This week, I do a crossover episode with my other brand, Podcast Production School, and invite Melanie Scroggins to the show to answer a question from one of our students: When did you know that you wanted/were ready to increase your prices?
In this episode, Melanie and I cover:
- Separating yourself from the value of your services
- Creating baseline price points that support your needs
- Understanding what your business is in your life (full-time projects vs side hustles)
- Becoming comfortable with the discomfort of raising prices
- Challenging the commitment levels of your clients and yourself
Thoughts about yourself
When you start a business, especially as a first-time entrepreneur, it can be incredibly hard not to tie your own worth to the worth and value of your business. I see clients do this often, sometimes even without realizing it, and these thoughts are unproductive because they warp your perspective of why people are paying for your services in the first place. Your clients are not asking for perfection and they are not just giving money to you as an individual. They’re asking you to provide them with a service, and that service has its own value and worth to them.
“You need to think about your offer and the value of that apart from you as an individual.”
Thoughts about pricing
In the early days of your business, it is all about survival mode. You are charging money to pay the bills and to provide for your family, and there’s no room in that period of time for you to undersell yourself. Lowering your rates past the point of what’s rational for you and your living situation is unproductive because neither you nor your business can thrive and grow in these situations. You won’t make yourself feel better about yourself or the services you provide for charging too low, you’ll actually only feel worse.
“At the very minimum, you need to figure out what’s worth your time and what’s going to pay your bills.”
Thoughts about being ready for change
You might have been thinking about it for a while now, but when do you know that you’re ready to raise rates? For me personally, there’s never one right answer to this question. The rates you charge need to fit what you want from your business, from your clients, and from yourself. If you’re looking for more and you want clients that will take that leap with you, higher rates can be used to accomplish that. Not every single person in your client base may be able to afford you charging more, but your business is not about compromising for every individual situation, that would only serve to be an unproductive thought. Understand that it is not about you or the price, and accept that it’s about value.
“It’s not about you, it’s not even about the price most of the time. It’s about the client and their goals and what they envision and that commitment level.”
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You can find out more about Podcast Production School on our website.
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You can schedule a clarity call with me here: https://oyfn.co/clarity/
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