November 14, 2023 • 15 mins
Show notes coming soon:
About the Host -
Belinda Ellsworth is a Speaker, Trainer, Best-Selling Author, and Podcaster
She has been a professional speaker, mover, and shaker for more than 25 years. Having built three successful companies, she has helped thousands of entrepreneurs make better decisions, create successful systems, and build business strategies using her "Four Pillars of Success" system. Belinda has always had a passion and zest for life with the skill for turning dreams into reality.
How to Connect with Belinda:
Facebook -https://www.facebook.com/workfromyourhappyplace
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/belindaellsworth
Instagram -https://www.instagram.com/workfromyourhappyplace/
Website - www.workfromyourhappyplace.com
Join my membership program and discover the art of creating and sharing amazing experiences with like-minded people, all from the comfort of your own home. You get to connect with others online, learn new skills and techniques, and grow your network without ever having to leave your computer screen. To know more, click on the link https://workfromyourhappyplace.com/vip/
About the Host -
Belinda Ellsworth is a Speaker, Trainer, Best-Selling Author, and Podcaster
She has been a professional speaker, mover, and shaker for more than 25 years. Having built three successful companies, she has helped thousands of entrepreneurs make better decisions, create successful systems, and build business strategies using her "Four Pillars of Success" system. Belinda has always had a passion and zest for life with the skill for turning dreams into reality.
How to Connect with Belinda:
Facebook -https://www.facebook.com/workfromyourhappyplace
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/belindaellsworth
Instagram -https://www.instagram.com/workfromyourhappyplace/
Website - www.workfromyourhappyplace.com
Join my membership program and discover the art of creating and sharing amazing experiences with like-minded people, all from the comfort of your own home. You get to connect with others online, learn new skills and techniques, and grow your network without ever having to leave your computer screen. To know more, click on the link https://workfromyourhappyplace.com/vip/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Work from Your Happy Place, the podcast that equips you with the
knowledge and inspiration to live your dreamsand find your own happy plays. You
will be encouraged by and learn fromentrepreneurs and artists who are already working from
their happy plays, all while pursuingtheir passion with a purpose. Be sure
(00:20):
to sign up for our free weeklynewsletter for our recap of the week's guests
and a preview of what's in store. We also have two special gifts for
you, a video the five coreprinciples Still Living a half year Life and
a printable download title Top ten salesStrategies. Go to Work from Your Happy
Place dot com, forward slash free. Fill out the attached form to receive
(00:44):
your gifts and be added to ournewsletter. And now here's your host,
Belinda Ellsworth. Hi everyone, andwelcome back. It's Belinda here, and
we are talking about the top tenmistakes that people make in business and today
is number seven of those. Ifyou haven't got a chance to watch one
through six, I would highly recommendthat you go back for the past tuesdays
(01:07):
and check out our Tuesday Tips andthey are in there. The top one
through ten mistakes that people make inbusiness. So today is number seven and
that is undervaluing your product or service. So what does that mean exactly?
It means that when all of usstart out, we don't really understand or
(01:30):
really know our worth about either ourselvesand our services that we're offering, or
we don't understand the value of ourproduct. We also oftentimes really don't understand
about margins and understand about marking theproduct where we need to in order to
make a profit, because let's faceit, we're in this business to make
(01:56):
money. That is the whole ideaof running and operating a businesses. So
that's what we're going to talk aboutright now. And how do you even
know that when your brand knew,you really sometimes do not understand exactly how
to price things and especially your services. We're going to talk about that first.
(02:21):
When I first was deciding that Iwas going to become a speaker,
I remember that I sat down andresearched what other speakers were making, how
long they had been a speaker,what did they charge when they first started,
What was a going rate for someonethat had never been in professional speaking
(02:45):
before. So I did a lotof research. I probably interviewed about seven
to ten different motivational speakers. Now, some of them had a best selling
book, which then warranted them tobe able to get a larger speaking fee,
(03:05):
while others did not. Here's whatI do remember. I had a
very good friend who had actually workedwith Jim Rohn. She had been one
of his sales reps, kind ofgoing in and warming an audience up and
trying to get him booked at differentlocations. And she had did that for
a number of years before she decidedto go out on her own. And
(03:28):
she had been a really good friendof mine for a number of years,
and I knew her well enough topick up the phone and say, okay,
tell me when you went out onyour own, what did you do?
She said, well, I hadno idea, really weird to start,
and so she just picked a numberout of the ear, which at
that time was eight hundred dollars.So she was charging eight hundred dollars for
(03:51):
a keynote speech. And she said, I wasn't getting hired. I would
get hired for really kind of somesmaller gift, which was good because she
got the practice. But she said, the minute that I started charging fifteen
hundred dollars. I had several peoplesay okay, they took her more serious
(04:14):
because if she was below one thousanddollars, they didn't feel that she was
probably good enough to be speaking totheir organization. So I was like,
wow, and she said, whenI changed my pricing structure, it was
amazing that my speaking engagements started increasing, like almost overnight. That was a
(04:38):
really good lesson for me. Andso I decided straight out of the gate
that I was going to make myfee fifteen to eighteen hundred dollars. That
was just a decision that I made, and that's what I was going to
work with. If I had tonegotiate down from that, if someone said,
well, all we have in ourbudget is X, then I could
(05:00):
say, okay, I can workwith that, or I could work with
you if we can do this,Like, as long as I was able
to negotiate the points in that thatI really wanted, especially if I was
going to sell from the back ofthe room, then I would want to
make sure that I had either ampletime or was in a good location.
I could negotiate some of those things. Now, how did I then decide
(05:23):
to increase that price? Well,I had decided on, this is a
certain amount of bookings that I wantto do per month. I don't want
to be gone more than this frommy family, So this is what I'm
choosing to do. And when thatstarted getting booked up months in advance to
where we were having to turn peopleaway. So when you have to start
(05:46):
turning people away because you have nomore spots or you have no more products,
then you know, okay, itis time to increase my amount,
and I did. We went fromlike fifteen to eighteen hundred pretty quickly.
Then I went to twenty five hundred, Then we went to thirty five hundred,
(06:06):
then we went to five thousand,and so on. And as long
as you are getting booked and thereis a demand, you can still continue
to charge for that. Now,did I negotiate smaller fees for companies that
just did not have the budget?I did, But again that puts me
(06:28):
in the negotiation position to get otherthings that I might want to get.
So the best advice I have forthat is understanding your worth. So that
means you have to do research,just like we'll talk about products. Now,
I have a planner. And whenI decided that we were going to
(06:50):
sell this planner. I researched whatdo other planners cost? So that was
my main point of contention, waslike, what's the research? And I
probably purchased twenty other planners just tosee what was the quality, what are
(07:13):
we comparing apples to apples, notapples to oranges, and what was the
quality of what price they were charging. So I wanted to sort of really
get a good handle on what thegoing rate was. I wanted mine to
be slightly below that because I wantedto be competitive, being in the fact
(07:35):
that I'm brand new and no one'sever heard of my planner, So it
was like, I need to bea little bit competitive in that way.
Now, in year one and twoand three, I really had not learned
the manufacturing end of things. Sowe had taken what I thought was this
(07:56):
set price right, and then whatmy costs were. You want to make
sure that you are getting enough ofa markup in that product to account for
free shipping if you're going to offerit. If you are going to offer
a sale, which oftentimes you're goingto need to do, you want to
pad that sale amount in there sothat you're not ever losing income or that
(08:20):
you are still making a good income. So make sure that when you are
marking your products up that you wantto account for some of those things that
are going to happen down the road, like a flash sale or when it
is now becoming more into the yearand we're going to need to discount this.
(08:41):
So what I had to do inorder to make more income then was
I had to work on the manufacturingside of it and make sure that I
could get some of my expenses alittle bit lower. Now, the other
thing in valuing your product or serviceis you have to have confidence in it.
(09:05):
So you have to say, youknow what, I feel really good
about this. I'm really confident inthis. And the more that you sell,
the more you will also have acertain demand. If you're starting to
sell out of your product, thenyou know, I can ask a little
bit more for this because I've gota higher demand. So that's another really
(09:28):
good tail tale sign is when youstart selling out of a particular product,
you probably can raise that price alittle bit. Now. You want to,
though, be competitive in the marketplace, because if you go in and
just charge like a price out ofthe air, you may soon find that
(09:50):
that is a price that people arenot willing to pay. Now I've learned
that. I've learned there's thresholds likethis as far as people are going to
to go with this item, Sowhat can you do? Sometimes if you're
bundling items so that you are goingto sell more, that's one of my
(10:11):
top ten tips for sales strategies.But it's also about valuing your product.
So I would always have things availableall a cart, or you could buy
this bundle or package and it wasdiscounted some I want you to understand that
you don't always have to discount abundle, and this comes into devaluing your
(10:37):
product. Oftentimes, when I teachabout bundling, the reason that you bundle
is because you are doing the thinkingfor the customer. You are saying,
this is a single item. Thisis a single item. You know what
goes really well together with these itemsthis, and if you buy these five
(10:58):
items together, you do save alittle bit. Like it can just be
a small amount that's pushing that personto purchasing more. It could even just
be free shipping, which then peoplesay, oh, well if I buy
this whole bundle, then I canactually get free shipping. So are you
losing a little bit in that itwould have been the same as if you
(11:20):
had discounted the product. So sometimesit's better to give free shipping than it
is to discount the product. Whybecause people hate paying for shipping. We
actually did a survey of over tenthousand people and asked them would they rather
have a ten to twenty percent discountor a discount on the product or would
(11:41):
they rather get free shipping? Andhands down, it was like seventy five
percent of people said they would ratherhave free shipping, which is good for
you because then you can create bundledprices and you don't have to discount them
an enormous amount. Can tank ita little bit of a discount and offer
(12:03):
some kind of perk, either anextra thrown in item in that bundle,
or they're getting an exclusive item thatisn't for sale on your site any other
way than with that, they couldget a digital item that could be added
to that, or they can getfree shipping. So now suddenly that bundle
(12:24):
is more valuable and you are puttinggood value on that. What I see
happening the most in business is peoplejust not understanding their worth and that comes
that comes from confidence, for sure, but it comes more from research than
(12:48):
any other single thing. Know yourcompetition, not because you're trying to be
just like them, but it givesyou some appridges to work with. So
know what else is in the marketplace, and take twenty of that item,
and take what's a good average,and where can I fall in that,
(13:13):
and where does the quality of myproduct fall in with these other items,
and getting that median average, andthen of course when demand goes up,
that's when you can think about increasingyour price as well. So I hope
that this was a great Tuesday tipfor you. It's kind of a big
(13:35):
one. And the biggest thing thatI can say to you is really knowing
the market and knowing your worth isgoing to be two of the biggest things.
And as you begin to either getbooked solid like I did, or
you start selling out of a particularproduct and then the supply and demand is
(14:00):
greater, that is the time thatyou can say, maybe it's time to
raise my prices. As long asyou don't price yourself out of the market
place, stay in that average,and you can be right in the middle.
You could be to slightly high endof that average, but you don't
want to cross over what the highestend of that average is. Right.
(14:26):
Thank you so much for tuning intoday. I hope that you will continue
to stay with us through these topten tips that we are giving top ten
mistakes that people make in business,and I hope that you'll go back and
listen to some of the others.Please follow our subscribe, follow us on
Instagram, That's where I'd really loveto see you, and check out our
(14:46):
website because we've got so many awesomethings going on right now. At work
from your happy place. Thanks somuch, guys, and we will see
you next time. Work from yourhappy Place.
Welcome to Work from Your Happy Place, the podcast that equips you with the
knowledge and inspiration to live your dreamsand find your own happy plays. You
will be encouraged by and learn fromentrepreneurs and artists who are already working from
their happy plays, all while pursuingtheir passion with a purpose. Be sure
(00:20):
to sign up for our free weeklynewsletter for our recap of the week's guests
and a preview of what's in store. We also have two special gifts for
you, a video the five coreprinciples Still Living a half year Life and
a printable download title Top ten salesStrategies. Go to Work from Your Happy
Place dot com, forward slash free. Fill out the attached form to receive
(00:44):
your gifts and be added to ournewsletter. And now here's your host,
Belinda Ellsworth. Hi everyone, andwelcome back. It's Belinda here, and
we are talking about the top tenmistakes that people make in business and today
is number seven of those. Ifyou haven't got a chance to watch one
through six, I would highly recommendthat you go back for the past tuesdays
(01:07):
and check out our Tuesday Tips andthey are in there. The top one
through ten mistakes that people make inbusiness. So today is number seven and
that is undervaluing your product or service. So what does that mean exactly?
It means that when all of usstart out, we don't really understand or
(01:30):
really know our worth about either ourselvesand our services that we're offering, or
we don't understand the value of ourproduct. We also oftentimes really don't understand
about margins and understand about marking theproduct where we need to in order to
make a profit, because let's faceit, we're in this business to make
(01:56):
money. That is the whole ideaof running and operating a businesses. So
that's what we're going to talk aboutright now. And how do you even
know that when your brand knew,you really sometimes do not understand exactly how
to price things and especially your services. We're going to talk about that first.
(02:21):
When I first was deciding that Iwas going to become a speaker,
I remember that I sat down andresearched what other speakers were making, how
long they had been a speaker,what did they charge when they first started,
What was a going rate for someonethat had never been in professional speaking
(02:45):
before. So I did a lotof research. I probably interviewed about seven
to ten different motivational speakers. Now, some of them had a best selling
book, which then warranted them tobe able to get a larger speaking fee,
(03:05):
while others did not. Here's whatI do remember. I had a
very good friend who had actually workedwith Jim Rohn. She had been one
of his sales reps, kind ofgoing in and warming an audience up and
trying to get him booked at differentlocations. And she had did that for
a number of years before she decidedto go out on her own. And
(03:28):
she had been a really good friendof mine for a number of years,
and I knew her well enough topick up the phone and say, okay,
tell me when you went out onyour own, what did you do?
She said, well, I hadno idea, really weird to start,
and so she just picked a numberout of the ear, which at
that time was eight hundred dollars.So she was charging eight hundred dollars for
(03:51):
a keynote speech. And she said, I wasn't getting hired. I would
get hired for really kind of somesmaller gift, which was good because she
got the practice. But she said, the minute that I started charging fifteen
hundred dollars. I had several peoplesay okay, they took her more serious
(04:14):
because if she was below one thousanddollars, they didn't feel that she was
probably good enough to be speaking totheir organization. So I was like,
wow, and she said, whenI changed my pricing structure, it was
amazing that my speaking engagements started increasing, like almost overnight. That was a
(04:38):
really good lesson for me. Andso I decided straight out of the gate
that I was going to make myfee fifteen to eighteen hundred dollars. That
was just a decision that I made, and that's what I was going to
work with. If I had tonegotiate down from that, if someone said,
well, all we have in ourbudget is X, then I could
(05:00):
say, okay, I can workwith that, or I could work with
you if we can do this,Like, as long as I was able
to negotiate the points in that thatI really wanted, especially if I was
going to sell from the back ofthe room, then I would want to
make sure that I had either ampletime or was in a good location.
I could negotiate some of those things. Now, how did I then decide
(05:23):
to increase that price? Well,I had decided on, this is a
certain amount of bookings that I wantto do per month. I don't want
to be gone more than this frommy family, So this is what I'm
choosing to do. And when thatstarted getting booked up months in advance to
where we were having to turn peopleaway. So when you have to start
(05:46):
turning people away because you have nomore spots or you have no more products,
then you know, okay, itis time to increase my amount,
and I did. We went fromlike fifteen to eighteen hundred pretty quickly.
Then I went to twenty five hundred, Then we went to thirty five hundred,
(06:06):
then we went to five thousand,and so on. And as long
as you are getting booked and thereis a demand, you can still continue
to charge for that. Now,did I negotiate smaller fees for companies that
just did not have the budget?I did, But again that puts me
(06:28):
in the negotiation position to get otherthings that I might want to get.
So the best advice I have forthat is understanding your worth. So that
means you have to do research,just like we'll talk about products. Now,
I have a planner. And whenI decided that we were going to
(06:50):
sell this planner. I researched whatdo other planners cost? So that was
my main point of contention, waslike, what's the research? And I
probably purchased twenty other planners just tosee what was the quality, what are
(07:13):
we comparing apples to apples, notapples to oranges, and what was the
quality of what price they were charging. So I wanted to sort of really
get a good handle on what thegoing rate was. I wanted mine to
be slightly below that because I wantedto be competitive, being in the fact
(07:35):
that I'm brand new and no one'sever heard of my planner, So it
was like, I need to bea little bit competitive in that way.
Now, in year one and twoand three, I really had not learned
the manufacturing end of things. Sowe had taken what I thought was this
(07:56):
set price right, and then whatmy costs were. You want to make
sure that you are getting enough ofa markup in that product to account for
free shipping if you're going to offerit. If you are going to offer
a sale, which oftentimes you're goingto need to do, you want to
pad that sale amount in there sothat you're not ever losing income or that
(08:20):
you are still making a good income. So make sure that when you are
marking your products up that you wantto account for some of those things that
are going to happen down the road, like a flash sale or when it
is now becoming more into the yearand we're going to need to discount this.
(08:41):
So what I had to do inorder to make more income then was
I had to work on the manufacturingside of it and make sure that I
could get some of my expenses alittle bit lower. Now, the other
thing in valuing your product or serviceis you have to have confidence in it.
(09:05):
So you have to say, youknow what, I feel really good
about this. I'm really confident inthis. And the more that you sell,
the more you will also have acertain demand. If you're starting to
sell out of your product, thenyou know, I can ask a little
bit more for this because I've gota higher demand. So that's another really
(09:28):
good tail tale sign is when youstart selling out of a particular product,
you probably can raise that price alittle bit. Now. You want to,
though, be competitive in the marketplace, because if you go in and
just charge like a price out ofthe air, you may soon find that
(09:50):
that is a price that people arenot willing to pay. Now I've learned
that. I've learned there's thresholds likethis as far as people are going to
to go with this item, Sowhat can you do? Sometimes if you're
bundling items so that you are goingto sell more, that's one of my
(10:11):
top ten tips for sales strategies.But it's also about valuing your product.
So I would always have things availableall a cart, or you could buy
this bundle or package and it wasdiscounted some I want you to understand that
you don't always have to discount abundle, and this comes into devaluing your
(10:37):
product. Oftentimes, when I teachabout bundling, the reason that you bundle
is because you are doing the thinkingfor the customer. You are saying,
this is a single item. Thisis a single item. You know what
goes really well together with these itemsthis, and if you buy these five
(10:58):
items together, you do save alittle bit. Like it can just be
a small amount that's pushing that personto purchasing more. It could even just
be free shipping, which then peoplesay, oh, well if I buy
this whole bundle, then I canactually get free shipping. So are you
losing a little bit in that itwould have been the same as if you
(11:20):
had discounted the product. So sometimesit's better to give free shipping than it
is to discount the product. Whybecause people hate paying for shipping. We
actually did a survey of over tenthousand people and asked them would they rather
have a ten to twenty percent discountor a discount on the product or would
(11:41):
they rather get free shipping? Andhands down, it was like seventy five
percent of people said they would ratherhave free shipping, which is good for
you because then you can create bundledprices and you don't have to discount them
an enormous amount. Can tank ita little bit of a discount and offer
(12:03):
some kind of perk, either anextra thrown in item in that bundle,
or they're getting an exclusive item thatisn't for sale on your site any other
way than with that, they couldget a digital item that could be added
to that, or they can getfree shipping. So now suddenly that bundle
(12:24):
is more valuable and you are puttinggood value on that. What I see
happening the most in business is peoplejust not understanding their worth and that comes
that comes from confidence, for sure, but it comes more from research than
(12:48):
any other single thing. Know yourcompetition, not because you're trying to be
just like them, but it givesyou some appridges to work with. So
know what else is in the marketplace, and take twenty of that item,
and take what's a good average,and where can I fall in that,
(13:13):
and where does the quality of myproduct fall in with these other items,
and getting that median average, andthen of course when demand goes up,
that's when you can think about increasingyour price as well. So I hope
that this was a great Tuesday tipfor you. It's kind of a big
(13:35):
one. And the biggest thing thatI can say to you is really knowing
the market and knowing your worth isgoing to be two of the biggest things.
And as you begin to either getbooked solid like I did, or
you start selling out of a particularproduct and then the supply and demand is
(14:00):
greater, that is the time thatyou can say, maybe it's time to
raise my prices. As long asyou don't price yourself out of the market
place, stay in that average,and you can be right in the middle.
You could be to slightly high endof that average, but you don't
want to cross over what the highestend of that average is. Right.
(14:26):
Thank you so much for tuning intoday. I hope that you will continue
to stay with us through these topten tips that we are giving top ten
mistakes that people make in business,and I hope that you'll go back and
listen to some of the others.Please follow our subscribe, follow us on
Instagram, That's where I'd really loveto see you, and check out our
(14:46):
website because we've got so many awesomethings going on right now. At work
from your happy place. Thanks somuch, guys, and we will see
you next time. Work from yourhappy Place.
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