Increase your prices, easy said but It’s hard, isn’t it. Scary even.

Early days in my business I had a client say to me a couple of times: ‘don’t ever bother increasing your prices, you won’t get any more work, people will only ever pay you what they can afford anyway. It’ll just mean I’ll have less of your hours’.

That put me off a bit and so I stuck with what I was charging for longer than I really wanted to.

But, do you know what – why should someone else dictate my worth?

What this client was actually saying was: ‘I can’t afford to pay any more because I am not earning enough in my own business’.

If I’d have put my prices up when she first made the ‘don’t ever bother…’ comment I’d have been better off almost immediately anyway.

Here’s why:

I was then charging £25 an hour and she had 8 hours a month (£200)

If I put her up to £30 an hour she would have only been able to have 6.5 hours of my time. I’m not worse off, in fact I am better off because I now have 1.5 hours free for an extra client who will also pay £30 an hour.

What if I lose clients?

It might happen, I can’t guarantee it won’t, but if you don’t up your rates you’re never going to earn more money or be able to take on higher paying clients because you’re stuck with the clients who pay the lower rate.

You can wait until a client naturally disappears and then up the price for new enquiries. But why would you let someone else dictate your feast?

How to do it

Start by telling that client, who you really won’t miss, that the rate is going up as of dd/mm/yy (you set the notice period – your business, your rules!) and say that you look forward to continuing to work with them.

No apologies, no explanation. You’re not sorry for wanting to have a good life, you also owe no one any explanations as to how or why you run your business as you do.

Update your website

It’s mind over matter here, but update your website with your new rates / prices so they’re out there on the world wide web. It’s a great way to see that your whole business doesn’t implode when you move some numbers around and will give you a little more confidence to say ‘I charge this’.

If you need any more help to increase your prices or growing your business then I can help: catherine@catherinegladwyn.co.uk