Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: Hello and welcome to the solopreneur Sisterhood podcast. A podcast designed to help heart centered service providers like you build a purposeful, profitable and sustainable business that supports what matters most to you. I'm your host, Becky McCleary and I am so grateful that you are here.
[00:00:24] Speaker A: Hello and welcome back. I'm so glad that you are here today. So today we are going to dive into three of the top money questions that I often hear from clients. Okay, so just a quick note before we dive in here today. So some of us, we hear money or that the topic is going to be money and we automatically get a little uncomfortable. And if this is you, I just want to reassure you that you are not alone. I cannot tell you how many business owners I have met with who really don't want to think about or talk about or look at the money in their business.
However, as business owners, money is an essential component. That's why this is a business and not just something we're doing in our free time, is that we are making a profit, ideally. And so we need to be able to talk about money and look at our money. And so I just want to remind you that this is a safe place. What I am sharing here are ideas. They are meant to help you and support you and hopefully offer some inspiration.
And if they resonate with you, fabulous. And if they don't, feel free to disregard them. But I hope you'll give it a chance and join me and listen in and see if any ideas spark something for you. Okay, so we're covering three questions that I often receive from clients related to pricing. And I am guessing that when I bring these up, none of them are going to be new for you, but we'll see if we can offer some extra insight here. So. So the first question that I want to address today is should I have my pricing on my website? Should I make my pricing visible or should I keep that off of there so that way I only show it when people actually get on a call with me.
So there are lots of different approaches to this, lots of different opinions.
My personal opinion is to go ahead and make your pricing visible.
My reason for this is a couple. A couple of thoughts here. So one, just thinking from my own perspective. I'm one where if I'm interested in a program, I want to know if I can afford it or not. And so I know that I am one where I am very unlikely to ever get on a discovery call with someone if I have no idea what the price is. The reason for that is no one wants to be on a call, all excited about a program and, and then hear a number and realize, oh, there is no way I can afford that. One, it's really disappointing. And two, it's really awkward to be in that position. So I think just from putting myself in the potential client's shoes, I wouldn't want them to be in that position. And so I like the idea of having your pricing visible. So now I know that a lot of people are saying, don't have it there because you'll lose potential buyers. However, I think that it's going to. I mean, I personally feel like you never want to force someone to work with you. You never want to push someone to work with you if they really can't afford it. And so I think it's kind of an act of kindness to show them the pricing up front. That way they can decide, yes, this is possible. No, this really isn't possible for me right now. I will also say that I have had clients where they show their pricing, someone is interested in working with them, they have a call, they cannot afford it right now, but they intentionally save up the money to be able to make that investment later on, and they have come back and they have made that investment. So just because a price might not resonate with someone right now doesn't mean it's an automatic no. It might just be a no for right now. My other thought with this is that if someone comes to a call with you and they know your pricing, then ideally this is an investment they are prepared to make. And so you're likely to be talking with more people who are serious about working with you, rather than talking with people who are interested but just not able to work with you right now. So I think also from that place of being a solopreneur, having limited time, you don't have a sales team making the most of those conversations. I think that this can work well for you in supporting business too. So the one note I will add to this is if you're listening and you're thinking, well, I don't have a set price. You know, maybe you are a VA or another contractor where your pricing varies depending on what a client needs. That's. I understand that. I've been there before. I like the idea of saying prices start at and then listing a number for your baseline package, or packages start at and again listing that baseline number. That way, again, you have people coming to the conversation with an idea of it's going to cost at least this amount and they are Prepared, ideally, if they're on a call with you to make that investment. So I like that idea of just having that starting point. So that way, even if you don't have a set number for every single client, potential clients come in with an idea of, you know, this is going to cost me at least this amount. And ideally they're coming to you prepared to make that investment. So that covers the question of should I make my pricing visible? The second question I want to address here today is the idea of offering a money back guarantee or a trial period. Maybe you offer a discount price for a trial period and then it goes up to a regular price. So I know we have all seen this, we've probably seen it from some of the bigger names online where they have that money back guarantee after a certain period of time, or they have a trial period for a week or two weeks and then you pay, or there is a discount trial for your first month and then it goes up to the regular price. We've all seen this and on the surface that sounds good because it looks like, okay, we could get more people in the door because it takes some of the risk out of it for them. So they're able to buy, they're able to see what we're doing and, and not feel like they, they're possibly risking making a huge mistake. It's easy for them because they have that guarantee or they have a chance to try things either for free or a low price.
One thing that I will say is I personally think as solopreneurs, I'm against all of these options.
So I think because I've been behind the scenes of different businesses and we have done some of these things, I have seen a surprising number of people where as soon as that trial is about to end, they cancel. So we've offered them some of the services, they've benefited from the services, and then they cancel before they're paying or they cancel after they've spent just a minimal amount.
And with that, it requires a lot of extra time on the back end to make sure that those people are not charged anymore, make sure that they're removed from the platform, make sure that they are removed from emails about that offer. And so if you are doing everything on your own, I would really encourage you to think through how much time this is going to take on your part to do all of the administrative tasks in order to get people in the door. I will also say with money back guarantees, we have seen a significant number of people take advantage of that. So then the Business is actually losing money because what happens with a payment processor is they're not just issuing a refund, they are issuing the whole refund. However, the client has also, the business has also been charged the processing fee. And so it's not just a case of, oh, this client gets a refund, I didn't make any money. It's I lost a bit. So again, as solopreneurs, I would encourage you to really think through this. My personal thought too is even if I have a smaller number of people join a program or take advantage of an offer at full price with no money back guarantee, ideally you're getting people in the door who are really committed to doing the work and showing up. And I personally would rather have a smaller group of people who are really invested in a program rather than a larger number of people who are just kind of testing it out and might not be as invested or committed. I personally feel since community is a big part of the work that I do, I would love to have people who are really committed to showing up doing the work because I feel like those people are going to make the community stronger and make the overall program more effective because they are committed to it. And so I think my personal opinion is one, think through how much extra work is this going to cost you as far as just the administration of having a trial or a money back guarantee? And then also think about the risk for you as a business as far as those extra processing fees. If you are offering refunds, if you are offering a money back guarantee, I would also be very clear on your requirements for offering that money back. Just so that it's very clear as far as what is required in order to receive a refund. So that way it's very clear for you, it's very clear for potential buyers. So that way there isn't miscommunication there. Okay, so onto our last question, which is probably the biggest question, the one that I get most often is how do I determine my pricing? How do I set prices? And if you are a business owner, I am sure that you have had this question come up whenever you have a new offer.
So there are a couple of different ways to approach this.
The first one is, well, first I'm going to backtrack here and say I don't think there is one right way to set your pricing. I'm going to give you a couple of different ideas for ways that I have set prices and hopefully it will spark some ideas for you. So the first approach is just a very simple, very logical approach.
You're going to think through for this offer, how much time is this going to take on my end? So if I am offering a copywriting package for someone, if I am offering a graphic design package, if I'm coaching a certain number of sessions, most of the time it's not just the work you're doing that's with a client, it's also the work you're doing behind the scenes. And I think a lot of us, especially if you're doing coaching or consulting, we tend to forget about all that extra time that we're working behind the scenes for that client. You know, if you're doing boxer support, slack support in between, if you're reviewing things for the client, if you're gathering resources for the client, any extra things that you are doing, that is time. And when you're working for that client, you don't have that time then to work on anything else in your business or for other clients. So I would add that into this equation. So the simple, straightforward way is to look at how much time is this going to take and then how much do I want to be making hourly, or in some cases, how much do I need to be making hourly in order to hit my goals. So if you worked with me at all, you know, we have a clear process as far as getting clear on your numbers to cover your business expenses, to be able to pay yourself what you want to make. And so sometimes it is just a case of doing the math that if I need to make this amount and I only have this many hours to work with, this has to be my hourly rate. If I go lower than that, there's no possible way for me to hit those numbers. So in that case, it's not that you need to tell your client that I charge this much per hour. This is more of a behind the scenes part for you. But it's just a very clear, this is what I want to be making or need to be making hourly, this is how many hours I'm going to be dedicating for this client, this is the price of the package. And so for clients, they would just need to know the price of the package. They don't need to know the hourly rate. But for you, you know that then if you sell that package at that rate, you are making the hourly amount you want to be making. And that's going to lead to meeting your goals, your financial goals in your business. So that approach is very logical, using the math, figuring out the numbers that way. So that is one approach.
The other approach is A little more intuitive and you can combine the two. So sometimes what I will do is I will start with that, looking at the numbers and figuring out what the number needs to be, and then I will check in with myself.
And this part you can do with any price point you set is this intuitive kind of check in. How does it feel when you think about saying that number to other people? If you think about posting that number on your website, if you think about other people finding it and seeing that, what kind of reaction does that give to you? Most of the time you are going to feel a reaction. You might feel really nervous about it, you might feel really uncomfortable, you might want to immediately lower your prices, or you might look at it and feel like, oh, that's not enough. You might feel a bit of disappointment, or you might feel somewhere in between. But I would check in with yourself. So whether you're looking at the numbers or you're just picking a number out of thin air for your pricing, I would do that gut check in with yourself. Because if we cannot confidently share our pricing with someone else, I really believe that that comes through in some way. If we feel un unsure of ourselves, if we're feeling like, I'm not really sure if this is worth it, I feel like even though we're trying to say, this is what I offer, here's the price, on some level, we are going to be conveying that uncertainty to potential buyers. They're going to pick up on that, and we want to feel confident in sharing our pricing. So if you have a set number that you want to be pricing your offer at, and you're feeling really uncomfortable with that price, there are a couple of things to do. One is you can play around with what price point you feels comfortable. You can start there, you can sign on one, two, maybe three clients at that level.
It's not at that point about making the money. It's more about building your confidence. And so even if it's a lower price point, but you feel very confident staying that price point, and you sign a couple of clients at that level, then you will have done the work, they will have gotten the results from working with you. Ideally, you gather some testimonials and then you can increase the price. And as you gradually repeat that process of signing two or three clients at that price point, doing the work, increasing your confidence, increasing your skill, learning more about what you're doing and how to better serve your clients, then you can increase the price again. And ideally, each time you're gathering testimonials you're also giving clients an outstanding experience. So they are either wanting to work with you beyond that initial package, or they are referring other people to you, possibly both. But ideally, you're building that confidence and you're working your way up to that price point that you want. So if you are checking out your numbers and you're not feeling confident, I would recommend starting lower and working your way up. The other thing you can do is if you are looking at your numbers and you are thinking, you know what, that doesn't really excite me. That doesn't feel quite like it's worth it. Quick note here is I would really encourage you, if you're going with a low number, to pause and give yourself a little time to reflect on that. Think through, how is it going to feel doing this work? Think of all the work you need to do for this package at that price point. I say this because early on I would offer things at. In right now, it's an embarrassingly low number because I didn't feel confident charging higher prices. And then what would happen is working for those clients going above and beyond, there would be part of me that would really regret having charged such a low price, and I wouldn't enjoy the work I was doing because I felt like it wasn't value. So if you're going with a really low price point, I would just give yourself a little time to think through. How is this really going to feel if I do all of this work for this price point? And if you can feel good about that and you're not going to regret it, go with it. But most of the time what happens is we end up regretting that decision, and then we don't enjoy that work. And so it's not a positive experience. So we want to ideally be in a place where it feels really good to be doing that work, and then we're growing along the way.
So going back here, again, if you are at a price point and it's feeling kind of like it's too low or you're not quite sure that that's fair for all the work that you're going to be doing, what I would do is play around with a price a little bit higher. So let's say you have a package that's $500 and you're thinking, yeah, I could sell it at that point, but I might not really love it. What if you went up to 750 and allow yourself to sit with that number and see how that feels, and if that feels good, go with it. Or if that feels like, oh, it's a little uncomfortable, but I think I could do it, go with it too. Because what I have learned over the years is that if you have a price point where you feel really confident or you're maybe a little unsure, but you're mostly there, go with it. Because that's going to allow you to stretch that's the whole way. You know, I think of clients where I started off and I was making maybe $400 a month working with that client. And then over time my rates increased, the work I was doing for them increased to the point where I was making thousands of dollars a month from that client. And so you can grow over time. So I think a lot of the time we're seeing people with these high ticket offers and we're thinking that's what we need to do, but we don't feel comfortable with it. We don't feel confident in ourselves and what we can deliver for that price point. And so there's that resistance. So my goal for you with setting your price is that one, it leads you closer to meeting those numbers. So that way you can cover your business expenses and you can pay yourself what you want to be making, but that you can do so in a way that feels aligned for you. And so I'm hoping that by sharing these strategies, you can think through it logically, but you can also be checking in with yourself how you feel and trusting yourself to, to make decisions that feel good to you and that will allow you to grow over time. Okay, so that is a wrap on the three money questions I most frequently receive from clients. I hope that today's episode gave you a little bit of insight, maybe some fresh ideas, maybe a new way of looking at one of these questions in your own business. And if you want extra support, you are more than welcome to come join us in the Solopreneur Sisterhood free community. We'll have a link to that in the show notes. And then if you want even more support, I do have a couple of spots open for one on one coaching and consulting, and I would love to learn more about you and your business. So we'll have a link for that in the show notes as well.
[00:19:16] Speaker B: Thank you so much for joining us and listening to the Solopreneur Sisterhood podcast. I hope this episode has offered you some encouragement, some insight and some new ideas to support you in building a business that works for you. Remember that our world needs you, your gifts, your vision and your work.
[00:19:33] Speaker A: And I'm cheering you on as you.
[00:19:35] Speaker B: Bring your vision to life and build a purposeful, profitable and sustainable business that supports what matters most to.
