Why My Brain Is Worth $265 (And Yours Probably Is Too)

In this episode, I'm getting real about something that makes most of us squirm: pricing. Specifically, why I charge $265 for a strategy session and why your expertise is probably worth way more than you're charging.

I know that number might make you flinch a little (trust me, it used to make ME flinch), but here's the thing - we need to get comfortable talking openly about how we price our services. It takes the mystery and shame out of the whole process.

In this episode, I share:

• My cringe-worthy journey from $25/hour (yes, really) to $265 strategy sessions
• Why I used to negotiate DOWN before I even finished stating my rates (spoiler: don't do this)
• The lightbulb moment when I realized I wasn't just selling time - I was selling transformation
• How to calculate the TRUE value of what you deliver (hint: it's not just about the hour you spend with clients)
• A simple exercise to help you recognize the worth of your accumulated expertise
• Why ROI isn't always about money - sometimes it's about peace of mind, clarity, and getting three whole days of your life back

The real talk: You're not just selling your time. You're selling years of learning, testing, failing, succeeding, and distilling all of that into solutions that actually work. That has serious value, even if you can't see it clearly yet.

If you're still pricing like you're brand new when you're not, this episode is your wake-up call. Your brain is worth more than you think, and it's time to price accordingly.

Ready to figure out your own pricing strategy? Book a strategy session with me at bizmagic.co - you know exactly what it costs! 😉

Learn more about BizMagic or the BizMagic Podcast.

Transcript

Welcome back to another episode of the Biz Magic Podcast, your place for all things tech in your online business with solid. So General Biz Chat two. My name is Patty Meyer and I am the CEO and founder of Biz Magic, where my team and I support entrepreneurs who are overwhelmed by the backend tech of their business.

We create, implement, and teach the tweaks that help our clients make a bigger impact with less stress. Today we are gonna talk about something that makes a lot of business owners uncomfortable and that is pricing. Or more specifically why my brain. Is worth $265. Now if you flinched or squinted at your phone, I get it.

That sentence can sound a little spicy. It sounds like a weird thing to say out loud, but here's the thing. I want us to get more comfortable saying things like that and not because it's about ego or charging what you're worth in some vague Pinterest quote kind of way. But because when we talk. Openly about how we price our services.

We take some of the mystery and frankly, some of the shame out of the process. So yes, a strategy session with me costs $265. That gets you about an hour of face-to-face time with me on Zoom, and a whole lot more than that behind the scenes. But it wasn't always that way with me. Right. When I first started offering strategy sessions, I way under price them, like really under price them.

I remember thinking, it's just a call, it's one hour of my time. It didn't feel like a big deal, right? And, and part of me, if I'm honest, was nervous. Would people pay more? Would they think I was getting too big for my britches or trying to get a little too fancy if I charged? $150 or 200 or 265. So I started really low first it was just an my hourly rate, which for a while was $55 an hour.

And then I was like, oh, maybe I should go a little bit higher, right? So I went up to 75 and so on until I got about 1 25, because that felt like a safe number. And here's what I started to notice when I did that. People would leave these calls with notes, right? With amazing amounts of information. They would say by the end of the session how grateful they were and how helpful it was.

They'd email me days later saying, they've already implemented what we've talked about, or it'd saved them so much stress. Some told me they felt more clear in that one hour than they had, and maybe. Six months of DIYing their stuff together. And, and it kind of hit me at that point. I wasn't just giving people advice, right?

We weren't, we weren't just sitting for an hour and I was just listening to them and giving them advice. I was handing frameworks, I was handing perspectives, uh, I was handing. A distilled version of everything I'd learned from years of working around small businesses, technology systems and strategy. And that wasn't a fluke, right?

That was value. So you're not paying for the hour. You're paying for the shortcut, right? So let's talk about how pricing really works or how it should work. So a lot of us default to pricing by the hour. That's how the world teaches us to think. We're trained from early jobs. You work for X number of hours, you make.

X number of dollars, time equals money. But in the world of consulting, coaching, creative services, especially in small businesses, the time spent is only one part of the equation. What's often more important is the quality of your insight, the speed at which you can help someone find clarity, the lasting impact your work has on their business.

So let's say somebody hires me for a strategy session and we figure out a way to automate their client onboarding process, right? So it used to take them two hours per client. Now it takes them 10 minutes. They bring on three clients a month, right? So that's six hours that has been saved every month. So let's do some, some simple math, right?

So six hours a month is 72 hours a year. And that's, you know, three days, right? So that's three whole days of their life that they got back, and that's just by one small system that we improved and that hour that they spent with me, it paid off not just in time, but in energy and confidence and mental clarity in.

Their clients having a greater experience and possibly giving more, giving them referrals and therefore potentially more clients, right? That one thing that I charge $265 for, that, that for them in the end, is worth me more than that. And here's the thing, right? ROI isn't always about money. Not all return on investment is financial.

And not every value that you deliver shows up on a spreadsheet, right? So sometimes ROI. It can look like I feel less overwhelmed. I finally know what to focus on. I am not embarrassed about my onboarding experience anymore. I am excited about my business. Again, we have to stop acting like the only justification for pricing is how much money our clients will make from it.

That is definitely one piece. That's a big, big piece, but. So is peace of mind. And if you are still charging like you're brand new, please stop because you're not, you are not just selling your time, you are selling the accumulation of everything you have learned, the tools you've tested. The roadblocks you've navigated, the clients you've helped, the mistakes you've made, and grown from the trends that you've watched, come and go and learned from that experience has value, even if you can't see it clearly.

I promise that your clients can feel it. So here's a little exercise you can do to try to figure out your pricing. Write down how many hours you spent learning your craft. So, and I'm talking courses that you've done, um, how many hours you spent listening to podcast, how many hours you spent Googling, how to fix like the weird thing in your client's system, or solve that little problem, all of it, right?

Now imagine if you had to start over from scratch tomorrow with zero of that knowledge, what would you pay to get all of that knowledge back? Right? It's more than you think because when you add all of that up, holy crap, it is worth so much money. And that's not the, that's not even the, the money you spent.

On paying for those things, right, or the cost of each of your hours to do that. It is just the amount of time that was spent. So setting your price isn't just gonna be a math equation, right? It's an emotional decision too. So you wanna make sure that it covers your time, your expenses, and your goals, but you also wanna make sure that you feel good saying it out loud if your throat starts to close up.

When you say your rate, it might be too high too soon, or it might be that you haven't. Like caught up to your own value yet. Right, and that's totally okay. Growth is awkward. It's uncomfortable. And you don't get to skip it. It's a part of the process. So I remember the first time that I raised my rate to $265.

I practiced saying it, and I would say it, and then like my breath would catch and I'd feel really scared, and in the beginning I would want to negotiate down. I did that with my prices many times, actually is in the very beginning, even like my basic hourly prices way back when I first started, before I would even.

Finish basically saying how much I charge per hour for my services. And I'm telling you, it was like 25 bucks an hour. I was negotiating down. I would literally, and then this happened. This is a true story and it happened many times, is I would get on a consultation call with somebody. And I would tell them all this great stuff that I could do and how I could help them.

And I really was like a Jill of all trades, like, for real. And I'd say all this cool stuff I could do. And then I'd be like, well, so it's, it's $25 an hour and in the same breath, like without even like pausing I would say. But you know, if it's, if you can't quite afford that, like I'm open to 20 an hour or whatever, like that's horrifying right now.

First of all, it's horrifying that I was charging that little. With the amount of experience I had, but I had to learn that lesson and grow. Um, but the fact that I did that on multiple, multiple occasions really says so much. But now I talk about my rates without flinching, and it's not because I'm trying to, you know, be too big for my britches or anything like that.

It is because I've seen over and over and over again the impact that the work that I do has, and that's just not braggadocious. It just is what it is. Right. The same is, I'm sure you see how what you do. It helps people in whatever way that is. So working with me, having this strategy session, it's not just a call, it's a tipping point for someone who's been stuck.

It's the moment they get to see their business through different eyes. It's the catalyst for some sort of momentum. Sometimes it's, it's simply permission that somebody needs. So if you're listening to this right now and you're like, okay. But I don't feel like I can charge that much. I hear you, and I'm not saying that you need to slap a $265 price tag on your work tomorrow, but I am saying start being honest with the real value of what you do, not just the deliverables.

Not just the time, but the experience, the clarity, the shortcut, the outcome. And remember, when it comes to the outcome, we're looking at the long-term outcome that your client is gonna get from working with you. We're talking about how much change is going to come to them. How, how, what areas are they going to be able to utilize this new knowledge or this new tool, or this new design, or whatever it is that you're creating for them.

Or, or offering them, like how are they going to be able to utilize it? Is it gonna be a one and done thing, or is it something that they're going to use repeatedly over and over and over for a, a significant length of time in their business? That's part of the outcome that you wanna. Take into consideration.

So whether it's helping someone hire, build a system, create a brand, write copy, organize their offers, if your work creates meaningful transformation that deserves a price that reflects that. Really trust yourself, and it's okay to start in smaller increments like I did, right? You don't have to jump to that big number Again, pick a number that feels a little bit outside of your comfort zone.

A little bit uncomfortable to say and get used to saying that. Then pick a number. That's a little bit further outside of your comfort zone, right? And, and I'm not saying forever, you're just gonna keep raising your price until you're like $5,000 to work with me for an hour, and maybe at some day that is a price that'll make sense for you.

But what I am saying is decide what a price is. That does feel good to you. And even if you can't get to that right now, have that be your goal. Right? 2 65 is a number that I came up with, but I didn't say it right away. Right? It took time for me to get comfortable saying 2 65, so, and if you're not sure how to articulate that, that's literally what my brain is here for.

You can book a strategy session with me. The link is in the show notes. You know how much it costs. We'll take a look at where you're stuck, what's holding you back, and what systems or strategies can get you moving custom to you. Obviously, as you know, no one size fits all. Advice happens around here. And, uh, if you have any questions about this stuff, feel free to send me a message.

And if you're not ready to have a strategy session with me, that is okay too. There is plenty of stuff happening on this podcast that's designed to help you build a business that actually works for you, your brain, your energy, your clients, and your goals. But remember your brain. It's probably worth more than you think, and I encourage you to price accordingly.

All right, that's what I've got for you. Again, if you wanna work with me in any way at all, including strategy sessions, you know where to find me, biz magic.co. Or you can message me directly at patty@bizmagic.co. And uh, I'm excited to hear how you price your services moving forward. Till next time.

Thank you for listening to another episode of the Biz Magic Podcast. Like most small businesses and podcasts, we rely heavily on word of mouth. So if you like what you heard today, or in any episode, please share with your friends and colleagues and rate, subscribe, and comment on your favorite podcast platform.

Till next time, cheers to your magical biz success.