Don't Justify Your Prices. Do This Instead. #240

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If you’re new to my page my name’s Corey Boutwell. I’m the founder and CEO of men’s personal development company Set The Standard. I’m a professional bodybuilder, I have coached over 300 men to their full potential and created a multi six figure business in just 3 years. This podcast is where I share EVERYTHING I learn along the way.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Raising Prices With Confidence
• 4:07 Increasing Prices With Inspiration
• 14:48 Embrace Price Increases for Success

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

It never got me the money that I wanted with the prices that I offered, but it was still working, people were still reaching out and I learned something amazing. This is the only hack that you'll ever need to raise your prices with confidence and not lose any sales. Let's get straight into it, guys. So I want to tell you a story about how I used to be scared of charging $50 for a service and then not even blinking when asking for 20 grand. And if you're someone who's asking for an extra hundred dollars or a million dollars, it doesn't matter. The skill that I'm going to teach you here is going to increase your ability to charge more money, which is super fantastic. Everyone who doesn't read this email, or not read this email anyone who doesn't listen to this podcast will miss out on being able to increase their prices and feel stuck and stagnant, charging the same old prices, which means less money to pay your employees, more stress around tax time, less motivation to work hard and close deals and live the life of your dreams and do the work that you're most motivated to do, and you'll also be less motivated to work with your clients and give them the service or the product that they need. Right, because when I got first into coaching, I was about 20 years old and it was people asking me for health and fitness programs. Right, because I'm competing in bodybuilding shows. I looked incredible and they're asking. They asked me a lot of questions but I had no idea what to charge and I was way too scared to talk to anyone on the phone, even for a service. This is not like a sales call. I was scared to coach people over the phone. What are they going to think of me? Like? Are they going me their money? I'm ripping them off. Now the question is was there truth to that? Yes, yes, there was.

Speaker 1: 1:51

I did not want to put in the energy to help someone to the best of my ability when I only charged $100 for eight weeks of support right, that's what I like would do for charging. And every time someone messaged me I thought they were going to complain. I was scared that they hated my program. I feared having to go and redo the entire program. I'm like shit. I'm gonna have to like redo this whole thing, which is why I only did a couple at that age.

Speaker 1: 2:17

So I was ripping people off. I was ripping. Ripping people off from my hard work, my energy, my effort and my expertise. By not charging enough, I was ripping them off of an amazing service by not asking for enough money because of my own self-worth, self-worth bullshit. So this is very dear to my heart. So I stopped doing all health and fitness programs for people. I was like hell, no, and I never wanted to be a pt anyway. I was frustrated at people not being able to stick to stuff. So I'm like hell, no, and I never wanted to be a pt anyway. I was frustrated at people not being able to stick to stuff. So I'm like why don't people stick to things? Like what do they need to take action? Which is why I started set the standard right. So it's like we help you set new standards, you set a higher standard, we keep you accountable to get it. You get it. It's fantastic.

Speaker 1: 2:55

It wasn't after, for me, four to five years of study and application that I want to start making sales again. I I'm like man, I got this awesome product and what I know is incredible. I want to start charging money again. I wanted to quit my nine to five, but I had no idea how to make sales, so my way of making sales was attracting, of just being such a beast that people attract themselves to me and they would go holy. And I do one grand thing a year. I do one thing, big and challenging, that would really test me, that I would talk about, like bodybuilding, starting a podcast, interviewing a huge guest, throwing a big party, something like that, whatever it was, and it never got me the money that I wanted, with the prices that I offered, but it was still working, people were still reaching out and I learned something amazing once I completed the process. I wanted to run someone through, like okay, this is all my knowledge. This is what I want to run through as a service. If you have a product, it's the same thing. I want to create this product for someone. For me, it's a service, a coaching service for personal transformation. Once I finished the whole thing, I was like man. If someone ran through this, I wrote out everything the worksheets, the videos, the concepts, the models, the theories, what to do about them. I was like man. I finished this.

Speaker 1: 4:07

A young multimillionaire reached out to me, 21 years old, making multi-millions of dollars per year, and I was delusional about what I had to charge him. So I had this thought in my head. I was like, okay, what percentage do I charge, like someone else, for one of my programs, and I was what do they make per year? You know 50, 60k at the time, because it's like 10 years ago, and I was like cool, they pay me like one to two hundred dollars per week, is like you know the fifty dollars per week or something like that. And I'm like this is like six to seven percent of their wage, is roughly what I'm making. So I come to him and he's making you know 1.5. I say roughly, because one to two million dollars per year revenue, about seven percent of that. So I said, hey, I want seven percent of your 1.5 revenue a year, which at the time I can't remember, I'm doing the math it was like two to three hundred thousand dollars. And that's what I pitched him for, my very first pitch right in business, and he said hell no. He said hell no and redirected the price. He's like, what about like a thousand dollars a month? And I said, yes, I don't know what it was worth at the time. So now I have a new baseline.

Speaker 1: 5:10

So here's lesson number one guys, if people want your service and they can't afford it, they'll tell you. And if they're the exact person you want to help and you're the person who decides the price and it feels okay, just lower the price right. Pitch something big, lower the price. See how you go. If you've got no idea, ask for the most amount of what you're worth and it'll come in. So if you're scared to ask for your prices, just know that if someone says, no, I can't afford that, and you're the main decision maker and they're your dream target audience person, you want to help. Just lower the price. Just lower it, unless you've got standards right. If you go, once you hit a certain standard and you don't want to go below that, fair enough.

Speaker 1: 5:49

But let's say you try something new, you go oh, I used to charge, you know, for a service. Let's say it was like 10 grand a month and you own like a, like a, like a wicked firm or something like an agency, and you used to charge like 10 grand a month for two months for a massive service. You know, shit, we want to go up to 20 grand a month. Give it a shot. And if they say, nah, but we can afford 12, you go okay, let's do 12, I really like what you're doing. Okay, I'm sick. You know what I mean. Like it's an awesome lesson that I learned is when you feel ready and you want to be asking more and you're not sure what to do. Ask for way more. See what happens, because you can always change it and the nose is having the pure confidence around the nose. That's like, oh well, I'll just change it down and they'll go holy hell and you go yeah, I like what you're doing, but at least you're trying.

Speaker 1: 6:26

Right Now, what happened here was I got quite a few clients at $1,000 a month. I started making five to six grand per month and for intensive one-on-one coaching for my energy, training, for my energy and my time, it started to tank because there was a lot of effort. I mean, I'm working with a lot of people and I'm trying to like do courses, learn stuff, whatever it was. I'm like man, weekly, this is a lot of calls, a lot of talking, like I'm tired. So I thought to myself, how the hell can I get to a million dollars a year like this in revenue?

Speaker 1: 6:51

Well, for me I was like I have to change my weekly calls to fortnightly, or do less time and charge more, or create a group program. So do multiple people at once. That's the logistics, right? That's what you want to figure out. So it depends, like, if you've got a product, it's like cool, do I make a bundle? Do I put them together? Do I send them separately? Do I give a discount for more? Do we make it less expensive to put more in here? Like whatever it is.

Speaker 1: 7:18

If, like, it depends what, what you're doing, but it's just to play around with what's like the value that you provide, right, and I had no idea what was right to do. So what I did was I listened to what inspires me. I had to listen to my own inspiration and be really in tune with my emotions, which this is, I think, the most important this one here for how to increase your prices without you know, without losing clients and feeling awesome about it, and that is your motivation and inspiration will tell you when it is time to increase your prices or decrease your time. They will tell you why, because if you're not motivated to work for what you're currently charging, you're ripping people off from your service, right? If you're not motivated, you're like oh, I'm tired, oh, I'm tired from this. You are legitimately ripping people off, but not for the price, but for what you're giving them. So you need to charge more at that stage so you can feel better. So, like, you can charge the same amount of money for less time at work and keep the same amount of value or increase the prices slightly. So there are options. But you can always keep your current customers on the same price while as long as long as they remain customers.

Speaker 1: 8:26

Well, why, if like, if you stick with me, it's like a grandfather thing. If you stick with me, let's say it was me. I was charging a thousand dollars a month and then I wanted to increase my prices. Like, you stay on thousand dollars a month, but everyone knew that comes in. I'm going to charge 1.5 and then every year you increase the price price, not plus price because of inflation, and everyone is happy with that. Hey, I'm increasing it by like a hundred dollars, two hundred dollars because of inflation.

Speaker 1: 8:47

Right now, what happens is the main signal to know when you need to increase your prices is when you're demotivated and then it's like cool, how can I? The question is, how can I get motivated and inspired now to increase my prices? Because that's what I want to do. I need to get inspired so that what's the money that I need to receive, what's the freedom that I need to have in regards to time. So what happens is that your inspiration starts to move quickly and then you can use the ehr method to calculate this.

Speaker 1: 9:16

Now, effective hourly rate is something my mentor, james schramko, taught me, and he used it to calculate what your hourly rate is worth as an entrepreneur. So you pick a month or a week and you calculate your total amount of revenue plus your total amount of expenses and you divide that by the total amount of hours of work that you do. That's your hourly rate. That's how much you're getting paid per hour. Now you could be someone who's like you be making. You know, let's just say it's ten thousand dollars a month, but you're working a hundred out, a hundred hours a week. Like that's 400 hours in a month. Like it's crazy to someone. Let's say, if you're working 10 hours a week, right, the difference is just absolutely insane. There's a lot more you can do with your time. There's a lot more freedom there. So pick a month, whatever it is, figure out the calculate and then figure out the total amount of hours that you work. Now the goal is to increase how much money that you make per hour, this can help inspire you right. This is something that shows, basically, your motivation to work score, because if you're working like crazy and you're like man, I'm really not getting paid much per hour here right now. It's not motivating. You want to be working on something that is motivating and inspiring to you.

Speaker 1: 10:21

And as I grew, the more my network expanded, the more I started hiring team members. I built out a community, I created multiple courses and my skills like with technology, got insane and you know, being able to deliver a message and, um, something that can impact someone grew. My self-worth grew at the same time. And my self-worth grew because I was integral to my word, which created proof that I was worth it. This is the point of following your inspiration, because if you're not inspired, you're going to do way less amount of energy put into work, which is it just makes you go. Entrepreneurs get trapped in that all the time, and this made me realize I had so much more to give right when I had my own self-valuevalue, because I created the proof that I was worth it and that made me value myself at a higher price.

Speaker 1: 11:10

Lesson number 3. If you want to charge more, create the evidence and the value for yourself that proves your own self-worth to yourself. So you want to create the amount of evidence right. So when you want to start increasing your prices, you might get to a position where it's like I really want to increase my prices right now, but why? I haven't done anything new. I haven't created anything, I haven't done nothing, I haven't learned any more skills, so why would I want to increase my prices? I know I want to and I should, but I can't. So you haven't, you haven't done anything to prove to yourself that you should.

Speaker 1: 11:42

So this means you want to create resources, automations, quality, quantity, efficiency, any type of value, some knowledge, whatever it is that makes you more valuable to your customers so that you can give them more value. So they can give them more value, for example, if it's like a stress ball, right, you might create like a stress-free guide how to use a stress ball, when's the most important time to use them, where you want to set them up in your house, so that when you need a stress ball at the most important time, they can use them. Right, that is knowledge that makes the stress ball better, and then you might have different grades of stress. I don't know right. I'm just pitching stupid ideas out there. I got a lot of ideas and whatever you're doing, they're still putting in a lot of effort to create worth in general.

Speaker 1: 12:23

Or you could learn how to get your stress balls instead of, let's say, australian market into the uk market, into the american market. You want to expand, but it's going to take different skills, employing different people, hiring different people. You prove to yourself that you can do that. You go and learn the skills. You invest in the coaching and the mentoring. Now you feel worthy enough. You're like hell, yeah, I should be making more money because I've expanded my skills and I've got proof of effort that I can do it. And now I'm not only just selling in this one country, I'm selling in the next country. Now it's like well, I should be paying myself more. I want to take a higher wage out of my company. Cool, I've just created more value, more connections. Now I can pay myself a higher wage for my business.

Speaker 1: 12:55

So you want to create that value, so give value and create pricing options for them that fit with the value provided. So whatever service or product that you've got to offer, when you want to charge more, it's like okay, what are those pricing options, sort of mentioned with the stress ball for mind coaching. It's like you know. Uh, do I want to go fortnightly? Am I going to do a two-hour call? One-hour call? I'm going to give, like, a whatsapp group. I'm going to do, you know, a telegram group. I've got a community. I've got all a ton of range of courses and websites I my network. I can directly introduce them with people who would jump on a call with them. Like what are all these different value points that I can give to someone and what are all of them worth? And because I've built those and because I've had that, it's worth more can charge more money. Fantastic, now, that's how you know.

Speaker 1: 13:39

So, once you link those three lessons together one your pitch. You can always know that when you're pitching your prices, you can change it to whatever you want. If you're the person who makes the decision, give it a shot. Two, noticing that when your motivation and inspiration decline, that is a sign that you need to increase your prices. Otherwise, you're not going to be putting in the energy and the work to feel good about it. So pay yourself more and figure out how to do that. And then number three, if you want to charge more is what are the goals? What do you need to create? How can you prove to yourself that you're worth more? How can you prove and put yourself to the test that's like, yeah, no, I'm definitely worth this amount of money. No, I can definitely charge this. No, I can definitely pay myself this because of the work that you've done. Bonus point Just know that every time you do change your prices, if you follow these lessons the ones that I give you expecting your prices stops being scary, like you're expecting your prices to increase stops being scary, and it becomes exciting.

Speaker 1: 14:48

Charging new prices. You're like, oh my God, I can't wait to charge this price because I deserve this. I earned this. I'm gonna be so motivated and it's something that I wanna try. Fantastic, and you might try above.

Speaker 1: 14:58

And then someone says no, and then you recorrect it Fine, but keep trying. You keep sticking to those lessons. You see the power of that. You keep sticking to those lessons. Over a period of time, you're going to feel amazing and your prices are going to keep going up and you're going to get paid more, which is fantastic. So when you do increase your prices, it's a sign of your own growth that confirms you're on the right path. I am on the right path, baby, so let me know if this helps you on your journey on becoming the ultimate stud.

Speaker 1: 15:26

Share with a friend and please follow the podcast. Give us a follow on there if you like this and if you want to join, set the standard. You want to work on this? Like with me and have me coach you and learn the skills and the tools that I've got around this, then come on and join. Send me a DM on instagram and I'd love to have you on board and teach you everything that we've got so that you can absolutely start smashing and integrating this. So big love, guys. See you in.