
118. You're Worthy of Earning More Money with Belinda Rosenblum
24 Aug 2021 | By Salome Schillack
Hands up if you've been thinking about increasing your prices, but then those thoughts sneak in…
What if no one joins?
What if all my hard work doesn't pay off?
What if it turns out I did this all for nothing?
It’s time to talk about the money thing!
Today on The Shine Show, my money matters coach and founder of Own Your Money, Belinda Rosenblum, shares her incredible wisdom about developing a healthy relationship with finances.
Recovering overachiever Belinda is a CPA, a money strategist, and became a self-made millionaire by the age of 33. Between all of this, she somehow found the time to write several revolutionary books helping thousands of people to find certainty, security, and create the life of financial independence they deserve.
If you've ever felt apologetic when telling students your price, or you've been whacked with self-doubt after a series of refunds, OR you're working for what feels like nine days per week yet still barely seeing that bank account increase; today's episode is especially for you!
You attract what you believe, and today Belinda will show you exactly how to shift your mindset to start bringing in those dream students and feel confident when sharing your prices.
If you're ready to discover the keys to getting your finances in check and set yourself up for a financial breakthrough, this is one episode you cannot afford to miss!
Grab a cuppa and tune in to The Shine Show!
XXX
Salome
P.S. Has today's episode inspired you to increase your prices? I'd love to celebrate with you! Jump over to my Instagram and let me know what steps you are taking to start charging what you're worth!
When you subscribe and review the podcast not only does that give me the warm and fuzzies all over, it also helps other people to find the show.
When other people find the show they get to learn how to create more freedom in their lives from their online courses too!!
So do a good deed for all womenkind and subscribe and review this show and I will reward you with a shout out on the show!!
Salome Schillack:
Hello, and welcome to episode number 118 of The Shine Show. Today, we're going to talk about your worthiness of earning more money, and I have brought my coach and my friend Belinda Rosenblum on to talk to you about your thoughts around money. Belinda is a CPI and a money strategist, and she founded Own Your Money and created a signature Cashflow CEO program. The purpose of these courses is to empower female entrepreneurs to feel worthy, in action, and safe with money and cashflow, so they can enjoy the freedom they started their business for in the first place, and pay themselves consistently.
Sounds like a good idea to me. Once these women are the same ambitious, loving, successful women behind the scenes, as they appear to be on the outside world, then their impact can be fully realized. She is also the author of Self-Worth to Net-Worth: 12 Keys to Creating Wealth Inside and Out, and became a self-made millionaire at 33. Let's jump in to my interview with Belinda.
Giving up your time and freedom to make money is so 2009. Hi, I'm your host, Salome Schillack, and I help online course creators launch grow and scale their businesses with Facebook and Instagram ads so that they can make more money and have an even bigger impact in the world. If you're ready to be inspired to dream bigger, launch sooner, and grow your online business faster, then tune in because you are ready to shine, and this is The Shine Show.
Belinda, welcome to the shine show. I'm so happy you're here today.
Belinda Rosenblum:
Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. It's exciting that we're making this happen now.
Salome Schillack:
Yes. Well, you and I have been on a journey the last six months in helping me clean up my money mess. I don't think it was a giant mess, but still, just having your brain inside my numbers and helping me look at my numbers a little bit differently, have been incredibly helpful. So, thank you. I'm so excited to have you come and share some of your wisdom with The Shine Show listeners.
Belinda Rosenblum:
Well, thank you so much for having me. It's so interesting. I feel like there's always room for improvement, right? It's not about feeling bad about where you are. It's about recognizing that you're so committed to getting to that next level and getting to that next level faster, right?
Salome Schillack:
Yes.
Belinda Rosenblum:
So, you appreciate the idea of investing to help you get there. [crosstalk 00:02:50].
Salome Schillack:
Yeah. I always think it's like an onion that you peel, because you learn the same lessons essentially over and over and it just goes to another level, right?
Belinda Rosenblum:
Absolutely. Absolutely, and hopefully you don't cry each time you ...
Salome Schillack:
Yeah, maybe I should find a better-
Belinda Rosenblum:
[crosstalk 00:03:08].
Salome Schillack:
A better metaphor than onion.
Belinda Rosenblum:
Because I got it. Sometimes I use that metaphor around our beliefs. We think that, oh, I tackled that limiting belief. I'm past that, but it's like peeling an onion. As you keep going to that next level, it's like you feel somewhere off and then you're like, oh geez, now I have this belief. It happens a lot to entrepreneurs because they'll be like, oh, I'm good. I can get to $5,000 a month or $100,000 business even.
Then it's like, whoa. Then they peel that away, and then the next level is like, but am I okay getting ... Or first I guess it's, can I sustain this? And then it's, am I okay? Can I contain being the $150,000, $200,000 business owner? Everything you're saying is right on track, and I think a lot of people can probably relate that they value coaching to help them reach that next level, particularly as it relates to understanding the money side of your business enough to do projections right into really, not just live in the moment hoping for a strong next month or next quarter, but really being intentional about it.
And aligning, I call it getting clarity with your money, where you're aligning your emotions, your tactics and your strategy. Usually, people have one or two, but it's when the three come together, boom, that's when your business really takes off, so I love how you've done that.
Salome Schillack:
Absolutely. I agree with you. I think one of the places where getting a coach or getting someone to coach you is really helpful for me is, I mean, you know me now a little bit. My brain runs at 700,000 kilometers per hour. That's a lot of miles per hour for my American friends.
Belinda Rosenblum:
It does.
Salome Schillack:
It runs really fast and I drive myself nuts with all of the conversations in my own head. So, sometimes you just need someone to sit down with you and go, just stop, chill, and put it down on a spreadsheet. And then you put it down on a spreadsheet, and suddenly the voices in your head can calm down, because it is now there and you can look at it and you can see how it works and you can see that it is working, and then you can make informed decisions from there. But the thing that I love the most about your work is the little bit in your bio that says you help female entrepreneurs to feel worthy around money. Tell me more about why is it so hard for female entrepreneurs to feel worthy around money?
Belinda Rosenblum:
Well, I think that it's an amazing question. It's only recently, I've been doing this now for 14 years, that I've been running our business called Own Your Money. I was in personal finance for about 12 years. Now, the last two and a half, it's really been focusing on small business owners. One of the things that I keep seeing come up again and again is the lack of worthiness, and then seeing how that then translates to become, people call it the imposter syndrome or money mindset blocks, right?
It's all of that. But at the core, it's that we aren't feeling worthy of our success, and even super ambitious driven, amazing women. Part of what I am really here to do is to have people feel that confident on the inside, like behind the scenes, as they make, like they are on the Instagram videos, and on the Instagram frame. I think that a lot of what happens is that we struggle with a lot of shame around our money.
I've been really studying a lot around Brene Brown and she has some ... The Gifts of Imperfection is an incredible book if you haven't read it yet, for those listening. It's how she sources shame, is that shame really has two messages. One is you're never good enough and the other one is, who do you think you are? I feel like those are the record player, not to date myself too much, but they're what so many entrepreneurs keep telling themselves. Then the way she defined shame is, as the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.
I think what happens is that we keep trying to do more and hustle harder. There's a lot of hustle culture that's still out there. Fortunately, there's people on the other side, like you and I, who are like, wait a second, hustling harder is not actually going to get you to the solution that you're looking for. But there's so much of that out there, that it ends up feeling like, gosh, if people see me struggle, if they see what's really happening behind the scenes, that I have to put an effort to achieve the success that I have, then I won't really be worthy.
And then we are like trying to fill this bucket that has a whole limit. It's never allowing ourselves to fill up, and it's because we, at the core, aren't feeling worthy and we're looking for that externally. So, we're looking for that validation from outside of ourselves. As we can start to recognize, wait a second, the only way that I'm ever going to feel worthy is if I can own my own worthiness, then everything becomes easier.
I talk about worthiness in the conversation of just even looking at your numbers of getting smart with money. I talk about it in the conversation of pricing, which we'll talk more about today, because this idea of owning your worthiness gets hard to do when we feel like, gosh, I just have to strive for the next thing. I can't feel worthy enough until I'm making more money, until I feel more skilled in something, until I have a bigger following, until I have $100,000 launch, until I have $1 million business so I can be more productive.
But all that does is it just puts us on the speed train to burn out. I think that, that's what so many potentially successful entrepreneurs may be feeling, like if you're listening to this now, you can be nodding your head like, yeah. It's like, we're just trying to work harder and harder and people please to be able to then feel worthy. But really, what I want you to start to realize is that, it's when you can own your shame even. I actually just wrote an article recently for a magazine called [inaudible 00:09:59], and the title of it was called Healing Money Shame and Stepping Into Your Worthiness.
Because it's, once you can own your story and you can even own your shame, like own the things that have been where you haven't felt like enough up to this point, and you can say, wait a second, if I own it, it's kind of like Gremlins, if you remember that movie, it's like, when the gremlins come into sunlight, they die. I think what happens is that when we can bring those shame gremlins into the light and not have them mean something about who we are and to take us down several notches on our self-esteem, when we can instead recognize it and love ourselves through that, then we can really step into our power.
Then we can really own our worthiness. It's only then, because otherwise, we just keep pushing and keep trying. I'm sorry to say, but I'm also kind of happy to say, the day will never come when that external validation will ever plug up that bucket for you, will ever really be like, okay, you're done. Because just think, whenever you get like some big, yes, you reached that $10,000 launch or the $50,000, the $100,000 launch, your Facebook ads actually take off, or let me just add a reel on Instagram got like 13,000 views.
It's like, we're happy for a moment and then it disappears, until we can re we can actually own our story and fully self accept who we are, and we can get to the point, and I see this all the time with pricing, when we need to recognize that our worthiness is separate and distinct from what we charge, from how our business is doing, from our numbers. But it can be so hard, particularly when we're a personal brand. Literally, our name is often on the outside of the business. When I started, it was my name LLC.
For a lot of people, that's how they have it. So, it certainly adds to the complication, but it also makes it even more important for you to be able to find your own worthiness, independent of how your business is doing, how much you're charging. Then it's only then, once we can win this war, so to speak, from the inside, then once we're solid and we're feeling whole, then the person that we're bringing to the world can create so much more of an impact, but not until we step into that worthiness ourselves.
Salome Schillack:
Yeah. I love that. The word that you used that jumps out at me, that Brene Brown is so good at using as well is belong. We are so afraid that we're not going to belong, we're not going to be worthy of belonging. I'm a firm believer that you attract what you already believe in your head. I think what I've seen happen so much is we believe that we don't deserve to belong in with ... Let's say we don't deserve to belong with students who have paid us what we believe is more money than what we're worthy of getting paid.
But the flip side of that coin is, on some level, there also has to be a belief that I do belong with the people who do not have money to pay me or the people who are not going to pay me, and I think it's kind of in that cycle that I see people underpricing, undercharging, giving away for free, over discounting, and continuously put themselves in a space where the only student you can attract is a broke student who's going to ask for a refund and not participate in your course and tell you that your course is too expensive. So, you kind of set yourself up to fail from the beginning. I think that's linked to that belonging ...
Belinda Rosenblum:
Piece of it. Yeah. Well, it's on the deserving front, which is closely tied to the belonging thing. I've had lots of challenges with belonging myself, and I think that, that's why when I started tapping into this, I felt like that it was, by understanding shame, it was finally being able to articulate a lot of the challenges that I had, had. Not realizing, not being able to it until then. I think that so much of her work is about vulnerability and about shame grows in secrecy and has us feel so alone. I think what happens is that we try and portray a person that we're not sometimes though.
The reality though, is that the law of attraction is working all the time. So, when you're attracting the people who are trying to back out or don't have the money, then that is very much related to who you feel like you deserve to have in your program. That when you claim the results, when you claim the value, when you claim the price that you're charging, then you'll start to be able to attract the right people who will be willing to pay that.
I will share a story. When I started this business a while ago, I was in the world of personal finance for the first 12 years. I literally had a TV show, a book, a radio show. I was like on the news, on the day of the federal bailout here in the US. I talk a lot about this, but when I started way back, 2007 now, I was marketing to broke people because I was like, well, who needs more money? Who needs to save more? And it was people who didn't have money. When I reread some of like my flyers, I was like, who would ever want to raise their hand for this program?
It's funny. Then I kind of woke up, and I was like, wait a second. I need to own the fact that the people that have this challenge around not saving enough and not really understanding their money, aren't just people who don't have money and aren't making money, but it's also people who are making $100,000 and they're not feeling like they're taking anything home. Then when I started to shift it from trying to market to people who were unemployed or not making money, that was just sort of who I was attracting. It's a really good reflection. Like if you want to know what's your perception of what you deserve, start to look at your clientele, start to look at who you're attracting.
If you're attracting a lot of people who want refunds or who are defaulting or who are looking for a different extended payment plan from what you have, it's often a reflection of your own money story. Of who you feel like you deserve to have in your program. Once you start to shift that and you get more clear about, this is my program, and this is who will excel in it, and owning that the value of what you're creating is so good that people will want to pay for it.
I think that it's like, we discounted in our own heads first, and then we say it because we're having trouble sitting in alignment with the price that you're charging. I just did a workshop, by the time this airs, called Confidently Raise Your Prices. A part of that is that you can't just charge what some coach tells you to charge until you can own the value of what you're doing and can clearly align the results that you can create for a certain group of people, that you have a strong promise and clear results of your program.
If you're not there yet, don't charge a high ticket price. I think that our internet marketing space sometimes does a bit of a disservice for people because it just says like, charge high ticket. Well, before you're charged high ticket, make sure you can get results, and be super clear on that for yourself, for your clients, so that you can, very specifically and clearly, point to the results that your program can create. If you're not there yet, then offer for a lower price and get those testimonials, get that success to prove it to yourself and to prove it to the people that you're going to want to have in your program.
That's why, oftentimes, when we all do a beta, we'll do it at half price. And then, we're, not because I don't believe in the results that we're going to get, it's just, I know I'm going to be going through a few growing pains while I hash out the content, while I do it live instead of recorded, like there's just things that are going to be a little bit more in process. We have our cashflow CEO program, that's our signature program, and when we started, it was called Smart Six Figure Finances. I did it live and it had five modules, and then it turned into six modules during the program.
So, I was like, I think there's a six. I don't know what it is. I was full disclosure with the people that were taking it, but they got a savings in exchange for giving me a ton of feedback. Then the feedback that they gave me helped me really take that program to the next level. I think that it's all about getting to that point of where you are so comfortable with your price, that it's like pass the salt, pass the pepper, here's what I charge.
Then you don't feel like you have to discount, like you're so aligned with that price that you're charging that you can say, this is the price and not flinch. If you're in a webinar, your voice doesn't have to change six octaves up. You're like, this is what I charge. We've all done that. I've listened to some past stuff of mine, and I'm like, oh my gosh, I totally do it. I do think that it helps to practice. It does help for you to like, even write it down on a piece of paper and post it next to your desk.
It's almost like, when you're on a call with somebody who's interested in what you have, you have a pricing sheet and you align the problem that they have with the solution that you're offering, and then you're like, okay, for that solution, it's going to be this program of mine, and this is what I charge. You end your voice on down, not an up. With a period, not a question mark.
Salome Schillack:
Yes.
Belinda Rosenblum:
I think that all of those are good little exercises for you to be like, yes. I would love it, honestly, if you like write down your prices or type them up and post them up, and put a picture on IG and tag the two of us and. Show us that you're getting clear on your prices, and so clear that you're literally able to post them up.
Salome Schillack:
Oh, I love that. So, if you're listening to this, put up a picture on Instagram with a sticky note or a little, you don't have to show it publicly, but show us the sticky note, show us the note, and tag myself and Belinda, and let us know that you are writing your prices on a piece of paper. I love that, because if you have a pricing sheet, but you can almost pretend it's someone else's pricing sheet, if that helps, I want to say. If it helps to say, well, right now I'm wearing the sales person's hat in my business, but on another day, I wear the CEO hat, and the CEO gave me this pricing sheet, and the sales person is told just to stick to the pricing sheet.
You can split your personality if you need to. If that means that you tell yourself, the boss said, the price is the price, and you're the boss, but now you're also reading off of a price sheet. If that helps, by all means, do that. I think you touched on something where you said we need to own and take responsibility for the people that we attract, and that's an indication of the money mindset stuff that we need to deal with.
But there's a side to that where I see sometimes my students struggle because they own too much of, somebody requested a refund, and now they make that mean I charge too much. Or here's one that I got this week. I sold my course to 10 people, five of them aren't coming to the live sessions. I'm just holding my breath until they ask for a refund. I literally had this conversation with the student this week, the expectation that people are going to want their money back.
I felt that way. When I started, I certainly can associate with that absolute crippling fear, and I can say, once you've had enough refund requests, you get to a point where you don't even have to see it anymore. You just have someone take care of it and refund it and you don't care about it. But when you're just starting out and you, or yourself, still unsure of the problem that you solve, there's a real balance between letting negative feedback from students impact your worth, your worthiness, your image of your own worth, and having that play out in terms of reducing prices or changing prices.
Do you see that happening a lot, especially for new entrepreneurs, especially for people who are selling their courses for the first, second, third time, and they're still working out their marketing message, and they're still working out their offers, and so they're not always getting the best results? What's your message to them when there is still a part of the external validation that needs to happen? How do you balance the external validation and the internal worthiness when you're still trying to figure out like, what is a good price for what I'm offering, and can I solve this problem for this student?
Belinda Rosenblum:
Yeah. Okay. There's a lot of good questions in there. Let me just start at the top from what you talked about. I think that the piece of an expectation of, will they want their money back? You have to really catch yourself when you find that, that's your expectation. My expectation is actually the other way. We've been running Cashflow CEO now for two and a half years, we haven't had a refund request. I think that ... I go into it thinking, we're not going to have a refund request. We're going to deliver, we're going to show up, we're going to give people so much value that they're not going to want to get a refund, because then they're going to lose access to the course. Why would anybody ever want that?
I think that it's about recognizing that the law of attraction is always at work. Either you're attracting the positive side or you're attracting the negative side. So, if you have a negative expectation, then that's likely what you will be attracting back. I really want people to be able to catch themselves when they have that and say, okay, wait a second, what's the fear? What's the limiting belief that's driving that expectation? And how can I actually source that and address that, kind of bring that gremlin into the light?
If I have an expectation of, that they'll want their money back, then take a step back, and say, okay, what makes you think that? What are you actually afraid of? Are you thinking that because they haven't come to a live call? We have people that just do the replays. They come into it knowing that they just make time because they're in a different time zone or they're not going to be able to make it, but then, maybe they're in the Facebook group or maybe they don't ever talk with me on a live coaching call, and they still execute, they still do the work.
For people to catch themselves and to say, wait a second, how do I shift my expectation, and how do I make sure that I'm creating enough value? If you're not sure, then charge a little bit less, particularly when people are doing one-to-one work. I'm like, don't just jump out of the gate and charge $1,000 a month for people because you're going to feel too much pressure, and maybe you can't deliver at $1,000 a month yet. But I remember, when I started out like 14 years ago, I helped some people for free, my moms, my close friends. They were all my first clients to get my success, to have me develop a process and a framework.
Then I charged 275 a month, and then I charged 350 a month, and then I just kept bumping it up. Charge to people at the current price, get comfortable charging that price, raise it. The next two people don't know what you just charged the previous people. If you need to, do that, but it's so important that you always feel aligned with your price, because if you're giving a price because you saw somebody else can get away with that price, well, you don't know the results that that other person can create, and the value is always determined in the eye of the people paying you.
I was just thinking about this the other day, that one of my friends has like a tumor in her brain. It's really crazy. We don't think it's anything, but we're going to know soon. It just reminded me, like, if you find out that a brain surgeon is $10,000 an hour to give you a consultation, but you don't have any brain problem, it's not worth $10,000 to you. But if you know, and you do have a tumor in your brain, and you're like, this is the world renowned person, if they look at my scans and they'll be able to tell me exactly what I need to do and who's the right person to do the surgery on me, that could be the best $10,000 you spent in your entire life.
It's understanding that we need to make sure that we're getting the right people who have the problem that we want to solve. Recognizing that you want to be specific enough so that the right people can say, yes, this is worth it to me. That's the expectation piece. Then I think that the next piece was not letting the negativity from students or things that happen impact your own worth. You touched on that.
Then I think that's a piece of not taking things too personally in your business. I know it's easy to say, and it's like a muscle that you have to build so that you recognize again, as part of that separating yourself from the service that you're delivering, but to recognize that some people will never be happy. You try not to attract them, but there are some of them out there. But to recognize that the best that you can do is be committed to helping your students achieve the outcome that they are paying you to achieve, that they are investing in you to achieve.
I will say that about, so every two years or so, we make a major shift in the business. Two years ago, I shifted to business finance, for instance, and then, about every two or three years, I come out with a new program. We're coming out with Cashflow CEO 2.0 this fall. That's normal to keep evolving. The key part that I've really come to step into recently is, it doesn't make what you're currently doing bad or wrong. If you can recognize that you are serving now, you are achieving results, and there will always be the next level of evolution, and that's why I do think that coaching is so helpful because oftentimes coaches like you or I can see what other people can't see about themselves.
So, we can help them see, okay, this is the little 10% or 20% that you can't see yourself that then opens up the 80% of the growth that you maybe have been missing out on. Yeah, so I think that it's really giving yourself space to be successful in the moment and be grateful for where you are, and to see that there's an evolution that's coming for you in a really good way. That there's always room to keep growing. That I think is the second piece. Then the third one that you touched on was, is there still some external validation that needs to happen as they're figuring this out?
That's why I think it's so important to be collecting the results of your students. We'll have like just stuff on the counters, like thank you notes from our students. I have a little file here of all the notes I've received over the years, or on my phone, I have an album of the wins. I'll screenshot wins from our students. Constantly be collecting the wins, and it serves two major purposes. One is that it's actually reminding your students that you have been the catalyst or the facilitator of the success that they've been having.
Then it aligns them with the value that they have gotten from your program or from your membership. Second, it helps you to remember that, yes, you are in fact creating results. There is something that's coming out of this. I think sometimes we're just so busy in the doing and the coaching that we don't step back and take the time. I actually, I hired one of our students to do some interior design stuff in our house, and I was just chatting with her, and I was like, "Well, how has your business changed since you took Cashflow CEO in October?" And she was like, "Well, at the time, I was maybe ran like 2,500." And she's like, "And last month, I had a $10,000 a month."
I was like, how are you not shouting that from the rooftops? Then I'm like, thinking to myself, how did I not ask that question right until now? That's why now we've instituted Wednesday wins. We're constantly having asking our students, so after Cashflow CEO, there's a Cashflow CEO Academy, so we're in a membership with people on an ongoing basis, and so we're encouraging them, we're doing quarterly reviews so that they take the time to reflect back on how they did in the quarter, and then to start to plan the next quarter or the back half of the year we recently did.
Then it also reminds you, okay, great, these are the results that I'm creating. Then you can use those stories. We know Stu McLaren, and he calls it the circle of awesomeness. It's like, as you help people, and as they achieve results, then you can tell their stories, and then provide social proof for the next people who are like, oh good. It's not just that you've achieved results for yourself. It's that you've also can prove to me that you achieve results for your students again and again, and again, and to keep telling those stories, to keep showing people what's possible for them.
I actually think, it's a little spoiler, but I think the people look at courses and look for reasons why they're not a good fit for your course. Even if they have the exact problem that your course solves, I think that their default, so our brains are programmed to keep us alive, and so it assumes that whatever you've been doing up to this point has kept you safe and alive, so just keep doing that. Don't change anything. Then, when people look at a potential course, like let's say you have an amazing course, and you do have an amazing course, I've seen it, and then they ... There's a part of them that's like, oh, this could be really good for me.
But you have to know going into it, that there is a visceral part of them that is looking for a reason why it's not a good fit. Some of those objections are just coming from fear. If you go into it and you're like, okay, I don't have to let their fears affect my confidence with my price and with the value that my course or program is going to be delivering. Instead, it's about showing them, how can they be confident in the results that you can achieve? How can they trust you, but also trust themselves to do the work?
I think that's often it. It's not that people don't think that we, as the creators, can create the results, with some instance that they don't trust themselves, but it's getting them so excited for the outcome that they can get from your program or membership and recognizing the flip side, which is the cost that they will continue to suffer if they keep making the mistakes that they're making and if they keep staying in the problem. One of the things that we're covering in that pricing workshop is like, okay, what would be the effect of you raising your prices now?
Then what would be the effect if you wait six months to raise your prices? Because I want people to feel the pain of the money that they're leaving on the table by not actually charging what they need to charge, and not finding the space of confidence in themselves to appropriately charge for what they are delivering.
Salome Schillack:
I love that. I love that. I have, every single time I've increased the prices in the agency, I have wished I'd done it sooner.
Belinda Rosenblum:
Yeah. I don't think anyone ever says, oh, I'm so glad I waited to raise my prices. I don't think I've ever heard [crosstalk 00:36:14].
Salome Schillack:
Yeah. I'm so glad I held on to that belief that I couldn't raise my prices. No, every ... I will tell you, every single time, and I'm speaking about the agency because with A-Lister and the launch lounge, I kind of feel like we're still in its infancy. I haven't raised the prices much on either of those programs. But with the agency, I can speak from experience where I have gone from working for free, as a freelancer of Facebook ads manager, to then charging 700, like I think it started with $500 a month, and then $750 a month, which I remember feeling anxious about charging that, and then going to $1,500.
I remember specifically quoting that $1,500 to someone and almost feeling apologetic for how much it was, and then they say yes, and you go, what? Yes. And you sign them up. And then everyone else after that comes on the new price, and you don't feel apologetic anymore because now you're getting it.
Belinda Rosenblum:
You got over it.
Salome Schillack:
Yeah. And then from 1,500, I remember when I put it up to two and a half, and I remember the first person I had that conversation with who signed up at that price, the mind blown moment I had when she said yes, and I was like, holy cow, this is real. This is going up. And then it went up, and then I put it to three and a half, and I was like, great, here we go, and the same thing. There's price increase paralysis something. Something happens when you increase your price, and that first time that you have to say that new price, I think that's what you're saying, like practicing it in the mirror, owning it.
That fear by piece of your brain is programmed. It is conditioned to jump in front of you, kicking and screaming, and go, no, stay safe, stay safe, and you've got to built that muscle to go, no, I'm still going to confidently quote my new price, put it up, own it, and do it sooner rather than later.
Belinda Rosenblum:
Absolutely, and I think that's such a great story. I think that part of it is that, as you were raising your price, you knew that you were getting results, right? If there was a time when you stopped getting results, we would have stopped raising your prices. We would have said, wait a second, hold on. Let's make sure that you can still achieve results and then you can keep going, then you can charge that. Because if you have, again, if you have doubt, you will project that onto them. I think that, when you're on a sales call, they're on problem island, they want to go to solution island and you want to take them on a direct trip to solution island.
But oftentimes, we stop at objection island. It's never good. It's like a deserted stranded island. There's nothing good that happens on objection island. Sometimes praising is more of an art than a science. I think that, that's part of it. I find that it's often, when it comes to our one-to-one rates, that this stuff applies more, or an agency model versus a program. Sometimes it's about recognizing, what do I want this program to be? Do I want this program to be ... It was ironic. We're charging $37 for a pricing workshop on Confidently Raising Your Prices. Somebody wrote me a comment like, this is kind of ironic. Like, are you charging enough for this? Someone was like, I would pay $1,000 for this.
I was like, well, this is intentional. I want people to be able to experience the wind with me. I want people to understand that pricing is one element of increasing the profit and understanding the money side of your business. I'm intentionally pricing it as a low ticket offer. I could create a longer program and I could make it $500. I think pricing is a really important topic, and I'm glad we're talking about it today. When you're pricing, it's also about recognizing where this item, where this program fits into your product suite, where it fits into the offerings that you have.
Do you want this to be a high ticket? I remember, I took a Brendon Burchard conference like eons ago, like 12 years ago or something, it was on sponsorships. He said this really great thing that has stuck with me now, 12 years later. He was like, well, don't look at what you can do right now for a sponsor. Think about, when they're paying you $3,000 or $5,000, then what would you be able to do? So that you stop and you think about, instead of just looking at comparing to my price to zero, because anything will feel expensive to zero, compare it to the cost of them not fixing their problem, compare it to price position against the results that you're going to help them achieve.
Consider it, in terms of not zero, because if you compare anything to zero, it's going to seem expensive. Expensive is all relative. I think that the more that you can own that price, can really say, yes, what I'm delivering is worth that and more, and this is how this offering fits in with the rest of my offerings, like it all starts to click together, and that's why that whole-
Salome Schillack:
I love that.
Belinda Rosenblum:
Yeah, that whole like worthiness and owning your price thing all fits as well.
Salome Schillack:
I love that because so much, I think so much of what happens when we raise our prices is, now you're getting paid more so you can hire someone to help you. And all of a sudden, you're better taken care of, and so you are better able to deliver. I've never thought of it from when that person pays you that money, how will it allow you to take care of them better? I've always retrospectively looked at it and gone, oh yeah, every time I've raised my prices, I have been able to hire more help, but you are so right. It goes forward as well. And you go to say, if I get this price, how will that allow me to take even better care of this student or client? I love that. That's really good.
Belinda Rosenblum:
It's even like when I got this price, right?
Salome Schillack:
Yeah.
Belinda Rosenblum:
What becomes possible? What becomes possible for me?
Salome Schillack:
Yeah, exactly.
Belinda Rosenblum:
What becomes possible for them? And to recognize that you are not serving anybody by burning yourself out. You're not really doing anybody a service by undercharging and over-delivering.
Salome Schillack:
Absolutely.
Belinda Rosenblum:
Just think of, independent of everything else going on in your business, think about, and sometimes it's helpful to not think about ourselves, but think about maybe a coach that you would be hiring. Would you rather hire a coach that is well taken care of, that has a supportive team, that is giving herself the self care, is sleeping at night, isn't working 70 hours, or would you rather have the coach that's charging a little bit less, but is totally burned out and not taking care of herself? That's not the person that you want to be hiring. How can you start to be the person that you would want to hire?
I think that we live the be do have model backwards oftentimes. We think, okay, once I have this, then I can ... Yeah, once I have the money, then I'll be able to do the things I want to do, then I'll be the person that I want to be. But I've always thought about it reversed. Literally, I have a book called Self-Worth to Net Worth. I published in 2012. I talked about this back then, that it's actually reversed. It's, who do you need to be, to be able to do the things you want to do to have what you want to have in your life? And to really flip that so that you start stepping in now to be that person.
Sometimes it's a transition. I totally get that, that you can't just necessarily stop everything that you're doing. However, I would challenge you a little bit to say, okay, when the ... Pareto's principle is alive and well, as Parkinson's law, and I'll tell you what both of those are. Parkinson's law essentially says that the work expands to fit the time that we allow it. When we give ourselves 50, 60, 70, 80 hours a week to work, and we're just kind of working 24/7. It's like we give up the 9:00 to 5:00 to work 24/7. We're not really helping ourselves.
But that, if you say instead, Pareto's principle basically says, the 20% of what we do creates 80% of our results. And 80% of what we do only creates 20% of our results. The challenge that I want to give you is, let's say next week, instead of working five days or more, you're only working one day. If you only have one day to work, which is essentially the 20%, and the 80% is the stuff you're not doing, how do you do the most important things? Just choose. If I only had one day, what would I do?
You would do what I call the RGAs, the revenue generating activities, right? The high payoff things that will create the results that you really want. Sure, maybe you can't scroll as much on the Facebooks or the Instagrams, or whatever, but you're going to make those sales calls, do the outreach, book those JVs, plan your launch. You're going to make a productive time. I do believe that we want to do less, better. I am a firm believer in that. That we, to circle back to the whole worthiness and shame conversation, that it's so easy to get caught up in the hustle. I am a recovering overachiever myself. I totally get this. I have lived it.
Salome Schillack:
Where's the club?
Belinda Rosenblum:
I know. Totally. It's so interesting how we train ourselves oftentimes at a young age, from a young age, based on our parents pushing us oftentimes. Or, us trying to please, like to win external validation again. So, if I get the A, then they'll love me more, then I'll feel like I belong. I actually, I mean, I've done a lot of work around this in the last 15 years or so. I asked my mom once, actually, I was like, why did you push us as much as you did? My family was totally the, you got an A minus, why wasn't it an A? Kind of family. And she was like, "Well, it was actually because ..." I was like, "I'm not sure, it was totally good. I still have it, and I have to really catch myself."
She was like, "It was from a total place of love because I felt like my parents didn't push me enough. They pushed my brother more because he was a boy. I was a girl. I didn't go to as good a college. He went to Harvard. He's a doctor, and he was pushed." And she was like, "So, I wanted you to have all of the opportunities so I pushed you." That was where her heart was, and the conclusions that I reached, because oftentimes we're drawing these conclusions around money and success when we're young, like five to eight or so, four to six even, sometimes that early. It's funny, because my kids are six and eight, and I'm so conscious of what they're seeing.
Salome Schillack:
You're messing them up, but in a whole way that you don't know yet. That's what I tell myself. I'm going to do things not to mess them up in a way that I think I don't want to make them up, but then when they're 30, they're going to tell me I messed them up in a way that I never even thought I was going to mess them up.
Belinda Rosenblum:
Couldn't even imagine. Yeah, totally. But it just gave me a different context. I was like, okay, so maybe I don't have to hustle to belong. Instead, I can decide, consciously now, how much I want to work and why, and to understand, what's that purpose for me in working? Will working more actually helped me serve and help me achieve my goals? I don't know. I think a lot of times it's like we start a business for freedom and we end up feeling more trapped than ever. That's why I help people with the money side of their business, because I don't want them to feel trapped in their business.
I want them to feel abundant. I want them to feel worthy. I want them to feel like they can be in action and they can be safe with money. But oftentimes, because there's so much uncertainty in it, and a lack of understanding, they don't feel smart, they feel like their money is controlling them instead of them being able to master their business money. I think that's all part of why I'm so passionate about this because I want them to ... I want you listening, I want you to be able to create the freedom that you want. I want you to be able to pay yourself. Oftentimes, we would never take this from a job.
Would you ever go to work for big company that was like, okay, we want you to work 70 hours, actually be available 24/7, and you know what? We're not going to pay you. And we do it as moms, but that's a whole different story, but it's ... We get other compensation for that contribution, but that we would never do that. So, I want you to take a step back and say, you do deserve to get paid from your business, but we need to be pricing appropriately and we need to really have a revenue plan that we reverse engineer and make sure that it is actually achieving the goals that you want.
Salome Schillack:
Yeah. I love that so much. I love that so much. On that incredible note, can you tell people where they can learn more about you and about your programs that you offer so that they can find you and they learn to live from that worthy space in terms of their money, please?
Belinda Rosenblum:
Awesome. I would be happy to. Thanks so much for asking, and I feel like, the beauty of podcast is that you can listen and you can certainly go and put up your rates and post the picture, tag you, tag me. I'm @ownyourmoney on Instagram. That's the one platform that I do try and be active on. And we post on stories and all the things. Get a lot of insight into our life and our family and the business that we run. That's part of it, but then it's about, okay, what are you going to do with this understanding? There's a difference between knowledge and knowing, and doing it. I just taught my daughter how to swim. Another thing, I was on the swim team in high school and college, and I was like, I really wanted to learn how to swim.
We started, and then it was, once she could actually jump in the pool, I could talk about swimming all day long, she could read books on swimming, but it's only when she's in the pool and actually moving her arms, moving her leg, that, that's when now she feels like mermaid. [crosstalk 00:51:59]. But that I want you to now take it to that next level. So, we have a few resources that I think can be great. The main one is what we call the Cashflow CEO Dashboard, which is really a way that in literally, just like 10 minutes a month, you can know and track the most important numbers in your business. I'll get you that at ownyourmoney.com/dashboard, and so we'll make sure we include that.
And then we just did that pricing workshop on Confidently Raising Your Prices, which could be a really great next step too. And we have our Cashflow CEO program, which will be coming soon to [crosstalk 00:52:36] internet near you.
Salome Schillack:
Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for what you have sowed into my life, and thank you for what you've shared today. I know there's a lot of listeners who are now going to be looking in the mirror and owning their prices for sure.
Belinda Rosenblum:
I love it. Well, thank you so much for having me on. Know that we believe in you. We know that you are worthy exactly as you are right now. You belong in Salome's incredible community and in our Own Your Money community, and that your success is inevitable. We just need to get you on that path to believing it yourself.
Salome Schillack:
Absolutely. Thank you, Belinda.
Belinda Rosenblum:
Thank you.
Salome Schillack:
Thank you so much for listening. If you had fun, please come back next week, and remember to hit that subscribe button so you never miss a thing.