5 Reasons To Charge MORE!

Foreign. Hello, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach. Happy Monday, everyone. Welcome. Tonight, I'm going to be talking about why you should be charging more in your business. This is a topic that I have to go into with pretty much everyone I talk to, and so I imagine it's going to be relevant for your life. I. I just realized I forgot I wanted to do this on. On Instagram also. And I'm. Oh, my God. I got so excited about my. My intro video that I forgot. So hold on. We're gonna do this on. On Instagram also. So. Okay, so now you guys are gonna see. Oh, God. Hi. So I am just setting things up so that I can go live on Instagram and on the regular streams. Also, this is a super janky setup where I balance my phone against my computer because for some reason, Streamyard hasn't worked it out to go live to Instagram yet. So, anyway, again, Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach. We are talking this evening about why you should be charging more in your business. And I'm going to be talking about why we undercharge first. And then I'm going to be going into the five reasons why you should charge more. Now, I'm not going to tell you you deserve it. I know that you deserve it, but I don't need you to, like, roll your eyes at me. You are a special snowflake, and you've been told that your whole life and you're over it. Okay? That's not a good enough reason to charge more. And. Hello. Hi, I think it's Ralex. I don't know if I'm pronouncing your name correctly. And hi, David. Welcome. And hi, Steven. Hello. Gosh, it's late in Ireland. Welcome. Anyway, so here's what I hear most from my clients who are undercharging is they feel bad charging more, essentially, so they want their services to be accessible to their clients who they are making up a story, cannot afford them otherwise. They also don't feel justified in making. In charging more money for the same amount of work. They feel like they have set the bar and they can't raise it. It's not fair. Fair to other people to raise it at this point. I've also heard people point to they want to work with marginalized groups and they won't be able to afford it. I've also heard people say that it's selfish. Like they don't want to be seen as selfish. And as Greedy for wanting more money. They like a whole slew of reasons. And essentially this is all the same. Like this different ways of saying the same thing. That they have a bad relationship with money. They have this relationship with money that says that if they dare to charge more, then they are inherently a bad person. That there's something wrong with them, that they are greedy, that they are natural, that they are on the wrong side and taking advantage of other people. And if you help anyone in your work, if your work helps anyone at all out there in the world, you're not a bad person, you're a helper. I just want you to know that. And you have to do some work on your money problems. It's one of the things I work on with my clients. Hi, Bobbi. I can't wait to see you in a couple weeks, by the way. Okay. The. Bobbi Michael is an amazing hairdresser in New York City. In the Village. I go. I actually drive up from Philadelphia to. To New York City to get my hair done by him. I pretty much followed him from San Francisco. Why? I live on the east coast now. No, not. Not why, but a major, major perk. It's called Maverick Salon. It's on Christopher. I'm just going to give you the address. It's 15 Christopher Street. It's amazing. There are some great lunch places around the corner. And he is an amazing hairstylist. Can't recommend him more, but don't go to him and make it impossible for me to get an appointment. All right, deal. Thank you. Anyway, so why. And also, Bobbi, please don't listen to this. Don't charge more for my haircut. Just kidding. Why should you be charging more in your business? I'm going to be talking about the five reasons. If you have any questions, I want you to pop them in the chat. I love this to be interactive. If you want to argue with me, bring it. I can take it. Okay, so number one, why you should be charging more in your business is people associate cost with quality. They associate how much you charge with the quality that you deliver. And before they even walk in the door, get on the phone with you, become your client, they in. Hi, Abby. Welcome. They are going to associate what they are paying with the outcome, the quality of the outcome that they're going to get out of it. Okay, so if you're a lawyer and you're not charging enough, guess what, Your clients are walking in assuming that they're going to get some pretty mediocre legal work. If you're a Hairdresser and you're not charging enough people are just going to come in. Like, I'm willing to be surprised and delighted, but not likely. Like, we've all, we've all sacrificed and just needed a haircut so badly, right. That we've gone and settled for, for, you know, someone who we didn't know and like, it was fine, our hair was shorter, whatever, but for what we paid, we weren't upset about it, right? People are looking to be delighted when they pay more. A lot of, a lot of my clients freak out about this because they're like, oh my God, I have to be quantifiably better if I'm going to charge more. And I always argue this. It's like, well, are you an expert in what you do? Like, let's go through all the trainings you've ever had in your business, right? Okay, so like if you're a lawyer, you went to law school, right? Great. And then you passed the bar, right? And what states did you pass the bar? And, and let's go through, you know, what's your specialty and how long have you been in that specialty? Like, I think you've got it covered here, right? And you're not gonna, the other thing here is like, you're not gonna show up wasted, right? You're not gonna show up drunk to court and like take your pants off in front of the judge, right? And you're gonna actually like read through the documents for your client's case and you're actually gonna like, make arguments and do all the work. Right? Cool. The other, the flip side of charging more for your clients means that you need to have fewer clients. And when you have fewer clients, guess what? You have more of time. You have more time and hi, Paul. Amen. Yes. You have more time to deliver that, that upleveled experience to give more to your clients, to add an extra check ins to make sure you have other people checking your work, if you're a lawyer, to really make sure that what you're doing is perfect for them. Whereas if you're charging too little, like, you gotta turn and burn, baby, you know? Have you ever been into one of those, like, fast service restaurants where they have waiters, but like, you sit down and you're expected to order as fast as possible and they slap down your food and they clear it as soon as you're done, they don't wait for everyone at the table to be done and they drop the check before anyone has even uttered dessert. They don't care about you Ordering dessert. They need that table back because once they get a new table, they're going to be able to build up that bill with entrees and appetizers and beverages. Okay? A measly $7 dessert. Your experience, like, go to the ice cream place down the street. We do not give a fuck. That is what happens in your business when you charge too little. You have to give that turn and burn shitty service. And you do not want to do that, because guess what happens. You're going to get shit reviews. And you don't want shit reviews because guess it's just going to completely trash your business. So we charge more to indicate more the quality that we provide. Right. And when we charge more, we have more time. Oh, my blog is up. I just got a text about it. I just got published. You have more time to deliver a better service to those clients who are willing to pay for it. Okay? It is a quality game. Who sets the quality, though? You do. It is not your clients. It is not how happy your clients are at the end of the day with you. It is how much you charge to start. Okay? So that's reason number one, why you need to charge more is it indicates quality. Reason number two, why you should charge more. You attract better clients. I see you, Luna. No, no treats. You attract better clients. So I know we all know this experience. Experience of that one client who got a deal who is way underpaying. And they seem to think that they own you. They seem to think that anything that they want, you have to hop to, and it is theirs when they want it. And if you don't do it, they're gonna nag you and pester you and be upset and create a whole scene about it. Right? Those are the worst clients in the world. And those are the clients that we attract when we charge too little. Those are the bargain bin clients. We don't want bargain bin clients. We want clients who see us see the worth of what we do, see the value, and think, yeah, I want to invest my money in that. Yep, I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is. I want to pay for that. And they're going to show up on time and they're going to be cooperative in whatever way that they need to be because they want the best out of you, because they decided this was important to them, that they ponied up the money and they're going to refer people to you. And also the people that they refer to are going to be equally able to pay your rates. I don't know if anyone has had this experience where you have a couple discount clients and you're like, oh, but they said that they would refer people to me, right? And then they refer people to you, but they refer discount clients to you. They refer other people who aren't able to pay your full rate. And that's not helpful to anyone, right? That's a waste of everyone's time. It's embarrassing for some people, and it's frustrating for you as the business owner. Okay? You don't want that. You want to set the bar here and have more people come to that bar, right? So you attract better clients when you charge more, clients are far more respectful of your time, of your expertise. This doesn't have. If you're charging what you should be for what you do, this is never going to happen. Where a client comes to you, gets an idea of, like, what your opinion would be. It's like, okay, goes to someone else, gets their opinion, pays for both. Both people's time, and then kind of muddles it all together. It's a messy situation. When you don't charge enough for your service, do your clients the favor of valuing what they're. You're going to give to them by charging enough, all right? That's lesson number two on why you need to charge more. Okay? You attract better clients. Number three is my favorite, because here's what most of my clients come to me for is like, oh, God, Like, I just want to get to the point where I can actually delegate the shit in my business that I hate doing. I want to delegate social media. I want to delegate my. My newsletter. I want to delegate, you know, my taxes. Great. So to be able to delegate stuff, you have to be able to afford to pay people to do those things for you. If you're. If you're living paycheck to paycheck on what you're charging your clients and you're barely able to cover your own expenses, how the hell are you going to hire someone to delegate this stuff to? You're not going to be able to afford it, okay? It's just common sense. The math does not work. If you're not charging enough to have a surplus in your business, to be able to hire someone to delegate some of this work to them, it's not going to work out for you to delegate. And hi, Alec, Welcome. These two delegate the things that you hate doing in your business. I'm sorry, toots, but you're gonna have to charge more. You're gonna have to charge more in your business. And guess what? You're gonna be so much better for your clients when you're able to focus only on the parts of your business serving them that you really, really, really enjoy. Okay? Every business owner should get to the point where they're able to delegate and offload the shit that they hate doing. Okay? I can tell you, I delegate. I have. I have a team behind me. They are incredible and they do all the shit that I absolutely hate doing. I hate posting my blog. I hate all the back end nitpicky shit. I hate, like, figuring out what SEO words I need to use. All that stuff. Like, you don't have to do that in your business either, okay? You get to delegate it. But to delegate, you do have to charge more. All right, I'm getting a little parched. Hold on now. Okay? One reason number four, this is actually counters a big argument that I hear back, especially from those of my clients who really want to help marginalize groups, right? Because you have this goal with your business that you want to help people. You want to solve a problem that people are really struggling with in their lives, something that is robbing them of their quality of life. Okay? And you want to make sure, maybe it's social justice, maybe helping those in poverty, you want to help them. So you feel so guilty charging more because this person is never going to be able to afford it. And here's the thing, you're never going to be able to afford it unless you're independently wealthy. I don't know, maybe you won the lottery, maybe you have a wealthy family, maybe you married rich. I don't know. Unless you're independently wealthy and you do not need to make money from this business, you're not going to be able to serve them consistently. You might be able to do it on the weekends or like a few evenings after work if you want to do this full time. You actually get to help more people when you charge more. You actually get to help more people with your gifts when you charge more. I know, it's a paradox, right? So here's how it looks like. You can absolutely serve people who can't afford to work with you full time. You can serve them in groups, you can volunteer your time, you can do a whole slew of things. But if you're not able to pay the bills, if you're not able to reinvest into your business, if you're not able to do this and, and make a living from it, you're never going to be able to help people. You know, those People, those, those coaches and those consultants who, like, they have their one on one clients, they have their consulting clients, and then they do events and then they write a book and then they have a digital course and you know, in a year they will touch about 200,000 people. They may not be working individually with 200,000 people, but you know what? They are helping 200,000 people. They're helping the people who come across them. They wouldn't be able to do that if they didn't charge well enough for it. You have to charge more. You, if you want to help a lot of people, you have to charge a lot of money. That's how that works. That's how Rich works. Okay? If you want to be able to have a social media team like Gary V. That that documents every smart thing that you say, say, and then turns it into social media stuff for all the platforms within five minutes. No, you have to charge enough money for that. Like, I'm just going to use Gary Vee as an example. Like, sometimes I know this for myself because sometimes he says something, I'm like, oh, just needed to hear that today. Yes, that was, that was just what I needed to hear. Thank you so much. Gary Vee. If you want to be able to touch people and help them in that minute way, you're gonna have to charge more money. Okay? This is not about you deserving it. This is about you having greater impact. Okay? They go hand in hand. Luna agrees with me. Right? Anyway, okay, so number five is my absolute favorite because, you know, if you're starting a business, you're doing it not because it's so easy and because of all the, like, idealized reasons. You're probably doing it honestly because there's nothing else left. You probably worked a career and worked for other people and it just didn't, it didn't, you know, kick it for you. It just, you didn't have the freedom, you didn't have the flexibility. You reach glass ceiling and pay probably and you're like, I think I can do better on my own. Right? You can do better on your own. You can also do very mediocre on your own. And I see a lot of very talented, very talented, well trained, certified incredible service providers really live in the mediocre life because they're not charging enough. So here's the thing. If you want to have freedom and flexibility in your life, if you really, really want to have that choice, money gives you choices. Charging more money allows for you to have the choice to take a whole month off charging More money means that you get to say no to projects that you don't want to take. Charging more money means that, you know, if in five years you realize this isn't the thing that you're tired and done and you want to move on to something else, you have the savings. You have the savings. You can wind down your practice or your business, you can go back to school, you can pay your mortgage. At the same time, if you've saved up enough, charging more money actually gives you choices right later down the road because you can't predict what life is going to hand you. You know, maybe, maybe you go from not wanting children to wanting 17 children. Children are expensive. You know, if you're barely making it by, it's going to be really hard to even have two children. Making more money gives you more choices. And if there's anything I want for you is I want you to have more choices. You deserve. Here's where deserving comes in. You deserve to have choice about how your life goes. That's. I mean, that's. If we're talking about freedom, that's essentially what that is, is choice to determine how your life goes. Everyone deserves that. You deserve that. That. I just want to summarize the five reasons why you need to be charging more money. Number one, you. You set the quality. You tell people what quality service you provide. Number two, you attract better clients. You attract dedicated clients who will be loyal and who will take your advice or really value the service that you provided. Number three, it makes it easier to hire people to delegate when you can actually pay them, you know, money. Number four, when you charge more money, you actually get to help more people. That's it. You don't have to. You don't have to be. You don't have to be a monk, you don't have to be a nun. You don't have to give up all your worldly possessions to be a good person. I don't know why we think that we have to be poor to help people. It's not true. You actually help more people the more money you make. And five, you get to have more choices in your life. The thing I want the most for everyone who's watching and everyone who will watch this video, if you are ready to charge more and you have no idea what you should charge or how you can justify it or how you even have that conversation with your clients, how you sell a more expensive program, I want you to book a call. Call with me, okay? And what we're gonna do is we're gonna just evaluate what your next three steps are to up your rates and charge your worth. And I know I said I wasn't going to talk about deserving and worth and all that stuff, but here's. Here it is. No one can put a price tag on you. No one can put a price tag on your hour because your hours is priceless. You're never going to get it back. And the gift you have to give people, no one else in the world can give that gift, just like you can. It's priceless. Lee Markham. So what I'm hearing is I need to get on my website and raise my prices. Actually, Lee, I have an opinion. I don't put my prices on my website. I have a big opinion there. So if you want to talk, we can talk through that and see if put putting your prices on your website is actually shooting you in the foot, because oftentimes I think that is exactly what happens. But anyway, so book a call with me if you're ready to do this. And if you're not and you just want to, like, muddle in this and this is helpful, I would love to hear what your main takeaway was with this. Luna has decided to get a squeaky toy to get my attention at this point, so I'm going to wind it up here. Thank you so much for joining. Um, I will be going live for the rest of this month. So Today is the 12th. We have. I can do math. 18 more days in September. 30 days in September. Right. Okay. Anyway, so I will be seeing you 18 more days. If there are any topics that you want me to go live on, please DM them to me, because that's a long time to go live and I need ideas anyway. And I want. I want what I'm going live on to be super useful to you, obviously. Anyway, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach. This is the point where I super awkwardly try to end two different lives at once on two different things. So excuse me while I do that. Have a great.