268: Pricing Your Work Without Emotion
Michele Williams: On today’s podcast we’re going to hear a pre-recorded podcast that I did with Ceil DiGuglielmo of the podcast “Sew Much More”. Ceil interviewed me and spoke with me about the Pricing Without Emotion course that I have been teaching since 2010. I am so excited for you to hear this as we are getting ready to launch our Pricing Without Emotion course on September 5, 2024. As Ceil says in her intro, even if you are not looking to buy the course or participate in it, there is a lot you can learn from listening to this podcast. So, I invite you to sit back and think about your pricing, your journey, and your relationship with money while you listen and enjoy.
Every day, empowered entrepreneurs are taking ownership of their company financial health and enjoying the rewards of reduced stress and more creativity. With my background as a financial software developer, owner of multiple businesses in the interior design industry, educator, and speaker, I coach women in the interior design industry to increase their profits, regain ownership of their bottom line, and to have fun again in their business. Welcome to Profit is a Choice.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Welcome to the Sew Much More podcast, where we talk with people in the custom window treatment, soft home furnishings industry, and so much more. I'm your host, Ciel DiGuglielmo. On today's episode in the opportunity thinking series of the podcast, I have my friend Michele Williams who is the owner of Scarlet Thread Consulting, a speaker, fellow podcaster, author, and strategic business coach who serves the interior design industry. Michele's work helps business owners create strategic plans that are actionable, manage their business and finances properly, and develop a framework for decision-making that allows for a laser focus. Many of the people who have worked with Michele increase their rates, reduce their workload, and increase their bottom line. Michele uses her signature program, Aim with Intent, where she focuses on the five strategies that lead to wild success strategies, the foundation intention, people, processes, and profits. Michele is also certified in Profit First and Fix This Next methodologies. You can find out more about Michele at scarletthreadconsulting.com. Michele is the sponsor of the podcast. She is also someone who you hear my guests speak about frequently. I would say probably eight out of ten of my guests have taken courses with Michele, most notably the Pricing Without Emotion course. That's what we're going to talk about today with Michele because she has come up with a different way to present this. You think that this is going to be just a commercial for Pricing Without Emotion. I assure you that every time I meet with Michele, I learn something new. And if you listen to today's podcast with no intention of taking the course, you will still learn something. I promise you. I really hope you enjoy my conversation with Michele today.
Michele, thank you for joining me today. It is so nice to see you. I haven't seen you in a while.
Michele Williams: I know. I'm excited to talk to you today. And I know we, we have to plan our, what is it, our yearly wrap up. We got to get that in the books and planned for, but, it's a special treat to be able to talk to you about something other than just how we wrapped up the year.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Exactly. And I. The reason I reached out to you about this is that in, I'm going to say 75% to 80% of the podcasts when I am interviewing a guest and I ask them about a book or a class or something that is highly impacted them, one or two of your courses or the Price Your work With Confidence book or Pricing Without Emotion course comes into the conversation and you have something new with Pricing Without Emotion that we need to talk about. But I have to tell you a funny story. You and I were emailing each other, and in Gmail, sometimes you see just the first line, and you and I were sending questions back and forth to make sure we covered everything. And I sent you the list, and you emailed me back, and the first line said, what is PWE? And I'm like, oh, Michele, if you don't know, we're really in trouble. And I went, oh, no, that's my question. But Michele, there are some people out there who don't know what PWE or Pricing Without Emotion means and what the course is about. So why don't we start with that? What is it?
Michele Williams: Yeah. So, I'm going to take us on just a little bit of a further step back, and I'm going to share with you how the course was created, and then I'm going to tell you what the course is because that's important. Cause it is important. So, for those that might be new to my journey and those who, of course, already know my journey, I started as a drapery workroom in 2000, and I didn't, at the time, even know that I was a drapery workroom.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Like many of us.
Michele Williams: Like many of us. I had not heard that term before. I did not know anybody else who did it. I just knew that people were ringing my doorbell, handing me bolts of fabric in my neighborhood, and asking me to make window treatments like what I had in my home. So, I started doing it. I didn't know how to buy wholesale at the time. I didn't know who the players were in that game. I was doing everything by running out to Joann's Fabrics or to, you know, a fabric store that was local at that point, too., we had fabric stores on every corner that had bolts of fabric. So, I could go in, find a fabric, show it to them, cut it off the bolt, take it home, and make something out of it. So, it was a little bit different dynamic.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Right.
Michele Williams: At the same time, the Internet was not as robust. It was only a couple of years old when we were using it at that point. And so, there was a lot of sitting at Barnes and Noble reading in books, finger books, going to the library. And the books were not bought off Amazon because that wasn't around. So, you were buying. You were, like, going to Barnes and Noble to buy them. I was going to use bookstores and older places, trying to find resources. So, long story short, my background is in developing financial software. And I started asking people, because I came out of an industry where I was making six figures so, I've been asking people, how much money can I make? How can I make money? What is this? How do I charge for this? What do I do for that? Like, I didn't know, and it's custom, so I'm not selling, as we now know, like a commodity, something right off the shelf. Well, the short answer is I didn't get a lot of help from people telling me what to do and how to do it. I thought they were all being stingy with their information. And later, as I matured in the industry, I realized it wasn't that they were being stingy. They didn't know the answer to the question. And so fast forward, it was like 2003. I realized I was losing money at the end of the year; I was figuring out my taxes for 2002. I did the business for three years for 2000, 2001, and 2002 and I was losing money again, coming from a six-figure income and we needed the income. We were in a home with two little boys. So, I was really taking my husband's money to invest in my business so that I could take time away from my family to do things for rich people. Like, that was the circle of life.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: That sums it up very nicely.
Michele Williams: And I had that moment with myself where I was disgusted with, if you will, my behavior in pricing and my lack of understanding of what I was doing. I was so enamored by the sewing. I was so enamored by the lead edge trim. I was so enamored with being able to make the things and have them be beautiful that I was literally paid with a small check, but a large thank you. Well, that large thank you, I could not take to the store to buy anything from my family.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Right.
Michele Williams: And the whole reason that the money was limited was because that's all I asked for, because I didn't know. Right. Well, I made the tough decision that day that I'm either going to figure this out or I'm going back to corporate because I can't work and do what I'm doing. And back in the day, Ceil, for those that are listening now, you could work part-time. Back in the day, there was no, it was called job sharing. You didn't have like a part-time role somewhere. Just 30 years ago, it's just not what we really had available. And so anyway, I put my nose to the grindstone. I started figuring out where every dollar, and I mean cent, where it came into my business, where it went out of my business, how long every single thing took me, what it just what are all the complexities, not only of pricing but then of pricing a custom product because it's different. And I quickly realized there was an art and a science to pricing. There are the normal mathematical equations that are involved. But then there is an art because we are selling more than just the window treatment. We're selling a belief. We're selling a feeling. We are selling a value statement. We're selling stress relief, privacy, or security. We're selling so much more. It's just coming wrapped in the form of a custom window treatment or bedding or whatever cushions or whatever we're doing. So, I started putting together a course. I ended up finding Price Work with Confidence by Kitty Stein, which is an amazing book and if anybody here hasn't heard of it or doesn't have it, go get it. What's so funny is, that when I created my course, I told Kitty what I was doing. I met with her a couple of times, and she was so kind and so gracious, and she was like, I need to probably call and tell her that I set up Metrique because I think she would love that. But she was like, somebody's got to carry the torch and keep going. Like, great job. Because at the time, I was the only one who was really like, “Rah rah ri, let's talk about financials”. It's kind of one of those topics most people want to run away from. but I developed the course, and what I realized was, we all price with emotion. Are they going to like me? What are they going to think? Oh, my gosh. I put my heart and soul into that, but they won't pay for that, so knock it down $100. Like, we have this inner dialogue with ourselves that is so emotion-based instead of logic-based. And so, I named it Pricing Without Emotion. Honestly, after coming to Pennsylvania, staying at Janelle's home, and teaching a class, back at Crabapple, back in the day, I was teaching how to sell window treatments, and I told them all, I'm working on the class, and we worked through the title of it together. It just came up. I wish I could just price without all this emotion. And I was like, well, that's it. Let's price without emotion. Let's work with the emotion. Let's work with passion, but we don't have to price with it. We can price with more the logic brain, and then we can work with that feeling and emotion brain so that we pour that into it. So it's not that we're separating it. We're just kind of putting it into place. So in 2010, I launched the Pricing Without Emotion course and taught it at CHF Academy and then traveled around the United States, literally, constantly, state after state after state, some once or twice. I, bet you I've taught over a thousand people, this particular course over all of the time and all of the years because there were many courses that we would have 20 and 30 people in at a time trying to take it. Some took it three or four times, because the minute you elevate your business, you're in a different place, and you see it in a completely different way, which I found was so amazing for this course.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: And I think some of the things that you taught Michele, and I'm one of the people who took it two times, there was emotion. I mean, you pulled out a box of tissues when you started.
Michele Williams: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There were tears in every class. And it is very emotional when we're talking about our money and our relationship to money.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: And there was a moment during the first class, the first time I took it, where I had to leave the room.
Michele Williams: I remember. You were sitting, like, on that second or third row, right in the center. Yep. I remember.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: You had us figure out what we were making an hour. I realized that my teenagers were making more an hour than I was.
Michele Williams: And I asked the question, would you let your child do what you're doing for the money that you're making? And that's when it got you.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yes, that is, because I was doing it, and they were not. They were actually making more money than I was. And at that time, there was a certain amount of that course that I could absorb.
Michele Williams: That's right.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: I couldn't absorb all of it. But when I started to put things into practice, then I was ready to go back again, and I took it in Maryland. And I still remember being in awe of some of the people in that class who had been in business for a long time.
Michele Williams: Oh, yeah.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: But had finally said, you know what? I'm not doing all of this the way I need to be doing it. And there was no embarrassment. There was no, all right, here's this course. I'm going to take it, and I'm going to get this figured out because I am doing that. I am working too hard to not be making money.
Michele Williams: The only shame is not getting help when we need help.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Exactly.
Michele Williams: That's where the shame comes in. What's been so interesting in this course, I mean, this course honestly, took me by surprise the first couple of times I taught it. I was not anticipating the crying and the tears in the live course. I just didn't anticipate it. And when I took a step back and thought, I mean, Ann Johnson was in the very first course, talk about having to have your ducks in a row, because she had bought the rights to Kitty Stein's book, and she showed up and was reorganizing and laying out and kind of refreshing the book. Not rewriting it, but refreshing it. And she's sitting in the course that I'm teaching. And she had asked me to write a foreword for the book. And then she actually organized the book a little differently based on the way that I taught it. And I was, like, nervous, right? Because Ann Johnson's in there. And people started crying. Men were tearing up. I had two men in that class. Men were tearing up. And I was like, okay, what did I just do? Because I wasn't trying to get to that. I was trying to get to the heart of why we're doing what we're doing when it's not working in our favor. Why do we keep doing what we know is not working for us so that we can do things that work for other people? I think, so what it. What got me was that was the same moment that I had at my own kitchen table with a box of tissues and tears and stomping my foot and being upset with myself and disgusted with myself and angry at myself, and then kind to myself and loving to myself and calling my husband and going, what the heck is happening here? It was that moment of clarity that this cannot continue. I don't care if you're making $10,000 or $100,000. What it comes down to at the end of the day is, am I making the amount of money that I need to make for the amount of work and risk that I'm putting into it? So, I've worked myself, I’ve been a business owner that was part-time. I've worked with those who are full-time and full-time plus, and those who are going back to part-time because they're either caring for aging parents or grandkids or traveling or doing whatever. The truth of the matter is, that it's about how much we work, what our expectations are, and how we make the most that we can for the time that we put in. And so, when we start to understand that we start to see patterns of behavior, but then people started realizing the same pattern of behavior that they were having in business was showing up in other places. So, we start to see, oh, that's the same me that's doing this over here, that's doing that over there. I had one woman call me, and she said, the part of your course that got to me was, that I realized I was letting people walk all over me in my business. And then I realized they were doing it in the PTA, and they were also doing it in the homeowners association. And I was like, oh, my goodness. Because she started seeing patterns that were not supporting where she wanted to go and what she wanted to do. So not everybody's going to have those huge epiphanies. For some people, it's about the dollars and the cents, but it was created because I had to have it, and I still use it to this day. I probably use it all day, every day. It is a subset of my CFO2GO. It is a subset of my Master Your Profit or Understanding Your Financials courses. It is a subset of all of my coaching because good pricing matters. But we have to know what we're pricing and how to do it. Like, I worked with a client today, Ceil, that wasn't pricing for profit. And I know that's a buzzword, and I've had classes called that. She was pricing for the work they did, but not for extra profit, for the company to be sustainable. So then, of course, the expenses were equaling the income. It's just there wasn't a whole lot at the bottom. And it's because the pricing didn't allow it to be at the bottom.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Right. Michele, you and I were talking a little bit before we started to record, and one of the things that we talked about was that there is still this hesitation because we do what we love and we're making beautiful things. And there's an Instagram account called Can You Sew This For Me. And it's crocheters, knitters, sewers and they share a lot of the stories of what they call gimme pigs. And that is where people expect them to do things for nothing.
Michele Williams: And a lot of gimme pig.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Isn't that a great word?
Michele Williams: I've got to write that down. I am not your guinea pig.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: I'm not your guinea pig. For the most part, I see people confidently standing up for themselves when they're being asked to do things for free, or their boss asks them in a factory setting if they will sew on the name badges for everybody who works around them when that's not their job. But I still feel like there is a certain amount of pushback in our industry to ourselves. This isn't that hard. But that's expensive. It’s a lot of money. If I charge them this extra money to add the trim on the leading edge, which becomes a nightmare because you have to hand sew it on. And we don't quite respect or value our own skills. And one of the threads that I read the other day was a woman who made headbands, out of metal with jewels and beads and things on it and someone wanted it for $15. And she said, oh, honey, I can't even buy the supplies for $15 dollars. And the woman was outraged and said I can do it myself. No, you can't. You have no idea how to do this. That's the thing. I think we forget most people can't sew anymore. While we do a whole lot more than sew, we do engineering and woodwork and many other things, most people don't have these skills that we have, but yet we still are willing to take that step back and go, oh, okay, I can do it for less. And some of us have mastered this. Certainly, we don't have to have it cost this much. What would you like to take out of it? But we didn't get here by accident. We had a little help from you learning to say those words, but it's still there. And that concerns me because I listen to people talking about how hard they're working and not being profitable, and that, to me, just isn't fair.
Michele Williams: You're right. That’s called under-earning.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yes.
Michele Williams: And I'm going to tell you what it's called. It says I think it's Barbara Stani. We talk about some of that in the class. We have a high tolerance for low pay and a high tolerance for low pay. And I think quite often, I'll tell you when it shows up and I hear the, oh, my gosh, I can't do that anymore. That is at the moment that a business grows, and they have to hire. So, the minute they've got to realize, how do I make money and hire somebody to do this, they go, oh, crap. Do you mean they won't work for free like I'm working for free? What's up with that? That becomes the ding, ding, ding that we're not making in enough it's been interesting to me when I look back at, what, 25 years ago, when we started. Well, when I started my business in 2000, I can look back there, and I can also look at the new crop of business owners that are coming in today. I will say this. The ones coming in today, the ones that are savvy, that are really coming in to make it a business versus a hobby or a little cottage industry. Like, they're coming in, going, I'm going to make some money at this. They're coming in a bit more with a business head on their shoulders and a bit more into let me invest in the business understanding and the business structure, and let me get the business part right. I would tell you, at least from, my interactions from 25 years ago when I started my business, it was more about, how can I sew it. What are the techniques? What is the lead edge? How does it look aesthetically? How does it hang? Because the designs back in that day were a lot more intricate and detailed than what we see today. Today we see a lot of straight panels, Roman shades, like, just a lot of straight, straight, straight lines. Not that there doesn't have to be careful attention paid to cutting straight on the grain and all that, but I'm saying, back in the day, we had all of the swags and the rosettes and the shoe, and what's the difference between a rosette and a shoe and then lambrequins? I mean, we just had all the stuff, right? And so, the detail and the time we put into those was a lot. Yes. This was interesting to me back in the day. I would have people in the class who were just starting, and it was minimal. And then I'd have people that been in 5-10 years, and then I'd have some that been in 30 and the ones that at 30, they literally were shaky voices and teary eyes and they came up to me and said, I thought that. I thought it was expensive to come into the course. And now I'm looking at how much money I could have made over 30 years if I had known this. I can make this money back. And I tell people, if you are in the middle of quoting a job, do not quote it while you're in the class. Now, at the time, we did the class in two days, because you will quote differently at the end of the second day than you do at the beginning of the first day. Or go ahead and quote it, but don't send it until you finish the second day. Because you will, in many cases, make back every dime you spent to be here.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Absolutely.
Michele Williams: Because you will start to understand, I can promise you, of everything I do I have never, ever in all my years had somebody take this class and put it into practice who didn't turn around and make the money back almost immediately. Ever. If they put into practice at least a portion of what I taught them, they are making that money hand over fist, year over year. I have a particular person in mind. She hosted the course in Maryland, probably the one you went to. She was very new, within her first year of business, and she had multiple young children. She was like, I'm so glad I did this early. I said, if you will keep doing this, I said, go through this phase of having your children, be with your kids. But if you're going to invest time in the business, make the most you can make now, because if you can get it solid when you have more time in the business as the children age, you're going to kill it. Yeah, well, she's currently killing you.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yeah, I know who you mean.
Michele Williams: She's emailed me. We've coached on and off throughout the years. We're getting ready to do the CFO2GO program. Her comment to me all the time is that that course changed everything in my life because I learned how to charge for the work that I was doing. So, if I was doing a lot, I was making a lot. If I was doing a little, I was making little. But it was commiserate with the profit that I needed to make to pay myself for the work that I was doing and to keep the company sustainable.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: And took her time away from her family.
Michele Williams: And that's right. Because this course is now like, I'm on what? I started teaching it in 2009, but I finalized it in 2010. We're 15 years into this course and I am watching the trajectory of people's businesses who started it and then who are 15 years later and going, look how much money I'm making now because I know how to make it.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: To your point, though, it's part of the reason people were willing to take it a second time. There was no doubt in my mind that it was worth every penny I spent because I had already learned to do a better job of pricing, and I knew I was going to learn more and absorb more the second time. It was a question of. The first time I took it, it was a question of, can I get the money together to take this course. I knew it was worth it, but did I have the money for it? I made sure I did. And the second time, like, okay, I'm ready. I am putting this money out because I will get it back quickly.
Michele Williams: By the second time, I'll teach you how to save money. And I always give a break if people want to come and take it again like, I'm never going to charge them full price to take the whole thing two times. Like, that's just not it. What's been interesting, though, just even in this course, and I'll tell you, this is probably one of my favorite things to do, and it's because the light bulb goes on. And I'm going to tell you my whole big why I've shared it with your listeners multiple times, is to empower primarily women, because that's my audience, to know and understand their numbers, to make decisions so that they can live a life that they can be financially independent. They can do what they need to do, not just independent of a spouse, but independence for their business, that it can do for them what they need it to do. Our businesses aren't just a place for us to pour into. They are supposed to provide something back to us, and sometimes we're missing the it provides something back to me, other than just time away from my family. Well, look, if I wanted to just have time away from my daily life, I can find a way to do it without having to invest my own money and time and effort and energy, and then perhaps be yelled at by a crazy client, like, I can find another way to do that.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: There are many ways for me to do that.
Michele Williams: I've told you that I'm getting ready to have a grandbaby. I'm going to go sit and rock the grandbaby. I would do that all day long for free.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Exactly.
Michele Williams: But the beauty of this course is whether you're beginning, whether you're in them somewhere in the middle, or whether you're at the end, I'll tell you, this is interesting. I've worked with a lot of people who took this course three years before they wanted to retire. Why? Think about this. We talked a lot today about what is your exit plan. What is your exit plan? Well, the deal is this. If your exit plan is anything other than turning off the light switches and selling the inventory, meaning the machines and piecing out, then your financials need to be in place three to five years prior to your exit. So, I can't tell you how many people that have taken the course because they wanted to get their financials in order before they either went to somebody to buy them out or before they wanted to set it up to sell in general or to partner with somebody else because you don't just walk in and do that. If I showed you that I'm paying myself $20,000 a year for a full-time job and owning a company where I'm paying everybody else a whole lot more than that, is that going to make my company look like anybody wants to come buy it? The answer is no.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Absolutely.
Michele Williams: So, I've got to do the work years in advance of making my company look and actually be financially healthy, identify what financial health looks like. What am I working towards? What net profit do I want to show? What salary do I want to have? Because I want to make it so that somebody else wants to buy it.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Right, right.
Michele Williams: So, I've got people coming in towards the end of their, you know, journey, and entrepreneurship in this industry and coming in at the beginning. And like I said, anywhere in the middle. This isn't just for the newbies, and it's not just for those who've been there.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Right. The best time to take this is early on. The next best time is now.
Michele Williams: Now. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. You know, I'll say this. When I first started the course, let's talk a little bit about how it's presented, because I think people that are listening might be like, okay, fine, you maybe think about it. But what's interesting is I used to teach it in person, and I first started teaching it at CHF Academy. And, the course would start, we would start around nine. We would go till five or six the first day, and then it was nine to about five the next day. Like, it's full. It was somewhere around 16 hours of direct information. Jean Laws gave me a Christmas tree. It was at the Maryland event. She gave me a Christmas tree she brought it was a little pin with all these different, colored lights on it. And she said you make my brain light up like a Christmas tree in the best possible way. So, it's funny when I know I'm going to see her, I wear my little Christmas tree brooch. But it is so much, and it's so long. And so, like you said, you can only take in so much. The nice thing is, I've now, since COVID, moved it into an online setting, I fought for years to not do it online.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Why?
Michele Williams: Well, because I love the personal experience, I love the Ahas. I love seeing people. I want to be able to answer questions. This is the type, of course, that you're going to have questions on. They're going to happen. But I can't sit and teach it individually to every person over and over and over and over. It's just not possible nor feasible. Nobody's going to pay for 16 hours to sit with me one-on-one to learn this at the rate that I would have to charge to do that.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Right.
Michele Williams: So once Covid hit, the last time I taught it in person was 2019 because, in 2020 when Covid hit, we couldn't gather together, we couldn't be together. Everything shifted about how we started educating and sharing information. And so I had fought for years. Everybody was like, you need to put that online. You need to put it online. And I was like, here's the deal. This class means so much to me that I only want to present it in a way that I know it can have the expected outcome because otherwise, it feels like it's just a cheap version of itself. And that was important to me.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: You can. You do a great job of reading the room, you do a great job of being able to answer those questions, and you can see if you're losing someone or if they are so overcome with emotion that they can pay attention. But if they're online, you don't have that ability. You could have someone pay for it but not be able to complete it because they're not engaged in the same way they would be in person. So, I really understand that.
Michele Williams: Exactly. So, I did go ahead and put it online, and I've had, you know, quite a few people who've bought it over the last three or four years as they've gone through it. There's a question-and-answer field, so they can ask questions, and it comes to me, and I answer it, but there's not a coaching aspect with it. And this year, I was really thinking about, I missed a. I teach that course over and over in my private coaching, and I just thought, you know, I really miss the interaction. But people aren't still ready to go pull 15 of their friends together to sit for two days in a room. It's just that we've shifted so much that it's like telling everybody to go back to work now. Like, what? What do you mean I gotta go back to work? So, I started talking with my team and strategizing on what could I do so that I could reintroduce it, hope people take it that have not ever had an opportunity to take it over the last few years, also be involved in it and create a community around it.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Okay.
Michele Williams: And so, what we've done is we've, since 2020, everything has been updated. It's all in an online system. So, the nice thing is they can move at their own pace. That was one of the other things I found like you were talking about in the live version. I've got a course to keep, and I've got a pace to set, but I'm trying to get through all the information in two days. It's a lot of information. There are some people who asked if we could do it over a week, but their brains would be so saturated. The nice part of this being online is I've broken all of the education into 15-minute chunks. You can take it, and you can watch it again and again and again until you understand the lesson and then move on to the next lesson. Inside each lesson is a box where you can ask questions. So, if you're like, I don't get it, you can go, hey, Michele, I don't get it. And that email comes directly to me. I can go, tell me what you don't get, Ceil. And then we can talk about it, and I can answer you. So, you're getting feedback as you're going through it.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Okay.
Michele Williams: Okay. Additionally, we've added four Zoom coaching calls.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Oh, nice.
Michele Williams: And then the four Zoom coaching calls, one to kick off, and then we have them paced. Like if you can get from here to here in the education, this is what we're going to talk about. Get from here to here in the education. Here's what we're going to talk about. So, we've broken it into three chunks, three more Zoom calls so that I can see that face-to-face. We can ask questions; I can bring my whiteboard over and teach it in the moment. And then we've also created a community within my online system so that we can ask questions, we can give you additional resources, we can prompt questions to say, what is this happening? So, if you think about it, it's like being in an online educational classroom. You have an opportunity to learn some of it on your own so that you can absorb it at your own pace. You have the opportunity to ask questions that come to, you know, the author. You have an opportunity to sit in the classroom setting to see face to face, to ask for deeper learning, and then you have a community to talk about it. So, at that point, I'm like, we've hit every one of the things that I knew we needed to hit to try to have somebody have the best success that they could have outside of a two to three day, now you got to travel and get a hotel room and all the extra costs that are involved with it.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: And I think the part about the community, Michele, is one of the important things is sometimes there are questions you're afraid to ask, embarrassed to ask, and there's always somebody who's not. And I'm always grateful for that person. But sometimes your brain isn't even ready to ask certain questions, but someone asks it, and it clicks. And that's when you have that aha. Huh? Moment, like, oh, now I get it. So, having that ability to interact with other people would be the one piece of it that I would miss doing it online. So that's brilliant. I love that!
Michele Williams: Well, because you remember when we did it in person, what was the thing everybody did? We all went to dinner that night together because everybody wanted to sit and talk about it. Your brains are literally zing, zing, zing, zing, zinging like a pinball machine.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: You absorb more because we were talking about it.
Michele Williams: That's right. And so, we're going to be creating the community to talk about the pricing. You know, that's kind of the thing that people do. I always. It always drove me nuts on the forum when people would say, how much do you charge for?
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yes.
Michele Williams: And I would always get mad, and they're like, why are you so frustrated? I'm like because they're not asking all the questions.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Right.
Michele Williams: Asking such a limited amount, they should be saying, how much do you charge for this? With this lining, hand stitched, made within this amount of time, with this level of seamstress, like, there's so much more to be asked in the question, what kind of overhead are you doing? What percentage of profit are you building into this? Like, if we're going to ask the question, we don't even know the question that we should be asking, we're asking the wrong question. I can charge $100 for something that you could charge $100 for, and you could make money, and I could lose money. Exactly. That's why we see people taking other people's pricing. I see it on the design side, and I've always seen it on the workroom side. They would go, and take somebody else's price list. I get it. Did it myself. I would try to institute that price list and charge it, fine, I could do it. But I still couldn't make it all work because that price list wasn't built for my business structure.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Right?
Michele Williams: And so, if we don't know how to tweak it for our own business structure, how do we ever grow? How do we ever know if we can hire somebody? How do we know how to do anything? Back to your point of getting into a negotiation. Part of what we talk about in this class is how to know how far down you can negotiate. Yes, I know. This is the minimum that I have to charge to even cover my own cost.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Right.
Michele Williams: I'm going to stop there. I'm not going lower. I'm not now taking a personal hit so you can have a beautiful window treatment in your home. Unless you're my mom. I'm not doing it. I'm just not going to do it. If you don't know my grandbaby. I'll do the nursery if they're listening. But outside of that, I mean, for real. It doesn't mean that we don't have some room we can move. But then I would say, so tell me what. How would you like to remove something from this? Would you like me to reduce the quality of your lining or of your interlining? Like, what would you like? Because it's not an I, just don't want to pay it so I'm just going to go down. That's not how that works. But if we don't know the dynamics of how we put the pricing together in the first place, we could go down too far.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Are right.
Michele Williams: And trying to be kind, trying someone.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Otherwise, using someone else's price list might be a jumping-off point for brand-new people who have no idea where to start.
Michele Williams: That's right.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: But again, you know, I'm not far from Merrill Y Landis. I can't use their price list. We don't have the same services. We don't do things the same way.
Michele Williams: No.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Do I use Merrill Y Landis? Absolutely, I do. But I don't use their price list for my custom workroom. It just doesn't fit.
Michele Williams: It's not the same. That's right. And again, all of those things are things we do sometimes when we're starting. Well, so and so is charging that. So, I can charge that. Well, go ahead. But we need to make sure that we have the same service. We need to make sure that our work's done. We've got to look at the other costs that go into it. I remember and this is going to sound crazy, and I thought about it because I pulled my mom's information out of her folder. I just redid the window treatments last week. I still have my workroom set up for everybody who's going to ask me, yes, I do, because I love it. I'm not letting it go. but we went down there and made all new window treatments for a bay window in her dining room. And I pulled out her folder from years ago. 19 years ago, I made the window treatments in there, and I found my cogs checklist, and it even had the cost of the boards in the bay window. It had the cost of the tack strip that I used to put the balance up on it. It had the cost of the glue that I used. It had the cost of the staples that I used. I know that there are listeners right now rolling their eyes, and I not suggesting that you have to do that for every single project, but at the time, I was doing it so that I could have an awareness of what really went into the products that I was making. Because by and large, I could have $10 or $15, $20 worth of just extra stuff. All the cord cleats, all the cord condensers, and all the little, tiny pieces. Not the headrail. I was accounting for the headrail. I wasn't accounting for all the extra, extra stuff. And so, then when I'm pricing it, I'm not pricing that into it yet. My business is absorbing it, which means I'm now taking it out of profits.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Exactly.
Michele Williams: And so, when I went back and pulled that out, I was like, mom, do you know, look how much tack strip was back in the day versus how much tax strip is now? But it was just that reminder of having to manually account for everything. It's kind of like when you're going on a diet and they give you those food trackers, like My Fitness Pal, and you have to, like, keep up with every bite that goes into your mouth. It is keeping up with everything that went into a product, because that informed my pricing more than anything.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yes. And I can remember getting an order from Rolli company, and I think a tack strip was one of the things. Okay, so this roll costs this amount of money, and it's this many yards. That means it's this much per yard for me to use. And the fact of the matter is, I might not use that tacks strip again for another three, four weeks, maybe even months, because of the diversity of what I was making. But I had to pay for that roll of tacks strip to get that project done. And I remember writing a lot of stuff down, the same thing. Funny that you mentioned that. I found a box with some folders in it today, and I looked it up and I went. I was really doing a good job of keeping track of things, but it was not long after I took your class. And if you're not aware of it, then those are the things that you neglect to include. The ancillary items you have to remember.
Michele Williams: Well, we tend to think of them as, oh, that's so small, I'll just throw it in. Oh, that's so small, throw it in. And what many of us come to realize is, over time, they're not so small because the projects are getting larger. I was talking to another drapery workroom this morning in the CFO2Go program, and one of the things that we were talking about for her was where are you charging to think? And she's like, what do you mean? And I said, well, you don't just take the order from the designer and walk up to the table and roll the fabric out and start cutting. You think about the job. Yes. Think about the layout. You think about how it's going to be installed. I said you do work on that design you design in your brain on that project before you ever get to the table or the sewing machine. Where are you accounting for that in your pricing? Because if all your pricing is, it takes you an hour and a half to make that panel, but you're not accounting for the fact that there's a different header or it's at a ten-foot ceiling so I got to have more buck room, and a deeper header at the top and maybe a deeper hem at the bottom. You know, I'm going to do a five-inch instead of a four-inch double turn. If you're not thinking, you're not writing down and you're not capturing that time, who's paying for that time? If you're only charging for what we used to say at the sewing machine or the ironing board, meaning doing one of those two activities, where are you charging for all the other things you do to bring that item to completion? Because if you're not, you're putting a lot of heavy lifting on marking up a three-dollar piece of lining. It can't hold it. It's too much. It's too much. And you can't outwork your way for bad pricing like you can't sell more and outwork it. Like, if I lose $3, I'll just sell five more to see if I could. You're not going to outpace that.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: That is not going to work.
Michele Williams: You're not going to do it. And so that's when she was like, I mean, light bulb, boom, boom, boom. Oh, my gosh. We have another 30 to 45 minutes for each item that nobody's paying for, which means she is absorbing it, which is why she can't get paid so that she can pay the other people because it wasn't built in for her to get paid, which means the company's not sustainable, which is why she's feeling like, I'm working and running this multimillion-dollar firm so that I can pay other people.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: And not make money.
Michele Williams: And work for rich people.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yeah, and work for rich people. So, one of my many light bulb moments was when we were discussing whether we were retail or to the trade work rooms. And at the time I was doing both. I learned to stop answering out loud after about the third or fourth minute. You asked about charging consultation fees, and my response was based on the fact that I'm not an interior designer, so I did not feel that I had the value.
Michele Williams: And we were talking retail sales at the time with the consultation fee. Yes.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: And you very kindly pointed out to me that I said, am I? My response was but I'm not an interior designer. I don't have those skills. I don't have that. And you looked at me and you said, but you're doing it. And it was still a value issue for me because I was not promoting myself as an interior designer. I was helping them choose fabrics and designs for their window treatments. Why that connection of that is a design that did not happen for me?
Michele Williams: Huge.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: But you said something to me, that really impacted me, and that was there are people in this industry who base their livelihood on getting paid to do that. And when you say that doesn't have value, that takes away from our industry. And you said it kindly, but that was one of those moments, like, I wanted to crawl into a hole because that was never how I felt about it. Again, this is one of those things that is still an issue in our industry. We just recently had a very big discussion on the forum in the library, where someone reached out to me and said, I'm getting pushback from a designer about going out for a measure and charging $75. I posted it in the forum for her and I am happy to tell you that almost everyone responded, of course, I charge for that. Yes, I charge for that. Yes, I charge for that, and all with kind answers. No one made her feel like she was doing anything wrong, but lots of suggestions about what they did. I send the invoice ahead of time and tell them I'll be out after they pay. Like all great, fabulous answers. She reached out to me recently. she very professionally explained to this designer that she needed to be paid for the measures, and she has not heard back from the designer. She has, however, acquired two new designers.
Michele Williams: So, I was going to say that is a 100% success rate. What I mean by that is, that even if she had not got the other two designers, it's still a 100% success rate. I just talked to a designer that had a very similar thing. Somebody didn't want to pay for something. She said the meeting didn't go so well. And I wrote back, the meeting went amazing. I said because you learned what they value.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yes.
Michele Williams: And they don't value what you value.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Exactly.
Michele Williams: So, therefore, it's not a good fit. And you've learned now, instead of when you're knee-deep and creating a window treatment that they don't want to pay you for because they don't think they should have to pay you to sew on the buttons or to make the trim or to change it up because they changed it halfway through. So, you just learned that this is not your client, and that is 100% success. To your point. Here's what's interesting, I used to do wholesale and retail, right? Remember, I owned a workroom for 16 years. I've done every bit of it wrong. Like, I can tell you. I remember teaching at, vision, at, IWCE vision one time, and I broke down in tears and started crying. And I said to them, I am crying because I have done such a disservice to the industry myself. Kind of the same sentiment that you just shared. Because I didn't understand my own value and worth, I undervalued what I did, and I led potential clients astray in thinking about what was valuable and what was not. And therefore, they carried that preconception or misconception into their next business dealing with the next person, and most likely pushed back on their good pricing because I had set the wrong stage, and I have to own that. But what I've done is made it my life's mission to reset the stage, to create the conception or the idea that this is valuable. When we are working in a completely wholesale environment, we have to price for that. But if we're working in retail, and retail is anytime you're selling directly to the client. And you may not want to call yourself an interior designer, fine, do it. Call yourself a window treatment designer or a window treatment specialist. But both of those are because you are managing the design portion. If you are choosing the design. I think this should be panels. You just chose the design. Oh, I think Roman shades would look great here. You are the designer of that particular idea. Oh, let's use this fabric in this trim. You've just designed that window treatment. If we can own the value in that, because, to your point and what I had shared earlier, there are window treatment specialists in our industry probably that will hear this because I know some that listen. They make their money by standing in the gap between the wholesale workrooms and the designers. The designers call them because the designer either doesn't like window treatments, they don't know them, or they don't want to deal with them. There are too many other details in the home or the building that they are consumed with, and they might give some slight direction. I'm thinking this, this, and this. Here are the other fabrics we're using. There are multiple ways to make that business model work, but they are literally deriving their entire income by making those selections either alone with the homeowner or in concert with that designer. So that is a value. The second part is that the value is in the making of it. So even Kitty talks about this in her book, if you are doing retail sales and you are the drapery workroom, you literally have two businesses. You've got the design business, and then you're selling to yourself as a workroom, which means we have to value the design and provide some version of a markup. Because then if I go to sub it out to Merrill Y Landis or I sub it out to you, Ceil, I got to be able to pay you and pay me. Remember when I said earlier when the light bulb comes on is when we have to start paying people.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yes.
Michele Williams: And we realize they won't work for free or for as low as we were willing to work for. Because they're right. They're not willing to under-earn like we are. Their tolerance for low pay is not the same as ours. And so, when we can break our business apart into where we're making money and what we're doing, we start to see very quickly how all the pieces and parts fit together. Here's another one I'll throw out with that real quick. We hear a lot of people, I don't know if you still hear it, you'll have to let me know that, they're like, oh, my gosh the retail cost of this is less, say, $150, but I can't make it for $75 because they immediately just cut it in half and assume that's what they have to do, as opposed to saying, it's going to take me $95 to make this. Now, what is the markup we want to put on top of it? And so, again, right, it's just, how am I coming at this? What needs to be done? What level of service am I providing? What level of lining am I providing? I remember when and I'm not going to say the name, but there was a really, really, really thin lining out there that was so bad that it felt like worse than a sheet.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Oh, it was awful.
Michele Williams: Awful. Like you could see through it, right? I could just.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: The window treatment I made was with that particular stuff.
Michele Williams: most of it was all we could get retail at the time, but you could read a tattoo on somebody's arm through it was so bad. And I remember ordering like a classic sateen, polished, thick, luxurious material. You know, like back in the day when we used bump and just like a really nice, heavy inner lining versus super thin and flimsy and some of the things. Just learning to separate out your product and learning to price for that separation, as opposed to, again, the questions we don't ask, what lining and inner lining are you using? Are you even using Buckram or are you not? What are you doing over here? Versus what am I doing over there? Just being able to price. And, you know, the last part we haven't even talked about is being able to price for the perception of value that you bring. Not saying you don't bring great quality, but people, sometimes don't want budget, right? They don't want to be perceived as budget buyers. So sometimes you're charging more because of the service that you're giving, because of the stress relief. Maybe you have some nighttime opportunities to do things, or Saturdays for busy working families or whatever. You have found a way to set your business apart, and then you can charge for that differently because pricing is about more than just adding up the individual pieces that make up the product.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Michele, very shortly after I took your class the first time, I had done the Bucks County Design Home, and I did it on my own.
Michele Williams: I remember that.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: So, I designed the room and very much taught me that I, in fact, did not want to be an interior designer because of all the details. I had a lot of fun. It was a fun room to design. I worked with a really talented artist who painted murals on the wall, and I met a designer who I then worked with for years afterward. The first job I did for her, she had me do panels, and she sent out the valance. And the installer is walking in.
Michele Williams: With, I'm already feeling pain at this, but go ahead.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: He's walking past, and both of us spot the pull in the thread as he's walking by. And I see she just goes white. And I turned to her, and I said, take him upstairs and start the panels. I'll be up in a couple of minutes. And so that, you know, homeowner followed them right up, and I took a pin, and I started pulling that thread and adjusting.
Michele Williams: Weaving it back by the hand.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Leaving it back. And it only took me a couple of minutes. I went upstairs, and I said, it's all good. And she said you didn't have to do that. You didn't make that. And I said, when we're here, we are a team.
Michele Williams: That's right.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: The Homeowner doesn't know that I didn't make it. If she had seen it, she would have seen a damaged piece. And there are three of us here, the installer, you, and I. She doesn't need to know who made what or who delivered it or who what. She needs to have that up on her wall looking perfect. At that point, that woman stopped using the workroom who made that balance and worked with me exclusively for years. I charged a lot more than that workroom.
Michele Williams: That's right.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: She also had to go and pick up everything. She had to deliver fabric. She had to do all kinds of things to meet their price.
Michele Williams: Well, and you had her back on site. I remember one time going in, and we were hanging window treatments, and my designer walked me over to a piece of furniture and said, we had, this is a brand new piece of furniture. It just came in, and it was like a, the upholstery was coming out, and she said, can you, can you fix this little corner? I got out my round needle, and I started sewing in the corner before the homeowner could see it. And now I'm the hero of the day, using thread and a needle that I already had in my go kit for the install.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: That the designer did not know how to use.
Michele Williams: And I become the trusted resource. But I can, like you said, I can charge for that. That's different than I'm going to sit here and you're good. We even talk about this in the class what I call true wholesale, wholesale plus service. And then retail and wholesale plus services, which is what I ended up being to that designer, you can place somewhere in the middle. Yes, we provide measurements. Yes, we come on-site. No, we don't. I mean, you get to choose. That's the beauty. We all get to choose how we play and how we show up in this business world. But we best darn make the money for the work that we're doing, otherwise, set yourself up as a 501C3 and go ahead and make it into something that we can all just give you money for and it can be a charity. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that either. And I'm not really trying to be flippant there, but what I'm trying to say is, if we're doing this work as a hobby or as a charity, let's own that. Yes, but if you're doing it as a business, let's own that, and let's recognize it. Let's recognize in all aspects if we have bad business practices or poor business or uneducated business practices or business practices that aren't working in the favor of our company, and we're putting those out into the world, we are setting the stage for the business owner that is walking behind us. And that was the part that I decided I didn't want to be part of that ongoing problem. I want to be part of a better solution so that when people come in and ask, wait, they don't want to pay me $75 to show up, yet they're going to pay $75 to everybody else who's going to show up and do everything, but, for some reason, they don't hold the same value. I now can borrow the confidence of others, just like in that forum post, and go back and go, no. I'll tell you, I remember the time when you remember back in the day, designers would call the worker, maybe they're still doing it, and they would say, can you give me a couple of references? I'm going to come to work with you. So, I had a designer call me. She asked me for a couple of references. So, I said, that's great. Here are my references. Sent her two references of other designers that I work with. And I wrote to her, please send me a couple of references for workrooms that you've worked with. She responded, "I'm not sending you information about your competitors". Now what did I just give her?
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Same exact thing.
Michele Williams: And I said, that's fine if you don't. Because why are you leaving your workrooms? So, I was like, okay, this one. Send me two of the fabric vendors that you work with so that I can call and get a reference for you. How dare you?
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yeah.
Michele Williams: And I wrote back, and I said, clearly our business values are not the same. If you would like to try to do a job together, I'll need full payment in advance because I don't provide banking services. If I don't understand the payment plan or, you know, yeah, I want solvency. I didn't want to say it that way, but I don't know you. I'm not doing 50% down if I don't know you. And you can't give me any references yet you're requiring my references to see what my work looks like. I want to see how your money spins.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Right.
Michele Williams: We're going to stand on equal ground, right? Or you're paying me upfront 100%, and then I'll go make it for you.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Right.
Michele Williams: Until we establish a relationship, until there's a trust there. And she got so irritated and angry with me. It's kind of like the other clients, I thought at the time. It kind of threw me. And looking back, I was like, you know what? That's okay. Because she said to me, “I don’t value you as a business owner, as an equal business owner, I'm seeing you as hired help”.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yes.
Michele Williams: And that's what she was telling me. I see what you do. I see the role that you play as hired help. You're just some subcontractor that I can blow through. I had done this with another designer, and it worked out beautifully, I'll give you a couple of references. You give me a couple of references. So, we don't know each other now let's meet each other and let's go forward. And we had years of working together that was beautiful because we came into it as equals. But through my pricing, through knowing what I was doing, through really understanding what I was providing, it gave me the confidence to do that. One of the phrases that I use in the course over and over and over is people cannot walk on you if you're standing up. They can only walk on us if we lay down, and I am inviting everybody who's listening to this to stand up for your financial health, stand up for the business, stand up for sustainability, stand up for longevity, and stand up for the industry as a whole. Because if every one of us has great business practices and great pricing, it doesn't have to be exactly the same. I'm not looking into price fixing. That's not what I'm saying. Good practices in how we price, good practices in how we do the work, how we show up, how we deliver the work, and how we stand behind the services that we offer. The more that we do that, our industry will be elevated. Our industry will be seen as a player at the table. We will be seen more and more as the professionals and the artisans that we are. But we can't expect others to respect us if we don't respect ourselves, if we don't respect our pricing, if we don't respect the processes that are necessary to run a healthy company, how can we expect them to do that? And if we're borrowing numbers without doing that next level of work, when they say, how did you get this price, what am I going to say? Well, Ceil charges that I thought I could charge it too. Like, we don't have an answer.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Right?
Michele Williams: Right. So, the minute we don't have an answer, we look what? Flustered. When we look flustered, it's, as I say, blood in the water, and the sharks are swimming. That's what we just did. We created our own drama in the moment. But if we could say to them that the price was well thought out and it was planned because I know exactly what takes to go into that product. I know all the raw materials, how I'm going to source them, and where I'm sourcing them from. I understand how I've got to look at that product to understand the warp and the weave of that fabric. I've also started determining the fabric layout and where that pattern is going to be. So that the little boy's butt at the well is not the only thing you see on your toile window treatment if you remember those in the day. Like, I've thought about where the wallpaper hits, I've thought about where the valance is, and what is going to be seen on that valance and on the horn and on the inside of the horn. I have calculated how much yardage I'm going to have to make trim for that micro cord on the lead edge and how long it's going to take me to put it on there and to cut extra to get the thing turned inside out. And then I've really considered the time that it takes to iron it and which of the seamstresses need to be on this job because it's yours. And I know how much the fabric costs, the lining, the inner lining, and everything that goes into it. So, I have very clearly thought about how much this is going to cost. What are they going to say to that? Well, snap.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Exactly. At that point, you are the professional in the room because you've proven to them that you know what you're talking about.
Michele Williams: And I'm not going to walk in, certainly, and overwhelm them with this. But here's the deal. If we know what really goes into making it and we stop, the challenge is it's easy for us. It is a natural talent for the majority of us, and we do not value natural talent the way we do for ourselves, or for other people.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Exactly.
Michele Williams: And so, if we can learn to hold value for the things that I believe God has gifted us to be able to do, yes, they might become easy, but business doesn't have to be freaking hard all the time. Take the ease where you get it and then charge for it. Let's create some value sets around that work so that we can actually take care of our families, go to the grocery store, hire other people to do other things like clean your house and mow your lawn or whatever you need them to, to do. We can keep the economy churning. We can send our kids to college. We should be able, for the work that we do, to have a happy living.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Exactly.
Michele Williams: By doing it, not working ourselves to the bone. And this business is physically demanding. It is physically demanding. just being back in my workroom when last week, my back was hurting, my arms were hurting, and I realized I was not ergonomically holding myself correctly, because I've not been down there.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: You’re out of practice.
Michele Williams: Yeah, I was out of practice. It was like holding the baby for the first time in so many years, I'm like, oh, I'm out of practice. Got to work on that. But we need to honor what we're putting into it. And I feel like I'm just, like, screaming at people, and I don't mean to do that. I'm just so passionate because they are the listeners to your podcast. The industry that I've poured my heart and my life into for the last 26 years, 25 years. I want so much for these men and women to continue to add beauty and functionality and privacy and security and all the things that we are doing. The ways that we are showing up and making people's lives better or more beautiful. And it is a skill, and it is a talent, and it is dying. And by gosh, if we don't charge what we need to charge so that we can also teach the next generation, I just don't think we have to do all this for free. We just don't have to do it for free. And it starts with learning and understanding how to do it ourselves before we can pass it on to the next person. That's what I want to teach. So, we're teaching the strategy of pricing, and we're teaching the tactics of pricing, which is the difference between, here's my idea of how I'm going to do it, and now I'm sitting down with a pen and paper, and I got to do it. We're teaching profitability, we're teaching profit margins and markups and multipliers. How to price, if the price goes up, if the price goes down. How to negotiate, how to do a break even analysis, time studies. We're doing how to create your financial goals so that you can tie your pricing into the money that you need to make to run the company that you need to have, and how to use profit levers, meaning how do I markup versus how do I charge directly for time, and how to go back and forth within that.
The course is going to be, I'm going to tell you, it's going to last, I think, that we have it for eight weeks. There are four different Zoom webinars that we do. It is for if, like you said, the best time to take it is early, and the second best time is now. I will tell you, it is for workrooms, it is for designers, it is for upholsterers, it is for anybody who has a business that wants to understand pricing. It truly could go for any of them, and my heart's desire is, gosh, if we could get the majority of the industry to know this information, I can't even imagine we would be something to be reckoned with.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: I think, Michele, the thing that I have seen after people take this course that has impressed me the most is that place where you are stomping your feet at the kitchen table on this isn't fair, and I was in exactly the same place is that moment when I am, handed a check for the final product and I know that when that money goes into my account, it's going to cover not only everything it took to get the product made, but that I am making money off of it. And there is nothing wrong with that. That every business on the planet is profitable if they're doing it right and they're employing people. And that's the other part of it. You know, we talk about supporting one another. There are many of us who have hired people and been the source of their family's income. And if that's the kind of business you want, you need to know what you're doing to be able to provide that security to them. We joked around a little bit that was never the kind of business I wanted, and I was very clear about that. But I wanted to support the business that I wanted to have and to be profitable. And you mentioned interviewing the designers. I had a designer quite a few years ago, and I was enamored of her, and she was very popular, and lots of people knew her, and I didn't ask any of those questions of her. I was at a WCAA meeting, and I was so excited because everybody in my area knew this designer and I mentioned her name, and I just watched two faces drop. And two of my very dear friends pulled me aside and said, we need to have a conversation.
Michele Williams: You're third in line, honey.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: And they had also not gotten paid for everything they did for her.
Michele Williams: Yeah.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: I went, oh, crap. But had it not been for that meeting, it would have taken me a long time to find out, to get the answers.
Michele Williams: That's right.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: I was smart enough. Enough to say, I'm not starting this work till I get the deposit. I never got the deposit.
Michele Williams: So, you never had to start the job.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: So, it was successful.
Michele Williams: That's right. Go ahead.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: I just think that's part of the difference in my mindset after I took the course and my ability to stand up for myself and not let anyone walk all over me. In fact, when I met up with that designer, in a group setting where we were presenting a certain front to a group of people, I was as professional as could be. I told her that the fabric was in my car, and she went to throw me her keys so that I could put the fabric in her car. And I let the keys fall on the ground. I walked past, opened my. The back of my car, and I said, when you're done, just close that and I walked away. That is not who I am on a day to day basis. I was so proud of myself for not letting her walk all over me.
Michele Williams: Yeah. You know the word that comes to mind that a lot of people, when they would write in, because I've got testimony after testimony after testimony is power.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yeah.
Michele Williams: I felt like I had reclaimed the power to own and manage my own business. My tagline, for the last, probably five, six years, has been, what you own, you can change. And when we're willing to own our financials, we can change the story they tell. If we don't like the story that our decisions and choices and finances have made for us, we are in the owner position of changing it. I can't change the person's house next door because I don't own it. But if I don't like the color of my house, I can change it. And so when we really kind of get down to the crux of am I willing to own my business, the financials, the marketing, the operations, am I willing to own it? The hard stuff, because it's hard. It's not easy. But if I can get to the point of understanding it, then I can get to the point of ownership. When I can get to the point of ownership, then I have a power. And that means I have the power to make decisions with information. I have the power to affect the lives of the people that work for me. To say, I can bring in enough work to keep you paid and keep me paid, because I know what that number is. That's the type of power I'm talking about. I call it conscious consumerism, not just buying to buy, but trying to be really conscious that money makes the world go round. So, the more profitable we are, the more we can either buy to put money back into the economy, or we can give money to true charities, not the ones that we're running, but the charities that we really care about. So, we can then affect change in the world by putting money back into the world. We have to have it to give, because we can't give from what we don't have. You cannot give from depletion. We can only give from abundance. And profit is an abundance, which simply means above and beyond the salary that you should already be making as an employee of the company. That's right. And so just understanding the difference in all of those things and then how to use them for our benefit, even for tax strategies. Like, I had an hour conversation with my accountant today. What should be counting as salary? What should be counting as a draw? And how does that fit in with what I'm doing as a tax strategy, with my husband's money as a tax? How do we put things where do we do it? How do we calculate it? What does that all look like? So that I know what's coming over the next few months as we wrap up the year, and my pricing fits into that. Everybody's does. And so, it just gives you a more well-rounded view of how to have your business work for you instead of only you working for it.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Right. And Michele, I think the one thing that I would really want everyone to take away from this conversation is if you are the kind of person who freezes up when you hear about the numbers and profit margin, and it makes no sense to you, it didn't make sense to me either. But learning about it freed me up from a lot of worry, because those first couple years, I just priced things on a guess. And the 50% that I asked for upfront, and then the 50% I got at the end, well, look, I made money. I have a check I'm depositing. And the fear of not understanding stood in the way of me not earning a profit.
Michele Williams: Ego and pride.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yeah, exactly.
Michele Williams: Yes.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: And if learning about the numbers makes your eyes roll in the back of your head, then sit yourself down, take this course, and then you don't have to have the fear, and you don't have to be operating in your workroom all kinds of hours and going, why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? You will know.
Michele Williams: Email me. Cause here's the thing. I'll tell you. I've had people come in, and I don't know if you remember, there was one class, people came in and nobody brought a calculator. And I was looking around the room, and I'm like, and this is before we had them on our phones. I'm, like, people, this is a pricing class. And not one of you brought a calculator to class. Like, what are you doing? So, I used to buy calculators. I used to give everybody a calculator because they were showing up without a calculator. But I think when we are willing to say, the pain of not knowing how to do this or have my arms around it is worse than the pain of either an investment and when I say investment, I'm not just talking money investment of time to learn it, or throwing up a flag and saying, surely there's something here. I don't know. Help me understand it. The pain of not knowing is worse. That's why we talk about, like, the opportunity costs for people that are saying, oh, my gosh, this is too expensive. I want you to think about how much you're losing for what you don't know. When we price this, we priced it, number one, under $2,000. The goal is to make it as available for everybody as we can make it. It also, like I said, includes coaching, it includes community, it includes everything. We have it well under $2,000, because our goal is to make it as accessible as possible for everybody. but I've had people that have said I'm not a numbers person, didn't bring a calculator. And by the time it's over, they're like, oh, girl, I love my numbers. I know where it's going, I know where it's doing. I know how to get what I need out of my business because I now understand an entire building block of my business.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: And I don't know if you can see it. Both of the binders from the Pricing Without Emotion class are behind me. I take them out regularly to refresh and to reinforce that what I'm doing is working or that it needs to be tweaked so that it continues to work.
Michele Williams: And the nice part is, if you take the course, you have access to the course even after the eight weeks, like, you can keep watching it. You did make a comment earlier, say this. We do have special pricing for people who have taken it before. a lot of them that are in my system, we've transferred systems, we've sent them an email to tell them. But if anybody's listening, that has taken it before and you didn't get an email and you want to be part of it, we have a reduced price since you've already paid once to take it, you're actually now paying for the coaching part of it, not for the course, because you've already paid for that. So, reach out to me if anybody is in that situation and you don't have an email about it.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: So, Michele, I'll put a link to your website in the show notes, and also your email address if you'd like, so that people can reach out to you and find out more information. But I highly recommend to anybody listening if you've even thought about this for a little bit of time. Don't think about it anymore. Just do it. So when will this be available for everyone?
Michele Williams: Yeah, so we're kicking off in September. Our first call is September 5th at 01:00pm Eastern. They will all be recorded. So, if somebody says, oh my goodness, I'm going to miss one of the calls, that's fine. They're going to be recorded. And again, we have the question and answer box so they can go back and get their questions answered.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Okay. Well, Michele, if anybody has any questions, I'll have them reach out to you, but if we have not convinced them that this was a worth it, I feel like anytime I spend time with you, I learn something new. And I think that people have to hear this multiple times. Some of us. I'll raise my hand. Some of us need to hear this information more than once to remind ourselves that these are businesses that we're running, and they need to be profitable so that we can support the people that we love. And as you said, to give back to the world in whatever way we think is important.
Michele Williams: That's right.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: You can't do that if you're working until 03:00 in the morning and not making any money.
Michele Williams: That's all right. That's right. Yeah, I'm just so excited about an opportunity to teach it again, to really focus on it, just because I've kind of missed it. Yeah, not kind of missed it. I have missed it, that, initial interaction. But, you know, there's. There are answers on the other side of nothing knowing. And I think that's what's super important, is just knowing that there's somebody. I got answers, and if I don't have answers, I'll go figure them out for you.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: You’ll find them, right.
Michele Williams: I'm going to find them for you.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: I have a little bit of jealousy isn't the right word and fomo isn't the right word. I have to think about it. But those moments that I had in the class of, all right, I know what to do now, or, oh, I can get past this problem easily. It armed me with information that made me feel empowered. And I think envy is the word for people who have not taken the class yet, who signed up for this. This is going to be that moment for you.
Michele Williams: It's life changing. It's life and business changing. And even people that have just. If they just listen to the conversation that you and I have had, if they sat down and every time we talked about an idea or a concept, they wrote it down on a checklist, they would see how much needs to be done and then the question usually is, okay, so I see the list of things, but don't know how to do them, and I don't know how to implement them. That's the beauty of the class is we're going to walk you through and show you how to do it, and then actually give you exercises to do it, and then you can even say, well, what about this? And we can talk about it.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Exactly. So, as I said, I'll put information to contact you in the show notes.
Michele Williams: Thank you so much for an opportunity to even just talk about pricing. I kind of feel like it's right up there with politics and sex and religion. It's one of the four deadly topics that we shouldn't be talking about. I'm gonna leave the other three to other people, but this one I'm gonna be willing to own.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Those topics don't have any place on this podcast.
Michele Williams: Exactly.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: And I do think that even though we've come a long way, I am still hearing a lot of this hesitation. And if you are leaving a corporate job or leaving a job or becoming the sole breadwinner for your family, this is the information you need to make sure that it happens. I think is the difference, Michele, between this and a lot of other, bits of information that you can get out there. This is what's going to hold your hand and say, this is how you do it.
Michele Williams: Yeah. I've worked with quite a few people that have gone through a divorce or the loss of a spouse, and the comment is, I've got to make this work now, or, like, alimonies run out, I've got to make it work, or I'm not getting it. I have to make it work, or I have to leave with my childhood. I have to make it work. Well, when you get to the point that you're hungry enough that you have to make it work, we can make it work, but sometimes we don't get hungry enough. Right. Because we are allowing ourselves to be paid in thank yous.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yeah.
Michele Williams: Those are just really hard to turn into hard cash. I wish they weren't like bitcoin. We'd all be rich.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Wouldn't that be nice? But we need this course so that we can get paid.
Michele Williams: That's right. There'll be humor wrapped in the middle of all the emotions.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yes, there is.
Michele Williams: Well, just again, I thank you for that opportunity.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: It's been a pleasure, Michele, and I'm so glad I got to see you again.
Michele Williams: You too.
Ceil DiGuglielmo: All right, have a great rest of your day.
Michele Williams: Bye.
Thank you so much for listening to the podcast and a big shout out and thank you to Ceil for inviting me on her podcast to talk about it. You know, I’ve done it wrong, and I’ve done it right and like I’ve said before, right feels so much better to me. I would love an opportunity to show you how to truly understand to the depths of your bones how to price without emotion and that means doing more than just taking a number and not being sure of why it is not working for you. When you understand your pricing and you understand the numbers in your company, then you really have the power to create the outcome that you desire. We start on September 5, 2024. There will be four live coaching calls along with education in the middle, worksheets, downloadable documents, and we’re giving away three FREE months of Metrique Solutions. Join us to have modeling tools to play around with to see your pricing in action. You can find out more by going to Scarletthreadconsulting.com. We have a pop-up screen that will take you to learn more about the Pricing Without Emotion program. As always, plan to be profitable because profit doesn’t happen by accident.
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