Why I changed to Open Pricing for the Queer Body Love Speaker Series and my invitation to you
About halfway into the Queer Body Love Speaker Series 2017, I hadn’t sold very many paid packages. (In addition to the free offering, there were options to purchase more goodies). I wasn’t really promoting them either, and in talking with a colleague of mine I realized that the setup actually didn’t feel right to me. I had used somebody else’s packaging as “inspiration,” (i.e. pretty much copied it… with their permission), and it just wasn’t me.
I realized that I wanted to offer the series from my heart and invite folks into a financial exchange which feels good to them. To be in an exchange of offering and receiving on both ends.
Basically, my body and my intuition told me that I wanted to shift to open pricing. With a minimum. I felt into it and $14 as a base minimum felt right to me.
I had fear come up about shifting the structure midway.
And if I truly listened to and trusted myself, I knew I needed to.
Here is the result of my open price offering.
You matter
You are seen in the intersection of your struggles. And there are so many ways of navigating. You have agency in that journey. This Queer Body Love Speaker Series will support you in exploring your particular unique way of loving your body, yourself and others in the face of oppression.
What you'll get
Luxuriate in the brilliance of the interviews over time. Receive support in digesting and integrating the ideas, questions and practices that resonate through the workbook.
You'll receive immediate streaming access to all interviews. Within a couple of weeks of series completion, you’ll receive all 14 interviews in all its forms (video, audio and the transcript), as well as the full speaker series workbook.
Many people have written that the Queer Body Love Speaker Series last year completely changed their lives. This has the potential to do that for you if you let it.
"My life is forever changed because of this experience. It has opened me up to so many new ways of thinking, doing and being and I will be forever grateful. I have had a complete shift in consciousness in regard to my relationships with food, my body and my queer identity." - viewer from last year
You choose your price
You choose your price based on what feels like it honors the exchange between us in this moment -- including the time, energy and resources that have gone into its creation and the value it could have for you.
I request a minimum of $14 -- one dollar per interview. (That is not the price, simply the lower boundary of what feels good to me as I offer it to you.)
Where your money will go
I believe in support -- in me and this project being well supported so that it runs well, and in financially supporting the people who have worked for the project. Labor is valuable, and people should be paid for their work.
These are my three main costs that your dollars will support:
1) Speaker Honorariums -- Especially queer and trans activists, artists, educators and healers are often not compensated well enough for their amazing work, so it was important for me to at least pay an honorarium for each of my speakers. ($100 each, so $1400 total... hoping for this to be higher next time!)
2) the technology & support around that -- website costs, technological support from my assistant and the web designer (about $2000)
3) Raechel Jolie supporting accessibility in a massive way, doing a lot of the transcriptions and captions and organizing the rest, as well as supporting social media posts ($1000)Guidance in choosing your price
Chose an amount $14 or above that feels good above.*** An amount that reflects what the interviews are worth to you and feels good to offer as you support the project. I extend my trust to you. Practice trusting yourself.
***If you would really like the series and paying $14 for this series would exacerbate hardship in your life (keep you from being able to put food on the table, pay rent or utilities or pay for transportation to get to work etc), please email me (elizabeth@elizabethjcooper.com) and we'll work something out.
Some further guidance on choosing your own price, based on the way I made the decision to offer it:
As you chose your own price, I invite you to feel into what's right for you, as I did in my process for deciding on this payment method.
Get centered in your body and ask yourself what feels right.
I know that “asking” and “trusting” your body and yourself for a decision on an amount can bring up a lot and feel really difficult.
Learning to trust also involves falling down and getting back up - of “messing up” or following a decision that you think feels right in the moment, and which shifts. (Like with me setting packages and then changing that.)
Practice being compassionate with yourself in the process.
Give what feels right in this moment.
If asking your body as a compass feels good, do that.
Otherwise, just ask yourself what feels good in general.
Notice and connect with the idea that you are paying to both honor the value of what you’ll receive and also supporting the project -- the speakers, the whole team and myself.
I invite you to give from an energy of abundance.
What “abundance” looks like will be different for everybody. What I invite is that feeling that you're offering something that feels generous and nourishing for yourself and who you’re giving it to. Connect with the energy of offering and receiving.
In making the decision to make this change in how I offered the series this year, I practiced a lot of the principles behind Queer Body Love, which I now offer to you:
- Approach it all as an experiment
- Connect to your values and what’s important to you
- Ask your body - or yourself, or your heart, or whatever aspect of yourself you feel most easily connected to - what feels good
- Track your nervous system, do what’s helpful to calm your nervous system, and practice making decisions from that centered place
- Know that learning to trust yourself and your body, especially when you’ve been trained to follow external formulas that are not your own, will be a process where you’ll fall down and get back up, again and again
- Meet yourself and each moment with compassion and acceptance