Hey Square Readers,
We hope you had a great time reading Worth Every Penny by Sarah Petty and Erin Verbeck with us. We had some really great discussion threads, and a wonderful live video chat discussion! Thank you all for participating and making the Square Readers Book Club a welcoming and helpful place.
So we’re here now to bring it all together with a full book and discussion summary, with the parts that you all found to be the most important. And if you didn’t get a chance to read the book, here’s a chance to get the shortened version. Let’s dive in!
Book Summary
Worth Every Penny by Sarah Petty and Erin Verbeck is all about how to break out of the pattern and pressure of discounting your prices, and to instead lean into increasing the value for your customers.
The trend to lower prices can come from the desire to either to appease or attract customers. The book goes into the theory and practical strategies to build up your business to charge what you're worth and have your customers happy to pay a higher cost because your business is worth every penny you charge.
They demonstrate this through what they call the Boutique framework, through offering specialized products and services, creating a well defined brand, pricing yourself correctly, having an over the top customer experience, and marketing everything well.
Discussion Summary
We used our Book Club discussion threads to take the theories from the book and see how you all put them into practice in your businesses.
We kicked things off with a baseline conversation before reading the book, about how customers perceive the value of your product and service offerings. This set the groundwork for the framework in the book.
Next we laid out the basics of the Boutique framework. We broke down what being Boutique actually means, the advantages of framing your business in this way, and how to use this filter to run business decisions through as you go. Readers shared how they view their competition, and how they see this framework working for their business.
The authors break up the rest of the book into four main sections, which we covered with separate discussion threads.
We dove into the meat of things, detailing the benefits of branding your business effectively. We explained that branding is more than just your logo, but also your customer perception. We talked about how important it is to be consistent in your branding, and to make rules in order to maintain that quality. Readers talked about their own experiences with creating and maintaining their branding.
After that, we moved onto the next piece of the framework, providing incredible offerings and customer experience for your customers. They say that the offerings you provide should be unique and provide a high value, reflecting your passion and expertise. The service you provide should reinforce that, thrilling your customers with a high touch and personalized experience. A big discussion point from readers was around taking responsibility for and fixing customer issues, even if it wasn’t your fault, in order to create a better customer experience. Readers also jumped into how they set boundaries to make their lives easier as business owners.
The next element of the system is around pricing your offerings accordingly to cover your expenses, make your business profitable, and reflect your value. One of their main points is to not discount your prices in order to attract customers, but instead focus on adding value and standing out. Readers shared their philosophies on discounting in their businesses, and how they bring more value to their customers.
Then we got into some of the author’s strategies around marketing and selling, where the authors recommend focusing on targeting a smaller section of customers that you actually want, rather than mass market advertising. They then say to sell without pressure or manipulation, again focusing on explaining the value of your offerings, and lead with honesty and integrity.
And finally we finished off our discussion threads by talking about the impact that implementing strategies from the book has had on your businesses, with folks sharing the benefits they’ve felt.
Live Discussion
We held our Live Discussion on Tuesday April 30th. If you’d like to catch up, you can watch the recording here:
It was a really great discussion, and thanks to everyone who joined us! We kicked off with sellers sharing how impactful this book has been on their business, and how they were inspired to implement the ideas in their work.
We started talking about branding, with some sellers sharing tips like using Canva and Splice for their design and video editing.
One seller shared the story of rebranding their business, and how the book encouraged them to go deeper to get a better understanding of what their business would stand for and how to get that message across. They shared the sentiment from the book, that branding is more than just the colors and logo, but rather it’s experience, packaging, greeting, quality, and more. They shared that if experience & quality isn’t thrilling, then the color doesn’t make a difference. We also dove into when and how to change, or not change, your logo and visual identity in order to keep things updated but still not lose brand recognition.
We also talked about how folks handle complaints and questions about price, which one seller gave the story of how they show and explain the value. Another seller said that they stopped doing craft fairs because of the tendencies of the customers there to bargain and minimize the value.
Another seller discussed their journey of planning to open a new business, and how the book helped provide considerations going into the process. They shared that they learned a new level that they hadn’t thought of before, and will be more conscious of things and put more thought in.
Overall, it was a wonderful call, and we hope to see even more folks in the next one!
Next Book
We’re starting our next book, The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber, on Monday May 6th, with the next Live Discussion on Tuesday June 25th. We hope to see you there!
Your Thoughts
I’d love to hear more of your thoughts on this book and overall the experience of our Square Readers Book Club!
- Was this book’s framework helpful? What did you get out of it?
- What are you looking forward to with the next book?
It’s never too late to jump into any of our discussion threads and join in on the conversation!
Paying it Forward
If you’re all done with the book and are looking for something to do with a copy you bought, I highly recommend paying it forward. Give it to another local business owner, or donate it to a local used bookstore, community center, library, Little Free Library, or anywhere else, so someone else can benefit from it.
Thank you so much for all of your participation and discussion throughout the last two months! A big shoutout to some of our most active members: @CareyJo, @Bronze_Palms, @DLRosenberg, @KaosXtecH, @Stacelyn24, @TheRealChipA, @bonny, @rtfulk, @MudFire_D, @Doran, @Smellthis1919, @Jimjam, @SavasFineArt, @JUYBoutique20, @Anjoli, @ChocoRee, @andrnesha, @TerriK, @scastrotattoo, @BrianaJo, @saltydazehair, @Gissel_Ivette, @TonyTone712, @139beautyco_llc, @Ipromise, @KellyMurray, and more!
We hope you read the next book with us and join us in the discussion threads!
Can’t wait to read more with you,
Pesso
