Fearless Pricing for Makers: Setting Rates That Match Your Skills, with Casey Brown

Creative Entrepreneurship and Pricing with guest Casey Brown

In this episode of Measure Twice, Cut Once, I introduce to you my special guest Casey Brown, a pricing expert and author of 'Fearless Pricing' and founder of Boost Pricing.  Casey's TED Talk can be viewed here.  Casey talks about helping artisans command the prices they deserve and shares insights on pricing, valuing one's work, and building confidence as a creative entrepreneur.

The discussion covers practical steps for setting price floors and ceilings, overcoming the fear of pricing, and improving negotiation skills. This episode aims to empower creatives to confidently monetize their crafts while staying true to their passion. 

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00:00 Welcome to the New Season
00:29 Introducing the Season's Focus
01:29 Meet Casey Brown: Pricing Expert
02:40 Diving into Pricing Strategies
10:25 Understanding the Floor and Ceiling in Pricing
18:01 Building Confidence in Your Value
31:32 Casey's Inspirational Journey
34:31 Conclusion and Farewell

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Transcript

Susan: 0:48

Welcome to a brand new season of Measure Twice, Cut Once. If you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you might notice something a little different this season. Over the episodes, I've shared so many incredible stories from crafters who've poured their hearts and souls into their quilting journeys. And those conversations have been magical. Hearing about the challenges, the breakthroughs, and the pure joy of creating something beautiful with our own hands. But this season, I'm taking a slightly different path. I want to dive a little deeper into the behind the scenes of not just quilting, but building a creative business that truly lights you up. As someone who's navigated the exciting and sometimes bumpy world of turning a passion into a profession, I'm excited to pull back the curtain and share my own experiences. Some episodes will be just me diving deep into my personal journey, while others will feature guests who are also navigating the world of creative entrepreneurship. We'll explore the nitty gritty of building a creative business with its lessons learned and the unexpected challenges that come with transforming your craft each day. Into a thriving enterprise, and don't worry, I'm not leaving storytelling behind. Instead, I'll be weaving them into the conversations about what it takes to grow a business while staying true to your creative spirit. So whether you're dreaming of starting your own business, or you just love hearing about creative entrepreneurship, this season is for you. Casey Brown is a pricing geek, author of the new book, Fearless Pricing, and professional speaker with a passion to help leaders, entrepreneurs, and sellers command the prices they deserve. She's helped over a thousand companies generate over 1 billion in incremental profits. In her signature keynote, Casey demystifies customer tactics and arms audiences with practical, ready to implement steps to negotiate fearlessly. Price confidently, and her TED talk has been viewed nearly 4 million times. She's the founder of Boost Pricing, where she leads a team of experts who help companies discover their true pricing power and sell at higher prices, and watch their profits rise as a result. So Casey, welcome into the podcast.

Casey: 3:00

Thank you so much. I'm delighted to be here.

Susan: 3:02

This is so great. Casey and I met in person,, we're in the same pod of a coaching workshop. And as soon as I heard you talking about what you do, of course, my ears perched right up because in the field where I with artisanal work and creatives. pricing is a big issue. We don't know how to do that well. So of course I wanted to pick your brain. But before we get into the nitty gritty, just tell me something that's new and exciting on your horizon right now.

Casey: 3:30

great question. you mentioned in your introduction of me the book but that's just launched, so it's only been, in print for a couple of weeks, and so that's still really new and exciting for me to be, sharing about the book. And I'm, it's important to me because, I have a mission. around pricing. For me, pricing is about helping people who are excellent at what they do and pour themselves into an extraordinary outcome and a high quality product and a world class customer experience. Seeing those folks go under rewarded by accepting mediocre pay for excellent work really fires me up. And, and so I'm on this one woman mission to, to eradicate underpricing that's rooted in fear, which is the reason most underpricing happens. And, I can't be everywhere. At once. And so the book I think is my, is part of that mission to really get the word out. Not only that you deserve to be paid for your excellence, but how to do it and the confidence to match so that you can actually command the prices you deserve.

Susan: 4:31

And that, of course, is key. For many of us that's a pipe dream to get paid what we feel like we're worth and because conveying that is, is the difficulty. Is this your first book, Casey?

Casey: 4:41

It is. Yeah. It's been about 80 percent written in my head for a decade. And I finally got serious about putting some words on paper and it was a bit of a process of course. But I learned a lot. I'm excited about that. The next book. So I'm already starting to write that one in my head, which is about how to do price increases in a way that is palatable for the seller and the buyer. The buyer is who we spend all the time worrying about that they're going to get upset or complain or shop somewhere else if our prices are too high. But usually the biggest obstacles to price increases are the seller.

Susan: 5:13

I, gosh, I think you're right. And it's something that I'm a little bit passionate about in my field too. So long arm quilting is my thing. So we, I'm offering a service then that is not a necessity, right? So it's so easy to fall into the trap of like, how can I. really show what my value is. So maybe we should probably start a little earlier. What I want to ask you is how does this apply to artisans, to people in the type of work that I do? But I want to know a little bit more about what is a pricing consultant? Like what are the steps you take when you're, when you see someone who's undervaluing themselves, what should they do first and then next? And how do they work through that process?

Casey: 5:53

Great. Let's start with the first question. So I, when you said, do you want to be on this podcast? I said, yes. And then I think maybe from the outside, somebody who doesn't know you as well. And I, me as well might think, why would a pricing person be on a quilting podcast? But there is so much richness in this topic for creatives. and for people who sell their craft. And I've got actually, if anybody I can send some stuff if you do show notes, but if anybody who's listening would like some of these resources, I've got some videos and blogs I've written specifically for creatives. And what I would call people who, so like nobody, my guess is that nobody listening to this podcast who is interested in what you have to share and teach Decided to become hang out their shingle as a quilter and selling their wares because they love selling conversations and they love negotiating with customers and they love spending time in spreadsheets, figuring out the numbers that isn't the, that isn't what drew them to this work. And that's where quilters have something in common with. Marketers or photographers or video production experts. These are people that have craft, craftsmanship and expertise, right? They're masters in something very personal that they're very passionate about. And so this means that they are necessarily in kind of a seller doer role. But for a lot of people in that role, the seller side of the job is the necessary evil. It's the part they dread. It's the part that they hate. It's the part they fear. They're most uncomfortable with it. And they will go to the, the ends of the earth to get better at their craft. They're not spending as much time or effort, or even a fraction of it, frankly, on how do we make sure that we're investing in our ability to get paid for that. Excellence that we pour into our craft. The other thing, and there's a whole bunch, I could talk for a whole hour about mindset limiters of creatives. I'll try to contain myself, but I'll just mention one

Susan: 7:48

one more.

Casey: 7:49

There's this challenge that if you sell a widget, anything, I don't know, I'm sitting here holding a pen, right? If you're a pen salesperson, you can talk about the quality of the pen and the attributes of the pen and the, and if somebody says no to you, it's okay, they don't want the pen, right? But if you're selling your own artistry, artistry. When somebody says no to you, it can feel like they're saying no to you. Like it's a personal, personal a personal rejection.

Susan: 8:13

Because so much of us is in the thing that we're doing. It's That's right. That's right. And can feel like a repudiation of your skill, your talent, your worth, your value. And that, that is, maybe the starting point of the answer to your second question is what do we do? It's it's really important to unwind the stories we tell ourselves about customer interactions around pricing. In other words, My guess is everybody listening to this, it has done some version of they're walking down the street, they see a garage sale, there's a beautiful rocking chair there that they know would be perfect in the den, it's marked at 20, you think, oh my gosh, steal, I would pay 50, but then you say, would you take 15? Human beings are wired to hold on to resources and save money. And so we've learned over our history of a species, how to, negotiate to hold on to what we already have to keep as much of that as possible and then get this thing we want. And If we understand that and we remember what it's like to be a buyer when we sell, then it starts to allow us to decouple the feeling we have when somebody says, Oh my gosh, and I don't, I don't know what the number should be to 200, 2000, 20, 000, 20 million. It doesn't matter Two,

Casey: 9:27

to 200. Oh, my gosh, that's crazy. I wouldn't pay more than a hundred. And when we hear something like that, what starts to happen in our confidence is. You're not worth that. And what it really is just a customer doing what customers do, humans doing what humans do, which is trying to hang on to their dollars. And so separating tactics from truth is a really important first step

Susan: 9:50

That's incredible. And you're absolutely right. We are so bound up in what we do. And in fact, loving what we do and in many ways, it feels like creatives are often very generous people too. And we, yeah, we want to do the best possible thing, and yet we don't know how to attach a value to that. So where do we start then? If we want to. figure out, you mentioned spreadsheets, but there's probably less Robust ways of valuing your time. But like, where do you start in saying and attaching a value to something that is intangible, like your time or like even your skill as an artisan? Like, how do you quantify that? You don't have a degree to hang on the wall or anything.

Casey: 10:33

So it's I have an unsatisfying answer it's not terribly

Susan: 10:37

It depends.

Casey: 10:38

I'm sure. I'm like, yes, I'm a consultant. So of course, I say it depends. No, I would love to be able to say to everyone listening and do this, take these three steps, do this quick little math and boom out pops the perfect price, but it doesn't really work like that, particularly in the world of subjectivity.

Susan: 10:54

Which all art and creative expression exists in this world of subjective value. So I would encourage, but that said, I don't want to just say, Oh, too bad. It depends. It's too hard to figure out. So good luck. What am I doing on this podcast? If I can't bring some useful, helpful ways to think about it. So first step is really thinking about two different price points. One is the ceiling and one is is the floor.

Casey: 11:16

So if we start at the floor, I would say everyone should know this number, even if you don't intend to ever charge it. What is the least

Susan: 11:26

that

Casey: 11:26

you should have somebody say yes to you and you should say yes to them and still be okay?

Susan: 11:31

By be okay, do you mean feel okay about it, or do you mean Do you know what your costs are and you're like breaking even at that point, is that be okay?

Casey: 11:42

Yes, so let me it's both of those things depending on where your floor is And so at the very minimum it has to cover your hard costs and some Modest measure of your time. So if you may say, and I, I'm a, I'm an expert in this and I've made mistakes before where I've ended up doing work that turned out to come back to minimum wage. And I'm like, how did I do this to myself? I'm an expert. But at least say, okay, if I'm going to pay myself, quote unquote, at least X, and

Susan: 12:10

at least McDonald's wages

Casey: 12:12

for, so it can be modest at least X per hour. And it takes me this many hours and I have this much of material. And I know that I want to. Have some measure of wear and tear on my machine and equipment and electricity. So I'm going to build in a making this up 3 an hour for that. And I'm so you even if you're guessing, try to get your arms around your costs at a modest rate for your time and say that is the absolute floor. I'm never ever saying yes to selling anything below that.

Susan: 12:41

And that right there is already a breakthrough because we creatives tend to not even think that way when someone asks us, can you do this? We just think, Oh, what a worthy project. Of course I'll do that.

Casey: 12:55

Yeah.

Susan: 12:56

And we don't even stop to think if I have a floor and if this is below my floor, if it's a way down there in the basement, I just can't say yes. So I have to find a gracious exit. We don't even stop for a second to think that.

Casey: 13:09

Think that through to do that math in our head or to at least have some and so that's step one. And if that's a breakthrough for folks listening, start there. Just start to, to be a little more, and I, this doesn't have to, if there's folks on the phone that are on the listening to the podcast that are thinking like, oh my gosh, I hate math. This sounds complicated. It doesn't have to be some, 70 line accounting of your time and costs, just at least an approximation that, that says, I'm going to make sure I don't end upside down on a project. I say yes to everybody in the world who sold anything has been sorry on the other side of a yes. Sometimes we've been like, why did I say yes to this? This is a nightmare for me. It's a horror. Like we're trying to prevent the regret of saying yes to the wrong projects

Susan: 13:52

And the key is to learn from those oopses. And okay, what am I going to do differently next time? Where has my floor perhaps changed that I need to make an adjustment? Okay, so we've got the floor in place.

Casey: 14:04

that's the floor. Now, anyone who wants to take it to the next level, maybe there's folks that have already been doing something along those lines and they say, okay, but I don't know where I could go from here. I'll describe the ceiling and then I'll describe the process to find the ceiling. The ceiling is more a measure of what's possible. The floor is like, Okay. It's just as it's described. It's a floor. It's the minimum, right? But what people will pay you is rarely limited by the floor Particularly if you are best in class or better in class at your skill People will pay you more because the value is there and it's the quality of the product But also the creativity express the artistry everything else. Maybe the very personal sentimental connection they have to, they've asked you, they've commissioned you to do something, but it's very important to them, like the value and that, that's where it gets a lot squishier. It's where it gets trickier, but I'd encourage folks to at least think about that because the problem with doing pricing based in our time is we get better and faster at things. So how does it make any sense that the better and faster we get, meaning we're producing higher and higher quality, more efficiently, why should we make less for that?

Susan: 15:13

Because it's taking less time.

Casey: 15:16

absolutely. That's my problem with time based production. Approaches to pricing unless we're saying, okay, I used to value my time at 25 an hour and now I'm valuing my time at 50 an hour or 100 an hour or 500. The number itself is less relevant than we have to understand if that's part of our thought process that we have to have a way to scale that number up as we get better. Even if we do that. What the customer is willing to pay is generally not rooted fundamentally in our cost. If you get halfway through a quilting project and realize you made a mistake have to rip a bunch of things out and start over You don't you know charge the customer twice Even though you've got twice as much time in it and twice as much material cost does not drive price only value

Susan: 16:03

does.

Casey: 16:04

So this idea that what they're willing to pay us is somewhere Quite north of our minimum If we're good at communicating and defending it explaining that value and helping them connect with the value that they will pay us more than the floor. And my guess is everybody listening to this podcast has had some of those experiences where they were nervous about a number. They said it and the customer said, okay. Like we've done that where we've exceeded our own expectations. So then the question becomes, how do we get there? So if we understand the concept of a ceiling is the maximum that customers will pay us based in value, not, the minimum we should accept for our time and cost, but the maximum people will pay us based in value. Then the next question is, okay, how do we figure out where that is? And this is the most unsatisfying answer of all. It's you've got a trial and error. No one knows. I don't know. You don't know. Your customers don't know. Nobody knows exactly what this stuff is worth because it is so subjective. And the only way to figure that out is to try it. So if you've been selling a certain product for, 100. I'm totally making up a number here. And you think that I've really been using floor based methodology to price that. And I think I could maybe see where that could go. I don't know. And you don't know if the ceiling's at 200 or 150 or 300. Or so the best way to start to figure that out is try it. And you can do that fast if you want to map out your full pricing power quickly, but it's a risk. Or you can map that out slower. You could say, Hey, I'm going to go up 10 at a time until I start to see that, if I, this idea of win rate, which may be a new concept for some folks listening. It's if I have, if I go to a a craft show and I have a hundred people stop by, I sell a, 40, of these products, these little pillows, whatever. It's okay, so then your win rate's 40%, you've sold to 40 people. Out of a hundred people that stopped by. If you raise it by$10 and you're still selling to 40 people out of a hundred, you haven't found your ceiling. If you raise it and 20 and 130, and once you get to some point where all of a sudden, boy, a lot fewer people are buying this, that can give you some indication that you're starting to get closer to the ceiling now. I would say if you sell twice as many, or sorry, half as many products at twice the price.

Susan: 18:21

It's a win. We to

Casey: 18:22

money creating half as much work that might still be a good idea So I don't over react to maybe a hit to quote unquote win rate if you're making enough money By selling fewer but higher priced items that can be a really satisfying way not to work your fingers to the bone Literally for nothing.

Susan: 18:42

Yes. So agree. So agree. One of the things that you say that we're touching on here is that it's very important to find your own voice. Do you mean your own voice in how you communicate with your clients, customers, or your own voice in your work and what you're producing?

Casey: 18:59

I think both are really important and particularly when you're creating something very personal expression of your talent and your creativity the more authentic you are and in doing so that in a way that aligns with your, your authenticity as an artist. I think that always resonates, right? And it feels

Susan: 19:16

out. Your voice can be heard if it's a very distinctive, whatever it is that you do. And I don't mean your physical voice.

Casey: 19:23

Yeah. Versus mimicry. Oh, that artist is making a lot of money because they're doing, a lot of stuff with, fairies. And whatever, like either topically or style wise we're trying to chase somebody else's style. I don't think that ever works out well. Or as well as it does to just find our own voice and style in our work. And that's, again, across industries that said mostly when I mentioned that I'm actually talking about the, how we talk about our work with customers, how we communicate our work. And so it's finding our own voice and, example is I talk about how to negotiate pricing more effectively. And some of the advice I give, I've heard from, different people over the years, like that thing you just said. Would be really hard for me to say. I would have a hard time saying those words. And I never, like never should you say something that isn't you. You should not say words that are not you and you should not channel a style that is not you because you think my brother in law is a really good negotiator and I always hear him say this. So I'm going to try to say that, Inauthenticity. Smells like it's I say dogs and prospects can smell fear. So if you are Trying to act away It gives off weird strange Goofy vibes and nobody Bye from somebody that they feel like is trying to talk them into something or that smarmy or weird or gross. So if it feels wrong to you, don't do it.

Susan: 20:49

Don't do it.

Casey: 20:50

That said, I don't think the choices are roll over and get paid nothing for my work or be this like smarmy, weird imitation caricature of myself. So what I advocate, and this is what's behind the advice of finding your own voices, find a way that is authentic to your personality. Your values, your style, Your way of speaking or writing that still allows you to respectfully and diplomatically push back against a customer who's trying to underpay you.

Susan: 21:23

And fundamentally, we're back at our knowing where your floor and your ceiling are and having pre decided where your comfortable price point is. I, for me, anyways, maybe this is just me, but pre deciding some of these things super helps me. So knowing what my floor is helps me also pre doing things like almost role playing, like practicing the things I'm going to say, practicing graceful no's, for example. I literally do that before the customer walks in the door. I have a list of maybe reasons why I wouldn't accept a project and I can pull out one and it's gracious and it's not hurtful to them, but still keeps me out of that situation. And likewise, you can practice, or I do, phrases that describe my value or what makes me unique. So is that a helpful way to approach this kind of mindset. It is a mindset about my. Comfortability, my belief in my value. I can't convey it if I don't believe it. In other words.

Casey: 22:24

Yeah. Yeah. There's two really smart things that you're doing that I want to highlight. One is a structure. So you mentioned this, like having pre decided, if we have rules for ourselves, I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do that. I'm only going to do this under this set of circumstances. That structure can be. Really helpful when we're in the moment having a conversation with a customer, I think of Dumbo the, the elephant with the big ears, he could fly because he had the feather, like the feather gave him confidence. Now he could always fly. He didn't need the feather, but the feather was a support structure for him to give him the confidence to, to do this scary thing. And I think of that. Like the idea of a set of rules, a, a set of a sort of a swim lane where it's okay, I'm not going to go here. I'm not going to go here. I'm only going to stay inside of this lane. And if I do that, then I know I'm happiest and my customers are happiest. So I'm going to, I'm going to stick inside this rule set and not use rules as a limiter. But as a supporter of us getting what we want. And so you're pre deciding that, to use your words is to me, that structure, it's giving yourself the feather to to jump out and fly.

Susan: 23:30

It is. I love that swim lane picture because that's how it feels to me. Deciding in the moment is, seldom makes the best decisions. Because I can't think of all the factors when I'm under pressure. But if I think of all the factors aside and establish the barriers of my swim lane, that just sets me up for successful communication. 100%.

Casey: 23:51

The second thing that you do that is very smart that I would encourage folks listening take a page out of your book is this idea of preparing specific things you're going to say, or specific ways you can respond and role playing. Humans. So first of all, pricing is for most people, a relatively fear driven area of our work. If you line up a hundred people who sell stuff, I bet you my house, zero of them would say, I love when I get to tell them what it costs. It's not the area of confidence and joy for most people who sell stuff. It's the area of relative discomfort. That, that means fear is present a lot when we sell. And when we're afraid the amygdala is in charge, it's. Fight or flight. It's not good at reasonable, nuanced, profitable decision making, right? It wants out of the pain and the fear. And so it will do rat like irrational things to make it stop.

Susan: 24:40

Why

Casey: 24:40

that's relevant to this idea of preparing what you're going to say in role playing. It's so the idea of a muscle memory is known to folks, right? If you're taking, if you're a golfer, if you take 10, 000 swings that gets into your muscle memory, there's the same kind of concept in our brains, it's called procedural memory. And so Why muscle memory works and procedural memory works is it becomes automatic. We don't need to think as much to put it into practice. And so you don't have to think as much. If you've swung the golf club 10, 000 times, you get up and you swing and you don't have to think why that's important is if we're under duress, a. k. a. we're in a stressful, scary, quote unquote, fear is present for us as we're having a customer conversation rather than in that moment. While we're afraid and our amygdala is running the show, try to come up with the right words to say our brains are not good at that. So what if we had preloaded our brains with some role playing and create some automaticity around our words such that like when that customer comes at us and says that's a lot more than I thought it was going to be. You do beautiful work, but geez, there's no way I can afford that. If you could do it for X, I'll go with, instead of deciding in that moment, What am I going to say if they do that? What if we had practiced ahead of time? What if we had asked ourselves, what are the different kinds of things a customer might say to me? What am I afraid that they'll say? What do I hope they don't say? And then practicing the answers to those gives us a lot more ability in the moment. To stay present and calm and operate with a little bit of automaticity because we've put it into our procedural memory.

Susan: 26:16

I love that word automaticity. I actually recorded a podcast episode all around it. It's just, I'm going down a rabbit trail here. Totally. But what I do is long arm quilting, right? So I hold the handlebars and I guide this 50 pound machine over quilts and my YouTube show, I talk while I'm doing it. I'm chat chat, chatting with the audience and everyone, so many people always comment. How do you quilt and talk at the same time? And this is my answer. But what I'm finding is it follows through in so many areas of my life, and you've just described that, that procedural memory, something that you learned to do by repeating it, then you don't have to think about doing anymore. And it just runs on autopilot, in the background. So I find that in my practical work, but I love seeing that applied to my thought processes too. So cool.

Casey: 28:33

And it can work and look, nobody likes role playing. I acknowledge that it's awkward, right? Even if we're doing it by ourselves with the mirror of the dog, but especially if we have another human we're trying to practice with it, it's awkward. I can appreciate it's not fun. fun, but I would say it's a little bit like a eat your veggies, right? Like you, you have to if you don't like this particular food, it's really good for you, just, just suck it up, eat it.

Susan: 28:59

It's less pain than being sorry you committed to things of great magnitude.

Casey: 29:05

than you should have

Susan: 29:06

Yeah, it's a smaller pain.

Casey: 29:07

The pain of saying yes to too low of a price lasts a lot longer than the pain of standing firm in your value for the two minutes you're standing in front of the customer.

Susan: 29:17

Yep, and especially if you are a chronic committer, over committer to things at a low price. And I know people who do that and they feel stuck in this paralysis, this rut of, but I can't ever catch up to get myself out of this place. How, this is something I think we, we need to address. Quilters, particularly Artisans, deal with how do we start to build the confidence in ourselves to be able to be, to have faith in ourselves and to be able to convey that to someone else. I just don't know how to tell people where to start with that. I feel like I've progressed a fair bit myself, and for me it has come from contact with other people and hearing other confident people in other fields. Sure. What are your thoughts on that?

Casey: 30:02

I think it's a great question. I'm not sure I have a robust answer to it. I think what you've done has been very helpful. I also, I think that kind of back to that trial and error thing, like the first time you sell something ever, you don't know what people are and, so success, commercial success can start to build. Confidence that, hey, I've sold 10 of these things. People really like this stuff and maybe I can sell it for, 10 more now, because I, so confidence can come from success. It can come from the, being around other confident people, seeing how they communicate and talk about their own value. I also think it's really worth spending a little time really in an inquiry about the value that you provide. Another pitfall I see with creatives and artists. People that are very, that have a high degree of mastery over their craft is they tend to discount that mastery because it's easy to, it's easy, stuff gets very easy once you're an expert at it. It's hard to get there. Like back when you first started long arm quilting, I'm sure you couldn't stare at a camera and record a podcast and also quilt at the same time. Like it's hard when you're new. But once you become a master at something, things get very easy and they get very fast and it's easy to discount the value of that because it's so simple for us. And so we think to ourselves, why would somebody pay me, 1, 000 for that? It's no big deal, right? But it's like some customer brings some intricate. specific requests that seems to them like this unsolvable thing. And you look at it in five minutes, the right way

Susan: 31:35

to display.

Casey: 31:36

The only reason you know how to do that in five minutes is you've done it a thousand times

Susan: 31:40

right?

Casey: 31:41

No, don't be tempted to underprice what is valuable to the customer just because it happens to be really easy and fast for you to produce. And so I think it, I would encourage folks listening on that, have a, have trouble with. With confidence around their value, lock themselves in a, a room with no technology and a blank sheet of paper for one hour and do not let yourself out until you've filled both sides of that piece of paper with something that you bring to the market that nobody else does and that you're proud of and that people have, told you over the years that they're really impressed by. Get and it's a little bit of an affirmation, if you will. Let me dive into what I know can make a difference with my work, and then use that as an affirmation to build your confidence.

Susan: 32:23

That is so good. So good. It is all too easy for us to just. Build one day on the day that came before and not ever stop to really take stock. How have we grown? How have we developed? And just like you said, let's attach some value to those things that we've learned and that we're good at and that we bring. Yeah, so good.

Casey: 32:43

I tell a quick story on that topic?

Susan: 32:45

Absolutely. Love stories.

Casey: 32:47

It's a I don't even know if it's real. It may be an invented story, but I think it's very instructive. The story goes that Pablo Picasso, once upon a time, was sketching in a plaza. A woman recognized him and asked him if he'd sketch her, and he says he will. And he dashes off a quick sketch, and when she sees it, she's Fascinated. She can't believe how well he captured her spirit and her essence. And she asked him if he'll sell her the sketch. He says he will. He quotes her price of 5, 000 francs, which was a huge sum of money for that time in history. And she's shocked. In fact, she's outraged. And she says, but sir, it only took you five minutes. And he says, no, madam took me a lifetime. Why I think that's so relevant for your audience is that they've spent a lifetime developing skills and creative expertise that allow them to produce something really beautiful in only X hours. They're not paying you for your time. They're paying you for your brilliance. You're Picasso. Get paid. So I originally got involved in the work in Guatemala because I am fluent in Spanish and I was looking for a place and a way to contribute some skills for a nonprofit's benefit. And so initially I had no particular connection with cleft lip and cleft palate repair surgeries which is the work that I got involved with. But a group that was going from the United States to Guatemala. to Guatemala to do this kind of surgical work was looking for a translator, someone that could help translate with local hospital staff, but also with the families of the patients because these are mostly babies. And I thought that sounds like great work. I think I would really like it. I think I can make a difference there and went a handful of times as a translator for that purpose. And I had a really I just had a, I fell in love with it. I think I'm a mother myself and I'm, comforting these moms, many of them quite young, far from home, far from family support who had maybe took a 30 hour bus ride to get to the Capitol where their baby is, going away for anesthesia and surgery. Many of them didn't know what anesthesia was. They didn't really understand surgery. So I'm explaining the procedure to them and it's understandably completely terrifying and completely isolating. And so the doctors or the nurses come and whisk their baby away and they're left there in, in tears and, sorrow and fear and hope and all kinds of things mixed together. And so it felt to me like a big honor to be able to sit next to those mothers and fathers and. And hold their hands and and tell them it's going to be okay. And, I would come and check, I would pop into the OR and get an update and I would come out and I'd say, everything's going great with the surgery. Everything's been, and I so I fell in love with it as a translator, but then started to see other ways that my. business expertise and process expertise could be helpful to the organization. So I started getting involved in volunteer coordination and surgery scheduling and stuff like that. And I go usually twice a year for one or two weeks. And last year I founded an organization in the United States called Cleft Care International.

Susan: 35:38

And,

Casey: 35:38

Because our NGO partner in Guatemala that does the, organizes all the surgeries and finds all the kids and make sure they get to healthy birth weight through a milk program and all kinds of other services. They don't have they did not have a mechanism to raise funds in the United States. And of course the United States is the, biggest philanthropy market in the world. Created that organization with the idea of Fundraising on her, on behalf of that organization and then channeling funds to help them do more of their work.

Susan: 36:05

That's amazing. It's, just the picture in my mind's eye of these young moms, as you said, or young parents who don't speak the language and what an enormous amount of faith that must take on their part to go to these great lengths to get these babies to the surgical center. Not really understanding what it is, in fact, that's going to happen, but just saying, I know I need help and here's a little lifeline that's being handed to me and I'm taking it just regardless. That, that's amazing. I love that you walk them through that process.

Casey: 36:35

Thanks. It's an honor to be part of it.

36:39

Well, that was a great chat with Casey Brown. She is an advocate for fearless pricing. And in fact, her brand new book is that same title, Fearless Pricing. If you'd like to get your hands on a copy, I've provided a direct link to the Amazon bookstore in the show notes. So head over there to obtain a copy of Casey's book. It could be life changing for you. Until next time, friends, may your sorrows be patched and your joys be quilted.