The Strategy of Raising Prices (Interview with Phil Telio from Embrase)

Are you priced right?

Are you charging the right amount? Is it as high as it should be?

That’s a tricky question for a business to ask, and even trickier to answer.

That’s why I got Phil Telio on the phone.

Phil runs a consultancy called Embrase that advises major corporations around the world on their go-to-market strategy.

And yes, pricing is part of it. 😉

Interview with Phil Telio from Embrase (33 minutes)

Here are the highlights of the interview (and a transcript):

Questions Asked…

1. Who is Phil Telio? What is Embrase? [00:20]
2. People think marketing are usually thinking about promoting, getting the word out, getting new customers – so how does raising prices fit into that mix in your opinion? [02:05]
3. What do you take into consideration when you’re deciding to raise your prices?[05:45]
4. Can you explain the concept of price elasticity, and how it figures into the discussion? [14:20]
5. If listeners aren’t sure they’re priced at the right level, what should they be doing? [16:00]
6. If our readers and listeners cleared three hours to work on some of the things we’ve talked about today, what should they do with those three hours? [29:00]

Topics and Resources Mentioned…

• Embrase
• Start-up Camp
• International Start-up Festival
• EventBrite
• Loss Leader

Distilled Wisdom from Phil Telio…

• Early adopters are more likely to be willing to pay more than the average customer.
• If you’re going to charge a premium price – be a premium brand! Never bother saying “we’re the same a X, but less expensive.” It always fails.
• If you feel like you’re getting a great deal on one part of an offering, you tend not to worry about the price of the other parts.
• It’s always easier to start at the higher end of the pricing scale and work your way down the to start at the bottom and try to work your way up.
• You can revolutionize your offering by completing something completely new, or by dramatically altering what you currently have.
• Think about what you’re offering to a customer in terms of the cost of what they’re doing now and how you can eliminate or minimize those costs.
• Sometimes costs can be raised if the product or service has an emotional component for the customer.
• Your indirect competition might just matter more than your direct competition – be sure to keep it in mind.
• If there’s a value-added product or service that can allow you to raise your margins (not just your sales) you should absolutely go for it.
• Costs that rise with your prices are fine as long as your net profits increase.
• Wake up every day and try to think of things and do things a little differently. Eventually an awesome idea will come along.

Interview Transcript:

Danny: Hi everyone, welcome to 4 Questions of Marketing Month at Mirasee. My name is Danny Iny, and I’m very happy to have on the line Phil Telio, who I’ve actually known for years and runs a consultancy right here in Montreal called Embrase. Phil, thanks for being with us on the call with us today.

Phil: It’s really my pleasure Danny.

Danny: So let’s start by just kind of setting the stage in terms of, you know, who you are and what you’re all about, can you explain, you know, who is Phil Telio, what is Embrase, what do you do?

Phil: Sure with pleasure, so Phil Telio, I run a consulting company called Embrase and we do primarily strategic marketing for technology companies, companies that range from early stage start-up companies through to larger corporations and enterprise customers and the, the types of work that we do with our companies is really about helping them figure out what market space they should be after how they should attack those markets and what they should be selling to those markets. We also run events and it’s something that has organically grown with Embrase, but we now run Start-Up Camp Montreal, start-up camps in Austin, Miami and Los Angeles, as well as the newly created start-up festival, the International Start-up Festival was held here last July in Montreal.

Danny: Which I attended by the way, which was a fantastic event. You did a great job putting that together.

Phil: Yeah it’s pretty good for an experiment, the idea of creating a large event here in Montreal to focus on innovation and entrepreneurship. We’re really pleased with the way it went.

Danny: Yeah, and those members of the audience who are listening to this or reading the transcript who are in the high-tech sector, particularly, who are looking to create something really innovative or you’ve created something innovative and are thinking about how to bring it to market. You should really look into some of these events and you should really look into connecting with Phil after you’re done listening to this interview with rapt attention of course. So Phil, you know, we’re talking about, you know, of the 4 Questions of Marketing the subject of the week is raising prices. Now this is something that is a little outside the box of what people usually think of when they think of marketing. You know, they think of marketing they’re usually thinking about you know, promoting, getting the word out, getting new customers – so how does raising prices fit into that mix in your opinion?

Phil: Well, raising prices on its own is not really a marketing tactic. I think creating a premium brand or a premium experience allows a company to, to raise their prices. That and simply creating something so innovative and new is also opportunity to fluctuate prices. I mean if there’s not an option out there in the market, you get to choose, assuming that people are interested in what you’re offering, you get to choose at what price you set it. I would say that there is a misconception when companies come out with a, a new offer or a new product and that is that they need to get customers at all costs. And they tend to, you know, enter the market at a very low price point to try and interest people. But really the, you know, the most early adopters of technology are those that are willing to pay the highest price. So our philosophy is always when you’re introducing a new product, is to bring it to market actually more expensive than what you plan on selling it down the line, allowing you the flexibility of lowering your prices over time as you take on new customers versus trying to raise those prices.

Danny: Yeah so it’s a lot easier to lower a price then to raise it.

Phil: It is always yes, in effect. I would even say with loyal customers it become somewhat impossible to raise prices, but lowering in your prices is always appreciated by most. Yes it’s a philosophy that the early adopters out there will purchase a new offering because it gives them some sort of differentiation in the market place or it gives them some sort of competitive edge or even the employee may get promoted as a result of taking on this new product and taking a risk with something that’s unknown and ends up working. Therefore they’re willing to pay more but also they’re willing to work with the company to tailor something. Because usually when a company comes to market with a new offer it’s not a perfectly refined, smooth rolling offering. So they’re going to work with the customers to create the ultimate product that will be available on the mass scale, and those customers, again, are not only willing to pay for the product but for the work necessary to refine that product.

Danny: It’s also built to their specs, to a certain extent.

Phil: To a certain extent yes. Generally. I mean especially in the technology arena, if I come to market with capabilities so a new way to I don’t know access the database or whatever it may be, but I come up with a new set of capabilities but not an exact clear understanding of how those capabilities are going to roll out to businesses. Yes, I need to find those customers, where I explain the capability and then they tell me how they’re going to take those capabilities and actually wrap them into the business processes and that’s when there is nonrecurring engineering or custom work that needs to be done. And again the real the real visionaries are willing to pay for differentiation at a pretty high cost.

Danny: So let’s, we’ve talked a little bit about, you know, you’ve mentioned differentiation strategy and different values across the table which can be implemented in terms of, you know, the capabilities versus how going to be used and applied by the customer. Let’s – maybe you could flesh that out a little bit, because we’re talking about prices, so what are the determinants of price? So whether you’re entering an existing marketplace so whether you’re thinking about adjusting your offering. You can’t just say, you know, “I’ll give it away for everything away for free,” and you can’t just say “I’m going to charge you know hundred gazillion dollars.” It’s not just a matter of what you feel like so what goes into consideration when you’re deciding what you can charge?

Phil: While I believe pricing is as much an art as it is a science. If you’re dealing with an existing marketplace where there are comparable products it’s obviously important to understand what the competition is charging in the, you know, relatively in line depending of your strategy. I mean if you’re opening say a new hotel there is a standard price for hotels based on you know the different star levels and if you plan on coming out the five-star hotel you’ve got an indication in the marketplace of what you should be charging. That being said if you’re bringing something absolutely new to the market something that doesn’t exist or a spin on existing hotels then you get the choice to really, or the opportunity to set the price. And setting that price is, you know, depending on a few factors – one is probably the most important, is what do people pay or what do companies pay today for you know, an existing process that you can be replacing with your new offering? And you can meet you know base your price on well: “today you are spending so much to do this and we’re going to save you a whole whack of money and therefore we can charge you this plus some sort of premium price.” But you know there are certainly other strategies to employ when defining pricing. Like literally setting your pricing higher than the average to give a sense of the being a premium offer. So you know most companies have their marketing and the intent is not to try and play their differentiation on price. Too often I hear company saying: “well were the same as this but we’re less expensive.” And that’s generally not a great strategy.

Danny: No, I think its terrible strategy because, you know, if you’re the same as this, odds are you’re the same structure as the other business, your costs are probably going to be more or less the same. If anything they’re going to be worse because you don’t have the economies of scale that, that the incumbent is likely to have in the market and so your margins are to be that much thinner.

Phil: Yeah well there are exceptions to those rules, I mean you can really take a price position so you know Walmart is the lowest prices in town and that is their position: “everyday low prices.” I’m not sure what their actual tagline is today, but they really take that position and the dollar store also, Dollarama is another example of a company that goes out and they say: “Look, we’re going to specifically sell less expensive products.” That is their positioning. But everything gets wrapped into the marketing of that positioning. So some companies feel that in effect, by offering a lower price they can actually take a very large market position, and as long as they get they can get the scale and start to sell volumes, well, of course low-price make sense. But it really becomes a philosophy that the organization to adopt through and through. It’s just that most companies are half-and-half they believe their products actually better than the competition and there also charging less. Those are contradictory terms. When a product is less expensive the general thinking is, is that it’s not quite as good as the more expensive product, for a whole whack of reasons. Either you know what are people going to think of me because I’m wearing this high-end watch versus wearing a lower end watch? And other things but-

Danny: Sure no one wants to say: “hey check out my new Rolex! I got on sale!”

Phil: No, I mean you’re probably happy that you got it on sale, but exactly, you’re wearing that watch because you like it, but also because of what it says to the people that you meet around you.

Danny: Yeah I really like the example you brought up, the example of Walmart. And I really like that example because a lot of people don’t know the strategy behind what Walmart is doing and it’s quite different from Dollarama. You know, Dollarama is a dollar store network that is big in Canada, I don’t know if it’s present in the States or elsewhere, but they basically sell everything from dollar and they’ve recently introduced they’ve got stuff from $1.25, $1.50, $2.00. But basically, everything is really cheap you go there and everything is cheap. Walmart’s strategy is different – everyone ,they’ve done a fantastic job, and this is part of the marketing that they’ve done of giving people this picture that everything is cheaper at Walmart. But it’s actually not true, what they’ve done a very good job of is making sure that in every category, they have the cheapest offer. And that’s the thing that they put and the end of the aisle. So they see that, whatever it is you’re looking to buy, the cheapest option is at Walmart. But then that a lot of people walk into the aisles and they’ve got stuff that’s priced pretty much the same as everywhere else, but by virtue of Walmart’s marketing they can charge the same and still people feel it getting a better deal.

Phil: Yeah absolutely, I mean, certainly Walmart’s strategy has evolved over time as they’ve gotten scale and gotten reputation and recognition. I believe that the original strategy was really about the lowest prices in town, you know, across the board, but in effect. they really use was referred to in the industry as loss leaders. You know sell toilet paper the least expensive price in the market and then get people to buy Kleenex a more expensive price so you know, yeah.

Danny: I just think it’s a great example of you know how marketing allows you to charge more than, than you otherwise would basically for the same stuff and people are still happy to pay.

Phil: Absolutely. And if people feel they’re getting a great deal on some component, they’re less likely to be concerned about, you know, what the rest of the offer is costing them. And companies do this all the time, you know, even the notion in the, in technology circles that Freemium is really all about getting you hooked on some service or some free offer, and getting you to use the product. And then ultimately knowing that their most valued customers will start to pay for more expensive services that provide additional value. It’s a little bit less of, you know, a gain and really you know: “come and try our product, and the best way for you to try our product is to have you try it out for free, either for a limited period of time or with limited feature set.” And then again, you know, there are, for example we run events and there is a service online called EventBrite for our registration, for selling tickets and managing our participants. And there certainly other products in the market that do this but EventBrite has a very easy way to, to get you on board: if you’re running and event and you’re not selling your tickets it’s free to use their service. All the features that come with the paid version are available to a ticket that you might give away, but the second they start charging per ticket they’re actually more expensive than the competitors in the market, but they’ve gotten their customers used to and familiar with using their service. So for example in our case we could go to a less expense solution but in the last four years getting to know EventBrite and so changing becomes a change of culture, becomes learning something new, taking a certain risk. so all of a sudden, I’m really paying a little bit more for a service that I would’ve that a competitor because changing has become costly to me. So there’s another great example of a pricing strategy which is higher for you know the eventual customer that grows. But some would refer to it as the sort of a drug dealer’s approach: you give something away for free to get people hooked and then the nukes concert then you can start to charge more for other products.

Danny: And you know there’s two things that kind of play into making that work, I think and it’s all you implicitly said I just want to make a kind of explicit for listeners. One thing is the switching cost, you know once you’re in, if you like it, it’s going to cost a certain amount in terms of time in terms of money in terms of energy in terms of frustration to switch to a different service provider. And so you’re willing to put up with a certain premium as long as you don’t have to bear those costs. The other thing is price elasticity. Can you explain what that concept is and how that kind of figures into this discussion?

Phil: Well it’s been a while since I took my marketing course and the defined price elasticity, but price elasticity is really the ability to, you know; charge more for your product without having to drop off usage. It’s at what point does an increase in price actually start to affect the number of people that you’re selling to? It’s something to that effect if memory serves me correctly. Danny, you’re probably more familiar with the definition of that.

Danny: Now, that’s just it, it’s basically: price is not the only and sometimes not even significant deciding factor for the customer. It’s like, you know, it costs a dollar, it cost two dollars. I don’t care as long as it works.

Phil: Absolutely. No, it’s finding that magical number where you haven’t a lost, and you gotten your maximum number of customers that you could get the maximum price that they’re willing to pay for that that product or service. And that’s not necessarily an easy, you know, line to fin. Existing markets that have been around for a long time, they’ve figured it out. They understand that a hotel room is $600 a night is too much for the average person obviously. So you can figure this out over time with trial and error, quite easily. But I would tend to start a higher end of that scale and work my way down then start the low end of the scale and try to work my way up. Which was my earlier point which is: it’s easier to lower prices than to raise them.

Danny: What happens for the business that’s already up and running , to a certain extent at least, I mean they can, there’s room to grow and they can be doing better, but they’re up and running already doing business. Their price is already set somewhere and they’re starting to realize that maybe they didn’t set their prices the way they should have. Maybe they’re not as profitable as they like to be. Maybe the market would bear more or would be happy to pay more either in exchange for the same service or exchange for the same service with a few add-ons. How can people in our audience who are listening to this who are thinking: “you know I’m not sure I’m priced pretty well.” how can they start looking at their business which can look at and what should they be considering in terms of what they should be doing?

Phil: Well, talking to customers is always number one in our opinion, so if you, if it’s a feeling that you can be charging more, it’s easy enough to talk to customers and find out would they be willing to pay something, you know, a higher price? I say easy but, obviously somebody’s got to be calling them up on the phone or somebody’s got to be calling around entire external firms to do that for you. But ultimately finding out whether you are charging the right amounts important. Once a company decides that they aren’t charging the right amount, they could be charging more for a like service, I would say depends on the service and you know their client base and how recurring that client base is. So if it’s extremely recurring client base but say they’re charging a monthly service for something, they can just unilaterally charge more. Well the can, but not without really infuriating the client base. I mean take my phone service for example you know whichever Bell, Rogers or Telus, they can’t just come out tomorrow and add $25 to my bill and say: “well look, we know that you’re willing to pay $25 more so we decided to raise it.” That wouldn’t work; they’d lose a whole bunch of customers just to dissatisfaction. So in the case in that scenario is to you, you know, offer something new. Create a new package. Phase out the old package somehow. So if you know I had a package where a certain number of megabytes or on my mobile phone well offer me an increases package and eventually phase out the old package. That would be one which is make sure that you know you maximize, you know, how much you could charge for something. In other cases, it’s literally just revolutionizing your offering. Create something completely new promote it as being the next absolutely greatest thing from that’s available today, justify it and charge more as a result. And again faze of your product or keep your product as a, you know, a more cost-effective alternative to the premium product.

Danny: I want to go back to, you know, this idea of calling customers and exploring whether you can be charging more. I think in some cases that would work really well, but in a lot of cases it’s, it’s a hard question to ask because people have a bias. You know I mean if you called me and asked “could I be charging more for the service that I’m paying for?” I’m going to say: “no this is it this is as much as I’m willing to pay!” Whether I am or am not because I have an incentive to be paying less.

Phil: Yeah sure.

Danny: So if I’m in a market where it’s not practical, like it’s kind of the focus group problem. People, you know in a focus group no one says they watch MTV and everyone says they watch PBS, but in reality it’s the opposite.

Phil: So yeah it is, in fact, a tricky question. The – ultimately, that’s the point we want to try and get to with your customer, and it really depends on what you’re selling and what you’re selling to. If you’re selling some sort of service to a company that makes a certain process like hiring employees easier, better they would retain employees for a longer period of time. It’s a question of creating a case study of the potential clients and saying: “look how much is the cost you today to lose an employee? How does it cost you today to take on a new employee?” Getting to the heart of, you know, we’re going to be changing the existing process and what is that process costing you today in its totality? That gives you a really clear insight into how much they’re willing to pay. Because if I, you know, let’s say today in your HR department between hiring and retaining customers you’re paying an average of $10,000 a year for that stuff, well chances are you want to pay $9999 if I can save you that $10,000 or somewhere thereabouts. Obviously there are cultural biases, if you’ve got to culture internally, or it means taking on so something new or it’s risky, well obviously y that means you’ve got a be a little bit more you know competitive to the existing process. That doesn’t mean you’re competitive to an existing product or a similar product to your own. You’re now competing against what I call an indirect offering, which is the way they’re doing business today. So it’s not so much asking the question: “how much are you willing to pay for your product?” Its more, you know, delving into the question of how much not having your product costs them today and then being able to turn around to other customers, potential customers and say: “look this is how we understand your business today and this is what we understand you’re paying for these services today and so with our product you get to save all that.” And that’s just creating a return on investment or payback analysis or, you know, some form of case study to be able to present to the potential customer demonstrating why, you know, purchasing your product is of value to them. And then there are, you know, other products that are just more emotionally-based. I mean, like we were talking about earlier, things like fashion and watches and cars. I mean all cars will get you from point A to point B but certain cars do that and give off an image. And that has nothing to do with what it would cost to take the bus from point A to point B. That would be probably the least expensive and best alternative for the environment. It’s more a question of, you know, how I want to feel how will people think of me as I drive down the street?

Danny: Yeah, and, and I really like the way you mention in terms of kind of the indirect costs and the value of the whole package. An example we sometimes is that, you know, you’re competing against the alternative that your prospective customer’s going to use. Not necessarily about the other company offering a similar service to yours. So, you know, depending on the market you’re going after here carpenter your competition isn’t the carpenter, it’s IKEA. And so the case you really got to make is that: “look you’re going to spend this much IKEA plus have this much frustration of not getting what you want and having to assemble yourself and so forth and the, the total cost of that is really worse than, than what I’m bringing to the table even if the, you know, the cost of the table is a little higher but the total package is just that much more worthwhile.”

Phil: Absolutely you know I think far too often when people look at competition they really look at direct competition and focus exclusively on their direct competitors. But in reality companies will tend to have a lot more indirect competition than they have direct competition. And focusing too much on direct competition is just a lost opportunity. Because it’s very easy to fight against direct competitors by really have, having some sort of, you know, differentiating factor. Anything would work. You can really have something in a completely new, something that’s patented or whatever and say: “look the other person selling a widget like my widget, you know, it doesn’t have, you know, a red button on it.” And that is enough but when you have an alternative to that that has nothing to do with the widget that it becomes more complex. And it’s the subtlety of people saying: “yeah you know I can also get that done through some other way.” And they’re not necessarily looking to purchase even in that category, so you really are. So a good example of that would be advertising. Let’s say I come up with a new digital advertising board that I put in, you know, universities campuses. I’m not really competing against all the other digital ports on the planet, I’m competing against the, you know, on site newspaper in a radio campaign that might be done to those students, TV campaigns, flyers being handed out onsite – they have nothing to do with digital media. I’m really competing for those same dollars from those advertisers that want to potentially advertise on my digital board. And so they’ve got a finite amount of money that they’re going to spend marketing to University students, and now I’m not fighting against digital board companies I’m fighting against all the other mediums.

Danny: And I really like that example because it kind of illustrates how you would go against looking at those pricing increases. When people are thinking about you know advertising on the digital board, they’re comparing you against all the other mediums they can use like the newsletter like the flyers around campus and so forth. But ultimately they don’t care about the advertising, they care about the results the advertising would get. So if for example you bundled your digital board service with a 30 min. session with one of your in-house marketers to help turn your messaging so it would be that much more effective your costs to you is not significant, you’ve got a guy on staff anyway, but it suddenly positions you as a much better service – you can charge that much more for it.

Phil: Absolutely that’s great we look at how to charge more for an offering is to, you know, add value added services they would have difficulties. Or if you, you know, got a relationship with the customer and they really like working with you on a particular part of the offer and you all of a sudden start to offer another component and they really like working with you even start to charge a premium for those value added services. Again I go back to a carrier model. Carriers will start to charge for things like voicemail or call forwarding or all of these value-added services where they actually get much higher margins than they do on the basic service and. And so that’s a really interesting way of, you know, raising not only are prices raising your margins is offering…

Danny: Which is really what it’s all about.

Phil: Sure. And there’s a whole slew of what are called “managed service providers” which are popping up around the globe, where it’s not just about selling the you know, let’s say a piece of software to a company, its managing the software for the customer. Because they realize the pain point for the customer is, is actually managing the service. And so they make it really easy by saying: “you don’t have to worry about that we’ll take care of that.”They obviously services like that are less – you’ve got a lower margin on the services and that’s how you can start charging a higher price for your software where you’ve got very high margins because the customer is felt like you know it’s a turn-key offer and they’re being well taken care of. So the total margin increases the total sales price increases and generally everyone’s happier as a result this is the harder business to scale of course if you’re offering specific services depending on you know the level of services required to implement that software.

Danny: For sure I want to just like highlight and underline what you just said because this is just so important. You know, when we talk about raising prices, it’s not because we wanted just charge more in charge more because – an example makes this easy: but say they are selling widgets for $1 and your cost of producing marketing the widget, servicing the customer, your overhead etc. works at $.90 for each widget. You know, your profit on the dollar is $.10 by raising your price by 10% you double your profit. And it’s really those fatter or margins that we’re after when looking at raising our prices. And thank you for kind of bringing that to the forefront because that’s really what this is all about it’s not about you how to I raise my prices along with my costs because that accomplishes nothing. It’s about how you make the margins fatter.

Phil: Oh yeah, look it depends on the company’s overall objective. Most companies are interested in increasing profit. Some companies that were really interested in increasing sale price because they want to look more attractive to a potential investor, partner, buyer or other. So you know some people do focus on top line and increasing top line in sales in which case they may add new products and features that don’t you give the more profit but it enables them to say that they’re selling X millions more per year. But, yes, in general you know, profits are better placed to be focus as you said raising your price for good reason or you know raising the price increasing also your costs but still the overall profit goes up that becomes interesting in general. So you know raising prices as well as raising costs are fine as long as your profits are increasing the net profits increase.

Danny: So Phil, I will be respectful of your time we’re coming up on the half-hour there’s one less question I want to ask you that I make a point of asking everyone that we interview as Mirasee. Theory is great and our audience appreciates theory but they also – practice is important to you need to listen to something and be like: “yeah that was interesting and really liked it,” but kind of, file it away to get to at some point in the future at some point never arrives and so we’ve got a whole bunch of people who are listening to this recording readings transcript and you know something that we’ve talked about that you said really struck them: “okay yes I need to think about raising my prices.” Or “I need think about fixing up my margins so that the deal is more attractive to me.” Their sold on it to the point where okay… This is Important I’m clearing some time, I’m clearing three hours on my schedule this afternoon to start doing something about this.” What should they do with those three hours?

Phil: While I don’t think three hours is necessarily enough time to rethink your total price and margin strategy but I mean, let’s say it’s a starting point. You know I think it’s important to constantly be innovating. I think you got to always be looking at how to create something that’s better and brighter. For me, you know, the ultimate company is that especially for talking about price it’s Apple. They understood very clearly that they can sell a computer for you know three times the price as their competitor because their product is just better. Better looking, you know, sleeker whatever reason that we pay $1000, $800 for similar computer that we can buy for $600. They’ve understood and so I think it’s an ongoing and constant re-looking at the offer and saying how to make this better when really what you’re trying to do is increase your sales and your profits if the constant move. So it’s really looking at a set of services you offer and if for some companies like, if you’re running a spa, there’s only so many things you can do but you know why not take on that new you know pedicure where fish eat your feet and can we charge more for that? And, you know is there a new technology coming out that allows us to do something – I don’t know. But the point is that I think you say and I wake up every day and I tried to think you how we do something a little bit different today and then when you strike something that really feels like it is different because that doesn’t happen every day and when something really does it really is interesting and I talk to people may really think that’s really cool now maybe can’t semblance of some sort of a you know add-on value-added or even a new service that allows me to charge more. I think just wanting to charge more is not enough you really need to figure out why it is that you can charge more. And again sometimes it’s just a question of perception: if I charge more than people will think I’m better than the others and in a lot of cases that is the case. I don’t know that a Gucci bag is necessarily any better than a Gap bag.

Danny: Maybe we should ask our wives about that one. You know that’s great, Phil, the thank you. Where can people find you?

Phil: Well for those that are on Twitter the best way to keep track of me is either at @PTelio or @StartUpFest, that’s for the events event and of course I’m available online at Embrase.com. I’m happy talk to anyone who’s interested.

Danny: Wonderful. Pill thank you very much for your time, I’ve enjoyed the conversation, I know it’s going to be interesting and valuable for our listeners and I appreciate you taking the time to do it.

Phil: My pleasure.