10 Reasons to Set Your Price Sustainably
Why it is Kinder to You, AND Your Clients
Setting up and periodically re-evaluating your pricing for sustainability is a kindness to you and to your clients. Here’s why.
1. As a human being you need quality food, a safe comfortable home, health care, clothing and a few things that give you and your family joy.
2. If you charge too low, you’ll get resentful.
3. If you charge too low, the sensitive, kind people you attract as clients — your ideal kindred who truly value your service — can start to feel consciously or unconsciously uncomfortable because they’ll wonder if you’re getting ‘enough’ in the exchange. This makes for all sorts of weird energy in the dynamic. (True Story: i’ve explicitly requested a few of my most excellent practitioners over the years — from acupuncturists to workshop facilitators to voice coaches — to charge me more.)
4. If you charge too high, you’ll have to sell like crazy to convince people to buy and that’s exhausting for you, and your prospective clients. Worse, when you have to ‘convince,’ you begin your helping relationship with an icky dynamic. The goal is actually not to have to ‘sell’, because you have systems in place, and your work and your offers speak for themselves.
5. ‘Charging what you’re worth’ is an invitation to play self-esteem games with yourself and everyone else. Your personal ‘worth’ has nothing to do with it. Price sustainably, instead.
6. ‘Charging market value’ might work for some products, but services are different. Don’t compare yourself to another practitioner whose education, experiences, services, results or family needs might be slightly different than yours.
7. It’s likely, if you’re reading this, that you are in some sort of helping role. The world needs more helpers, almost always. If you don’t set up your business sustainably in all ways — including pricing — you won’t last, and that is a loss for everyone. I get annoyed and sad when I: find a service I value, use it, support it, and tell all my friends about it--only for it to disappear within a couple of years.
8. Even if some of your prices are set a little ‘higher,’ you’ll still get clients as long as you a) deliver the result that solves a real problem for people; and b) have some services priced lower for those who can’t afford the more comprehensive service, that requires more of your time to provide. It’s all about consistently providing excellent value for whatever service you provide, at whatever price point.
9. ‘Sustainably’ does not mean that unicorn, ‘reach 6 figures by X date’ or any other number someone else tells you. It does not buy into the pervasive greed of the market. It means pricing so that you can have ‘enough.’
10. Pricing Sustainably is one element of an overall business plan that takes your dream job from the realm of vision and possibility into grounded reality.
And Bonus #11 for Dreamers like me who also dig Master Numbers
Imagine an online marketplace that is like a village farmer’s market: you know the other vendors and customers, they respect you, you respect them. You value what each other has to offer. You are accountable to each other because you all must live and work together. Pricing sustainably is part of creating a positive space in the new online market available to micro entrepreneurs.
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(Which we feel is solid value for our clients, and priced sustainably : )