The #1 lever in growing your coaching business in 2026
In 2024, my business brought in around $5,000.
I felt embarrassed by this number.
As a newbie coach, I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
I tried everything to scale, from launches, to cringey Reels on Instagram, to ideating enticing lead magnets.
In 2025, my business 10x’d.
And it wasn’t due to marketing.
In fact, I’ve done less marketing this year.
The single biggest lever in this unprecedented growth (that allowed me to hire my first VA and work 5 hours/day)?
You’re about to find out in today’s podcast interview.
Today I have an special guest interview for you today.
Today I talk to John Ray — a pricing consultant — who specializes in helping coaches, consultants, and professional service providers grow their businesses through the power of appropriately pricing of their services.
(10x’ing my business was less about marketing, and everything to do with pricing.)
If you:
Struggle with limiting thoughts around self-worth when raising your prices
Want to raise your prices next year but the wrong price falls out of your mouth during a sales call
Discount, discount, discount…
— This episode is for you, so that you can finally up your prices confidently (and bring more revenue into the door starting in January).
Enjoy.
Purchase a copy of John’s book, The Generosity Mindset, here: thegenerositymindset.com
Or get connected with him here:
Email: john@johnray.co
Website: johnray.co
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/johnray1
The Price and Value Journey Podcast: pricevaluejourneypodcast.com (or your favorite podcast app)
Renee (00:00)
Hey, everyone. So we have a extra special guest today and we don't normally, you know, this is a little different from we usually do for our Smokin’ Hot Books audience. And usually we're doing interviews through Substack Live, but we have a really special guest here today. His name is John Ray and he runs North Fulton Business Radio X.
And I was on his show a few weeks ago, actually it was a maybe a few months ago at this point, but John, we met through the North Fulton County Chamber of Commerce ⁓ in Atlanta. And John, at first, I wasn't even sure what he even did. When he first told me what he did, this is really important for you guys because you guys are all consultants, coaches, professional service providers, ⁓ lawyers, we got lawyers in the audience. And ⁓ you guys might...
think that, you your prices are the way that they are. You don't even realize that your prices are probably the single biggest lever in growing your business. And so when I met John, I didn't really know that until I read his book called The Generosity Mindset and it absolutely blew my mind because I recently signed up for a $20,000 sales boot camp and
the stuff that he goes over in his $20 book, they don't even cover in the $20,000 bootcamp. So you guys are in for possibly more than $20,000 worth of value right now. without further ado, here's John Ray and John Ray, John, you know, give a little introduction about yourself and we want to hear your story. How did you, you know, tell us about yourself?
and you know what you do and how did you get into that? You know, how did you become passionate about what's quote unquote pricing and we'll go over what pricing necessarily means. So go ahead and take it away. Well, first of all, Renee, thanks so much for having me on and you're you're you do marvelous work. So thank you for that. And thank you for your
enthusiastic endorsement of my book and my work. So I'm really grateful for that and honored by it. So thank you. So I spent quite a number of years in corporate and specifically in the ⁓ investment banking world, the investment management world. You might say I grew up in my career analyzing companies. ⁓
kind of the backbone of what I did big companies and with lots of money at stake, lots, lots of, ⁓ issues at stake. ⁓ I did MNA advisory strategic advisory, you know, and, ⁓ we did all sorts of analysis on a company's position in the market and you know, whether their stock was going to do well or not do well and you know, ⁓ w whether they were.
a good combination for another acquire or, you know, all this, all this, mumbo jumbo and, know, so, but here's the thing in all of that, in all of that, ⁓ I really didn't come out of that experience. Once I left corporate, start my own business, my, ⁓ advisory business, my own advisory business, I didn't understand the importance of pricing.
And that showed up in how I priced my own work and
What it led to was frustration. So what typically happens, and I'm sure this is true for a lot of your audience, what typically happens when, and it happened for me, you come out and you kind of look around and you see what others are doing and you charge, you know, relative to them. Here's the problem with that is when everybody else is charging a bad price or an ineffective price, your price is by definition wrong.
And you don't even know it. Well, here's how you find out. You find out because after a few years, you're working too hard for too little money. You are, you are, um, uh, resenting your client. You're resenting your, let me tell you a story about this. So just, can we be honest here? Yeah. So, so I had a situation where my.
lowest fee client. He would call me on Sunday mornings. Now I needless to say, I didn't answer the phone, but he would get mad because I wouldn't recall return his call until like Monday or even Tuesday. Cause I really didn't want to talk to him frankly. And that's another sign. It's like when you, when the client name pops up on your phone and you don't want to talk to them, you met your pricing may be the problem, because you're not getting paid.
enough for the work you're doing. That's why you resent them. And so, ⁓ he decided he was going to hire somebody, someone else. And I got mad. I got mad about it. And you know what? should have been, I was mad at him at the time, but I should have been mad at me because it was my fault. ⁓ that I allowed that to get that situation to balloon the way it did.
⁓ you know, when you are, ⁓ charging the same price to every client, when you're charging by the hour, you're charging inadequately. ⁓ I go through these, what I call the seven red flags of inadequate pricing. It's, it's in the introduction to my book. And, ⁓ the point is, is that
What I figured out was that I had a pricing problem. finally figured that out and I could see that in all my clients. All my clients had pricing problems too. And so here's the problem is when you're in business for yourself, ⁓ there's no place to go. I mean, to, to solve this problem. ⁓ for example, you go, I hate the title of this book, but,
Bear with me, small business for dummies. Nobody that starts a small business is a dummy by the way. But anyway, um, if you go buy that book, it's 250 pages, pretty good information. You know, I mean, pages there are devoted to pricing four and a half out of two, out of 250. And they don't really apply to people like you and me and others that are watching this.
⁓ show who price their expertise, who are pricing the intangibles that come out of their head that, ⁓ move the needle for clients. So that's why I got passionate about this work. So I did a lot of, ⁓ help try to trying to help myself, trying to help clients. And because there was, you know, I, sensed a void, ⁓
it became a, I guess, a principal focus of my work. And then it led to this, you know, the book, right, the generosity mindset. So ⁓ that's, that's really my story. Yeah, John. ⁓ So we'll link the book in the show notes, because any professional service provider, ⁓ even if you just left corporate, even if you have been in
entrepreneurship for years. I was talking to Paul, who is one of our mutual friends who has been in entrepreneurship for years. And he still learn, he's his mind was still blown about how you know, the psychology of human behavior when it comes to buying and selling and value in that book. So I will link in the show notes. And so, John, when I first
heard, you you utter the words from your mouth. I specialize in pricing. I'd never heard of that before. You know, what does that even mean? Is it because I'm charging too high? Is it because I'm charging too low? Why is that even a problem? You know, walk us through what it, what even is that break that down for us? Yeah, well, here's, here's the thing is that you, pricing is the biggest lever.
On an income statement. In other words, it's the fastest way to change your bottom line for good or for worse. So, and this is not my opinion. This is an accounting fact. So you can't find a CPA that will disagree with me on this. ⁓ so the point here is, is that if you, if your pricing is inadequate, it
has an outside, outsized impact on your bottom line. If you're your pricing is effective, and you're you regularly raise your pricing. It's the most effective way to scale your business cost effective way to scale your business. It's better than any marketing solution you can come up with. ⁓ You know, the I mean,
marketing's okay. There's nothing wrong with it, but it costs money. And the results are uncertain. ⁓ You know, you don't know if you've hired the right person or not, right? ⁓ but even if you have, costs money. And so you don't get the same benefit for ⁓ that marketing expenditure, cutting your expenses that you do with moving your price.
So that's why pricing is so important. And it's particularly important for people that are pricing their expertise. So maybe the question everyone might be thinking is, is my, know, maybe they have some packages, standard packages that they sell and they might be thinking, well, it would be really great to just charge out the wazoo for my prices.
But then that would, you know, that would solve all my money problems. could be rich overnight and I would never have a problem ever again, but there is this inherent like resistance. ⁓ you know, so what's, know, what's the problem? Like what's keeping people from just being like, okay, I don't want to charge 5k for this anymore. I'll just charge 10k for this, know, like what's that? Yeah. Well, it's, it's the little voice in your head. Yeah. That is saying things like, ⁓ you're not worthy.
⁓ it's saying, ⁓ I'm not as good as such and such, you know, someone else that's got more experience or whatever. ⁓ I'm new, so I have to discount, ⁓ that old, hairy goat called imposter syndrome. I'm just faking it here.
It's just going to be a better time for somebody figures out that I really don't know what I'm doing, which is of course garbage, right? It's all these voices in our heads. Yeah. And you know what? could even be things that we grew up with. Yeah. You know, ⁓ I, yeah, I heard recently that when you're a seven, your, your money, ⁓ ideas about money get kind of submitted in your head.
At the age of seven, by the age of seven. So maybe they're, have to do with a certain faith you grew up in where it's like, it's bad to be make money. ⁓ it could be, you know, you're just your parental upbringing, you know, that you're, Hey, you're inadequate or whatever. there's all sorts of things that are going on in your head and see, here's the thing. It, it.
It's particularly hurtful to those of us who are pricing our expertise because what are you pricing? You're not price. You're not the, you're not selling a can of dog food and you can just price the can. Right. You're selling, you're selling yourself. It's so intangible. It well, it's intangible, but it's also highly personal. So personal. when I'm sitting across the table from Renee and I slide by
Proposal across the table. That's a highly personal thing because like I'm, I'm exposing, you know, myself and, and, and it's creating these issues in my head. And I, I know this may just be true for me, not the rest of your audience, but you know, you slide this proposal across the table and you're immediately thinking, no, I charged too much. know, even in that moment, Yeah. I mean, these, these thoughts are happening in what, it's like a
Half a second or something. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. They're happening all the time. And so that's where it starts are those mindsets that hold us back. And so that's why I start the book talking about that to the, here's the, here are these mindsets that affect all of us. They affected me. They affect, ⁓ I've seen them again and again in clients. And so what you've got to do is call those out and understand.
where those come from and have something that stands in to replace that. And that's why I, that's why I call that the generosity mindset. ⁓ and essentially what that is, is getting out of your own head and getting into the head of your clients and where your clients see value. Right. Because, here's the, the
insight that I had over time is that clients see more value in us than we see ourselves. So by definition, if that's the case and you price into that value that clients see, you'll improve your pricing.
Which in a nutshell means you can raise it with confidence. Having the thoughts that support that new reality of there is going to be someone who's going to purchase my prep package at a price that feels really good for me. That feels sustainable. I love this. I'm helping people. I can tell you now, John, that in 2025, and it's not even over yet, but when I read, I mean, I read your book, what is it over the summer?
But I somewhat began this journey at the beginning of the year because I had hired another coach who had told me to, it was like raise my prices by like 10 X or something crazy. And of course I'm like, my gosh, are people gonna think about me? Do I even deserve this? Am I worth it? And I remember in your book, you call out, yeah, exactly. Like you call them out and you call out the thoughts that people are thinking.
And I remember taking a highlighter and you said, you know, I'm not good enough. And I was like, wow, someone finally, maybe people do understand, but I never really understood that. Like someone, a professional could, it's like as a professional, you are handling something that seems, you know, it's like, it's like the nervous system. It's the body, it's thoughts in our head, which, which have this emanation, this manifestation out into the 3D.
on and on and on into our families and how we treat our kids and then the next generation. And I felt like I was finally seen. That is the thought that I'm having. And I could possibly try to not think about myself so much and start thinking about other people more and start amplifying that transformation. So yeah, I remember reading the first few pages, I was like,
Thank God someone's talking about this. I don't think I've seen, I mean, you hear people talk about on podcasts or whatever, know, manifest your a hundred million dollar business or whatever, but that's not happening unless you realize that it's, first of all, it's okay to feel those feelings and have those thoughts, but there's an alternative. There's a new possibility and you offer that. so what in your, if someone, for example, were to hire you, John, is that what you're doing? You're coaching them through these mindsets.
Well, that's where it starts. Yeah. And showing people where it shows up. Right. I mean, so that, because you can see evidence of this, ⁓ in the way they talk about themselves, ⁓ the fact that they are talking about themselves with, know, when, when you look at a website, for example, and all you see are, ⁓ my CV, my
My resume, my experience, my deliverables. Here's what I do for clients. ⁓ that's somebody it's probably got a pricing problem. And I've just described, you know, ⁓ a huge percentage of service providers because that's what all their websites look like. ⁓ right. I mean, probably has, yeah. Has little bits of that. Yeah, definitely. Well, yeah, we, there's probably still some
vestiges of that in mind that I've got to scrape out. the point is, that you're not speaking to where clients see value. Okay. So, so for example, somebody, if I refer someone to you to do work on their book, ⁓ they, yeah, sure. They'll go to your website and they'll check it out and see if everything that
I told them about you checks out. Right. ⁓ but then when they get in touch with you and want to have a conversation, they come ready to talk about their need. They don't come ready to talk about your qualifications because you know, they're, they've already seen your website. They're, ⁓
There's some borrowed trust going on because the referral came from me. Right. So they like, yeah, I trust John said John knows what he's talking about. So Renee must be good. Yeah. But what do we do in those circumstances? We start talking about all the things that we do when we don't have to write. What we need to do is start talking about that person who, why is it you want to write this book? What will that do for you? How will that change your life?
How will that change your business? How will that change in your business create further value for you? You see, when you start talking about things like this, the clients, the electrodes in their heads just light up. Yeah, because you're talking their language and what you find out is you find out how they value what you are the service you're going to provide for them.
They don't care how you do it. They don't know how you do it. What they care about is what, how are you going to meet my needs? Hopes wants fears of phobias about writing a book. Right. And how are you going to get me through that? And, and what's the outcome going to look like for me on the other side? That's why I say the generosity mindset is not about giving things away.
Um, it's about leaning into the head of the client in front of you and trying to understand where they see value. Yeah. And this reminds me of something, this huge transformation I had in 2025. And I see it everywhere now. Most people are really concerned about, you know, the way their t-shirt looks, the way that they're, know, you know, they're playing pickleball on the court and they're like, I'm not good enough.
They show up in their business and they try to explain their conversations. They're fixing their hair. They're always concerned about the way they look. And when I started seeing the way that you talk about this, and also in the sales bootcamp I'm in, I start seeing it everywhere and it hides itself as humility because everyone's like, well, I just want to be small. don't want to take up space. I just want to... ⁓
If I take up space, doesn't mean everyone else can take up space and everyone thinks that they're being humble because of it. But it's actually self-obsession. It actually is preoccupation with yourself. know, am I qualified? Am I good enough? Am I worthy enough? It's just, ⁓ it's always me, me, me. Whereas what I'm learning in the sales bootcamp and what I'm learning through, and it's just reinforced with what you're saying, what the generosity mindset talks about is that
literally stop thinking about yourself and think about the other person on the other side of the table or on the zoom call or on the phone and just thinking about them more removes that that like preoccupation with self because your focus is on something else and your world starts snapping into place because it's like I and you learn this quickly about money it's like the the fastest way to make money is just stop thinking about yourself and to start thinking about other people first.
And I like how your work reflects that conversation and how these things get reflected in all of these different things in business, whether it's like the way we show up as leaders in our business, the way we show up ⁓ on LinkedIn. When someone's obsessed with themselves, you can tell by the way they're posting on LinkedIn. And it also shows up in pricing.
And the way that you have a sales conversation or value conversation, when someone's like, you know, am I good enough? I'm talking about my qualifications and my process. You can tell they're just focused on themselves, whereas you want them to be focused on you. And yeah, I was just like, wow, this is, I see this everywhere. And with a lot of service providers, especially when it comes to people who just left corporate, it's a big shift.
huge shift. don't even realize that they're doing it. ⁓ Actually, I would be really curious to go into that conversation because I also came from corporate and I'd always had a dream of starting my own business and I even consider myself as a born entrepreneur, you know, and even then, like you were saying, how, you know, your money mindsets get established when you're seven. And I even had a dad who was an entrepreneur and he didn't, I'm almost certain he didn't.
think of money and pricing in the way that you talk about it. It was about him. Um, so yeah, what kind of patterns do you see, especially with people who just leave corporate, if they're just leaving corporate and going out on their own, they're hanging their shingle. What kind of patterns do you see when it comes to pricing in these value conversations and talking about, yeah, creating value in the world? Oh my gosh. See this, you're going to bring back nightmares here. So, so, so.
I used to work for a big, ⁓ global financial institution, a big, ugly, global financial institution. And I will never forget these decks that we would work on for clients and potential clients. And the first like God awful number of pages of these decks were all about us and how wonderful we, are. Right. And so, ⁓ and, and you kind of.
when you're in corporate, that's really what you're infected by. ⁓ because that's what you learn. It's not your fault. It's just what you learn. And, and so then you come out and this is just like a reflex. ⁓ and you don't even, a lot of times don't even know you're doing it. You think you're talking about other people, but you're really not. ⁓ and so you bring all that out and then
This is particularly true for these, the folks that come out of the consulting world to start their own consulting practice. You know, you come out, it's like, suddenly you don't have that logo on your business card anymore. Right. Right. That's where it gets really vulnerable. It's like, ⁓ well, I'm not, I don't work at the big global financial institution. And so I don't have that, the mothership behind me anymore. And I don't have.
the logo on my business card. And, and suddenly you feel there's some inadequacy there. And I've got to discount my price because of that. When in fact, your expertise did not change. Right. What you're able to do for clients has not changed. And if you, if you talk with clients about where they see value and what they're what their needs are, their hopes are, ⁓ then
Your, your mind is too occupied with that to lean back into this, ⁓ these other mindsets that hold you back. Yep. And it takes practice too. Like, you know, you, you've maybe you first hear about it and I, I've heard this quote before words don't teach. It's the experience of, know, the experience of experiencing it that teaches you that, I get it now. Like it's not about me and I never had to prove myself.
anyway. But yeah, for, yeah, for like, most of, you know, in corporate, you're, you know, you show up and you get paid, you show up, you get paid, you show up, you get paid. So there's almost like this element of like, oh, the money is coming towards me. There's this, and I noticed this as I was, my mind was shifting in that
As money comes towards me, feel like I'm wrapping my arms around it. That's the way I get paid. But when it comes to entrepreneurship and really, mean, this goes into the value equation that we're gonna go over really soon, but this is really, I noticed how value is even exchanged anywhere in the world is that you get paid as a portion of the greater value that's created for someone else. ⁓
There's this like story I was reading where they have, it's like a hunter with some dogs and the harvest of the animal is not guaranteed, but the dog gets fed when they can help the hunter get the harvest of the animal. And, know, good boy, know, great job dog for helping me achieve this outcome. And there's, that's that's that it's almost like it's not money isn't
coming to you because it's coming towards you. coming at, you get paid because you have created out there. And so there's this almost like this, you have to let go of, and that's that nervous system reset that I've noticed that you have to, it's almost like you have to open your palms even more, more trust, more surrender. And there's this counterintuitive thing that the universe says, well, congratulations, you have, you've always been good enough all along, here's your payment.
⁓ so let's talk about the value equation, ⁓ because this was, this was totally mind blowing to me. and we don't, I mean, we have the video here and feel free to use the book or how to describe this, but, ⁓ I did not under, you know, I was get on these sales calls and I was following the sales bootcamp, you know, they had this process and I was following it. was following it.
And anytime when I would say the price, didn't understand why people still had so many objections after I named the price until I saw this this graphic in your book. And it just all clicked in my head. And no, I've never seen an economics book talk about this. I never seen a blog post. No, no money podcast I've ever listened to talked about this. Let's talk about the value equation and
Yeah. What did actually, yeah. How does it actually work? Yeah. Well, so let's, let's call it so, so we can be perfectly clear about it. Let's call it the client's value equation. Right. That's so right. So, ⁓ because that's what I call it in the book because it's really important, ⁓ to understand who's doing the, the, ⁓ calculation, right? It's the client. Exactly. So
And this is true for every transaction. reg whatever you do, even if you get, ⁓ you're given something for free, you're thinking about the perceived value of what you're receiving minus the price you pay equals the value, ⁓ that client that you, you receive. So for example,
⁓ the, one of the more extreme examples I can come up with is a lottery ticket. The, the lottery ticket is essentially worthless. I mean, when you buy, when you buy, when you buy at least all the ones I've bought it, I've been, ⁓ when you, the odds of winning are so infinitesimal that it's a worthless piece of paper. So why do people spend?
A dollar, $2, $3 on a worthless piece of paper because they get value out of it. Well, how do you get value out of something? You don't get the money from, well, you get, ⁓ hope you get dreams. You know, you get people standing in line and sharing stories about what they're going to do with the money when they win. Right.
And tell them lies to each other about how, I'll, I'll give you a little bit of mine if I win or whatever, right. Or, or, ⁓ fear of missing out. Yeah. Right. My wife says, you got to go buy that lottery ticket. You know, if you don't, we might, we, we might not win. We can't win. Right. Right. mean, all of these are intangible values. They don't have anything to do with money, which is a tangible value. Right. So
point is, is that even when you, spend money on a worthless piece of paper, there's value that I get out of it as a customer. So this is true for every good and every service. When you go by gasoline, what are you getting? You're getting the ability to get where you want to go. Right. Right. Seeing my, my mother-in-law.
in Blairsville, Georgia right now is more valuable to me than the price of this gasoline. Therefore I'm willing to exchange money, which has less value to me than seeing my mom or my mother-in-law. Absolutely. Delta. airlines says we, we sell reunions. We we sell meetings, Gatherings. That's what they talk about. Yes. They have that new, yeah. Campaign where it's like the people, ⁓
Running into each other and seeing each other after some time and it moves you emotionally. Right. Yeah. Right. ⁓ you know, ⁓ a car repair place, they don't sell the parts. They sell peace of mind. They sell a car that sounds great when it's running down the road. They sell reliability. ⁓ you know, those are what a car,
repair place sales. We all have these intangible values in the client sees that we don't fully realize at all. We don't realize them at all unless we ask. Unless we ask. That's right. So, you know, in your case, you help someone write a book. What are you, what are you selling them? You know, or sell the book. You're not, you're not selling them the book.
per se. It's it is what comes from the book. It's the authority value of having written the book on this particular ⁓ subject. The certainty of ensuring that the book actually gets done. That gets done. It's the it's the it's the ⁓ what thousands of people want that very few people ever get. I want to be an author.
I would like to have my book on Amazon and have people buy it and have people say to me, wow, that was such a great book you wrote. And those are intangibles. And see the thing about it is if we don't have conversations with our clients about where they see intangible value, um, then we're not, we're not able to price relative to the full value that a client receives. It's not just about the book.
about what happens to them because of the book, you know? this is something that was also something that I never, it took me a long time to wrap my head around what even the idea of value was as someone who came from corporate, you you show up, you get paid, you show up, you get paid. And the idea of the word value was hard to understand, hard to grasp. And not only that, but the
the definition of intangible value. And if you've never had formal sales training, if you're just winging it all the time, if you've never really been navigated through what intangible value means and how you could extract that from someone, how would you describe intangible value to a corporate professional who's just starting out as a solopreneur and
can't get anyone to say yes to them on a sales call. How would you describe intangible value? It's largely emotional. Yeah. ⁓ there there's what, and see, this is where sales training, a lot of it misses out. You know, it's, it's, it's focused on tips and tricks and it's not about tips and tricks. ⁓ I can't remember all those things anyway. It's, it, it, it's, it's about
the emotion, how clients buy based on emotion. They justify their purchases based on the logic. Right. So again, if I can use, use an example. ⁓ yeah. See, I sit and chat with you about you helping me with my book, ⁓ making sure it gets, ⁓ out there in the market and people buy it. And you know, you send certain signals my way that, ⁓
are emotional for me that resonate with me in some way. And it's different for each person, right? Everybody's got a different way to interpret you and what you do. But I feel emotionally, you know, hey, this is the right decision. And because I all those things, I think I'm going to get out of it. And so then when
I've made the decision. I justified based on logic, based on all the things that we think are important. You know, our experience, our, all those kinds of things that we emphasize those come later after someone's already bought the product or the service. So it's all a little bass backwards in our minds as providers. Yeah. Yes. It's counterintuitive, but,
clients by based on emotion. and they, I've got, here's another example. I've got a good friend of mine that, know, Gloria Matei, ⁓ her and her husband, Sergio own, ⁓ three nothing but cakes doors. And when you ask her what, what they sell, she doesn't say cake. She says we sell joy.
Love it. We, we sell celebration and you know what she is, her store, ⁓ near where I'm sitting is surrounded by big box retailers that sell sheet cakes. Right. There's no joy in the sheet cakes. That's why she's able to charge a premium for her cakes because she sells joy. She doesn't just sell a cake.
Right. That's what I'm that's what I'm talking about. Yeah, yeah. and I mean, this is homework for because my husband is currently in corporate, he wants to start his own business. And we walked through all the things I learned from your book, john. And he had so much resistance. He was like, What do mean people buy emotionally then justify logically, it's all logic.
He defends charging by the hour and bless his heart, if he wants to do that he can, but this is the homework for a lot of entrepreneurs who've never actually been in touch with their emotions. I was actually having a conversation with my mom about this just over the weekend, about how, I mean, and even for immigrant families who have come to the US, the US and Canada,
talking to my therapist about this is this new realm of where you can be emotional. And for my mom who grew up in Hong Kong and escaped a war as a kid and the idea of being emotional and being in touch with your emotions and then valuing yourself and others on an emotional level is new territory. It is a new skill. It's a new thought process. It's new. So this is homework for anyone who's listening.
to anytime that you're buying something, I dare you, I want to challenge you. What is the emotion welling up inside your heart? Not your head, don't worry about your head. What is the emotion in your body? Do you feel relaxed? Do you feel joyful? Do you feel excited? What is that emotion? The more clearly you can articulate your own emotions, the more you can...
help your clients articulate their own intangible values, which is actually what they really want. They want to feel something when they buy something. That's why Nike, you know, ⁓ build a bear workshop. All of these brands are selling intangible emotions when you're buying something, it's about the emotion. So that's, that's homework for, for you. If you're the next time you're buying something, pay attention to your body, what you're feeling. so can I talk about hourly pricing a second?
Yeah. Let's just get this in out here. Some of our listeners. Yes. some people in our audience who may be, infected by this disease. ⁓ so I understand that, that if you're pricing by the hour, you're doing this because everybody else does it. And I get that. ⁓ this is a relic of the industrial age.
Sorry, we're out of that age now. We've moved on, ⁓ and it's time for your pricing to move on. So here's the problem with hourly pricing. You're not pricing based on value. You're pricing based on an input to what you do. ⁓ the hour is an input. It's how long you, it takes you to do something, right? It, you know what? It's kind of like pricing a house like
I ask you, well, you know, how much is the house you want to sell me? How much does it cost? you quote the price of the windows. I mean, see, it's just one complete. It's incomplete. It's not the final price. Everyone knows that. Right. It's not the final price. And so what does it do? It puts you on the opposite side of the table from the client because the client wants the job done fast.
But you don't get paid to be fast. Now, please don't tell me that you're above it all.
I know you are, but the problem is, that you're not incented that way. You're not incented that way. And if you're gosh, in an industry where let's say AI is about, is about to eat your lunch and you're pricing by the hour, you're about to disappear. So you, you have got to have a model that where you're pricing relative to value that
you create that the client agrees that you create its client perceived value. And, and if you've, if you're pricing based on that, then you're going to get paid a lot more. Yeah. Then work less. Yeah. And you can work less. And this is like, this is how to me, this is the magic. The whole idea is to, ⁓ work for best fit clients only and fewer of them and get paid better.
And that is possible. That's, that's a nice, that's a nice promise, John. ⁓ yeah. I mean, all the things you're saying, cause it's like in certain industries and I can't, I studied engineering in college. So engineering is a big one. Certain industries are have a, you were saying a relic. has this relic of charging hourly and to go against the grain is, it's kind of scary. And you, you don't know, like, and you maybe have never done the X it takes work.
to outline what intangible values that a client would get. The tangible and intangible values. You would have to brainstorm. You would have to ask questions. You would have to do the work to get to that value number. And so if you've never done that before, this is gonna be new territory for you. And I'm gonna tell you right now that your book, John, is that breath of fresh air, that first dip into the toe of like,
I finally get it. I understand how I could possibly start charging for the outcome and not just by my time, because there's that story where it's like, you know, like there's that plant and the pipes are broken and he gets all these quotes, but then the person who wins the quote, you know, he puts an X on the pipe and he says, here's the $50,000 bill. And he says, I'm charging $50,000, not for my time, but for the
experience that all the hours it took me to know exactly where to put that X. So yeah, I would recommend your book, John, um, for anyone who's still stuck in hourly pricing and grinding it out, doesn't have to feel like a grind. No, it doesn't. And, and, uh, here's, know, it, here's the other thing you cap your earnings unless you start making up time sheets.
Like Tom Cruise in the firm, know, yeah, yeah, he's got the mob after him because you know, they've, they've, they've, ⁓ the law firm has been cheating on the law and the time sheets and, and so if you price by the hour, you're capping your, your earnings, your shoe cobbler only, only so many shoes, the shoe cobbler can pound out in a day.
Same for you. If you're pricing by the hour. Yeah. There's just no reason for that. ⁓ for, for, for you to shortchange yourself that way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's not uncommon in the coaching industry to, charge by the hour, know, in therapy or anything, know, it's $90 a session. That's, that's what I do. And you have the possibility it's open for you to not have to do that anymore. ⁓
So John, this has been an incredible conversation and I'm hoping that this has started stimulating the juices for the coaches, the consultants, professional service providers in the audience who have been wondering when they'll ever reach that next level of revenue. When they'll make that breakthrough in their business. And that breakthrough gets to be an emanation of the internal work that you do, the resistance that you work through.
The mindsets that you overcome and beyond just plugging your book, John, which is that I would absolutely recommend anyone who needs that portal into that next into the breakthrough. Your book is a great place to start. Where can people find more about you and the work that you do for them? Yeah. Well, thank you again for that. ⁓ so my book is again, available where, where all basically all physical bookstores, ⁓ online.
bookstores, can find, ⁓ the book, ⁓ it, it, it's the generosity mindset.com is one place to go just to find out more about the book. And, ⁓ yeah, I mean, I'm blessed to have the five star rated on Amazon. So people really liked the book. I've got a lot of ratings on Amazon. So that's nice. ⁓ but you know, if you want to get, get there faster than reading the book,
If you want to get there to the promised land in your business faster than reading the book, then I do work with coaches and consultants and service providers generally on how to think about their clients, how to ask the questions that were that of their clients, where they can see value, ⁓ do better business development, ⁓ and price better price to that value that clients see. I, I helped
I helped them with that and basically try to help them make more money with fewer clients. That's the goal. And so johnray.co is my website. You can find out more about me there. can, I'm very active on LinkedIn. John Ray one on LinkedIn. So you can connect with me there. I'm writing about these issues all the time and posting there. ⁓ and you can email me, john at johnray.co. ⁓
Perfect. All right. Thank you so much, John. It has, I feel like we just scratched the surface of a conversation. I mean, we could talk about this for hours and share all the epiphanies I've had because of your book, all the epiphanies I've had and then notice how other people are doing it. so we could go on, but it's been great. And thank you so much. And anyone in the audience will link John's links in the show notes and you'll be able to find him there. Thank you so much.
Renee, thanks again. I appreciate you. Thanks for the great work you're doing for folks. Thanks. Thank you.