How can you tell when a decision is the right one?

by | Sep 3, 2015

decision making meadow-680607_640In this issue of the “Simple Wisdom” ezine I announce Pay What You Choose Coaching. This is something I have been dancing with for a l-o-n-g time. Dancing or going around in circles.

I chose this pricing decision as the topic of a session with my own coach last week. As I told her, I have been coaching for nearly 20 years, and I have never had an issue with pricing my work.

I started low

In the olden days, as a newbie, I was happy to price my services near the bottom of the range. In fact, my first rate was $175 a month for four one hour sessions, which was well below most posted rates.

I was happy to earn that, and I never seriously questioned my choice to low ball my prices as a newcomer to a brand new field in a market that was largely unfamiliar with the concept of life and business coaching.

My rates went up from there

As I gained training and experience, I raised my rates. The first change was an increase to  $240 a month and a reduction in the amount of time to three 40-minute sessions. I raised my fees regularly over the next few years and played with various lengths and frequency of sessions until, in 2013, I was charging $5,000 for six months of twice monthly hour-long sessions.

I’ve written and taught tons about pricing

Over the years I have written and taught a lot about pricing. I’m familiar with the notion that people tend to value more what they pay more for, and I think that is often the case.

I’ve coached clients who had blocks about charging for their services, and I kept questioning my motivation. Was I suddenly in the grip of doubt about my value? Had I turned over night into someone who couldn’t have a straight up conversation about money?

Beats me.

The truth is I don’t know what’s up with this shift

I honestly don’t know what’s behind this pricing shift. That troubled me until my coach asked me a question last week that shifted everything.

The way I heard it, she asked what happened if I let go of the need to understand.

Letting go of understanding freed me to do the obvious thing

Letting go of needing to understand what’s going on freed me to notice a simple fact: except when I was second-guessing myself or trying to figure out what is going on, I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

I wanted to offer Pay What You Choose Coaching.

I could follow my inclination or fight it

I realized that the only thing keeping me from being 100% comfortable with doing what I wanted to do was analyzing it. And since analysis has never, ever been able to shine much light on inspiration, it wasn’t helping.

There are no rules about pricing

The rather disorienting truth is that there are no rules about how to price your services or run a business or a life.

There are models. There are cautionary tales. There are theories. And they can be valuable. I’ve gotten heaps from them over the years.

But right now models, cautionary tales, and theories obscure rather than clarify, so I am setting them aside in favor of an experiment.

I don’t know how long the experiment will last

Who knows how long I’ll price my services this way. It truly doesn’t matter. Now that I’ve made the decision, I’m excited to see how it goes. As is my wont, I will certainly keep you posted.

Here’s how Pay What You Choose Coaching will work for now

For the time being, I’m offering 55 minute coaching sessions on a Pay What You Choose basis. The ground rules are simple.

  1. Use my online scheduler to select a Pay What You Choose time on Wednesdays between 8:00am and 1:00pm Pacific Time (11:00am – 4:00pm Eastern Time, 3:00pm – 8:00pm UTC/GMT). Click here to choose a time: https://mollygordon.com/scheduling/
    NOTE: PWYC Coaching is now available on Tuesdays and Thursdays, too!
  2. Please schedule a single session to begin with. When you and I talk, we can determine together if multiple sessions are a good idea and talk about how often they should occur.
  3. When you schedule, there will be a place to tell me how much you choose to pay. I will send you a PayPal invoice for that amount and ask that you pay that prior to our session.
  4. You can choose to meet by phone, Skype, or Zoom.

Is there something you’ve been running around in circles about?

Is there something in your life or biz that you’ve been chewing on for too long, analyzing endlessly without getting any clearer?

If so, I invite you to ponder the question my coach offered me. What happens if you let go of the need to understand?