Many entrepreneurs find pricing a hard thing to do. They don't know if they're pricing too low, pricing too high, and it creates a problem when they want to offer products and services. Well, we're gonna talk about how to price with confidence on episode 18, where we're gonna talk a little bit about work and money on the Resilient Faith Online Show. Welcome! I'm Marissa Shatterick, host of the Resilient Faith Online Show. I'm a digital strategist and certified copywriter, but more importantly, a woman of faith. In this podcast, you'll find a biblical perspective to the external and internal challenges we face as online content creators. Join me for some inspiration and practical tips as we build our faith shape or work to create positive change online. To connect with our private Facebook group of faith-based online entrepreneurs, go to MarissaShabert.com forward slash faith. Hello, hello. We are going to talk about money today. Hi, how are you doing? This is Marissa. Yes, we're going to talk about pricing. We're going to talk about money. We're going to talk about work. We're going to talk about how do we do this when we're entrepreneurs online. Sometimes it can be a difficult thing to do because we may have some rooted misconceptions deep down, I know I did, and that we have to really bring to the surface and view work differently, view the economy in a certain way, and be able to price things with confidence. Now I love to read the scriptures. I find it's foundational for every aspect of life, including work. I have uh taken some theology courses. I am not a theologian, but I have done some research on it. And a lot of this, what I'm going to share today, is some of the content that I found related to work and money. This is from Dr. Scott Ray, who shared some views on faith, work, and money from the Talbot School of Theology and by Aldo University. I find this stuff fascinating because I struggled with pricing and I often price things too low. And I had many people say, you need to raise your prices, you need to raise your prices. But I needed to have an understanding of how all that fit in. You know, how do I please God with what I do? Is it too much? Is it greed? Is it fair? You know the drill. You can get really confused about all the different things and all the different views. Now, there's lots of things that you can Google online and they tell you how to upsell, how to downsell, pricing tiers, all kinds of stuff. So we're not going to necessarily talk about that. We're going to go deeper into maybe call it the mindset of pricing to help you get to terms with the fact that when you price things, it's okay as long as it's in line with value, with integrity, with fairness, and only you can decide that. So we're going to talk about this. And the thesis, if you will, is really based on some of the findings of Dr. Scott Ray. And he was saying that economics is a moral issue. Now that piqued my curiosity. So I dove in deep and I did some research a while ago and I pulled out some of my notes and looked at some of it again. And so much of it makes sense. And I realized I was able to untangle a lot of wrong beliefs, limiting beliefs, based on just looking at the scriptures and basically just looking at Genesis 2 and 3. That was it. And so I'm going to share some of that with you, and maybe it'll help you when you're starting to price your products and services. So when we think of pricing, we need to understand our market-based economy and what does God say about the whole darn thing, right? So is God interested in our work? Is that God interested in our business? Well, absolutely He is. He's interested in every aspect of our life. In fact, God was the first one that thought of work. Oh, yes. And he was one of the ones that started working when he did creation, when there was creation, right? And we see that in Genesis. We need to understand a little bit about market-based economy. So I'm going to, in the simplest way I can, explain what this is and give a definition. And I researched a lot of definitions, and some of them were way over my head, and some of them were too simplistic. So from all the research I did, I kind of compiled this definition for you. So hopefully this will resonate with you and it'll make some sense. So market-based economy is a system where goods and services are sold and the pricing is determined by an individual or a business without or minimal outside control over the means of production or trade. So often it's based on supply and demand. That's why many of us do market research, right? It's based on supply and demand. And there's a voluntary exchange where buyers receive something that they need, and the business ideally makes a profit. So this is what it is. If you have an online business, you're participating in a market-based economy. So when we think about our work, we want to make sure that we have a healthy perspective so that when we begin to price things, the unhealthy perspective doesn't surface and limit what we do. So here we're going to go back to Genesis, where God created all of this, including work, and kind of see where his head was at so that we can figure out where our head should be at. Does that make sense? Hopefully it does. And we're going to again look at Genesis 2 and compare between Genesis 2 and Genesis 3. Now, Genesis 2 is all before sin entered the world. It was the way God designed things. Okay, so we're going to use that as our plumb line. So when God created everything, he said it was good and he took a day of rest, right? That is very much something that we look at as far as working, but also recovering and taking a day of rest. But he noticed that there were no people to cultivate the soil. There was going to be things growing and there was no one to cultivate it. And God had placed man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over everything. Basically, aka to work, right? God worked, He created everything, He said it was good, He declared it holy. God also showed the importance of work and He showed the purpose of work in Genesis. God also said that the use of the earth was to provide value, and he wanted man to manage that value. So all of this was set up in Genesis 2, it was very beautiful, and then Eve came along. So now he had two people, they were overseeing everything, and everything was good until Genesis 3. And Genesis 3, we see that sin entered the world and everything changed, including work. And the unfortunate thing is that at least for me, I realized that I was viewing work the way it is portrayed in Genesis 3, as opposed to viewing work as God intended it in Genesis 2. So we're gonna break that down a little bit. So when sin entered, work changed. A lot of things changed, right? So the woman, God said that she would have birth pains. I know I'm going through this really fast, but if you're someone that that reads the Bible, you're familiar with this. If not, again, it's in Genesis 2 and 3. You can read that so for yourself. So she would experience birth pains. She would have a desire to control her husband. And to the man, he said the ground was cursed, and he would struggle to scratch a living from it. Ooh, what a word, right? To scratch a living from it, that there would be thorns and thistles that would come up. And by the sweat of his brow, he would have food to eat. So work now looked very different from the sweat of his brow. It affected health, it affected relationships, it affected the environment with the thorns and thistles, it affected work. It was laborus, right? And sometimes we view work that way as a negative thing that we have to do. And oftentimes, and I said this in an earlier episode, we think that ministry can only be if we're in ministry and that work, because it's like so awful that we have to do every day from Monday through Friday, that there's no way there's a separation between work that it could not have a ministerial influence in the world. So we have this view of work. And sometimes, even if we love what we do, sometimes the idea of work, and because it is perceived as something negative in Genesis 3, when we try to price things, it can affect the way we view our products and services because it's in within that realm of Genesis 3, and we struggle to price things. At least for me, when I saw that God made everything and it was good and it was holy, and he orchestrated work, I had a different view and I saw work differently. And I saw the opportunity to use work not only as a means of personal development, as a means to generating revenue, but also as a way to be able to have opportunities to minister. So here's the problem. Genesis 3 begins to create these assumptions about work, and we've heard it. Like I'll just tell you what the three are and then we'll dive deep into them. The first one is that economics is based on greed. So it morally is not good. The second is that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The third is the market system leads to materialism. So when we have these views about work, it really affects when we're working and we're in business and we're entrepreneurs that what we're doing is icky. It's it's maybe not as wholesome or pure as if I was working in a church and doing ministry work. And what I'm doing, and then what I'm charging, that I'm one of those greedy people. And that's not true. So let's look at the first one. Economics is based on greed. So morally it's not good. The Bible makes a difference between self-interest and greed. We have the self-interest to take care of ourselves and our families, right? Even our extended families. In doing so, we help other people as well. So when we work, not only do we take care of our families and our extended families and we take care of ourselves, but we also create opportunities for others. Like when we hire a graphic designer or we hire a social media expert that will create all the posts for us on social media, or we hire a bookkeeper to take care of the finances of our business. That all of those things, when we begin to hire people because of our business, it takes care of those people and they'll be able to take care of themselves and their families as well. So the other, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, that filter, that wrong belief, is that there's a limited amount of resources. So what happens is if if you believe that when someone gets more, someone will automatically get less. Like there's an automatic cause and effect. If this person gets more, that means I'm gonna get less. There's a limited amount, there's scarcity. Now, maybe that was the case in in Bible times, and maybe that's the case in some countries, but here we have an opportunity to excel and to be part of the economy and create wealth and create opportunities for other people to create wealth as well. So when wealth or profit is created, we end up with more resources. Do we see a disproportionate times? Yes, we do, but that's not because there's a limited supply. The third is the market system leads to materialism. Now that is more of a human condition than an economic issue. Does it add to temptation? Absolutely. It can add to temptation and to greed, but it's not the cause of greed. It's a human condition. However, wealth provides resources for charity. We see so many businesses that give to good causes. We see it over and over again. And a market-based economy allows businesses to create more wealth, and oftentimes they are generous not only with their employees, but with causes and they support nonprofits as well. When we view work as God intended in Genesis 2, God called it holy. And what does that mean, holy? Our work is holy. It simply means that it's dedicated to God. That whatever we do, we dedicate it to God. That's all it is. Our work, we de whether it's ministry work, whether it's what they call secular work, that it's not like inside of a church. If we dedicate it to God, our work is holy. So now when you think of, you know, pricing, you think if your work is holy and you're dedicating it to God, then He's going to lead you as far as the pricing goes. Let's think back in the Mosaic Law. There was Mosaic law was there to create fairness and honesty, to take care of others because there was so much prop poverty. And you read in the scriptures and they'll see examples of provisions for the poor, provisions for the slaves, uh, provisions for the widows. It was really uh a way to be able to encourage to use skills, gifts, and talents in an entrepreneurial way to take care of others. We see wealthy people in the Bible that met needs. We see Joseph of Arimathea, who was a wealthy Jewish man and took responsibility to provide uh all the burial arrangements and a burial place for Jesus. And that was referenced in Matthew 27, 57 through 60. He had actually placed Jesus in his own new tomb that he had cut out of a rock. We see people of wealth coming and aiding and supporting God's cause. And then we see later on in Paul's ministry the conversion of Lydia. Now, Lydia Thyatira, she was a successful businesswoman, which was really unusual in Bible times. She was said to be uh the woman who sold purple cloth. Now, purple cloth was really, really expensive. So she had a high-end offer, okay, to lack of a better word. She had a high-end offer in a very niche market because only royals and rich people could afford this purple cloth. And there was nothing wrong with the business that she did. She was a successful businesswoman who sold to a niche market, and she sold very expensive purple cloth. And during Paul's ministry, she had heard the gospel and she became a believer, and she opened up all her resources, including her home, to the disciples to be able to take care of them and to house ministry in her home. So these are just examples of how wealth met needs, and there's nothing wrong with wealth. One of the points that Dr. Ray had made was that he proposed that today's issues are less about inequality and more about insufficiency, which I was thinking about that. And when you think about it, the insufficiency is what creates a lot of friction. Now, don't get me wrong, the discrimination is wrong, favoritism is wrong, sedition is wrong, greed, idolatry is wrong, corruption is wrong, but insufficiency creates a lot of tension, a lot of friction. And I think a healthy economy helps reduce the insufficiency that we see in the world. So when you think about work and pricing your products or services, try to view work as God intended in Genesis 2, where he said it was good and he said it was holy, simply meaning dedicating it to him. Work creates value, work stirs the economy, work provides us with meaningful lives. Work helps us to be self-supported, work helps us to care for others, work helps us to donate to the less fortunate. It's in our spiritual DNA to work, it's how we serve God. Our work is an extension of who we are. Sometimes we see people who have a large influence and we think they could be more effective in the world, but you know what? That's so far from the truth. The size of our influence has nothing to do with the impact we can have today. And boy, we need to have an impact. In all our little areas where we serve, we need to have a positive impact online. You don't have to be in ministry to do ministry work. So it's not about pricing too high, pricing too low. It's really about getting our head around the way God intended work to be, and even praying about what the price should be. Because really, in the end, it's a fair exchange that is free of greed. So I hope that helped you today. It's kind of a different podcast episode, had maybe a little bit more theology than you would like. But I think it's important to see work in a healthy way. If you're creating value, if you're creating transformation, if you're providing something that's really going to help people, and they need to enter into a program that's going to provide all of those things, it's it's a good thing. It's a good thing. So until next time, take care. We'll see you soon. If you found this podcast helpful, then subscribe from wherever you're listening today so you never miss an episode. Every subscription, review, or rating means so much to me. So keep them coming and share this with a friend. For more free content, go to marissah.com and remember keep cultivating resilient faith online to create positive change in the world.