Pleasurable Money Podcast Transcription

36 | “Raise Your Rates” is Bad Advice

PODCAST INTRO:

This is the Pleasurable Money Podcast. Hi, I'm Meaghan and I'm the divine alien driving this here spaceship. I'm a pleasurable money coach with over a decade of experience in finance. During that time, I've learned that a mix of systems and spirituality makes a perfect blend. I have helped hundreds of spiritual business owners heal their relationship with money, and I'm here to teach you how to become money's ride or die.

Stop treating money like a booty call using the help of tools like breathwork and pleasure, which will be featured on this podcast and learn from me and other experts about how to own your wealth. Together, we will break down what it looks like to be in relationship with money and to be in full embodiment with your pleasure.

Episode 36 Begins:

Welcome back to the Pleasurable Money Podcast. I'm your host, Meaghan, and I'm so happy to have you here. Today, I wanted to talk about why the advice "just raise your rates" is really bad advice. I have told people to raise their rates, but as a money coach, I look at the holistic picture. I look at why you need to raise your rates in the first place, what your goal is with your current rates, and I have a list of questions here that we're going to get to at the end that you can ask yourself so that you always know when it's time to raise your rates.

I wanna preface this by saying sometimes it is the right time to raise your rates. Sometimes that's exactly the advice you need to hear and sometimes you are holding yourself back from blossoming into your full potential by not raising your rates. Now, we'll get to this when we talk about all of the questions that I have for you to ask yourself, but there are many reasons why we may choose to raise our rates and why we may why we may hold off on raising our rates.

It's, it's, there's so much more than just "you're charging too little. You need to raise your rates". And people that just say things like that on TikTok and the internet in general really grind my gears because they don't take the time to consider a person's inner dialogue or the journey they may be on. And it also vilifies wanting to help people and doing things for free.

So that's what I really wanted to start out this podcast by saying, is that free, is not a bad word. It's not a dirty word. And I do things for free all the time. I coach for free, I offer free, strategy calls. I offer free bookkeeping sometimes for people that I wanna help. I do things for free all the time.

It's part of my ethos to want to give back to my community, because I believe that everyone should have access to money coaching and financial education. Because that is important to a thriving and, forward motion community and society. Everyone deserves to have financial education, which is part of the reason why I do this podcast, which is part of the reason why I post on social media, all of my tips, tricks, and ideas. And it's part of the reason why I actually share some of my coaching sessions on this podcast so that you can kind of learn how to coach yourself. If you can't, if it's not in your wheelhouse, right now to afford to hire me as your coach.

I am accepting new private clients. I have just extended my, uh, private coaching program from three to four months, which I am very excited about. It was long overdue. I really felt like the Sacred Money Method needed some expansiveness. Some time to really integrate. Some space for custom meditations and money rituals in between all of the curriculum that I have set up inside of the Sacred Money Method.

So, doing things for free is a huge part of my ethos and most of my community begs me, ask me, I get these questions all the time. "How do I, how do I bake in my desire to help people into my business while also taking care of me and making sure that I make money on the things that I work hard for?"

And part of the part of my advice is to find something that really lights you up and do that. So, I do things for free, and I also have a sliding scale available for my private coaching. For the Sacred Money Method, I have three payment options depending on what your financial situation is. If you have manageable debt, if you have trouble meeting basic needs, there's a spot, there's a price level for everyone.

And that's also where having different price points for your different packages or your different offers comes in. So, say you have a $5 freebie, I'm sorry, a $5 PDF. It's not free if it's $5. A $5 PDF. And then you have a group coaching program. That's mid-tier level, maybe a couple hundred bucks to close to a thousand dollars to join a group coaching program. And then you have your private coaching program, which is usually higher ticket. We get to charge more for more access to us. For more one-on-one access, more tailored experience. That's what people pay for is to get tailored custom advice from us as coaches.

The advice "raise your rates" also kind of gaslights your inner dialogue. All of that, all of the stories that your subconscious is telling you when you're like, okay, I need, I sh I should raise my rates because this random person on TikTok told me I needed to raise my rates. And then all of those stories come flooding into your subconscious and you end up just shoving them down or shoving them aside, feeling super anxious, raising your rates anyway, and then not feeling good about it for a very long time.

Imposter syndrome kicks in. All of the, all of the doubts that you could ever possibly feel or think or believe come to the surface when you're trying to raise your rates. There's worthiness issues, there's rejection issues. All of it is very, sensitive, and serious and important. And the advice to just "raise your rates, you're charging too little how dare you do things that are, low, low cost?"

Like it's all gas lighting that internal dialogue. So, in my coaching container, we take into consideration all of the thoughts that come up. Maybe it's not a worthiness issue for you. Maybe you do believe you're worthy. of receiving more for your services, but maybe you believe your best friend is going to get jealous and want to leave you or start hating you. Maybe that's the piece for you. Or maybe you are worried about outshining, a sibling, or a parent, and maybe you feel like you'll get hate from family members. Maybe you feel scared of being seen on the internet. Maybe you are scared of becoming a capitalistic snob who's all about the money and not about serving people anymore. There's so many different variables that go into the stories that our subconscious tells us about raising our rates.

Okay. I think that's all I wanted to say about like, kind of the intro for this podcast. Here are the questions that I have prepared for you so that you can kind of run through from beginning to end whether or not it's the right time for you to raise your prices.

So, these questions are here for you. No right or good, no bad or wrong. These are all just data points. If you feel like you should have done something differently, then we always have next time to get to practice and change our behavior.

The first question is what was the first number that came into your mind when you decided on a price?

So, let's set the scene here. You are a brand-new entrepreneur, or maybe you just have a brand-new offer. And you're thinking about the structure of the offer. You're thinking about how long it's going to be, what the little fun details are like how many calls, what they get access to, all of that stuff.

And you're like, okay, now I'm ready for the pricing aspect of the offer. And a number comes into your mind and all of a sudden, all of these thoughts start flooding your mind. Okay. So, what was that first number? What were the stories that immediately flooded in from your subconscious? And did you adjust your price after you heard those stories. Now remember, no right or wrong answers here.

So, if you did adjust your price, totally okay. We're going with that okay. And if you did not adjust your price, what story out of all the stories that came up in your subconscious stood out to you the most that made you stick with the price that you, the first price that came to your mind? And if you did adjust your price, which of those stories stuck out to you the most, that scared you the most, that made you lower your price.

Now we're going to look at, do I have any evidence that proves those stories are untrue. So, let's take the example of no one's ever going to pay me this price. Who the fuck do I think I am? You're off your rocker. Do you have any evidence from previous clients from friends, you know, entrepreneurs, you follow on social media that tells you that people will pay that price? Start to collect that evidence and use it to build a new belief for your subconscious. Because a lot of time, the subconscious belief that "who are we to charge this price, nobody's going to pay us to coach us" or whatever service you provide for this price comes from yes self-confidence but also gathered evidence that we've seen over the years.

Most likely you saw someone on the internet get canceled for their pricing. Maybe you have your own beliefs about people who charge a certain rate. What we're doing here is just trying to gather evidence that people who charge more are not always ostracized or hated and building a new belief.

And then after we take our external validation, build it into our subconscious, we wanna look at our internal validation. So, if you have been serving at the same price for a while and you felt unsupported or unfulfilled, then it may be timed to raise your prices. So, the last question I'm going to give you is "have I felt unsupported or unfulfilled by the price that I have been charging?"

That's all the validation that we need internally to raise our prices. If we are unfulfilled and unsupported by the money that our business is making, it's unsustainable. It's never going to be that coexistence, that co-creation that we get to have with a business that is creating enough income for your lifestyle

To recap the questions,

"What was the first number that came into my mind?

"What stories immediately flooded in from my subconscious?" Make a list. All the beliefs that came in when you said this price.

"Did I adjust my price after I heard those stories?" Simple yes or no.

"Do I have any evidence that proves those stories are untrue?" Maybe you've gotten previous clients to actually pay that price and you're just kind of arguing with yourself and telling yourself that nobody else will pay this price.

And lastly, "Have I felt unsupported or unfulfilled by my previous price?"

I'd love to know how you felt about this episode. Let me know any of the answers to these questions. Feel free to send me a voice memo through Anchor so that I can hear your beautiful voices. Send me a voice memo through Instagram. And I'll just tell you quick quickly about my three offerings, right now.

I have the Ritual Room, which is $5.55 cents a month, which is just access to my inner thoughts, my inner dialogue, spicy podcast episodes, stories, poetry, fun things that include very little promotion from me. It's all just why I do what I do, my journey with business, and some fun, spicy podcast episodes.

Okay. That's $5.55 cents a month. That's my lowest tier offer. Then I have the Drip Money Membership, which is a group coaching membership, where we focus on ritual and pleasure and moon ceremonies and, leaning on others who are in the same boat as we are. And that is $150 a month. And you can find all these links anywhere.

Literally anywhere, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, on my website. And then my highest tier offer is my four-month private coaching program, which is $6,500, full pay. Or like I mentioned at the top, I do have a sliding scale available. Which all of that information, all the pricing information for all of my offers is always on full display.

You never have to hop on a call with me first to understand my pricing. So always check out my website. If you have questions about pricing... I'm someone who's like, who loves to be fully empowered in price and not have to like hop on a call with somebody to figure out if their coaching is in my wheelhouse.

So that's for you. That is for me to empower you, to make these decisions. I love you so much. See you next time. Bye.

PODCAST OUTRO:

You've been listening to the Pleasurable Money podcast. If you want to attract more money into your life, subscribe to Pleasurable Money wherever you listen. And if you learned something today, DM this episode to a friend. Reviews help this podcast reach the rest of the world, so if you leave a five-star review on iTunes, it could be featured in a future episode.

Love you so much. Bye.