Every decision can make or break profitability, and pricing remains one of the most powerful yet underutilized levers. There is fear that often holds companies back from taking bold steps in pricing. How about getting a proven playbook to guide you?
Get to have a peek at Mark Stiving‘s groundbreaking new book, Instant Profits: How to Raise Prices Without Losing Customers.
In this episode, together with Mark and guest-host, Rebecca Kalogeris, we explore how this concise, impactful guide empowers executives and decision-makers to conquer pricing fears, implement value-based strategies, and unlock untapped revenue potential—all in under an hour of reading. Let’s bring your pricing game to a whole new level and make a lasting impact.
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Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
- Gain access to the behind-the-scenes of the making of Instant Profits book and how it showcases a concise, actionable guide that can help executives make meaningful changes in their companies.
- Delve into the common fear of raising prices and gain actionable strategies to address it and boost your revenue confidently.
- Learn how to price based on the value delivered rather than arbitrary metrics in order to optimize profitability.
“If you are an executive, this book is awesome because it gives you a chance to read about what you could or should be doing in pricing, and you can do it in less than an hour. Come up with at least one or two ideas of things you can go do, and it’s going to make the company money.”
– Mark Stiving
Topics Covered:
01:43 – The reason why Mark wrote the book, Instant Profits: How to Raise Prices Without Losing Customers
03:18 – Mark highlighting how fear of raising prices can hinder action
04:47 – How his new book, Instant Profits: How to Raise Prices Without Losing Customers differ from the previous one
06:05 – Why you should go and buy this book for $100 and who should purchase and read it
08:05 – Rebecca explaining Amazon’s royalty system and the real reason why the book is priced at $100
10:40 – Kindle version available for now and why the hardcover is still to be released
13:30 – Mark emphasizing what makes this book an invaluable and concise resource for executives
Key Takeaways:
“The reason I’m charging a hundred dollars isn’t because I need the 30 bucks or the 70 bucks or something like that. The reason we’re charging a hundred dollars is because I want buyers to know that it’s worth a hundred dollars. That’s it.” – Mark Stiving
People/Resources Mentioned:
- Instant Profits: How to Raise Prices Without Losing Customers by Mark Stiving: https://impactpricing.com/instant-profits-book/
Connect with Mark Stiving:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/
- Email: [email protected]
Full Interview Transcript
(Note: This transcript was created with an AI transcription service. Please forgive any transcription or grammatical errors. We probably sounded better in real life.)
Mark Stiving
If you are an executive, this book is awesome because it gives you a chance to read about what you could or should be doing in pricing, and you can do it in less than an hour. Come up with at least one or two ideas of things you can go do, and it’s going to make the company money.
[Intro / Ad]
Mark Stiving
Welcome to Impact Pricing, the podcast where we discuss pricing, value, and the instant relationship between them. I’m Mark Stiving, and I run bootcamps that help companies get paid more. And today our guest is, well, I guess I’m not sure if I’m the guest or if Rebecca is the guest, but we have Rebecca Kalogeris here to talk with me today. Welcome, Rebecca.
Rebecca Kalogeris
Hello, Mark. It is always a pleasure to talk to you. And we’ve done many a podcast together on other shows. But this time I’m stealing the mic from you. I’m taking over as your host so that I can put you on the hot seat. So everyone who’s been a guest before is going to be like turnaround is fair play.
Mark Stiving
It is. And what are we going to talk about today? Not that I don’t already know, but…
Rebecca Kalogeris
Well, Mark, you may not be aware, but you have written a fourth book that just got released, right? Instant Profits How to Raise Prices Without Losing Customers. And I want to talk to you a little bit about that book and what it’s about. What drove you to write it, why it was something you were so passionate about creating?
Mark Stiving
Okay. Do you want me to just blather or do you want to ask one of those questions?
Rebecca Kalogeris
I’m going to ask first, like, why you wrote this book.
Mark Stiving
So, it’s actually fascinating because I was trying to write a different book targeted at CEOs, and I’m sitting on an airplane and I just can’t get my arms around how to structure the book. And I’ve been doing a lot of bootcamps lately, helping companies figure out how to raise prices. It’s like the biggest thing that’s on everybody’s mind. And it just hit me, people really need to know what I know about raising prices. And I started writing the book and I said, look, I’m not going to put fluff in it. I’m not going to put stories. I’m just going to write what they need to know. And believe it or not, I was done writing it in about two flights. So let’s call that, what, six hours, eight hours, something like that. So you can tell it’s not a very long book. But the first draft was done really quickly and it just flowed. It was amazing. I loved the process of this one.
Rebecca Kalogeris
Well, and I think one of the reasons it was so important is you run into this a lot when you are working at bootcamps, whether directly with companies or through their PE firms, that there are people really missing the opportunity to raise prices. And it’s because there’s fear, right? There’s fear that I’m going to do this incorrectly and my customers are going to leave me forever. My business is going to fold. I’m going to be stuck on the street. Like, I mean, it goes deep and it’s emotional. And because it’s an area you know so much about, like in the book, you really helped like them face their fears, recognize them for what they are, and then like, ‘Hey, let’s talk about how we’re going to do this systematically to lower that risk and to get the rewards that you so you deserve,’ let’s say.
Mark Stiving
Absolutely. So, I want to talk about the fear thing for just a second. I’m going to call him a really good friend of mine at this point in time, but he’s someone who works for a PE firm. He helped me form some of the first bootcamps we ever did. He went through a half dozen bootcamps with me. It got to the point where he could teach if he wanted to, right? He knew my contents so well, and I got a call from him the other day, and he is like, Mark, we’re having a pricing problem. He’s like, sure, happy to talk to you. And it turns out the pricing problem is he was afraid to raise prices. It was hilarious, right? I’m not going to mention his name because I don’t want to embarrass him, but the guy’s brilliant, right? And it just amazes me how easy it is to be afraid. And when we step back and start thinking, ‘Oh, look, we don’t have to raise prices across the board to every customer.’ We just have to think about where it makes sense? When does it make sense? And how do we go about doing it? And we can get some of that fear out and get people to actually go raise prices.
Rebecca Kalogeris
And it’s funny because, I mean, you can theoretically know what to do and why and teach and understand it. But still, when you’re applying, there really is a fear. You did mention that, like you wrote it in eight hours, that you are a very quick prolific writer. But you also hinted that this is maybe not as long as some of your other books.
Mark Stiving
I have to say, it’s the thing that makes me most nervous about the book and also the most excited about the book. If you look at Selling Value, the third book I wrote that has 50,000 words in it, right? It’s filled with stories, it’s filled with dialogue. It tries to make it readable and fun. This one, instead of 50,000 words, has 4,000 words. Now, that means one 10th the number of the words. I didn’t write stories, I didn’t write examples, I didn’t write anecdotes. It’s like every paragraph is a fact. And you should be thinking about how you apply this paragraph to your company. So why is that exciting? It’s exciting because, heck, you can read this book in an hour. So, you should get it and read it and then read it again. And then decide which paragraphs we are going to go do something about. You’re not going to do all of it, I get it. But, if you can’t find something in that book that makes sense for your company, then, you’re not in a position to apply those concepts.
Rebecca Kalogeris
Tell me more about that. What do you mean you’re not in a position to apply those concepts?
Mark Stiving
Well, so, before I answer that, let me tell the audience how much we’re charging for this book.
Rebecca Kalogeris
I was going to wait for the end, but let’s do it. Price matters. I want you to explain how much it is and why that is what you did.
Mark Stiving
Yes. So we decided, okay, well, I’ll take all the blame. I decided, yeah. We wanted to write a book and I’m charging a hundred dollars for this book. A hundred dollars, that seems ridiculous. But when you think about value-based pricing, we’re not pricing by the word. We’re pricing for the value we deliver. And I wrote this book for people who are running companies who have the ability to make decisions inside the company. So if you’re running a product line, if you’re actually the CEO or an executive of a company, and you make decisions and make a difference, a hundred dollars is almost peanuts compared to what you’re going to make from this book, right? Yeah. So, when you think about value-based pricing, I way underpriced the book, but I thought a hundred dollars would stand out and it would make it look like, ‘Hey, that guy’s really proud of his book.’ And in a lot of ways, I really am. So if you’re not in charge, if you don’t have the ability to go make changes in your company, don’t buy the book. Right? That book is for people who have the ability to go make changes and they’ll go implement something. And they will absolutely make way more than a hundred dollars from something that they learned in that book.
Rebecca Kalogeris
I like to think of it as, it’s sort of like a playbook, right? Each of those are like really proven plays that you’ve done and you’ve helped other companies do in a ton of different environments. And the reader’s goal is to read through these, identify the ones that really fit in your environment and go implement them. Like you said, take action because the rewards are going to be significant, measurable, impactful.
Mark Stiving
Absolutely. Right. So, now that we’re talking about the hundred-dollar price point, can I ask you a question?
Rebecca Kalogeris
Of course.
Mark Stiving
Tell me about Amazon’s pricing and what we’re dealing with in the Amazon pricing world. Because we’re only selling this at the moment. It’s only available on Kindle through Amazon. We’ll tell the rest of that story in a minute. But tell us about Amazon’s pricing because you did all the Amazon work.
Rebecca Kalogeris
Oh yeah. It was great fun. Really loved it. So in case anyone’s unaware, Amazon pretty much has a monopoly in book distribution, particularly ebook distribution, right? And they know it. It’s clear and what’s really interesting is they have like two royalty programs, right? You can either earn 35% royalty on your book, or you can earn 70% royalty on your book. Now, Mark, which one would you want to earn?
Mark Stiving
I’d vote for 70%. 70% sounds way better than 35%.
Rebecca Kalogeris
Because you wrote it, right? You can only get that amount of royalty if you price the book between $1.99 and $9.99. That’s it. If you charge $10 for your book, $10 and 5 cents for your book, then you are in that 30% royalty frame.
Mark Stiving
I’m curious, is a hundred dollars in between a $1.99 and $9.99
Rebecca Kalogeris
It’s not. But it actually made me look at most of the books that I purchase on Kindle. And they’re also not in that range. So it’s sort of like, the majority are definitely not. So it feels like it’s there to be like, well, we would let the authors get that much if they charge less. But, it’s clearly like a fake royalty. But if you think about that, that’s an enormous percentage of the profit and revenue that Amazon is taking. Now, it may be if you go through a publisher, they have different negotiated rates, but this is, if you are publishing directly as you did with this book in your last book, this is how the wonders and joys of Kindle Publishing works.
Mark Stiving
And so I want to point something out. We’re charging a hundred dollars and we get to keep only 30 of that hundred? And so the reason I’m charging a hundred dollars isn’t because I need the 30 bucks or the 70 bucks or something like that. The reason we’re charging a hundred dollars is because I want buyers to know that it’s worth a hundred dollars. That’s it. Yeah. And so it was painful when you told me that.
Rebecca Kalogeris
I know. I was like, oh, I’ve got great news, Mark. And you can’t get the information, it’s like little breadcrumbs. So you keep learning new things. They’re like, oh, look at that. Who knew? So, it was an experience. But we do have the hardcover coming together. Well, so you’ll be able, for a hundred, you can get either the ebook version or the hardcover.
Mark Stiving
I was about to ask you, why do we only have a Kindle version today?
Rebecca Kalogeris
Because again, there’s lots of little joys. And then there’s page limits that you have to hit, and there’s a process. It’s been really fun to go through. But I do think we’re ending up with a really nice hardcover version, which has got some great place for notes, because as you said, sort of like each paragraph in there is really almost a whole idea and concept in itself. And it’s a great place to reflect. I say that, I read the book quickly, but I’ve thought about the book for months since I got to read it early. Right? I thought about it and the concepts in there for months. And I think that’s some of the joy. And so having the hard copy to be able to like, write your notes in and kind of stop yourself and think, great, how am I going to implement it, is great. Or if your eyesight is failing like mine, then you just read the ebook and you can see it. And that’s great.
Mark Stiving
The font is really big, right?
Rebecca Kalogeris
I know.
Mark Stiving
Well, just because the story’s fun, Rebecca came to me and said, Mark, we can’t have a spine for the number of pages we’re going to have. And I thought, if we don’t have a spine, it looks like a pamphlet. How do you charge a hundred dollars for a pamphlet? And and so we were like, well, what do we do? And then I thought about kids’ books. And kids’ books are hardcover. And they don’t have that many pages. So, it’s like, well, we should be able to do a hardcover. Turns out there’s a page limit. You have to have at least, what is it, 70 pages or something?
Rebecca Kalogeris
78, I think.
Mark Stiving
78 pages. Trust me, this book is not 78 pages . So, we ended up adding a bunch of notes pages to it just so we could get to 78 pages and put out a hardcover version. So it’ll at least look professional when you put out a hardcover version.
Rebecca Kalogeris
To be fair, we were like 60 pages. Like the book is short. It’s not four pages long, but it’s longer than hop on pop, right? I mean, it’s got pages, but it wasn’t enough. And then it was like, how do you add pages to make it seem intentional and to be useful to the readers so that the experience was nice. We had an early version that came in. It was just sort of random blank pages. And I was like, I can’t even show you, Mark. This is why they’re not available at the same time. Because I was like, nope, that one’s not going to work. But I do think we came up with a nice balance.
Mark Stiving
Excellent. I’m looking forward to getting a hard copy version. That’ll be nice.
Rebecca Kalogeris
Yeah, it’ll be nice. Yeah, it’ll be good on my coffee table. Or maybe I’ll just put it behind me so that people see.
Mark Stiving
Ooh, there we go. So, alright. Did we miss any good stories on the book at this point in time? Why we’ve done what we’ve done.
Rebecca Kalogeris
No. I mean, I think again, you’ve had some other people, not just me who’ve read it that’s had some really positive reviews and I think I’ll be really excited when we start to collect back stories of things that people implemented. And I think that’ll be really powerful.
Mark Stiving
Yeah. So, I’ll just reiterate one more time. I guess that was redundant. If you are an executive, this book is awesome because it gives you a chance to read about what you could or should be doing in pricing. And you can do it in less than an hour. Come up with at least one or two ideas of things you can go do and it’s going to make the company money. Yeah. So, that’s the way I look at it.
Rebecca Kalogeris
And it does unlock other resources. There is, like, an online kind of portal for people who buy the book that you get access to other stuff on the topic just because Mark can’t stop talking about the topic. So it’s good to have a teaser.
Mark Stiving
Someday. I’ll stop talking.
Rebecca Kalogeris
No. Yeah, I have read it, I’ve read it more than once and it is an excellent book. And I’m excited for other people to read it as well.
Mark Stiving
Alright, thank you very much Rebecca. I guess we’re done. To our listeners, if you have any questions or comments about the podcast or the book, feel free to email me, [email protected]. Now, go make an impact!
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