Hey lovely. It's Denise here, Denise Duffield-Thomas if you don't know me. Today, we're talking about pricing, one of my favorite things to talk about and such a big pain point for so many entrepreneurs. If you need some help after this episode, don't forget to download your free pricing ebook. Just go to denisedt.com/pricing, and we've got heaps of stuff, heaps of resources for you so it does not have to be scary at all. Today, it's five signs to increase your prices even if you feel really scared about it. It's normal to feel scared. Pricing is a weird thing. Right? We always think that everyone else has got the perfect price, but for some reason, we don't, and the truth is everyone's just making it up. They really are. You don't need my permission to increase your prices. You literally can do it anytime you like. But if you're feeling that urge, you're feeling the nudge, you're feeling scared, you're feeling resistant about it, well, after today's episode, you'll feel really great.
So, sign number one is you're getting a lot of business and you're getting really booked out. Now, that doesn't mean that you have a ton of clients. It just means that you're feeling out of balance and you are feeling like it's not win-win. The amount of work that you're doing isn't making sense for what you're getting paid. So, your booked out might be tons and tons of clients. Your booked out might be only a handful of clients. But if you're not feeling like you're earning enough for the amount that you're working, then that is all the justification that you need to increase your prices because if it doesn't feel good, then that's when people quit, they get burnt out, they get resentful, and sometimes that's when they sabotage their business is because they kind of break it because they're like, "Oh, I can't increase my prices so I'll just break it."
So, once you're feeling that, "Ugh, I'm feeling a bit busy," sometimes increasing your prices just recalibrates that, especially if you know that you have a lot of demand for what you do, then you can increase your prices, and every time I do that, I think, "Oh no, one's going to book with me again." But the thing is if you're already burned out and you're already really busy, even if you lose clients, you'll still be working less and probably earning the same, if not more. When you're just feeling it energetically, that's totally okay for you to increase your prices.
Sign number two is when people start to talk about you as being cheap, or almost you feel like people are talking about your prices in a way that feels kind of exploitative of like, "Oh yeah, go to them, they won't charge you lots of money, or they'll do it all for you," or if you're getting this reputation for being someone who really overdelivers because you don't have boundaries or you don't price well, then that's a problem. No one should ever be saying, "Go to them because they're cheap." We don't really want that reputation as someone who doesn't value themselves very well. If people are telling you that to your face, like, "Oh, wow, I really thought you'd be more than that," it just shows that's a mismatch of expectations, of energy, of perception, of value. So, listen to the people saying that, if they're saying you're too cheap.
Now, that could also be coming from your mentors, from your colleagues, from your peers, and from your business friends. Now, of course, I always think your results and your clients probably know better, but if your best friend's like, "Ah babe, you're too cheap, look at this work that you're doing," listen to that. See that other people have got a different perception than you do about your value. I know when I see someone's really cheap or something is too cheap, I do feel suspicious sometimes, and I think, "Why? What's wrong with that?" And so, if you're saying in your mind, "Oh, people only buy on price," it's not true. Some people buy on price, but not everyone does, and I can tell you from my point of view as someone I have money to spend, often I don't take the cheapest option. I usually take the most expensive option because I think, "Oh, that must be the best," or it's the quickest or it's something like that.
So, remember so much about pricing is perception, and you can definitely show yourself as being too cheap. I remember doing it. Oh my god, it was so embarrassing. I said something on a stage or a call. I was like, "Oh yeah," and I named the person I thought was too cheap, and then everyone went and told them and said, "Denise said you're too cheap." And I was like, "Ah, that's so embarrassing." But they were. I really thought that they would be way, way, way more expensive, and so, I was like, "Oh, okay," and it didn't make me go, "Oh, I'm getting a bargain." It made me kind of go, "Oh, why is it so cheap?" So, remember, pricing is perception.
Sometimes pricing, the way you price is in alignment with your brand. Are you showcasing your value as something that is premium or is it something that's everyone can have? And there's no right or wrong around that. It's just that sometimes if you are doing cheaper kind of products, you need a lot more people to hit your business goals. So, it's really hard to overdeliver and be the cheapest person in your industry. It's a recipe for burnout. So, listen if people are telling you, if you're hearing that again and again, that your prices are too cheap, listen to that and give yourself permission to increase them.
Okay, number three, and this is actually probably one of the biggest signs to increase your prices. If you're attracting clients who are painful, pain in the butt, demanding, et cetera, okay, because this can happen at any price point. You can have great clients at any price point. You can have horrible clients at any price point. What this is telling you though is that there is an energetic mismatch at the moment that you are feeling maybe like it's not enough, you've got some issues around maybe your self-worth, and so, then sometimes you can be an energetic match to people who also won't be happy with you, and it will never be enough, and I've found that when you compromise on price and say, "Oh, okay, I'll do this," you often pay for it because sometimes they can be the worst clients.
And again, I'm not saying only people who pay a lot of money are good. It's literally at every price point. It just means it's a mismatch of energy, and also sometimes your resentment of it perceives people to be annoying, right? You just go, "Oh God, they don't even appreciate it," or they're wanting all this stuff and they're not... So, if you've got resentment around it that everyone seems like a pain in the butt client. Does that make sense? It totally seems like it.
So it's just such a big sign. Sometimes you increase your prices and the pain in the butt clients go away. But it's not, again, it's not because of the price. It's because of the energy that you're putting out, that you feel worthy, that you value what you do, that you're working on your boundaries, that you're allowing yourself to receive, and that can sometimes just send those painful clients away, and the annoying thing is that sometimes, again, when you're attracting those clients, you're like, "I'm delivering so much and they're not even happy," and it's so annoying, isn't it? So, also saying no to things like discounts or saying no to people who are trying to overstep your boundaries at the start, that's often just such a red flags that your prices are just not enough to make that worthwhile, and it's like, see you later.
Again, would you rather have a business where you're just resentful and hating everything, or do you want to risk that some people won't continue to work with you, but you'll actually enjoy what you do? So, there's no risk really sometimes in increasing your prices because if you hate it anyway and you're pissed off and you're resentful of your clients, you may as well increase your prices, and at least you'll actually make money out of it.
So, they were the first three signs that you should increase your prices now. So, one, if you're getting booked out, or if you've got a waitlist, or if you're just getting a lot of people asking to work with you because you're probably too cheap, and that, that's not for everyone. Sometimes remember you don't have to have tons and tons of clients to feel that. It's feeling that you're feeling like it's not worth it. It's not worth it, and that's totally fine for the amount of work you're doing. You could have one client and feel like that.
Sign number two was that people tell you you're too cheap, whether that's clients or mentors or friends. If people are saying, "Go work with them because they're so cheap," then that is just a really big sign to increase, and then the sign number three was painful clients. Not because of the price, as I said. It's because of the mismatch of energy that you're putting out.
Okay. I've got another two signs as well. I've also got a ton of stuff for you, [email protected]/pricing, including an ebook where I put all this stuff together for you and some scripts too. So, go and download that. It's totally free, but I will be right back after this break with another two signs on why should increase your prices. Right. See you soon. Bye.
Speaker 2: I feel like I'm the last person in the world to discover Denise Duffield-Thomas, and I'm so glad I finally have. I saw her from a distance at the Sister Code lunch for our mutual friend, Mel Houston who put it on in Merewether recently, and since then I went to Uluru with my pat, Tina Tower, and her Empire Builder, and all of the ladies there that I was sitting at this table with had done Money Bootcamp, and they were talking about Denise Duffield-Thomas. They were huge fans, and I can't believe I had never heard of Denise before. I feel like I'm seriously the last person in the world.
Anyway, I bought the book, Chill and Prosper, and it was like written for me, and it's probably come at the best time in my life, and maybe Denise has come into my life now for a reason. When I read the book, so many things stood out for me, particularly the part about the golden goose laying the golden eggs. That's totally me, and already we've now hired a nanny/housekeeper to come in the mornings to help with our two toddler boys who are two and three so I can get into the office at a nice time and get those creative juices flowing. I'm a course creator as well, and it's just so relevant to me, and I'm really, really glad to have had you come into my world, Denise. I think you're fabulous.
Denise Duffield...: Okay, welcome back. So, hopefully you're feeling excited about increasing your prices, but chances are, you're actually feeling trepidation which is really, really normal. There's a lot of fear that comes around setting prices, increasing prices, but sometimes it's just undeniable. You're feeling so burnt out or resentful and it just doesn't feel right anymore. And so, remember, you're allowed to increase your prices whenever you like. There aren't any rules. You can choose. You are the boss. And yes, some clients won't pay the new prices, but you will have other clients pay the new prices. So, that's cool.
Okay. So, sign number four is if you're creating amazing results for people, then you can charge more for that, and this isn't just for people who teach business or money because it doesn't matter if it's outside of that, but if you're someone who really has incredible results, you help people save time, save money, become more efficient, solve a problem, it's totally okay for you to charge really good money for that. If you help high achievers be even better performers, it's okay for you to charge money for that. It's okay for you to save people time and money so they can have more time with their kids or their family or on their health. If you're getting great results and you're doing it quickly, then you deserve to get paid for that in alignment with the value and results you get, otherwise you get resentful.
I've seen this. I have a lot of friends in the business coaching world and sometimes they undercharge and then I see them, they're going, "Oh man, I just help that person make six figures, seven figures, and they're not even grateful, or they don't even want to work with me anymore," and it's because they've been taken for granted. They're not valuing that work, but then they get resentful. They go, "Ah man, I'm helping all these people," but you have to charge appropriately for that.
So, if you're getting quicker, better, faster results, charge appropriately. If you are getting better at what you do, it's okay to increase your prices. That's totally fine. Oh god, I love paying for people who can get me quick results. I don't want to do it over six weeks. Can you give me the two-hour version? Can you just hook it into an IV and put it into my arm like a vitamin infusion? That's what I do, right, by the way, because I suck at taking vitamins. So, once a month, I go get a vitamin infusion, and it's so much more than vitamins, right, but the result for me is time. So I will always pay for someone to do things quickly for personal results, for instant gratification. I paid someone recently to come and help me declutter my wardrobe. I can do it myself, but I needed someone to hold me accountable to get the result done, and that's what I was paying for.
So, if you know you're really good, or if you have to do some work around reminding yourself you're really good, then it's okay to increase your prices because as you get better, you'll help people get better too. If you're getting rave reviews or people are saying, "Oh, you're my big secret weapon," you're getting great results, you need to have win-win pricing around that that reflects that, otherwise you'll feel the imbalance. So, if you need help on that, it's like I serve, I deserve. I serve, I deserve.
Okay. Sign number four that you are ready to increase your prices is just that you want to. It's okay that your prices just don't feel right for you anymore. It's okay to feel like you've outgrown your pricing, that you just want to earn more because you feel like you're worthy of it, and for all of the other reasons we've talked about, about attracting different clients, or working with a different clientele, or getting great results for people, or just wanting to work less. It's totally okay to increase your prices just because you want to. Honestly, it really is, and they're never set in stone. It's not like you'll come up with a price and then that's it for the rest of your life. You have to constantly check in with yourself and say, "Does this feel good? Does this feel good?" And sometimes it did for a while. It did feel good, but then it doesn't anymore, and that's fine. This is an organic kind of thing.
I remember when I never used to charge for speaking gigs because I just felt like, oh I'm traveling anyway, whatever, it's fine, and then I would charge like a token amount. Even to friends, I'll charge friends to speak at their conferences because I'm an introvert. I'm like, "Lure me out of my house with money." But I was just like, it didn't feel good just to do it for free, even for my friends, and I remember a couple of times I spoke at friends' events, and then I was sitting there and I was going, "The caterers are getting paid. The florist is getting paid. Everyone here is getting paid, and all of these people paid to be here, and I'm not getting paid." And at some point, it's a choice, right? For some of my friends, fine, I'll do that. But it actually hurt.
I remember leaving an event and I felt, god, my back hurt, my shoulders hurt, and there was something there. I went, "I can't do this for free anymore because the energy exchange is off." And I was like, "I'm feeling the deficit of that. I'm having to wear that." And I could feel it in my body. I really could. Yeah, it just didn't feel good, and so, I was like, "I have to honor this feeling in my body that says, 'If you want me to speak at your event, you have to pay me to do it, even if we're friends.'" That was tricky. It was tricky, right? But I was just like, "I actually want to get paid to do this because my time is valuable. My energy is valuable. My face is valuable. My ideas and inspiration I'm giving to other people's audiences is valuable."
So, it's totally okay just to go, "Wow. It doesn't feel good in my body at this price. I need to increase it." And if you do anything, if you do artwork, if you're a yoga teacher, if you make websites, if you're a coach, if you get out of that interaction with a client and you feel imbalanced, if you feel resentful, if you feel yuck, it's okay to increase your prices because your energy is telling you something. You're having to deal with that deficit. It's being balanced somewhere, and unfortunately it's being balanced in your energy.
You also just might decide you've got really big goals and you go, "I don't want to work anymore, any harder. So, I'm going to increase my prices." And there's no right or wrong. There is a customer for every price point. It's totally okay for you to be cheap if you want to be cheap. It's totally okay for you to have mid-pricing if that's your audience, and it's totally okay and just as valid to want to be a premium service. It really is. It's okay for you to charge for fast turnaround. It's okay for you to charge for one-on-one work. It's okay for you to charge for extras. It's totally okay. It's totally okay to charge if there's scope creep and people want more. It's totally okay to charge upfront. It's okay just to want to earn more money.
I think we're just so entitled, sorry, entitled, we're so trained that if we care about something, we should do it for free. We should do it selflessly and that money somehow dirties relationships, and we've got to get out of that because money is power, and I want more power in the hands of people who care about the planet and who care about their clients. So, just because you're charging more doesn't mean you don't care. It doesn't mean that you're wrong. It doesn't mean you're a bitch. It doesn't mean that you don't care about the result.
Here's what it does do though. If you charge appropriately for what you do, it's an energy... I can't even say, conservation, that's what I'm trying to say, energy conservation. So, if you're burning yourself out undercharging, overdelivering, working with everyone, being resentful, you are just going to have zero bandwidth, zero overflow. When you're charging appropriately for what you do, you have overflow. It could be that you have time to write a book to help heaps people, time to create a group program, time to create passive income, time to create a scholarship program, time to find other ways to give back in your community.
It doesn't always have to be that you serve anyone who wants to work with you on their terms. It always has to be on your terms so you can show up and help other people, and it doesn't matter what you do. Even if you have something where you're helping people with big problems, it's okay for you to charge appropriately to the people who can afford you, and it's a win-win for them, and then you can give from your overflow. Okay? So, there's no topic that you're not allowed to charge for.
But you will have some feelings about it, for sure, and that's absolutely something I can help you with. Money Bootcamp is great for that. It's my course and community on dealing with your inner money stuff, your inner money resistance. If you haven't joined us yet, you have to. I just think it's a must if you're in business and you're talking about money. All the details are at denisedt.com/bootcamp, and that's just a great resource if you know that you have money mindset issues around charging people, which we all do, but you totally serve and you totally deserve. All right, I have one more final thought for you right after this final break. Okay. See you in a sec.
Cam: Hi, I'm Cam. I'm a movement coach based in Bristol in the UK and globally online. My business is called Move with Cam. I discovered the work of Denise when I was halfway through my year of business recovery from a very tricky pandemic, two years of lockdown that affected my business and how I was working. I couldn't have found her work at a better time. I started with Get Rich, Lucky Bitch! which completely unblocked my way of thinking, and how I valued myself, and the work that I do, and what I should get from the work that I do, rather than just valuing the needs of my clients, and then Chill and Prosper which has really started to help me think more clearly about how I can run a business that I have always been afraid of expanding due to fear of exposure, fear of overwhelm, and overwork, and burnout which I was already experiencing by six months into the year I discovered.
So, really, I can't thank her enough for her work. It's personable. It's brilliant if you've got ADHD because she really understands some of the blockages that come with that, and she's just very much about finding your own way and being brave and going for it. So, I cannot recommend these books highly enough, Get Rich, Lucky Bitch!, Chill and Prosper, and the podcast, Chill and Prosper.
Denise Duffield...: Okay. It is safe for you to charge what you want. Stop thinking there's a critic-proof price. Stop thinking that there's a price that will be your forever-perfect price. It does not exist. So, it's safe for you to charge. It's safe for you to charge well, and you might need to write that down quite a few times. Literally, grab your journal and write it's safe for me to charge what I like. It's safe for me to be a premium service. It's safe for me to be too expensive for some people.
I know it's going to bring up stuff for you, but I'm here for you. It's really normal. I know you can do this. You deserve to have energetic win-win pricing. You really do because it's your time and you're ready for the next step, remember. Okay. Have fun increasing your prices, and actually if you need help, I've got that ultimate guide to pricing and all the details for that are at denisedt.com/pricing. There's scripts in there on how to increase your prices and make it your best month ever. All right, I'll see you next week on another episode of Chill and Prosper. Have a great week. Bye