The bodily toll of discounts,low prices AND what to do about it
I recently had opportunity to reflect on my family roots and I started to journal about some insights that came from that process. My father was largely a pessimist, and while I never shared that perspective, I grew up in the presence of it. How much do things rub off?
There was a period in my life some time ago where I was faced with difficult personal circumstances. I espoused a lot of anger and resentments, but I also felt very validated in them. I had a right to be angry! I need to be angry! This self-validation kept me in a loop and to be honest, just seemed to make this worse rather than better, even when I felt that I had resolved the issues I had faced.
A few months ago, I came across an IG post that stated we would be more healthy if we cut 5 deadly toxins from our life: complaining, criticizing, being negative, making excuses and gossiping. Yes, we know they aren’t nice things, but can they really have a physical toll?
The mental diet of negativity
When we complain or criticize, we are feeling and expressing a dissatisfaction with something. Often that dissatisfaction is out of our control; think traffic, long wait times in places we go. Let’s take the traffic example. You have no choice but to sit in traffic if there isn’t an alternate route. There is no way to rectify except to wait. But the frustration seethes inside you. It has zero effect on the traffic, just inside you as a reaction to the traffic. You cannot take that frustration and place it upon the traffic. A negative situation isn’t just a mood killer or a late-maker, it actually perpetuates toxicity in your body. Have you ever tried to shake off a fight you just had with someone, such as over the phone in a public place, and then try to smile at a passerby or make nice if they said hello? It’s really hard, been there, done that!
We are triggered to use one or more of those 5 deadly toxins when restriction or limitation is placed on us. For example, you complain that you don’t have enough clients. Clients represent income. If you would have sufficient income from enough clients, the complaint would dissipate, wouldn’t it? And when you’re secure and safe and your needs and wants are taken care of, then dissatisfaction wouldn’t ever occur.
Money is one of the most significant things that can lift restriction and limitation. For example, you stay at a hotel in an economy room and you have a complaint that something isn’t right. You are annoyed that the tap leaks or the wifi password doesn’t work or that you weren’t given enough towels. You go to the front desk and the clerk immediately upgrades your room to a suite. Or, gives you a free voucher for a future stay. What happens to the complaint? Usually it dissipates, because the restriction or limitation has been lifted. Thus the need for that complaint is gone. Extrapolating on that idea, if you had the money and had booked the suite instead of the economy room in the first place, the complaint may have never manifested!
It is said that money isn’t the root cause of unhappiness, but the lack of it. What a lack of money does is to impose restriction or limitation. We can’t take a vacation this summer, or we can but it has to be camping and bare bones. The restriction or limitation turns into a dissatisfaction which is then vented through one of the 5 deadly toxins. Those toxins then fester inside our own bodies because they can never really live outside of us. If we cannot resolve them, they pile up and the blackness creates an internal environment that works against us in the form of being jaded and resentful. In our hotel example, say you must always book the crappy, economy room due to lack of money. You are dissatisfied because the amenities in that room suck. But you see others around you that are breezy and happy in their premium suites. You don’t have that but they do. Cue being more disgruntled, and then cue being jaded. You then project those feelings onto the others who are simply enjoying what you wanted to enjoy, but can’t. You’ll never get there, it’s out of reach for you, the world sucks! The reason I can speak to this is because I saw this cycle play out in my father and his pessimism. A comedic example of this is when Elaine flies coach while Jerry flies first class in this Seinfeld episode.
The toll of discounts and low prices
When we discount, or offer low prices from the start, we are playing with fire. Essentially we are conducting business while flirting with triggering one or more of the 5 deadly toxins at any moment. We feel we need to do these things to get a kickstart into finding clients and making more money, but those who have walked this path will be the first to tell you that starting with a discount or low price only made things harder and not easier. While I studied psychology for 4 years in University, I still can’t wrap my head around the complexity of why some of these business and marketing myths grab us and hold on to us. So many feel they need to start low with price to ‘break into the market.’ Why? Why do we think that? Yes, there is such a thing as entry-level work and entry-level salaries, but for small business it seems that entry-level isn’t even a breaking even level as many photographers don’t do any math but pick a random, very low number to start with and are losing money. The closest explanation is that we don’t feel we are worth it - that horrible, awful, unhelpful mindset. That mindset leads us to impose restriction and limitation on money to try and move forward. One or more of the 5 deadly toxins are activated. Their blackness grows and we become jaded. We’ll never get people to pay our price. We’re validated that we aren’t worth anything. And that creates circumstances where feelings of defeat and resentment block us more heavily. A deeper pit that gets harder to dig out of. Eek. The absolute worst part of this is we did it to ourselves, squarely. It’s not the dripping hotel room tap, or the traffic jam. We had a choice and we chose to discount or to offer low prices.
These stressors then manifest in physical symptoms - a lack of self care perhaps, illness and even disease. Can I relate to that? In the opening paragraphs I mentioned that my personal situation created a lot of anger that I (willingly!) held on to. And then, in 2018, I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. Reading Gabor Mate’s When the Body Says No, the emotional/ mental and physical connection is real. There is a genetic component to the disease, but mine manifested in adulthood which isn’t super common. Could I surmise that the anger and resentment I had internalized had taken a toll? I sure could.
Ending the vicious cycle
I know you want money. You want income. You are not greedy. You want your needs to be taken care of, and you want to feel safe. In our society, money plays a big part in doing that. I also know that you don’t ultimately want to discount your services, or offer bottom of the barrel pricing. No one on this planet wants to do good work without being well compensated. Not the lunch lady, nor the person on Wall Street. When we are appropriately compensated, the world is a better and happier place. Multiple cups are filled - financial, emotional, personal.
If your clients happily hand you the value that you need and requested from your work to have your needs met, and on top they are grateful and appreciate you for the beautiful photographs you provided, wouldn’t that make you jump for joy? They love me and they paid me. That surging feeling of joy is then turned back to your work, which can grow the way a flower blooms in the sun. Now you can book that family vacation and can stay in that premium room, where no restriction or limitation ever forms. You and your family can focus on having an incredible time together and make your own beautiful memories because no dripping tap has you complaining at the front desk.
Contrast that with offering a deep discount to get a client because you feel stuck. You attract a price shopper that gives you a hard time even about that price and tries to haggle you down and then they pay late. This leads to stress and the complaining is triggered and spreads inside. You did the work and you have little to show for it. You don’t feel good. That economy hotel room is your only option if you can even afford to take the family for a vacation this year. Resentment builds with each low priced client you book. You are staring into the bottom of the pit and climbing down rung by rung. The deeper you go, the longer way back up to the light.
I think you’d prefer the former option to the latter. I think we all do. Here are the steps I suggest we can take:
Step 1: Embrace your desire to run a business and make money. Money and photography are not mutually exclusive. You can make money AND create beautiful, artistic work and memories. You can choose to serve those who will serve you back because it’s a win-win for all. Yes, there are people who may not be able to afford your rates. If that concerns you, then consider that when you have more money, you can help them. Discounting yourself as a means to helping others is a deadly toxin help, that serves no one.
Step 2: Know that the desire to discount or to offer low prices is mostly a function of not having other tools. Education can conquer this. The world of buying and selling relies on principles much like your photographs rely on the exposure triangle. With the proper manipulation of your camera settings and rules of lighting a composition, along with your creative mind, you can create incredible photographs. Marketing isn’t arbitrary or nebulous; it also has a set of rules. With the proper manipulation of certain factors, and rules of the market and of consumer behaviour, along with your creative mind, you can create a good marketing plan. That plan has one purpose - to get you booked at the price you need and want to not only keep the 5 deadly toxins at bay, but to thrive in a place where those toxins can rarely penetrate.
If you can learn how to market, then you set the conditions that the 5 deadly toxins never activate. If an unknown situation creates a dissatisfaction, ask yourself right then and there how to dissipate it, before you allow a toxin to get its hooks into you. Learn from that circumstance so that you avoid it in the future, be it through a policy or a customer service action. This will not only protect your business and your income, but your body. Our bodies are the only vessel we have on this earth. Take good care of it so that it can take care of you.