Ed Gandia shares a single question that changed how he prices client projects. Ask yourself what outcome the client needs, not what hours you'll spend. This shift in mindset directly impacts your income and business growth.
Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia.
Hey there. Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast. I am your host, Ed Gandia, and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love or better. Client. This episode is a little different and much shorter than usual rather than my typical 45 minute format. Today I'm sharing a quick tip with you and this is part of the regular audio insights that I publish for my private coaching clients. I just thought you'd find it helpful. So here we go. I hope you enjoy it. There's a mindset shift I made just a few years ago that's had a huge impact on on the growth of my business and on my income. And it has to do with how I price my work. See if this sounds familiar, I'm going to give you a quick situation. For years when I would quote a project, my approach looks something like this. I would try to figure out the lowest possible number I could get away with. This was a number that was high enough to make it worth my while, but low enough for the client or prospect to say yes. So if you take out a sheet of paper or if you can imagine a sheet of paper in front of you on your desk and you turn it on its side so it's kind of in landscape mode. This is like starting from the left edge of the paper. Just pretend the left edge was the absolute minimum number that you could get away with, and then adding to that number incrementally in your head or on a spreadsheet, and then stopping at that inflection point, the point where you can imagine the client would say no if you went just $1 higher. So adding from the left edge to the right, moving right incrementally until you get to that point. And you know what? This construct worked for a long time. I grew my business using this approach, using this mindset, and I even broke six figures with this. But something happened a few years ago that changed my thinking around this, and I can't quite put my finger on it. I think it was a combination of factors. For one, I was getting burned out because I was growing too fast, but I was working a lot of hours. But also became clear that I could become bolder and I could start taking chances. And I think that's because I had tried a few things in my business that had once felt very bold and risky and they were working, so my courage was higher. And you know what? I was too busy also to overthink things, too. Anyway, I started taking a very different approach to my pricing. So rather than starting from the left side of the spectrum, or the sheet of paper, if you will, I started from the right side and worked left. And that made all the difference. So here's the mindset behind that approach. Rather than start with the lowest possible number and just add incremental amounts to that number until you feel like you've gone as high as you can go, I asked myself a different question, and this is really important. What number, if I got the work, would make me really happy? What number would make me feel like I can take my time with this project and with this client in order to deliver an amazing product to them? Now, don't get me wrong, it's not like I was doing shoddy work before, okay? But you know what I'm talking about. You know what it's like to get the job. You go to that number that's like just high enough to make it worthwhile, and then in hindsight, you land the project. But in hindsight, you realize it was too low, because, remember, you approach it from that side, it was just like you were doing it from a scarcity mindset. It was just high enough for it to make sense, but that's it. So now you have the work and there's no margin for error. So when something goes wrong, even a very small thing, you get easily triggered. You get upset, you get frustrated, or you get stressed, and that really sucks. So I started asking myself, what number would have enough profit that I could afford to make some mistakes, as I often will, take more time to do it right or have things happen that I just didn't expect because things are going to happen. I started from the right side of the spectrum and worked my way down incrementally until I arrived at a number I felt really good about but wasn't so high that I'd insult a client with it. And you know what happened? Most of my clients and prospects were saying yes. I don't know if it's because I felt better about it, which translated into more excitement in my quota proposal or because the number was right to begin with. I just know that I was getting yeses, not from everyone, but from enough clients that I knew I was onto something. The lesson is simple. Start from the right side of the sheet and work your way down. And yes, it's a mindset thing more than a specific pricing process or formula. But this stuff has to start with the right mindset. Only then can you start making the last improvements. You need to go where you want to go.
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