Why does the exact same offer, at the exact same price, get bought by one person and ignored by another?

In this episode, Jo breaks down the real psychology of perceived value, for anyone selling something a client can't hold in her hands: coaching, strategy, wellness work, anything intangible. Starting with McDonald's famous milkshake problem and why the "stated" reason someone buys is almost never the real one, Jo works through five research-backed ideas that explain why some sales pages land instantly and others, saying almost the same thing, land nowhere at all.

This includes the two completely different motivational engines behind every purchase, why "reduces anxiety" is close to useless on a sales page even when it's completely true, and why the invisible work behind an intangible offer has to be made visible before anyone will pay for it.

Research referenced in this episode:

Zeithaml, V. A. (1988). Consumer perceptions of price, quality, and value: A means-end model and synthesis of evidence. Journal of Marketing, 52, 2–22.

Zeithaml, V. A. (1981). How consumer evaluation processes differ between goods and services. In J. Donnelly & W. George (Eds.), Marketing of Services (pp. 186–190). American Marketing Association.

Higgins, E. T. (1997). Beyond pleasure and pain. American Psychologist, 52(12), 1280–1300.

Christensen, C. M. (2005). Marketing malpractice: The cause and the cure. Harvard Business Review, 83(12), 74–83.

Paivio, A. (1986). Mental Representations: A Dual Coding Approach. Oxford University Press.

Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, 47(2), 263–291.

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Instagram: @thequietgame
Website: www.jobeldade.com
Email: info@jobeldade.com

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For twenty years, one book shaped how the business world explained the gender pay gap. Women Don't Ask, by economist Linda Babcock, argued the fix was simple: teach women to negotiate, and the gap would close. Millions of women, Jo included, absorbed that lesson.

Then in 2018, three economists got access to real employer data that earlier researchers never had, added one overlooked variable, and reversed the story almost entirely. Women, it turns out, do ask. They just don't get.

In this episode, Jo traces the full arc of the research, from Babcock's original findings, to the study that flipped the popular narrative, to a 2010 experiment that reveals something almost every woman has lived through without a name for it: the same woman who negotiates fiercely for a friend's business will quietly soften her own price mid-sentence. Along the way, Jo connects the research to her own experience pricing across borders, and lays out what actually helps once you understand what the studies really found, and what they didn't.

Research referenced in this episode:

Babcock, L., & Laschever, S. (2003). Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide. Princeton University Press.

Artz, B., Goodall, A. H., & Oswald, A. J. (2018). Do women ask? Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, 57(4), 611–636.

Bowles, H. R., Babcock, L., & Lai, L. (2007). Social incentives for gender differences in the propensity to initiate negotiations: Sometimes it does hurt to ask. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 103(1), 84–103.

Amanatullah, E. T., & Morris, M. W. (2010). Negotiating gender roles: Gender differences in assertive negotiating are mediated by women's fear of backlash and attenuated when negotiating on behalf of others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(2), 256–267.

Want to go deeper?

The Anti-Hustle MBA is a free 30-day email course for service business owners who are done running on empty. One email per day. One honest idea you can actually use. No hustle, no 6-figure promises.

Join for free at https://www.jobeldade.com/theantihustlemba

Let's work together: https://forms.gle/KHyedhSYSVeesgur9

Connect with Jo:

Instagram: @thequietgame
Website: www.jobeldade.com
Email: info@jobeldade.com

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Ever notice how the same business decision can feel obvious with a friend nearby, and completely impossible when you're facing it alone? There's a real psychological reason for that, and it explains a huge amount about solo entrepreneur burnout, overthinking, and the strange swing between overconfidence and self-doubt that comes with building something by yourself.

In this episode, Jo breaks down social referencing, the psychological mechanism that makes humans check other people's faces before making decisions, first studied in infants and never actually switched off in adults. She explains what happens to decision-making and even your nervous system when that "room" disappears completely, why working from home in isolation can quietly distort how you judge your own performance, and why the habit of "reading the room" can turn against women in particular once there's no room left to read.

If you've ever wondered why you can give a friend brilliant advice about a problem you can't solve for yourself, this episode explains exactly why, and what small, concrete thing actually helps.

Want to go deeper?

The Anti-Hustle MBA is a free 30-day email course for service business owners who are done running on empty. One email per day. One honest idea you can actually use. No hustle, no 6-figure promises.

Join for free at https://www.jobeldade.com/theantihustlemba

Let's work together: https://forms.gle/KHyedhSYSVeesgur9

Connect with Jo:

Instagram: @thequietgame
Website: www.jobeldade.com
Email: info@jobeldade.com

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The first business Jo ever built was as a yoga teacher, not a business strategist. And for almost a year, she ran it under a version of her name with no surname attached, specifically so the people who already knew her, from university, from the Air Force, would not find it.

In this episode, Jo introduces the concept of the business habitat and its three layers: the business itself, the physical environment you work in, and the layer that connects and often quietly sabotages both, who you believe you are allowed to be.

She talks about the specific shame of building a new identity that felt, to her, like a fall from an academic and military past. Why so many capable women avoid visibility not from lack of ideas but from the fear of who does she think she is. And what actually shifted the belief, years later, in small, unremarkable ways rather than one dramatic before and after.

Want to go deeper?

The Anti-Hustle MBA is a free 30-day email course for service business owners who are done running on empty. One email per day. One honest idea you can actually use. No hustle, no 6-figure promises.

Join for free at https://www.jobeldade.com/theantihustlemba

Let's work together: https://forms.gle/KHyedhSYSVeesgur9

Connect with Jo:

Instagram: @thequietgame
Website: www.jobeldade.com
Email: info@jobeldade.com

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Have you ever lowered your price before anyone said it was too high?

In this episode of The Quiet Game, Jo gets honest about one of the most expensive habits a solo entrepreneur can have: the pre-emptive discount. The one nobody asked for. The one that happens before the proposal is even read, before the client has said a word, before anyone has given you any reason to lower the number.

This is not an episode about pricing strategy. It is an episode about projection, geography, and the belief underneath the number that is quietly doing most of the work.

Jo shares the specific moment she realised she had enrolled in a programme costing thousands of dollars that was delivering less value than the twelve euro monthly membership she was already running. And the uncomfortable question that raised about her own pricing.

She also talks about being Portuguese in a North American market, and the belief she carried for years that her location somehow affected the value of her expertise. And one practical change that shifted everything: sending the price before the discovery call.

Honest, specific, and uncomfortable in the best possible way.

Want to go deeper?

The Anti-Hustle MBA is a free 30-day email course for service business owners who are done running on empty. One email per day. One honest idea you can actually use. No hustle, no 6-figure promises.

Join for free at https://www.jobeldade.com/theantihustlemba

Let's work together: https://forms.gle/KHyedhSYSVeesgur9

Connect with Jo:

Instagram: @thequietgame
Website: www.jobeldade.com
Email: info@jobeldade.com

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What do prisons, Antarctic research stations, submarines, conflict zones and working from home as a solo entrepreneur have in common?

More than you might expect.

In this episode of The Quiet Game, Jo goes somewhere she has never gone publicly before. She shares the academic research that quietly shaped everything she does, a master's thesis on human wellbeing in isolated, confined, and extreme environments, and a PhD she began on the design of habitats for long-duration space missions, including contact with a NASA researcher and an invitation to work on the habitation module for future Mars missions.

And then she connects all of it to the solo entrepreneur working alone from home.

This is not a dramatic comparison. Jo is clear about that. Working from home is nothing like being stationed in Antarctica. But some of the structural conditions are surprisingly similar. And the research on what keeps people well in the most extreme environments on earth, and beyond it, might have something genuinely useful to tell us about building a sustainable business alone.

Research referenced in this episode:

Wilson, E.O. (1984). Biophilia. Harvard University Press.

Kaplan, R. & Kaplan, S. (1989). The Experience of Nature: A Psychological Perspective. Cambridge University Press.

Beldade, J. R. B. (2014). As plantas e o bem-estar humano em ambientes extremos [Plants and human well-being in extreme environments] [Master's thesis, University of Algarve]. Faculty of Sciences and Technology.

Want to go deeper?

The Anti-Hustle MBA is a free 30-day email course for service business owners who are done running on empty. One email per day. One honest idea you can actually use. No hustle, no 6-figure promises.

Join for free at https://www.jobeldade.com/theantihustlemba

Let's work together: https://forms.gle/KHyedhSYSVeesgur9

Connect with Jo:

Instagram: @thequietgame
Website: www.jobeldade.com
Email: info@jobeldade.com

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Disclaimer: This episode contains personal stories about pregnancy loss, a traumatic birth experience and postpartum depression. If any of these topics are sensitive for you right now, please take care of yourself first. It's okay to come back to this one when you're ready. Or not at all.

What do you do when you finally build the business you always wanted and then walk away from it?

In this episode of The Quiet Game, Jo shares the most personal story she has ever told publicly.

But underneath all of that, it's a story about a business decision. The decision to walk away from a model that was working.

This episode is not a cautionary tale. It's an honest account of what happens when life arrives without asking permission, the choices we make in those moments, and why building a business that can hold when you can't is not a luxury. It's the whole point.

If you have ever stepped back from something that was working and told yourself it was just temporary, this episode is for you.

Want to go deeper?

The Anti-Hustle MBA is a free 30-day email course for service business owners who are done running on empty. One email per day. One honest idea you can actually use. No hustle, no 6-figure promises.

Join for free at https://www.jobeldade.com/theantihustlemba

Let's work together: https://forms.gle/KHyedhSYSVeesgur9

Connect with Jo:

Instagram: @thequietgame
Website: www.jobeldade.com
Email: info@jobeldade.com

Subscribe and leave a review:

If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe so you never miss a new episode. And if you have two minutes, leaving a review on Apple Podcasts helps more women find the show. It means more than you know.

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What do you do when your business is working, the clients are there, the revenue is coming in, the strategy is sound, and it still feels wrong? Not broken. Not failing. Just wrong. Like you're wearing something that technically fits but that you can't stop noticing on your body.

In this episode of The Quiet Game, Jo goes beyond the usual conversation about business models to ask a more fundamental question: is your business designed for who you actually are? Drawing on research into personality, nervous system differences, and what psychologists call person-environment fit, Jo makes the case that the exhaustion many entrepreneurs feel is not a motivation problem or a discipline problem. It's a design problem. And specifically, it's the problem of building a business using someone else's blueprint without ever stopping to ask whether that blueprint was made for you.

Want to go deeper?

The Anti-Hustle MBA is a free 30-day email course for service business owners who are done running on empty. One email per day. One honest idea you can actually use. No hustle, no 6-figure promises.

Join free at https://www.jobeldade.com/theantihustlemba

Connect with Jo:

Instagram: @thequietgame
Website: www.jobeldade.com
Email: info@jobeldade.com

Subscribe and leave a review:

If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe so you never miss a new episode. And if you have two minutes, leaving a review on Apple Podcasts helps more women find the show. It means more than you know.

Send us Fan Mail