3 Ways to Raise Your Prices Without Losing Clients

In this episode of The Pilates Business Podcast, host Seran Glanfield dives into one of the most challenging (and often avoided) topics for studio owners—raising prices. Speaking directly to overwhelmed pilates studio owners and boutique fitness business operators, Seran shares three powerful strategies to increase your pricing without losing clients or damaging trust. She unpacks the common fears around pricing, why undercharging is keeping your pilates business stuck, and how to confidently position your services for long-term profitability. 

If you’re tired of working long hours, struggling with inconsistent revenue, and feeling undervalued, this episode offers a smarter, more sustainable approach to growing your boutique fitness business while protecting your community and your income.

Learn more about Thrive and book a discovery call at www.springthree.com/thrive

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Transcript

The Fear Behind Underpricing

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Have you ever looked at your pricing and you just know that it's priced too low? And then immediately thought, but if I raise my prices, what if everybody leaves? So you stay where you are, and perhaps you add a few more classes to the schedule, a few more sessions to the schedule, and you just keep working harder, teaching a little bit more, teaching a little bit more, and you're not getting paid at the end of the month, you're not getting paid at the end of the quarter, and you're not getting paid at the end of the year. And you're quietly wondering to yourself, how long can I do this for? And I think there's a reality that a lot of studio owners, a lot of business owners, in fact, don't often realize until later on, which is that raising your prices doesn't make you lose clients. But I have seen that raising your prices the wrong way can be detrimental to your business. So in this episode, I want to take you through some of the most powerful shifts, the ways of thinking that will help you to increase your pricing without triggering client drop-off. And more importantly, without compromising the amazing community that you have worked so hard to build. Well, hi there, I'm Sarah Glanfield. I'm a business and marketing strategist just for boutique fitness studio owners like you. If you're ready to be inspired and make a bigger impact, you're in the right place. All you need are a few key strategies, the right mindset, and some support along the way. Join me as I share the real life insights that will help you grow a sustainable and profitable studio. This is the Pilates Business Podcast. Well, hey there, and welcome back to the Pilates Business Podcast. I'm Saren Glamfield. I'm the founder of Spring 3 Studio Business Consulting. And every single day of the week, I am here helping studio owners to build and grow a profitable and robust boutique fitness studio business. I'm sharing with you some of the insights, some of the tools, tactics, resources, and strategies that I have used over the last decade plus of standing side by side with hundreds of studio owners around the world, helping them build a profitable business that they love being a part of, that they love leading. And I want to talk today about something that comes up, I would say, almost always, uh, when we are working with studio owners every single week, I would say. And yes, pricing is a big sort of piece of the puzzle. It often is the piece that we spend a lot of time worrying about. And oftentimes there is this sort of worry in the back of your mind where, probably more often than than you'd like to admit, um, where you're thinking about your pricing. And what I see very often with studio owners, especially when they are also sort of the heart and soul of the business, especially when they've built the business from the ground up, and especially when they absolutely love what they do and they love to teach and they love to share it with their clients and the members of their community. And I know that you are exceptional at what you do. I know you've invested in yourself, in your teaching skills, in your continuing education. I know that what you do changes people's lives. I know that your clients love you. And yet you might be wondering whether your pricing reflects that. And oftentimes, honestly, it doesn't. And it often doesn't, not because you don't want to charge more, but because it probably feels a little bit risky. It probably feels like that one decision could mean that you destroy everything that you've worked so incredibly hard to build. And we're also often working up against your how do you navigate that within the framework and the context of the relationships that you've built, right? You don't want your clients to question your value. So it's actually easier to keep your pricing low or keep it where it is or to not change it. And so you perhaps stay where you are with your pricing, and perhaps you're staying underpriced. And perhaps you compensate that by working more. And yet you sit there and you watch other studios come along and open up and charge more than you and wonder how it's possible that they can, I mean, honestly, get away with that, right? When here you are working more classes, more hours, putting more into your business, worrying more about what's next. And this is leading you to sort of perhaps a feeling of this is not really what I signed up for. And I think that there is a deeper issue here. There's often a lot of deeper issues here when it comes to pricing and money and in studio business and teaching. And I think that a lot of folks uh often think it's just about numbers, right? But it's not. Pricing is a really powerful marketing tool. It is about positioning, it's about perception, it's about experience. And there's a lot in there. And I think until you get really clear about a lot of those pieces, pricing and raising pricing will always feel scary. So I want to walk you through some of the things that might help you to raise your prices in a way that actually strengthens your business and some of the things that you might want to avoid if you want to keep your clients for the foreseeable future, at least. And I think the first thing was that we want to start stop thinking about price increase. You know, people come to me and they say, I know I need to raise my prices. And I say, Yes, perhaps you do, but it's not just this sort of blanket raise everything by X. You know, that's the other question I get asked a lot is how much should I raise my prices by? What's the general number? And the reality is there is no general number. It's to do with your business and a lot to do with what those things I just mentioned about positioning and uh perception and experience. And there's a lot of other pieces to it. So there is not sort of a generic one size fits all. You must increase your pricing by this across the board every single year. Okay. And I want to get you out of that frank. I mean, that's a one way of, I mean, I'm not going to say you can't do that. You can do it that way. It's a very linear way of thinking when it comes to pricing and business. I think there's a lot more sophisticated ways to do it. And I think in the in the environment that we're in today, I think we have to evolve our thinking around pricing and be a little bit more sophisticated in the market that we're in with the competition that we have. So we want to stop just thinking about price increase and we start thinking about the value evolution, right? And I think that a lot of times we think it's just like this flip uh of a switch, um, where like one day your classes are$25 and the next day they're 30. And then we just sort of like close our eyes and hope for the best, right? Hope that clients just accept it. And I think that from a client's perspective, when they see a price increase, a lot of the way that they, the perception they have is either that nothing has changed, the same class, same experience, but just a higher price, right? And that's often where we often see resistance. And things may have changed, but they may not have noticed. And I think that we have to be really careful about how we communicate with our clients. And we have to set this the these sort of baseline communication activities in order to be able to showcase and continue to showcase the amazing impact that your classes have on your clients. And so if the only email your client's going to get from you for the whole year is your pricing increase email, then they're gonna react to that, probably not in such a terribly good way. And so instead, we want to shift your pricing as your business evolves, right? So not randomly, not reactively, not because you haven't done it in six years, but because the reality is that it's likely your studio has evolved. The studio probably is not the same studio that it was a year ago. You've certainly improved as a teacher. You've certainly improved in terms of your operations. Your coaching, your, your, your, um, your training and your coaching of your team is probably a little bit sharper, a little bit stronger. You've probably invested a little bit more in your community. Perhaps you've invested in your equipment, in the studio itself. And the whole experience probably has evolved, right? Because we can't typically just stay stagnant in our business. And that's why I say that. So we see that your business is evolving, and we see that perhaps your pricing should evolve, that evol should evolve with that evolution as well. And so instead of sort of beginning with how much do I raise my prices by, we want to think about, okay, well, how have how has my business evolved? How does my business impact my clients? How has that shifted over time as well? And does my pricing today reflect that evolution? And then we start to see that this is actually quite a different conversation. And you're starting to root this price change into something that is deeper than just a number. And it should be deeper than a number because then you're going to tap into some of these other pieces that are actually going to make a pricing increase successful. Now, the other part of this is we often make this assumption that if I raise my prices, my clients won't be able to afford it. So I want to dive into this a little bit because there's a lot to unpack here. Now, first of all, we do also we what we've seen in at Spring 3 time after time, year after year, is that your most loyal clients, the ones who show up consistently, the ones who love your classes, who feel a part of your community, they're not there because you're the cheapest option. They're there because of how your studio makes them feel. That connection they have, the expertise they get, the safety they feel by being taught by teachers just like you, the consistency they feel in your um in the way that you teach, um, and the progress they've made and the results they've gotten. And so what happens often is that when you underprice your services, you unintentionally create this mismatch. Because those highest value clients, the ones that you love the most, aren't just sort of looking for the cheapest option. They're looking for the option that is most aligned with what they're looking for from their movement practice, right? Oftentimes, underpricing can actually erode that trust. Because sometimes there's this sort of concept of what's the catch, right? Why is this price so low? Why, why am I gonna buy a 10 pack and then this studio closes? This seems crazy to be this cheap. Will the studio still be here next year? So when you're avoiding raising prices and when you're avoiding having your price reflect the value and the impact of what you do, it's often more about protecting, I'm gonna say it, sorry, protecting your own perhaps discomfort, not about necessarily protecting your clients. And this is like a whole world, you guys, of that I could go and talk about for a long time. But this is often what we are actually doing. We're actually protecting ourselves because we are concerned and we have a lot of fear. We're not actually protecting our clients from higher prices. When we think about pricing and we're pricing right, it's not a betrayal of your clients, right? There's a lot of emotions here tied up around all of this. It's not like you're betraying your clients. And I think that for those of you who have really strong relationships with your clients, you often feel like that. We I hear often studio owners will say to me, Oh, this client's been with me since day one. I can't increase my pricing on that person. And the reality is that if you're then losing money on that person, you're not doing them or you a favor at all. So it's a commitment to the longevity of your business and to be able to continue to deliver what you do so well to those clients, especially those long-standing clients who clearly want to keep coming back. It's a commitment to them and to your business and to yourself that you can continue to do this amazing thing that everybody loves. So it's not a betrayal and it's not about necessarily we often kind of mask it in sort of we want to save our clients from this extra cost. It's often more about our own discomfort as well. So let's talk a little bit about what are the fails that I see. Because I there are there are times where I see studio owners completely mismanage a price increase, and I don't want to see you do that. Um, so I don't want you to stay with your prices too low for too long and be undervalued. I think that does not help you in this industry at all, and it definitely steals your profit. Um, so we don't want that. But we also don't want to be haphazard or create issues with a pricing increase. And there's a way to do it where it doesn't. It is a way to do it where it's actually a piece of cake. It's what we see more often because inside of Thrive, we coach our studio owners through that process sort of happens in a in a way that really only positively impacts their business on every level, except for the people that don't listen to that advice. And that's what I'm going to talk about next. So the the price increases that don't um create a problem, that don't create that client drop-off, because I do know that that is the biggest fear. And it should be, because then when it is handled wrong, that is exactly what will happen. You will lose people if you handle a price increase poorly. But that's not always to do, isn't usually because of the actual price itself. There's only been a couple of instances where I've seen uh studio owners really ramp up their pricing in in an extreme way. And that that does tend to sort of rub clients the wrong way. So, you know, if you're looking to double your prices overnight, yes, you're probably going to lose clients. If you're going to, you know, make your pricing so that you know that it is going to be an a huge extra outlay for your clients, yes, you probably will lose clients. And and and no amount of improved communication or or uh will save you from that. You know, there is a limit to what people can spend. So we want to be careful about that. So, and when I say careful, I mean, yes, you're you're when you're increasing incrementally, you know, each year, you're usually in a good spot. Generally, what I see that, you know, we're thoughtful about that. But it's when we see price increases of 100% that we see there's a big problem. Otherwise, it's not typically because of the price point or the price itself that people leave. It's usually because of how that price change is introduced. And I will say that often because we have a lot of anxiety around pricing and because we have a lot of fear around it, a lot of times pricing increases is sort of like a last-minute announcement. There's no context, there's no narrative, there's no sort of like leadership or positioning conversation. And so clients are left to sort of fill in the gaps for themselves. Um, and that's where that friction happens. The most robust, strongest businesses will do it differently and they'll bring their clients along for the journey. And they'll anchor that price and that price change in the evolution and the growth of their experience and the experience that they get in the studio, in the results, in the improvements, and in the what's next. And so they'll create this understanding as they're creating this change, right? Because the reality of scaling a studio is that as your business grows, there is a little bit more complexity in terms of more clients, a few more moving parts, a few more teachers, but also a wider degree of expectations. And so without very intentional communication and leadership around things and really everything in the business, but when it especially when it comes to pricing, even the most positive of changes can feel disruptive. So the question isn't will clients leave if I raise prices? The better question is have I shown them why this change makes sense? Have I led them to an understanding about why this change is an obvious and logical step for me as a business owner, as a business, to lead my business forward. And that is truly the difference between what will protect your client base and make sure that you always have those people in your business and having a drop-off of clients. So what protects retention is intentional communication. So it's not just about numbers, it's not just about revenue, it's not just about profit. This is again one of those evolutions that you make as a business owner because staying underpriced truly has its consequences on your business. Typically, if you're staying underpriced, you're usually also teaching many of the classes yourself because you're not building in a margin that allows you to hire. And so you're teaching too many classes, you delay hiring, you avoid investing in those systems, and you stay very, very stuck in the day-to-day. And over time, you can't scale coming from that place. Your business will be very challenging to grow. It won't be easier at all. And we've seen this happen a lot already across the industry. We've got studios that have filled their classes and now hitting those new kind of constraints that are holding them back. They're at capacity limits, they have a strain on the leadership, on the owner of the business, and there is a little bit more complexity from an operations perspective. And if the pricing doesn't evolve alongside that, we see two things happen. We see growth stalling, and we also see from a revenue perspective, for sure, but also we see growth stalling because you're not building in capacity into your business. And so we are creating more chaos and we're creating more overwhelm. And we're not really designing our business for growth. So raising your pricing honestly isn't just about making more money. It's about building a business that can actually support its own next level. So the question becomes are you pricing for where your business is today, or maybe even was last year, or are you priced for what is coming next? Okay. So let's bring this all together. I want to talk, I mean, we could talk about this for hours, you guys, hours and hours. And I think it's it's important to talk about it, honestly, because this is something that comes up. And even though you may tackle this once, I would say that, you know, when we come to the having a conversation about pricing in every business that we work with inside of Thrive, there are always lots of questions. And it's important to raise those questions to ask them and to ask them to someone who has context for all of these different moving pieces that makes your business and that pricing successful. So raising your pricing without losing clients isn't about finding the perfect tactic. You'll hear a lot of, you know, throwaway comments and random ideas from a lot of people. Like just raise your prices is another common one. Like it's, it's, it's, it, it's not the solve. It is not the problem solve. Raising your pricing without losing clients isn't about finding the perfect pricing tactic, but it does come down to sort of three very fundamental shifts. One is that your pricing has to reflect your value and your changing value, not just these random increases. Second, remember your best clients, they're not looking for the cheapest in town, but they are looking for a studio that is aligned with what they need. And I think the the clarity that you can offer around what you deliver in your studio, and the more that you are able to refine your communication around that, the easier your pricing will always be. Okay. I should say your pricing conversations will always be. And then third, price increases in themselves does not make you lose clients, unless, of course, that caveat I mentioned of like multiplying your pricing, increasing your pricing by 100% or three times, right? That you will see pre-people drop off in that scenario. But typically, if you're sensible with the level of increase, pricing increase in of itself does not create the churn. But what does create the churn is if you, as the leader, are unable to really communicate that in a way that is sophisticated and smart and leveling with your clients. Because underneath all of this, pricing really is about your leadership and the way that you see your business, your role in it, and the role of money in your business. And all of that really determines how you show up, how you grow, and how robust and how sustainable your business actually is. Because if you're overworked and underpaid and stuck in the weeds, then honestly, it's not always just about the pricing and increasing your pricing might not fix the problem. It's often to do with the way that you've designed the business. And that's exactly the kind of thing that we work on inside of Thrive. So we help studio owners just like you build that business that is not only profitable, but also highly sustainable, where your pricing, your systems, your team, your marketing, and of course your role all work really closely together. So you can grow your income, work as much or even as little as you like, and really enjoy the business that you have built. So if you're ready for that, then you can learn more at springthree.com forward slash thrive. And that's exactly where you can go to book a quick discovery call to learn a bit more about exactly how you can get started inside of Thrive today and what strategies and tools and resources we will help you to use and implement in order to build the business the way that you want. I hope this help episode was helpful to you as you go about building your boutique fitness studio business. If it was, I'd love it if you could go to wherever you're listening to this and rate and review the podcast. And I will catch you again next week.com and check out my free resources that will help you run a profitable and fulfilling studio business. And before you go, one last reminder there is no one way to do what you do, only your way. So, whatever it is that you want to do, create, or offer, you've got this. Thanks again for joining me today and have a wonderful rest of your day.