Category: Creating A 6-Figure Business You Love

How can I move from charging by the hour to offering higher priced packages?

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One of the biggest mistakes I made in my own first business, and I see other small business owners doing today, is charging clients by the hour.

Not only does this put an automatic cap on what you can earn in any given week (because there are a finite number of hours in a week) but I also find that, when working out their estimated income, a lot of business owners forget that, when you’re really trying to get a successful business going and regular money coming in, more than 50% of your time really needs to be spent on marketing so you can keep your pipeline full.

That’s 50% of your time that no-one is going to pay you for.

When I first speak with clients to set their 12-month and 90-day Bold Money Goals, I will often hear something like “ Well, I’m going to be charging £25 an hour and working a 40 hour week, so I’m expecting to earn 40 x 25 = £1,000 a week.”

Well, that’s all well and good if every single one of those hours are billable hours – in other words, as long as those 40 hours are packed, back-to-back with work your clients are paying you for.

But that’s never the case. Because where are those clients going to come from if you’re not spending any time marketing?

So, if we estimate that 50% of the time we should be marketing, then allow for admin (raising invoices, paying bills, sending out agreements, book-keeping etc.) you’re more likely looking at 22-23 money-producing hours per week.

And if you’re charging £25 an hour that works out more like £550 – £575 a week.

And that’s a) assuming you can fill every available hour with work and b) not taking into account people who don’t show up, people who don’t pay or pay late or those clients who you under-quoted so you’re going to have to charge them for less time than you actually gave them.

So what’s the answer?

Packages.

Stop charging by the hour and, instead, create fixed-price packages that your clients pay for either up-front or by way of a deposit then monthly instalments.

I can already hear the objections from here J but hear me out.

When you charge by the hour, you create 2 major problems for yourself that you just do not need to have:

  1. Potential clients will automatically compare your hourly rate to that charged by the next person who offers what you offer. They have no idea what differences exist between you both in terms of experience, qualifications or service delivery but they will think they are comparing apples with apples and they WILL make a judgement based on price – and that’s never good.
  2. You run the risk of people querying a) the number of hours or sessions it takes you to complete your service for them – they’ll have one eye on the number of hours/sessions they’re going to have to pay for and b) stopping using your services before they’ve had chance to see any real results.

Each of these can lead to you feeling like you have to justify what you’re charging or even revising your charges down if someone challenges you.

Creating a fixed price package and agreeing the pricing in advance, on the other hand, completely eliminates this problem. It also:

  • Makes your business more profitable because fixed-price packages bring in greater income per client
  • Frees up more of your time because you don’t need to work with as many people to reach your desired income goals
  • Creates greater cash flow even with a small list or small number of contacts
  • Keeps you from slipping into over-delivering and burning out
  • Focuses your business on creating extraordinary results for your clients, not on selling your time, which liberates you to enjoy your business and love your life
  • Means you become known as one of the best at what you do
  • Elevates your sense of self-worth and makes you feel fulfilled at a soul level
  • Keeps your business simple to run, which synergistically lowers the stress of running a business

So, have I convinced you yet?

No?

Back to those objections then – virtually everyone I work with starts off with some kind of objection towards creating packages, so I’ve put the most common 3 below with my advice. J

  1. I don’t know how long it’s going to take to solve a person’s problem – it could be 2 sessions (or hours), it could be 20. I can’t  say how long it will take until we start so it would be unethical to charge them for a full package if they don’t need it.

The point of having a package is that you take your client through a particular step-by-step process that you’ve designed with their best interests at heart (see my article on your Branded Signature System). Your ideal clients just want to know that if they work with you, they will experience the results they’re looking for.

That might be fixing their problem completely or it might just mean a significant improvement for them – depending on the services you offer.

Even if their problem is entirely ‘fixed’ by step 2 of your process, you will still take them through the rest of your package to make sure they get the best results they possibly can from working with you. Probably better than they could have imagined.

You are showing them, up front what your package consists of and what it costs, and that is what they are paying for. You have moved the focus away from the number of hours or sessions it takes and towards the results they want.

Do you really think someone is going to complain if you manage to completely fix their problem quicker than they were hoping for?

It just doesn’t happen that way when you offer packages instead of talking about hours/sessions.

  • My clients all have different needs, I can’t possibly create one package to suit all.

Yes you can.

When you have worked out exactly who your ideal client is (we use the Niche Breakthrough Secrets method) and the specific problem they are facing, you will see that there are commonalities across all those particular clients.

When you examine what you actually do with each client, you will see that there are things that you do, steps that you go through over and over again with every single one of those clients, and you will continue to go through with new clients that you enrol.

It is this that becomes your Branded Signature System.

Of course, if you want to add additional, bespoke items, sessions or bonuses for clients who have additional needs you can do that – and you can decide whether to charge a premium for that.

It’s your business, your decision.

The point is that the main package is in place for you to follow so that you become an absolute expert at delivering it and you have a basis to start from that is not based on your time – it is based on the results you want your clients to experience.

You know exactly what you’re going to do for your client and so do they.

  • I’ll lose the clients who pay me hourly if I switch to package only offerings.

No you won’t. Not all of them.

When you show them the process you are going to take them through and the results they can expect at the end of it, your ideal clients will jump at the chance to take you up on your offer.

And the ones who want to continue to pay hourly are free to go continue to do that with someone else.

My experience shows that the loss of those who want to continue paying by the hour is far outweighed, financially, by those who move to the new package.

And, let me tell you, the clients you take into your packages will be FAR better clients to work with – more committed to following your advice, more interested in doing their own additional research and more appreciative of your expertise – than hourly payers ever will be.

It’s just a fact.

If you’d like to learn, step-by-step, how to create lucrative premium packages that sell, join me in my Ignite Mastermind & Coaching programme at https://emmahague.leadpages.co/mastermind

How do I make my service more marketable?

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I meet many business owners who offer a very broad range of services.

We tend to think that the more things we can ‘do’ for people, the more people we can help so the more clients we’ll get.

It’s why so many business owners spend thousands and thousands of pounds learning more skills, getting more qualifications, more letters after their name…but not earning any more money.

The real truth in business is ‘It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it.’

I can tell you now, if you’re the owner of a service business, there are thousands of other people already offering what you offer. And that’s good. Because it means there is demand for it.

But I can also tell you that simply having a longer list of services than your competitor is NOT going to help you attract clients.

Take a look at your competitors websites – most of them are just a long list of the services they offer. And most of those are probably the same as the services you offer.

And here’s the thing – a lot of your potential clients, people visiting those websites, have not the foggiest idea what most of those services are or how they can help them with the problem they have.

I talk a lot about how specialising in a particular field is the key to Charging What You’re Worth, and if you’re going to grab the attention of your ideal clients it is absolutely crucial.

You need to switch your focus away from the service you offer and towards how you can help your ideal clients.

(Of course, to do this, you first need to know who your ideal clients are – we cover this is the Niche Breakthrough Secrets module of my Ignite Mastermind & Coaching programme but I’ve also written a number of articles about it). 🙂

So, to make your services more marketable, you need to think about the problem that your ideal clients have and how you can solve it for them in absolutely the best way possible.

This is how we go about creating your Signature System – a step-by-step process that is unique to you, that you take your clients through to get them from where they are now to where they want to be.

A process you can talk about with clarity and confidence, knowing that no-one else does this.

No-one.

Because you’ve designed it.

Having your own Branded Signature System (we give it a unique name) suddenly raises you automatically to expert status.

It gives you confidence that you can help your clients get the results they want, and it gives them confidence in you – because they can see you have a thought out process and can see how each of the steps is going to get them nearer to their goal.

It makes your service more ‘tangible’. It has suddenly become a ‘product’. And people are prepared to pay more for something they can ‘see’.

AND (this is huge) it completely eradicates the threat of competition – because your competitor are not offering what you’re offering. And that means no-one can compare you on price any more.

Once you’ve got your Branded Signature System set out, you can do all sorts with it:

  • you can create mini-products or services for each individual step
  • you can create a ‘premium’ version for people who want more of your time or BONUS treatments/services
  • you can lay out the steps on your website and in your marketing literature to show people exactly how you will help them get results
  • you can move current clients onto your new, improved package and increase your fees

Having a Branded Signature System really is the key to being able to make your services uber-marketable and being able to finally charge what you’re worth.

So how do you do it?

Well, our process uses a set of templates, worksheets and exercises to create, name and market your Branded Signature System but, to get started on your own these are the steps I would recommend:

  • Get crystal clear on your ideal client (niche) and exactly what the specific, urgent problem is that they have and you can help them solve
  • Starting from where they are now, think about what the very first thing you will do with them is, when you start working with them and write it down.
  • Now think of the 2nd thing you’ll do with them, after that initial step – and write it down
  • And the 3rd, 4th, 5th and so on until you finish at a point where you’ve completed your process with them.
  • Now you might end up with a ton of steps, and that’s fine for this exercise – but you need to start to group those steps together so you end up with 5 or 6 steps really. Certainly no more than 7 I would say.
  • Once you’ve got your 5 or 6 step process, go back through the steps and see what you could add to each step, that would not take more of your time but would really help your client get an amazing result.
  • Give your system a unique name based on the results your client will get from working with you
  • Start telling everyone about it!

I have yet to find a business that this does not work for.

Yes, virtually everyone I speak to (particularly therapists, healers, coaches and other business owners who really could help ‘anybody’) tells me this won’t work in their industry.

And yes, it absolutely does work for all industriesand all my clients.

Take a look at the entrepreneurial leaders in your sector. I’ll bet they’re known for being an expert in a particular area (not a jack of all trades) and I’ll bet they have their own branded signature system.

Done properly, your Branded Signature System will not only make you stand out from the crowd, it will give you the confidence you need to sell more and will create a whole new, simplified but lucrative structure for your business.

Meaning you get up every morning knowing what you need to be focused on doing that day.

You have clarity around the people you need to be meeting and the content you need to be providing for blog posts, articles, social media, lead generation magnets and more.

And you’ll have the renewed interest and motivation to research your new speciality that drives successful business owners forward, becoming true experts in their chosen field and creating unbelievable results for those lucky enough to work with them. 🙂

Join my Ignite Mastermind & Coaching Programme to create your very own Branded Signature System with me, become known as an expert in your field and start to charge what you’re really worth at https://emmahague.leadpages.co/mastermind

How Can I Attract My Ideal Clients (And Stop Attracting Time Vampires?)

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Have you ever got talking to someone new and felt, after only a couple of meetings, like you’ve known them for years?

Like they’re just somehow ‘on your wave-length’? (There’s a scientific reason for that – they really are! We naturally attract the people to us who are on the same vibrational level. But that’s an article for another day!)

Have you ever noticed how you naturally resonate with the characters from certain books, films or songs? As though their story is one you’ve somehow lived yourself?

The same is true for your brand. Branding isn’t just about having a fancy logo to spark recognition.

It’s the emotional appeal you create to others – whether that’s with a logo, the way you speak or your physical presence.

Whether you like it or not, as an entrepreneur, you DO have a brand – even if you don’t know what it is!

As men and women who ARE our business, we naturally put across certain traits, values and language when we speak to our clients (and potential clients) – even if we don’t mean to!

And so it’s essential that you understand what you want your brand to be, what it stands for and how to get that across properly to people.

Ever feel like you’re not attracting your ideal clients? Ever wondered why?!

Maybe people are getting the wrong idea about you.

Some entrepreneurs try to avoid this problem altogether by being totally devoid of any personalisation – you see this a lot in online marketing where the aim is hands-off, recurring revenue generation.

Have a look at some of your competitors’ websites – I’ll bet you’ll find many are created from some kind of template and they can have a fairly impersonal, corporate feel to them.

Everything looks the same – same services listed, same stock photos, same red headlines, same red arrows, same font…it can be very difficult to work out the kind of people you’re dealing with and thus, many people who try to market purely online find it difficult to get the results they really want.

They lack that ‘know, like and trust’ factor that smaller business owners need to encourage people to engage with them.

Doing good work and being honest and reliable (which seen to be the go-to phrases for most business owners) are worthy characteristics. But let’s be realistic, it’s charisma and personality that make a person – and their business – succeed.

However, get it wrong and this can also be totally counter-productive. Because potential clients can get entirely the wrong idea about the kind of person you are from the marketing you do.

One of the reasons video is proving so successful when marketing on social media is that your potential clients can see you. They can hear how you speak, the kinds of words you use, your tone of voice.

You might find it really uncomfortable getting used to the idea of speaking to a virtual audience but think about it – if your personality, your approach and your voice are already out there, you know that people who still approach you really like YOU. And want to work with YOU.

Which is why when I work with clients on creating their authentic signature brand, I include the amazing power of archetypes.

It prevents potential clients being drawn in to marketing you might be producing that isn’t really ‘you’, and then finding out they’re dealing with someone completely different and backing off.

(Usually after you’ve spent a good amount of time ‘nurturing’ them while they decide whether they want to work with you or not (I call these ‘Time Vampires’ because they will suck out your time as well as your energy 🙂 )

So what is an archetype?

Archetypes are well-established character types that exist in each one of us and have long permeated the essence of who we are.

Archetypes define our personality and our values and when you reflect your own archetype in your personal branding, your ideal clients are drawn to you.

Your audience can connect with who you are rather than just what you do (which may be the same as thousands of other business owners).

There are dozens of different archetypes and they’re often used in therapy and healing. I focus on just 12 in branding a business like yours.

What’s important to know is that each archetype: Alchemist, Maverick, Humanitarian, Artist, Nurturer, Jester, Romantic, Innocent, Hero, Ruler, Explorer and Teacher has it’s own meaning, personality, values, strengths, likes and dislikes and sense of mission.

What this means for you is that when you brand your business with the stunningly accurate power of archetypes, you immediately make your marketing easier and incredibly exciting because you’ll (finally!) clearly communicate who you are and what you’re all about to your audience.

Branding With Archetypes dives deep into the heart and soul of who you are. We see this shining through in highly successful people who’ve turned who they are into a brand they love.

Here are 3 examples to show you exactly what I mean:

Example: Angelina Jolie, Actress

Can you guess which archetype Angelina is? Well, in her early twenties Angelina was known for being a Rebel and she is still a voice for challenging authority (through the Jolie-Pitt Foundation she fights against global issues of injustice such as immigration, sexual violence and rape).

However, she channels most of her energy now through her true archetype of Humanitarian and is passionate about helping those less fortunate than herself. She is a special envoy for the United Nations and is noted for her extensive work in poorer countries of the world.

Example: Oprah Winfrey

What is Oprah’s speciality? Transformation! Oprah takes the raw material of life and turns it into something amazing through her charitable work and makeovers.

Her archetype is the Alchemist – the archetype of change and transformation.

Her message is clear and consistent: with enough determination ANYONE can live their best life.

Example: Me! Emma Hague

As a Ruler archetype (with some influence of the Hero) I’m passionate about taking control of my own future and creating a prosperous and successful family and community.

I’m a northern girl and tend to say it like it is!

I strongly believe that we are in control of (and responsible for) how our lives turn out and I’m passionate about helping others achieve the results they desire.

It’s important that I don’t attract clients looking for too much of a softly, softly, touchy, feely approach becasue that’s just not ‘me’ – I’m interested in helping people get the results they want quickly, not letting them off every week because their hamster’s died or the kids were off school or they’ve had a cold.

So it’s important I try to get that across in the words I use and the content I put out.

And I have the same wish for you and your business.

Which is why in my trainings we focus on how your brand is your personal archetype expressed through your business.

It’s personality that separates the ordinary from the extraordinary. Archetypes give you a highly creative yet easily structured way to create a brand rich with emotion and personality – one that’s authentic and unique to YOU.

To find out how to learn use your Signature and Influencing Archetypes to build your own authentic brand AND get your hands on my gorgeous Branding With Archetypes® Cards, check out my Ignite Mastermind & Coaching Programme at https://emmahague.leadpages.co/mastermind

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How Do I Find Clients Who Will Pay For My Services?

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One of the biggest mistakes I find small business owners making is fishing for clients in a pool of people who will just never pay for the services they’re offering.

We all want to help people, and it’s an unfortunate fact of life that many (MANY) of the people you could really help – you WANT to really help – will just never pay for that help.

And, actually, many of the people who need you MOST may fall into that group.

Sometimes they just don’t have any money and they have absolutely no means of accessing any money.

Sometimes they DO have money, they just don’t want to pay you.

It’s important that, as someone looking to build a successful business, you get to grips with this fact and face it head on.

Because there will always be more than enough people who DO have the money and DO want to pay you for your help.

The trick is focusing on getting in front of them.

Now, that’s not to say you shouldn’t help people who have no money, and we’ll come back to that later on.

But for now, let’s talk about finding those clients who can, and will, pay you handsomely for what you do. Enabling you to go ahead and create amazing packages that will bring them amazing results, and that will empower to charge what you’re really worth.

What we’re talking about here is finding your niche. Finding the people who love you, love what you do and how you do it and will happily pay you handsomely to help solve their problem.

In my Ignite Mastermind & Coaching Programme, we use a 6-Step formula called ‘Niche Breakthrough Secrets’ for this, and in this article I’m going to walk you through Step 4 in that process – working out whether your current niche is ‘Hot Or Not’.

In other words, are you going to have the success you really want fishing in the pool you’re currently fishing in or do you need to make some tweaks?

Let’s take a look:

  • Is your niche big enough to be viable?

Now let’s just take a step back for a minute and look at this realistically. Think about how many clients you actually NEED. (I would recommend you do that calculation if you haven’t already). If you’re offering packages that range in investment from, say, £99 to £ 5,000, I’d recommend you need to be looking at a pool of at least 10,000 people.

So do some basic research – are there likely to be 10,000 or more of your ideal client in the area you’re looking to serve?

Remember, we’re not saying you need to convert 10,000 into clients – just that there needs to be at least that many people out there for you to pull from.

If there are less than 10,000 you need to look at either broadening the scope of your main package, or widening the geographical area you’re going to cover.A

  • Are your ideas/services flowing upstream or downstream within your niche?

Flowing upstream within the culture that is already present within your niche means you are attempting to get them to change their mindset and beliefs about your topic.

Flowing downstream means your ideas are ones your niche is likely to accept. Any time you are flowing upstream within your niche’s culture you’ll find marketing and making sales difficult, time consuming and costly.

There are plenty of people who will already be ‘sold’ on the methods/approach you use. Focus on showing these people how you specifically can solve their problems and help them achieve the results they want, rather than trying to convince non-believers that your way is best.

  • Out of 10, how important will the people within your niche rank solving the problem you’re offering to solve?

Let’s be honest, there are a myriad of problems that we all live with on a day-to-day basis that we could just carry on living with forever, without ever getting to a point where we believe we need to fix it NOW.

So, out of 10, how important is it that your ideal clients get a solution to the problem they’re facing?

A 10 is a “must solve now” and 1 is “I can live with it for a long time, as is.” This ranking must be a EIGHT or higher to make your niche viable for you.

If it’s lower than 8 you need to either change your niche or change what you’re offering.

I’ve made the mistake numerous times over the years of nurturing (essentially giving free advice to) potential clients – sometimes over many weeks – who are ‘interested’ in what I’ve had to offer, but not at all ‘committed’ to taking action to solving their problem.

This can lead to a tremendous amount of wasted time and effort and huge disappointment when they eventually decide they’ve got better things to spend their money on.

Addressing this at the outset by purposely hunting out those people you know need to solve their problem urgently can eradicate this altogether.

  • Do the people within your niche have a history of investing in things of a similar nature to what you offer?

Remember that people will put up with a lot before they decide to invest in solving a problem – in fact, in these days of YouTube, Google and social media, they’ll likely try every avenue they can to solve the problem by themselves first.

So it’s best to focus your business on solving a problem your clients already prioritise as important.

The best measure for this is finding people who’ve already paid for something similar in the past.

Luckily, using those same online tools as well as other methods, it’s easy to do that nowadays.

  • Do you love them?

You will be spending a lot of time with the people in your niche – working out different ways to help them, designing amazing packages for them that create great results…

This means you need to love these people and what you are doing with them.

If you don’t, the motivation to do everything in your power to help them just will not be there and that leads to a poor attitude, poor client results, payment problems and complaints further down the line.

So let’s go back briefly to helping those people you really want to help who have no money.

The best advice I can give is to separate your business from your charity.

Yes, if you want to give your time and energy away for free, that’s your decision. But that’s not running a business.

If you want to have a separate charitable project, of course that’s fine.

Personally, I would suggest that you wait a few months until you actually have some cash in the bank, are able to pay your bills and have your cash warrior lines and savings well and truly under way, if you haven’t already (see my Money Breakthrough Method® training!).

Because if you haven’t got that sussed, giving away your time for free will just be counter-productive – you need to spend all the time you can finding paying clients while you’re getting your own money sorted, THEN you’ll have the luxury of being able to help others.

If you’re looking for a proven method to turn your business results around, offering step-by-step guidance and support, so you can finally Charge What You’re Worth And Get It and build a life you are 100% in love with, check out my Ignite Mastermind & Coaching Programme at https://emmahague.leadpages.co/mastermind

Feel Guilty Charging For Your Services?

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One of the most common reasons I see for business owners (and women in particular) undercharging, failing to chase late payers – and in some cases not charging AT ALL – is that they feel guilty ‘taking’ money from people who clearly need their help in one way or another.

I can totally relate to that… but this feeling could be sabotaging your business.

As someone who has made a career of helping people get set up in business with little or no money, help them make better money decisions and work their way out of debt, believe me, I have faced this dilemma myself on more than one occasion.

And it’s part of the reason why my first business failed. Overcoming it is one of the reasons my second business is a completely different animal.

While I could talk all day (literally) about charging what you’re worth I realise in a blog post I need to be brief!

So here’s my advice – and it’s 2-fold:

I) Giving away help for free (or almost free) very rarely creates the outcome your client is looking for. In my experience, clients only a) value your expertise and b) actually put what you’ve given them to good use, if they’ve had to make an investment of some kind.

If they haven’t, there’s no motivation to ‘make the changes they need to now’.

This has also been true of my own learning experience – I only actually started making progress in my business when I bit the bullet and invested in training. All the free PDFs and tele-classes and webinars I’d downloaded before that had certainly given me food for thought, but it was only when I was thinking ‘Okaaay, I’ve just put £1,200 on my credit card – I’d better make this bloody well work and earn some money’ for the first time that implementation started to happen for me.

Yes, give away a part of your knowledge – a really useful part, that potential clients will get true and instant value from… but then show them the transformation they could get by investing in your full service.

ii) Separate your business from your charity. You want to help people. I want to help people. If we didn’t have that to drive us, we wouldn’t (shouldn’t) be in business for ourselves.

But you can’t help people the way you want to – the way they need you to – if your business doesn’t survive. You have to earn money and most reasonable people understand that.

If they ask you to give away your services for free, or as a trade-off or at a discounted rate, they don’t value what you’re offering and probably won’t get the results you want for them anyway.

Asking for money can be uncomfortable to start with but that can be changed with a few tweaks to the way you think about money and your own value.

If people really want what you have, in my experience, they will find the funds they need.

Once you start earning good money, you can choose to generously support whichever charity helps those you most want to help.

The ripple-effect that occurs when women start to increase their self-worth and net-worth and to create more money is truly inspiring – for their family, friends, colleagues, charities they support… almost everyone they connect with on an emotional level.

So understand the value of what you’re providing, charge what you’re worth and you’ll be able to help more people than you think.

Charge What You’re Worth And Get It

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Fact: The vast majority of small business owners struggle with pricing.

More specifically, the vast majority of small business owners undercharge for their services.

Common statements I hear on a daily basis from my coaching clients go something like this…

“My clients can’t afford to pay more than they do now…”

“I won’t get any new clients if I charge more than I do now…”

“People will think I’m taking advantage of them if I charge more…”

While I could talk all day (literally) about charging what you’re worth, I need to be fairly brief here, so here are the 3 biggest reasons most people undercharge, and how to make sure you don’t:

  1. When anyone starts out in business and needs to know how to set their fees, they look around to see what everyone else is charging.

Or maybe they look at what their own trainer or coach or mentor charges.

This is a BAD idea.

The vast majority of people who have their own business undercharge.

So if they’re undercharging and you’re looking to them as an example to base your fees on, you’re going to undercharge too!

What’s worse is, because you see that they’ve been in business longer than you, they’ve had more clients than you, have more testimonials than you – you set your fees lower than theirs.

Or maybe you go the other way and think “Well, I’ve got a qualification that they don’t have and I’ve created a better website so I’ll charge a bit more than them.”

But guess what? You’re still undercharging – because you started from a low base.

Instead, I teach my clients to a) work backwards from the amount they want to earn each year and b) make sure they create packages that are worth at least the amount they need to charge to meet their goals.

  1. Fear of not getting any business.

Fact: Low fees do not necessarily mean you’ll get more clients – in fact very often the opposite’s true.

Think about it…what are you saying about your services if you undercharge?

You’re telling potential clients that you don’t really believe in what you do. You don’t believe your services are as good as someone who charges more than you.

Is that really how you feel?

Instead of having low fees to get more clients, you can create a smaller package that’s more limited in scope than your main offer, but that gives potential clients a lower entry point to experience working with you.

  1. Fear of what other people think.

There’s just something buried deep inside us as human beings (and women are more prone to this than men, interestingly) that wants to be liked.

I can totally relate to that…but this feeling could well be sabotaging your financial future.

As someone who has made a career of helping people get set up in business with little or no money, help them make better money decisions and work their way out of debt, believe me, I have faced this dilemma myself on more than one occasion.

And it’s part of the reason why my first business failed. Overcoming it is one of the reasons my second business is a completely different animal.

It’s incredibly common for small business owners to be held back because of concern about what someone else might think – maybe it’s a partner or a spouse or a colleague or a current client.

And at the end of the day you have to

  1. recognise it for what it is
  2. make a decision

Are you going to accept it and let that fear determine how your business pans out or are you going to address that fear so you can free yourself to charge what you’re really worth and earn more money?

And that’s something only you can decide.

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Here are the 4 biggest pricing mistakes I see people making in their businesses and how you can avoid them:

  1. Losing control of when you discuss/reveal your fees

This is incredibly important, and it’s one of the reasons I suggest you don’t show your fees on your website IF customers are not buying online.

There’s only one good time to tell someone what you charge, and that’s after you’ve had an in-depth conversation with them about the problem they’re experiencing.

It’s important to clarify if and how you can help them first of all but, most importantly, what it’s really worth to them to solve this problem.

If you quote your fee before you’ve had this discussion, you (and they) are just guessing what they need and how you can help them.

Quoting your fee too early can lead to you being judged as being too expensive or not enough value – and quite often at this point clients will try to put their own package together to suit the fee they had in mind!

And that serves no-one.

  1. Doubting Your Fees

If you doubt your fees then you’re probably focusing on the processes and features of the service you provide, rather than the benefits or results that clients get from working with you.

This is you if you’re inclined to start telling them

  • about the different kinds of products you use
  • what qualifications you have
  • the broad range of skills you have
  • what awards you’ve won

This is a big turn-off for potential clients because until they’ve decided they really want to work with you all they’re thinking is “Nice…But how does that help me solve my problem?”

Switch your focus instead to the benefits they’ll get from working with you so your client hears what’s important to them which is ‘what is the change that’s going to happen for me and what are the results of that change?’.

  1. Apologising, over-explaining or justifying your fee.

Now, from experience, I can tell you that this often happens in conjunction with pricing mistake number 1.

It also tends to show up if you’re feeling doubtful or guilty or just not confident that they’ll say yes – it’s very tempting to start explaining your fee but it is crucial that you don’t do that.

And the only way I found to combat that to start with, if this happens to you, is to say your fee then to force yourself to say nothing.

Stop talking and sit back while your client then deals with whatever’s coming up for them.

Let them lead the conversation from there.

  1. The 4th pricing mistake is charging by the hour (or session) instead of creating packages.

I’ve been there and done the hourly pricing thing and I can tell you, if you’re charging by the hour or session you are causing yourself 2 problems you don’t need to have:

  1. There is potential for clients to compare your hourly rate to someone else’s (even though your expertise, your knowledge and your expertise differ greatly)
  2. There is potential for clients to question the number of hours or sessions it takes you to complete the service you’re providing

Each of these can lead to you feeling like you have to justify what you’re charging or even revising your fees down if someone challenges you.

Creating a fixed price package and agreeing the pricing in advance completely eliminates this problem. It also makes your cash flow easier to forecast and is a proven way to help your clients achieve better results.

The far-reaching results you provide for your clients are, in reality, priceless.

Help maintain your own credibility and reputation, and that of your profession/industry as a whole, by making sure you charge what you’re really worth.

You can do that with me (as a part of building a unique, authentic business that you LOVE) in my Ignite “6-Steps To 6-Figures” Mastermind Programme.

I run it 4 times a year and you can read more and register for the latest intake now at support@emmahague.com