127 What to Consider When Setting Your Prices in 2022
Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Modern Creative Podcast where I chat all about creative entrepreneurship and how to grow your calligraphy business. So if you are looking for tips on how to scale your biz maybe how to balance your day job while you're scaling that biz, you were in the right place. And in this episode, I actually have a guest with me.
If you're watching on YouTube or Spotify video, you can see, I have a guest with me. If you're not, well, I have a guest with me, the very first of season three, and we're talking all about what to consider when setting your prices for 2022. So Marie from Maiden September is here and she's going to share her tips on all things pricing. Welcome, Marie. Hi, thanks so much for having me, Joyce. I'm so excited to be talking to you today.
I'm just, I'm excited to talk about pricing. I'm excited to talk to you about pricing. I'm excited that we both decided to put our eyebrows on today to talk on this video podcast, because normally we work from home. It's like, I'm not going to brush my hair, but I will for Marie.
Just for you, Joyce. And that is where we're at folks. Month I dunno, 22 working from home. Here we, yes. So before we get started, I just wanted to say that I appreciate Marie for many reasons, but one being that she understands my love of football, American football, for those of you that may not be in the US.
So fun fact Marie's day job actually allows her to go to the Super Bowl every year in like non pandemic years and in 2019 she went for her day job. And my team was playing in the Super Bowl. We did not win. I'm still sad about it, but she sent me pictures of herself meeting like legendary 49er players, and also paparazzi shotting Joey from NSYNC.
I don't know if you remember, you also sent me Joey from NSYNC and the 49er pic was my fave. It was like players I grew up watching. However out of Joey and the 49ers. However, I think it was because it was Joey and not JC, who is my favorite.
So Marie, if you sent me a picture of like JC and the current 49er quarterback, Jimmy Garoppolo, I don't know who my favorite would be TBH. I would have fainted just sort of like lost my mind. I fainted in like pictures of herself afterwards. Like, yes, exactly. I know. So, you know, and I can't pick one out of those two, cause I feel like I'd be a bad fan of one over the other, but that just cemented everything for me.
And then Marie and I've collaborated on the first and second Calligraphy Biz Summit that I hosted or summits that I hosted. And then the Calligraphy Business Bundle that I offered too. So my point here, people not only do I love Marie and the fact that she sends me 49er pictures and NSYNC pictures, but the more that you share about on social, the more likely you're going to find a genuine connections with people like beyond calligraphy, like people that have similar interests beyond calligraphy and who knows where that could lead.
Maybe it will be on a podcast. Maybe you'll just have someone to text every Sunday when something happens in the NFL. I don't know, but that is my point there right? Share more. Like I get that it all starts on social with like with calligraphy and this is like our first common thread, but we're all people behind it. We all have other interests besides calligraphy. I could do a whole episode on calligrafriends to be honest because it's such a great community.
That's so really good idea. I feel like for that episode, I want to get a panel of people, right. And like all calligraphers of color. Okay. Yes.
Oh my gosh. Amanda would definitely be down for that. I'm sure that might be like a fun community episode, hopefully coming to you soon. Thank you Marie. Stay tuned podcast listeners.
But today we're not here to talk about football. That's for Sundays, expect a message from me in two days from now. We're not here to talk about it NSYNC. We're here to talk about pricing.
Yes. So. I want to know what is the first step when it comes to setting your prices as a calligrapher. So for me, the first step is getting crystal clear on what your offerings and services are. And I know you had mentioned, like you have another guest, who's going to be speaking about that, which is great because that's such an important step for people to take. And I think it's probably a step that we kind of tend to just figure out as we go along the way, but it does deserve like sitting down and like putting some conscious thought behind what are your services and what are your offerings? So that's the first thing, is what are you actually offering? So I do a lot of wedding calligraphy.
I do a lot of signage. So I'm going to be speaking kind of in those terms for my examples, but this can apply really to any service or product that you offer in your calligraphy business. Let's take, for example, you know, you do place cards. Well, you need to figure out what are your cost of materials going to be and also how long is it going to take you to complete a job? So cost of materials can be multifaceted because you can offer materials. Like, let's say you can just do, you know, folded white paper place cards, or you could have a client bring you the materials and your prices should be different depending on which one you know is happening, which one your client is asking you for.
It doesn't necessarily mean that one is less than one is more either because if your client is bringing you a surface, but it's really difficult to write on then you want to factor that into your prices. So when you're talking about your starting prices and getting clear on your services, I like to think of things as like starting prices, because you're never going to be able to factor in all of the different, you know, elements because calligraphy is a very customized job. I mean, I get a lot, I have one client who does come to me frequently for just white place cards.
That's all she wants. But most of my other clients, they want tiles, they're bringing me seed paper or they want me to write on a mirror or whatever the case is. So you need to figure out sort of, what are the baseline cost of your materials for your services.
Secondly, is figuring out, well, how long is it going to take me to complete that job? And that is also sort of very nebulous too, because you know, sitting down and writing, you know, black ink place cards on white paper for 50 place cards is going to be a lot different than maybe doing it on a more complex surface. It'll be different than if you're, are you doing it in your studio or are you doing it onsite? Things like that. So figuring out sort of your baseline cost of materials, how long it takes you to complete the probably the most simple aspect of it. And that's how you basically arrive at your starting price.
The other thing is that you want to do some market research as well. Well, I just wanted to ask for the one client that always goes back to you. This is a tangent.
That's not a Real Housewife, right? Oh my God, I wish it was. That would be amazing. I don't really know much about them, but I have a feeling that they are a pretty wealthy person. They're based in Texas. Yeah.
I don't think that they're a Real Housewife because we've only seen it on Bravo. Oh my gosh. First off. And you wouldn't have to hate on the other ones.
And it means that a Housewife actually took the time to hire a calligrapher as opposed to like handwriting with a big pen. Oh my gosh. If anyone is like a reality TV follower, now you're going to start to notice when they have these fancy parties, how horrible the place cards are. They need to hire a calligrapher. They need to hire Marie.
Hire me, hire any calligrapher. I truly, I mean, I would love it. That would be my dream job, but just hire any calligrapher, to be honest. I watch Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and Kathy Hilton hosted this immaculate dinner party at her house.
It was like white glove service. And then she gave away these like $800 baccarat candlesticks. Insane, like super expensive.
And then her place cards were like, she wrote them herself. I was like, Kathy, what are you doing? You should just message her. You should message her.
I need to start tagging these women. I think you do, actually. I love Selling Sunset, but they need your help too. Yes. That's the other one that somebody tagged me and they had like a party for dogs or something recently. The cocktail drinks sign was like not good.
Okay 2022, everybody listening who watches reality TV, you need to start tagging Marie in these and let's like collectively get Marie to do the calligraphy for any of these. I would love that hashtag calligrashade. That's what I always use. Calligrashade.
I just, I want this for you so much. I want you to be able to do. Believe me putting it out in the universe because this is truly my dream job. Okay. I hope that's.
I hope that happens for you. It'd be fun in December to see like what happened. Oh my God. Okay. So back to pricing, Marie, you mentioned, okay. Let's figure out your baseline.
Let's figure out the simplest black ink white card and what that is. So how would someone go about like increasing pricing if it's a more difficult job? Yeah so then you have to sort of factor in going back to your cost of materials. Like, what are your cost of the materials? Also, if you are going to be sourcing materials for your client, you need to factor that time in there.
So I actually have a flat rate for a sourcing fee. So if my client is asking me to provide something that I don't automatically have available or that they're not bringing to me, I tell them, okay, I can source this for you for a flat fee. I think my rate is like $40 or something like that.
And then if it goes on and on like, you know, for multiple hours, then we would have to like revisit this. Because I can't be spending a lot of time searching for these materials, especially when you're trying to plan out your pricing, it's usually for a quote. So it's before your client has even signed a contract or it's actually your client, they're usually a prospect at that point. So I'm not going to be spending a ton of time going around and doing all this research for them because they may not even end up wanting to work with me, you know, they might say, oh, it's too expensive. And now I spend all this time sourcing materials for them that they can now go and do themselves or find somebody else to do.
So, factor in your time and factor in like, okay, if it's going to take you time to source this, you need to consider including a sourcing fee into it. But let's say somebody who says I want white marble tile place cards. That's something where you can easily go on Amazon or you just do a quick Google search to find out how much that's going to cost. And then of course you want to factor that into your prices because that's going to cost a lot more than a white, basic place card. Is it going to take you longer to write on a marble and place card? For me I can do both about the same amount of time and marble it's not super fickle, but you know, just your surfaces can be kind of fickle. So you want to factor that in there as well.
So I have base prices for a paper place card, for marble, or acrylic place card. And then I have on my Rate Book, I have sort of a starting price as an add on for any kind of like complicated surface, because I want my clients to know like, okay, I'm going to be transparent with you about my prices, but this is a starting rate and I'm not going to know how much this is truly going to cost for you until we start building out your quote. I love that transparency and I, and you mentioned the Rate Book, so we definitely have a link in the show notes. Take a look at that for Marie's Rate Book. That makes me want to ask you, do you list prices on your site or only in your Rate Book? I do both. So I have a rate sheet that's on my, my website and you can go and look at it.
It's just starting prices. And it's not like everything. It's just sort of like the key things that people are looking for.
I like having it on my website because it's a good way for people to sort of self-qualify in some ways. People are looking for prices and I wouldn't trust working with a vendor who wasn't transparent with their prices. So of course I want to be transparent with mine. But for some people, calligraphy is just outside of their budget. It's a luxury service. And so I want them to be able to self-qualify themselves, if they can and say, okay, this is outside of my budget.
If they look at my rate sheet and then they go ahead and fill out my leads form through that workflow process, then you're going to be served my Rate Book where you'll see all of the prices, starting prices. You'll see, sort of a comprehensive build out of like the add-ons that you can include. Obviously, photos of my work, a little bit about my process, things like that. Who do you use for your automations? Cause you know, I use HoneyBook.
In fact, I signed up for HoneyBook when I was part of your Creative Business Circle. So I've been a HoneyBook user since like 2018, 2019 something like that. Sponsor me HoneyBook. No hide. They should.
I love it. I know some other people use Dubsado. I honestly would love it if the HoneyBook and Dubsado could merge cause there's features in both that I like, and it's not enough for me to want to leave HoneyBook and rebuild in Dubsado. But also if I was in Dubsado, I'd probably feel the same way. I wouldn't want to like leave Dubsado and rebuild in HoneyBook. It would just be awesome if both could like integrate the same features, little note to HoneyBook slash Dubsado.
So Marie, let's say that someone has gotten more, you know, pricing is scary, but they've gotten more comfortable with their pricing and they're like, cool, it's a new year. How often should someone reassess their pricing? Is that even something that someone should do? A hundred percent. Yeah. You should always reassess your pricing.
How frequently? I guess it's really up to you as a business owner. I mean, I set up time at the beginning of first off, I go into every year, knowing that I'm going to be raising my prices. The cost of doing business.
Exactly. Like everyone should be thinking about that. You don't have to stay at the price that you're at forever.
That's right. So I'm a little bit of like a personal finance nerd. And even if you're not, you've probably heard people talking about inflation in the news inflation is something that always is. Money, cash money that is sitting in your pocket today is not going to be worth the same amount a year from today, or whatever amount of time from today. So you should also understand that when it comes to raising your prices, like $3 for a place card today is not going to be the same amount of money in your pocket for $3 place card a year from now or two years from now. We don't really feel that because inflation is just sort of part of life and we kind of just go through the motions, but you do need to factor in inflation is a real thing, or at least it's a real thing in economic terms.
And so you should consider to do an increase because you know, the cost of doing business increases year over year and that increase can be anything from. 1%, 5%, whatever you want it to be, whatever you feel like is appropriate. That's the thing with calligraphy prices is that I wish there was a rule book of like, this is the bottom barrel that everybody should do. And I think there is a rule book, the bottom barrel everyone should do is called Etsy. Yeah, you're right. Actually that is, you are absolutely right.
That is the bottom barrel that has got as your benchmark. And here's the thing about Etsy. I don't want to go too much on a tangent about Etsy, but Etsy is a marketplace. So people have to compete on price because you're competing for customers in that marketplace. So one of the benefits of Etsy is they bring the customers to you, quote unquote, but that's also, you have to compete against everybody else on there. So, what do they compete on? They compete on pricing, but if you are working off of Etsy and you're providing your own services to your local market, you're not competing with those same people.
You can certainly use Etsy as like a starting place to look at your prices. But I would not consider that like the end all be all. I mean, I've seen place cards on there for 60 cents each, which it's just not worth your time. I haven't seen 60 cents, but yeah, that's it's for research. That's what I always tell people.
It's for research. It's definitely for research a hundred percent. Yeah, totally. So factor in sort of inflation, it's just the cost of doing business. I usually think like around 3% is probably a good rate to increase your prices each year. You know, some things you might look at it and say, this is priced well enough.
So for instance, with envelopes, I purposely priced my envelopes very high because it takes so much time to do envelopes. And I only want people hiring me to do envelopes who really want to pay for it. I'm not charging $5 an envelope. Sorry, that's not what I'm doing. I think I start at like $6 for envelopes and that's just for the front.
If you want me to do a return address, I think it's an additional, like $3.75 to do a return address. So it's basically almost $10 in an envelope. I'm probably not going to raise my rates on my envelopes because they're already priced really high I think so.
But for place cards or let's see signage. Oh my gosh. Signage. The world of signage. Definitely raise your rates on your signage.
You can do it sort of by size or you can kind of just do it, starting prices are X, but definitely consider raising your prices for your signage because the cost of materials are so expensive, especially when people want you to do like acrylic signs and things like that. I love that you mentioned that your pricing for envelopes is really high because that's not something that you really want to do. Everyone, keep that in mind.
Whenever you get a job and it's happened to everybody, who's offered services. When you get a job and you're like, I just, I don't really want to do this, but you need to answer this inquiry that's come, this lead. What is your price where you would not mind doing it anymore, you know, and that's what you price and that's Marie. She don't want to do envelopes for $3, but she'll do them for $10 each.
That's right. And I, the thing is I actually do enjoy envelopes, but they take so much time. So I find myself like when I'm feeling resentful about a project that's assigned for me that either one, I don't ever want to do this again or two, I need to raise my rates and you need to pay attention to your emotions while you are doing these projects, because that actually does help you inform what your pricing strategy is going to be. I don't ever want to do another marriage certificate again. I've done two and people have reached out, especially with the COVID weddings.
Like people have reached out to me and I hated it. I did not enjoy it, but somebody else might enjoy it, but they're time consuming. And so you need to price that appropriately.
Yeah. And then, you know, if you've built up your calligraphy community as well, if there's a job that you don't want or you don't have time for, you can always refer it out. And that's amazing. Like, that's the great thing about this community. I just love that you're like $20 an envelope.
I'm sure there's somebody out there who charges it and there's somebody out there who pays it. Yeah, there always is. There's a market for everything, but I love what you said about like, "Hey, pay attention to what you feel" and maybe what you're feeling a little bit of hesitation or resentment for, because that's also going to help you niche down. You know, when you're just starting, you need to figure out what it is you want to do. And so I'm definitely a fan of " Hey, try all of the things."
Just don't try all of the things your whole business timeline. You need to try all the things and really be honest with yourself of what you don't like and what you do like. That's right. That's absolutely right. Especially if this is a side hustle for you. People who are doing calligraphy businesses as a side hustle, you have the benefit of having a full-time job that probably pays your bills.
So that means that you don't have to do this for money. And so any money that you do make from this in your free time really needs to be worth it because you're spending your free time working on this business and doing other client work. And so you have to enjoy it. If you find yourself feeling, you know, negative or just not enjoying like a project, pay attention to that, because you don't want to be spending your free time doing work that you don't enjoy doing.
You want spend it doing work you enjoy, and that you're getting paid well for, especially if it's your side hustle. I thought that you were going to say when you're like, Hey, you're you have the benefit of having a job that pays your bills. So whatever money you get from your businesses bonus money and what you should do with it. I thought you were going to say the invest it.
And when I thought, oh, that's a whole other episode getting into personal finance, which I'm starting to nerd out about too. So that's a whole other episode. You're here for pricing. Just know if you're a fan of American football or personal finance Marie should be your calligrafriend. So go follow Marie.
Or Real Housewives. I'll talk to you about all the things or any reality shows with a really bad calligraphy, hashtag calligrashade. So kind of related. But kind of not, but we already talked about HoneyBook earlier.
So, you know, like I mentioned, I love systems and I love automations. What's your favorite way to organize your bookkeeping? So it's kind of related to pricing, you know, you've gotten paid everyone. You've raised your prices. You're charging $50 an envelope like Marie told you to, and you've gotten paid.
What do you do with that? So I use QuickBooks in my business and that is another system that I would be lost without. I know that for a lot of creatives, like dealing with the financial aspect of your business is not the most fun side of things, but get to become best friends with your bookkeeping software. Number one, it's going to make your life so much easier when it comes to paying taxes.
QuickBooks sets it up so it estimates what your quarterly taxes are which is really important. You want to make sure you're paying your quarterly taxes so you don't get stuck with like a big tax bill at the end of the year or any kind of penalties or fines. But one thing that I use QuickBooks for in terms of setting my prices is that I use it sort of a for research to see where did the majority of my income come in from the previous year. And so a little hack that I like to tell people about is in QuickBooks. You can use the tag groups in QuickBooks to create an income group.
And then within that group, you can have individual tags. So let's say your streams of income are like wedding work. It could be windows, it could be workshops. It could be any digital products that you have. It could be affiliates.
Any of those things, let's say those are your five income streams. Every time you get money from a job, make sure you go into QuickBooks and tag that income as one of those five revenue streams or whatever, however many revenue streams you have. Because then at the end of the year, you can see which one was bringing in the most money. And then you can say, okay, this is what I want to focus on for next year. I really want to grow this area because that's where I'm making the most money from.
Or you can say, "okay you know, I want to do more window jobs. And so in order for me to focus on doing more window jobs, I'd probably need to take on fewer wedding clients" or something like that. And that helps you sort of think strategically about the finances in your business, which again, helps you get into that mindset around pricing. So definitely if you use QuickBooks, take advantage of those tags because it can be really helpful for getting that kind of analytics and data. I love that you mentioned that.
You really are taking the data and you're letting it inform your business decisions. And that's what we should all be doing. We can't just like, like throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. If you have data, whether that's your email and you're tracking subscribers and open rates and click through rates, or you're going through QuickBooks, or if you have another bookkeeping software, like you need these pieces of data to help you be strategic in your business. The numbers don't lie. The numbers in your income streams, the numbers in your email open rates or whatever, none of that lies.
And so this is a perfect time of year to kind of look at that because it is January as this episode is being released it's January 2022. What the hell it's 2022, but you're probably right now thinking, okay, what am I going to do for the rest of the year? Right. And so this could be a way that you could look at it.
If you don't have the setup yet, definitely set it up. But you, if you have made any kind of income so far, you know where that came from. So look at that data to help you inform decisions. If you're feeling a little bit stuck about what you should focus on in the new year.
Absolutely. Okay, Marie, this just hit me. I want to ask about shipping. What are you? I don't know. What do you do? Do you hand off the price? Do you take care of like, I just, I have no idea where to start.
So assume that someone listening right now has no idea what to do with their shipping. What should they do? All right. So shipping, I purposely avoid a product-based business for the fact that I hate shipping. I hate having to deal with shipping and the reason why I hate it so much is because I've gotten burned so many times with underestimating shipping. But there are a few times in my business where I do have to ship something out. And so number one is that when somebody fills out my intake form, I now have a dropdown menu where I ask straight up, is this for delivery, for pickup, or for shipping.
That kind of gets the client in the mindset of understanding if they're going to choose shipping, they're going to have to pay for shipping. And number two is always overestimate your shipping because shipping, isn't just shipping, like the cost of actually shipping it. It's also the materials that you need to package it in.
So envelopes or bubble wrap or whatever the case, it envelopes, you know, boxes and those kinds of envelopes. Bubble wrap, all of those things tape, even your tape. I mean, all of that is money out of your pocket.
Those are your material costs. I use a website called Sendle, S E N D L E, for all of my shipping. It's a little bit less expensive than going directly to the post office. But what I like about that is that it allows you to kind of pre estimate.
You can go on there and use their calculator to pre estimate how much shipping will cost. So I go on there and I'll usually, you know, find out okay. It's gonna cost $4.14 to ship this. I'll probably charge my client $7 because I need to factor in a little bit more if it ends up costing more or if it ends up being a little bit heavier. Also, just the cost of materials for shipping. So just don't be afraid of padding a little bit more on for shipping, because I just don't know of any foolproof way of, you know, figuring out exactly how much it's going to cost to ship something.
And that is why I try to stay away from shipping as much as possible. You actually just reminded me of when I I was just starting and I did like a few weddings and sides, and then I called it quits and focused on teaching people, calligraphy and coaching. But let's say that someone listening right now has just started and they're like, cool. Like now I know how much I want to charge per envelope.
I know what my hourly rate is. I know that I'm going to pass on that cost of shipping to the customer, but they're not sending this itemized invoice to someone. So I just want to make that clear if you're newer to calligraphy, like you're taking all of these numbers and you're giving your person, your inquiry, one number that's because if you do not, you're opening this box of like, oh, well you charge $50 an hour and you estimate it's four hours, but what if it only takes you three? Like you're opening that door.
And so that's not what you want to do when it comes to pricing, you're taking all the tips that Marie has just shared with you. And then when you were sending that proposal out, it's one number. It's not broken out.
Let's just be right on that. A hundred percent do not send out an itemized invoice. They don't need to know what the cost of your materials are. I think there's a difference between being transparent with your prices. " It is going to cost X in order for me to do this job for you," that's being transparent with your prices. You do not need to tell them what the cost of doing business is because that's when you to your point, Joyce that's when you kind of open it up for scrutiny and I've had people do that.
With my seating charts, I used to list out, okay, it's $1.50 cents per name. And now I don't even do that anymore because I had somebody trying to like, kind of, you know, haggle on. You know, well, if I, if you write the name this way, will it cost it's like my prices are what they are. Period. The person asking that has no idea about calligraphy.
They're like, oh, but if you write smaller, like no, get out of here. Yes, exactly. That's right.
And look, I was a budget conscious bride before, so I get it. But at the end of the day, you set your prices. They are what they are, and then you give your client, this is what the cost is for to do this project, period. End of story.
And look no one is going to book 100% of the jobs that come their way. Know that now and be okay with that now, because if that person that reaches out to you ends up not booking, that's fine. There's someone else that's going to come and like fill out the lead form and you'll book that job. So. I do want to mention that.
Cause it is always a, it's a bummer to get told. No, and I feel like default people start to think, oh, it was my pricing. And it's like, yes, if you listen to Marie and took all her tips into consideration, it's not your pricing.
We don't know that other person's like budget, their financial things. It's hard to say, but try not to default to pricing, you know? It's probably not that they probably just didn't see the value of it, or they spent it all on flowers instead. Like whatever brides are spending, spending on. But it's like, don't feel bad about yourself if they say no, because one, there are other jobs.
Two,if you're booking a hundred percent of your jobs, you're charging way, like too be too low. So you need to change that anyway. And then three. There's more out there. I promise, but don't shortchange yourself and try to meet these low prices.
That's right. Being hungry in your business is good, but being thirsty, that's never works out. Okay. We're not going to be used in your business in life.
I mean, truly when have you been like overeager and you know, thirsty to please and that's worked out well, you know what I mean? And kind of to your point, it's really funny. Now I'm thinking I'm like, oh my God Marie, will you and I need to quit with the whole 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo thing. No, I'm definitely thirsting after him. For sure. That's a different kind of thirst. Like, she's like, thirsty isn't good but I'm like, Marie you and I are a little thirsty about that.
A little bit, a little bit. Oh my God, that man is so fine. I'll leave links below in the show notes.
He's a good looking man. And you know, this whole football thing doesn't work out for him, there, there are many career paths that lay ahead for him. But Joyce, you were kind of like to the point you were saying that you're not going to take on a hundred percent of all of the inquiries that come your way. It's not your job to appeal to 100% of the people who come into your leads form or whatever the case is. Your job is to do good work, but to make money doing it.
You know what I mean? Calligraphy is a luxury service. And so when people do value it, they need to be paying for it. And if they don't value it, that is okay. It does not necessarily mean that your prices are too high. It just means that they were not the client for you. That's all that means.
And how many times have you walked into a store and walked out and haven't bought anything? It doesn't mean you don't like the stuff that they have in the store. It just means you didn't see anything you wanted or it wasn't right for you. Same thing. It's not personal. And it's just a decision that somebody is making.
That's all it is. I love that. I love that mindset and it's just important to have. Because we are doing something that is like handmade and it's personal. Like we're making it, but you remember that you are a CEO. Remember the cost of doing business when you're thinking about your pricing.
And then just remember like, Hey, I'm not the one for you. Someone else will think that I am and you can just move on because it can be a little sad when you get your first no's. But yeah. I promise you'll be all right.
Yes, exactly. And you know, it's so funny is that a lot of times people will ghost and then they come back at like the 11th hour. And then at that point, you get to turn the tables and say, well, if you want me to do this job for you, I'm going to charge a rush fee, which has hopefully doubled what you originally quoted them. Or you can be the one to turn them down and say, look, sorry, I don't have the capacity to take your project on right now. Even though that's not fun to like, you know, potentially lose out on work.
It is a very empowering position to be in. You know what I mean? And as a business owner, as a CEO, sometimes you have to make those difficult decisions where you know, I'm going to be declining work or this person isn't going to want to pay for this now, but that's on them because they waited too long. You know, it's not your job to please every person that comes into your business, it is your job to provide quality work and to make good money doing it. Okay, I have a question. If this has happened to you, it's happened to me.
Has anyone ever given you a sob story so that they could try and get the price lower or get something for. free? I don't know if they've ever given me a sob story. I mean, I've definitely had people try to haggle, but I don't think it was like one time where somebody was asking. So I have this like gray tile.
They call them like arabesque shape tile place cards. And she wanted them for her wedding and it was the perfect amount. Like I only have like 87 left and she needed like 85 or something.
And she really wanted them. And I gave her the quote on them and she was like, oh, that's outside of my budget. Is there any way you can do it for, you know, X? And it was like $2 lower.
And I was like, no, absolutely not, you know? And she's like, oh, I really want them, you know, I just really want. Then what are you going to cut out of your budget? I didn't say this to her, but in my head I'm like, what are you going to cut out of your budget then? Because if you really want them, you can have them. They're $4.50 each. So did that end up going through or no? She didn't do it. Which is fine. I mean, I still got them if anyone's listening, but I wasn't going to lower my price just to accommodate her.
And I'm not having like a liquidation sale. The right person will come along who wants those tile place cards. Yeah. I love that. Yes. Thank you for sharing that story.
Marie's out here, like I still got them not starting with them for less than $4.50 each. Yeah, that's right. I love it. Ah, I love chatting with you. So Marie, thank you so much for sharing all of the tips, all the calligrashade, all the NFL references. I okay.
Anyone out there that's listening and you follow American football like message me and Marie put on Sundays. Sometimes Monday night football, sometimes Thursday night football. Just message us. Cause we're looking for more football calligraphers. But I don't even know where I was going with that. I'm just looking for friends here, Marie.
It's hard. There's not a lot of football fans, at least not that I've seen in the calligraphy community. If you are, you have a home here with me and Joyce. Where can people find out more about you and about your Rate Book? So, you can find me at MaidenSeptember.com. That's also my Instagram handle @maidenseptember. That's usually where I'm hanging out the most is on Instagram.
And then if you want to learn more about the Rate Book, you can go to RateBookTemplate.com. And for those who don't know, the Calligrapher's Rate Book template is just that it's a template that helps you pull together your prices and services and display them in a professionally designed document that you can share with prospective clients and vendors. And it helps you stay really organized when it comes to pricing out these custom jobs, which can be very complex as we've just talked about. Awesome.
So everyone just remember that all the links will be in the show notes and everything that we've referenced too. Like Marie mentioned the shipping program she uses and like HoneyBook and all of that. So it's easy for you. All the links will be in the show notes. Thank you so much for tuning in whether it was on Apple or Spotify or even YouTube.
And remember to check out Marie, check out all her links and be friends with us if you follow American football. Until until next time, folks. Thanks for listening.
2022-01-12 19:17
