How To Double Your Prices In 20 Minutes

Have you ever thought about doubling your price? What about tripling your price? Well, for most people, just doing that would have this pit in your stomach about how would this affect my business negatively? Would I still have clients? What would they think of me? Those fears are valid. Today's episode, we are going to dive into the psychology and how to overcome that so that you can get the value out of what you do and what you deserve. Welcome to this episode of Content Amplification Podcast.

I'm excited about this episode because we're covering a topic that I never actually spoke about over the 100+ episodes. And that's, that's pricing your products. We talk about how to market your products and your services. But today we have Wendy and Monica. They are money experts. And more specifically, they're experts in increasing the value of your business, your products, and ultimately yourself. So welcome to the show.

Thank you.

Very excited to be here again, Shaun.

So I'm going to say that I am guilty of this, undervaluing my products, my services. And I don't know if that's a mindset of growing up and just, you know, being in a small town or just like wanting to give give back. I don't know what it is but I tend not to price properly. So, let's just kind of start out with why is it important to properly value?

Well, there's a couple of things there, Shaun. I'm going to talk to you from the practical side of things in the sense of obviously, if you price your products appropriately, number one, the true value of what you do is out in the world. Two, there's sufficient margins to pay yourself appropriately. And so, in particularly if you are someone who's really focused on increasing impact in the world, well, really, the more profit margin you have, the greater your, your impact can be because you can afford to do more things for more people. And so, and also in terms of if you're building a business that you want to have valued and sold someday, obviously, the more appropriately priced your, your products are, the better price you're going to get at the end.

That makes complete sense. Monica, do you have anything you want to add to that, what Wendy said?

Yeah, so that's the practical part. That's where Wendy is the expert, like the go-to person, right? I've done some of her things and it's mind-blowing. But the other side of it is the one— the question that you asked: what is that? Is it mindset? Why can't I price myself properly? And we all know that there are so many people out there overpricing themselves, right? They have no idea, uh, how they are totally like exaggerating their own value. But the majority of especially small entrepreneurs, business owners that are really passionate about what they do, that have built a business from the bottom up really tend to undervalue because they're one, they're too close, right, to their own stuff. So we do tend to have our own pricing be kind of in a blind spot. So we don't really see what's going on. The other thing is that we have been raised with less than optimal view of money, success, pricing. We don't understand, right? We're not born entrepreneurs. This is something we learn. And most of us have parents that were, you know, living paycheck to paycheck, doing the hard work, being the salt of the earth and good people. And people like us, well, we don't have a lot of money and we tend to take on that programming on a subconscious level. So it's actually not even in your head. It's in your nervous system, and that's why you don't catch it, because it's not a cognitive thought that you can actually think critically about. It just happens by default, right? 95% of all of our decision-making every day happens on a subconscious level, even price setting.

I mean, that makes complete sense. And, you know, in my case, and just thinking about it, I don't think like my pricing has evolved with, you know, the world and inflation and all that kind of stuff that's going on. I'm still kind of thinking about when I first started my business like 20 years ago and kind of pricing around that. How do we kind of— and Wendy, I think this one might be for you— but how do we figure out where our pricing should be and how the actual market would actually tolerate that price? Like Monica said, a lot of people overprice. Price things. I mean, in the digital marketing space, you see people that have courses and they list out, you get this, this, and this, and it's a value of like $50,000. But you'll get it for $27, right? Like, where is that original value and that type of thing?

Well, that I think that goes down to even how our minds work and how people position things is to try and make us see the value in a different way. I like to look at 3 different things in particular from the business perspective. So, from your side, what is the contribution margin of the sales price. So if you are putting in X dollars of hours, you have subcontractors providing some services, etc., that gives you a certain baseline to say, okay, for me to deliver service A, this is how much it costs me. And so then when I charge them this, the difference is my margin, right? And that margin has to cover all your overhead, right? So for example, whether you service someone or not, you still have to pay for your Zoom account, you still have to pay for your internet services. So we still have to be able to contribute to that. I also like to look at capacity, like what, how much do you want to work and how much time does it take you to deliver that program? And then, how much of that margin do you need to live on? And finally, I like to look at joy as well because there's no sense in having a very high-performing product that sucks the very life out of your soul. It's not a very fun place to be. So, I look at that. But definitely, on the other side of it, we have to look at the market and what will the market bear. And that is almost like a return on the investment. If you can demonstrate, if you invest this much with me, here's what your return's going to be, then that's, I think, a very good way to actually demonstrate the value of your product from the client perspective.

And I think like, if you've got a product or service that is unique and a consumer doesn't have anything to anchor it to, like you're coming to market with something that's new, you really kind of have to go above and beyond to educate them about the value of it and why that price is what it is, I think.

Exactly.

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And then we have the, the other side of it, and that's our own personal resistance to actually raising the price. And that's some of the fun that we will have today, Shaun, if you are up for that.

I am up for it. And that was kind of my next question about why do we have this guilt and fear of raising prices?

Oh, we could— like, that would be an hour podcast. So let's not even go into that stuff. Let's just create a result. So Shaun, do you have a product or a service that you know, like, maybe have multiple, but like one that you know, okay, this is underpriced. I should raise my price on this one.

Yeah, absolutely. Let's look at one that most people would probably have some kind of understanding of what it would be. It would be website design. So, you know, that would be one that I know has been underpriced in my business.

Brilliant. Wendy, do you have one?

I have one in my head. Yes.

Brilliant. So both of you think of that one specific service and you know what you charge, right? So now, think about doubling the price. What happens? Like, what are the thoughts and what are the emotions coming up when you just think about that?

There is a pit in my stomach, Monica.

For me, I immediately thought, excuse me, if I'm doubling the price, I have to do double the amount of work to give them that value.

Yeah. And that, look, that used to be true back in the Big Depression when my grandfather was building roads. If he did double the work, he could get twice as much money. Right. However, Shaun, I want to challenge you. Is that true 2023?

I don't think so. I think I don't think I have to do twice as much work. I think I just have to give a better experience, maybe.

Maybe. Yeah. Or maybe even, like, explain the value better so that they understand the value that they get. Maybe just having the confidence to say the price out loud. Have you ever experienced a client saying, 'Whoa, that was way too cheap.' Yeah, it was phrased differently.

It was like, 'I was expecting more' is usually the phrase I get.

So those are indicators that we are possibly undervaluing ourselves.

Right.

So we have Shaun, you have the, 'Oh, twice as much money, I have to work twice as hard,' even though you intellectually know that is not true. That's the feeling that you have. And Wendy, the pit, like what happened in the pit of your stomach?

It's just turning around there. I worry that it would be too much. Yeah, that no, no, people won't pay that price.

So what will happen if it's too much? What is it like? You won't have any clients, they won't like you, people will get angry, people will go elsewhere.

They won't, they won't engage with me.

Okay, so it's like, it's this price, it's underpricing myself, or it's the highway.

There we go.

There we go. Okay. So let's do— and can you both feel like if you were to rate Shaun, if you were to rate your resistance, just feel the resistance 1 to 10. How big is the resistance right now? And Wendy, please do the same and give me a number.

For me, it's 5 right now. And that's, you know, ask me that 12 months prior, it would have been like a 9.

I think I'm at the 9 still, Shaun.

Really good.

And we love a good number. We love like a high number because that means we're actually getting triggered. So, uh, Shaun, what if I said double the price again?

Oh, now we're in— now we're into like $9.50, $10.

Brilliant! Yay! See how easy that was? Where do you feel that in your body?

Uh, in my stomach.

Like, it's like all the way down by the belly button or in your solar plexus?

Yeah, it's up a little higher.

Brilliant. Yeah. So feel into that 9 or 10. Okay, now we're having some fun.

Okay.

Okay. Let's see if we can shift this. We are going to do something that looks absolutely ridiculous, but it actually works. And it's called tapping. Have you ever heard about that?

No.

Yeah. So have you heard of acupuncture?

Yes.

So it's basically the same, but instead of doing it for your eyesight or your stomach, we do it for your emotions. And what it does is it lowers the amount of adrenaline and cortisol in your bloodstream, meaning it will take you out of the stress response, because this is what happens when you go into stress. Blood leaves the brain, goes into your arms and your feet to fight, flight, or freeze, right? So you're getting ready to run away or defend yourself, basically. Now you need blood in your arms and your feet, meaning it leaves your brain and you become kind of stupid. Shaun, I'm sorry to say so, but that's what happens.

I've been called worse, don't worry.

So when we get— if we can pull ourselves out of that reaction, we get access to our brain again. And having access to cognitive thinking while making business decisions like price setting is kind of helpful. Would you agree?

Absolutely.

That's where we want to be.

Is it upsetting the patterns from the past as well? Or just how does it affect that how Shaun and I were brought up?

Oh yeah. So there are like layers and layers and layers and layers, right? And anyone who's interested, come to the workshop that Wendy and I will be hosting, Unleash the Power of Outrageous Money Goals. We will, like, you will get to experience all so many layers of this. But right now, let's just do an experiment for fun and see if just getting both of you out of the stress response will change how you feel about the new price.

Okay.

Okay. Maybe it doesn't work. Maybe this is just mumbo jumbo. I don't know. Let's see.

The Mumbo Jumbo Podcast by Shaun Whynacht.

So here's what we're going to do. I'm going to go closer to the camera. So we are going to tap like index finger and your long— what's that called? Middle finger. Yeah. And just tap like where the eyebrows start. So not on your forehead, but where the eyebrows start. Either hand, either side. And then on the side of the eye, under the eye, under the iris as you look straight ahead, under the nose, in the crease of your chin, and where the collarbone meets the breastbone. And Shaun, if you don't get them all, that's okay. This is a very kind of forgiving tool, so it will work anyways. Okay? We don't need perfection for this to work, which is one of the things I love about it. So I am just going to do something we call tap and rant. I'm just going to voice all of the emotions that you had and you can voice them after me. So do what I do and say what I said. What I say. Okay. This woman is clearly crazy.

This woman is clearly crazy.

She's telling me that by doing this stupid stuff, she's telling me by doing this stupid stuff, I will be able to raise my prices.

I'll be able to raise my prices.

As if I haven't been trying for the longest time.

As if I haven't been trying for the longest time.

I know I'm undervaluing myself.

I know I'm undervaluing myself.

I know I should be charging more.

I know I should be charging more.

And Monica, you can't make me change my mind.

Monica, you can't make me change my mind.

Because I can feel it in the pit of my stomach.

because I can feel it in the Pit of my stomach.

I will not raise my prices.

I will not raise my prices.

Double my price point.

Double.

Double my price point.

Not happening.

Not happening.

I refuse.

I refuse.

I refuse.

I want people to like me.

I want people to like me.

And if I double my price point, ...and if I double my price point, they will go elsewhere. They will go elsewhere. And I will have to work so hard for more money.

And I'll have to work so hard for more money.

Twice as hard for twice the price. Twice as hard for twice the price. You can try to tell me otherwise. You can try to tell me otherwise. But I know more money equals more work.

I know more money equals more work.

And I'm sticking with that story.

I'm sticking with that story.

You cannot make me change my mind.

You cannot make me change my mind.

I refuse. I refuse. I want to be cheap. I want to be cheap. I want to work hard. I want to work hard. That's what good people do. That's what good people do. Great. Okay. Take a big deep breath and try to release some of that, what was going on in the stomach. So Wendy, think about doubling your price on that particular service. Feel the resistance, 1 to 10. How big is it now?

It's much lower.

Give me a number. I'll give you 5 now. From a 9 to a 5. Okay, Shaun.

Mm-hmm.

Feel. What's the number now? Is it the same?

No, it's definitely not the same. I'm probably down to like a 6.

Is that on the double or the quadruple? On the quadruple.

I mean, the doubling is like, like no resistance. Like, let's do it.

See? You see why I made you quadruple it? Yeah. Can you see like, that made no sense, like 3 minutes ago. And now you're like, of course.

Now I'm curious about this exercise because As we were tapping, we were saying the negative thoughts and we weren't telling ourselves the positive part of it. Why was that? That's what I'm curious about.

Yeah. Okay. I live in Sweden. Every spring, when the spring sun comes through my windows, right? All winter, I fooled myself into believing I lived in a clean house. And now I see all the coffee stains and it's like, "Oh." So, I sit down, I open all the windows and all the doors, and I sit down on the floor and I think happy thoughts. Of course I don't, Shaun. I have to scrub away the coffee stains. Right? That's right. Positive thinking? Won't do the trick. What we did now was the scrubbing. Oh, see, emotions are like people. They want to be seen, heard, and acknowledged. Do you have kids, Shaun?

Yep.

Yeah. So you know when they're in that age, right? That you— I don't know how old your kids are, but there's a stage where they just— you are their hero. And whatever happens, they go, Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad. And you're like, I can't deal with this now. And you try to ignore them. Does that work?

No, they keep going.

Negative emotions in the subconscious is just the same. This is why positivity, positive thinking, positive affirmation, right? Mental strength. There's so little for us. We need to deal with what is. We need to deal with the coffee stains, and we all have them, right? And, and I— there has been extensive research on this. We call it procrastination, self-sabotage, and holding back. Decades of research. We now know exactly what kind of people do those things. We can pinpoint them. There's actually a scientific name for them, Shaun. Do you know what that is? No idea. Human beings. We all do it. Even the guru that tells you stop procrastinating, right? Maybe he doesn't procrastinate around the things that you do. I promise you there are things in his life he is procrastinating about, and if he does not admit to that, he's lying. So we all do this, and as long as we keep like the lid on, we are creating a pressure cooker instead of actually dealing with what is and evolving and increasing our prices, increasing the value moving forward, evolving, as we should be doing as human beings, as entrepreneurs. We deserve better.

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When you look at that and, you know, you internally start to be comfortable with that new price, That confidence comes across when you start to talk about the price. And I think, you know, in your business, when you're not sold on the price, you're like, I'm doubling it, but I don't feel like I should have. And then a client says, well, how much is the program? You're like, well, because we— you start to validate the price before you even give the price versus, oh, it's $5,000.

Yeah. And it even comes out in the tone of your voice.

Absolutely. People can smell it. I'm going through a sales training program and they talk about alpha tonality in that. And it's, there's 3 phrases in there. You can either be the boss, beggar, or the buddy. And it's talking about how you inflect when you talk about the price and you want to, you want to be kind of down inflecting in there. And it's confidence in that price. And I had a personal experience actually yesterday with a price increase on one of my products. I did a quote and I originally put in the, the old price in the quote. And before I sent it, I'm like, no, you deserve better. And I put it up to the price, I sent it, and within 5 minutes the quote was signed and the project was started. And I was like, wow, because I did that and I was like, this actually works.

Yeah. So imagine what will happen now, right? You can actually, Shaun, you can do this podcast, you can play the replay again for each and every product that you want to increase your price on. And let me know how it goes.

Now, do you think people would have to do this exercise several times? Yes. Even if you've done it, you've got the confidence to now increase it, you put it on all your materials. But as you're approaching to start to promote it, you might have those feelings again, do the exercise again just to calm yourself?

Yeah. Did your children come to you and say, "Dad, dad, dad," just once?

No, they still do it.

Emotions can be persistent. And also, right, it can be like, okay, I'm good with that price point for this client. But then there's another client that you go, oh, but I know he's struggling and he's my friend and my brother. So you have all of these layers. So it's not a quick fix, but it's quicker and much better than not doing it. Right? So yes, you will have to do this probably multiple times, but it just takes a few minutes to do it. Right? For sure.

Now you guys are putting on an event called Outrageous Money Goals. Is that correct?

Yes, unleash the power of outrageous money goals. Wendy, say something wise.

Okay, wise. I think that there's so much how out there, like that's what I do is the how, but we have to unleash these emotions. We have to untether some of these things that could be holding us back. I know how to make sales calls. And if I don't do the deep work, like, or the little bit of those, those changes, sometimes that I procrastinate on that stuff. So it's like, how do I unleash those goals? But then I think also we were talking about how to make them, how do we quadruple them, how do we do whatever, right? Because we are naturally self-limiting because of what we think we know.

Yeah. And also we talked about like The reason why Wendy and I are doing this together is that there is so much talk about the, the selling and the marketing that we undervalue the importance of creating a perceived value in the business itself. If you want to sell it someday, you have to take a look at what you have. And now that gets personal, right? It's not fun if you have been undervaluing yourself as long as you had your business, and you've maybe had your business for 5 years, a decade, 2 decades, and you've constantly, like, overall you have done not the best job in pricing. There will be, like, your company will be undervalued. And that you have a life after work. After work, you have a life, like an everyday life, right? And then you have the retirement that is coming up. And we live, like, we don't stop working and then we die.

Hopefully not.

Hopefully something more. And we have to eat. We have to live, we will have bills even then. So the more you can increase the value of your company. So, so this all goes together. I need to value my services. I need to set my prices right. And then I need to make sure that that is seen in the value of the business so that I have that as an asset. So it's a whole thing. It's not just content and marketing and selling and social media, right? Those are very important.

Also very important.

But there are two pieces that are often just missed out on. And that's what Wendy and I are very passionate about.

Yeah, I feel like setting a bigger goal and then working to figure out how do we build the engine to get to that goal, right? So I think that's the combo. But we do have a trivia question for you, Shaun. Before, just to anchor some of this importance of planning for life after work. What is— what does the number 54,750 mean?

No idea.

It is the number of meals that a couple will eat in retirement if it lasts 25 years long. 54,750 meals. So then if we multiply that out and say each meal costs $10 on average, that means you need $547,500 just to eat in retirement.

Wow. So you cannot afford to undervalue your services nor your business. Yeah, let's change that.

So let's talk about the event. When is it and what are some of the things you will get out of, of leaving that event when you attend it?

Perfect. Well, it is on September 14th, so in a couple of weeks. It is, um, at, uh, 10 o'clock Eastern for the event. It will be online and virtual, and Monica and I will be live at that event. And Monica will take us through some really good exercises. So I think that it's going to be very, very cool to expand our minds even further. Like, if you thought your mind was expanded just with that little exercise that we just did now, like, multiply that by 10.

Yeah, for sure. And do we have a URL for this?

Yes, we do, Shaun. It's going to be blackstarwealth.com/outrageous.

Excellent. And we'll also put that in with the show notes as well. So I'm looking forward to this event. I think this is something that I think any entrepreneur struggles with this, right? Unless you're living this like crazy life where you think your stuff's worth a billion dollars. But I think most legitimate business owners who, who are having to price either products or services can benefit from this event.

It's an epidemic and we need to solve it. It's costing us way too much. We cannot afford not to take a look at these things.

Well, thank you so much. For sharing this. I mean, in over 100 and so episodes, I've never been asked to do an exercise on myself. The tapping thing was great. And if you're listening to the episode, not watching a video of it, I don't know where you're tapping. Hopefully you didn't take both hands off the wheel to tap, but if you did, you end up in the ditch.

We take no responsibility.

We're not liable for any cones or pedestrians you hit while listening to this episode. Thank you so much, Monica and Wendy. Thanks,