How Hayley Overcame Her People-Pleasing Tendencies to Understand Her Worth and Charge with Confidence
After completing Charge with Confidence, Hayley finds it easy to quote her services and no longer feels awkward when discussing money with clients
Hayley provides a wide range of language services, from Spanish-to-English translation to pre-recorded and live subtitling via respeaking. She has a PhD in respeaking, and the research she has done in this field is absolutely fascinating. Hayley also offers training in respeaking.
When she signed up for Charge with Confidence in December 2020, Hayley had been working as a freelancer for approximately three years. She was at a stage in her career where she wanted to learn more about the different ways of charging and how to give herself a pay rise.
The challenge: helping Hayley overcome her desire to please others to make sure she was charging her worth
Like many students coming out of university, Hayley says that she completed her MA in Translation and Interpreting without any practical knowledge of the financial side of running a business. As a result, she fell into charging for her language services per word but became aware of people charging in other ways and was curious to find out more.
When she enrolled in Charge with Confidence, Hayley really wanted to get a handle on her rates. After three years’ freelancing, she felt she deserved a pay rise and wanted to find out how best to go about it.
At the beginning of the programme, Hayley identified her biggest mindset block in her fear that clients might say no to her quotes. As a people pleaser, she always wanted her customers to like her quotes and think well of her, which was definitely something that was holding her back. If a client tried to negotiate, she would find herself agreeing to a lower price without reducing the client’s demands, meaning that she was devaluing her services.
The solution: giving Hayley the confidence to charge her worth by showing her how to base her pricing on facts and figures rather than emotions
Taking part in Charge with Confidence helped Hayley dispel some of the awkwardness she felt when talking about money with her clients. The programme showed her that it’s completely understandable for freelancers to struggle with their pricing while also normalising the discussion around it and providing a concrete solution.
Through Charge with Confidence, Hayley was able to see exactly what she needed to be taking into account when pricing her services, as well as how all these different elements had an impact on her rates.
The programme provided her with spreadsheets and advice so that she could identify her minimum rate and set an aspirational one too. These objective calculations took the emotion out of pricing for Hayley and helped her to understand the importance of charging an amount that was relevant to her unique set of circumstances.
Indeed, Hayley has stopped being a people pleaser when it comes to her clients. She knows what her minimum acceptable rate is and will only lower the price of a project in exchange for a reduction in the customer’s demands.
“I am super organised anyway, so I already set money aside for tax, pension, expenses, etc. But what the programme really made me see is that we should be charging what we are really worth and that there is nothing to be fearful of. The immediate impact on me is a feeling of relief that I’m not on my own and that other freelancers struggle to charge what they should be charging, raise rates, ask for testimonials, and everything else that comes with running a one-woman business. This has given me the confidence to just go for it!”
The results: Hayley feels confident in her rates and has established a pricing strategy for her services, helping her to stand her ground when negotiating with clients
Four months on from Charge with Confidence, Hayley has a pricing strategy in place that she feels good about. She has three rates for each of the services she provides: minimum, middle, and aspirational. She quotes her middle rate as standard but increases it to aspirational if she knows the value to the client is going to be very high.
On one occasion in particular, a potential client queried her quote, saying that someone else was charging less. Hayley stood her ground. She responded graciously, telling the client that she couldn’t comment on someone else’s business or circumstances but that her rates are what she charges and reflect the value she provides. She offered to reduce the scope of the project to match the other freelancer’s price, but the client said they needed the full scope and wanted to go ahead with Hayley anyway, even though her services cost more.
I love hearing these kinds of stories because they show that your individual profile might offer value to clients that they are willing to pay extra for. It’s proof that if you’re able to highlight this value and are confident enough to charge your worth, people will accept your rates.
As for what the future holds for her business, Hayley is launching a course and feels happy with how she’s pricing it thanks to what she learnt in Charge with Confidence. The rate calculator spreadsheet I provide during the programme contains different tabs for calculating your prices for group programmes and packages too. It’s not the first time I’ve heard about it coming in handy long after Charge with Confidence has finished!
“I’d say that the best thing about Charge with Confidence is Susie! An experienced freelancer with lots of great advice, a spreadsheet magician and all round wonderful person. It’s a great programme to help you get a hold of your business finances and think about the future. It’s a five-star programme. Who would want anything less?”
I’m so glad Hayley feels as though she’s got more from the programme than just a pricing strategy. Her new approach to pricing and negotiation embodies why I call this programme Charge with Confidence. It’s so true that feeling confident in the prices you attach to your services will have a knock-on effect on your business, not only when quoting but also when dealing with customers and deciding how to take your business forwards in the future.
If you’d like to give your confidence a boost when quoting your services and negotiating with clients, Charge with Confidence could be just what you need. Click on the button below to find out more.
