Oh, live and recording. I, I might go and get my KitKat.. No, I won't get my KitKat. 'cause that's just rude. It's like, it's four minutes to decide. Uh, welcome to a Happy Pricing podcast sans Ben, cause Ben is on holiday. Uh, but I am joined by the lovely Annie and the wonderful Kieran. Not because they're gonna necessarily. Talk to you about pricing strategies, but we are gonna be talking about the stuff that maybe stops us from actually executing those pricing strategies well.
Kind of think about whether it's entrepreneurship or understanding how to price well, it kind of tells us a lot about ourselves and so we can think of pricing as a spiritual journey. We're gonna connect that to the passions that, uh, Kieran and Annie have around the Enneagram. And I wanna try and smosh those two things together, 'cause I'm really, really loving the pricing stuff that I'm doing with Ben.
I'm really fascinated by the Enneagram stuff that I've been learning from Kieran and, and more recently Annie. Uh, and I wanna see how these, those things connect. Uh, and from a, rather than just telling you about frameworks, we're gonna just tell you stories and, and, and so our own sort of experiences with pricing and with the Enneagram and with the stuff that comes up for us.
So then hopefully that will be of some use to, to those of you who struggle with working with money and working with prices, particularly if you are a solopreneur and entrepreneur, a freelancer consultant, coach. Basically someone who has to go and talk to people and say, can you gimme some money? Can you gimme this much? And you go, oh. So anyway, that's the scene. But before we kick off, I, I thought it'd be useful to just, for each of you to just intro yourselves a little bit.
Just give a background as to who you are, uh, and your curiosity about this conversation. You know, what's, you know, what's, uh, alive in you about this conversation. Great. Thank you Carlos. A pleasure to be here. And so I am Annie Hanekom and I have been working in the world of people dynamics and how we relate to each other and how we relate to stuff, and very importantly, how we relate to ourselves for probably the last 20 years.
And so anything around that I find absolutely fascinating and energizing the Enneagram as a, a gateway into that. I don't wanna call it a typing tool or an assessment because it's so much more than that. It's an ancient tool, but it's, it really is such an interesting lens. And that's all it is. It's just a lens. It's not everything. It's not the all. And I think that's an important point to make, but the lens to look through, um, is such an interesting way to think about this.
And I think one thing that's important to say also upfront, because I think this is an important way to think about this, is that you will find yourselves in every story that you hear. There'll be parts of you in all of them. Um, it's certainly we have one story and that's it. And we all come at, at it from our uni angle. You will hear yourself in all of it, um, maybe more strongly in some stories than others. Um, but certainly that's the fascination of this.
And so I think that this topic is so powerful and so rich. 'cause it's not about pricing, it's about you. And our relationship to it. And so I, I, yeah, really delighted to be here, so thank you. I am a lifelong musician and all of my work revolves around the voice, so as well as working with community choirs and university choirs, I also work with people to help them connect who they are with what they're saying and how they're saying it.
And I think for me, the Enneagram stuff is a, I I loved what you were saying about the lens and it not being everything. Absolutely, I have also found it an incredibly valuable tool in that work for me to deepen that work, not just for myself, but to deepen that work I do with other people.
And when I think about myself through the lens of the Enneagram and, and, and my type structure, how I, how I perceive the world, how I experience the world, it's fascinating to me how my perceptions towards money have changed in quite fundamental ways. I spent most of my early and late twenties working in the arts sector, a traditionally quite underpaid sector here in the UK. It's full of internships.
It doesn't have high salaries, and therefore you are constantly working with people who don't have an expectation of being paid. Lots of freelancers who are singers, instrumental musicians, orchestral musicians who don't have an expectation, but all believe strongly that musicians and and creative artists should be paid fairly. And I've grown up with a real fire in my belly around that.
And yet I've still found this interesting resistance that has come up for me whenever I've been working for myself, which has been for, for most of that period of work, rather than working for an organization.
And I'm really interested in exploring this, this resistance towards receiving money for things that we do, particularly things which have, uh, I guess what people might say as a slightly more esoteric outcome, something that is more artistically or creatively driven, ought to do with a, a spiritual dimension, and how we connect those elements, which have, I believe, absolute and true value for people. With the receiving of money and being receptive to getting that money.
Uh, I think that leads us nicely into the second topic that has in my mind as a com an exchange that I was seeing on the WhatsApp group, being apologetic about pricing. I even think as you say that, uh, Carlos, and again, I'd love to be challenged on this, but there is an apology around money in so many of us for different reasons. And I think that's, that's what's interesting here.
But, uh, certainly if I speak for myself, so I'm a, a type two, an SX2, and the Enneagram, and so that's kind of, the helper, has such an externalized view and what comes with that is being other referencing. And so your sense of who you are, your sense of value, your sense of contribution is all by reference to others. What have they said? What do, what is their perception of me? What do they think? How do I feel in the presence of?
And so you can imagine that when you do having a pricing conversation, the apology around, oh, I've gotta ask for money for something, which I so genuinely, I'm, I'm wired. My world view is around offering and, and helping, and now I'm asking for money? Like there's a massive apology that sits behind that. And then a problematic relationship to pushback around that because, oh, now what do they think? And how am I seen?
And I. Am I taking the mickey here and, and, and all sorts of stories, whatever those might be. And so the apology around it certainly is very up for me. And the many clients that I work with that are, are, uh, identify whether type two or predominantly feel their homes that's there in their preferences and how they, you know, are just in the giving space to other. Attaching a monetary value to that just suddenly becomes tricky.
And so the apology then can lead down very different paths of, um, wanting to negotiate too early or compromising or starting the conversation on the back foot without being very clear. And what I would say is unapologetic, where certainly I've seen that in, in other types and, and interestingly in my work, I've, I've often talked about, there's a type, the type eight, uh, the act of controller as being unapologetic in general. Very clear, very front footed, strong pair of hands.
The conversation is clear and unapologetic. And yet, Karen, I know that you've even challenged that to say it might look that way, but it's not necessarily that. So I'd love to hear your view on that. I would love to ask you a counter question first though, if I may. And it's just about this thing about receptivity and twos, because twos are often seen, I think, by people first read about the Enneagram as the people that want to give everything but find receiving challenging.
The idea that if you receive a gift, you need to give a gift almost of equal or, or more greater value back again. And I wondered just how that dynamic. With regards to you giving the service or giving coaching and receiving money for that. That's been a lot of my work. Yeah, certainly. And that's how the Enneagram has been such a powerful tool for me is. A, to be very clear about what's that little voice about recognition for what I do.
'cause if it doesn't come man alive, is that, that just raises all sorts of, yeah, stuff. Let's just leave it at that. Um, and I've almost been able to link that to, well, actually, fair trade. So actually if there's a fair trade , . Then that feels right. And so that's the recognition. And so I've had to work with that on, uh, and recognizing that actually someone making that contribution financially is potentially that matching.
Um, and so it's been a really important thing for me because it's enabled me to see worth, not by way of relational capital, but actually, you know, financially being very clear in that conversation. And I, I say that also because I've seen how, when I've done stuff pro bono, when possibly I shouldn't have, the value disappears in so many ways.
Not to say pro bono work isn't super important, and there are places in which it's absolutely the right thing when you're doing it for not the right reason, there's all sorts of complexity that comes into that. And so certainly for me, the receiving and the way of going. This is exchange of value has been really hard, but important work for me.
Mm-Hmm. Um, and so I guess that's a point Kiran, that actually just to quickly shoehorn in there, no one said this works easy, so we are gonna have a lovely, like, quite casual conversation and it all might seem quite straightforward, but the work, man, it's, there's tension there. Oh, it's tough. Absolutely. This is the work I think of life for people that want to do it. And the thing is, it's not, it's not the work that we have to do. None of us have to do this.
Yeah. It's, it's always a choice to do this stuff. I loved where you got to with worth and thank you so much for indulging my curiosity about that. For me, the apology and your talking about the apology manifests in an entirely different way.
Growing up, I look back and I realize that a lot of my association with earning money felt quite painful, from what I've witnessed with my parents and from what I witnessed with them when they needed to take over accounts of, of my aging grandparents and, and just all of the associated emotional baggage around managing money and managing budgets and, and that kind of thing. And they also had very, very different careers.
My mother working in public office for the, the council and my dad being a freelance musician. So, so wildly different. There were foreigner seven, sexual subtype four and a social seven, just to pique your curiosity, Annie, so you can see a loud household. And I realize I grew up in a very eight referencing way, I, I am an eight and the eight word is lust.
And indeed, whenever I did get money, whenever I got money from my grandmother, I would go and buy something immediately and my sister would keep it in the bank account, it would, it would accumulate. And I would feel this intense jealousy, this enormous rage that, how did she get this money and it's got interest? And I have nothing. I think the, um, the most ridiculous story I can remember from childhood of kind of money story for me was this, this game called Pigs Might Fly.
Now, some people on this call that know me know that I'm a big pig enthusiast, and this was a game advertised in the nineties. And I became obsessed with this game on television, and I I wanted to buy it. It was 30 pounds, huge amount of money for me as a, as an 8-year-old, and I saved up my money. I bought this game and I cannot express the bitter disappointment with how, how poor the game was, how poor the experience was. And I just remember sitting there having completed one play through.
And all I could think about was the loss of the money and how I felt inferior and this pain. And I realized this is all part of this long narrative I've had to do with expenditure and, and the sense of losing money. And I think it speaks very keenly to my, to my self preservation, eight need of satisfactory survival, which is really about making sure you have everything you need to survive.
And, and for me, as I've expressed to Carlos in a practical way, this means when there's an offer on moisturizers, I'll be buying as many as I can put in the basket at this discount rate. It doesn't matter if it's 300 pounds, as long as I'm getting a discount. I feel there's an efficiency. It's the same with, you know, chili oil, whatever it is, it fills the cupboards and I accumulate the, the material things. And it's just a fear of things running out.
But of course, it's kind of born from this, this strange relationship with, with pain, I think quite early on and, and money and having money and, and associating with the pain and also with others having things I didn't. At the beginning, Annie, you, you mentioned that, um, there's elements of each of our stories that we will resonate with and, but we might relate to in different ways.
And I definitely picked up on this feeling of if I receive, then I'm gonna have to give what the way Kieran put it, I think I might have to give back and maybe even more so Neely kind of it's owing aspect of receiving and giving or in that exchange? I think my point, and I'm less, um, knowledgeable of my type and what it means, and so I, I'm gonna be talk purely about experience rather than a reference to how I, how it relates to the type six that I'm attracted to at the moment.
But I'm, I, I've, I can remember being very le less apologetic about pricing, particularly when we were running our agency, and also when I was a freelancer, I was very much of the thinking that what's the least that I can do for the most that I can charge? And it, it's, and it might relate to a question, uh, later that Henry asked, uh, whether we might tackle the, how do you know what is fair exchange? But I had this real kind of sense of like.
If I can do it in 15 minutes and I've charged 'em for an hour's work and they're happy to pay for that, I'll do it in 15 minutes. I'm not gonna spend an hour on it. I'm just going to do it as quickly as I can. Uh, and so there's this, I dunno how, how that relates to the type aspect of things, but there's something there around, I was, I was very much around needing to see what's the most I could get for the less, the least I could do.
And then, One of the conversations I had with Kieran before um, doing this podcast was this, around this idea of how much money is enough. And one of the things we were talking about is what's enough. And I remember always need Islam like this. I needing to a buffer. It's an arbitrary number. I have no idea how I've got, but there's always like this. I've got this figure. It has to be in the bank. And as soon as it starts to shrink, I start to get a bit worried and a bit scared.
And when it grows or when it gets bigger, I become a bit more generous and a bit more, uh, loose, let's put it that way. With, with the money. And so, yeah, it's, it's, uh, it's, uh, again, different aspects of, some aspects resonate in terms of like, oh, there's the, less about apology, but more about, oh, what do I have to give back? Why do I have to give now in terms to earn this match money?
And then there's something around survival, it's like, what's enough to survive and how do I, and what happens when that survival budget or that amount starts to shrink. How that affects, uh, my ability to do things. I think context there absolutely matters, right? Um, you know, 'cause we are, if we're in survival mode, that's gonna bring up a very different context than if we, there's enoughness in general.
And, um, I also know that certain types, and I, uh, I hope you don't mind me referencing it, Henry, 'cause I happen to know that you're a nine.
Um, and that money is a really tough one, uh, because there's potential conflict, there's potential disharmony, and that is just almost a, well, what, whatever it needs to be, the stepping back from, and so I guess that's apology in a different way, but certainly, uh, this is just a piece of advice I had from a mentor, which just has, I've used in many contexts, not only pricing, but it's turned inward. Does it feel right? Do you feel that you are overcharging?
Do you feel that this is really stretching it to a point that you're not, you, you, you feeling uncomfortable with that? Or are you feeling hard done by because actually you know, you're discounting or you compromising? And so if that, either of those of those ends make it a difficult conversation.
And so it's gotta be your sense of what, what feels right in this scenario, for this client, for this piece of work, knowing the value and the worth that I am bringing and the work that I am putting in. And that might change according to your context, um, because it's also gotta be weighed up with what's gone before and, you know, what does that bigger picture look like?
But certainly it's when you are knowing is that it feels right, the conversations you can have in a very clear way, I think, are, are ones that then allow that pricing to, to feel right and for the conversation to go, go the way it needs to go. But if you've got that sense of apology on either end, it makes it tough. Uh, and that's when we get a bit unstuck. It certainly been my experience.
It makes me go back to this apology question you had before and how for much of my freelance life I've approached pricing when something has felt difficult and emotionally challenging that this should be worth more. But usually after the fact and at a point whereby I've already locked in some pricing or I've set a fixed budget for something. So it goes into this kind of resentment deficit against myself, which the client isn't aware of.
But this deficit builds and builds and builds and, and again, I think this is another part of the pain narrative for me. And because of that dynamic, I've realized that when I work with clients that I enjoy the time with, my inclination is to charge them less. Because I don't feel this buildup of a painful deficit. And one of the most interesting things for me, really only in the last couple of years has been thinking about, isn't this the work that's worth more?
Isn't this work, this deeper work where I can be at my best because I'm not feeling resentful and therefore providing much greater value and much greater support and awareness to the people I'm working with, surely this is the work that I should do more of and, and has greater value? And the work to which I'm resistant, I should just stop doing. So starting off from the perspective of happy pricing, one of the things that we talk about is, is value is in the eye of the customer.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. A fair price is what they say is a fair price. If they're willing to pay 10 times and what you thought, then that's what it's worth to them.
And, and it's about, we talk about having conversations with your customer to understand what kinds of numbers they're comfortable to work with, and then also for them to understand, alright, if I work with you, what value could that create in terms of what does that connect to, into the rest of my business, into my life, whatever it is? And another way of talking with, say, if I don't work with you, if I don't do this work, what would be the cost?
And this is a, a way to explore at a very subjective level what is it worth to them? Because it's, it's, it's always gonna be based on their ability to pay and how much pain or pleasure they're gonna be getting from working with you. So that's one side of the equation. The other side of the equation, which I, I, I wanna, I definitely feel is important, is how I feel about accepting that amount of money, which is what I was hurting. Annie, Annie say.
And if I don't feel comfortable, then it's gonna be hard to back up a price that they may, you, you may hear, oh yes, I'm gonna pay you five grand for an hour's work, but if you feel like you're never gonna step into that confidently and say, okay, it's five grand, you probably say, ah, it's probably maybe two and a half or two. And then you realize, actually I could have charged more. And then you kick yourself for doing that.
I don't, again, maybe this is a conversation we have another time, but it's how, how do you work through that? How do you work with that? 'Cause I believe there's a moral aspect, an ethical aspect, and there's a personal belief aspect. And that's it is like this whole thing, like I'm enjoying the work, I'm loving the work, and so why am I charging that much money? I should charge less 'cause I'm getting something out of it.
And I related to what Annie was saying in terms of the feeling, if you, if you, if you are really receiving the money with joy, and I assume that's connected 'cause you love, you love the person that you're gonna work with, you love doing the work, then actually the eventual outcome is going to be more, uh, easily attained. Because the thing is the outcome most of the time, and maybe with coaching is different, but the outcome potentially could be the same thing.
But how it, the experience of getting there may be different, but ultimately what customers are paying for what they pay for a lot of the time is the outcome. Will you get me this number of clients? Will I be able to stand in front of a load of people and talk? Will I be able to lead this team without feeling scared? You know, if I get to that place, that's great. How you get there.
In a sense if they paid up front or if you, if you've already set the price before, how they get there doesn't really affect how much you charge in the end. It's just whether they refer back to you, whether they enjoy the experience, whether the stuff really sticks in their heads. So really sorry, just narrowing down to this idea, like the pricing bit is you generally at the beginning of the engagement before you've even done any work.
And so because of that there's their perceptions of what is fair exchange, your perceptions of what you're willing to receive. And so fair. In my eyes is so subjective, dependent on the two players in the conversation. And you need to believe it's fair, right? Mm-Hmm. That's the starting point. And that, and that's it. Right? And I, I had such a powerful conversation and I'll never forget it.
Um, I was with, uh, sales director, I was new in the role and we were presenting something around, uh, it was a, a long running program and there was a price on the table and it was punchy, but I knew that the, the quality was high. And so I was flanking him. And the client said, oh, well actually I've had something offered by someone and it's almost half the price. And he did, it didn't even take him a split second to respond to go, that's great, and I'm sure they're worth every penny.
And it was so powerful because he just didn't back down at all. He was like, And that, that that's, and that there is, the really interesting thing is like, what is the price of confidence? Because he was very confident.
So the, if a, as a customer, as a client's, like, okay, if, if they're, if in their mind, if they're in their own history, in the way they look at things, any kind of uncertainty or doubt is a massive risk, even if it's just kind of, uh, just presented as isn't even a fact, it's just like, oh, there's an element, they might pay for that, you know, they will not go to someone else because I, I not having doubt is of value to me. Yeah. And, and this, and what's so powerful there? Depends.
I guess what actually, in any kind of service industry, it's Kasa Mahan who said how you sell is a free sample of how you solve. And so my experience of you in the exchange of setting pricing, negotiating, designing stuff, that exchange. Is a sample of what it's gonna be like to work with you. So make it solid, be confident, you know, don't bullshit, don't be trying to pull all over their eyes. Do it as you would really work with someone then in a very front foot way.
And so, Henry, again, to your point around exchange, it's less about the actual price than you, than, than, you know, you've, you've gotta set that, but you almost wanna set that and then move on. Uh, 'cause if you're constantly negotiating on price, I think it, it gets confused and we keep holding onto that. And I think setting pricing is a really, really useful model. And you can tweak around it, but then the conversation becomes about something else. Uh, what do we offer for that?
How do you negotiate with what you do within that pricing? Pricing holds, uh, can be really powerful. I love that story, Annie. And it made me think about my experiences of working for other people and selling their products, which I've never had any problem with at all. And I've always enjoyed the fact that the KPI was just 90 something percent without me having to do a thing about it, because I would just be myself selling their thing.
It almost didn't matter whether I thought that this was a particularly great thing. If I thought that this worked for them, I could tap into my own energy for that. And yet when selling, uh, this through experience of many years selling myself, because that's what it felt like, that confidence evaporated completely.
And my journey, my work has all been around tying together this thing of worthiness, to tie it back to what you were talking about, to start with actually really allowing myself to feel into my worthiness. And, and for me that's about the, the vice to virtue conversion. The any go to take it slightly back Enneagram roots, because it is about the, the move into innocence from the eight.
It's the move into openness, into receptivity, into that oddly vulnerable place where actually I'm self-accepting. And through that self-acceptance, I can be confident in actually saying this has value and I've decided this is the value that it has. And that's really, that's non-negotiable then that is just, it is what it is. It is. That is the feeling in that moment. Yeah. There's, um, this is where for me and I feel we can go over so many topics.
I think there's, where I'm drawn to now given the conversation we've just had is this, is this whole exploration about the money stories, since we talk about the pricing. That's, for me, it feels like there's another angle because it, it, the money stories is very much about us. And I think with Annie we're talking about the feeling and when you talking about the confidence and you're thing, this is about us.
And when it comes from my perspective, when it comes to pricing, it then becomes about them, uh, how we stand as long as we're confident. And Henry, as long as you're confident in your work, then it's about who you wanna work with and who will. You know, how much they will pay will always depend on their own contexts, you know, and, and who and the kinds of people you wanna work with. So that is, this all then starts leading into marketing and niching and understanding your customer.
And you can't be a, you're not gonna sell to everyone you want, not everyone will buy from you. So a whole nother world of things that we could tackle. But it feels like here at the core, before you even start thinking about who and how much is like. What is it that's holding me back and how can I also be aware?
'Cause another thing, a conversation I've had with Henry is like, we can we, these stories still come up as, as no matter how many times we deal with them and talk about 'em, they still come up. But I feel through these conversations, and maybe we can do some more of these, just be having more awareness of them, maybe more habituated to the feelings they bring up rather than just pushing them away and denying like, this is coming up again and I'm gonna have to deal with it.
Before we leave, before we close it. I think what will be useful as to any final remarks, thoughts, reflections, epiphanies, concerns, questions that you wanna, um, leave the listener with? Yeah, I feel like I've got all these little statements, but they've been so powerful for me. So I will share another one, which, um, this was so useful for me because I think in the pri context of pricing, why is it that we might have discomfort? Why is it that we dancing around this question?
And so often I think it's our fear of losing a client or chasing a client away of not getting the work and what it, the thing is, you're not gonna get all the work, and so don't let pricing be the reason for that, or something that delays that decision. And so the statement that, uh, my mentor always was very clear on with me is he said, A yes no, no will feed you for life and maybe we'll starve you forever.
And we just going for the, maybe is 'cause Oh, maybe, maybe if I discount, maybe if I keep the conversation going, maybe. Can you imagine if you had to have enough babies? You don't have time for that, right? You know you want a yes or a no. So be clear. Have your pricing move on in whichever direction that takes you. There are loads of people who need your work. Loads of people who need your value, go find them.
I think for me, the thing that feels alive is identifying that, that discomfort in the body when that discomfort arises, the question is simple. It's really what is the, what is this thought? What is this belief about money that is manifesting in such a way in my body to stop me expressing myself? Stop me expressing myself confidently?
Because that is the thing that is cutting off the ability to, to actually speak to the truth of, I have this value, and here is the value you will give me in return for working with me. So I think identifying whatever that process is internally. And I do think the Enneagrams a fantastic tool for doing just that, not for fixing it, but for knowing what the thought is and then being able to relax it when you recognize the signals that say that thought's coming up again.
And I know that that actually takes me away from what I want rather than toward. And by relaxing that structure, I can be myself. What's, um, both of you made me think of now is this. I like this idea of, you know, find the yeses and the nos and ditch the maybes. And then the phrase that's coming up from my in mind now after you say talking Kean is like, how do I get paid for being me?
And this whole idea of like, turning up, just doing the stuff that I really enjoy, and then being able to find the yeses and the noss, it's very clearly run through the nos and forget the maybes about the people who, who will pay me to be me, because it creates value.
And you know, of course it's articulating what is the outcome I create, but to be able to turn up to every single, uh, engagement, just fully happy that I'm in the right place with the right people, getting paid the right amount of money. Uh, and so there's the tactics and the strategies, but I feel this is kind of like, okay, how do I remove all the fear of rejection? Because some people I can't work with and some people I'm perfect for. Thank you both of you.
I really, really appreciate your time and the last minute, you sound like pulling out a bat signal saying who's gonna come and talk to me about happy pricing? I really, um, really appreciate you taking the time to do that. So until next time, take care. Thank you. Bye-Bye everyone. Thank you. Bye.