Ep 64 - How Your Brand Positioning Directly Affects Your Pricing

Have you ever dropped your price because a lead went quiet? Or watched someone with less experience charge significantly more than you and actually get it? That moment of confusion is worth paying attention to, because the gap between what you charge and what you could charge is rarely about your skills. It's almost always about positioning.

In this episode, Emma breaks down why brand positioning is the invisible force setting your price before you even open your mouth. She explores what it really means to know where your brand sits in the market, why the signals your business sends create a perception of trust long before any sales conversation, and why the coaches who charge premium prices aren't necessarily better than you. They're just positioned differently.

Emma also gets into something that doesn't get talked about enough in the personal branding space: the difference between performing a position and actually embodying one. Because the goal was never to fake it until you make it. It was always to build something so genuinely yours that the right clients feel it before they can even explain why they trust you.

You'll learn:

• Why undercharging is almost always a positioning problem, not a confidence problem
• What it means to understand where your brand sits in your market and what that communicates to potential clients
• How to move from performing your brand to genuinely embodying it, and why that shift changes everything

If this episode sparked something for you, Emma would love to hear where you feel your brand is positioned right now. Come find her on Instagram at @emmamaidment_ and continue the conversation there.

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Flow on friends, 
Em x

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

It's about making your credibility visible. This is about leverage. This isn't about faking it. It's not about getting on a podcast and reading a script and quoting a bunch of scientific facts that you actually don't know because it makes you sound smart. It's about actually being deeply embodied in your work and positioning yourself accordingly so it signals to other people that you are a trusted source. Welcome to the Flow Lane with me, Emma Maple. This podcast is for the female entrepreneurs who want the both end big goals and a life that you can actually enjoy. We're talking sustainable scaling, working in flow, and creating a business that supports your energy, not trains it. Let's dive in. Your brand positioning dictates your pricing. If people don't know where to put you on a shelf, they will literally leave you behind. So your positioning is essentially answering why you, why this, and why now? If you can answer those three questions, then your positioning is locked in. If you can't, let's dive in a little deeper. So I would like to take you to the coffee aisle in the supermarket. You will find in a coffee aisle you've got premium brands, you've got cheap and cheerful, you've got your old faithfuls, and instantly you know, am I the budget shopper? Am I the premium? Am I looking for the artisanal blend or the origin story of these beans? Am I looking for the old faithful? Like just give me that trusty consistency, I know it's going to be the same every time. Or am I looking for that kind of niche offering? Am I the decaf? Am I the single origin? Do I want it to be ethical, functional? You get the drill, right? You are probably one of those categories. And if your brand doesn't clearly signal to people which one of these you are, you become the bag. They pick up, look at, and put back down. So I like to think about this and give the example of what is in your shopping trolley. Because I think it's a really nice way to understand brand positioning. Because often brands will come to me and they'll kind of want to position themselves as top shelf because it sounds good. Oh, I only want to work with premium people. We only want to have premium customers. That sounds good. And then you actually realize, no, you're offering the person that you're speaking to who this actually serves, the why you, why this, why now is actually maybe more of the cheap and cheerful. Or maybe you're somewhere in that kind of niche offering that you're speaking to a certain type of person. So I often bring it back to what is in your shopping trolley. And this is literally a story about what was in my shopping trolley. So for those of you that don't know, hi, I'm Emma. I'm clearly Australian, but right now I'm living in Greece. And when we first moved here, I was at a shopping center and I'm walking through the aisle with my kids and my shopping trolley. And I'm putting things in the shopping trolley, right? And this woman is watching what I'm doing. And she comes over to me and she asks me, excuse me, um, I've seen what you're getting here. Do you know about these eggs? Do you know uh where they come from, if they're organic, what organic means in this country? She started kind of asking me these very indifferent questions about the eggs. Why was she assuming that I would know the origin of the eggs? Because everything in my shopping trolley would signal that. Everything that was in a packet was organic. And then she would have seen me physically looking at ingredient lists, Google translating to check the ingredients. I was signaling to her that I value quality produce, I value knowing where things come from, I value organic, I value all those kinds of things. So she made the assumption she probably knows about the eggs if she cares about all this other stuff. That is you understanding your brand positioning. So your trolley, what is in your trolley is that identity signal. People are making assumptions about you and ultimately trying to put you in a category based on what you're showing them. So she asked me about the eggs because she assumed I was health conscious, values-led, probably know what I'm doing, and that's why she asked me. Now, if you translate this into your business, your content, your website, your office suite, who you collaborate with, where you appear, that is your shopping trolley. That is where you are placing yourself on the shelf. So if your trolley says premium, people will ask premium questions and you'll be beholden to and speaking to a premium client. If it says confusing, people will ask for a discount, or they'll just ghost it altogether because it's not clear. The value proposition is just not there. So positioning is ultimately what people say about you when you're not there. So she's the one who, or she helps women who, or she's like no other. If you can't finish those sentences clearly about yourself, then your audience can't either. They're just as confused as you are about where you sit on that shelf. So if people don't know where to place you, then they can't choose you. Positioning is kind of like a shelf label, and pricing is the number underneath it. Back to the coffee example, right? If it's positioned in the aisle, in view, and it's speaking to me because it's single origin, organic, from blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I'm not gonna worry that the price tag is three times the amount of the cheap and cheerful because it's speaking to me and my values, and I am the person that's gonna buy from that. As opposed to the person that's like, coffee is coffee, like I don't even care, is gonna shop based on price. Neither one of those things is wrong, they're just different. And so you need to understand where you sit to be able to know how it is that you're communicating that. So people don't often buy the best. They buy what is the clearest signal of safety and credibility. So sometimes that can be frustrating when the quality is actually not, it's positioned as quality, but it's actually not. And I say this all the time: marketing will kill you. Like you could literally walk down any supermarket aisle and be tricked into buying the healthiest, best possible option, and you read the ingredients and you're like, this is actually terrible, right? Marketing is designed to elicit a response from somebody. And so we want to know this, and that as heart-centered, authentic human beings, we want to use it for good and not evil. And that is the mission I am on in this world is to empower people like you that are heart-centered, that are living their sole purpose, that are doing good in the world, to understand this stuff so that you can leverage it and make your business ultimately better. So visibility is kind of a shortcut to this signaling. People and humans use symbols. We've used symbols in humanity forever, but they use it to decode: is she legit? Right? Is this legit? So, for example, I gave this example in a previous episode. You can go back and check it out about building a personal brand using these principles. If I click on a product, I get hit with an ad for a skincare brand, and I click on their product and it says, as seen in vogue, as reviewed by a top beauty editor here, as won this award, it's signaling to me, oh, okay, this must be legit. The ad seemed kind of dodgy, but all these other signals are signaling to my brain that this is safe, right? That this is actually credible. And so sometimes the symbol of authority gets you in the room before your actual expertise does. And this is where the kind of game comes in. So to give you an example of what does that look like, seen with the microphone in your hand is borrowed credibility. And it is often more powerful for you to be seen with the microphone speaking to people than it was for you to speak to those five, 10, 20, 100 people in the room. Because an image of you speaking to a crowd with a microphone signals she has an audience. People trust her voice. She's a leader, she's an educator. We're making these assumptions, even if they haven't heard a word of what you have said yet. Their brain categorizes you as a public figure. It categorizes you as an authority. Because we somehow, somewhere along the line, thought that people who have microphones have authority. Now, am I saying that you should get a microphone in your bedroom and pretend that you're on a stage? No. There's an element of leveraging smoke and mirrors and then just straight up lying. But ultimately, we want to understand that, you know, I say this all the time where people come in and they go, it's opportunity to speak on stage. And it was so amazing. And I spoke to the 20 women in there and I totally changed their life. And I'm like, Did you get any photos? Did you get a video of it? And they're like, oh no, I didn't, forgot. I was too busy in the moment. And I'm like, ah, because that photo, that image can be leveraged over time more than just those people in the room that you were able to impact in that moment. And not a lot of entrepreneurs kind of think in that way. So you can sometimes position yourself in a way and then have to actually have the credibility to back this up. And this is a bit of a vulnerable share, and maybe you'll think that I'm discrediting myself in some way, but I'm gonna share it anyway. Is that when I first started teaching yoga, I came from this world, the PR, the positioning, as my background. So I started teaching yoga, and I thought, wow, most yoga teachers are kind of broke and they're not getting paid very well. How am I going to become a senior teacher a lot faster, right? Without doing this for 20 years and then suddenly being able to justify a higher price point. I'm gonna have to position myself as an expert. What should I do? So I did what I know and I reached out to publications. I started writing and educating about yoga into big publications, big health and wellness magazines, because that's the world that I knew. And so suddenly I was seen as this expert and I was scrambling behind the scenes because I'm like, I'm writing these articles about best running tips for runners, and I barely know what a hamstring is. So I had to go back it up. I realized, okay, don't be the person that's fake credible. Actually, have some substance. And I did the reps. And you can go back and see how many years of reps I did. I can confidently educate you on a hamstring if I needed to. But I positioned myself. It felt cringe in the moment. And there have been so many times where I have been called an expert or referred to as a guru, and I will literally reach out to the editor and say, please don't call me a meditation guru. Please don't put that in front of my name. I don't like the association with it because in the spiritual world it means something else. And it also makes me feel uncomfortable to think, who am I to be that expert? But also who are you not? Because if you actually have the substance behind it, then there is no difference between you and the person that is being quoted. There is no reason why you can't be up there as well. Now, this played out recently for a client. She was, she's in she's an incredible healer in the in the breath work space. She's been doing trauma-informed breath work for over a decade now. She's very, very good at what she does, but she still doesn't feel like an authority. And somebody recognized her, a leading clinical expert, someone who she sees as more knowledgeable, as you know, speaking an entirely different language to her. She puts him on a pedestal. He recognized, no, you actually deserve to be here. I'm giving you these clients because I know you are so good at what you do and you get them such a powerful transformation. She straight away was like, oh, I didn't feel like the authority, but actually I am. And these people are trusting me with these clients because of that. Nobody ever really feels ready to claim their authority. You have to step into it for the good of your work, for the good of what it is that you're here to do in the world. So I don't want you to confuse performance with positioning. So performative visibility is like you're being seen everywhere, but you're actually saying nothing. There is no substance behind it. And I think the influencer culture is a great example of that. Then there's actual potent visibility. You have a clear point of view, you have a clear, consistent message, and you have real substance to back that up. Meaning anybody could sit here and look you straight in the eye, down the camera, and read a script. I'm not reading a teleprompter right now, it's not my style, but I could be, right? But if you get in a room with me and you ask me a question off the cuff, or if I'm on someone else's podcast and they ask me a question that isn't pre-scripted, can I back that up? That's the difference. If you can, even if you feel nervous doing it, then you can step into that authority. Because the goal isn't to be just be seen. The goal is to actually be seen as you for this thing, for the thing that it is that you're doing, right? So you're not just being seen in whatever random way. You're actually wanting to leverage it so that you're seen as the leading expert in what it is that you do. So you can actually then think of, okay, well, what are some visibility assets that you can use to create this authority around what you do? Obviously, the microphone. Or if you don't have a stage or you haven't been invited onto a stage, make your own podcast. Create your own stages, create your own events, actually pitch yourself for actually getting out there. The starting point of that is just being brave enough to do a spoken to camera reel. Like start there and then build your own stage or get on other people's stage. Borrow their trust and credibility. When you have a guest feature on someone's podcast or you collaborate with them on a post or an event, you're also borrowing their trusted audience. You're not just, you know, getting the photo of you on the stage, you're also being positioned to their audience as we trust this person because we've invited them to speak. Therefore, they've already broken down all those barriers around trust. Then testimonials, but presented like proof. So not just here's here's a random Google review, but actually telling the story of like, here's how I took this person from here to here. And if you're ever doubting your authority or like, who am I to even say this? I want you to go back and look at the people's lives in which you've impacted. Look at the testimonials, look at the people that you've worked with in the past, what has been their transformation? Let that inform your truth. Then having this consistent brand language and ultimately a signature framework, something that you can go out there and repeat and share and become known for. I have been telling people to live in alignment for over a decade in a variety of different ways, from teaching yoga to now stepping into to educating about brand and business. It's ultimately the same message, which is kind of funny to think about. It's the same message, it's just through a slightly different lens, but it has been consistent over and over and over again. It's in my book, it's in everything that I do. And then having this clear offer suite that actually this is what I do, this is who I do it for, and this is at what level I help those people with. All of those things help to signal your positioning. And so you don't actually necessarily need more confidence, you need more context. If people only see you talking into the void, then you kind of look like a beginner. But if they see you in a container, if they see you in the shopping trolley, right? The shopping trolley then is the podcasts, the event, the guest speaking, the guest expert feature in an article, you look established. So it's not that you're waiting till you get to a certain point to become established, to become an authority. No one's gonna just tap on your shoulder and give you that baton. You have to get out there and pitch yourself, put yourself in these rooms where it's then signaling to other people, hey, I have something to say, I can back it up, and I'm gonna step into my power to bring that to you. So authority stacking when done ethically, because I feel like as I'm opening this can of worms and sharing it with the internet, I really hope this gets into the hands of the heart-centered people that want to do well in the world, because there's a lot of people that know this stuff that aren't necessarily using it for good. But I want you to actually go in and borrow visibility. So get on the stage, pitch the podcast, whatever it is, but back it up with substance. So getting on even small podcasts is a great place to start. People are always looking for people to be. There's literally Facebook groups of people that are searching for podcasts' guests. Host a live training. So create your own stage. Bring other people in. When you bring in other people, again, you're borrowing their trusted audience. Run a simple series so that you're getting on and you're doing maybe like weekly teaching or these authority signals that is, hey, I am an authority on this topic. I can speak with authority on this topic, let's dive in. And then creating your signature framework so that you can repeat your message, so that you can get on there and say, this is my framework for this, and repeat it over and over and over again. So I want you to ask yourself, what are you currently being seen as? And just kind of let that land for a moment. Are people looking at you and going, wow, yeah, she's the premium expert, or is she the friendly kind of generalist? Or is she the chaotic creator? Or is she the hidden genius? Like, how are people in your world seeing you right now? And then what are three visibility signals that we just spoke about that you could actually implement right now onto your shelf that would actually transform your brand from kind of best kept secret or random put to the side coffee pods that actually become front and center and put in front of the exact right people, your dream clients. Positioning isn't what you do, it's what you're willing to be seen as. And I need you to let that fully land in your body because most of us are not willing to be seen. We would prefer to hide. We would prefer to not be seen in so many ways because it feels confronting, it feels big. We want to be seen, we think we want the visibility, we want the book deals, we want the podcast features. And then when we realize the reality of that, we often shrink back. So I want you to just think about that in your own journey right now, because there's a there's a cautionary note to this of like, this is not about faking it. I don't believe in just like fake it till you make it. It's about making your credibility visible. This is about leverage. This isn't about faking it. It's not about getting on a podcast and reading a script and quoting a bunch of scientific facts that you actually don't know because it makes you sound smart. It's about actually being deeply embodied in your work and positioning yourself accordingly. So it signals to other people that you are a trusted source. So you can actually be brilliant in private and then literally underpaid because the market actually can't see you. And this happens all the time. People come into me and they are so under-leveraged, so underpaid, because they're not positioned in a way that signals to their market that they are a premium brand, that they should be able to charge and justify premium pricing because their brand is kind of giving hot mess. Now, giving hot mess, if that's relevant to your product and where it sits on the shelf, is totally fine. It's not that either one of these is better than the other, it's just that you need ultimate clarity about where you sit on that shelf. So visibility is essentially a bit of a game and perception just opens the door, but substance is what keeps you there. I want you to remember that. So take a moment to look at your brand, zoom out, look at if I was objectively looking at myself on a shelf, whether it's your product that you sell or your service, where would I sit? Who is my audience? Bring it back to why you, why this, why now? If you can answer those three questions, you will nail your positioning. And when you nail your positioning, you get product market fit. That is when your stuff just starts selling like hotcakes. That is when you become in demand. Because people are like, it is so obvious that you are the person for me, or that is the product that solves my problem. I want it now. Gimme, gimme, gimme. All of that happens when your brand is positioned accordingly and when your nervous system feels safe to hold that positioning. Because if you don't feel safe with someone inviting you on a podcast as an expert, even if it feels like a stretch, if you genuinely don't feel safe, you will self-sabotage, you will say no, you will talk yourself down rather than actually going, I'm safe. I am meant to be here, my work matters in the world, and I'm gonna get out there and give voice to what it is, what is the mission that I'm trying to lead. So I would love to hear from you in the comments below. Where do you think that you sit on the shelf right now? Come and slide into my DMs or comment below. I would really love to hear if you feel like your positioning is matching your pricing and is matching ultimately the results in your business. I'm gonna be back with you really soon for another juicy episode. Thank you for your attention today.