Psychology of charging more

Yo, yo, yo. I can taste. Foreign. I'm Katie McManus, this strategist and money mindset coach, and I should start adding that I'm also the host of the weeniecast podcast, which is A Weenie Is a Weenie is a podcast for ADHD business owners who want to scale their business and have control of their life. We have a lot of fun over there, so if you want to go check that out@weeniecast.com we're on all of the podcast places. There's been some confusion of late because I go live and I do that, and there are a lot of people who go live and they have that be their podcast. This is separate. So this content that you get from me while I'm going live is completely different from what you'll get on the podcast. I am just cranking out content these days, so I hope you really enjoy listening to that podcast and. And the lives that I do here today. I want to talk about something that is near and dear to my heart, because I am fully committed to making sure that everyone in the world makes a good living doing work that they love. I firmly believe that you deserve to do exactly what you love doing and actually make a good living from it. That's the only opinion I've ever, like, shared online that I've had haters in my comments for. As humans in our society, we kind of have this belief system that for us to make good money, like, we have to suffer, we have to sacrifice, and we have to, like, punish ourselves for it. I mean, sure, like, if you want to do life that way, go for it. You know, it doesn't sound very fun, and it doesn't sound very fulfilling. And there's, like, you could choose to make it hard, and you can also choose to let it be part of something that you really enjoy. Today, I'm talking about something that I hope will empower you to take the reins of your life, to really do what you love doing and feel appreciated for doing it, and also up level your business at the same time. So we're talking about the psychology of raising your rates. Okay. I can't tell you. I mean, I can tell you, every single sales call I ever get on with potential clients, they tell me what they're charging. I'm like, whoa, you need to be doubling, tripling, quadrupling, like, exponentially increasing your pricing. You are under charging. All right, Part of this, I just want to, you know, tell you. Hi, Justin. Welcome. Charge what you're worth, plus tax, you know? Yes, and also, I think people get really flipped out around that whole concept of charge your worth because it's like, well, how much am I worth? I don't know. Like, I think I'm a pretty cool human, but you know, like, how much would I pay me for an hour? Like, I have access to me all the time. It's really hard to be objective about how much you're worth, right? So we'll be talking about that. But you know the incredible thing about when you raise your rates? Like, you're obviously, your business gets better, but it doesn't just get better because you're making more money. It gets better because you get to be pickier about who you work with, right? You get to draw in your sole clients, like the people who just really resonate with you. You also just get to have more fun. And I'm going to be talking about all the ways in which you can do this. Okay? So the number one benefit to raising your rates is obvious. You make more money. Okay? Like that. I want that for you. I want you to make more money. Okay? You should. Want you to make more money. I was on a sales call with someone the other day and I suggested to them that they should be, you know, quadrupling how much they were charging for a certain offering. And they asked, well, how do I do that? And he said, okay, you're gonn say this. Hello, I charge quadruple what I used to charge. You know, it's not complicated. It's not easy, but it's not complicated. You raising your rates is simply you stating, this is what I charge now. Right? You know, it's up to them if they want to buy it. And it's up to you to uplevel your offer to like really fine tune your niche to make sure that it's a match financially. Does your eye twitch when someone asks, can I take you to lunch and pick your brain? You know, so my eye twitches when I'm tired. That's the only time my eye twitches. You know, I've had. Here's the thing, I my. I'm very, very strict about my time. I host a free group coaching call once a month. I used to do it every single Friday, but I was giving away too much and I wanted it to be a really sacred space for most of my CL clients. So every fourth Friday of the month, I actually have a free coaching call. It's a free group coaching call. It's at 11:00am Eastern Standard Time. It's Brave Biz Labs. It's in the links and all the things like you can go and you can show up and ask me any question you want. That move was one of the best moves I ever made because I got to be really, really strict about my time. Because here's the thing, I charge a lot. I charge a lot for people to work with me. And it would be disrespectful for the people who pay me a buttload of money to support them in their business to then go and give away what I give them to someone for free or for lunch. I mean, it would have to be like a really fancy lunch, like a three Michelin star restaurant, for it to be worth it. But also, here's the thing. When you charge your worth, you know, I used to get that question a lot, Justin. You know when someone like asks, can I take you to lunch and pick your brain? I used to get that question a lot. I stopped getting it when I charged more. Right. When you're not charging enough, you get a lot of the freebie chasers. You get a lot of people who are just like, oh, awesome. They're, they're not that expensive. So it's not a big deal if I charge a lot or if I ask for them to give free money to me or free advice. Hi, Sarah. Welcome. Yes, Amen. Exactly. Yeah. So charge. Charge more. Raise your rates. Okay? You are worth it. The service that you provide is worth it. The transformation that you offer your clients is what they're paying for, and that sure as hell is worth it. Okay? So that's number one. When you charge more money, you make more money. Major benefit. Me too. Scarcity breeds value. Exactly. Exactly. The second benefit to raising your rate. So here's what happens. So like, say you have 10 clients and you decide, okay, I'm going to be doubling my rates going forward. And you go to your 10 clients and you say, hey, listen, I'm doubling my rates. You know, you know the value that I bring. And I've realized that I've been massively, massively undercharging. Some of you have even been telling me that I've been undercharging. Right? So going forward, this is going to be my rate. Does that work for you? Typically, your clients will stay with you. Okay? They love working with you. There's a reason they work with you. I've actually insisted that some people charge me more for what they were providing for me because I felt like this exchange was uneven. Okay. You will be shocked. The clients who will be like, yeah, duh, of course you need to be raising your rates. Right. But let's just assume you lose 50% of them. Okay? So maybe you were charging $1,000 per person per month, and you're raising it to $2,000 per person per month. Okay. With 10 clients at $1,000 a month, you're making $10,000 a month. Now, if five of those go away and. But you still have five, and they've all agreed to pay $2,000 a month, what has happened here? Nothing has changed about your income. You're making the exact same amount as you were before, working half the time, working with half the amount of clients. You now have the availability and the capacity to take on five more clients or less. You know, it really is up to you if you want to make sure that you're not working too much, like you actually want to be able to enjoy your life. Yeah. Take on two more clients, make $14,000 a month. Okay. But this is what happens when you raise your rates. You make this possible for yourself. And, I mean, that's not bad, making $10,000 a month with five clients. Right. So I know it's scary to raise your rates, and we worry that, you know, if I raise my rates, I'm going to lose clients. But is losing clients necessarily a bad thing? Right. I also want to remind you, you are the business owner here. Right. You make the rules with this. If you really love working with a client and they can't afford to pay your new rate, you get to say, hey, listen, I love working with you. I don't want to stop working with you. I know you can't afford my new rate. Is there somewhere we can meet in the middle that would honor, you know, the value I give and also be within your budget. Absolutely. Within your power to do that if you want to. This makes so much sense. I'm so glad. I'm so glad. Yes. And if you're just joining us, welcome. We're talking about raising your rates. This is one of the scariest things that people need to do in their businesses. You know, most of the time, when people start their business, they don't actually start with the math of it. And it's totally okay if you didn't start with the math with it. No one ever taught you how to start a business. No one ever taught you how to set your pricing. Okay. They don't teach us in high school or college. And I never learned this in any of my jobs. I had to figure this out on my own. So when you're figuring out how much you should be charging. I want you reverse engineering from how much money you want to make. Right? So if you want to make $240,000 a year, I'm just using that number because it's easy to divide by 12. That equals $20,000 a month. That tells you, depending on how many clients you want to have, how much you need to charge per client, and what kind of work you might need to be doing for them. Amanda, I always feel guilty charging people, even market rates. Okay? So, Amanda, every time I hear there guilt in charging people, I hear there is a relationship with money that needs some attention. Right? So what did money. My question for you, and you don't necessarily have to answer it in the comments because it is a personal question, my question for you is, what did money mean in your family system when you were growing up? Was it something that people use to control others? Was it something that you had to feel like super reliant on? Whatever. Because money is neutral. Money is absolutely neutral. You are not the Scrooge McDuck for asking people to pay market rates for working with you. Right? We have this. We have this mindset that, like, if we ask for more money, it makes us this evil greedy bastard who's like, out to get everyone and, like, really, really selfish. No, no. You can't actually be generous to your whole world with your spirit, with your money, with your time. Oh, my God. Desk. With your spirit, your money, your time. Unless you are taking care of yourself first. Okay, so if you feel guilty taking care of yourself first, who's going to take care of you, right? No one. No one has the responsibility of taking care of you and making sure you are happy and fulfilled and have everything taken care of except for you. Right. I want you to know that. So. Wow. Yeah. My mom used. Used it as control and my dad used it to buy my love. Yeah. Okay, cool. So let's look at that dynamic. Thank you so much for sharing that. That's really brave of you to share it here. So if your mom used it as control, so like, you probably, as a teenager, like, you probably felt really grudgingly about taking money. And I'm totally guessing here I can be wrong. I'm not like, insisting this is the truth, but this is how this can play out with some people. So if you have a parent who's really controlling with money and they use it to control your actions, like, accepting money feels like you are accepting their rules for how you have to behave. Right? And of course, as humans, like, we want agency, we want to have freedom, we want to have flexibility. Like, we don't want to have to adhere to someone else's rules. And of course, like, if your dad used it to buy your. Your love, you know, that happens in a lot of father child relationships, especially when you have parents who are like, boomers and older. You know, you didn't get your needs met, you didn't get your emotional needs met by your father. And instead of getting your needs met, you got stuff, you got money. Right. And that wasn't a substitute. Right. So you weren't getting enough from him. And you are also having this grudging relationship with your mom. Of course you feel guilty with your relationship with, like, charging enough. Totally. Yeah. So, yeah, Amanda, like, there's so much work to do on your relationship with money and not just you. Like, I had to do my work too. This is one of the reasons I coach on money mindset with all of my clients. But yeah, let me see. Wow. Imagine getting some more therapy from a random YouTube live than your actual therapist. Oh, God. Oh, my God. Oh, I'm so happy to provide any insight. Obviously, this isn't therapy, but, Amanda, there's a great organization that I'm certified through, but they do these amazing, like, months long courses. It's called Trauma of money and trauma, like, most of us have childhood trauma. Let's be real. And you didn't have to be beat up as a child. Like, it literally was that, like, emotional self as a child didn't feel safe and didn't feel like it was getting its needs met, you know? And you know, that can create a whole lot of stories. It might be something cool for you to look at, but there are so many resources out there. If you want to connect up with me on all the socials, I'm more than happy to send you some resources. Anyway, great questions. And again, thank you so much for being so brave to share that. I know that's not easy, Andrea. Lots of things to unravel. Oh, my God. I know. When we start pulling at that money string, it's. It's a lot. It's a lot. So. So that was, number one, when you charge more money, you make more money. Number two, when you charge more money, you can actually make the same or more in less time. The third benefit is really, when you charge more money, you attract better clients. Right? And I want to use, like, the hotel motel kind of dynamic here. Okay? So I want you to imagine you own a Motel 6, right? And, you know, you're a Motel 6. You're on the side of the highway, you have pretty clean rooms. But like the people who come, you know, they can really only afford a Motel 6. Or like they're in a hurry. They're not really there for the experience, right? They're in, they're out. They may vary in their respect for your property. Like when they're in the parking lot, they're probably like spitting and doing stuff. Like, are they really throwing stuff in the garbage bin? Who knows? Are they leaving a mess? Maybe you know it. That's the type of clientele you're going to attract. And it's just, and it's not that they're evil people, it's just the nature of that business versus your other hotel. That's four stars, four diamonds. It's like $800 a night for people to stay there. It is an experience, right? The people who will show up there generally are very respectful of the space. They are also there to get the full experience. Whereas the Motel 6 guests, they do not give a fuck. They are there to sleep and to get a shower and to grab some coffee before they hit the road again on their road trip, to go wherever, right? When you are charging more money for a greater experience, you're. You're attracting people who are bought into your business, right? It's the difference between like signing up for like a $200 a month copywriting, like AI tool that's going to write up like 10 blogs for you and not really giving a fuck about it because you know it's 200 bucks a month. And like in the greater scheme of things, that's not that much money. And paying someone $4,000 a month to write beautiful SEO optimized copy in your voice for your blog on your website, right? You're going to respect the product so much more or so how you're going to respect the product will be very different. That's how you say that sentence. Let me see. Justin, do you think entrepreneurs would benefit from understanding the difference between a scarcity mindset and an abundance mindset? Like deep dive on it? Justin, that's a great question. Here's the thing about abundance and scarcity. No one connects with that language, right? I don't. When I like make a bunch of money, I don't think, wow, this is abundance, right? I think, wow, this is a lot of money. I love having money, right? When I'm broke. In contrast, I'm not thinking, oh my God, like I'm, this is scarcity. I'm thinking, I'm broke, right? So like you want it. Whenever you're designing something for entrepreneurs or for any niche, you want to use the language that they would use that actually hits home for them. I think examining scarcity and abundance mindset. Yeah, absolutely. It's beneficial to everyone and also like, it's a massive topic, massive topic. So get really specific about it for yourself. But yeah, it's, I think it's super beneficial. I think you should absolutely do that. So back to my point about the, the motel, Hotel, motel, Holiday Inn, whatever that song is. So when you charge more for your services, you're attracting those four star, four diamond clients, right? They are committed, they are so into what you do and they are going to honor your work. Like, so back to. Oh, that's right. So back to the SEO, like copywriting from the AI machine and from that, like really, really elite copywriter. You're not gonna fuck with the copywriter's copy, right? They poured their heart and soul into it. You paid a ton of money for it. It better be good, right? And also that quality, you're not gonna wanna mess with it versus the AI. Like you're gonna chop that, that baby up, you in sentences, change words, all this stuff, because you have to make it sound like you, it's a machine, right? Charge more, you will attract better clients, you will attract more committed clients. And that is number four, your clients who show up, they will make sure that they are getting what they need out of working with you. All right? When I raise my rates, my clients actually started getting better results, right? And that's not just an anomaly, right. When I raised my rates like the, the barrier to entry was a lot higher. So when people were thinking about working with me to grow their business or start a business, they really had to think, oh shit, this is an investment. This is not just like some money that like, yes, investment, like, and I can kind of throw it in. It's not a big deal if I don't make anything out of it. No, like this is a serious investment. I really need to think about if I'm going to step up to the plate, if I'm going to have, if this is enough skin in the game, if I'm actually going to show up and do the work, right? So when you charge more, you get people who really do some soul searching before they work with you because they want to make sure that they are in the right spot to pour everything they've got into getting whatever it is that they're working with you on, right? And this doesn't just Go for coaching. This goes for consulting. When a company brings you in as a consultant, they're going to listen to you and they are going to have their teams credit you a hell of a lot more. When you're charging more, right? If they're not, if they're not paying that much, like whatever you provide them, they might use, they might not. Who knows? If you're a lawyer, if you're a lawyer, if you're doing litigation for people, right? They are going to be far more respectful of your time because they know exactly how much it's worth, right? And they want to make sure that you have everything that you need to be successful in their case. All right? Now, number five is the result of that, right? When you have more committed clients who honor what you do, you're going to get better testimonials. You just are, right? Because the clients that you work with, they are going to get better results because they are more committed. And when clients are more committed and they get better results, what happens? They have an amazing success story to tell, right? And when people have an amazing success story with a business and it completely changes their life or it solves a problem that was really stressing them out, of course they want to talk about it. Which means that you can then turn around using those high ticket testimonials to attract more clients just like them. What a lot of new business owners tend to do is they think, hey, well, I am going to charge like baby prices in the beginning because I'm just starting out and I'm going to get some clients paying the baby prices and then I'm going to wait until they get amazing results and then I'm going to use their testimonials to attract higher paying clients. Here's the thing, like, just because, just as like your pricing is on two different tiers, like the $500 client versus the $50,000 client, they have different, like they have different problems and they have different severity of problems, right? So the Testimonial from the $500 client is going to be like, oh, it was a nice to have. She was very nice. She was supportive, you know, made me laugh. Blah, blah, blah, blah. That's not what the $50,000 client needs to hear. The $50,000 client needs to hear, oh my God. This was a transformational experience. So happy I did it. I went from being at this and this and this scenario to landing over here. And it was the best investment of my life. Keyword investment. Okay. It was an investment. Welcome. Hello. So you're gonna get better testimonials. You just are. When you raise your rates and you allow for your clients to be that much more invested and have that much more skin in the game when they're working with you, the testimonials you get get are absolutely incredible. The bonus here is that when you raise your rates, you're actually able to deliver a better service, right? Because you have more cash, right? When you make more, when you make more money, you can literally send all your clients Christmas presents, right? If you're barely paying the bills, you can't do that, right? If, say you are doing an event, if you charge a little bit more, you can elevate that experience so much more and it's a better experience for that, right? Versus if you're barely, you know, in the, in the black on it and you're stressed out about maybe going into debt, you're not going to be able to create an amazing experience. You know, back to that scenario where you raise your rates, you double your rates and you lose half your clients. You're making the same amount of money, but for those five clients that you have left over where you're still making the same amount of money, you have more time to, to surprise and delight, to deliver a higher level experience because you're not having to split your attention between 10 clients now for $10,000. You're splitting your attention between five clients for $10,000. Okay? That gives you breathing room, that gives you leverage, right? It's one of the best reasons to raise your rates because you want to be proud of what you provide, right? You know, the motel owner is going to have a different level of pride about their, their property than the four star resort owner, right? Like, the care that goes into design is going to be very different. The care that goes into the, the menu at the restaurants. Like there's not even a restaurant at Motel 6. Not even a thing. There's a vending machine. Like, how much care can you put into what goes in the vending machine? Not a lot, right? When you raise your rates, you get to like create the service that you want to provide, right. It becomes like a sole experience, a sole expression for you. And it's really a beautiful thing. If you struggle to raise your rates, if you know that you need to be charging more and you just can't do it or you're not really sure like how to make that jump. You need to book a call with me, okay? Flat out, you need to book a call with me. You cannot continue not charging your Worth. Okay. It's a rule that I just made up and I hope you follow it. If you want to book a call with me if you need to, there are links in my bios. You can also DM me and I will send you the link to book. But really, like, there's no excuse for you not to be making more money. I'm saying that right now. I have just told you you need to raise your rates and you need to raise your rates. That's it. Okay. Go get them, tiger. All right. I'm going to be jumping from here and going to TikTok where I'm going to be doing a question answering. I might also be pulling some tarot cards and having a little bit of Friday fun if you want to come join me. I have put my username in the post so you can come over and follow me there and I'll be going live, I think. Give me about five minutes to, like, switch over. I have to fill up my water. Anyway, thank you all for joining. I hope this was super useful for you. A little therapy session and all the stuff. To Justin and Amanda and Andrea, Celeste and to Sira and to Citizen J. Kane. I love that username. Anyway, thank you all for being here. I hope it was super useful and I will see you live next week. And hi, Noor, welcome. And just to remind you, I am going live every single day, Monday through Friday, until I've done that 30 lives. Today's day. Eight, I think maybe nine. I've lost track. Anyway, if there are any topics that you want me to go live on, I'm always happy to crowdsource ideas, so DM me with any questions or topics that you want me to do. Again, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach and host of the Weeniecast, my podcast. Thank you so much for being here and have a great Friday night, everyone. Bye.