Candice (00:00.226)

Hey, hey, it's your coach Candace. Have you ever had a client ask you for something? And your instant reaction was, that's easy. I'll just take care of it. And you didn't charge a thing for it. What are you doing, by the way? What are you doing? It might be bigger than that though. Maybe there's a whole piece of what you do that comes so naturally to you that without even really thinking about it, you've priced it like, it's no big deal. That is what I want to talk to you about today.

Because I think you're taking for granted how easy some things are for you that you're able to do naturally. And that ease messes with how you see the value of what you do. As we head into Q4, my favorite season, an engagement season, when the asks and the inquiries start rolling into your inbox, God willing, fingers crossed, an avalanche of fantastic rich people. This is the exact blind spot.

That is going to cost you the most money. And so today's episode is for the wedding pro who has been doing this job long enough that a lot of what you do feels very effortless now. Notice I didn't say it doesn't feel aggravating. It just feels effortless. And if that's you, I want you to stay with me because by the end of this episode, the whole it's so easy for me is going to mean the exact opposite of what you think it means. So let's get into it.

Candice (01:31.384)

Hey you, welcome back to the Power and Purpose Podcast. If you're new here, hi, I'm Candace. I'm a former wedding planner, I'm a business coach, and I'm the person who is about to catch you underpricing the thing that you're best at. So if you're new here and you haven't subscribed yet, do me the biggest favor, hit the follow button where you are listening so that our new episodes, nearly every Tuesday, land right in your feed.

And if you're returning to this show, welcome back to a really great episode. I've made this one short. Well, at least I hope it's gonna be short. You know I like to chat. Hopefully it'll be short enough to give you just a little injection of strategy today. Now, if you've got a business bestie who's always saying, this is so this is that that's the easy part. I don't really charge for it, then I need you to send them this episode. Send it to them before they give away one more thing this season.

And if you catch yourself doing what I'm going to describe to you in this episode, you know I want you to pull out your phone, open up Instagram, DM me, candace.copala, and share with me an aha that you had during this week's episode. Now, before we get into the meat and potatoes, little cue update.

I'm so excited to announce that we have rolled out this week our guest list feature, our room block feature for planners. I spent so much time creating this. It was literally one of the biggest features that we've rolled out. Who knew? Guest lists and managing guests were so complicated. Well, I expected it to be complicated, but I didn't expect it to be this complicated because when I started pulling back the onion of guest lists.

And everything that's involved in guest management, I really went into all the far reaches of the things that planners do that most software doesn't account for from destination work, flights, travel, check-in, room blocks, gift bags, rolls, notes, all the things. And it really became a big project, a much bigger project than what I and what I anticipated. It also was a really fun puzzle to put together because if you've been listening to the show,

Candice (03:43.078)

First of all, if you don't know what the hell I'm talking about, I'm launching a wedding planning software for wedding planners. And I'm doing it backed by some of the smartest, most talented, most generous people in the tech world. You can go a few episodes back and hear more about this. It is the episode where I'm making a huge major announcement. but back to guest lists and and then I'll wrap this up. This was one of the most complicated things that I had to untangle. And it's so complicated it took me a very long time, much longer than any other feature.

But I'm happy to say that our beta testers are using it. And not only did I want the guess list feature to function really well like a custom spreadsheet, but I wanted the point of Q, the whole ethos of what we're building here is intelligent wedding planning software. That means Q knows how to do things for you because it thinks like a wedding planner thinks. And guess lists required a lot of thinking, a lot of

A lot of thinking about households and who's related to who and what this should do. And if somebody's a VIP, here's what we need to know. And gosh, it was just a lot. But also very exciting to get this in the hands of planners. Now, up next, I'm working on some really big projects. I seem to have saved the most complicated for the end. I am working on floor plans, which you guys, what we have already started making is like so insane.

I'm working on floor plans because Guestless has to talk to the floor plan. And I'm working on Teams, which you guys are going to freak out when you catch a whiff of what Q is going to do for Teams. I have so many planners in my orbit who are solos, solo entrepreneurs, and I have so many who are growing teams, starting teams, and maintaining teams. And I want Q to be.

The best software, whether you're a solo business owner, you have a small but mighty team, or you're a bad bitch with lots of team members. So that's my queue update. Stay tuned to hear how this comes together. I have a feeling there are gonna be some challenges as we build out floor plans.

Candice (05:59.682)

Back to today's episode because we're talking about sales season. And I'm sharing with you something that I told one of my clients recently that's gonna change how you price this season. And so let me set this up for you and where this topic actually came from. I was on a call with one of my incredible clients recently, and she was telling me about her design process and just how she can walk into a venue and immediately know and immediately see it.

Fully in its all its glory for her client. She can see where the tables go, how she wants to design this, what needs to change here, how the lighting should be, like what the room needs and what it doesn't need. And she can see it in her mind. She can just literally close her eyes and it just comes together. It takes her less than 10 minutes to figure it out. And she's done this a thousand times. And in the same breath, she's also telling me that she's not sure she can really charge.

what she wants for design and all her design ideas. So we're sitting in this coaching call and I'm like, mm-hmm, okay. And meanwhile, her couple has like a hundred, not even a hundred, three hundred pins saved, all a hodgepodge of crazy ideas that do not make sense. They have all these questions and they're very nervous about the design of their event because they can't picture any of it.

And so the thing that she does in 10 minutes is the thing that they couldn't even do in 10 months. And this is the crux of today's episode. And this is the conversation that inspired the conversation we're going to have here. And it is very simple. The fact that it's easy for you and hard for everyone else to understand is proof that the value of what you do is much higher than you're giving it credit for and that you're pricing it for.

And can you see how simple it is now to understand this? Using the example of my client, something that she does naturally, easily, comes naturally to her. She just walks in and knows. Much like you, the things that come naturally to you, how a client describes their idea and you can instantly see it translated into paper. How you are able to, in a literal nanosecond,

Candice (08:22.742)

Know how to frame a photo in a moment that is not repeated, and you nail it every time. How you know how to change the camera settings on your camera to capture this, how you know how to frame that photo, how you know how to move just one inch to the right to capture something that will never happen again and nail it. That, my friends, is magic. It's skill, it's talent, it's

Intuition. And it's expensive, babe. That's expensive. It comes naturally to you. While many people, even people in your fields, it doesn't come naturally to you. They have to fight for it. They have to work for it. They have to train for it. This is something that I want you to keep in mind during engagement season.

Candice (09:18.924)

And while we're on the topic, let me give you the three things I want living in the back of your mind every time you price something for 2027 and 2028. Please don't take any 2029 clients. Please don't do that to yourself. So put this in the back of your mind every time you price something, or you say, sure, no problem, this upcoming season. The first thing.

That I want you to know is the stuff that comes naturally to you is the stuff that you are likely undervaluing and you're not noticing. This is the real psychological thing, and it's sneaky. You can see how sneaky this is. When something is genuinely hard for you, you have no problem charging for it. You feel the effort, you feel the worth. You know, somebody's gonna have you running around all over town, taking up your time, dealing with all this stuff. You're gonna charge accordingly, right?

But the things that you're gifted at, the things that come naturally to you, I find that our brains just files those things under no big deal. And it shows up in one of two ways. The first, a client asks you for something and you go, yeah, that's easy. I'll just do it. And you don't charge for it. Stop doing that. Two, this is the bigger one. There's a whole part of your service that is so effortless for you and you've priced it like it's worth less than it is. But not today, babe.

You're gonna flip this around. The reason it's easy for you is that you've done it a thousand times. And the reason your clients are hiring you is that it's not actually easy for them. They can't do it all. They can't do it like you do it. And so that exact thing that you're just waving off like it's no big deal is the thing that they're literally hiring you for because they cannot figure this out on their own. That is so valuable. And it's sitting right there in plain sight.

So, on that note, the second thing I want you to file away in that beautiful brain of yours is that they're buying the outcome and not the hours it takes. We love to price like we're selling time. We love to be like, that's gonna take me 20 hours to do. You gotta think about the meetings, the hours on site, the creative hours, the emails answered, the back and forth. But most people are not shopping for your hours. And if I could also make the case.

Candice (11:42.922)

About craftsmanship. So I want you to think about the Birkenbag. I love using air mes in an example because it is priced ridiculously, or is it? The Birkenbag is one of the simplest bags on the planet. And that's actually why it costs what it costs. The craftsmanship. The amount of hours it takes an artisan who's been doing this for 20 years. Simple isn't cheap. Simple is often the most expensive thing.

And so when you look at the work that comes easy to you, your client is paying for the wedding that runs smoothly, or the vendor team that they trust, or the beautiful images they see in your portfolio. The version of their day where nothing goes wrong and you clearly make it look effortless. Effortless is actually the outcome. And I don't want you charging less for it because you make it look easy. The ease of it all is the entire point of hiring.

You. And so when we look at the number of hours something takes you, yes, that's valuable. It's valuable for you to make sure that you're pricing it accordingly. But we also have to look at the number of hours it's taken you to make this easy. One of my favorite examples of this is a dentist. There's this funny little story. I think it's a marketing story. I'm not sure if it ever really happened, but I imagine maybe it did, right? Somebody goes into the dentist's office and they're going in for a root canal. And

They're like, my God, it's only gonna take you five minutes. And this cost, and I'm obviously it takes longer than that. I don't know how longer Rook it all takes, but picture that it takes a short amount of time. The person's like, wow, it only it's only gonna take you five minutes to do this. And I'm paying you three thousand dollars out of pocket. Like, wow, you're really raking it in, aren't you? And the dentist says, Well, I can take longer if you want.

And the patient's like, yeah, no, I guess I'll pay three thousand dollars for five minutes. Sure, right? What a great example. Because what it's illuminating is, well, if you want to sit here in pain longer, if you want to be uncomfortable for longer, I can certainly make that happen for you and charge you the same. Or I've developed this expertise and this method and this way of doing something that takes what used to take 25 minutes of being uncomfortable in my chair, and I've whittled it down to five minutes. And yes, that does cost more because

Candice (14:03.244)

Time is money. And so remember, people are buying the outcome you produce, not the number of hours it takes you to produce it. But even still, you have spent way more hours producing what you are doing than what you see on paper for that one client. Some of you have been in business for a decade. Think about all the hours you've spent honing in on your craft, learning.

Making mistakes, fixing mistakes, outing fires, seeing firsthand what bad decisions do, all of that, all of that increases the value of what you do by more than I think you recognize. And the third thing that I want you to file in the back of your mind is you set the price by deliverable, not by the circumstances. And this is the reframe.

That I gave my client on that coaching call and I want it to be yours this season. And this goes back to my dentist analogy. Imagine they gave you a discount because it only took them five minutes. No, they're gonna charge you full price for it, and you should charge full price for it too. But I want you to charge a full price proportionate to what you believe the deliverable is. So don't lower your price because of the circumstances, because it's easy for you, because it only took you a short amount of time.

To come up with a concept to make something happen. What you're doing there is you're creating an environment where you can support this client at the full price it would take to do it. So the design that came to you in 10 minutes, like my like my coaching client, full price. The deliverable is the same, even though it didn't take you the same amount of time that it might have taken you a year ago, 10 years ago, or it might take somebody else. Think about your eye, your expertise, the vision.

That they could have never gotten on their own without you. That is worth what it's worth, whether it took you 10 minutes or 10 weeks. So you're not pricing based on the hours that you spend, you're pricing based on the years it took to make those hours effortless. And this is what I wish more experts kept in mind every time they priced their products or services. So on that note,

Candice (16:26.584)

I'm gonna leave you with one thing to sit with. The next time you hear yourself say, that's easy, no problem. Please don't say that out loud. Catch yourself. Catch yourself. Because that sentence is usually the sound of you about to undercharge. Something that comes effortless for you, but that is actually worth a lot of money. And instead of letting that slide past your lips, ask yourself if this is so easy for me.

And so hard for everyone else, what is that actually worth? Now, if you want help seeing and pricing your value, seeing and pricing your value and the messaging behind that, the pricing and the confidence to send proposals without flinching or flinching, but also being like, yeah, I'm worth every dollar. That's the kind of thing that I do with my coaching clients inside Wedding Pro Insiders.

So make sure that you're on the wait list to learn more about when spots open up in my mastermind. Thank you so much, friend, for spending this time with me today. I know your inbox is about to get loud with incredible, amazing inquiries. People who are rich and fabulous and easy to work with. And don't forget to price your expertise accordingly. I want to remind you there's so much power in your purpose. I'll see you next