The Anti-Hustle MBA is a free 30-day email course for service business owners who are done running on empty. One email per day. One honest idea you can actually use. No hustle, no 6-figure promises.

Join for free at https://www.jobeldade.com/theantihustlemba

Let's work together: https://forms.gle/KHyedhSYSVeesgur9

Connect with Jo:

Instagram: @thequietgame
Website: www.jobeldade.com
Email: [email protected]

Subscribe and leave a review:

If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe so you never miss a new episode. And if you have two minutes, leaving a review on Apple Podcasts helps more women find the show. It means more than you know.

What do you do when your business is working, the clients are there, the revenue is coming in, the strategy is sound, and it still feels wrong? Not broken. Not failing. Just wrong. Like you're wearing something that technically fits but that you can't stop noticing on your body.

In this episode of The Quiet Game, Jo goes beyond the usual conversation about business models to ask a more fundamental question: is your business designed for who you actually are? Drawing on research into personality, nervous system differences, and what psychologists call person-environment fit, Jo makes the case that the exhaustion many entrepreneurs feel is not a motivation problem or a discipline problem. It's a design problem. And specifically, it's the problem of building a business using someone else's blueprint without ever stopping to ask whether that blueprint was made for you.

Want to go deeper?

The Anti-Hustle MBA is a free 30-day email course for service business owners who are done running on empty. One email per day. One honest idea you can actually use. No hustle, no 6-figure promises.

Join free at https://www.jobeldade.com/theantihustlemba

Connect with Jo:

Instagram: @thequietgame
Website: www.jobeldade.com
Email: [email protected]

Subscribe and leave a review:

If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe so you never miss a new episode. And if you have two minutes, leaving a review on Apple Podcasts helps more women find the show. It means more than you know.

How many followers do you need before you can launch? Before you feel legitimate? Before you give yourself permission to charge what your work is actually worth? If you've been waiting for a number on a screen to tell you you're ready, this episode is for you.

In this episode of The Quiet Game, Jo makes the case that the obsession with follower counts is one of the most expensive mistakes in the online business world. Not because visibility doesn't matter, but because most people are optimising for the wrong kind of visibility, attracting the wrong people, and then wondering why their audience doesn't buy. Jo shares her own experience of launching a successful programme without a large following, the story of her mentor, who built an internationally respected business without chasing social media growth, and the specific reason why twenty thousand followers can feel exactly like five when they're not the right people.

This is the episode that gives you permission to stop waiting and start building.

Want to go deeper?

The Anti-Hustle MBA is a free 30-day email course for service business owners who are done running on empty. One email per day. One honest idea you can actually use. No hustle, no 6-figure promises.

Join free at https://www.jobeldade.com/theantihustlemba

Connect with Jo:

Instagram: @thequietgame
 Website: www.jobeldade.com
Email: [email protected]

Subscribe and leave a review:

If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe so you never miss a new episode. And if you have two minutes, leaving a review on Apple Podcasts helps more women find the show. It means more than you know.

How many productivity systems have you tried? Time blocking, batching, inbox zero, the four-day week, the morning routine with the lemon water that someone very shiny on the internet promised would change your life. And how many of them stuck?

In this episode of The Quiet Game, Jo makes the case that the reason every system eventually fails has nothing to do with your discipline, your follow-through, or your personality. It has everything to do with the design of your business. There are two kinds of problems in any service business: behaviour problems and structure problems. They look identical from the outside. But they respond to completely different solutions. And if you've been bringing effort to a structure problem, you've been pushing water. You can push it for a while. But the moment you stop, everything slides right back.

This episode will change how you think about your own business, and more importantly, how you think about yourself.

Why does Sunday night feel so heavy, even after a weekend of rest?

In this episode of The Quiet Game, Jo explores why the dread many business owners feel before Monday isn't always burnout. Instead, it may be a sign that your business is structurally dependent on your constant presence.

Jo unpacks how an always-on business keeps your nervous system in a state of readiness, why staying busy often masks the real problem, and how to identify the hidden dependencies preventing you from truly switching off.

If you've ever come back from a vacation only to feel overwhelmed within days, this episode will help you understand why—and what needs to change.

A thoughtful conversation about sustainable business growth, nervous system health, and building a business that supports your life instead of running it.

Want to go deeper?

The Anti-Hustle MBA is a free 30-day email course for service business owners who are done running on empty. One email per day. One honest idea you can actually use. No hustle, no 6-figure promises.

Join free at https://www.jobeldade.com/theantihustlemba

Connect with Jo:

Instagram: @thequietgame
 Website: www.jobeldade.com
Email: [email protected]

Subscribe and leave a review:

If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe so you never miss a new episode. And if you have two minutes, leaving a review on Apple Podcasts helps more women find the show. It means more than you know.

What happens when the work you love starts to break you? In this episode of The Quiet Game, Jo shares three real client stories that she has never spoken about publicly before. Stories that left her feeling disposable, guilty, and so drained that she almost walked away from her business entirely.

This is not a cautionary tale about difficult clients. It is an honest conversation about what it costs to care deeply about your work, where the line between professional and personal gets dangerously blurry, and what happens when you stay in working relationships long after you should have left. Jo shares the lessons she learned the hard way about boundaries, about testimonials, about ending client relationships with integrity, and about the most important thing she had to learn to protect: her own worth.

If you have ever felt disposable after giving everything you had to a client, or if you have ever stayed in a professional relationship too long because you genuinely cared this episode is for you.

Want to go deeper?

The Anti-Hustle MBA is a free 30-day email course for service business owners who are done running on empty. One email per day. One honest idea you can actually use. No hustle, no 6-figure promises.

Join free at https://www.jobeldade.com/theantihustlemba

Connect with Jo:

Instagram: @thequietgame
 Website: www.jobeldade.com
Email: [email protected]

Subscribe and leave a review:

If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe so you never miss a new episode. And if you have two minutes, leaving a review on Apple Podcasts helps more women find the show. It means more than you know.

What if you could earn four of five times more without working five times harder or even changing what you do? In this episode of The Quiet Game, Jo tells the story of a client who went from charging $60 per hour to $400 for the same work, simply by changing how she packaged and presented her offer. She didn't gain new qualifications. She didn't reinvent her services. She just stopped undervaluing what she was already delivering.

This episode goes deep on the real reasons why smart, talented, experienced women consistently undercharge for their work and it's not what most people think. Jo breaks down the psychology of pricing, the difference between charging for time versus charging for value, and why the client's mental maths changes completely when you reframe your offer. If you've ever suspected you're worth more than you're charging but don't know how to justify a price increase, this episode gives you the clarity and the confidence to start.

Honest, practical, and grounded in real client stories this is the pricing conversation you've been needing to have.

Want to go deeper?

The Anti-Hustle MBA is a free 30-day email course for service business owners who are done running on empty. One email per day. One honest idea you can actually use. No hustle, no 6-figure promises.

Join free at https://www.jobeldade.com/theantihustlemba

Connect with Jo:

Instagram: @thequietgame
 Website: www.jobeldade.com
Email: [email protected]

Subscribe and leave a review:

If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe so you never miss a new episode. And if you have two minutes, leaving a review on Apple Podcasts helps more women find the show. It means more than you know.

If you're a service-based entrepreneur who is fully booked, exhausted, and wondering why your income has stopped growing no matter how hard you work, this episode is for you.

In this episode of The Quiet Game, host Jo breaks down the difference between a business and a very demanding job you created for yourself. Most online service providers, coaches, therapists, consultants, and freelancers fall into the same trap: they build a business model that depends entirely on their presence. And when that happens, growth becomes impossible without working more hours.

Jo shares her own experience of working constantly while talking about freedom, and what she learned about building a business model that actually delivers the life you set out to create. This episode covers the emotional reality of entrepreneurship including the loneliness of building something no one around you fully understands and offers a clear, practical first step for service providers who are ready to stop being the bottleneck in their own business.

If you've ever had a quiet moment where you missed the predictability of a nine-to-five job, this episode will make you feel seen. And it might just change how you think about your business model entirely.

Want to go deeper?

The Anti-Hustle MBA is a free 30-day email course for service business owners who are done running on empty. One email per day. One honest idea you can actually use. No hustle, no 6-figure promises.

Join free at https://www.jobeldade.com/theantihustlemba

Connect with Jo:

Instagram: @thequietgame
 Website: www.jobeldade.com
Email: [email protected]

Subscribe and leave a review:

If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe so you never miss a new episode. And if you have two minutes, leaving a review on Apple Podcasts helps more women find the show. It means more than you know.