I Finally Got it: I Can Love my Work AND to Make Money

Foreign welcome to Live with the Pricing Lady.

I'm Janine, your hostess.

This show is all about helping you build a sustainably profitable business while making an unbelievable impact on your world.

Learn from my 20 plus years of experience and from my guests as we discuss their pricing challenges and failures and successes.

Pricing is a way of being or behaving in your business and my mission is to help you confidently charge for the value you deliver.

Pricing either hurts or helps your business.

Let's make sure it's helping you reach your dreams.

If you're loving this show, be sure to rate, review and subscribe to it.

Share it with your friends and colleagues.

And of course, if you'd like to find out more about how to work with me, head on over to thepricinglady.com and book a discovery call.

In this episode of Live with the Pricing Lady, I sit down with Valentyna Coco.

Equity, diversity and inclusion are more than just buzzwords to me, she says, and when it comes to pricing, she struggled.

At first.

She thought to herself, how dare I charge for something I love to do?

I know many of you have felt this way in your businesses, so let's take a look at what she had to say and Valent Valentina's pricing journey.

Sit back, relax and enjoy the episode.

So hello everyone and welcome to Live with the Pricing Lady.

I am Janine Liston, your hostess and I'd like to welcome my guest today, Valentina Coco.

Hello, Valentina.

Hello, Janine.

Nice to be here with you.

I'm so excited to have you here.

We had such a great conversation on the phone previously.

I'm quite excited about today.

Yeah, same here.

So, Valentina, why don't you start by telling people a little bit about yourself?

Yes.

So I'm Valentina.

As you already said, I'm originally Italian and also Chinese.

Hong Kong Chinese.

I grew up in Italy though, and I've been in Switzerland for over 17 years.

I left my corporate career about end of last year to now focus on coaching leaders and into diversity, inclusion and just to create more engaged, better cultures.

It's something that being of a mixed heritage and a woman has impacted me a lot during my corporate career and somehow I just decided to step out and try to do something about it.

And again, setting up my own business with all the challenges.

And that's actually how I found you, the pricing lady to help me solve quite some of them, actually.

Excellent.

Yes.

Certainly diversity is a hot topic in the world these days or today and I think it's wonderful that you're bringing this to businesses around the globe.

So fantastic.

Excellent.

So of course we're here in part to also talk about pricing.

So I'm curious about first of all, how you started your business.

So I started my business as a side business, you could say side hustle, side engagement.

And it was for free.

I mean, I was working in corporate and this goes back to more than three, four, sometimes even five years ago.

I started working on as part of employee resource group and then outside of companies, you know, mentoring people, coaching people, helping with advocacy platforms, helping with students, everything around this topic and just in general, better leadership, understanding and communication.

And I was doing it for free, to help association, to help people, to support friends that had startups and, you know, social programs.

And for a long time I did it for free because it felt foreign to me to start charging for something while I had a corporate job.

It was a big leap.

I didn't see myself as an entrepreneur or something to this was like a service, a hobby that I had.

And then I really had to shift a lot the mindset and that was really hard when I decided to go all in and stop working in corporate, to have it and actually run it as a business.

So, I mean, as many things that come from passion, I started for free, right?

Which is, I think, a path that a lot of people start on.

Now, was it free just during sort of your training period or did you continue doing it for free even after you had your certificates and hours and.

Whatever I done for free for a long time, even after I've done it for free, basically until I stopped having a corporate job because again, it felt so strange to say I'm charging for something while I'm getting a salary.

And in a way it was like, I provide value, but I don't really need the money.

I don't do this professionally or, you know, the startups I was helping.

Social program impacts don't have a budget.

I do it for free.

And in some cases I still do some of this engagement for free because I believe in the cause.

But for me that was just like a default, like I couldn't switch off it.

It was like my salary comes from the job.

This is passion.

Right?

And so how dare you charge for what you love to do?

Exactly.

It was like, you're getting paid already, why are you charging?

And you love doing it and it's fun and all those things.

In my head, I think it's very interesting because of course a lot of people come to starting their own business from after being in the Corporate world or even while being in the corporate world, as was your case.

And so I think it's not an uncommon feeling for people to have.

Yeah, I think it's quite common.

And again, I am not sure if it's more women than men.

I certainly heard this more from women than men, so I wouldn't want to generalize, but I heard it more from women than men.

That this view of starting to charge and seeing as a value and as a. I mean, we know it helps, but seeing it as a business and something worth being compensated, it's a hard switch to do.

And then it's always the struggle of how much and what for and is it too much, too little, what's going to happen, all of that?

Yeah.

Do you think that in part it was like, well, I don't actually have to deal with this until it becomes a necessity.

That is not in the corporate job anymore.

Totally.

I was totally.

I was like, you know, as long as it's free, as long as it's free, I know I'm providing value and I don't need to be afraid of rejection.

Let's be honest, that was also a big part of it.

I don't have to deal with the how much, what is it?

Negotiating it in a way which I learned the hard way after because again, for me, negotiating my salary with a corporate felt very different than negotiating my price with a no profit and association or even a person that was wanting to be coached.

So that was completely different mindset.

But also, yeah, there was this whole thing of I don't have to deal with it.

And also there was this whole utter relief of if I don't ask for a price, they're not going to say no because it's expensive.

So I completely avoided that fear of rejection possibility even by not naming a price for so many years.

Yeah, I think that's really.

Thank you for being so honest because I believe that this is one reason why a lot of people offer their goods and services for free, because they don't have to face the possibility of rejection if they don't start putting a price tag on it.

So that's.

That's a very important insight.

Thank you for sharing that.

Thank you for giving me.

I'll learn from it.

I'm sure that I've faced and done the same thing myself over the years.

So that's really important.

So one of the things that you spoke about when we talked was that as you were transitioning out of this phase, you know, from the corporate world, and then really Stepping out of that into your business, you had some realizations around what was going on with your pricing and what you needed to change.

I'm curious if you can share some of the, you know, that learning or that experience that you had with us.

Yeah, so initially I realized that I.

Well, first of all I realized I had to start charging.

You know, this was a job now and I couldn't do it for free.

And so at the beginning it was connections that were reaching out to me to put together some programs, some training, some coaching and they offer a certain rate.

And I didn't negotiate it, I just took it.

Right.

I didn't want to negotiate it.

I didn't feel like I could.

It was my first paid job.

Forgetting about the fact that I had done this for many years and whatever I was teaching was based on a 17 year corporate career accumulation.

So it's not like something that is just coming from yesterday, but somehow my mindset was like, that's my first paid job.

I don't know how the mindset works sometimes it's funny that way.

And I didn't negotiate it.

So then I went to the second client and my reference point was that first price that I was given and then I realized it was fairly low.

So I actually went to a client with such a low price and I was told that can't be serious.

I mean, you can't be good, right?

If you charge this little, like, what is it?

You're not prepared?

You're not going to give us the follow up?

You are just starting now?

And I'm like, no, I have experience.

So after that I went back out there and I started again pitching myself and discussing and talking and then the big learning again.

The other realization for me was that as I was pitching, I was talking to startups and people that needed coaching and bigger cooperation and my mindset somehow switched and I was able to, okay, realize that if I underprice myself as I did, I would be seen as not competent.

So I was able to raise it to a decent level still.

I knew that for a corporate contract, let's say I had to raise it, let's say 200% compared to what I was charging.

I didn't get there, I still am not there.

It felt just too much of a jump in my mind.

But I was able to increase it to a reasonable level.

Thinking it's a corporation, they have budget or they don't and they will tell me and we'll negotiate.

When it comes to small business, startup or individual people, it was the hardest thing I had to do and I'm still working on tiny increment at the time because I have this feeling of, I don't know, I'm taking the money of another person or a startup which doesn't have a lot of funds and can they really pay whatever the final price that I'm gonna be charging eventually is, should I just adapt it slowly because I already done a couple of coaching programs and workshops at a low price.

What if they find out that other people are paying more?

And all of this chatter and it's like, can they really pay for it?

And what if the other person tells them so?

It's been a lot of a different learning curve in dealing with different type of clients.

So if I understand correctly, it felt easier for the corporate clients because your assumption is they have money to spend and that if I take some of that from them, it's not such a bad thing.

I'm paraphrasing here, right.

I mean, you know, I've been in corporate finance, I know how it works.

We have a budget, it's either there or it's not right.

If they have it, they'll pay.

If they don't, they'll tell you no and you come back six months later.

It's a different feeling.

Is not a personal money, it's everybody gets some budget allocated.

So.

Right.

And then when it came to smaller business or solo entrepreneurs, startups, it felt different because it felt more personal, is what I'm hearing on the one side.

But also I'd like to point out, I hear that you're making the assumption that they probably can't afford it.

So you're making that decision for them upfront, in a sense.

I know, and it's the biggest thing.

Honestly, it shocked me because I'm all about being unbiased and inclusive and diverse and I shouldn't make any assumption on my client and I should then let them decide what it's worth to them and potentially negotiate down if that's a problem.

Yes.

Still, my mindset was so much into is it.

Can they.

It's hard.

I don't know.

Maybe because I'm in that situation though.

I pay for coaching and I never even question it if it's valuable, I pay for coaching.

Right.

So I don't know what is it in that mindset, even when I know that I shouldn't be biased, that it makes it so.

Maybe again, the fear of hearing the no if the price is too high, I can't tell you.

But I just discovered as I'm going through in this last year, adjusting the price, that there is this lot of mental chatter around it.

Right.

Well, I think that's really interesting.

And I also believe that, you know, many people struggle with this as well, because, yeah, it sometimes it does feel different.

And that's oftentimes why businesses have different prices for different types of companies as well.

Not just because of ability to pay, but also because the value that they can get from that service or that product is often quite different as well.

So, you know, these are all really good points.

I'd say that certainly we should try to let other people decide that for themselves.

And it's also why it's good to have different offers at different value and price points.

Right.

So.

So that we can navigate that with them, not for them in that context.

Super.

These are great, great questions.

One of the things that you spoke about that I thought was really interesting, you were talking about the offer that you made, and the company said it was too low.

I'd like to go back to that for a minute because I think one of the things there is that when we underprice our goods or our services, we're not taking ourselves seriously.

And then the question is, how can we possibly expect our clients and customers to take us seriously?

So maybe you have a few words to say about that.

Again, I didn't get to that price with that not taking myself seriously.

It was really more like I had an initial offer and I did not think, somehow I did not think I could increase it all of a sudden.

But it's different when somebody that, you know, makes you an initial offer and you might not want to negotiate it, by the way you should, but you might not want to.

In my case, first offer, first paid gig, whatever, it just felt a big of a leap.

Right.

I don't know.

If it had been maybe 20% below the market rate, I would have maybe adjusted and say, yes, worth this.

But it was a good 70% below the going market rate.

And I felt, okay, I've earned this much.

Now going 70% up, it was a mix of, again, is it too much?

Can I do this leap?

All of a sudden I knew the value that I was bringing, but I felt the gap is too big to bridge in one go.

I have to go step by step.

I have to do this.

And again, I don't know this.

Where does this belief come from?

Because when you go to the shop, they never increase peace.

It never increases.

Two euro every time.

Right.

Or two Swiss francs every time.

It's just Suddenly, another price.

But I had this thing in my head and then I realized actually as a pretty that wake up call, that no, it wasn't being taken seriously.

Right.

And then I had to face it and I'm like, okay, what am I doing here?

Because I'm afraid to ask the market price that everybody else ask.

And I'm not even saying premium the market price, that it's that he's here in Switzerland.

Well, I'm devaluing myself.

And that was a big wake up call because it was like, okay, get over your fear.

Yes, it's a big number.

Yes, you're worth it.

That's what everybody else charges, so go with it.

Yeah.

Wow, sounds like a great transformation.

You're still in the journey in some areas, but you've taken that first step and once you've done it once or twice and you see that there are customers who will accept that, then it doesn't feel so difficult if you end up needing to do it again as well.

Yeah, exactly.

To be fair, having the first customer actually saying yes to that was the relief point where I'm like, this is working.

I am not.

It's not completely out there until then.

I knew it in my head.

But there was that tension behind is it really going to work?

So when the first customer accepted it, it was this giant, the theory is.

Right, the yoga breath of pricing.

I like that word saying, I'll write it down.

Another thing that I thought was really interesting you spoke about was that at the very beginning you kind of told yourself, well, first I have to get testimonials, so I'm going to do it in exchange and I'm going to do this.

And then you got the testimonials, but you still didn't give yourself permission to char or charge properly.

Could you share a little bit about that experience as well?

It was a strange situation because at the beginning it was like, okay, I've got testimonials, I need to get them, I'll exchange.

Fine, I had them.

And then I was going, okay, I need to charge because I'm doing this right?

Everybody else charges.

Why am I not?

I mean, I'm using time after a corporate job, which is never 40 hours, as you know.

So, you know, I'm using a lot of my weekends and evening times and stuff to do this.

And people get benefits, so I should ask for money.

And then the whole mindset came in, which is, you have a pretty big corporate salary.

Don't be greedy.

You know, do it as a karma points or you know, do it again for testimonials.

At some point, you're going to need them.

Why are you going to ask for money?

Potentially, people are going to say no, right?

That whole rejection.

Do you really need the cash?

And is it a business or is it just a hobby that you do, like your passion, you know, like being paid for something you like?

It was like this concept of, if this is not my job, can I authorize myself in my mind to ask for money to do something I actually enjoy doing?

Because it was not my main job and I didn't have to make money out of it.

It was really a big blocker of going, but it's worth money, and then going like, yeah, but don't be greedy.

That.

That whole mindset kept going in my mind for a long time, so basically for another year.

And plus, I didn't charge anything ever.

So I just kept.

And after a while, I even.

I mean, you won't believe it, but after a while, I even stopped.

Stop asking for testimonials because it was like, okay, I've got 10 to 15 and what for, right?

I mean, am I ever going to charge and it's enough.

And so I missed a whole good half a year of testimonials there because I just didn't bring myself to say no.

Ask.

Just ask.

At the beginning, I needed them and, you know, I was asking, and then after a while, I had a bit and I stopped asking because again, this whole thing about, is it really a business, it's a passion.

What if the testimonial isn't that great?

That whole thing in the.

In my mind was excellent.

I find it really interesting, this conflict or belief conflict that a lot of people have that we tell ourselves, if I'm passionate about it, I can't earn money from it.

Somehow if you earn money from your passion, it kind of negates that it's really your true passion.

And yet, on the other hand, you know, all the coaches and all the experts are out there are saying, find what you love and do that as your business.

So there's this huge divide between the way that we think about things or perceive things or a mindset towards things and what people are actually advising and telling you is the best way forward.

I find that really fascinating.

Yeah, indeed.

And it's like, I don't know, just maybe coming from the old days of work, being in a factory, and it's like, okay, if it's not painful, it's not work.

I don't know.

I mean, I'm working really hard to get out of that mindset.

Really hard.

Well, I think, you know, you're not the only one.

I've seen this before many times.

And a lot of the people that I work with, I work with a lot of sustainability startups and, you know, people in that area and I find it incredible that, you know, they say I need your help, but I don't care about the money.

And you're like, wait a minute.

Yeah.

I mean, because the reality is a lot of what I do is helping people with the money.

So if you don't really care about it, then why are you coming to me?

Of course the money is important and they know that on some level, but they don't want to be perceived as being greedy or profit driven or, you know, all of these horrible associations that we have with money.

The reality is that just because I charge you something to work with me or you charge me something to work with you, it doesn't mean that you're taking money from people.

It's just energy moving around and shifting.

Right.

You're 100% right.

And we need to get out of that mindset.

It's just really hard.

Especially as a, as you say, when you are in a field which is openly about helping whatever it is, people, the environment, others, it's hard to say I'm here to help and to make money.

I just make a living like there's nothing wrong to say and I want to make good money.

Actually, I think we should be saying that in a stronger way a lot of the times.

Yeah, yeah.

And be and accept that.

I have had some clients who've been told by their prospect clients that they shouldn't be charging for what they're doing.

I always tell them, no, that's not correct.

I understand that these people need help and want help, but that doesn't mean that you're, you know, that all of us are there and available to give that help and support for free.

We pick and choose when we want to do it, but we can't be there to do it if we don't have some way of living on the other side of it.

Excellent.

So we're going to start wrapping this up and I'd like to ask you if there's one thing that people can take away from our conversation today.

What do you think is most important?

Take yourself and your services seriously and price.

It doesn't matter if you do it on the side of your job, as your job on Sunday, for fun, whatever it is, if they have value and I am sure they have value because everything we do has value for some customers.

Right.

So the if it's very rhetorical.

If, let's say then price.

Because again it doesn't have anything to do with is it your main job or not.

Like don't make my mistake of doing it for three years for free and then get in there.

Okay.

Now I want to make a living and I have no clue on how to price it.

That could have been three years of trial and error of what works and what is too much of a price point.

Like I've missed three years of consumer research basically.

I mean it could have, you could have been farther along with your pricing as well if you had taken that opportunity sooner.

Yeah, very true.

Now that's a great point.

If I summarize it, it's take yourself seriously and the rest the of of the world will as well kind of kind of thing.

And also I get questions all the time from people.

How can so and so charge so little?

And I always tell them, well they're probably looking at it in a different context, from a different space.

Maybe they're targeting different people, maybe this is not their primary source of income.

But it doesn't matter that that's what's charging.

What really matters is what you are charging in the end.

And so that's very important to keep in mind.

So Valentyna, I have two more questions for you.

The next one is tell us a little bit about the value that you bring your clients.

So I help small business owners, startup founder or new managers really to find a better way to engage and lead their team.

You know when you start and you don't have a team or you haven't had a team before, you go through that whole learning curve where the team gets disengaged, you don't know how to have difficult conversation.

Can you get everybody on the same page?

Especially if you have a diverse team and if you don't have it, I can help you with that because you really should have it.

It's great for the business and there is no denying it makes things a bit trickier in terms of finding the right way of cross cultural communication and engagement.

And that's basically what I do.

I help them, I coach them through one to one group programs, workshops.

I basically help them skip two years of painful learning curve with like two to three months of intense coaching on this because I've been to the learning curve myself over 17 years.

So you've got enough history of my trial and error plus the theory and everything else to help them unlock the power of their team and, you know, avoid all those bumps.

Excellent.

So if someone was interested in finding out about how to speed up the curve in their business, where should they reach out to you?

They can reach out to me on the website.

So it's a usual www.

I don't think anybody says it anymore.

So here I'm revealing my age.

Coco Consulting Ch.

Okay, or you can find me on LinkedIn Valentina Coco and you can sent me a message request and ask me.

There is a contact me form on the website.

I'm there.

I can hop on a call and see how I can help anyone.

Excellent.

So I'll put those links in the show notes and in the comments below.

That's where you can reach Valentina Valentina Consulting Ch.

Thank you so much for joining me today, Valentyna.

It's been a real pleasure having you on the show.

Thank you Janine for having me.

It's been an enlightenment.

As always listening to your webinars and talking to you.

I've learned a ton so I'm happy to share.

Excellent.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Live with the Pricing lady, the podcast.

If you enjoyed the episode, rate, review and subscribe to it, then share it with your friends and colleagues.

I love hearing back from you listeners.

If you've got comments, questions or topic ideas, go on over to thepricinglady.com and contact me there.

Not sure where to start when it comes to improving pricing and profit?

At thepricinglady.com you can download a copy of my Self Assessment Pricing Scorecard.

Find out where it's going well and where you can begin improving.

Or just simply book a discovery call with me.

There we can discuss what's up with pricing in your business and how I might be able to help you.

Thanks once again for joining.

Remember, pricing can hurt or help your business.

Let's make sure it's helping you reach your dreams.

See you next time.

And as always, enjoy pricing.