Asking for money can be tough. How can you make it easier, and more comfortable? If you could ask for money easily, what would that do for your business? Your life?
With Reid Mihalko from ReidAboutSex.com and SexGeekSummerCamp.com and Cathy Vartuli from TheIntimacyDojo.com.
Cathy: Someone wrote in and said, “How do I ask for payments with ease? Should I negotiate? What do I do?”
Reid: I just send them that little clip from Jerry Maguire. Show me the money.
Cathy: You might actually do this. This is Reid Mihalko from ReidAboutSex.com.
Reid: This is Cathy Vartuli from TheIntimacyDojo.com. I’m also from SexGeekSummerCamp.com where we teach sex educators business-y things.
Cathy: Like how to ask for money.
Reid: Now, this is a business advice video when you want … I’m wearing this shirt. It’s about business. When I’m wearing my Sex Geek shirt, it’s usually about relationship advice. However, really good business advice also applies to relationships.
Cathy: The playlist with all of the business advice is the link is just below.
Reid: Cool. See, we’re so smart.
Cathy: One of the things that I had to do before I could ask for money with ease was realize the value of what I was offering. The problem is we start to be experts without realizing it. We do it a bit. We teach it a bit. It starts getting to be much more common sense and basic to who we are. That’s a good thing. You’re in a great end but it’s really easy to forget the struggle and the fear before you knew this stuff.
The best way I know when I work with clients with this all the time is to remember before you knew it how you felt how much would you have paid for someone to walk up and hand it to you so that you didn’t have to struggle for five or 10 or three year or how many years you struggle. If someone could come up and say, “Here. In an hour, I’m going to teach you everything you know, need to know to jump to hear,” how much would you have paid? How many hours did you spend struggling? How much time did you spend confused? How much money did you spend in classes or research?
Remembering all those things and all those steps you took on your journey to come to here lets you realize how much you’re really offering to someone. If they really want to know this stuff, you’re giving them something priceless. When I first started working with you and two weeks after my first session with you, I was out dating. That was priceless. I’ve missed that 14 years.
Reid: Cathy came to me wanting to date. It wasn’t like she came through for business advice and all of a sudden, she’s dating. That wasn’t the case.
Cathy: No. Sorry.
Reid: Context.
Cathy: Yeah. I already had a business. I was looking to date but that was really priceless. I’ve spent 14 years not dating and I did not know how to move forward and an hour and a half with you and I was out on my first date. That was priceless. I wish I had spent a lot more money earlier on. Knowing that lets you ask for it in a very different way.
Reid: Talking to other people who have had success in figuring out these things so that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel, talking to other, in this case, sex educators who can also just be business owners who’ve worked through their weirdness around money and pricing things and starting to understand and figure out for yourself your way that feels congruent for you of how to price things.
Then, for me, the big breakthrough came around sales models and understanding if there different ways to do sales. A lot of the advice I had from good, wonderful and wonderfully successful friends of mine in the business realm, they were using different business models that didn’t work for me. Once I figured out business models that were inside of my self-expression …
Cathy: Which he teaches so brilliantly.
Reid: Thank you.
Cathy: I love the way you teach that.
Reid: Once I figured out how to figure out which business models work best for me and which sales models work best for me and then understood how I needed to be pricing services and goods that were basically priceless like you helped somebody have their first orgasm or save their marriage or how to raise their kids to be healthy and great at negotiating sexuality, that’s just priceless. What do you really charge for that? There are some methods and ways to look at how you can figure out what feels good for you and also lean into the stuff that’s scary.
Cathy: How much you charge.
Reid: Yeah, like, “Oh.” People pay me five grand to help them with a thing. The first time I got that kind of money, I freaked out because I’d never had anyone pay that and I felt like I was a fraud. Then, that first person tipped me another five grand because it was so wonderful what I did. I still don’t understand how that’s possible and you having structures and doing the inner work for yourself so that you understand, “Oh, what I’m offering is priceless but here’s what I need to work to do what I do so that my world works.”
When you feel good about it, you raise your prices a little bit so that you’re a little bit freaked out in a growthful way and then all of a sudden, things can be really interesting. There are a lot of people out there, the way that Cathy is saying, who will gladly pay you to solve that one piece for them rather than take five years of struggling to somehow figure it out.
Cathy: In terms of negotiation, you get to choose that. A lot of you teach boundaries as part of a sex positive … It might be a business. You might be teaching boundaries. You’d get to say no if you’re a firm no or something, if your price … I really recommend deciding, calculating what your minimum is so that you know if you go below this, you’re going to be resentful or you’re going to have trouble supporting yourself well, figuring out what that is and then doubling it to charge that, you can choose to negotiate. I sometimes do, “Well, my price is $180 an hour but if you buy three sessions, it can be 450.” I’ll reduce the price if they buy a block.
Reid: You’re really charging 180 now?
Cathy: 50 minutes actually.
Reid: 50 minutes? You should [inaudible 00:06:01]. Get her right now folks while she’s a steal.
Cathy: You can decide. Just like with sex, you can be a firm no. “I’m not. These are my prices and if you can’t afford it, I’m sorry. Here’s some group coaching or here’s a place you can get free information.” If you really want to work with that person or they feel like a really good fit for you or that you think that you genuinely want to help them, that’s great. Realize you never have to justify your prices just like you don’t have to justify your no when you’re having sex.
Reid: If you’re having weirdness around being accessible like, “Oh my god, I’m charging more than 180 for 50 minutes. Ah,” this video is free. I create a lot of content that you can get on my website for free. When I have somebody that who can’t afford me for my in-person rate, I have tons of things that I can point them at that should help them.
Cathy: Programs, group coaching, yeah.
Reid: That’s how I deal with issues and weirdness around being at classes or not being accessible to everybody who are different levels in their life around working class and whatnot. Again, there are structures for this and there’s actually a whole free call you can sign up for about pricing that Cathy helped me with that he did. We’ll put that link in the comments, or not comments but the description below.
Cathy: The description. It might be popping up right up here, one of the other sides.
Reid: It might be somewhere. Click on that to sign up and get the download link for the free call so you can hear more about this. Again, as you start to learn and don’t have to reinvent the wheel and maybe it’s not my advice or Cathy’s advice but somebody else’s advice that really works for you, take that stuff and run with it. The advice that doesn’t work for you, good for you for looking for different kinds of advice, the stuff that doesn’t work, just chuck it.
If our advice doesn’t work for you, chuck it. I’m not attached to it but go find those tools and those tactics and strategies and context that really empower you because we need more sex educators out there who are paying their bills and have the peace of mind to really work with the people who need their help. Thank you for watching these videos and being awesome. I hope your career is going great. Come go to SexGeekSummerCamp.com.
Cathy: It’s going to be such a blast. Hope to see you.
Reid: Come join us at camp or join us online, whatever works for you. Just try to get better tools and empower yourself so that we have longer careers and we can help more people.
Cathy: See you soon.
Reid: Bye.