The Abundant Practitioner Podcast By Dr Tilean
Welcome to our podcast channel. I'm Dr. Tilean, a Chartered Psychologist and Behaviour Change Expert turned Business Mentor for Practitioners, Coaches and Consultants who want to start and scale their own purpose-led business so they can live a soul-nourished and profitable life without compromise!
The Abundant Practitioner Podcast By Dr Tilean
Ep 54: From Scarcity to Abundance: Pricing Your Services Right
What if your pricing strategy could not only sustain your business but also boost client commitment and outcomes? On this episode of the Abundant Practitioner Podcast, we tackle the often daunting challenge of setting prices as psychologists, therapists, and counsellors transition into the online coaching world. We'll dismantle outdated narratives around low pricing and sliding scales, revealing how these beliefs can erode confidence and undermine your value. Learn how to shift your mindset from scarcity to abundance, recognising the substantial skills and accomplishments you already possess.
We'll also explore the deep-seated limiting beliefs that many service-based professionals, particularly in healing and well-being sectors, struggle with. Feelings of inadequacy and doubts about one's qualifications can hinder effective pricing. By grounding yourself in your expertise and considering strategies such as scholarship opportunities or a healthy profit margin, you can ensure your services remain accessible while also providing for your personal and business needs. Discover how financial success can be re-framed as a tool for broader service and support.
Finally, understand the power of value-based pricing over time-based pricing and how it can transform both your practice and your clients' lives. We'll discuss the importance of higher investments leading to greater commitment and better outcomes, as well as how to energetically align with your price points. By the end of this episode, you'll be equipped to confidently articulate the comprehensive value of your services, from emotional to spiritual benefits, helping clients fully appreciate the worth of their investment. Tune in and start believing in the value you provide!
Thank you for joining me today on The Abundant Practitioner Podcast. I’m so glad you carved out this time for yourself because you 100% deserve soul-nourishing and soul-aligned success!
If you’re keen to dive deeper into my world, here are my socials where you can learn more about how I specifically help Health & Wellbeing practitioners start and scale their own soul-aligned and profitable coaching business. As a fellow practitioner who has been operating in the online coaching world since 2015, I’m excited to help you successfully navigate it too. You can also reach out to me on these platforms, if you have any questions!
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Welcome to our podcast designed for psychologists, therapists and counsellors who want to take their business online and live a soul, nourished and profitable life without compromise. If you want to know the secrets used by practitioners just like you to navigate the global e-learning market successfully, then you're in the right place. I'm Dr Talib, chartered Psychologist, business Mentor and your host, and welcome to the Abundant Practitioner Podcast. Overcoming pricing fears right. As a practitioner, it is common for many to have been trained to see that being um, lowly cost right service, or being, um, you know, a average priced service right. Or having a sliding scale, or you know, those types of ways of working are like the done deal for our profession. And then they slide into whether it's doing their business or doing a job, with that same narrative, right. And so now, even if they were to go out to decide to develop their own business, whether that's going to be a coaching business or whatever, those narratives then shift into that new, normal right. And so it's like, okay, I'm going to do something different, I'm going to work and do, maybe build a coaching business, for example, but they're still bringing those old stories, those old patterns, those old beliefs into the new business that they're creating and so they sell out this whole new business, maybe one that really lights them up in terms of its mission led. They're like this is who I really want to help. This is the ways I want to help them. But there's still that underlying view that actually like how much would it be per session? How many hours is this person going to see me? Right, and then they're like you know, I often see people trying to stuff things into their programs, so they're creating these. They decided, actually, actually I'm going to move from charging per session to charging per package, but they're still thinking per hours, right, like hour facing work, yeah, like how many hours am I actually going to see this person? How many hours are they going to have access to me? Right, let me use that to kind of work out the number of what's a viable amount to charge, based on the hourly rate that I previously had, and maybe I might up it by five or ten or twenty dollars if I go at a push right or pounds right to to kind of increase me, because I haven't ever had a pay rise or given myself a pay rise ever.
Speaker 1:Despite going on numerous courses and trainings and continuing to professionally develop themselves. They've never increased their, their fees, they've never increased anything, right, and so they develop these packages, but they're they're based still on these narratives, right, and so these packages, now and then to to think about increasing the price of the packaging, right? They're thinking, ok, well, what else could I put in this? All right, maybe I could. Could I put some meditations in it? Could I put some breath work in it? Could I? You know, maybe should I do this course so I can upskill here and I can put that in it and I can say I'm worth more because of this. Should I do this qualification? Then I can say I'm worth more because of that.
Speaker 1:And so they fall into this trap of record of believing that the only way that they can increase their price point is by either increasing the amount of stuff that they are giving this person to help them with their transformation, or increasing the number of of academic qualifications and accolades that they have themselves, so that they feel like, oh, okay, I, I can, I guess I could command an extra however many, right, however much right. And I really, and I really want to help you break that way of thinking. If that is you, or you've held that Because one I want you to know that there are people already less qualified than you out there charging way more than you. All right, so number one, and not that that's the reason to be doing it. But I just want you to recognize that, like you are so skilled, you are so like wherever you are, and we can all upskill, right. We've got a whole life to continue to upskill in a variety of different ways, but wherever you are today, you have a whole host of skills and knowledge and experience within you. You have a whole host of people that you have supported, the life changes you've made yourself, and I think it's important to get a real recognition of actually who I am, what I've accomplished to date, right, what transformations I've seen my own life go through, who have I helped right? The feedback I've got back, like all of that.
Speaker 1:Just really take stock of your own internal references, right, and I use that term references right, because it is right, it's not hopeful thinking. I'm not asking you here to lean on, to wishy-washy thinking right Of like, just standing up and saying I am great, I am amazing, I am great right, with no like reference to back it up. I'm asking you to look within yourself and say, wow, like, what have I accomplished, right? What have I got through? What have I? What certificates, workshops, books have I read podcasts, I've attended ones that I've spoke on right things, that I've written publications, I have right, certificates, workshops, training experiences like there's so many things to you, right. Then, not to mention life experiences that you've come through people that you've helped so many references. You have a stack of them, yeah, and you want to be looking at what you do have and not what you don't have.
Speaker 1:So sometimes people go I talk about this and then their mind is so used to going to what they don't have or what extra they need that when I say these things, they're like oh, she said book, I don't have a book, maybe she'd write a book, right, like you know, I want you to like, look at what you have, because you have a lot already. Yeah, like you have a lot already and you need to ground yourself in recognizing, like there is a lot already to me. There is a lot already to me and it doesn't matter as well when you graduated. That's another limiting belief, that kind of creeps in as somebody saying, well, I just finished my last course, like yesterday. Right. What about all the other things that happened before yesterday? You know what I mean day, right. What about all the other things that happened before yesterday? You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:So, really try to not allow yourself to grab on to something that would be a limitation, to say that again like you're not qualified enough, you're not enough. Right, you have to create that stamp of approval yourself and stamp yourself as enough right now. Right, because you are enough right now and that doesn't mean that you won't ever continue to upskill yourself, right, I think every person should continue to upskill themselves, every single person, one of us. I think learning is a great thing, right, but it's also to recognize that, where I am right now, I am enough and I'm able to journey and help people in a certain way. Yeah, so very, very, very important about recognizing that, right, I am absolutely enough. Right, I'm beautifully made. I'm absolutely enough. Right, everything that I have already is a blessing and I have a gift to be able to share to the world. Blessing, and I have a gift to be able to share to the world, right, and I'm thank you, thank you, thank you, and courageously stand behind that and start sharing that. Yeah, and so then that comes to okay, who am I here to help and how am I here to help them, right? This, as well, is like.
Speaker 1:The another limiting belief that can come up in terms of pricing is, like you know, again related to this am I enough?
Speaker 1:Is like, oh, have I healed myself enough?
Speaker 1:Have I?
Speaker 1:You know, maybe I'm helping people with their internal healing, right? Have I done enough of my own healing? Or maybe I shouldn't be charging here, or you know? Or you know, have I? Maybe you're helping somebody in terms of their health and well-being, right? Like, oh, but you know my health, I felt a bit unwell two weeks ago, so maybe I'm not right, you know, like, just again, like, ground yourself into perspective of how much you have already upskilled yourself in that particular area, right, and by you starting to lead a transformation with other people in that area doesn't mean that you're doing it from a place of, hey, I'm high and almighty and I've got no more work to do in this area, right, and we want to ground ourselves back into actually, right, this is an area I'm passionate about, I'm dedicated about it, I'm continuing learning about it, I'm continuing to grow in this area, but there's already so much growth.
Speaker 1:I've done that I can help you, right, I can help you with what you have not yet accomplished or what you are still working through. I'm in a position to be able to help you, and so grounding yourself in that as well can help you, because, honestly, a lot of the pricing, nervousness and fears that come up is is sometimes around that I'm not enough, I won't like, I've not done enough work, I'm not skilled enough, I've not done this before. Who am I to do this this way? Right, it can come up around that, yeah. The other thing that can come up as well is what we shared earlier is around like, well, if I charge per transformation right, and I'm charging now, you know, to come and work with me, my services, it's a three-figure, four-figure or even five-figure investment to come into my services at once. Right, then I can't help certain people, right, right? And so then the narrative comes up in the mind in terms of, like, well, if I, I really want to help as many people as possible and I want to help those people that don't even have the ability to financially help themselves, so, therefore, I can't possibly position my, my pricing in this way, because, therefore, all these people are going to lose out, right. But in the sense of it is like you can totally just rearrange your business to be able to, if you want to serve people in other ways.
Speaker 1:How about creating a business that has a profit margin to be able to give back to people that need help, right? How about being able to create a business which has, potentially, every 10 clients? You take a certain number of people in on a scholarship? You could do that too, right? So there's certain things that you can do rather than continue to price yourself out and price yourself low in a way that you are potentially not meeting your own needs, which is a whole nother topic about you yourself being a soul nourish practitioner. Are you meeting your needs that you need financially for your business, financially for you personally right? That is also part of soul nourishment.
Speaker 1:When we think about the Maslow hierarchy of needs, one of those is, like you know, the basic needs. Right is finances. Can you accommodate yourself, right? Is there more to give? Right? Do we have overflow, and so, instead of reducing down to be able to say, okay, I've got to reduce, right? How about you expand? Right and and really see yourself for who you are and what you've accomplished so far and have that, that brand that is positioning themselves as I'm a top tier brand.
Speaker 1:I'm a qualified professional out here in the coaching world that has skills to be able to serve people in these transformations in this way, right, and therefore you can remove yourself from the masses and position yourself here Right. So you want to be able to remove yourself from the masses by saying I am this professional, right, and then this is who I am, this is the skills I have. This is why I why I'm going to stand behind serving this particular group or doing what I'm going to do, right, I'm going to stand confidently here and, as I do that and work with a proportion of the population in doing that right, I'm also going to create a business that has profit margin to be able to overflow and do other things, should I wish to. Right, it doesn't have to be a requirement. That's a way of thinking, as opposed to not step in there because the narrative is being called out that actually, if I do that, I just can't serve anybody, which is simply not true unless you decide it to be yeah.
Speaker 1:So it's very, very important about recognizing that actually, if I position my business and myself to be expansive and be able to do more, receive more, have more, be more. Right, there's more that can happen from there. That's more goodness that can happen, right, you know. And so just expanding the mind of recognizing that actually making more money is a good thing and I think it's very important to kind of infuse that narrative into yourself, infuse that energetic belief and understanding that me, being able to make more money is a good thing. It's a thing of service as well, and we talk about what that means in terms of how you charge and stuff, but it's just understanding that it can be of service to you, your business, your clients, your overall mission, by allowing yourself to just energetically understand that, right, making money within my business is a good thing, right, it's a very good thing, right, I want to be expansive. I want you to be able to talk to yourself in those ways.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm really recognizing that this is of importance, right, and there's things that need to be covered within business. It's not just about paying yourself, right. Right, it's about continuous learning, investing in that. It's about investing in the services that run your business, whether you have a website or email system or whatever. Right, these are things that need to be paid for, right, you know it's about recognizing that there's going to be tax payments right, there's going to be. Maybe you have team, you have an assistant, you have people that are helping you Right, there's things that require a cost to be covered, yeah, and so when you really start to take a CEO mindset around being in business, you have a skill, a gift, right, that you can really help people, and a skill that is a service, right, and that people want to, that will feel delighted to invest in that service and gain that support, right, you really start to shift the internal perspective you might have around that, yeah.
Speaker 1:The other thing I want to say as well is, like, when you are thinking about charging per transformation, right, you are thinking about what does the person that is coming to me, what are they challenged with and where do they want to get to right, and what would that? What's going to be the most helpful things to include for them to have that journey, not what do I need to stuff in it so I can charge more because there's more hours being involved, right, like what needs necessary for them to have the most impactful transformational journey that they can have, where they are supported and held through resistance. Where are they supported to have the breakthroughs that they need to have? Right, you wanna be thinking about it in that way, right, how long would I need to work with them, right? What would that look like? Yeah, right, what would that look like? Yeah, now, what would their outcomes look like? What impacts would it have on their own life? How would it impact the lives of others around them, if any Right? Friendships, children, family, workplaces, job opportunities, all of those things? Right, you want to be thinking about the ripple of impact that them being involved in and joining to that outcome has on them.
Speaker 1:And then you want to think about value based pricing, as opposed to time-based pricing. So when you think of value-based pricing, right, you're thinking what is the value of that? What is the value of that? Like?
Speaker 1:One of the things that I heard earlier is like, oh, could it be therefore unethical to charge, say, you know, five thousand for a, for a program that might help somebody with, let's say, it was going to help them keep their marriage alive? Right? How much would that financially save that person? Right? Or the two people involved right In marriage? Yeah, but not then, therefore needing to journey forward and doing the divorce costs and going through the therapy costs for themselves, maybe the therapy costs for their children, right? All of the mediation, all of that. You know what I mean, right?
Speaker 1:So, and that's just one example, like, if we think about playing out the, the a story right of somebody's life that was going for a challenge in relationship, they're, they're arguing all the time. They, they, you know they, they, just they. They once loved each other because they're married, right, right, but now they're in this space that they just don't know how to navigate it, right? Therefore, is it ethical to then have, maybe, them have, a service which is a low-cost service that they may or may not show up for because now it's low cost? So, you know, it's really hard at home anyway. Should we really work through this? Well, maybe, you know, this week I can't really show up for the session because things are just going on right, they're not necessarily going to show up, right, so there may be more cancellations, no shows resistant to change their value, perspective of the service or the journey that they're going through.
Speaker 1:Not all the time I'm making broad statements, but I just want to give you a way of thinking about this Right Versus, potentially that they go and they get really serious. They're like we're going to give this a real great shot at this. Right, we found somebody that is skilled in relationships and marriages and transformation and we want your help and support right Now. Number one I've invested in the transformation and it's upfront, okay, we better show up every week for that session that we paid for for the next 12 weeks, right? There's a different perspective. They've invested now for the whole. Maybe it's a 12-week transformational journey, right. So now they're like, okay, even if we've just had an argument one minute before the session, we're showing up for that session because we put our money where our mouth is right, you know what I mean. We've, like, really invested in that. We've decided to take it seriously, you know, and really just give it our best possible chance. So we're showing up, even when resistance is there.
Speaker 1:That's something that can happen when you put a price point paying per transformation, right, as opposed to paying per session. Yeah, it also is. When you put a price point, that it stretches somebody in terms of valuing the perspective of what they've invested in, right, then why do you think universities charge what they do for their courses, yeah, right, they want you to show up, they want you to get the education right. That's not everything. Now, some people go to university and they don't show up and do stuff right, but that's one of the ways of thinking, like, how do we get people to go through these courses, go through these hard work, right? Do the assignments go to the 24 hour library? Put in the work right? Well, they've invested in it. And even if you didn't particularly invest in the education or that person didn't invest in it, somebody invested in it somewhere, right, you know so, and a significant amount. So you want to really respect the um, the level of service that you're bringing in terms of the level of value and outcome it brings to the person. Right, and that's how you then price value-based, okay.
Speaker 1:The other thing I want to say before we have a discussion on this there's so many ways I could go with this conversation, but the other thing I want to say is what came up earlier as well is about the vibration. Right, so you can go to value-based pricing, and I think a great exercise to do is to look at the values of what you are bringing to people Like, why is like, write a list of like, why your service is like, worth that and so much more. What impact does it have in people's lives, right? What impact does it have in other people's lives? What are you bringing to the table? Right? How does it help people in terms of what? Is there any you know emotional, financial, mental, spiritual, physical benefits of them coming into your services? Right, you want to have a whole host of lists that, when you say your price point value-based, you can stand behind it and be like I'm very fully aware of the value I'm bringing to the table here right now. Right, and the price is the price of the price. That bringing to the table here right now. Right, and the price is the price of the price. That's what it is right. We can break it down into a payment plan if you would like, but the full price of the program is this amount.
Speaker 1:Yeah. What would you like to do and how can I best support you in journeying towards saving your marriage? Right, or whatever the outcome might be? Yeah, because at the end of the day, it's not. How can I best support you to give me two grand, three grand, five grand, one grand, whatever it is right In terms of the price point 500, whatever. It doesn't matter in terms of the number, it's not how do I best support you? Hand me over some money for a course. It's how do I best support you make the decision to step forward and really work with me and journey with me so we can do the work on your marriage. We can do the work on your life. We can do the work on your relationship. We can do the work on whatever it might be your business, your job, your career history, your career future, whatever it might be right.
Speaker 1:That's really what the conversation is about, because that's the value you're bringing to people. You're helping them with the outcome, right, you're not helping them just give me some money and I'll give you a course. That's not the transaction that's happening here, and so you've got to really lean back into and ground yourself into the real transaction that is taking place and be okay to confidently communicate that right and so the confidently communicate that is taking place and be okay to confidently communicate that right and so the confidently communicate that is to really stand behind that and to get your own vibration to match that and to really be like yes, I can see the value I'm bringing. I also believe that they have the ability to invest in it. There has to be a level of.
Speaker 1:If you don't believe that the people that come into you have the ability to invest right, or they have access to resource. It doesn't mean that like nobody's sitting around just with money stashed away for your services, right, or mine right. So, like it's like recognizing though that do the people that you are helping have the the mental and mindset ability to either access the money or have the money to be able to work on what they want to do? Right, like to be able to ring fence and say, actually I'm going to move here and make that a priority for this area of my life, or actually I'm going to go here and I'm going to, you know, apply for funds to help me with this, right, it's the same for, you know, a large percentage of people that go to university or whatever, right, they don't necessarily.
Speaker 1:You know, I personally didn't have, like I know some people do have like education funds and stuff like that saved for them, right, but I had to go and find, you know, myself like hey, like where am I going to find this money to do the education that I want to do? Yeah, when I went to do my master's so I didn't have it just stashed there, I had to go and actively have those conversations, and so you want to be thinking about that when you think about your, your clients, right, the people that come into you. Have they even got access to financial resource or have the financial resource to be able to invest? That is a thinking, because if you don't believe that, then why are you making there's like? You know, it's not like matching up, yeah, and then you'll continue to have these conversations of like, yeah, I see the value, but I also see that you can't do it and so it just doesn't go anywhere. Right, and anything times zero is zero. Okay, so you need to energetically align to the price points that you would like to, to share, and that can be a process, and there's lots of internal work that can happen, and I certainly go through my clients and stuff to really just help shift their energetic vibration around money and around their services and around sales and all of those stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the last thing I'll say before we have a bit of a discussion on this is um, another point that was made is that when you start selling a lot of practitioners that are not even ever sold anything. Right, even if you have um, think you've sold because you have a low-cost service right, generally people have just chosen you because they were like looking for therapy somewhere and they kind of researched you and like, okay, yeah, you know that will do right, I'll go there right. This is a different thing. Here you're asking people to invest in a transformation. It's a whole new psychology around buying of that right, and so the um response is going to be um, it's about you energetically doing also your internal work and also recognizing the external skills that need to be developed on how to articulate your offer, how to communicate with your audience, how to um develop aligned messaging right. All of those are skills that have to be learned right and practiced. That will help you as well.
Speaker 1:So I think it's very, very important to recognize that those things do come into play and, as you were doing that, you therefore might find yourself in situations when you first start of being behind your pricing and thinking, oh, yeah, well, well, I think they can invest, and the first time you say your price point, you're like, hey, there's my offer and this is the price point, and they're like, how much. Right, that's what we call like level one. Right, like you just come level one. All of what's been going on within yourself is like coming out on the other side of like people, like how much, how much. Once you get over that internal narrative yourself of recognizing, actually I do really believe in my price point, I do really believe in my offer, I do really believe in what I can bring, you'll start to hear people be like level two is like okay, I can get. Why it's that much? I wasn't expecting that. But cool, I get it right. Right, that's because your vibration is lifted up right.
Speaker 1:Then level three is when it's like okay, yeah, absolutely get it. How do I get in? I'm gonna find the resource, I'm gonna make it possible. Da, da, da, right. So there's different levels as well, which are vibrational levels. That can happen as well. Yeah, that nothing actually changes in terms of who you're talking to or how you're talking to, but you change vibrationally, that things change on the outside as well. So I just want to say that