Episode #95: Raising Your Price: When Is It Time & How Does It Work?

Ruth Poundwhite 0:00
Raising your price. How do you know when it’s time? Will it ever feel easy? What are we making the numbers mean? Here is everything I know from working on this with lots of business owners over the last couple of years all condensed down into a podcast episode that I really hope inspires you into aligned action. You’re listening to quietly ambitious with conversations about how it really feels to build a business that honours your whole self unapologetically. And that includes who you are, how you feel, what you really desire, the impact that you want to create, and importantly, the money you want to make. I’m your host, Ruth Poundwhite. And my superpower is supporting sensitive and ambitious humans to make more money by fully expressing and owning all of who they are. Let’s dive in. Okay, so here we are the first episode of a brand new season, not a brand new podcast, but a rebranded podcast. This has been the longest break I have had for my podcast since I first launched it, and I’m not gonna lie, I’m feeling a little bit rusty. So I decided to kick it off with a subject that I just can’t seem to stop talking about lately. And that is pricing more specifically, raising your prices. And I wanted to start off with something juicy, I wanted to start off with something that I know just seems to be on everyone’s mind. I’ve been having so many conversations about it with my clients, with the people in my world. And I wanted to bring it to the podcast because I have a lot to say about this. So I guess I’m going to go through a few key points that I see come up when it comes to pricing. And I’m going to give my own examples from my own business as I go. So let’s dig in to the juicy topic of pricing. Firstly, how do you know when it’s time to raise your price. So I would say that for the majority of people that I work with, they could probably do with charging more. There are several reasons for that. And one of which is the fact that the way they want to work and the ultimate vision they have for their business is just not possible when you’re under charging. So if you’re really honest with yourself about how many people you want to work with, how deep you want to go with those people how much you want to work in general, are the prices you are charging, supporting that vision. Now, obviously, most of us have some sort of ecosystem of offers. Not everything that we have out there needs to be like go up in price or be a high price, what I’m really talking about is the stuff like one to one or Group offers that are kind of more high touch. And you only have a fixed number of people that you can actually take on, you know, capacity wise, right. I mean, so many people are under charging for courses and stuff like that as well. But I think that for this the benefit of this episode I’m going to talk about really your services. So that’s one reason to raise your price. If you are doing the maths, which by the way, I recommend you do the money maths, and it’s something that I talk about in my group programme rasterize. Do the money maths on a regular basis, make sure that what you want to earn is actually possible within your current pricing. So that’s one way. The second thing I think, and this is where I’m going to really show my example is when you’re selling your service, and you just have a feeling, a gut feeling and knowing that it’s actually kind of disappointing to think about if you fill up on this service, what money you’re going to be making an exchange. This is something that happened to me. So when I first started, I was earning, I was charging about 850 pounds for three months to work with me. Now that price has gone up many times since then. And don’t get me wrong, I was absolutely thrilled to get my first clients at that rate. But there came a time when I just knew that it did not feel good to imagine like I think at the time, my goal was to get fully booked with six clients, it did not feel good to imagine having six clients at that amount of money, it just didn’t feel good. It didn’t motivate me to actually want to get out there and sell it. I think a part of me knew that it wouldn’t feel like a fair compensation for the work that I was putting in. It wouldn’t feel exciting to sell and I felt like energetically it might have actually been getting in the way of me selling it. And actually, I wasn’t fully booked. I wasn’t getting loads of inquiries, but I still had this gut feeling that I really wanted to raise my price and that’s where

that’s where this like energetic piece of like when you know it’s time to raise your price can be a bit tricky, because you’ve got a gut feeling. You’ve got a knowing that you don’t actually want to charge what you are charging. But you do you’re not fully booked. So wouldn’t it be ridiculous to raise your price when you’re not fully booked? yet, like don’t you have to wait to a fully booked to raise your price, that you have to wait till you’re turning people away to raise your price. Obviously, it works like that for some people. But the truth of the matter is what happened is, this was like over two years ago now, I decided to raise my price. I remember I went to a live event in London with Risa floor Thomas, I challenged myself to talk on the microphone, which if you know me is a bloody big deal, like I would never normally do that. And I declared to the room, that I’m doubling my prices, and that it’s going to be a story, I get to tell my clients in the future. And guess what. So what happened was, I wasn’t fully booked, I doubled my prices, I got more clients. I’m not saying that it’s a magic thing. But in some ways, it is a magic thing. Because I was way more energetically aligned to my price, I was way more excited to sell it, I was way more behind the value that I was offering because remember is an exchange, people aren’t just giving you money, they’re giving it to you in exchange for service that you provide. And potentially I was more energetically aligned to the right kind of clients as well. So I just want to say that sometimes it can feel like a difficult decision for that reason. And actually, that’s the next point I wanted to get to, it is totally normal to feel nervous around raising your price. One thing I realised at that moment, when I decided I had to double my prices. And believe me when I say that, like I could have chosen to just go up by 100 pounds, right. And sometimes I do raise my prices in that way. But at that time, I knew that that wasn’t in integrity with what I wanted. I knew that that didn’t fire me up, I knew that I had to make a bold move. And I recognised that absolutely no one could tell me that it was all 100% gonna work. No one could tell me that. All I could do was sit with the uncertainty sit with what felt like a risk, make the bold move, because it ultimately felt right. Even though on the surface, it definitely brought up fear. So it is absolutely normal to feel fear when something like this comes up for you. The thing is the key. The key thing with pricing is that it’s not so scary that it totally freaks you out, you can’t even say the price, you have absolutely no belief that no one’s gonna buy it that mean, that is a sign that your price is too high. But when it’s a fear that it’s just you know, it’s the unknown, and it literally is the unknown, because if you’re raising your price, you’ve never charged that much before. So you don’t have the evidence whether people will or won’t buy it. And interestingly, what clients often say to me is, they definitely logically think that they’re their ideal clients won’t pay it. But the truth of the matter is, they don’t yet have the evidence either way. So it’s normal to have some level of fear, you have to be discerning, you have to talk it through with your peers, with your, you know, community with your coach, whatever, to make sure that it’s a good kind of fear because you’re stretching your comfort zone, or if it’s a fear, that means it’s just too much. Okay, so I just really want to make that clear, no one is going to come and tell you now is the perfect time to raise your price, just go ahead and do it. It’s all going to be fine. No one’s going to tell you that unfortunately. And it isn’t it just the same with so many things in business, we have to sit with so much uncertainty, we have to make what what we feel are big risky moves. But when they pay off, it is so so worth it. Okay, so that’s how I knew it was time to raise my price. That’s how I felt when I did it. And I have raised my price several times since then. But I feel like that time when I doubled them was the time when I learned so many lessons about it, like it’s suddenly just became clear to me. So let’s talk about getting used to the new price. And actually, this is something that I have had to think more about lately when my prices have gone up to a point that like that past me who charged like 750 850 pounds could never have dreamed of. And I have had to sit with some discomfort around the number. And when so I’m totally recording this imperfectly, by the way, my son is shouting downstairs. So hopefully you can’t hear him on the microphone. But that’s just the way it is. Okay, so yes, charging more money than I ever could have imagined before. There are ways to get used to certain numbers. My best advice for the sake of this podcast episode, I’m keeping it short and sweet is literally to give yourself a bit of time to start energetically aligning to the new price. Now, if you’re not yet ready to move up to it now. So what I mean by that is start so if your price was like 1500 and you want to raise it to 3000. Just start telling yourself that your price is 3000. Now, put it up on a post it note, start practising saying in the mirror, start telling it to your kind of business friends, mentors, coaches, start energetically aligning to that price. Now. That’s my simplest advice for that. And the other thing to know is just like, be really aware of what stories you’re telling yourself about certain numbers and certain milestones. So I remember a time I can’t remember what it was. I think it’s when I raised my package again to like 3000 or something. I think it’s When it I think it’s when my monthly payment plan for my one to one offer crossed the 500 pounds mark, keeping it just under 500. So keep an eye out 400. And something felt really safe for me. As soon as it went up to 500. And something I suddenly started seeing as a much bigger number. I’m thinking like, Oh, my goodness, is anyone going to sign up to this? Does this seem too big to them. And it was very interesting to know that those kinds of stories come up. And I would say that every client that I speak to has similar stories. And usually, interestingly, it’s usually a different number. Like I was literally talking to a client recently who who had it around the 400 pound mark, and eats for some people, it’s like when it gets to the 1000 pound mark, you know, whatever milestone it is, it’s just really interesting to be aware of your stories. Like, if you’re charging 475 pounds a month for something versus 500 pounds a month for something, that real difference is literally 25 pounds, but you are making the difference mean something else in your head, you’re attaching a story to it, you’re, you’re assuming something about the what your audience will attach to it, what your ideal customers will attach to it. So I just wanted to bring that up as well, because that’s also a way of like digging into the numbers digging into the stories and kind of energetically aligning to your new price before you put it up.

The other thing I wanted to say on this point is actually, let’s the argument that often comes up when I’m working on clients with this is okay, I know I want to charge more, I know that that feels exciting for me, I know that it doesn’t feel like too much of a stretch. So the price point is kind of right. But, and the but is often my ideal client can’t afford that. I know this about my ideal client and they won’t pay this. Now, I get that different markets have different kind of average price points, I get that different people work with different types of people who might have different levels of income, I get it, I get it. And at the same time, it’s really important to remember firstly, the fact that if you’ve never tried to charge that much before, you literally don’t know, every time I raise my prices, I am blown away by the ways in which people can afford it. And you might argue with me and say, Well, that’s because you’re helping people with their business. So it’s like, you know, a more easier thing to invest in. Yes. And I do believe in every industry, there are people at different income levels, there are people with different things that motivate them. And a thought that I would really love you to consider. And this is something that one of my past mentors Ray Dodd always talked about was that there are people who you are too cheap for right now. There are people out there who literally could benefit from working with you, but they won’t be motivated enough by the price that you’re currently charging. So when you’re worried about excluding people raising your price, firstly, you have to remember, there are different ways to work with everyone, you don’t have to be able to be accessible to everyone one to one, you can make more accessible offers in other ways, if that supports the vision for your business. The second thing is accessibility is sometimes means you have to charge more for certain people like I personally wouldn’t be motivated by those lower priced offers, I need to have more skin in the game. So don’t always assume that your work isn’t accessible. Or don’t always assume that your work is more accessible. When you charge a lower price. It just doesn’t work that way, especially when we’re talking about like one to one services and stuff like that. So that’s another thing for you to dig into mindset wise before you raise your price as well. And the other thing I want to say about this, so let’s just say you’ve gone through if you’ve got the knowledge, you know that inner feeling that inner knowing that you need to raise your price. You also know that it’s the vision that you have for your business, which by the way I was going to talk about just then when I when I mentioned like this fear of being not accessible to certain people at a higher price. Just remember that you don’t design your business around what’s accessible for everyone. You have to design your business around your personal vision. It includes making your work accessible in some ways to some people, but it also includes the way you want to work. And remember the ultimate sustainability of your business is not burning yourself out and charging less. It’s doing your work to its full potential. So I get to work so much more deeply with my clients. When I charge more money, I get to have more of an impact because I’m not stretched too thin. So that was just something I forgot to add there.

So yeah, you’ve got this knowing you know, you want to raise your price, you’re doing the work to get behind it. The next question is, should you just raise your price straight away? Like, you know, you want to just do it? Should you do a sale and should you want people before you raise your price? My answer to this is it could be both. So back a couple of years ago when I decided that I had to double my prices. I knew I was really really absolutely not energetically aligned to my current price. So I didn’t want anyone I didn’t do a sale, I just doubled the price. And again, doing that without taking advantage of the opportunity to encourage people to join before raising the price. Again, it was scary, it felt like a bold move. But I had to do what was right, knowing that I would be more energetically behind my price after I doubled it. That said more recently, are a couple of times now I have decided I’m raising the price, but also felt really good and excited to use it as a reason to get more clients in at the old price. I’ve done that a few times. And it’s worked really well. So the question is basically the question and all of this stuff always comes back to what, what you energetically align to like, if you keep the price low and decide to do a sale? Like you know what I mean? It’s not like a discount sale is a warning, giving people time to sign up at the old price before you raise it? Will you be energetically behind it? Will you be excited by it? Will you be motivated to sell those places? Will you will you show up and do justice to your offer. If you’re really not energetically aligned to it, then I really encourage you to choose a price that you are energetically aligned to. So I cannot believe I just shared all that in the space of 15 minutes, I’m actually really proud of myself because I set the intention at the start of this episode that I want it to be like short and right to the point. But I think that it’s 15 minutes, it may only be 15 minutes long. But I think that what I’ve shared here could have the potential to change things a lot in your business. And it’s all about how you feel honestly, like there are strategic stuff. There’s strategic stuff about pricing. But when you’re in the business, especially if you’re like coaching or doing some sort of transformative work, then there are so many different price points that you could choose. There are coaches and healers and therapists and transformational people, by God think of my words, but you’re not I mean, operating at all different levels of price. The most important thing is how you feel about it and how it aligns to the bigger vision of what you want to create in your business. And the way you work best with people like give yourself the space give yourself the capacity to work deeply with people and have a bigger impact through working deeply. So that is my advice on pricing. I would love to know if this has sparked anything for you. Feel free to come and DM me on Instagram at Ruth Poundwhite or send me an email. Also know that this is something that I work, work with very deeply with a lot of my clients. Like I said, it has been coming up a lot lately. So if you’re curious about how we can work together, you can go to my website, all the info about my one to one and my group package rest of rise is on there. I would love to work with you and I am very busy at the moment I have a waiting list for clients. So definitely get in touch sooner rather than later if you think it could be for you. And I’ll leave it there. Thank you for listening. And I feel like I’m back in the game with the podcast. I can’t wait to share more with you this season. It’s going to be fun. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of quietly ambitious. If you have a moment to rate and review know that it really does make a difference. And if you’d like to carry on the conversation, then you can connect with me on Instagram at Ruth Poundwhite Join me in the Facebook group or my personal favourite. Sign up to my newsletter letters to quietly ambitious humans. Just go to Ruth poundwhite.com forward slash newsletter to subscribe and keep doing what you’re doing because your work really does matter.