Latest / Profit With A Plan / EP347 Stop Undercharging. Price for Profit, Not Just Your Time

Transcript

EP347 Stop Undercharging. Price for Profit, Not Just Your Time · Profit With A Plan

• 0:04
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Are you charging for your time or pricing for the transformation you deliver? Because that one decision could quietly be capping your revenue.
• 0:15
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: On this episode of Profit with a Plan podcast, we're talking about profitable pricing strategies, and why so many high-earning women business owners still undercharge.
• 0:26
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Even when they're delivering powerful results. We'll look at why hourly pricing can keep you stuck in a ceiling you didn't even realize you built.
• 0:36
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: How to stop deciding what your clients can or cannot charge, and why confidence is not just a nice bonus, it's part of your pricing strategy.
• 0:47
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So if you ever felt that you had to soften your price before saying it out loud, or second-guessing your rates before the sales call, or even worse, price based on what feels safe, instead of what reflects the real value you create, this conversation is for you.
• 1:05
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So on Profit with a Plan podcast, we're going to change the way you think about pricing before your next sales conversation.
• 1:15
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Hey, entrepreneurs, are you working too hard for too little profit? Well, welcome to Profit with a Plan, the podcast where we help business owners grow smarter, increase profitability, and build a company that's worth more, whether you keep it or plan to sell it.
• 1:31
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I'm Marcia Reiner, Business Growth Strategist and the profit booster behind Infinite Profit.
• 1:37
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Each week, I bring you practical strategies, expert insights, and real-world steps that'll help you grow your revenue, improve your margin, and build a stronger business.
• 1:48
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: This episode is brought to you by Infinite Profit, where strategy turns into profitable growth.
• 1:54
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: But before we jump in, I have something special for you. If your revenue plateaued, or your marketing is just not producing the return it should, go get your free Profit Booster Growth Map.
• 2:06
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: In just a couple of minutes, it helps you identify where to bring in more qualified clients, and where profit leaks seem to be costing you money.
• 2:16
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Go get yours after the show at ProfitBooster.biz. And by the way, there's no sales call required.
• 2:22
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Now let's get into today's, conversation.
• 2:26
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: My guest today is Audrey Faust. An MBA is also known as the Manifesting CFO, and brings more than 25 years of CFO and accounting experience into the conversation around money, pricing, and business growth.
• 2:43
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: She helps six-figure women, business owners, step into the role of seven-figure CEO by mastering both their numbers and their relationship with money.
• 2:53
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: What makes Audrey's work so unique is that she combines the high-level financial strategy with the transformational tools like EFT tapping and neuro-coaching, helping her clients price for the transformation they deliver, not just the hours they work.
• 3:10
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So today we're bringing… we're talking about more profit… profitable pricing strategies, how successful owners can outgrow the way that they've been pricing, and why charging by the hour may be costing you more than you realize. Audrey, welcome to Profit with a Plan!
• 3:26
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Thanks, Marcia. I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
• 3:30
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Thanks, me too! I think this is going to be a super interesting conversation. So I'm going to start off with something that, I don't normally start off right away with. I normally like to ask how you got into this, but, you know, I had a question about,
• 3:44
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: You know, your introduction had a little bit of controversy or contradictory in the way I was thinking.
• 3:51
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: You talk about high-earning women that are still undercharging, and my question to you would be, how can some women make 6 figures and still be pricing below the value that they deliver?
• 4:06
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: What a great question. Well, not only are six-figure women doing this, but also seven-figure. I work with multi-six to seven-figure women, and…
• 4:18
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: I see it at every level.
• 4:21
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Really?
• 4:22
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Yes, they are deciding
• 4:26
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: for their clients what they think they will or won't pay. That's one of the very common things. They are not looking at the entire picture when they're doing their pricing. They're just thinking about
• 4:38
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Who they are, right?
• 4:40
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Mmm.
• 4:40
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Comes to mind as an interior designer I had worked with, who was at almost 7 figures.
• 4:48
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: And when we went into what I call the Signature Profit Plan, which is when I work with women, we create this
• 4:59
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Vision of what their business looks like in a one-pager.
• 5:04
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: And when she finally saw
• 5:07
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: well, she knew she wasn't making a profit. She had been in business for 20 years, almost 7 figures, and was barely bringing in $20,000 a year. That's hard to believe.
• 5:18
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Wow.
• 5:20
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: And she was literally ready to close her business down when she came to me. And I don't blame her. Like, that's a lot of work, almost seven-figure business, and you're not bringing enough profit.
• 5:33
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: But she was doing a couple of things. She was… Pricing by the hour.
• 5:39
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Which, somebody that's been in business for 20 years, like…
• 5:43
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: the client is benefiting from their ex… from the hourly rate, not them, right? Because they're doing things quicker, they're more efficient, they're more experienced, they have all the… the…
• 5:57
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Things already, all the experience, all the 20 years experience that she had, she was tying into an hourly rate.
• 6:06
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: And she wasn't really looking at all her overhead, right?
• 6:10
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: She had a staff, she had a team.
• 6:13
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: And she was taking into account some of their work, but not all of it.
• 6:19
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: And until you see it all in one place.
• 6:23
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: page, right? Like, like on the signature profit panel, until you see it all on that one page.
• 6:29
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: like, logically, it's hard to understand. Oh, well, I have this project manager that I'm not billing for. I have this, you know…
• 6:40
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: other person, this administrative assistant that I'm not billing for. And when I'm charging, you know, X number of dollars per hour for the interior design I'm doing, I'm just taking into account my personal time.
• 6:53
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Not the time of the entire staff of the business that is actually working behind the scenes, right? All the things, the billing, the accounting, the bookkeeper, the, you know, all the things that create this business.
• 7:09
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: And business expenses can add up quickly if you're not pricing it correctly.
• 7:15
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Exactly. You know, that's… that's a great story, and I'm glad you shared that, because it's like, we don't think about all the… the… the nuts and bolts that go on behind the scenes, that when we're… we're… we need to price into that.
• 7:29
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Now, I've had guests on that said, oh, yeah, we have to price in everything that your operating expenses plus your cost of goods sold.
• 7:38
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: But then I have some people say, well, maybe you can't price in all of your operating expenses, you know, that you have to do in it, because then it maybe prices you out of the market.
• 7:48
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: But I still think you have to look at the whole picture, right? You gotta look at the whole picture before you say, here's the project's cost, right? As well as the marketability and how competitive you are with your… with your competition. I mean, that's a lot of…
• 8:03
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: That's a lot of pressure that comes on you when you… when you do that, when you make that pricing offer. So when we… when we look at that kind of information, we can look at the hard numbers and go, wham, here's the price.
• 8:18
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: But then… we women, you know, we're in the back of our head, right? Oh my god.
• 8:23
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Always.
• 8:25
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: do that right? Should I… can they afford it, right?
• 8:28
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: They won't pay that. I know they won't pay that. Exactly!
• 8:33
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Exactly! Oh my gosh, this is… it's crazy, and I know for the gentlemen that are listening to us, you know, yeah, we do… we do go through this in our head, and it's… it's crazy on… on what we price. I have a client that's doing the same thing. She's undercutting herself all the time, and I'm like, what are you doing?
• 8:51
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Yeah.
• 8:52
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So how do we… how do we factor that in when we're looking at our pricing? All the stuff that goes around, and then all the stuff that's sitting on our shoulders.
• 9:01
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Well, the first thing, obviously, is to look at the whole picture. Like, I like to come at it from two angles, right? From the logical end. That's the signature profit plan, but then there's also this mental.
• 9:14
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: part that goes with it, especially with women. And one person that actually just comes to mind is a physical therapist I'm currently working with.
• 9:24
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: And… yes, she needs to price on an hourly, because that's the way that's priced. There's really no other way to price it. However…
• 9:32
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: When we were doing market research in her business, I said, well, what's the highest-priced person? And she told me the number. And she literally said, what does she think? She's curing cancer?
• 9:47
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Stories that we have in our brain, like, we make this judgment about what we charge, or what someone else is charging.
• 9:57
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: And… then we decide, right? And then often, we think we want to be the lower price, because that's the better thing to do.
• 10:06
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: But I literally said to her, I said, well, it depends. Do you want to be seen as the Walmart, or…
• 10:15
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: the Tory Burch, right? So, I'd rather be the Tory Burch.
• 10:22
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Yeah.
• 10:23
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: than the Walmart. And the problem with being the Walmart brand is, yes, you will get clients, right? Because you're cheaper than anybody else in the market.
• 10:32
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: But you know what? As soon as the next person comes in that's cheaper than you, those clients are gonna bounce.
• 10:39
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Exactly!
• 10:41
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Exactly. And I think, I think what, I always, try to wrap around is… and… and you brought this up in, in your, your, your information that you assimilate,
• 10:55
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: What's the… what are they actually getting from you, though, right?
• 10:59
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: You know, because if… if I come in, and I'm helping you grow your company, we'll just throw that example out there. I'm helping you grow your company, and we're, in one year, we've doubled the revenue, or we've cut.
• 11:14
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Right.
• 11:14
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: and your profitability is, you know, 50% more. What does that mean to the client? What's the dollar value or the transformation to the client? And I know you talk about this, so how do we price that?
• 11:31
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, look at your results, of course. You want to look at the market, look at your results.
• 11:38
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: And share your results, right? So…
• 11:42
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: you and I are in a similar world, right? We get… fortunately, we have good ROIs with the people we work with. We get to say, I've increased your profit, I've doubled your revenue. The interior designer that I mentioned earlier.
• 11:58
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: By the time we got done working together.
• 12:00
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: She… her revenue almost doubled, 1.7.
• 12:05
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Her expenses… we shifted her team around. Her expenses only went up about $10,000.
• 12:12
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: And she was ready to shut her business down, but we made a tweaks.
• 12:16
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: You know, we tweaked her… we took, now, some of… she works with
• 12:23
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: new builds. So there's legitimate scope… scope creep. So having a flat rate.
• 12:30
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: isn't necessarily good if you can't control the scope creep of the contractors, which she couldn't. So we did a hybrid model, right? So we did this model where
• 12:42
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: The part, the design part, where she was… the creation part, that was a flat rate.
• 12:48
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: And then the scope creep stuff, that was an hourly rate that was a monthly amount minimum.
• 12:57
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: And just by making those two changes, a couple team changes that freed some of her time up, and only cost her an extra $10,000, she doubled her revenue.
• 13:08
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: See, that's fantastic. And I think, I think that… that today's business owners, they, they often are so…
• 13:16
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: ingrained into the company, and so deep, I guess would be the better word, that they can't see
• 13:24
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: the potential changes that could be made without the help of someone like you, right? Where you come in and go, well, have you thought of this? Or what if we did that? And then everybody's even happier, the revenue goes up, the owner gets some of the stuff that they shouldn't be doing off of their plate, right? And then you're like.
• 13:46
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Oh, this is actually the way I thought it would feel, right, when I got into business, rather than going, I am so done, I'm ready to close.
• 13:54
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Yeah. Yeah, and she was. I mean, she literally came to me ready to close, because she wasn't profitable, and I didn't blame her.
• 14:01
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: So, like, that's exactly right. I mean, that was a huge transformation. How do you price for that? I don't know. Like, I probably did not charge her enough for the price, the way I look at it now.
• 14:17
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Yeah, so, so I look at the, I look at the side of, you know, adding that factor in. Well, gee, if I'm going to increase your revenue, in her case, by $700,000, right?
• 14:29
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: and minus the $10,000 add-on for the additional labor, but you basically gave her $700,000 from working with you. How do… how… let's… let's kind of drill into that. If a company is… is doing something that's maybe not results revenue driven.
• 14:48
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: But say, you know, okay, they're a criminal defense attorney, right? I'm saving your life. What is that life worth to you? You know, I mean, could you go to that aspect of saying, well, what does this mean for you?
• 15:04
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: If you could X, Y, and Z, and what, what is, you know, I mean, we have to value that, right? In the pricing that we're presenting to the client.
• 15:15
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Right. Yeah, I mean, you do have to value that. It's sometimes harder to…
• 15:21
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: You know, put a price tag on that.
• 15:24
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: But… It should be factored in.
• 15:26
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: though, right?
• 15:28
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Some way.
• 15:29
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Maybe not dollar for dollar, you know? But if I'm giving you $700,000 in revenue, and I'm charging you $20,000, there's kind of a no-brainer there, but where could I go?
• 15:41
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: where I could charge more, and… or where do you think that pressure point would be? And I think that's the thing in business that is often overlooked, is they're not factoring that in.
• 15:54
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: They're really not.
• 15:54
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Right now.
• 15:55
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: We are back to looking at, well, this is the hourly rate that goes in my industry, so that's what I'm going to charge.
• 16:02
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Yeah. And what we did with her, like I said, was the hybrid method, so her design part, where she could do that in her sleep, and she was…
• 16:12
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: That's where we increase the price. And then the other part, the hourly rate.
• 16:17
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: We kept that… actually kept her hourly rate the same.
• 16:21
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Because it was market standard, but…
• 16:26
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: that was just for the scope creep, and we put a minimum on, right? So, if the job got extended from the original 9 months to now 12 months, she's actually making more money and not less.
• 16:39
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And not losing money on the deal because she didn't factor that piece in. Well, good. Yeah. All right, well, this is really helpful. Figuring out how to price is, I think, the first thing that many people do, but they often don't revisit that
• 16:53
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: In, you know, they've been in business for a few years. When do they start… when do you think they should start to revisit their pricing?
• 17:01
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Well, I like to look at the close rate. So, what do I mean by the close rate? You probably know, but maybe not all your listeners know. For as many, you know, sales calls that you get on.
• 17:14
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Or proposals you send out, whatever it is, however you do business.
• 17:19
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: how many of them close? So…
• 17:23
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: close rate should be, not be 100%, or you're definitely undercharging. Like, I love it. Oh, I… when I ask women…
• 17:33
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: That was every deal.
• 17:34
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: I place every single deal, and I'm like, okay, we're raising your prices. They're like, what?
• 17:41
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: And I'm like, yes, because you shouldn't close every deal, even though we think we want to. If you're closing every single deal, you're not priced high enough.
• 17:51
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: You know? So I usually say between the 50% and 75% mark, okay? Like, you should be in that range. Now, if you're under the 50, if you're not closing 50% or less, it does not mean that your price is too high, either.
• 18:09
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Good point.
• 18:09
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: There could be another problem.
• 18:12
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Lots of factors. Lots of other factors.
• 18:14
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: follow-up, you know? I worked with… this was actually a guy, work with mostly women, but if guys come to me, I don't say no. And this guy, it was another interior designer, and, he would send out a proposal and never follow up.
• 18:32
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Never. Just, boop, goes out in the abyss.
• 18:36
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: And assume that they got it, assume that they didn't want to sign it. So, when we first started working together, first thing I had them do is go back for 6 months and follow up with every single proposal.
• 18:50
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: And he immediately got additional work.
• 18:53
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Mmm.
• 18:54
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: maybe it wasn't that exact proposal, but they asked him for another one, and then he implemented a follow-up process. So, there's a whole…
• 19:04
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: myriad of things that could be if you're closing less than 50%. It's not always pricing, it usually isn't pricing, especially when women are involved.
• 19:17
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Okay, so… so when… when you look at… so what you're stating, then, is that if you are, under, or if you're over 75% close rate, then you should probably consider increasing your pricing.
• 19:31
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: If you're under 50%, then you want to see and possibly consider pricing, but see what other… everything else is, in line, and…
• 19:41
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Working properly before you adjust your pricing, right?
• 19:45
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Right, exactly.
• 19:47
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Okay, cool. So that's a nice, that's a nice window to look at. So now let's kind of get into the, the, the real problem that a lot of us, women entrepreneurs, and several men entrepreneurs, kind of go through, which is…
• 20:03
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: they can't afford that. Or, you know, the stuff that's going on in our head when we do make that price, you know, that offer, right? Because…
• 20:14
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I think that, you know, I'll come in and I'll go, okay, here's what I think, and here's based on all the problems, but then, you know, yeah, I get in my head and I go.
• 20:25
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Wow.
• 20:26
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I don't know if they're gonna, you know… I don't know if they're gonna be able to… I don't think they're gonna accept that, right? I've already made that kind of decision for them. How do… how do I stop doing that?
• 20:36
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Well, the problem with that, too, is if you're speaking with them.
• 20:40
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: And you bring that price to them anyway.
• 20:43
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: your confidence, It's gonna come through.
• 20:47
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Okay.
• 20:47
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: In your voice, in your posture, in how you deliver that.
• 20:53
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: One thing that women do… Which, if you,
• 20:58
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: ever record a sales call. I'm sure you don't do this, but if you ever record a sales call, a lot of women might, state their pricing as a question.
• 21:09
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: So… like… $7,000?
• 21:16
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I just…
• 21:16
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: See how my voice went up? Like, is that okay?
• 21:21
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: You know, and that's immediately gonna be… that's immediately gonna be transferred over to the other side. And they're gonna be like, well, if she doesn't believe in that pricing, why should I? You know?
• 21:35
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Right? So…
• 21:36
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Really good. That's really good. So, confidence in the price that you're… you're, you're presenting to the, to the customer. I think that's a strong…
• 21:46
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: That's a strong skill to have, right? And when we're getting into that confidence, right, even in the word, putting it with a question mark at the end,
• 21:56
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I like to write proposals before I even share anything, and sometimes, like, I may even notice, oh, I may say it matter-of-factly, but then I hear myself, and I'm maybe saying it too fast, right? Because I'm trying to just get it out there.
• 22:10
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Get it out.
• 22:10
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: That's a challenge, I see.
• 22:11
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: vomit. Right.
• 22:14
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So it's gonna be this, and this, and this, and this, and that.
• 22:21
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: And the problem with that is your client… your clients can't process it, right? If you're talking too fast. Your clients can't process it.
• 22:30
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: you're uncomfortable in giving a price, right? And then they're feeling that uncomfortableness. Like, anything that you feel, they're gonna feel on the other end.
• 22:42
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: So, it's, you know, especially if you're doing it via Zoom, right? It's… they're gonna feel that on the other end, and
• 22:50
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: That's where I say practice it, right? And only deliver a price that you're comfortable with.
• 22:56
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Like, that you are confident.
• 22:59
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: And another trick I give you… I'd like to share with you and your audience is what I call, like, creating a confidence card.
• 23:07
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: So, before… That's true.
• 23:10
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Before you deliver that price, or the sales call, or get on the call.
• 23:16
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: have a list of why you're so amazing. All the ROIs you've gotten people, all the, you know, all the amazing things that make you up of who you are, what you've done, your experience, your education, all of that.
• 23:32
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Okay.
• 23:33
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Can… if you have a little list.
• 23:35
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: That you can read before a sales call. That's gonna pump you up. That's gonna, like, bring in the confidence in your pricing, like, oh my gosh. I mean, for instance, I worked with an 8-figure, or a multi-seven-figure entrepreneur that got an 8-figure exit. I saved him millions of dollars.
• 23:54
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: And…
• 23:55
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: You know, anytime I get in my head about my pricing, I'd be like, yeah, remember that guy? You saved him millions of dollars. Imagine if you worked on commission.
• 24:08
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Exactly.
• 24:09
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Exactly, right?
• 24:09
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Right? So…
• 24:10
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Wow.
• 24:11
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: So, like… What?
• 24:12
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So you're not gonna read that confidence card to the customer, you're gonna read it to yourself, So…
• 24:19
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Before you get on board.
• 24:20
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: You can, like, pump up your energy and do that.
• 24:23
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: You know, and it's so funny, I'm sorry to you salespeople out there that are going, what the heck are they talking about? Just say the number, right? There's a significant percentage of people out there that feel really icky when they go to present their offer, right?
• 24:41
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Yes.
• 24:41
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: fantastic at what they do. The results are amazing, but they just have in their head this ickiness that goes.
• 24:51
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I gotta say something, right? You know? And… and it's… it's… so, sorry to you salespeople out there that are going.
• 24:58
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I could have nailed that. I would have doubled.
• 25:00
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: I'm jealous.
• 25:01
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: $7 million.
• 25:03
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: The what?
• 25:04
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: I'm jealous of those salespeople, let me tell you what, because most of us get into business, and not only do they not teach you the financial part, you know, that I help people with, they don't teach you… you don't know sales, you're good at something.
• 25:18
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: And you want to deliver that to somebody. But all this other crap goes with it, right? And nobody teaches you it, unless you hire an expert, and you learn, and you trial and error, and all these things along the way. But, you know, if you're billed… if you have the sales as your genius.
• 25:37
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: then, you know, I'm very jealous of you, because it is not my genius. It is definitely something I had to work at. But… but yeah, so it's…
• 25:47
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: some things… numbers come easy to me. That's my genius, right? But sales is not. And maybe the, you know, numbers is not everybody's genius, which is why I exist.
• 25:59
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: So, a lot of that, too, is mindset, that… that…
• 26:04
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Childhood programming, believe it or not.
• 26:07
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: So, you can go all the way back to when you were a child. So, I have a whole, I did a neuro-coaching certification, and…
• 26:17
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Know about all the brain science that goes behind all this stuff that we struggle with.
• 26:21
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: And… Part of it is, maybe we heard, rich people are mean, greedy, selfish, right?
• 26:30
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Those things. Making money is hard. Those are… rich people enter in your negative, or making money is…
• 26:39
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Hard are the two number one programming in our subconscious that we get when we're younger that make all this stuff so much harder.
• 26:48
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Because if we're charging more, that means we're making more money, and either A, it's not hard enough, or B, like, we're gonna be rich, and then we're gonna be mean, or selfish, or greedy, so…
• 27:00
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Wow.
• 27:00
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: We're fighting all this internal programming that's in our subconscious that we don't even know is there. And our subconscious actually runs 95% of our thoughts, and we have 80,000 thoughts per day.
• 27:14
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Isn't that crazy?
• 27:15
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Bye now.
• 27:16
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And we just think, okay, I'm gonna think it through and logically do it, when it has nothing to do with logic, it has something to do when we were 7, right?
• 27:25
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Yeah, yeah. Something our parents said about the rich neighbors, or…
• 27:30
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Yeah, that's crazy! Okay.
• 27:32
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: that.
• 27:34
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Alright, so then we can overcome this, and we can get confidence, or build confidence, and we can get comfortable delivering a price based on…
• 27:44
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: the numbers of our company, and we can deliver a price based on the value that we're providing to the customer and the results that they're receiving on the other end, that will make everybody happy, right? So then that kind of goes back to the woman thing, that everybody's happy in this situation. I made money, they made success, it was an easy transaction, everybody's good.
• 28:09
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And then… then… then we're all happy, right?
• 28:13
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Let's hope so.
• 28:15
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Okay, so… so this is an interesting… this is an interesting dilemma, right? That… that we want…
• 28:24
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: We want success.
• 28:27
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: We know our stuff can produce the success we want, and really, truly, it sounds like what's getting in the way is understanding the financials and having the confidence to deliver it. Is there anything else that we're missing? I mean, that seems pretty big as it is.
• 28:43
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Yeah, I mean, it's… it's…
• 28:46
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: It's what it is. It's believing in ourselves. It's not deciding for the client. It's…
• 28:52
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Any of the programming that we're bringing into all of this as business owners.
• 28:57
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Of who we don't want to be, so we're like, oh, you know, I don't want to be this, or I don't want to be that, I don't want to, you know…
• 29:06
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: What was… what was my physical therapist said? When am I curing cancer?
• 29:11
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Right?
• 29:12
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Well, actually.
• 29:12
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Actually, no…
• 29:13
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: You're enabling the person to go back to work. You're enabling them to have the fun things that they wanted to do, right?
• 29:19
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Yeah, yeah. So, but again, that's… that's… that's a mindset that was somehow put inside her mind that we then have to dive into and say, where is that coming from?
• 29:31
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: You know, that's… it's all about our worth and our value, and women struggle with that more than anyone. Did you know that, we price ourselves 30% less than men?
• 29:44
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Like, that's sad. We're pricing ourselves 30% less than men.
• 29:49
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: We're taking a 30% pay cut.
• 29:52
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Right? Intentionally.
• 29:53
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Scrolling.
• 29:54
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: you know.
• 29:54
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: We're doing it.
• 29:55
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Yeah, and we're doing it to ourselves, which is stupid, right? You know, you wanna… you wanna just shake your friend and go, girlfriend, what are you doing? Let me fix your crown, let me tell you what you can do right, or what you're already doing right, and all you have to do is say… believe in yourself, that that's it. But I love that.
• 30:13
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Yeah.
• 30:14
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: if you practice this, right? You take your confidence card, and you practice the pitch, the offer, the conversation that you're having, and if you believe truly that what you're delivering
• 30:30
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: is worth that.
• 30:32
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: then how come you can't throw your shoulders back and say, I'm charging you, you know, $10,000 for that, you know? Or whatever it is, right?
• 30:41
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: You know, why can't we do that?
• 30:44
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I don't know.
• 30:45
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: All the things. All the things.
• 30:47
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: The laundry list of things that we put on ourselves, right?
• 30:50
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Yeah, yeah.
• 30:52
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: That's fantastic. So, when you're working with people, how do you get past that, now that we've realized that we've done this to ourselves, how do you get past that?
• 31:02
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Well, when I work with people, you know, that's where the neuro-coaching stuff comes in. We don't even look at the numbers, we don't even look at the profit plan that we create until we get into the mindset first. And,
• 31:18
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: and I hate to use the word mindset, because people, oh, I can have a positive mindset. It's not really that. It doesn't really…
• 31:24
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: No, no, it's your subconscious beliefs. It's all those stories running in your subconscious that, A, you don't even know is there, right? So, I like to…
• 31:37
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: I like to sometimes…
• 31:39
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: It feels like you have one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake.
• 31:43
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And if you.
• 31:43
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: feel that way, right? If you feel like you have one on the gas and one on the brake, it's because there's something in your subconscious that is putting that brake on.
• 31:52
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: and you don't know it's there, and you're like, why does it always feel that way? Why do I always feel like I'm doing this? You know, doing… then people dance in my hands if they're listening, but one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake. Why does it always feel like that? Because…
• 32:07
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: your subconscious is running the show. So that's what we dive into first. Before we even look at the logical side, before we even go to the numbers and saying, this doesn't make sense logically, we go into what's going on that brought you here, because that's the key.
• 32:27
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: There is some story going on beneath all of this.
• 32:33
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: That has created it.
• 32:36
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: You know?
• 32:38
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: either you deciding for what your clients won't pay, or you're not wanting to be rich, greedy, or selfish, or you're not, you know, all these stories, or that you believe you have to work so hard to make money. That was one I had to reprogram.
• 32:54
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: was my mom used to always say, we work hard for our money. And I internalized that as, you have to work hard for money.
• 33:02
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: So, that's where we…
• 33:05
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: That's where we dive in first. Let's find out all these things that are going on in your subconscious that are keeping you from the success that you really, truly want and deserve. And until you do that, you're going to be on this hamster wheel forever. So that's why we start there.
• 33:24
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Then when we get to the logical stuff, we start looking at the profit plan, and look at the financials, and start making changes that make sense, your mind is open to that.
• 33:34
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Instead of still fighting it.
• 33:37
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Oh, I like that. So you're working on the mind first, and saying, okay, where am I… where am I sabotaging myself, right? Where am I getting in my own way? And then, you know, when you said, I'm like you too, I'm comfortable with numbers.
• 33:50
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: As long as I have a calculator. I can't add 2 and 2 in my head, but… and then you can look at the logical stuff and go, okay, that makes better sense, and yes, I see where I'm failing, or I see where I'm forgetting these pieces in there to be able to make this much more profitable. Because the ultimate results of creating a business is to, one, find a customer, and two, make a profit.
• 34:14
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: If you're not making a profit, A, you either don't have the customer first, or you are not… you have a very expensive hobby.
• 34:24
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And… and you need to be able to… you need to be able to produce profit, and that's… and I mean, everything down to, you know, the IRS rewards you for making money, right? You're helping the community, you're paying taxes, you're doing, you know, you're hiring people, you're doing all these things.
• 34:42
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: There's a reason the business is developed for it, and I think that's the piece that absolutely has to be there. You have to make a profit.
• 34:51
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So.
• 34:52
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Yes. And your profit should be decent, right? So…
• 34:57
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Yes.
• 34:57
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: I like to think of your profit as something that you would make if you… your profit, not your revenue, you would make if you had a job.
• 35:06
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Not your revenue. People get excited about a six-figure revenue.
• 35:10
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Nope.
• 35:11
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: What's your profit? What's your profit? Is your profit?
• 35:14
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: It's awesome.
• 35:16
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: What do you got left? Because…
• 35:18
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: you can go work at McDonald's and make more, so… you know what I mean? So, and, you know, people are like, well, I don't want to pay taxes. You know, that's… that's a whole thing around profit, which makes me cringe, because, like, if you're working a job, you're paying taxes.
• 35:35
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Yep.
• 35:36
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: a W-2 job. So, just because it feels a little different.
• 35:42
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: When you're making… paying taxes on your profit?
• 35:45
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Doesn't make, like… like you said, it's an expensive hobby if you're not making a decent profit that you can live off of.
• 35:54
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Exactly. Well, that's great, Audrey. Okay, so we can… we're running out of time, because this is a really interesting topic, and it's… it's double-edged, so I think that's why we spent a little more time on it, because it is your head… your mindset, and the actions, and your beliefs that you're thinking about, as well as the hard numbers and the logics.
• 36:14
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Of… of running a business.
• 36:16
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And so I think that straddling both sides is super valuable. But where can listeners find out more about you, and how they can kind of get out of their own head, get the numbers in line, and start making that money, so yes, you can pay taxes?
• 36:33
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Celebrate paying taxes, let's say!
• 36:35
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: That means you made a profit, not me.
• 36:37
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Yes.
• 36:37
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: celebrate paying taxes, but the people that have figured it out do. So, you can find… my website is Audreyfaust, A-U-D-R-E-Y-F-A-U-S-T consulting.com.
• 36:54
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: And, at that website, if you do audreyfaustconsulting.com slash pricing.
• 37:02
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: I have a free PDF I made especially for your listeners.
• 37:06
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Pricing secrets from an expert CFO. So, we talked about a few of them here, but this is a, you know, a PDF. It's not huge, it's like 4 or 5 pages long. It's got some stories, so it's fun to read, it's not all boring, and then it's got a lot of questions that you can kind of ask yourself.
• 37:26
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: To kind of decipher if you're pricing correctly.
• 37:30
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: And, yeah, there's some really good… there's the ROI, you know, one that we talked about, but there's also some others, and…
• 37:39
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Also, there's a story about one of my clients who actually,
• 37:45
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: made a decision for someone, and then… I'm not gonna ruin the story, because it's kind of fun, who made that pricing decision?
• 37:54
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: And he didn't need to, and…
• 37:56
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Huh.
• 37:56
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Lost some money in the process. But anyway, so there's some fun stories in there, some questions you can ask yourself, and again, that's Audreyfaustconsulting.com slash pricing.
• 38:10
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: For the free PDF.
• 38:12
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: If you reach out to me, I'm on Instagram, I'm on Facebook, at The ManifestingCFO.
• 38:18
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: And I'm also on LinkedIn, that's probably my largest platform, and that's… I'm on Audrey Faust on LinkedIn.
• 38:26
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Perfect.
• 38:27
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Well, listeners, go find Audrey, go get this PDF, figure out what's getting in your way, and your pricing way, because
• 38:37
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: We all know that, I mean, we just… we just went through, you know, COVID, we coming out of the, you know, into… into different pricing things, we're going into different ups and downs in the market, and we always, like, I hear from people, oh, well, I can't raise my price. Well, tariffs just raised your price, or… or, you know, taxes just raised your price, or the cost of living just raised your price, but if you're
• 39:01
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: If you're not raising your price, then you're eating that, and your customers are getting a significant discount.
• 39:08
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: on what they're… what they're able to, you know, spend on you. And so I think this pricing story is really something that you want to get a hold of.
• 39:16
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And figure out how to… how to improve your pricing so at least you're… you're, you're… so you can be more profitable, right?
• 39:24
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: And all you women out there, raise your prices 30%.
• 39:29
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Exactly, exactly. Go right off the get. And even if you… you're not gonna… rarely are you gonna just drop a 30% bomb. Maybe you need to do a 5% every 6 months, right? You know, there's ways to do it, but it's… yeah, it's time to step up and…
• 39:42
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Right? Yep. That's, you know, sometimes you can just raise it for new customers.
• 39:48
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Yeah, figure it out. Figure it out. All right. Well, thanks for listening today. I hope you walked away with some practical ideas that you can put to work right now to grow your business.
• 39:59
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: for more profitable and a valuable business, right? Because the business that we want today, you know, is an asset that we can sell sometime in the future. So, I want you to think about that one as well.
• 40:11
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Alright, before you go, if you want a clear path to more revenue and stronger profit, go grab your Profit Booster Growth Map right after the show. It'll quickly show you the top opportunities to grow revenue and stop those profit leaks that may be holding your business back right now.
• 40:29
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And you can go get that anytime at ProfitBooster.biz.
• 40:34
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And if this episode gave you value, be sure to subscribe with it and share it with another business owner who might, need to hear it. And I'll see you next week for more strategies that'll help you grow smarter and profit stronger. So until then, make your plans and profit with them. Thank you so much, Audrey, this was fun.
• 40:53
  Audrey Faust, MBA - The Manifesting CFO: Thank you.