Raising Your Prices

When do I know it's time?

Episode 54 of the CounterCultural podcast aired & in it Alex and I set up to explore trauma bonding, prosperity bonding & the shame of wanting to make more money in your business.

What happened was something much more beautiful.

I originally invited Alex to share a story from our past that we hadn’t ever shared publicly before.

We were sitting in the office ideating on the topic & both turned to each other, at the exact same time & said: “the story, it’s time”.

This was a really painful time in our lives as two young parents. Alex’s cheating at work got him fired which led us to having our car reposed & being evicted from our apt with our then 2 kids under two.

We knew nothing about personal finance or money care & were just in the thick of it.

The day he walked through the door, my heart literally fell out of my chest. I was holding Selah, she was only around 1 or 2 months old & I couldn’t begin to imagine what would come next.

Overnight Success

After we recorded & reminisced, it got me thinking about this phrase entrepreneurs, business owners & service providers are continually being told-

‘raise your prices’.

The thing about raising your prices is that there’s a lot more than just hitting backspace on an old number and typing a new one in its place.

There are fears, self-doubt & shame that are asking to be dismantled before making this change- it’s not an overnight success.

And anytime I’ve tried to make this change with false gusto, it wouldn’t last. I’d go to sell my new higher-priced offer & there would be no juice there.
No belief.

I learned that mixing worth & business is a very slippery slope and that whenever I had the pull to charge more it was somehow tied to being tired, overgiving, and stretched in multiple directions.

I had unknowingly built a business that is completely unsustainable, so the most natural reflex is to keep expanding to make it worthwhile.

Except our bodies aren’t ready for expansion, what they’re actually calling for is contraction- but who wants to hear that in business?

Quick Reframe: Contraction can actually be an invitation to refine, streamline, invest, or save.

But I’m really ready to Charge More

Okay, if you’ve already streamlined & it’s really about raising your prices, here are some questions to ask yourself beforehand.

1. Are my current prices enough to pay for my cost of living while paying my business taxes, expenses & investment savings account?

   • You may not currently be able to put investment savings away starting out but taxes & expenses come first.

2. Are my clients or customers getting the result that my service or product is promising?

   • How many clients have & how many have not?

3. If my clients didn’t have access to this offer, how would their life be different? (there are content gems in here)

   • This is a value question. For me, if I didn’t have Spotify, there would be no wind-down music for my kids, no podcast listening on a walk, no background music as a type this. It wouldn’t be that great, so this service adds a lot to my life.

   • Spotify’s business model is also a wide-eyed perspective, many service providers opt for deep eyed perspective.

4. Are you feeling bold? Send out a survey & ask previous clients how much more they would have paid for your service. This will give you a shocking depiction of either how severely underpaid you are or where you can refine to make a higher quality product to charge more.

5. Hate this Question. Normally the question around seeing what others are charging would go here, but I don’t like that question- at all. You don’t know anything about their business operations, if they're the sole provider, their client’s price points, etc. It’s good to keep in mind, but matching prices can sometimes devalue your offer.

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Is it Possible to be Rich & Ethical?

In that podcast episode, Alex vulnerably shared his current friction points (triggers) with believing that he could get paid what he wanted while doing work that was integrious.

And by the incoming DMs & comments, he wasn’t the only one.

I too have spent many years (a continual daily practice) to erase the binary thinking that broke equated to virtue & rich meant unethical.

Except mine was slightly different. I knew I could make money & lots of it, my mom did & because I saw it as a normal way of life, a woman in business making millions, it wasn’t hard to believe.

It was hard for me to believe that you could be well-rested, nourished & healthy doing it. That no matter how much you made, you’d still be burnt out.

Last year was my breaking point. I cocooned & massaged this exact friction point out with Energy Fasting (more on this soon) & now there’s absolutely nothing on this planet that would make me compromise my health & personal well-being for money. I can simply have both.

We need money. We need to learn to love money. We need to learn how to be in right relationship with it.

And as a Founder that’s choosing to make a living with my gifts, I have to simultaneously take responsibility for clearing what’s in my way & replace it with the truth that making money ethically equates to being in integrity with my God Identity & the God Identity of others.

remember, care for your energy first.
talk soon
Jas

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ES World

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