How Can the Price Be So Different? (And Video of My Speaker Slam Talk)

I encountered a wild pricing difference that surprised me this week.

A couple weeks ago, I shared three stories to help you raise your rates. I'm hoping today's tale might be what you need to finally feel comfortable increasing how much you charge for the magic that you do.

On Tuesday night, I competed at Speaker Slam.

It's the largest inspirational speaking competition in North America. There's an application process, and if you're chosen, you compete against 9 other speakers sharing a personal story around a specific theme.

You do this on stage, if front of a couple hundred people, including a panel of expert judges.

Like anything else I take seriously, I hired an experienced coach who was invaluable in helping me see things I was missing, get out of my own way, and ultimately allow me to make much faster progress than if I had tried to do it alone. A lot of work went into preparing for my talk. And at the end of the night, I was one of the three winners.

I now have a chance of getting a spot in the Grand Slam finals later in the year and I won a prize pack valued at $4250.

This includes access to a program that guarantees helping me land a TEDx this year, a deep dive session with the founder of a Speaker Agency to help me better understand the paid speaking circuit, and a PR audit with a media strategy expert so I can get more media exposure.

But here's where it gets interesting...

Two of those prizes include an hour one on one with an expert, and they've valued their time in a drastically different way.

• The hour with expert #1 is valued at $250
• The hour with expert #2 is valued at $3500

How can there be a $3250 price difference?

Because there's clients at every price point and in some ways, it's all just made up. The market will pay you in alignment with how much you value yourself and your time.

P.S. You can see my full talk from Speaker Slam on Instagram here or on LinkedIn here.