Do What Makes Your Heart Sing
Do what makes your heart sing. Using this idea as a touchstone to build your business will guide you in choosing clients and, most importantly, providing value.
The Price and Value Journey is presented by John Ray and produced by the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX®.
About The Price and Value Journey
The title of this show describes the journey all professional services providers are on: building a services practice by seeking to convince the world of the value we offer, helping clients achieve the outcomes they desire, and trying to do all that at pricing which reflects the value we deliver.
If you feel like you’re working too hard for too little money in your solo or small firm practice, this show is for you. Even if you’re reasonably happy with your practice, you’ll hear ways to improve both your bottom line as well as the mindset you bring to your business.
The show is produced by the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX® and can be found on all the major podcast apps. The complete show archive is here.
John Ray, Host of The Price and Value Journey
John Ray is the host of The Price and Value Journey.
John owns Ray Business Advisors, a business advisory practice. John’s services include advising solopreneur and small professional services firms on their pricing. John is passionate about the power of pricing for business owners, as changing pricing is the fastest way to change the profitability of a business. His clients are professionals who are selling their “grey matter,” such as attorneys, CPAs, accountants and bookkeepers, consultants, marketing professionals, and other professional services practitioners.
In his other business, John is a Studio Owner, Producer, and Show Host with Business RadioX®, and works with business owners who want to do their own podcast. As a veteran B2B services provider, John’s special sauce is coaching B2B professionals to use a podcast to build relationships in a non-salesy way which translate into revenue.
John is the host of North Fulton Business Radio, Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Radio, Alpharetta Tech Talk, and Business Leaders Radio. house shows which feature a wide range of business leaders and companies. John has hosted and/or produced over 1,700 podcast episodes.
Coming in 2023: A New Book!
John’s working on a book that will be released in 2023: The Price and Value Journey: Raise Your Confidence, Your Value, and Your Prices to Grow Your Business Using The Generosity Mindset. The book covers topics like value and adopting a mindset of value, pricing your services more effectively, proposals, and essential elements of growing your business. For more information, contact John below.
Connect with John Ray:
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TRANSCRIPT
John Ray: [00:00:02] Hello. I’m John Ray on The Price and Value Journey. Years ago, I was having lunch with a close friend of mine, a person who I consider to be on my unofficial board of directors, you might say. I was seeking his advice on one of those fork in the road decisions I had to make. And I can’t remember exactly what it was, but I remember vividly the guidance he gave me. Do what makes your heart sing, he said.
John Ray: [00:00:33] I thought of this moment recently as I interviewed a friend of mine, Becky Berry, who’s a terrific career coach, mostly for women, and she talked about wanting to get her clients into a role for which they’d be able to sigh with delight at the end of each day. What a beautiful phrase and what a beautiful idea.
John Ray: [00:00:58] Whichever of these metaphors resonate with you, or maybe you have one of your own, use one as a touchstone as you build your practice. If thinking about a meeting with a client makes your heart sing, then that client is the right one for you. If the thought of that meeting makes your heart sound like my five year old grandson banging on the piano, then it’s time to reassess and do something about it. And it might not be that client’s fault, by the way. It might be yours for having taken them on to begin with.
John Ray: [00:01:33] Let’s expand the lens a bit wider. As solo and small firm professional services providers, we are sometimes captivated and maybe imprisoned by the idea of scaling our business into thousands of customers generating millions of dollars in revenue. Maybe “you see everyone else doing it” and you feel pangs of inadequacy over where you are in your journey. And by the way, “which you’ve blown up into everyone else” is actually a small minority.
John Ray: [00:02:07] A lot of those people you envy, you’ve confused their social media presence with striking graphics, cool videos, and lots of likes with their revenue. And those aren’t the same things. You put the big firm in your rear view mirror because you don’t want to be saddled with difficult clients with corporate demands which are ruining your life. You went out on your own because you wanted to do the work you love. You want to go all out for clients you adore sprinkling value all over them. They in turn love you back because of the transforming work you do for them.
John Ray: [00:02:48] Now, that you’ve made the jump, why are you doing anything other than what makes your heart sing? Why are you in client relationships which make you unhappy? And, incidentally, the client might be secretly miserable as well. Maybe you’re taking on business which isn’t a great fit because you have some artificially inflated notion of where you should be in your headlong quest to scale your business.
John Ray: [00:03:17] Let me say this very plainly. There’s nothing wrong with a so-called lifestyle business. Don’t be shamed into thinking otherwise. Anyone who looks down on your lifestyle business – which is a term I’m not really crazy about – is a jerk, frankly. And you don’t need to be listening to them. There’s nothing wrong with chasing big goals and scaling your business. That’s perfectly honorable. If that’s what makes your heart sing, go with it.
John Ray: [00:03:48] Wherever you are in your own unique journey, don’t forget that the most effective way to scale your business is to change your pricing. This is not my opinion. It’s an accounting fact. It works for lifestyle businesses and for businesses wanting to scale. If you make addressing your pricing a regular part of your management practice, you’ll have a business which makes your heart sing.
John Ray: [00:04:16] I’m John Ray on The Price and Value Journey. Past episodes of this series can be found at pricevaluejourney.com. And if you’re not already a subscriber on your favorite podcast app, I would be honored if you would subscribe there as well. Hey, big news for 2023, I’ve got a book coming out. The title of the book is The Price and Value Journey: Raise Your Confidence, Your Value, and Your Prices to Grow Your Business Using the Generosity Mindset. If you’d like to know more about the book and when it will be released, you’re welcome to email me directly, john@johnray.co. Thank you for joining me.
