Helping A Premium Ghostwriter Raise Her Prices

So I may have prematurely increased my prices, uh, like 6 months ago, and I'm trying to figure out, do I stick to my guns and try to make that happen, or do I backtrack and kind of lower the pricing again? Um, basically I took it up from €3.3K a month to €5K a month for LinkedIn ghostwriting. Uh, haven't gotten takers on the new pricing yet, but it's also limited data. Like, I presented the pricing to 7 people. It's— I haven't done like a huge amount of outreach the past several months. Um, and now I'm at a point where I'm like needing to really bring new people in to the business, new clients in. And I'm kind of getting cold feet on the pricing. So I just wanted to get your insights into, like, I know there's pros and cons to both. Like, if I keep trying to do the 5K, if someone actually says yes, that would be awesome. But I don't want to shoot myself in the foot, uh, when I have some, like, open slots, if that makes sense.

Yeah. Okay, so this is a great, a great question because pricing is one of those things that is extremely context dependent. So most people— like, here are the two extremes. The two extremes are people think if something's not working or people aren't saying yes, if I bring the price down, that increases the likelihood that they say yes. And the other extreme is if I raise my prices, then I decrease the likelihood that they say yes. And the reality is neither one is really true. The thing is you have to, A, figure out why aren't you closing the person. It usually is something to do with, it's something other than price. And second is understanding the context of making different pricing decisions. You actually said the answer, which is, you said, I don't know if this is the right decision because right now I really need to land some new clients. Okay, this context is really important when it comes to pricing. Here's, here's a very simple way for anyone here, if you're debating when you should raise your prices versus when you should leave them the same, here's the mental model you should go through. You, as a ghostwriter, have 5 client slots. Each slot is filled with a client. Client number 1, client number 2, client number 3, client number 4. Okay. Now, little question for everyone here. If this is, we'll say, the theoretical max of your ghostwriting business, you really only have two options. You either— your two options are either charge more per client or take on more clients. I have learned that the ideal, the sweet spot, is around 5 clients for one person. Okay, so this is the take on more clients, like, isn't really the lever that matters. What matters is you want to charge more per client. Now, here's a little question for the group. If this is what the ideal client roster looks like, but your roster looks like this, is now the right time to raise your prices? Yes or no? No. Okay. So why? Why is now not the right time? Because you haven't achieved the first milestone, which is ideal client roster. I just need to fill all 5 slots, right? Let's say you're like this, I have 3 clients. Is now the right time to raise your prices? Probably not. You still need to fill all 5 slots, right? So the first step is I need to get 5 clients paying me something, right? And ideally, everything we talk about inside PGA, that something is like, You should be charging at least 3 grand a month for something or for a project, 3 to 5 grand at least, right? If you accomplish this, you're in a great spot. If and when you do raise your prices, an interesting thought experiment is here. You said, I went from 3.3K euros a month to 5K euros a month, right? So here's what's interesting about like pricing jumps. I would recommend doing them in smaller increments. Again, can you? Yes. But I would recommend doing them in smaller increments. So I would go from like $3K a month to maybe $3,500 a month to maybe $4K a month to maybe $4,500 a month, right? And the reason that this is a little bit better is because A, it mitigates your risk. Like the person who says yes to $3K is also gonna say yes to $3,500. Like that person is the same person. But second of all, when you do too big of jumps, it actually makes it harder for you to learn whether or not, like, which problem to solve for, you know? Like, for example, if you had pitched these 7 people and you didn't pitch them on $3.3K but you pitched them on $3.5K and they all said no, Like, what's your takeaway from that? Well, it's probably not a budget problem. It's probably a lead quality problem, right? Because it's— that's literally the same thing. Like, a $200 a month difference is nothing, you know? And so that's— whenever I see stuff like that, I think it's always helpful to isolate the variables and go, okay, so how do I make my jumps smaller so that when I cross the next threshold, I can feel what's happening and know that there's a reason for it. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it's not what I wanted to hear, but that's, uh, that's, that's fair. So are you saying— well, because I had already made the decision like months ago, like, I'm just gonna do this, I'm gonna try to, try to make it work. So are you saying that like even though I already went through this process and or not this process, but I already said, oh, okay, I'm just gonna try this. I've already been pitching the $5K, that it was too early, and just kind of accept that, own up to it, and go back to this is what I'm already charging. Let's just say that price to new clients.

Well, I think, I think the important question is like, oh, own up to it to who? You know, like, yeah, you're testing different pricing, but like Who cares? You told 7 people this is what I charge and then you're like, yeah, you know what, maybe that's not the price point I should use right now. And then what, you tell another people or another 7 people, you know, like $1,000 less than that? Like, that's not like— this is just business 101. It's like you're just always testing things, you're always trying things, you know?

Yeah. So I have a call tomorrow, and I have a call Wednesday. So would it make sense to do like 3,500, like as a nice round number that's much closer to what I'm already doing?

Yeah, I mean, the answer is always just try things, you know, like, first, I do think that pitching 7 people is— it's not a ton of volume, it is something. You know, I like to think in round numbers, like go pitch 10 people and then how many of those 10 did you convert? You know, if you're just a one-person business and you're converting 1 out of every 10 people, that's still a great business. You know what I mean? So 7, I think you have to internalize like that is both not a lot of volume and even with not a lot of volume, you can start to glean conclusions. So that's okay. The other thing to reinforce, so two little, two scenarios here that I wanna point out to everyone, okay? So first is, scenario one is you pitch a higher price and the person says no. And then second is you have low-paying clients on your roster How do you get them up in price? Okay, so these, these are two different things to solve for, and I saw someone ask a question about it in the chat, which is why I'm pointing it out. So first of all, the thing you have to remember is it honestly doesn't really matter what price you pitch anyone at. Because one conversation isn't the end, it's the beginning. And so you always have the option. You always have the option of going, I pitched this person whatever price, $3,500, $5K, doesn't matter. I pitched this person $5K. They said no. You always have the option of either following up forever, and you don't know, they might say yes a month from now, they might say yes 3 months from now, they might say yes a year from now at the original price that you pitched them. So, A, you have to extend the time horizon. Just because someone says no on the call or the week after a call doesn't necessarily mean that that's a no forever. But second, is in your back pocket. You always have the option of going back to them and saying, hey, I thought about it. I really feel like this could be impactful for your business. I would be happy to do this at a discount for you in exchange for a testimonial or a referral. So even if you pitch— let's take the iPad for a little test drive here— even if you pitch someone at $5K, right, you can always discount it back to your original price, which is $3.3K, right? You can always say, I thought about it, I really want to help you, I'm happy to do it for this amount. But weirdly, this actually works to your benefit because they've already been price anchored to here, right? So like, that's, that's why playing with pricing is not It's, it's not a one-way door. It's like, yeah, you can walk through it and then someone says no, and you can always turn right back around and go, I thought about it, I still want to help you, and I can do it for this price instead.

Yeah, so it's like I know my own floor. It's like I can't go lower than, you know, the 3.3 or whatever it is.

But yeah, you're not gonna be like, I'll do this for you for $75, you know. But you can meet them in the middle if you really want to. And honestly, I If you go back to what are you solving for, that's probably the right decision if you only have 2 clients. If you only have 2 clients, for everyone here, it's like you only have so many problems. It's like problem 1, get a client. Problem 2, fill up all 5 slots on your roster. Problem 3, make each client worth more. That's it, you know? And so then going back to, I saw this question in the chat of, if you have a low-paying client on your roster, what do you do? Well, let's go back to our decision matrix, right? If you have client 1 that is paying full price and client 2 is paying full price and client 3 is paying you $1,000 a month because they were your first client, but you don't have clients 4 and 5, which thing do you solve for? Drop in the chat. Everyone, what do you think the next best decision is? Do you go fill the remaining slots on your roster or do you try to get client 3 to pay you more? You go fill the slots, right? And then when you have all 5 slots, you're like, okay, I have client 4 now and I have client 5. Well, now there's only 2 ways to make your business more profitable because you either You either take on more clients, which is probably going to push you into burnout, or you need to maximize each one of these slots. So if everyone's paying full price except for that one person that you signed at the very beginning, now what's your next move? Your next move is you go to this person, you go, hey, I just want to give you a heads up, my business has grown a lot. I've decided— you give them some future date— I've decided 60 days from now 90 days from now that I will need to put you on our new pricing tier, one of two things happen. They either ascend and they pay you that, or they leave. And both of those are good outcomes because either they're paying you more, which maximizes the slot of that client, or they leave, which opens up the slot for another more profitable client. So all of this stuff is just like— there's only so many moves on the chessboard, you know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, does that make sense?

Yes, it does. So the main priority is just adding clients, and it's, it's interesting because you're saying like basically the, the actual price that I'm pitching is not as important as filling the slot for right now.

Yes.

All right.

Now, if you had, if you had 5 clients and you were like, cool, I'm working like crazy, but all these clients are only paying me $1,000 a month, but I have 5 clients, what do I do? I would say, well, you've maximized the slots. Now we have to go make each client worth more, you know, but, but you're not there. So you need to fill the slots first and then go, all right, so how do I notch my pricing up?

Yeah, okay.

Makes sense?

Yeah, thanks.

Yeah, good question. Thanks for asking it.

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