I love talking money y’all and this is such a great question! Before we get into it though, I want to hone in on the word justify, because I think there's a particular connotation and mindset attached to this word. When I hear the word justify, I also hear the word prove, or convince, or defend. 

Let me be clear, my belief is that the only person you should have to justify your price to is yourself. If you find yourself having to justify your price to your client, one of two things could be at play. 

1. Confidence

   You may not be confident in your pricing, so you believe you have to justify it. If this is the case, you’ll need to do some internal work and unlearning. If that is you, don’t worry! We all have to go through it, we’ve all got money mindsets that may or may not serve us.

   If you feel you have to justify your pricing to your client and you haven’t even spoken to them yet, you're anticipating justifying, and that means that you yourself aren't at the point where you feel confident in your pricing.

2. Messaging

   Maybe you feel confident in your pricing, but you find yourself in situations where you feel that you consistently have to prove why your pricing is what it is. This is a messaging issue, meaning the messaging that you have about your business and your services doesn’t show the true value they provide. Once you master your message and clarify the value you’ll be providing to your client, you won’t need to justify your pricing. 

   If your clients are really clear on the value you’re providing, your ideal client should be at a place where they're looking at your messaging and saying “oh my goodness, this person will be able to alleviate this problem I've been struggling with for X long, or these pain points that I'm experiencing”. Your messaging should be so clear and so tight that they get to the point where they say “Sign me up! It doesn't matter how much, I'm ready to write the check!”

   Here are some examples of how your messaging can change from being what you do to the value you provide

   What you do: “I provide PD, I provide coaching, I provide one-on-one consultations.”

   The value you provide: “In PD partnership with me, you’ll gain more time to focus on what truly matters and ensure that every child has access to quality instructional content in every classroom.”

   When you’re creating value centered messaging, you want to focus on the outcome that folks would experience through working with you. If you've been focusing on what services you provide, try not to lead with that because what people are really looking for is their return on investment in working with you. When you make the return on investment crystal clear, price tag usually doesn't matter. 

I'll give you a mainstream example:

When people talk about Peloton, or even if you look at Peloton's messaging, they don't talk about the fact that it's a $2,000 bike, that's not what they lead with, they lead with community, they lead with the instructors and their personability, #Alex is the best. They lead with the bomb playlist and music, making you feel like you're riding with your best friend, they lead with the ease of being able to access your workouts from anywhere.

Yes, people are paying $2,000 for a bike, but they’re also paying for the community which is the value in Peleton’s message.

Questions from our community: "I hear all these giant numbers and instantly have a battle with mind trash." 

First of all, let’s count that as a win because you recognized the mind trash! Once you recognize it, you can manage it. I really encourage y’all to get into more spaces where you hear people say the numbers that feel scary to you, because you'll start hearing them so often that they aren’t so scary anymore and they’ll start to become your expectations. 

In reality, folks don't flinch at an invoice when they know the work is quality. Someone said “every time we went with the cheapest option, we ended up paying twice.”

Every time we went with the cheapest option, we ended up paying twice, because you had to go back and find someone else to fix what the first person broke. 

When we have this battle around our pricing we need to unearth the money mindsets that are underneath that battle so we can dismantle them and come out the other side to state our price confidently. 

Sometimes you just need to have the experience of charging the low price, and then getting mad after you charge that price, because you realize how much work it really was, and that's what makes you increase your price. And you'll realize that you don't have to explain why you’re charging that price tag, because when you did it for less, you were mad. 

That's natural. That's natural for us as entrepreneurs to have that experience of trial and error, because it helps you learn, and when you know better, you do better, and you use those experiences to grow in your business.

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