This Mind Reframe Helped me Charge Higher Prices

Do you feel guilty about charging higher for your services?

Even when you do charge high, do you sometimes feel as though what you’re doing isn’t ‘worth it?’

At the same time, do you KNOW that you need to increase your prices?

Don’t worry - I did too.

In fact, I would say I struggled with raising my prices DESPITE my years of experience, specialised expertise, and proven results.

And that’s because raising prices has more to do with your beliefs, than it is to do with whether the customer is willing to pay.

Let me address whether the customer is willing to pay first. In short, there will be many that are, and some that don’t. When I raised my prices from $80/60 mins session to $100/60 mins, I had 7 years coaching experience, 2 years physiotherapy experience, 7 years competitive weightlifting experience (I was #1 in my country for a period of time), AND I had a stable of weightlifters who demonstrated both technical AND competitive ability - I questioned whether my client base (and new customers) would be willing to pay.

Guess what?

Every single one applauded my price move and I lost ZERO clients.

Two days prior to announcing my price increase, I was constantly asking myself…

‘Is it worth it? Would people pay this?’ After the result, I realised that all this chatter came from my own insecurities and beliefs about money. The truth was - people were willing to pay. But I wouldn’t pay myself.

So often, our price raising objections are a reflection of whether we believe in the VALUE we provide to our clients/patients. And the reason we don’t believe in the value we provide is…

Because we haven’t SEEN the long term effects in front of our very eyes.

I suppose experience in the game has helped me understand this, but I’ve seen people I worked with for 12 weeks who went on to achieve all their health and fitness desires after 3-4 years (and will continue to for the rest of their lives).

And they thank me for laying the FOUNDATION of their success.

So let me pose a question to you…

What value do you provide as a health professional?

I’ll use physiotherapists as an example, but you can take the principle and do the same thing with your profession.

Some of the common responses I get are:

-Pain relief
-Manual therapy
-Exercise progressions
-Quicker recovery
-Education

And although these are all true - so many of these value pieces are derived from what you do during the session.

Not many of them are reverse engineered from where they end up.

In order to understand the value you’re providing, you have to see exactly where you’re getting them to.

And I promise it’ll all make sense by the end of this article.

If your patient has torn their ACL, this is where they end up with the proper rehab:

-Full return to doing what they LOVE
-No fear in what they choose to pursue in recreational or athletic endeavor
-No hesitation in social activities
-Education for knee rehab for the rest of their life
-A fully rehabilitated knee that won’t cause them problems

Now do you see what I’m getting at?

A lot of health professionals I’ve spoken to only think of value from the perspective of what they provide in the short term session.

But not enough thought is placed on the long term outcome. Patients don’t come to see you (whether they know it or not), because you have the best short term treatment. They come to see you because they want the long term outcome.

So when you are pricing your services, you need to keep the long term outcome in mind.

For example, when I decided to raise my performance consults from $200 to $300 for the hour, I did so because I knew that this would give competitors an EDGE for the REST of their lives.

$300 to learn a unique set of skills that are evergreen is, in my mind… outrageously cheap.

Heck, if I look at the competitive advantage that one would have over their opponents for a serious athletic career (say 10 years), that’s $30/year, or just shy of $3 a month.

And the return? It could be the difference between first and second place, qualification or non-qualification, a successful athletic career or an amateur one.

When I posed that question to myself, it was abundantly clear that I was UNDERCHARGING for the value it’s worth. So $300, when I think about it, is cheap.

But if I simply thought of it as a ‘1 hour’ chat, then $300 sounds outrageously stupid to me.

Let me use another example - but I’ll use a dietitian because I talk about physios and coaches too much.

When I was living in Thailand for a few months, I struggled to get all my protein requirements because Thailand is not a ‘meat heavy’ society. To make my protein targets, I would go to 7/11 and buy this protein shake (let’s call it XL). XL shakes tasted great, and had ‘no sugar’, which I actually didn’t care for, but it was the only protein shake being sold.

Anyway, I drank one and the next day - I had the runs.

It wasn’t food poisoning, but rather, just the runs. I didn’t feel sick, but my guts would go.

I didn’t think much of it. I just thought I was in Thailand and that’s what happens.

A few weeks later, I was needing my protein fix again - so I bought another XL shake.

Again - the next day, I had an appointment with the potty.

My hunch was that my guts weren’t tolerating something in the XL drink, but I had no way of knowing because I wasn’t trained in that area.

So I decided to consult my friend and nutritionist.

Within 3 seconds of my story, she asked me whether there was a certain chemical in the shake (I forgot which one), but it was an extract from alcohol they use to give the shake the sweet flavour, without using sugar.

Turns out, many people are actually allergic to this extract and they get the runs not long after they consume it.

Welp - that was me.

Now my question to you is - she spent 5s helping me understand my body and what to avoid for the remainder of my life.

In reality, it was a 5-6 worded short hand text she sent to me over Instagram.

Was this worth a standard $150 consult fee?

If you did ‘short-term value’ thinking, then 5 seconds for $150 sounds ludicrous.

But considering the information is useful for the entirety of my life…

$150 sounds pretty damn cheap.

And that’s why I challenge you all to think longer, further and DEEPER about the value you are all actually providing.

It’s not ‘just’ a 60 minute session of whatever you’re providing.

It’s not ‘just’ advice that you’re giving.

It’s not ‘just’ exercises that you’re prescribing.

You are giving them the tools to craft the future they want for themselves - and if that’s not WORTH a higher price, what is?