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Price Your Product

I have no idea what to charge for this. Have you been there? Have you done that? Yes, I know you know, I'm just like so many things pricing is relative, but you need to know what it's relative to to be able to price properly and so that's what we're going to talk about today on going hot seat one of our students and kind of go through that process find out maybe what their interest introductory price is going to be so that you can choose your introductory price as well. Here's what? I know if you don't know what to charge for your new product it's likely you weren't charging correctly for your service in the first place if you don't know what to charge for your product it's likely that you weren't charging correctly for your service in the first place uh, figuring out what to charge for my product has really helped me also figure out what to charge for my service, but I think by and large I was pricing pretty well for my service originally, you know, coming through my business and so a...

ctually putting a price tag on the product that I created was pretty easy and it landed in the market really well and I'm going I'm going to kind of go through all the different factors that I used to figure out how to my product should be priced and all the different factors that you can also years to figure out how your product should be priced. So let's, take a look at that. What should price really be based on? Well, first of all, it's not how much you think your time is worth? Okay, let's, just throw that one out, okay? Instead, you want to think about the value being delivered and the transformation being created, the value being delivered in the transformation being created so you can ask yourself questions like after this transformation takes place. How much more time is my client going? Tohave. How much more money would they be able to make? How much easier will things be for them? How much weight could they lose? How many more relationships could they be in? How many more friends could they make? You actually could start turning the transformation into kind of quantifiable pieces. You want to do that as much as possible. The more you can make those quantifiable pieces things that you can actually a signed dollar amounts to the better. Obviously, you can't put a dollar amount on how many friends you have. Unfortunately, no, for yeah, fortunately. But you can on how much the more time you have. For how much more flexible your schedule is, those kind of things could be quantified down into dollars, and so that can make it easier for you to figure out what to charge for your product even if you're not in a in a b to b service or b to b field. If you're selling direct to consumers people who don't own their own businesses you khun still quantify their time in terms of money or quantify their experience in terms of money quite often, not all the time, but often if you can definitely use that, you also want to take into consideration the story that you want to tell relative to the rest of the market because pryce tells a story, this is a big thing that we forget we think about price all in terms of math in terms of numbers, but price tells a big story as well. I've talked about price in a number of my creative live workshops one of them was value pricing and business models for creative entrepreneurs and in that class I talked about how the price of coffee tells us a lot about how we can think about pricing and the story that we want to tell because coffee comes in all different forms and at all different price points right, you can go to the gas station could goto wawa and pick up coffee for sixty nine cents I think that's what it still cost there? It's a it's a philadelphia thank um you got a wawa and you can pick up coffee for sixty nine cents ninety nine cents. You can go to mcdonald's and pick up coffee for a dollar twenty nine any size, whatever it is, something like that. You can go to starbucks and you can pick up coffee for two fifty or here in san francisco, you could go to blue bottle and get a pore over and you can pay seven dollars for eight ounces of coffee. No joke, no joke write each of those different prices tells a different story about what you can expect at each of those locations you're based seven dollars for coffee. Well, you know what kind of things are you going to expect that really friendly, really personable service experts making your coffee, people who really know what they're talking about clientele that's, you know other people who would pay seven dollars for coffee if you goto wah wah and you pay sixty nine cents for sixty four ounces of coffee, what do you expect? You know, like caffeine drip, right that and that's it that is it, it doesn't have to taste good all you're looking for when you want sixty four ounces of coffee for sixty nine cents is a caffeine drip all right, that's the story that happened, so think about the prices that you're charging in your business right now and what's story that's telling about where you fall in your industry where you fall in your market. This was one of the big things that I used when I was figuring out how to price quiet power strategy I knew that one of the main competitors to quiet power strategy was going to be marie for leo's program rich, happy and hot b school, and that program sells for two thousand dollars it's a video course there are thousands of people in it at any given time, and so I knew I could not charge less than two thousand dollars for my product because it wouldn't make any sense at all. So I started charging just a little bit more than that uh, we started around twenty eight hundred dollars plus a plain mint payment plan put it up over three on dh. Then I realised that really that wasn't a big enough differential. It wasn't telling enough of the right story, so we moved it up to thirty five hundred dollars or a payment plan that put it closer to four and that really seemed to be seems to be the price that people understand the difference most with it actually comes back to the unfair advantage for that product, which is that it is a an in depth hands on personalized strategic planning product so we're not just going to teach you the fundamentals of business which is fantastic that's not a knock on any other product we're not going to teach you that because we assume that you've already learned those things either you've learned them working in corporate or you've learned them working in your own business or you learn them in another course instead we're goingto take what you've already learned and start applying it in new ways by finding new discoveries creating new insights and the building a business model from that which is something that no one else teaches and so because that was the differential we wanted to make sure that the price was different enough from everything else that was out there so what we're selling now people really get it now and it's really exciting and it's fun and I did that by raising the price not lowering the price we sold mohr raising the price then we did at a lower price point I cannot emphasize that enough ah low price point can actually hinder sales not help sales can you tell I've got like many soap boxes so it comes to this particular topic you also need to take into consideration the investment customers need to get results this was another thing that I was thinking about in terms of quiet power strategy the amount of money someone is willing to spend is absolutely related to the amount of time and energy and mental bandwidth they're willing to put into a product now that can be different in different markets it's it might be different for different audiences it's not like this isn't a magic formula but you do want to consider relative to the results a relative there work that has to get done to get results what kind of investment to someone need to make and think about how that influences your price then he also need to think about the profit that you want to create to reach your business goals what's the profit that you want to create to reach your business goals. One thing that I noticed working with quiet power strategies clients is that when we review their business models initially they haven't built a profit into their businesses at all because they're on ly thinking in terms of the amount of money I bring in equals the amount of money I take home or their pricing and yeah I know and or their pricing in terms of my time is worth x amount and so that's what I charge for my product or that's what I charge for my service and there's no profit on top of that built in when you think about a product when you think about an asset that you're building in your business you have to consider profit because one of the ways that you convey move your business forward, get results for people and deliver distribute your product is to have is to pay other people, and when you pay other people, you're no longer paying yourself for your time, which means you need a way to make money well, what's, the way that you make money profit, and so you want to make sure that you're building into the price that you charge the profit that you want to create, to reach your business goals and to reach your personal goals, because let's, be honest or personal goals matter a lot here in less than one. Some of you talked about how lifestyle changes were a big part of the goals that you have for the next part of your business will profit? Is what's going to drive those lifestyle changes? So think about that as well, and this question of profit really brings us back to lesson one. How much are you willing to write checks for? What kind of expenses are you willing to invest in to take your product to the next level? Yes, absolutely, you can build a product on the cheap and I recommend it, but then if you're going to take it to the next place, you're going tohave to really invest in it I mentioned in back there and less and one that last year I wrote bridget a check as a partner and create a quiet power strategy for more than I used to make in a year managing a five million dollar business that was exciting, and I would not have had the windfall year that I had financially if I wasn't willing to write bridget that check and I wrote a number of other large checks last year, a swell, and those checks were all directly related to the amount of money I was also able to bring in for myself. So let's, look at what some of those expenses that you might want to consider our because even though you can build a product on the cheap, you want to be thinking toward the future so that as you're pricing your m v p as your pricing, your introductory offers that you're also setting yourself up for success. Later on, I've talked to so many people who have priced a product, sold a product over and over and over again, only to realize there was no room to scale beyond that. There was no room to improve, and they had to double or triple the price of their product to be able to make it work later on and that's really painful it's painful for you, it's, often painful for customers who are expecting to pay one thing and find out they have to pay another thing. And so we want to be thinking toward the future when it comes to setting your initial price so here's, what you need to consider better or different website hosting raise like yeah, that is what you need to think about, you know, a lot of us ah lot, not us because I am not included in this anymore and I have the bills to show for it ah lot of people are still on five dollars. Host gator five dollar month host gator counts, right? How many of you are still on a cheap web hosting account? Oh, this audience wins those services used to be great, we're not great, but they used to be really functional for a long time. They are not really functional for a long time anymore. On dso investing in better website hosting if you want to re grow your audience if you want to send an email to ten thousand people fifteen thousand people fifty thousand people and trust me it does not. It doesn't even start a ten thousand I would say five thousand if you want to send an email to five thousand people and send them back to your website, you can't be on cheapo hosting anymore, you will crash your site and that is not fun because it will happen the day you launch a product and that will suck, okay. So consider investing in better or different website hosting that'll allow you to grow the way that you want to grow doesn't mean you need an enterprise solution right now, but it does mean you need something super flexible you want to think about product delivery fees? I also totally bums me out when people boo hoo about papal fees. If your boo hooing about three percent, you need to raise your prices, it really bums me out, it makes me super sad, so please don't do that anymore just raise your prices even if you just raise your prices three percent you don't that's the cost of doing business all of these things that were about to talk about or the cost of doing business if you want to make money, get comfortable paying fees to make money that's how it works, they deliver an amazing service, every service has its problems, but they deliver an amazing service that we didn't have fifteen years ago, and now we're able to be in business. You doing the math? I don't know if it was fifteen years, you know we're able to be in business now in a way that we were not able to be in business fifteen years ago that's really exciting, I like paying them all right file storage fees. If you're creating any kind of information product, you want to think about how you're going to store that product where it's gonna live and that costs money, some of the solutions are really inexpensive like amazon has three super inexpensive I host loads and loads of giant files there and I think I still pay them less than ten dollars a month there kind of magical but to be able to use that you need to have some tech savvy, so if you want a less tech savvy solution, you might need to invest in something like dropbox for business, which is considerably more expensive. S o you know, there's always tradeoffs here but it's another thing that you want to think about here's a big one, subcontractors or employees and we're not going to get into the legal differences between those two things today because we could spend a whole three day creative live class on that um but you do need to think about who's going to be on your team, how they're going to be working with you and how hiring people can help you make more money. Like I said, I could not have made the revenue that we made in my business last year without paying bridget a lot of money, which is great it's so fun I think supporting other people with my business is incredibly fun it's just so fun and I'm so glad to be able to do that and next year we're looking at all sorts of new hires and new structuring and I'm really excited about it because it means stepping into a whole new phase of my business but yeah, you want to think about who you need to have on your team to achieve the goals that you have you know, one of the other questions that I asked in a previous lesson was what would you create if time was no object? Well if you want to make time not an object or a constraint in your business hiring people is a huge part of that people can help you create more people can help you sell maur people can help you reach more people people can help you create what you do better so that it sells more easily people can help you with so much stuff. One general guideline here is that if you're thinking about bringing on people you should be able to come up with a reason away that bringing on that person is going to make you more money or make your business more money okay if you're going to bring someone on, make sure you know how that person's going to make you more money sometimes that person themselves makes you more money other times they free you up in a way that you can create the products or the flexibility that then allow for you to generate more revenue because of that person, but you should always know what that connection is that's key um and then customer experience a support or customer service? This is one of the first places I encouraged people to invest in, whether it's an application or whether it's a person or whether it's both I think, until you hand this part off in your business, you don't realize how much time and energy it's costing you to me this is a huge time suck not because it's not valuable, but because I am so invested in my product I'm so invested in my community that it causes me a lot of stress to handle customer service it makes if something's not working or if somebody doesn't understand something, it really affects me emotionally, which makes me unable to do the things that I need to do to grow the business to bring in revenue all would create new ideas. So this is something that, you know, I've hired out for a long time it's something that we're working on in terms of improving operations so that we don't even need to have a cz much hands on customer experience, support and it's something that I'm looking to invest in further next year so that we'll have ah customer service person, customer experience person who's mohr of almost like a sales person, a matchmaker essentially people come in they'll say hey, I think you can help me where should I start and showed guide people in direct people should get on the phone with them she'll answer emails really personally and then we'll have someone who can send out links or say this is you how you use google docks or oh here's that resource that you were looking for right? It's very very easy things so investing in customer experience support is huge on then the last thing is time to further develop the product if you don't know how you're going to take time to further develop the product before you build it trust to be it is not gonna happen and I've gotten into this cycle before and it's really sad because you want your product to get better you want people to have a better experience of it and at its most basic you just want more people to be able to buy it right but if you don't invest in further developing that product, make the time for that make the money for that and, you know incorporate that into your price and into your profit then you're not going to be able to take that time and you're gonna get stuck I don't want any of you to get stuck on the product development process so panelists let's talk about money how did you decide on the price of your product and what lessons have you learned about the price? So I want you to tell us how much you charge how you decided on it and what lessons you've learned about that price bridget let's start with you s o I've learned some hard lessons about price and I start there because, um what I find that it's really challenging and my market is when I start charging a premium price on products people just want to hire me oh interesting right? And so because what I do is you know, it's time intensive and so you know, people will say if I charge somewhere two thousand are up they'll say, well, why don't I just spend the thirteen thousand toe hire you just turn it all over and get more um so I'm still struggling with pricing little bit might beta round of my recent project product um it's a four week online workshop and we have like live lessons paste out a q and a and a facebook group and for that beta I did three seventy five and so I'm actually looking at raising it like the five hundred dollar level um which feels like because I don't want to be cheap right and only product speak cheap and I think it is really transformative in terms of getting people through blocks that are really holding them back in their businesses um getting their message out so yeah I think I should start there that's kind of that this is a this is a non going a challenge for me because I do offer one toe one yeah services um but what I also realises like I want to have another product layer between entry level product him working with me and so I do want to have it at a place where I can have somebody stepped into another higher level experience so we'll still be more leveraged yeah I like that I think that what you brought up in terms of you know if you're going to charge this much for a product that I should just work with you one on one normally and I'm not necessarily saying that this is the case for you but normally that means you should be charging more for your one toe one yeah right and that that's a really good thing to keep in mind like I said I don't think that is actually the issue with you I think that's more like the type of client that you're attracting and their struggles with that decision but but yeah for most people I think if you're you know if people are like well that's too expensive I'm just going to work with you one on one you really need to raise your dad and I have raised my one on one price yes since then so they used to be used to be entry level like five thousand dollars less to work with me for the same timeframe so I've I've made a big um increase there and I think that's really helping too because I can set in context the service level of my three, seventy five product the service is forty five hundred so there's a big gap now between I can hire your team for a month and have to do this or I can spend my own month in doing it and so yeah I'm wondering like a sterile almost like an equation of like what would I divide that forty hundred by when somebody's doing it themselves that's probably a crazy question yeah e especially in your business it's not that simple because it's not forty five hundred dollars for a month like you can't compare a month teo alright one month long work shape right like especially in your business it does not work that way no because we get there so much faster and that's what also what you're buying yes that faster transformation so I do like this idea of like the finite result it has a lower price I'm still experimenting with like is that high enough is that I don't think it's high enough but we'll talk about that I might not be your best case study this's about the learning process that you guys have gone through eso jen what do you charge for what if conference and how have how did you get to that price? We're currently charging twenty one hundred dollars for five days that includes your accommodation, food, drink and the conference or at a flash sale seventeen hundred dollars we originally priced it we haven't really changed our pricing a hole but just gone up a little bit over the years but it stayed pretty pretty much the same in the four years we've been doing this we used to do five day intensive workshops in our studio for twenty five hundred dollars a seat, nothing included on dh then there was like conferences that were like two hundred dollars, so you wanted to make sure we were creating a premium experience and having people pay a premium price knowing that it was a large number of people say they weren't good then get the an individual attention therefore it couldn't be a ce high as our workshop price if that makes sense eso we've we've played with the model less than the price and the price has been pretty constant it's how we price it so it all inclusive this year was all inclusive last year it's been priced separately before yeah and your product in this case is in is a little bit different than most of everybody else's because it has really hard expenses absolutely solved innit very hard so the cost of the food that has the best speakers are way yeah so that's that's really interesting? I love that you said that you've played with format more than you've played played with price like you felt really comfortable with what you're charging so you're playing with, uh the other pieces of that to see what makes the most sense to see how you can get the profit out of it but you want to get out of it, right? Yeah, perfect marine I definitely struggled with the pricing and had a few our friend natasha being like what the heck? No way you cannot charge that little s o after doing the beta test with that group of people in the suggested price just realizing how much work actually went into the whole process so actually broke it up into two uh two courses so there's an evergreen component that's a thousand dollars and that includes a slack group as well. So it's you know, written content the modules plus the slack group awesome and then the mastermind is for thousand and that includes six one on one sessions I've now brought in a co mentor as well, so now they have access to both of us. The facebook group is only for the master minders so it's a lot more intimate on dso after talking to some of the students and seeing some of the actual concrete results like got the highest project I've ever gotten in my life like that's pretty amazing already got that like if I know that you've already gotten your investment back and you've tripled a few budgets in the course of a year four thousand isn't actually that much when you consider the result so talking to some of my superstar students that like really did well they're like I think you could actually charge a lot more for there like okay, we're way past the waters on this way are charging it you are in a bit of the market pricing I will invent pricing is easier in a b to b market yes when we were thinking about what the price was going to be on the master class, we were thinking about the exact same thing what what would be really reasonable in terms of people's return on the investment and how fast that was goingto happen on dh so you know the price for that is twenty five hundred dollars you sell the program that you create in the program during the program there's no reason you can't make twenty five hundred dollars back by the end of the program, so again we feel really come trouble with that price. I can't imagine pricing at any lower than that yeah really good jennifer hard home so remember that I'm a very different market these um when I started the membership in twenty ten, it was a whopping five dollars per month and I have very generously grandfathered in a lot of members were still paying that amount because I promised no price increases ever for the lifetime your membership unless you cancelled it more that it's angry for all and now it's fifteen dollars a month which you know is so much more but that's one hundred eighty dollars a year for hobby people on average spend twenty five hundred dollars a month on their hobby in terms of supplies but I'm also looking at my competitors in the market there aren't a ton of membership size there are more and I'm already on the definitely the higher end um I don't think you should apologize for your pricing well, I sometimes I wanted to be more but I'm not sure that my market can support it yeah I'd like to go to twenty but I don't know yeah I feel you all right um actually before we move on to sasha what had would it have been some of your considerations in increasing the price because you've made a three fold increase in price? Sure um mostly that our resource library has increased so much because we're adding new content every month we produce a magazine every month plus have these additional creative resource is um but the community has grown so you get that much more support in the community and then these quarterly events that have been talking about there are included in membership and so I think that would be my biggest push to go that extra five dollars yes that those events are so valuable yeah, absolutely. Sasha um the tank as um adventure is twenty five, ninety nine and um most recently in august it was one hundred dollars less but I had to change hotels and I worked hard to get a more boutique e hotel and negotiate a good price so it just went up one hundred dollars um and how did I decide on the price? Well, quite literally I had coffee with a member of this online business group who convinced me to charge more but also it's it's really important to me I'm an author and I'm nationally recognized so part of what people are getting is access to me as well as all this super deep information and you can't get through anyone else so it seems to be working I mean, you know, it seemed to be like, oh, that's a lot, but I mean people pay it and they're happy and they have an amazing experience and also when my memoir wet I can say the word here that ivan said comes out it's very much about tango and so at that point it will be much more well known and I would like to charge a lot more yeah, I mean, I'm doing all of this now to build for that book release when a lot of people learn about the transformation of tango yeah, absolutely on dh have you looked to the rest of your market as part of the of as part of your decision making in terms of price like the author retreat market oh, I was thinking the tango trip market um I mean like there's the famous coach market like martha back she has very expensive retreats in africa. Um other author trades I'm sure gilbert doesn't retreat. Jen load yeah. Jennifer louden oh yeah, right yeah, her sir reasonable or maybe about the same his mind something like that like a writing retreat. Yeah, I think so. I think she's I think we're about the same. Yeah, and and I've seen some very famous author retreats that are actually in the same ballpark that you're in right now too that's why I was wondering is if that was kind of part of your thought process there although yeah, absolutely I think you'll be able to charge considerably more when the book comes out and just as momenta morale and the event gross for sure. Yeah, yeah, awesome. Thanks for sharing, guys, eh? So now it's time for a hot feet uh so let's figure out somebody's price well, it's all right remind us what your product is again my product is uh eh I'm looking at a thirty day e course email delivered course for my minimum viable to start. Okay. Excellent. And what other? What are some of the other competitors in the market for something like that? Well, it ranges from, um like actual individuals who are well let's in price addicts themselves the products themselves thinking things like uh what is it called mondo beyond oh, I don't actually know what that what they're currently charging for that maybe ninety nine or something that sounds about right uh figure that out though yeah there's also um patty dies a number of courses out there that are more in the two, seventy five three, seventy five up range rate for thirty seven days kind of thing. Okay, so it's quite a range I think you should also look at vivian mcmasters see your love it yes yeah, that last forty nine I think he went up to ninety nine okay, I think okay, great. Um yeah, I think thinking in terms of that market where it's you know there's content and then there's this element of creation as part of it would be really, really helpful on I think that's a very similar that is a very similar product to what you're looking to create but I think there's there's others in that in that market as well so I would make a list of all of those different price points what do you what would you like the goal of this product to be on the back end and what I mean by that is where do you want that customer to go with you after they take this course? Well, I'm thinking I I also have aa membership community like like jennifer that's pretty new and so I just launched I'm in the middle of a program right now that's ah month long program and the way that I priced it was if people you the only way to get this program was to join the membership community so they can either join for one month only and their membership goes away at the end of one month, which is the most expensive way to do it. That was ninety nine or they could join the membership community for a quarter for seventy nine dollars for three months or join the membership community for a month for twenty nine dollars a month and those both those air recurring fees. So I was thinking about doing pricing it this in the same way, but how did that work out for you? Well, I'm in the middle of the program, so um I've yet to see how many people really stick around but almost had a little less than little fewer than half of the people who signed up uh opted for the quarterly and, um only I think like a quarter about a quarter of the people opted for the monthly and a quarter opted for the ninety nine dollars which surprised the heck out of me people are very resistant to setting up recurring payments yeah, so much so that they're willing to pay three times this month so there are fines you um okay uh, yeah I'd be curious to see cso did you did you hit your sales goal for that now is shy of my sales goal. Okay that's something to consider to although it would almost I would almost hesitate recreating that pricing model without first rerunning the program with that pricing model again to see if you can either hit that sales goal where at least recreate the results that you had the first time around the program that I just get a program that you just did okay, which I wasn't planning on doing until the spring. Yeah, well twice here program yeah. Okay, so I I don't think you're going to know the full results just like what we were talking about earlier. How do you know if your m v p is actually working or not? Andi I said you don't really know until you fronted at least twice I think the same thing is true of that pricing model now you sure you could use this product to test that pricing model a second time it makes me a little nervous, actually, I don't know why I wish I had a more concrete answer for you on why I'm finding that slightly problematic. I think that may be part of it is that I could see this, this product being the first step toward a much more cohesive brand for you in a very specific message that you're moving toward that everything will fall under, and I almost don't want it to get muddied in with everything else that you do because you've done so many things and you have so many things they're available not all the time, but there's, so many things that you've put out there that I have, but I'm not anymore. Yeah, I mean, I've I've changed my whole business model, okay, so the entry point really is the membership community right now, and I don't have anything else on offer at the moment, okay, but I I have plans for more intensive programs that are separate from the membership community, but right now that my thinking was that all the smaller things that I would put out would be part of the membership community, but I mean it's all brand new, so it's all in flux, so one thing I think you should do is talk to jennifer. And find out what she's learned in terms of on dh that goes for anyone, like, if you're thinking about what to price, how to price your product, you need to talk to other people who used a similar pricing model before and asked them about the lessons they have learned. This goes back to not being afraid of talking about money, which is a message that I've preached for a long time. You can't be afraid to talk about the price that you're charging for your product. You can't be afraid to talk about how much money you make can't be afraid to talk about your profit margins, not that you are, but I want you to talk to other people who have who have really been in this membership model for a long time talk to you, you could talk to me, yes, because kickstart labs is really similar model to what I have to go. We're changing that and it's not to say that things that I've done in the past haven't worked out really well. I've launched individual programs very much in the same way you did, where you could buy the program on its own, or you could just sign up for kickstart labs and get access to it because you get access, teo, everything asleep, you know, the tactical resource is that worked well it hasn't worked as well as I wanted to work on and it hasn't grown the community as much as I wanted it to grow it um and so I'm looking at a similar model but something a little bit different for next year which will involve some rebranding and some other things so yeah but I want you to talk to more people than just me tio because I work in a the t b market and I want you to talk to some people who were competing to see and uh yeah well the other thing it gets tricky when you do have a membership community like because if I it brings up all these questions and if I do launches a separate program then do my creative sandbox people get access to it do they get special pricing do that you know like all that stuff becomes complicated yeah yeah yeah because price could affect your business operations just the way you know building a new product can affect your business operations to so that's that's a really good point to me I think the biggest thing is thinking about what this product is going to war could represent for your brand and direction and in terms of building your intellectual property in a way that really helps you and your business and your community really stand out on dh so maybe that doesn't come down so much to price or it's uh yeah, maybe it doesn't come down so much to price or the pricing model, but it comes down to mohr of actually, what is the relationship of this product to your membership community to begin with? And then when you figure out what that relationship is, you can really come down to the price, but I think your market in this case is going very heavily dictate what you can price this product at andi, I think that ninety nine dollars is probably a really good starting point, and that there may be an opportunity to go higher than that in the future, but until you really make a name for this product and figure out exactly how you're going to differentiate, and I mean, we know a lot of the pieces of it that are differentiated, um, but until you really focus in on the message and that you're only going to get that message, the more you sell it, like, right? You, khun, sometimes you had a home run on the first pitch, but most of the time you don't write, and so, so you're gonna want to hone that message. You're gonna wanna hone the products relationship to your brand before you start about thinking about pricing at higher than what your customers are naturally going to expect, and I think that your market is pretty solid on that, so do more research, because if I'm if I'm wrong about that, then I don't want you to be I don't want you to think I'm stuck on ninety nine dollars, but I want you to list is many different programs that kind of fit into that thirty day email course format that's in the personal development market, the creativity market, all of those different, the life coaching market look at all of those lists, as many as you can, enlist the prices and see what kind of a spread you get, um, and that's going to give you, I think the best, the best price that you can come up with. Yeah, that wasn't exactly figuring out what, but I really do think that that your market is going to dictate a lot of where you can at least start with this product and take it from there. Yeah, well, it seems like, ah, no, I haven't done an extensive, you know, extensive research on this, but the courses that I'm aware of that are somewhat similar are they kind of all started in, like the forty nine dollars range, and then after they'd run it a number of times, then they bumped it up, right? So I'm what I would say is do not start it in the forty nine, dollar range just because everybody else was a scaredy cat about their introductory price does not mean that you should be but I am a scaredy cat I know which is why I'm telling you not to do that, huh? Okay, okay, okay just because the price that it is now is the important part not the price that it used to be these other things right? Right? Because that's what people are expecting if you come out with a forty nine dollars class, what are people going to think? It's a forty nine dollars class? Well they're going to think it's not ready yet because all of those other classes used to be forty nine dollars and ninety nine yeah, and they don't need to know that you're building a minimum viable product and then it isn't actually ready yet that really watching ah ah that doesn't it doesn't actually matter what, matt what what matters melissa the transformation, right, right? And so if you can create the same transformation now that you're going to on the fifth run, why wouldn't you just charge the same thing now? Right? Well, which makes me think also, um I have a tiny little course that's one week long called creative sandbox one oh one which started off as a freebie and now is part of my membership community but I think it's one of the most transformative things that I offer and it's somebody was talking about pulling back on I think it was natalie pulling back on the content uh, maybe it was rebecca and this courses so like, in terms of it's, not a fire hose it's so tiny and yet it's the thing that people say this change my life yeah. So, uh, that brings up a really interesting thing in terms of marketing and when it comes to pricing and that that's your price shouldn't be dictated by the form out of your product. But prices sometimes is dictated by your business model, and I would say that ugh, this product, this creative sandbox wanna one isn't I would say that it's paid marketing people are paying right for marketing, right? It's not actually a product that you offer? I mean, it's part of your business model, but in a very different looks like a book. Yes, exactly. So like what I'm doing revenue forecasting for my business, I don't plan on my book sales at all right? Because that's not money that I count on to live that's money that I count on to advertise my business with right or it's? Yeah, that money goes someplace different, and so when I'm thinking about growth, I'm not thinking about how to sell more books I mean that's part of it, but it is very different reason I'm thinking about how to sell more books so that I can sell more of something else yeah makes sense totally okay yeah so I don't want you to go thinking like oh that's the biggest transformation I offer so I could show her it should be two two thousand dollars for a seven day course not that those things not that that may not exist out there but I don't think that's the purpose of that product for you yeah absolutely right yeah all right okay. Thank you. Yeah you're welcome thanks, melissa alright questions about pricing your product michelle oh, I kind of suffer from what bridget suffers from I underprice things are habitual you know tears like yeah you know kidding. Michelle s so I have this idea for like, a six week a program that would like ladders up to the larger methodology what was the name mastering your masterpiece message stop hustling for speaking but gigs and be the go to expert okay, so I like the title yeah and I'm just trying to, like, figure out um I have no idea what that question of I have no idea what to charge for it because right now I charge eighteen hundred dollars for my one toe one service yeah that's knots michelle I know she's going to strangle me nights what was somebody so that let's clarify what you do in that service you three can you help people? You co create keynotes people that they will sell over and over again? Yes. And how much are your speakers averaging in speaking fees? Um, you know, no, not you should find out. Okay. Yes. Cara so it's recently come to my attention that if I'm charging five thousand dollars a key note, it's too low? Well, I have not been charging five thousand dollars a key note. It was very exciting news to me. Very exciting. Sorry for everyone that would like to book me to speak that I found out this piece of information, but it was very exciting. So I paid fifteen hundred dollars for your service, right? And I have sold that same keynote multiple times for fifteen hundred dollars, which means I've made a significant profit on what you're offering charging way too little for that keynote. I would venture to say that the majority of your clients because I know you know who some of your clients are, what positions they hold are probably charging in the neighborhood of ten to fifteen to twenty thousand dollars. A key note would you say you've got people in your field like that? Oh, yeah, for sure, so why wouldn't you charge ten thousand dollars for your service? Because it scares the crap outta me. Okay? That's not a good reason okay no you know and maybe you're not ready to charge ten but I would say you're a least ready to charge five that I mean come on if someone could turn around and take the key note that you've co created and sell it five times which is a very low number but sell it five times for even five thousand dollars how is that not a good invest it's a great invest it's a great investment and it's probably on par with what the rest of the market is charging what does a professional speechwriter cost? They charge by the minute. Okay, so what are the charges? There's like usually a set up fee and then between one hundred to one hundred twenty dollars per minute of text okay, so why wouldn't you charge in that ballpark? Because you're not just teaching people you're not just giving from somebody one speech you're giving someone a system to follow because the other thing that I've done is since working with you, I've not just told that keynote multiple times I've sold multiple key notes that I've used gone back and used the exact same system with because I'm a smart, savvy kind of person that's capable of doing that that's what the system is designed for exactly, so why wouldn't you charge for that yeah, so then I can up my price, but then have this minimal, viable product that I can offer on the market that has the same process, but not me. I mean, maybe a little me like, innit? Yep, and but not as much of it. Me? Yes, because you should be selling that system in multiple ways. There are people who would prefer to do it at home study and who would be perfectly capable of getting amazing results doing at home study, you know, they're they're people that are coming out of teaching or the people that are maybe even coming out of writing that really understand putting content together and telling stories, right? That's your ideal market for that, then there's people who are going to work with you one on one over the course of a month who are you know, maybe they're they're probably professional speakers is what they are. Yeah, then there's people who would like to work with you for a day and get the same results, they're probably ceos or directors of marketing or vps there there corporate people write or their business owners on dh those people are willing to pay a premium toe on ly have to work with you for a deck, yeah, right? And you might say, well, you know, it would be better to work with me over a longer period time cause you'll develop this a little bit longer but yeah, we can we can get you the same results in a day absolutely so what would you charge for a day of your time? Five thousand no no I think you need to be charging at least ten thousand dollars a day for your time for a day so because the people that are higher the people who would be hiring you to do that with them are already used to paying people for corporate training at at least ten thousand dollars a day yeah, right e I mean, you know that market tell me if I'm wrong but I don't think I'm wrong no for corporate training yeah and that's what you're doing night it's essentially corporate training or it's in the same kind of market right? So why would you price it any differently? Yeah, okay, if you don't know what to charge us because you're pricing your service incorrectly, you don't know what to charge for your product because your your pricing your service incorrectly ok? Because now you can charge fifteen hundred dollars for the product I would totally pay fifteen hundred dollars for that product awesome, yeah, seriously so even with beta testing because I want yeah yeah absolutely no people can really hung up on introductory pricing beta pricing if you're delivering the result just like I said to melissa you're delivering the results I don't think you'd have any problem getting the right people to pay you fifteen hundred dollars for a product that your co creating with them if anything you can use that as a selling point I'm gonna walk through this product of a product delivery with you step by step so that you know you get the very best results and this is the on ly time I'm going to do this with this particular offer so join me in this very first session, right? Yeah alright and would that be worth it to you at fifteen hundred dollars a person? Yeah, like ten times what you're making now at least right? Yeah. Okay, so for sure beautiful or we do we feel good? Yeah, yeah and you know it's like everything's already created. So exactly. Oh, exactly. Okay. Any other questions about pricing? Cory so be beginning of this year I stopped taking one on one clients because I was finishing the book and traveling and everything and I feel pretty good about the pricing I have dialed in for my products, but now I would like to start taking one on one plants again but uh my one on one pricing but I was previously doing does not reflect the value of my products right? So do you have you have a way of thinking about how if I reintroduce one on one work about how to reintroduce that yeah, this is sort of like the opposite of what bridget was talking about earlier one one guideline that I've always kind of used at least is a jumping off point is to ten times or divide by ten the amount that I would charge my pricing right now doesn't necessarily reflect that um I also but I'm not also offering one on one right now at all and part of it is because I don't feel like I could charge for my time I mean I could there be people out there willing to pay for it, but the marketing for it doesn't make sense and I don't think even leaving time in my calendar doesn't even necessarily make sense but yeah, I think I'm not saying that that's a guideline in terms of you take so much your product costing multiplied by ten and there you go but at least it gives you a guideline of what I think people expect to pay and so maybe you settle on five times instead of ten times or even you settle on three times instead of ten times the biggest thing to keep in mind is that there has to be a big enough jump between your product and working with you one on one so that you don't create a choice paralysis for people because that will ruin, you know, because it will shut down your product sales and it'll shut down. You're one of my people will be able to make a decision exactly. So that's that's the worst thing you could dio the probably the best thing that you could do is price your one on one service is higher than you think they're worth and watch people pay that thing like the worst thing that you could dio would be teo, you know, to discount your one on one service at some point. So you say, you know, it's, my birthday, and I'm going to take three clients at this price on dh, then that creates kind of like a stepping stone up to the price that you initially set accents. Melissa so that brings up the question. So I I've been working on a sales paid for one on one service, and but I've also done small group like four people, and I really love working in that format. Is it too confusing? Tohave the same offer up there, essentially as collecting, you know, optimize for people who are interest might be interested in a really small group versus one on one. Yeah, um, I'm not sure that I can give you a definitive answer on that. I think it would depend on a lot of different things I think would depend on how you were going to package it if you were just going to say, I've got if you want to work with me one on one, I'm going to be taking those kind of jobs soon versus I've got this group program that I'm going to take people through, as opposed to, like I'm in a group, coach people, then I think that would be okay. Uh, I would say I would just collect sign ups altogether for people who want to work with you more closely, and that might be the way you want to market it. You've got two options to work with me closely, you could work with me one on one I've got I've only got room for three people to do that, or I've got room for twelve people in three different groups to work with me in groups of four on that costs this, this is going to be a team of our group coaching these, we're going to be the results that were working towards us, a group, things like that, and how how would you look at pricing for a small group? Say it's like four people, max first one was so again, this is not something that I could give necessarily a definitive answer on just because pricing it's so relative, however, what I can tell you is the thought process that I'm going through right now because this is something that I'm going to be this is part of our restructuring for next year is that I'm going to be offering a small group retreats probably two out, six people so similar and the price point on that I'm going to look at at least doubling what we've offered in terms of quiet power strategy before s so it'll be three days with me in a beautiful location all inclusive or mostly inclusive andi, we're going to double that s o that would put me at the sixty, five hundred to seven thousand dollars range totally within market norms on that on the low side on dh, then with the goal of getting it up to ten thousand per person by the end of the year. So again, basing things off of what I've charged before what I've worked worked with before but also really thinking a lot about what the market eyes telling me there because there's a lot of people who do that kind of thing there's a lot of precedent for it and so I can really use the market to figure out what people expect to pay and use that to my advantage thanks yeah um and price is always one of those things where I love talking about it, but it does make me nervous because so often the answer is, well, it's relative or well they can't give you a definitive answer on that you've got to play with that. Um so keep that in mind uh, your task for this lesson is to choose an introductory price for your new product. What I don't want anyone to dio is stress out about it please don't stress out about it if you come up with a price that you're like yes, I know this should be the price, but oh my god, it scares the heck out of me like don't stress out about that part just be like yep, that price makes sense just forget this up forget the other park don't want you to stress out about it. I don't want you to take weeks and weeks or our even hours or hours to decide you can do the research you can think about the story that you want to tell you one thing about the results that you're going to create and they come up with a price seriously, were there any questions from the online audience about price that I want to forget you guys? Thanks there was one question it was more about pricing in terms of hiring somebody okay, so the question was how do you decide on a rate for the person you will hire particular that person is bringing a specific expertise or talent similar to the relationship you have with bridget yeah so obviously maybe not obviously if you are hiring someone with a very special particular expertise you're going to pay that person a significant amount of money but people that you pay a significant amount of money should also deliver a very efficient I have a very efficient way of delivering value so yes, I pay bridget a significant amount I actually paid bridget more for the intellectual property she adds to our program then for her time the amount she makes relative to her time is a lot right which is fun so yeah so I'm compensating for intellectual property at that point I do also think about you know, with the other experts that I hired are are quiet power strategy sort of fighting strategists I think about how much money they could make bringing in one toe one client's versus how much money I could pay them as part of a revenue share on our program on dh so I try and come in well above what they could make bringing in the same amount of one on one client in the amount of time that they're going to spend on the programme I know that sounds like a really weird calculation maybe that was complicated to me it seems it seems pretty clear they would spend in the program they probably spend the same amount of time that they would on about maybe for four one two, one clients and so I make sure I think about what rate they're getting paid for their one one clients and make sure that we're ideally coming in ahead of that. But the biggest thing here is that you know you want you're going to want a price area or not you're going to want to pay someone what they're worth and largely you ask them what they're worth especially if you're hiring a contractor they should be dictating the price in one way or another if you're having an employee you get more negotiation power largely again I'm not a lawyer we're not talking about the legalities of this but yeah so then once you know how much someone costs then you want a price so that your pricing for profit so that you're still able to make money on the service that you're offering and so that you're making money on the work that they're doing that takes a little bit of a mental leap but that's the way it works you want to be able to make money on other people's work I make more money on quiet power strategy because bridget is part of the program that I would without her so that's kind of the way I think about that