Raising your prices? Unpack this first.
New Year, New Pricing!
Before I decided to say F off to Instagram (more on that in another post), I noticed a common theme amongst beauty industry professionals - lots of people are raising their prices come January 1st and they're posting announcements to their followers. This happens every year around this time as we run our numbers and reflect on the past year.
I also talk to people about this A LOT and see it pop up regularly in esthetician groups... raising your prices often seems like the answer to all your problems. Not making enough money? Raise your prices. Clients not respecting you? Raise your prices. Working too many hours? Raise your prices. Cost of supplies went up? Raise your prices. Hands hurt, back hurts, neck hurts... just raise your prices! If you take a class or hire a coach to help you with your business, this WILL be a running theme when it comes to making your business (more) profitable.
There is truth in all of that and so here we are... raising prices for the new year. But then your nervous system begins to respond, informed by a life of money-related trauma and unconscious programming. The IDEA alone of raising your prices causes a shit-ton of stress and sends you down an anxiety + shame spiral.
You are freaking out, man.
And here is what you do...
You feel bad about charging more, so you offer to grandfather in your current clients and let them keep the old pricing.
You worry no one will pay more for your services so you soften the blow by just raising prices $5-10.
You post apologies to your clients, "sorry, but due to the increased cost of supplies I must unfortunately raise my prices."
You actually talk yourself out of it because you don't have enough experience or certificates to charge what you want... you will raise your prices later, when you have those things.
You raise your prices, then offer discounts as a cushion for the complainers.
You invest in an expensive machine or product to add value to your service and justify a higher price point, hoping that you will make money off of it but you don't actually know if that will work (because you didn't plan or calculate your ROI).
If you haven't figured it out, I think all of these are pretty shitty ideas. But when your body begins to feel anxiety and shame regarding the idea of exchanging of money for your services, your nervous system will drop into fight, flight or shutdown and you will naturally respond by doing what feels right in that state.
Unfortunately, the result will often be that you don't come out ahead next year. At least not by much. You will still work too hard, work too many hours and the clients who complain about pricing will still complain because that's about their own relationship to money.
It’s not them, it’s you.
If you want to thrive instead of survive, you need to raise your prices in a meaningful way that actually doesn’t cause you stress… and to do that, you need to deal with your own relationship and beliefs about money.
5 ways our limiting beliefs are holding us back from earning and keeping money
To get you started, I want to explore 5 limiting beliefs about money that are especially prevalent in the beauty industry. These beliefs prevent us from making and keeping money, because they impact how we charge for services, accept wages from employers and how we run our businesses.
I highly recommend being honest with yourself, exploring your relationship to these beliefs (maybe through journaling or talking to a safe person in your life) and allowing yourself to really be in your body and FEEL where money issues hit you - is it in your gut? Is your heart racing or slowing down? Are you fidgeting or picking when you think of money? Or do you shut down and avoid it?
Hot tip: discovering where feelings about spending and receiving hit in your body will help you identify when your response is being driven by your autonomic nervous system, and is a helpful step in recognizing your own subconscious + harmful patterns.
Limiting Belief #1: Market Pricing
“We should charge based on the market price of services in our area, our experiences and our worth.”
This is a lie we are told over and over again by capitalism. It allows companies to justify paying workers less and increase their profit margins. It includes concepts like...
You need to gain experience and until then, we will pay you less.
You need to be worthy of a raise and prove it in a measurable way.
You are worth more if you have more certificates, degrees, etc.
You need to sell more, rebook more and have more return clients in order to justify making more.
The idea of market pricing in our industry makes little to no sense, because market pricing is driven down into nothingness by those who 1) lower prices to complete and 2) pay their employees nothing in order to make a profit.
The reality here is that the "market" can not tell you what your bills are. Your experiences and certificates have nothing to do with what you should be charging. In fact, no one but you can tell you what you should charge because it is dependent on what you personally need to thrive.
Limiting Belief #2: Worth
“We undercharge simply because we don't value ourselves enough and should charge our worth.”
Many courses on money manifestation for healers or charging in the beauty industry rely on this concept of "charging your worth". The idea is that if you just felt you were more worthy you would charge more, so you just need to do more inner work or have the balls to charge what you deem your worth to be.
But what is your worth as a human being? Can you assign a number to what each of us deserve to make? How would you even calculate that?
If you charge $100 for a service and someone else charges $60, does that mean they have less value than you as a human being? Is your life - your time + energy - less valuable than someone who charges more?
You can see how this is complicated and not actually helpful at all. Worthiness is not finite or measurable, so it can not be a factor in pricing.
Limiting Belief #3: Spending
“You need to spend money to make money; only those with money to begin with or access to credit will be successful.”
Even if you have money to begin with, spending unnecessarily will land you in untenable debt or bleed your business dry. Uncontrollable spending is a harmful money pattern and this false belief is a way we justify that harm. Yes, you should invest in yourself and your business but you have to do it carefully and thoughtfully. This may mean something different for you than other people.
You don't need fancy, expensive machines to make money. You don't need a ton of product. You don't need to spend thousands on coaches or pay for expensive certifications. You don't need a rich family or lots of credit cards.
You do, however, need to understand your expenses and how to get a return on your investments. And you need to detach from some of these limiting beliefs about money because they will trick you into thinking that you need to spend more than you should.
Also, I feel it's worth mentioning that just because someone LOOKS like they are thriving on Instagram doesn't mean they actually are. Until they are posting their profit and loss statements I would hold back on being jealous of others and remember, your finances are yours and what other people do may not work for you.
Limiting Belief #4: Gratitude
“Money doesn't buy happiness - you should be happy with what you have or with what others are willing to give you.”
This is a hard one, because to some extent it's true. Happiness can not be purchased. If you grew up not having enough, your parents might have told you these things and it makes a lot of sense... it is a coping mechanism we use to deal with scarcity.
But it is also a concept that is used to combat or control our need or want for more. It is one of the beliefs capitalism perpetuates and we see it in our society all the time - about half of our country and an entire political party believes "you don't DESERVE anything and should be happy with any scrap you are given because even that is a gift."
We have this false belief in the back of our minds when we justify not raising prices or just not making enough (either in our business or in a low-wage job).
The reality is money doesn't buy happiness, but it makes life a lot easier. We all deserve to live without the fear of scarcity. Just barely paying bills is not thriving and its not sustainable.
Limiting Belief #5: Client Finances
“It is a burden for my clients to pay for my services.”
I hear all the time that the biggest concern we have with raising prices is, "clients won't pay for it."
The standard response (one I have given many, many times) is, "well then you will lose the clients who are not for you and make space for the ones who value you." And that is true... raising prices is a good way to push out those bargain-seeking clients. But I would like to pose another theory here.
Let's think about this. If your clients are making you feel like your price is a burden for them, they have their own money trauma. You can not control that. You can not control their finances or what they spend money on. If they are truly making you feel bad about it, don’t take their money.
But... are your clients actually telling you that your prices are a burden, or is this your own projection of a money trauma?
Are you thinking about how YOU feel when you spend money? How do you feel when you invest in self-care and in yourself? How do you feel when you invest in local businesses doing great things that are ethically aligned with you?
Most clients actually feel GOOD spending money on self-care services. They are doing something good for themselves, and if they know they are helping you and your business THAT makes them feel good too.
If this is not a feeling you align with, then likely the hypothetical burden keeping you from raising your prices is your own.
Ok then, how should I be pricing my services?
There is a very simple, yet complicated answer to this question… the simple answer is that no one can decide that but you. The complicated part is actually doing that, especially since it takes time and a bit of math (every beauty industry professional’s FAVORITE thing to do I’m sure).
You need to define what your energetic thresholds are. What do you need to get yourself out of a scarcity mindset so that you can enjoy the time you spend with clients and give them the best possible experience? That is where it gets complicated. You need to know what you want to bring home to thrive but you also need to know your expenses, your bookable hours per year, your average service times, cost per service, etc. You need to define everything - how much vacation time do you want? How many days are you working? How many hours? How many clients can you see in a day and not lose your mind? How much do you want to invest in products? In machines? In yourself?
The good news is, I have resources for this. I cover exploring your money trauma and defining what you need to charge based on expenses and what you want to make to feel safe (complete with spreadsheets to do all your calculations, play with different scenarios, etc. and a workbook to help you define your thresholds for energetic exchange) in Abundance Alchemy. Abundance Alchemy is a DONATION BASED course which you can pay any amount for. This information is beneficial even if you don’t own a business because it can help you to define what you want out of a job, what you need to get paid and whether or not that is actually attainable based on your current situation.