Jan 13, 2015
Welcome to SuccessLab Podcast #32! Hope your year is off to a great start. This week, I'm in the lab with Denise Duffield-Thomas. She's the founder of Lucky Bitch, where she offers coaching and an online bootcamp for entrepreneurs. I felt totally recharged after this interview, and I hope it does the same for you!
Like a lot of people, I think I always wanted to be an entrepreneur, but to be honest, I hadn't met any entrepreneurs before. I'd seen on TV that women could have power and money—I kept thinking of Dynasty, and that's what I thought of women who had their own power and money, that you kind of had to be this "rich bitch." I didn't ever really meet a normal woman in my everyday life who had their own business until I was way into my twenties.
Throughout my twenties, I lived in London (even though I'm from Australia), and I had some really cool gigs: I did some sustainability consulting, I did events, I ran sale bootcamps. But I knew in my heart of hearts that I wanted to work for myself around helping women make transformations in their lives. At that point, I didn't even think about doing it around money. I just wanted to help women make transformations, and I had a burning desire to work for myself.
My husband and I were in a competition to go blogging around the world. It was a six-month, all-expenses-paid trip around the world. Afterward, I was sleeping on my mum's couch after living in five-star hotels, with no job, completely unemployed, and not wanting to get a job. I thought, "Holy crap. I just manifested this trip that was worth half a million dollars in value, and I was staying in amazing places and eating the best food, but not having any money." I remember thinking, "Wow, I think it's time for me to learn about making money." Not just being lucky, not just winning things, being given things for free, or having great relationships, but being okay to make real cash and then spend it how I want to spend it.
Sometimes it's really obvious: You don't have money in your bank account. Then, there's probably a really good chance you've got a block around receiving money. But sometimes it's really subtle. Some people might think, "Oh, I don't have any blocks around money." Maybe your parents always had money growing up, or you just feel like you're okay with money. But when you start to dig deeper, there might be a few key beliefs that you have around money that really stop you from earning more.
I'll tell you a really common one: "I don't want to make money—I just want to help people." Have you heard people say that? It sounds really noble. "Money's not important to me and my business. Helping people is important to my business." The thing is, that's really noble, but it sets up this expectation that you don't deal in currency, you're not open to business, and you're not open to receive more. You have to really look at that and say, "If I help more people, I will make more money. If I make more money, I will help more people." The two do not have to be mutually exclusive.
The most telltale sign is if you're burnt out and resentful. Every time you're with clients, you feel like you're getting ripped off. It doesn't feel like a fair exchange of value. That's a perfect sign that you need to increase your prices or, to be honest, change your business or change the type of clients you work with. Another sign is if there's a lot of demand for what you do. If you just can't keep up with demand, you're trying to stuff clients in to every available space, you don't have time to pee or eat proper lunch because you're working—all those things are a sign that there's not a fair exchange of value going on.
I have a free resource for this, actually. The first thing is getting into yourself that it's okay for you to increase your prices. Lots of companies do it every single year as just a matter of course. If you're getting better and better at what you do (therefore getting better and quicker results for your clients), that can totally justify a rate increase. If you invest heavily in your own education (which you can then pass on to clients), again, that totally justifies a price increase. They're borrowing your knowledge without having to invest in it themselves. I think there's sometimes a bit of backlash against increasing your prices or charging premium pricing, and I totally agree because you do have to justify it. But you don't necessarily have to justify it to people in your industry. Some people might say, "Oh, in our industry, we normally charge X, and we're not allowed to charge Y." That's total crap. You don't have to justify it to your competitors, your colleagues, and you don't have to justify it to your parents.
Step #1: De-clutter. Not just de-cluttering your house, which absolutely does help. You always start there; you get rid of messes in your life. But it comes down to de-cluttering your beliefs around money. I'd really encourage people to go back and look at your money memories. What did your parents say about money? What ideas did they have around money? That's always the first place to look.
Step #2: Decide. Get really clear on what you want to manifest. How much money do you want to make? People can send really conflicting messages around this. I'll ask, "How much money do you want to make?" And they go, "Oh, I want to do 200, but I'd be happy to get 50." Well, what do you think you're going to get? 200 or 50? It's always going to be what message you send into the universe. Get very clear on how much you want to make.
Step #3: Surround yourself with positivity. Absolutely get infused, in every part of your day and what you want to achieve. You have to infuse every part of your day with Reminders, Triggers, and Anchors about that goal. It could a Post-It on your computer. You get in your car, and a podcast you've been listening to comes on about people who earn six figures.
Step #4: Taking inspired action. We know nothing is going to happen unless you take action. You can't sit on your couch and meditate and light an abundance candle. Yes, someone might knock on your door and hand you a check out of the blue—that does happen, I've heard that happen. But really it's going to come by taking action. Inspired action is just those teeny little things that will make a difference: picking up the phone and talking to the right person, sending that e-mail that promotes the course, opening for business. It's not researching, it's not Googling, it's not procrastinating.
Step #5: Learning to receive. It's okay for you to receive that money. Put that PayPal link in there and feel okay about it. Honestly, Step #5 can really trigger people sometimes. When the money actually starts coming, that's when people's blocks also start coming up. Then, you have to go back to Step #1.
If at any stage you get blocked, you just go back to #1.
I started out doing life coaching. I'd help people with anything, any problem. It was really fun because people would come to me with interesting problems and say, "Can you help me manifest a soulmate?" and, "I want to sell my house." It was really fun, but the thing people kept coming to me and saying was, "I really want to earn money. What's going on?" And I said, "Universe, I do not want to be the Money Girl. Please, no. Anything else. Don't make me talk about money." Because I was scared about money, too, and I didn't want to talk about it either. I thought, "I should work on my own money stuff. I think it's time for me to earn some cash and explore some of these fears that I have around money." Before the Lucky Bitch brand, I was doing a very generic brand. It was very soft and polite and lovely. I decided to bring more of myself into my brand, to have a bit more fun with it, to have that kind of cheeky side that's total Me.
Consistency, consistency, consistency. Unless you get a lucky break, not a lot of people are watching at the start. It can take courage to have that consistency, but that's where your business is going to grow. I've done a blog post or a video pretty much weekly for the last four years. That takes consistency to do. Some weeks, I had nothing to say, but I had made that commitment to myself, so I had to come up with something. I see that a lot with entrepreneurs at the start, or even further along in their journey, where they just do it when they feel like it or when inspiration strikes. You can't do that. People are waiting to see you.
Everybody's scared. Everybody has fear. Unfortunately, it never goes away. It's just the business of being in business. Don't let it stop you from creating a life and a business that truly serves your purpose in life.
I'm not reading a lot of business books at the moment. Sometimes as entrepreneurs, we don't get enough creative space. So I'm reading the Outlander series! A bit of adventure, a bit of history, a bit of sex.
In terms of tools, Masterminding is rocking my world at the moment, just being around women and other entrepreneurs who have similar goals to me.
LuckyBitch.com. I'm generally more on Facebook than anything else, and I'm always happy to hear about money "ahas" and anything that's come up for you.
Typeform! This tool launched with its full version last February, but it was in beta for a year prior. It was created by two designer/developers out of Spain and has taken off. At its core, Typeform allows you to make really cool forms for things like surveys, questionnaires, and polls, but you can also use it for client intake or customer feedback, fun quizzes, and competitions.
Another really cool use for it is to serve up the specific content your users are looking for. For instance, if you have a series of marketing videos, you can ask your users a set of leading questions that routes them to the appropriate video based on their answer. So if they came specifically for tips on content marketing, that video can be dished up to them, rather than having them scroll through all of your content. It’s very similar to a CRM tool in which you set up "if this/then that" scenarios.
A few other really cool features of Typeform include its responsiveness—it automatically adapts to the user’s device. You can also link it with Google Analytics to track user behavior. Typeform also integrates with Zapier, which allows you to link it with an email service like Mailchimp. The Facebook Conversion Tracking Pixel can also be integrated into the form, allowing you to potentially market to those users on Facebook down the road.
Here are a few cool uses to get you thinking about how you can use it:
Review your pricing. Be real with yourself. Are you charging enough? If you haven’t raised your rates in years, but have gotten better or faster at what you do, or even added more bells and whistles to your product or service, it may be time to up your rate.
Pricing is one of the most challenging parts of business, and unfortunately there’s no formula or out-of-the-box approach that applies to all. This is especially true for service-based businesses. A few things to take into consideration include cost of goods (Have the goods and services you use gone up over time?), continued education (Have you paid to attend conferences or courses?), and growth (Have you hired on additional support?).
Of course, raising rates is never an easy feat when presenting it to existing clients. A few ways to do this is to develop new packages or services to roll customers into, or grandfather existing clients in at their rate, while all new ones will be at the higher price. As Denise mentioned earlier in the podcast, she has a pricing guide that is really helpful. Just remember: You owe it to yourself and your business to be relentless in managing your pricing strategy.
"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up." ~ Thomas A. Edison