Learn to price confidently and get paid your worth
A course for purpose driven freelancers, founders, coaches and consultants who want to get paid their worth
“I’d spent the last few years under-pricing what I do but Ben and Carlos shone a spotlight on its true value. Before the programme ended I was earning more and even doubled my income (to £100k) for the year. I can’t wait to experiment more with what I’ve learnt.”
You want to effortlessly get to a price that your customer is willing to pay and that makes you feel valued and rewarded.
Maybe right now you feel apologetic when it comes to pricing and negotiate yourself down.
Or you waste too much time and energy trying to come up with the right price which leaves you physically exhausted and emotionally drained… and also means you find it hard to get back to potential customers.
We’ve created this course to help you get to the bottom of your pricing blockers and help you overcome all the hurdles to getting paid your worth… in the most effortless and elegant way.
You’ll get the tools, tactics and mindset to price more confidently so that you can create more ease in your business.
And be a Happy Entrepreneur.
Who’s it for
Small business owners, freelancers, coaches, consultants and creatives that already have an established product or service, but need help to price more confidently and courageously.
You know that you create a lot of value but you find it hard getting paid your worth. You also find selling and pricing “icky” and wish you could feel more confident when talking about money with your clients.
This course isn’t about just arbitrarily raising your prices.
It isn’t just about learning tactics and strategies.
It’s also about building your confidence and clarity so that you can price with authenticity and integrity - Pricing Happy!
You’re not interested in unethically manipulating your customers.
You just want them to clearly understand the value you can create and pay you for it.
“The Happy Pricing course completely changed my thinking around pricing and closing sales. Was great to connect with such a fantastic group of business owners as well as Carlos and Ben.”
The Happy Pricing course will help you:
remove the guesswork from pricing and be confident about the prices you set
convert more sales opportunities (for higher fees!)
talk about money (without feeling icky!)
stop chasing the wrong clients who don’t value you
learn how to say ‘no’ more (and be in a position to do so)
unlock your next chapter of growth (personally and in business)
How the course works
Course structure
Over six weeks you’ll learn the tools and techniques to upgrade your pricing skills.
Working with Ben, Carlos and your fellow entrepreneurs you’ll grow in confidence and make the necessary changes to earn more for your work.
We’ve designed the program to help you fit it into your busy lives.
All course materials will be available online and accessible whenever you want them and wherever you are.
Weekly sessions will be delivered via Zoom and will last a maximum of 90 minutes.
We meet as a group once a week to dive deep into each of the core concepts and provide live coaching.
All the live sessions will be recorded.
This is what' we’ll cover…
28th Sep - Module 1: What can more money buy you?
Time off? Training? Well-being? A nicer computer? A new office? Better clients? If you’re not clear what more money buys you, there is little incentive to do the work. This is true whatever stage of business you’re at. For this module you’ll create your ‘more money manifesto’ to shape and inform why and how you’re raising your prices.
5th Oct - Module 2: Who are you serving?
Try to sell to everyone and you price for no-one. Understanding your client, their wants, dreams and roadblocks is key to pricing well. With some simple tools we’ll help you define your ideal customer. You’ll learn to speak to them in a way that makes them feel at ease and connect with you as a person they can trust.
12th Oct - Module 3: What are your customers buying?
People generally buy two things: good feelings and solutions (to problems). Your products and services are just the means for creating valuable outcomes for your clients. We’ll help you get clear about these outcomes. We’ll make you focus on them and spend less time talking about your clever solutions. We’ll also help you help your clients understand what these outcomes are too because if they don’t they won’t pay.
19th Oct - Module 4: Be easy to buy
Getting a client to buy from you isn’t just about finding a magic price. How you package and present information back to your client is just as important. Building on Modules 2 and 3 you’ll learn how to create options that make sense and also make you easier to buy.
26th Oct - Reading week
2nd Nov - Module 5: Bust your money ceiling
One of the reasons you’re not pricing well is that you’re telling yourself a story about money that isn’t helping. Your beliefs, biases and limiting ideas about money can be more of a problem than NOT knowing the strategies and tactics. We’ll help you uncover some of these stories and help you recognise when they’re getting in the way of you earning more.
9th Nov - Module 6: Reflections and wrap up
This is an intense course and so this final module will help you consolidate everything you’ve learned and discuss some live case studies, so you’re ready to price more confidently and more courageously! We’ll work with volunteers from the cohort to review how they’ve priced during the program and explore what’s worked and what hasn’t.
Course materials and guidance
Each module will have accompanying worksheets to guide your thinking and for the duration of the course we’ll also host a Whatsapp group where you can share your questions and discuss the content of the course.
By the end of this course you’ll have all the tools you need to go into your next pricing conversation with confidence and courage.
Do you want to price well?
Click on the button below to apply for the next course.
Happy Pricing
Setting prices which get you excited to do your best work and your customers are happy to pay.
What People Are Saying
“The Happy Pricing course helped me put myself in my clients' shoes and see how I could work better with both their needs and my own.”
— Charlie Peverett, Communications & content strategist
“Carlos and Ben were a great team and made it entertaining to talk about making more money.”
— Simon Thomason, Managing director, LEAP Design Agency
“Happy pricing creates a win-win for everyone involved. Excellent course that was informative and fun, too!”
— Shamash Alidina, mindfulness teacher & coach
“The expertise behind the course was exceptional and the insight throughout was incredibly valuable.”
— Dom Huxley, Huxley Design
5 minutes with Ben & Carlos
In this 5 minute video Carlos Saba, co-founder of The Happy Startup School talks to Ben Johnson about how this course came about and what excites them about collaborating on it.
My story
By Ben Johnson
Early on in running my last company we did what many people do – we begged for work.
Not actually begging - well, not using those words - but in the signals we sent and in our behaviours, we were begging for work.
We had great meetings and conversations with prospective clients. Full of life, energy, connection and potential.
And then we’d talk about money. “How much do you charge?”.
We thought it better to charge a little, to open the door and get the relationship going. We weren’t asking for much; maybe a couple of thousand to show what we can do. Time after time it came to nothing.
It felt like pushing water up hill.
Price is a hugely important lever.
What you charge sends a signal. Maybe the most important signal.
It says:
I feel good about what I do. Or not.
I'm confident in what I do. Or not.
I’m safe to buy. Or not.
We’re either the same as everyone else. Or not.
Putting your prices up is a lever which affects all aspects of your business.
I know because we did..
“It costs £45,000”.
Without plan or foresight, I was in a meeting with another prospective client. The same energy, positivity; a conversation rich with seeming opportunity. Like the others.
Sure enough, the conversation wound its way to money; how much do you charge?
But rather than replying with the same “give us a few thousand we’ll show you what we can do”, I said “It costs £45,000”.
No plan, no foresight just an accidental increasing our price by about a factor of 20.
And, you know what, they bought. Straight away. No quibble. No discussion. Just a “great, lets do it”.
In that one moment, much changed.
It changed how we felt about our work.
It changed how our market felt about us.
It changed our positioning.
It will affect our marketing.
And we started to win more work. Much more. And with it changed the very foundation of our business.
In that one moment, we become easier to buy.
Busyness
You didn’t start a business to look busy.
Yet too often it can feel like we’re on the hamster wheel.
The constant push and struggle to create opportunity, to win work, to feed ourselves and teams at large.
More is rarely better. Yet we’re perennially chasing an illusory more / better goal.
Try this.
Do the maths.
If you employ people, how many?
If you sell your time, how much for? And how does this relate to what you actually earn?
Often times we’re chasing more and bigger and better; we’re working harder but earning the same.
This is true whatever our motivation.
“I don’t want to profit in a pandemic”
said one entrepreneur recently.
She’s sitting atop a business providing important, necessary products.
Like many mission-driven companies, her first concern is service and usefulness.
Profit is somehow a dirty word.
This is wrong.
Whatever your business, profit is the oil which allows the organisational wheels to spin.
Whatever your motivation, if you’re not generating sufficient profit, you’re strangling your mission, strangling your goal.
Getting a grip on money affords you and your business a rich stream of opportunities, whether your motivation is personal, commercial or social.
Earning well is important for your wellbeing. And it’s important for your organisational wellbeing.
“Perhaps the reason price is all your customers care about is because you haven't given them anything else to care about.”
– Seth Godin
The price is right
We know how hard it can be to price right. Often we price too low which ends up becoming a barrier to us achieving our goals.
This is why we’d love for you to be able to…
…
set a price for your products or services that feels right
...
set a price that gets you excited to do your best work
…
not have to worry about trying to hard sell to your potential clients
…
be comfortable saying no to the wrong clients
…
feel confident pricing higher
…
have clients wanting to buy what you have to offer
…
have enough time for the things that matter to you
Learn to price happy
Click on the button below to apply for our next course.
Your teacher
Ben Johnson, entrepreneur and pricing coach
Ben has co-founded, created, managed and sold businesses most recently, the experience and innovation design firm, FreeState, sold to Hassell. And before that businesses online and off. He is an active investor, advisor, teacher and talker and writes books and blogs. He wants to share his knowledge and experience to help purpose-driven entrepreneurs create financially sustainable businesses and thrive.
Ben blogs at Ten Percent Better and you can find him on LinkedIn
“There’s a lot of advice out there from people who’ve never done it. Ben has and very successfully. His advice is based on first hand experience and will change the way you think about pricing forever.”