Inspiring Women in Business Podcast - Episode 16 - How To Set Your Prices For Your Products And Services

As a freelancer, it is important to know how you should price your services. But how do you do it? Where do you start? 

In this episode, I talk about how to set your pricing and rates for your services properly. I also talk about the money mindset and how important it is to address that first.

Key takeaways from this episode:

• We get trapped in patterns, and if we don't address them, they can show up in different ways in our business and life.
• Helping people and making money doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive.
• Others can't advise you on what you should charge because your experience and how you feel towards the value add are unique.
• We owe it to others to charge the right amount. Otherwise, we can devalue a sector or an industry.
• There isn't one size fits all. We have different experiences. We have different attitudes. We have different confidence levels. Don't worry too much about what others are charging. 
• Avoid charging what you're worth. You can end up pricing your services and products based on how you feel about yourself and your valuation.
• A better approach is to look at the research. You can look at industry benchmarks for pricing.
• Make sure that your pricing is aligned with the value that you offer. Approach your pricing as value-based pricing instead of pricing according to what you'd love to charge at the higher end and build to that value.
• Don't be cheaper, be different. Make your offer unique and irresistible.
• Consider moving away from hourly rate traps as they tie you to the effort spent rather than the value you deliver.

Episode Timeline:

00:04 Intro

01:08 Episode Intro

01:41 Business Building Hub

02:44 Set Your Secret Base Rate

03:34 Base Rate Calculator

04:14 Money Mindset and Pricing

05:30 Understanding Our Behavior Towards Money

06:32 Our Money Stories

06:21 Sales funnel

07:48 Why You Should Not Ask in FB Groups How to Price

08:52 The Fallacy of Charging What You’re Worth

09:15 What Should You Do Instead

09:59 Aligning Your Pricing With the Value That You Offer

10:59 Don’t Be Cheaper, Be Different

11:32 Recap

12:21 How to Unlearn Things

13:20 Outro

Get the Free Base Rate Calculator Workbook here:

https://www.ruthgilbey.com/base-rate-workbook

More about me:

Hi, I’m Ruth, a business coach specializing in helping freelancers and business owners adjust their mindset and marketing so they can get fully booked with clients they LOVE to work with. I’ve helped hundreds of self-employed women achieve the time and money freedom they craved.

I’ve started this podcast because when I first went all in and left the corporate world to be a freelancer, I was grateful for any work that came my way. After over 20 years of freelancing and working for other people, I started to realize I’d created a glass ceiling for myself.

In 2017, I finally started listening to that voice that had been telling me for a long time that I wasn’t doing what I loved and fulfilling my true potential.  It took a critical illness to give me that wake-up call.  I don’t want the same to happen to you.

You can expect practical advice, inspiring stories, and a lot of aha moments as we uncover and kick to the curb all the obstacles you have been putting in your way.

I’m on a mission to inspire women to start and play bigger in business.

Connect with me here:

Coaching: https://www.ruthgilbey.com/coaching

Free stuff: https://www.ruthgilbey.com/next-client

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ruthgilbeymarketingandcoaching/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ruth_gilbey/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruthgilbey/ 

Transcription:

00:04

Hello and welcome to the inspiring women in business podcast. My name is Ruth Gilbey, and I'm a business and marketing coach. I'm on a mission to inspire women to start and play bigger in business. Now I started this podcast because when I first went all in and left the corporate world to be a freelancer, I was just grateful for any work that came my way. After over 20 years of freelancing and working for other people, I started to realize I'd created a glass ceiling myself. It was in 2017 when I finally started listening to that voice that had been telling me for a long time that I wasn't doing what I loved, and I wasn't fulfilling my true potential. It took a critical illness to give me that wake-up call. And I don't want the same thing to happen to you. You can expect practical advice, interviews, inspiring stories, and a lot of aha moments as we uncover and kick to the curb. All the obstacles you've been putting in your way.

01:08

Welcome back to inspiring women in business podcast. This episode today is a solo episode. And I'm going to be talking about money mindset, pricing, and your rates.

01:20

Now, this is such an important topic. A topic that's very close to my heart, something that I absolutely love helping women master. I love to help them grow in confidence regarding what they should charge, think more commercially about their businesses, and run their businesses more profitably.

01:41

Now, the reason why I want to talk about the money mindset as well today is that I have launched the all-new business building hub, which you can find on my website. And I will also link to the show notes. There are a number of amazing new free resources for you. And one of the resources on there is a new workbook calculator called the "Set Your Secret Base Rate." This helps you work out your hourly rate. Now you might not want to charge an hourly rate. But what it does is it gives you an overview, it helps you kind of understand and calculate what it takes to run your business, your taxes, your expenses, and it gets you thinking about what salary you want. It gets you thinking about the costs associated with your business, the time you want off, how often you want to work, and it gets you to have a real reality check of what you need to actually be earning to get this actual salary.

02:44

Because often what people think is they might have moved from working in full-time employment to being a business owner, and they see the money coming into their business is money that is for them. But what we've got running costs for your business as well. So it's getting you to think logically and budget as well. So then, when you have all that information from the calculator, you can then sort of understand. You can step away, and then you can start thinking about how you want to charge now. I don't advise charging hourly rates because I think that limits you. You're stuck for the time. You're stuck for the sort of time for money in the time for money trap. I really believe more in value-based pricing. However, this calculator gives you that benchmark to then go away, do your value-based pricing, and make sure that it connects up.

03:34

So there you have it, you've got our link to it in the show notes. It's the all-new secret success base rate calculator for you that you can download today. It's something that I've used with my clients before. And it's just such a really useful tool as well. And it's got some advice and tips as well on there for you for thinking about you know, just taking a moment to think about what you should charge. I truly believe just using that calculator on its own will help you think differently about the way you charge and help your mindset, and you'll think more logically and confidently about your pricing. Anyway, that's the base rate calculator.

04:14

So I just want to give you some more tips today. I want to really talk about money mindset and pricing and what worries me. What I see happening, how I see women approaching setting their rates, what kind of behaviour I see. And I want to actually tackle that today and give you some more advice to go alongside the calculator to help you really think about pricing and your money mindset in a different way.

04:37

So on the surface, you might feel like you've got a healthy money mindset. And you might have been told, you know, charge what you're worth, put your rates up. And that's great. But putting your rates up isn't the only thing that we need to be doing when we're thinking about the money mindset. It's all our behaviour, how we operate in our businesses as well, what we do when we get money. You know you hear about people having kind of income ceilings or behaving differently when they get money as well. And Denise Duffield Thomas talks about this an awful lot in her book, Get Rich Lucky Bitch where she talks about these amazing stories about how celebrities or people she's known to have once, they've got money, they don't know how to handle that money and what they do with that money. And if they sabotage the money in and they sabotage relationships, as well. And it's all connected with our beliefs around money.

05:30

So as I say, it's not just about putting your rates up. It's understanding our behaviour and our beliefs as well. So there are very, very few women I know who haven't had to work on their mindset around money. We get trapped in patterns. And if we don't address them, they can just show up in different ways in our business in our life, as well, as things start to change.

05:51

So many of the women I speak to say to me, money isn't important to me, and I prefer to help people. So I would ask why does helping people and making money have to be mutually exclusive? Why is it an either-or situation? I've been reading Jen Sincero's book. I'm a Badass at Making Money. And it was part of our book club. It was in my membership. It was our book club book for quite some time. And I did a competition around it where members would win the book. And Jen Sincero talks about taking back the word money and decriminalizing it. We attach too much shame and negativity to making money.

06:32

Let me know. Message me on Instagram and let me know if this resonates with you. And we really need to address this. Society has demonized the rich or cease talking about or having money as something we should be ashamed about or that we shouldn't talk about or don't talk about money. I mean, I still do this. I say things like don't talk about money. Why is it easier to say to someone, "I'm broke" than "I am okay for money." We all have money stories. And in Jen Sincero's book, she does some great exercises alongside the book as well to get you really thinking about what are your money stories? Or stories? Have you been hanging on to that perhaps you need to rethink or update?

07:15

Okay, so let's get on to that was talking about money mindset that was talking about the things that we believe around money. But I want to chat to you today about that question that you might ask about what rate you should charge. What rate should you charge? How you should price your services, or how you should price your products and services. Now, if only putting your rates up would solve your money mindset. There's so much more to it than that. But I want to focus on at this point, you're thinking about what's your rate, or you're thinking about putting your rates up.

07:48

So I see this happen quite a lot. I see this happening in quite a lot of Facebook groups, I see people posting, and I think No, they're posting in Facebook groups and asking, what should I charge? What do you charge for that? How should I price it? And I think No, no, no, because what's going to happen is what you end up doing is by taking advice from someone else about money, you could adopt their limiting beliefs on what they're charging, and you think, oh, okay, I need to charge that as well. My firm belief is others can't advise you on what you should charge. Because your experience and how you feel towards the value add is completely unique. I also believe we owe it to others to charge the right amount. Otherwise, we can devalue a sector or an industry. There really isn't one size fits all. We have different experiences. We have different attitudes. We have different confidence levels. Don't worry too much about what others are charging. You've got absolutely no idea what their business model is. How profitable they are. What else is going on inside their business as well.

08:52

Also, avoid charging what you're worth. Have you heard that expression charge what you're worth? I mean, I understand it's kind of like a symbol of empowering women to charge more. But if we charge what you're worth, you can end up pricing your services and products based on how you feel about yourself and your own valuation. So I've just talked about all the things that I don't think you should do.

09:15

So what should you do instead? So what I think is a better approach is to look at the research. You can look at industry benchmarks. There are benchmarks for every different industry out there. So if you're a copywriter, for instance, pro copywriters have done an awful lot of research and benchmarks within the industry, and they show you a range of what other copywriters are charging. There's also, you know, Juno, who has done extensive research on freelancers, service providers, from client managers to digital marketers, as well. So that's good for industry benchmarks. Understand the benchmarks. If you want to know what else is other people are charging, then use the data and research that's been, you know, a lot of people have given that information.

09:59

The other thing is to make sure that your pricing is aligned with the value that you offer. So let me just say that again, make sure your pricing is aligned with the value that you offer. So do approach your pricing as value-based pricing instead of pricing according to what you'd love to charge at the higher end and build to that value. I read something as well that was like, actually keep saying a rate until you know, keep saying a rate that you want to charge until it feels so uncomfortable. And then just like edge it back slightly. I think it was in Denise Duffield Thomas's books where she talks about that, well, you actually push yourself, or it starts to feel really uncomfortable, or you start laughing. You know, it feels absurd. So just keep pushing, pushing, pushing. So price according to what you'd love to charge at the higher rate and build the value to that. Then it will be the right energy exchange for you as well.

10:59

Also, make sure that your offer is unique and an absolute hell yes to your customers. So people can't do that like for like comparison, because it's such a unique thing. Don't be cheaper, be different. Also, consider moving away from hourly rate traps as they tie you to the effort spent rather than the value that you deliver. I know this isn't always possible with some industries. But I think as our businesses grow, we can do packages rather than hourly rates, and you're talking about the value that they get from something.

11:32

So that's my advice for you today. Let me just recap that for you. So what I believe you should do instead, when you're actually thinking about your prices, is number one, research industry benchmarks. Number two, make sure your pricing is aligned with the value you offer. Number three is price according to what you'd love to charge at the higher end and build that value. Number four, make your offer unique and irresistible. So it's kind of like a "hell yes" to people, and they can't do a like for like comparison. Number five, don't be cheaper. Don't make that be the differentiation, that you're cheaper. Be different, be valuable. And number six is to consider moving away from your hourly rates as this ties you to the effort spent rather than the value that you deliver. 

12:21

And my last piece of advice for you is to do the work to be curious to do the work and kind of know that we need to unlearn things. We've adopted old, outdated ways of thinking, and we need to re-address them we need to look at them differently, and that's why some of this book Jen Sincero's I'm a Badass at Making Money, Denise Duffield Thomas's Get Rich Lucky Bitch or her book Chillpreneur are absolutely brilliant talking about money mindset and female business owners. And last but not least, don't forget to download my Set Your Secret Base Rate Calculator, work out your base rate so you will never be undercharging again. Understand your costs, your taxes, your expenses, and overheads to run your business and pay yourself properly. I hope you find that useful. You can find all the links to everything I've talked about today in the show notes.

13:20

Thanks for listening to the inspiring women in business podcast. I hope you found this episode helpful. If you did, I would love it if you would leave me a review. Also, I would love to connect with you on Instagram. That's where I hang out most of the time. I'm @Ruth_Gilbey. I'll put a link in the show notes for you as well come and connect with me. Tell me about your business. And also tell me what you'd like to hear next on the podcast. And lastly, go and check out the business building hub on my website. There you can find more amazing free resources to help you take the next step in your business. And you can also find out other ways that you can work with me. I'll see you soon.