Signs You're Undervaluing Your Business

Has anyone ever told you to raise your prices and your immediate response was to explain why that won't work? That reaction alone might be the clearest sign you're undervaluing your business. In this episode, we break down the most common signs your business is quietly operating from a place of undervaluation. We talk about how these habits train clients to treat your work as less valuable than it actually is, the difference between cost and value, why premium clients don't want bargains, and how discount-driven businesses train customers to only show up when there's a deal. Get ready to rethink how you price, position, and talk about your business.

Highlights

00:00 What does it really mean when clients tell you to raise your prices?

07:45 The reason most business owners undervalue their work without realizing it.

10:45 Tips to separate personal undervaluation from business undervaluation.

17:00 Why constant discounts quietly train the wrong kind of customer.

22:00 Why your current clients won't pay more, but better clients absolutely will.

27:00 What premium buyers think about cost and value.

30:30 Why value buyers don't want cheap.

37:15 How over-apologizing undermines your authority as a business owner.

43:30 The worst advice for growing your business.

Resources + Links
Apply for Luxury Clothier Collective Mastermind  HERE
More resources for custom clothiers HERE
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Appointment Only in IG: @appointmentonlypod

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Has anybody ever told you to raise your prices? A client. Has anybody ever been surprised at how little you charged? But if anybody has ever told you, any of you regulars, that you should raise your prices, whether it's somebody in your industry, whether it's us in a previous episode, and your immediate reaction is to start making excuses for why that won't work. I'm telling you right now, you're living in a place of undervaluing your business. You are. This is Appointment Only, the podcast for entrepreneurs building profitable high-end businesses. If you want control, profit, and freedom from the endless hustle, this is for you. We're Kenny and Dami, twin brothers from day one and business partners for 15 years. We're sharing insights from our own experiences running a high-end small business, the highs, the lows, and what we've learned along the way that will help you build businesses you enjoy running that aren't running you. We're here to help you continue creating businesses that support the life you actually want to live. Your appointment starts now. All right, it's that time of year again. What time of year for everyone's Spotify raps? Oh, I hate those. Well, I hate those because I'm never, it's never accurate. I didn't even look at mine. Let me see what mine is. Mine's appointment only. You listen on Spotify? No. Like a goon? No, you're supposed to listen on Apple. I love when people are like, I watched your podcast. Well, first of all, I'm like, thank you for watching. And then my next question is, why? Why did you watch that? Also, could you could you at least play it through on Apple? Yeah, let it go all the way through. Um, okay, so where do I even go? Here we go. Right here. Wrapped. So what's your 2025 wrapped? Don't we share an account? Oh, do we? It does it say Kenny King. We're ready for you, Kenny King. Okay, so why don't you tell me what my Spotify wrapped is then, I guess. The worst is when you're trying to listen to something, and so am I. And then we both keep getting kicked off the account. And I've told you what I told you like years ago. You should get your own Spotify. I've tried, and it I don't know. What do you mean? What do you mean you've tried? I don't know. I don't know if I have. I don't think you're 25,992 minutes. This is gonna be really skewed. Because it's the work, it's what I listen to. Dance pop house, indie pop. That might be me. Dance pop, k-pop, k pop. Age is just a number, so don't take this personally. Your listening age? 17. What does that mean? Since you listen to mostly new music, your taste is trending. Oh, so I'm like a Gen Z-17-year-old. 17 years old, is that even younger than Gen Z? Yeah. Cheese. Yeah, that's definitely not me. My actual music age is I don't see 40. Your top songs. I don't know any songs. One year it was watermelon sugar because that's what was playing at like, or at Peaches, and that it was over and over and over and over. Of course, that's the top album. Funny. Yeah. Because I actually do listen to audiobooks and podcasts sometimes. Through this is so funny. Spotify. The top albums are like my lawn mowing listening. Your lawn mowing? Oh, yeah. There's there's a Justin Bieber album in here that work work made its way in, but everything else is stuff that I listen to from like that's old. Like Altar Bridge is number four. You've got to be the only one on planet Earth with Altar Bridge in your Spotify hat. Oh so good. Altar Bridge. So it's skewed. Let's just say that. The Spotify is skewed because it's a combination of what just mindlessly and effortlessly plays while we're at work. Right. With like uh, oh, I'm mowing my lawn, so I'm gonna I'm gonna hop into Spotify. Because I just play, I have the it's called today's top hits in my library of Spotify. And anytime we're in a meeting, I play that and I don't really can't really hear it. It's kind of like the train tracks. I can't hear it. I cannot I cannot hear train tracks. I can't hear it until horrible language is being done. It's like I remember at one point when that song, what was that song? Uh the who d Who D even Sings It? I think it's Cardi B. It's so vulgar. W A P. Yep, that's the one. And that was like on one of the players. What does that stand for again? White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. That's my favorite album. Yeah, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. It's a bunch of uh it's a bunch of hymns. It's a bunch of those alternative Christian songs. Like where these aren't hymns, these are these are really cool songs. No, uh, it's not what it stands for exactly, I don't think. But the uh when you're you're not listening until all of a sudden like it's quiet, and then you you can hear really well the the words. Yeah. I have to go over. When you start listening to the words, you start to say, is this really appropriate? Is this really what I want to be putting out into the world? And you if you have to ask, the answer is no. This is a good one today. I'm excited about today's episode because it's something I think we could all think about. Some it's it's some food for thought, something to consider. Some real uh speaking of food for thought more so food. What was your Thanksgiving situation? What do you mean? My situation. Like, did you get sickly full or did you keep it under control? Um, I kept it under control, I think. Seriously? Yeah. Oh did you? Isn't that not what you did, huh? I got sick. Exactly full. Yeah, oh yeah, big time. I mean, I didn't feel I wasn't puking when I got home. Well, that's good news. But I felt gross. You weren't pill- I wasn't puking like the pilgrims. Nothing celebrates the pilgrims like getting getting stuffed. It was fine. I mean, I was full. I wasn't like hungry when I got home for food, but I I had plenty to eat. That's good. That's good news. I was worried you weren't gonna have plenty to eat. Yeah, we mentioned at the last episode that we uh we got back in the gym, we've been training. So it's important carbo loading, really. And here's the thing about my macros is I don't know what your food pyramid looks like, but fats and carbs are at the top of mine. Yeah, those are the most important the bottom, the bottom of the pyramid because that's the foundation. Oh, I've mine, I've mine's an upside-down pyramid. Oh, gotcha. It's an upside-down triangle. Here's the pressure that I put on myself as the number one host is I've got to drive the ship because I know this one is a stowaway. He's no, I do feel like a stowaway in this podcast. Honestly, walk the fucking plank. Get out of here. I better be quiet. I better not say a word, otherwise, I'm gonna be found out. That's that's how I like to do it. I like to not say a single word. Just stay so quiet. Yeah, I mean, it's like a good stowaway should. Be quiet, seen, not seen nor heard. I don't even want to know you're here. But as the captain of the ship, I'm the one who knows the path. And so I always feel the pressure instead of making harsh transitions, which I I think would be fine if I were to just say, let's switch gears. That'd be that's a great transition. But instead of doing that, I like to do it where it's clunkier and uh less natural and forced, yeah, super forced and uncomfortable for the listener. And so I always try to make it really smooth. And every once in a while I can do it, but mostly I cannot. And this is a great example of that. Signs you may be undervaluing yourself and your business. And I will admit that I did say maybe because I wanted to be, I have a tendency to be like signs, you signs you're doing it wrong, you know, like really sort of unambiguous, but signs you may be undervaluing yourself. This is an encouraging language. I like to be encouraging, so you may be undervaluing yourself. And here's something to think about. Here's the reason why we want to talk about this is uh small business owners, entrepreneurs, uh in my experience, uh have a tendency, and we we were guilty of this for years as well. You have a tendency to uh see other people, other businesses, other products, services as more valuable than you see your own. And even if you wouldn't say, Oh, yes, that's more valuable than what I do, you treat it like it's more valuable. Your your actions prove that it's what you believe. You might not say it, you might not even consciously believe it, but the way in which you operate proves that it's something that you actually believe. Exactly. That's a really good way of looking at it. Different perspective from the stowaway. That's the stowaway's perspective. Quiet over there. Have you ever thought about this? Where'd that come from? You know what's crazy though? Uh the stories of the people stowing away on flights. Like, how can you even do that anymore? I haven't heard any of those stories. Oh, okay. Well, where do they stow away? In the like in the wheel. Yeah, you haven't heard that? Oh, well, no, I haven't heard that. It's one of those things where I feel like it probably happens more, but they probably don't want to do here's the conspiracy theorist. I'm putting my tin foil hat on. They probably don't want to do news stories on it because you don't want to give them the ideas, right? Yeah, you don't want to glamorize it. It's kind of like you remember Dare, the drugs thing where you don't do drugs. I won't do drugs.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

You're like, hey, won't have an ad.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

They're like, here's you shouldn't do drugs because they're bad for you. Because here's exactly how they cook meth. No, wasn't it like you don't want to feel good all the time, do you? Because that's no, I feel like it was like they're giving you the recipes for drugs, and they're saying, like, that it's so bad for you. Look at all of the specific ingredients and all of the quantities that you need and the temperatures. It was basically like a how-to manual on making drugs.

SPEAKER_00 10:27

R I will respect myself.

SPEAKER_01 10:29

E.

SPEAKER_00 10:30

I will educate me, D.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

We were dare uh, what do you call them? Like inspirations. We were dare mentors? No, mentors might be right. Dare mentors. Yeah. I think mentors. We were dare mentors. Anyways, it was just because we never did drugs. So we would we would go to the elementary schools. They rounded up all the dorky kids and put them in the dare dorks. We were a couple of dare dorks. So we would have to wear it. It was nice because we got you got out of school and you would go to the the elementary schools. And I guess I guess we would talk about not doing drugs. What's there to even talk about? I don't even remember it, honestly. I just remember the year that I did that. There was a girl in the grade above me who I had a pretty big crush on, and she was also a dare. She was a dweeb. Nice, cool. So that was the only that was your takeaway? Yeah. All right. So speaking of undervaluing. So that's a really good transition, just as I planned. Let's transition and talk about signs you may be undervaluing yourself or your business. Now, here's the thing: when you run your own business, when you're self-employed, entrepreneur, uh business owner, there's kind of an ambiguous line between personal and business, as you know, right? We're not gonna talk a lot today about undervaluing, devaluing yourself, because really what that has to do with more so is boundaries. We talked a little bit about some of the boundaries in the previous episode where we talk about training your clients, your customers. Uh, but specifically, we're gonna talk today about the business aspect. Of course, there's no shortage of boundaries and whatnot that you could be implementing and should be implementing. Okay. You you should be for sure. Uh we're gonna talk about the business and signs that you may be undervaluing your business, your product, your service, and might be important to pay attention to some of these things. Maybe you've already thought about these things, maybe you haven't. We're just gonna point them out from where we sit. This is what it looks like sometimes if you are undervaluing your business. Don't be a dweeb. That's what dweebs do. There's that transition you were looking for. Loved that. Thank you. Don't be a dweeb. I can't wait till we get to port and you're out of here. Here's a really easy one. Has anybody ever told you to raise your prices? A client. Has anybody ever been surprised at how little you charged? For us, hasn't happened in a while, but not anytime recently. It's been a long time since someone said, you know what? You should charge me more. Here's what people do when we when when we tell a business owner, not just a custom clothier like in our mastermind group, when we tell a different business owner, I think you should think about raising your. We just did this to our barber last week. They they give us excuses.

SPEAKER_00 13:22

Oh, well, you know, I don't know about that. Yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

Yeah, I do. I told our so we we've been seeing the same two barbers. We used to go to this barber shop down the street, and two of the barbers there that we used to just kind of go between whoever was available, they left, started their own thing in one of those like large salon suite places. So now they're their own business owners. They left the barber shop, opened their own thing, didn't raise their prices even one penny. And we've been going now, seeing them in the new location. And I said, Hey, I'm gonna give you some unsolicited advice. I think you should raise your prices five dollars per haircut. You're on your own now, you're they might not know if they are gonna have to pay employer and employee taxes now that they're not a uh W employee, but uh either you're on your own now, you're your own business owner. I think five dollars a haircut would be absolutely very, very easy. No one's gonna notice, and of the people who do no one's gonna say anything, everyone's gonna get it. And I got they they were arguing with me about it. They disagreed. And if you're listening, guys, I still think you should raise your prices, five dollars a haircut. I really, I really do. I I don't see the the downside, but I believe that in not doing that, they are undervaluing themselves, them, their services, they're undervaluing what they do. And I think they're also undervaluing I mean, the operative word here is value. Right. They're devaluing themselves. They're also making assumptions about the people who are paying that they can't afford, won't pay, won't prioritize. And I just I think it's untrue. But if anybody has ever told you, any of you regulars, that you should raise your prices, whether it's somebody in your industry, whether it's us in a previous episode, and your immediate reaction is to start making excuses for why that won't work, I'm telling you right now, you're living in a place of undervaluing your business. You are. So that's just a good lead-in because it's obvious and it's explicit. If somebody has told you this thing and you meet it with excuses, you are living in an undervaluing place. We should point out that within anybody's category, anyone's industry, there's a there's a wide variety of price points that exist. It doesn't matter what you sell or what your service is, there's a high, there's a low, and there's a whole bunch of people in between. And I would imagine if you if you really were to split it up, most of the people in your category are probably towards the lower end because that's just how it works. In order to be the luxury choice in your category, there are some additional things that need to be true of your business and your product. It needs to justify the price point. You can't just completely jack up your prices and then have a product or a service that isn't actually indicative or representative of that price point. To be on the high end, if not the high end of your industry. Yes, I agree. To go through a round of price raising, I don't necessarily think that you that means you have to do all sorts of drastic changes. Exactly. So there's always room for a price increase, assuming you're living in that sort of middle area. I mean, if you're living towards the end, you absolutely can raise prices to get to a point where you're not actively living in this undervaluing. Could and should. To charge the premium and be the primo, there are some additional, you know, expectations and implications of what that looks like. Yeah, in the case of our barbers, I'm saying, hey, I didn't say I think you should double the cost. I said I think you should raise it $5. It's a price increase. They haven't done one in a while. It's it's time. Yeah, we're not saying you have to be the most expensive haircut in Minneapolis. We'd all pay it. I don't think anyone would have a problem with it. We get it. You know, life happens. So you raise your prices a little bit, but I think if you're gonna shoot from down here and then you're gonna try to go into the luxury category, you got to make sure that that's justified. That's not what we're suggesting, though. A price increase. You don't want to be undervalued or underpricing. Here's a sign, surefire way to know you're undervaluing yourself. And it's especially prevalent this time of year because we're in the holiday season right now. We would have kicked that off, you know, Black Friday. There's a lot of people running a lot of deals, discounts, specials, all of that. That's normal this time of year, I guess. I still don't necessarily think it's idea, a great idea, depending on what you do, what you sell, but I get it. I do get it from time to time, especially if you're trying to clear old inventory to make way for the new inventory come to the beginning of the year. Makes sense. But if you're in the business of running a discount operation, you're always doing a discount, a deal, a BOGO, of something like that, you are undervaluing yourself. And you're undervaluing yourself because you're not charging what you could. But the reason why you're not charging what you could is because you're telling yourself, well, people are only interested in me because I'm discounting. And that's actually also true. Yes. Because that's what you've been attracting in the discounts. Discount buyers are attracted to discount behavior. Remember the episode about training your clients? That's exactly what you're doing. When you're offering discounts and deals, you're training your customers to expect it. And that is the person you're attracting. You're only attracting discount buyers. And as soon as you no longer offer deals and discounts, they're out of here. They're not loyal to you. It's the exact same psychology as was it JCPenney. Yes. That when they decided they weren't going to inflate prices to then discount them, they were going to enter the marketplace as the bottom price to begin with. They went out of business because psychologically, people wanted to go get a deal. And as soon as JCPenney, even though they were the lowest priced options, they weren't offering a deal. They lost that clientele, that deal-seeking clientele. We don't want you, as whatever small business you're running, to be seen as the JCPenney of your industry. And to give them credit, they did ex, they trained their clients exceptionally well. Yeah. Those clients were locked and loaded in that training. Yeah, they only wanted, but that's just horrible. That's a horrible situation to be in, where you train your clients to expect and need a discount 100% of the time that you could even come in at a lower price than your previous deal, and those people won't buy. We had that light bulb moment, that realization at one point when we were working with someone, we used to do discounts for everything. We've mentioned this in a previous episode, constantly doing discounts. I can only imagine the kind of promo we'd be running this time of year. You know, the holiday season, December 25th is Christmas. $25 for two. Ho ho ho special. Get, yeah, I don't know what we do. Going out of business, miss. Probably. But we were uh we would do discounts for everything under the sun. And we were trying to generate some business. We reached out to someone who we thought was a good client. And he said, I'm good. I'm gonna wait till you run your promotion, your next promotion, because he knew it was like probably days away. Seconds right, we're just about to hit publish. Exactly. He was he was right. He called our bluff and we just said, we can't do this anymore. We had been undervaluing ourselves, not to mention our prices were low. You know, we could have used the advice, raise your prices a little bit. We would have argued, oh, we can't because we would have argued big time. And we did for years. I mean, we we used to get told from clients, hey guys, you could raise your prices. Yeah, looking back on the clients who would tell us that it was clients who actually had our best interest in mind. Yeah. And they were giving us constructive. They were probably nervous that we were going to go out of business because they liked our product and they knew it was worth a hell of a lot more than we were charging. And they're like, Oh, shit, these two are these guys are dumb. Yeah, they are not doing it right. And I don't, I don't want to have to start over. I want to keep using them, but they're about to put themselves out of business, and I don't even think they realize it yet. We had we had a a couple of clients, I I can see their faces right now, tell us, guys, I think. I think you should charge more. And we were like flabbergasted by that news. I'm not going to say his name. Just mouth it to me. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you're listening, but I I I remember it clear as day. And and probably we met that with and he just wanted us to stay in business. What we used to say all the time, we used to always say, well, our clients, and we teach this in our mastermind. We used to say this all the time. Our clients wouldn't buy a suit for this amount. And you can fill in the blank for whatever you sell. My client wouldn't buy a haircut for this, or my client wouldn't book a photography package for this. The thing is, you're right, your clients won't. Your clients will not do that. But that's not to say there aren't other people out there who wouldn't jump at the chance to work with you if you were charging something that was more in line with what they're willing to spend. Because the best clients with the most money to spend, they don't want to buy a bargain bin custom suit. They don't want a bargain haircut or a bargain photographer. They want to use someone where there's a perceived value where they feel good about a dollar amount they've spent because they want to spend a certain dollar amount on it. So we we talked about low prices already. We talked about the fact that you could probably stand to raise your prices a little bit. Uh, you maybe not double them, but you could probably raise them by a per, you know, a 10%, 5%, you know, do something that feels like it would make a difference because it will. You know, in the example of the haircuts, $5 a haircut, I'm not saying I think you should charge me $5 more because I think my $5 every week is gonna give you the Christmas of your dreams. What I'm saying is every little bit counts. And if you charge every client five bucks more, let's say you work with five clients a day, $25 a day. That's, you know, I don't know. This is a lot of. Oh boy, here we go. It's over a hundred bucks a week, right? That's not nothing. That adds up over the course of a year. That's thousands of dollars at over the course of the year. So forget about people who have low prices. Yes, I think you could stand to raise your prices. You're undervaluing yourself if you're underpricing. By underpricing, not only do we mean your prices are low, we mean you're looking at who you identify as a competitor and you're undercutting their prices. You're you're trying to get after their clients because and you're you haven't done your own math on your margin. That's a story or a situation that we can get into great detail in, and we're not going to the fact that you need to know your numbers and know what your costs are, and that's how you should come up with your pricing. But if you're looking at other people and all you're doing is undercutting, here's what's happening. People are reaching out to that business that you're undercutting. They're realizing I'm too cheap to work with that client or that that business. And then you're getting them. After they've identified I don't want to spend this, then they're finding you and they're working with you. You are, by design, a scrap sweeper. That is the business that you run. You only exist because you cost less than that company over there. That is not the place you want to be. That is not why you started your business. That is not why you're listening to appointment only. No, to sweep up some other businesses' scraps. And they probably don't even run a better business than you. But for whatever reason, you think the only way you can get clients is to undercut people's prices. There's a lot of clients that will that will be for you in that scenario, but they're all going to be cheap. They're all going to be a lot of work. And they all wish they could have worked with this other company. And they're not loyal either. So as soon as somebody comes in and starts underpricing you, you're out. Have you ever heard of the phrase race to the bottom? That's exactly what that is. That's exactly what it looks like when everybody's underpricing. Nobody values themselves enough to charge what they think they're worth and attract the clientele who sees that too. They're only focused on, all right, well, whose prices can I undercut? And then I'll get clients that way. You are so undervaluing yourself if that's how your business is set up. And you're undervaluing yourself. What did I say? You're like undervaluing. Like you undervalue. You like slurred your words. So undervaluing. You're also undervaluing yourself. There we go. And also that. Yep. Speaking of pricing, a lot of price conversations when it when it as it relates to this. I think it's hard to have a conversation about value without it directly translating to price. But I think that's that's one thing that is a totally m misunderstood and a misconception. Is the right kinds of clients they're value buyers? They want to see something that's worth something. We always say it's not what it cost, it's what it's worth. It's not what the thing costs you or what you can, you know, figure out your margins. It's what's the value of that thing. It does not cost the airline a thousand, fifteen hundred dollars for your butt in that first class seat. But it's what are you willing to pay for that? So here's an example of value versus cost. We stay at the same hotel in New York throughout the year. We go there twice a year for our trade shows. One is in January, one is in July, and then we're also staying there uh this week at Christmas time. It costs about two and a half times as much to stay there this time of year as it does next month in the dead of winter in January. It isn't because it actually costs the hotel twice as much to have us in that room, the exact same room. It's value. The value of being in New York at Christmas with the tree, and it's a it's a high tourist time of year, the value increases so they charge more. It isn't because it costs them more. It's about seeing something as a value versus the cost of the thing. Does that make sense? Have you ever seen those reels where the person goes behind the scenes and here's what it actually costs to make a pair of Lululemon? Oh, I hate those. And it's like, yeah, no shit. It's Lululemon, dude. People are gonna pay the price. We don't care what it costs, we care about the value of going to a store that's convenient. We want that little, you know, weird, floofy, whatever that thing is, that's semicircle brand on the left calf. That's what we're paying for. We know we're paying for that. Also, that isn't what it would cost me. They have the equipment, right? They have the prepare the proprietary technology and the and the materials. It's kind of like when you work with someone, speaking of hair again, you're not paying them for the our our barber takes like 15 minutes to do our hair every every week. What even does a haircut cost? Including tip when we pay together, it's like 88 bucks. Okay. So I'm not paying you 88 bucks 44 bucks for the 15 or 20 minutes taking you to do my hair. I'm paying you because you have been in this industry for a decade or more. You've gone through trainings, you've figured out your craft. You also know me and you know my hair, and you have been doing it consistently for many, many years. I'm paying you for the value of what you bring, not just the 20 minutes it's taking you to do it. I'm paying you. I could spend 20 minutes and do my own hair for free, and it wouldn't be as good. I'm paying you $44 because it only takes you 15 minutes to do my hair. Because you've done the hard work to get to the point where this doesn't take an hour. That's what I'm paying you for. The value and cost. So many people lump those two things together. Well, this is a good value because it's cheap. This is a bad value because it's expensive. No, I think a perfect example is I wear uh winter coats and they're really expensive. And I love these coats because they are so warm. And you have them for years. I've had them at this point, a couple of them for like three years, but you wear them every single day for months at a time. I shovel the snow in them, I wear them to and from work, to and from the gym, out and about running errands. I take them when we go to New York for Christmas. I'm wearing them constantly over everything. And I paid a lot of money for them, but I use them all the time. Now, here's a question as it relates to value and cost. Would you have spent the same amount of money for that exact same coat without the little insignia on the left arm? No. Exactly. I wouldn't that's proving my point. Value and cost. It doesn't matter. I know that a Louis Vuitton bag is not thousands of dollars more in cost than whatever bag I could go find over at Marshall's. I know that. Yeah, I know. Duh. Do you think Louis Vuitton is going out of business if I tell start telling people, oh, it doesn't cost them thousands of dollars to make their bag. Yeah, you just lost yourself a customer. You just lost your customer, yourself a customer, Louie. No. They don't care about you. Value and cost. These are two things that are standalone things. Each person decides what they value and are willing to spend money on. The people who buy steaks, we use the steakhouse example all the time. It's a good example. It is a good example. You want to go celebrate, you want to do something fun. You're gonna spend $80 on a steak that you could go get somewhere else for $25. It doesn't have anything to do with what it costs. It's what is the value? What will people pay? And if you're in the place where you are constantly undercutting prices and trying to connect cost and value. And well, I'm a good value because I'm a low cost. You are undervaluing yourself and you're undervaluing your expertise. Well, and a lot of things are low cost and a bad value. You buy these cheap dupes off of Amazon or a Target. Perfect example for you right now. Oh, can't wait. So you tuned in, everyone, turn that volume up, crank it, stop what you're doing, pull that car over. You're gonna want to put this in part for this one. In order to get you to physically turn the volume up, I'm gonna whisper this story. No, oh, this ought to be good. Can you imagine anything worse? Oh man. No, I'm gonna talk normal and you don't have to turn the volume up. But this would this would have been a want to keep this pretty pretty tightly tuned. 10, 12 years ago, this was in the new era of Dyson was kind of coming onto the scene, and it was Christmas time, and and Anna really wanted a cordless vacuum cleaner. We had had the plug-ins, and it was just it was inconvenient. And she say, like for a healthy marriage, that's absolutely not what you're supposed to buy your wife, a household item. It's just what she wanted. Okay, remember that commercial for the Peloton? Oh, it was so outrageous where they're like, I can't believe he caught his wife a Peloton. How rude. I'm sure that's kind of what it was like. Hey, uh, Merry Christmas, babe. I got you some new Windex. Got you some white work. These windows are looking a little smudged. But anyway, she wanted it. So I bought an off-brand cordless vacuum cleaner. Their cordless vacuum cleaners are awesome. Yeah, totally. They are awesome. Yeah, it was called, it was like a DEEK, is what it was called. Careful when you say that. It was called what? D-I-E-K. Or maybe D-I-E D-E. I don't think that's I don't think that's it. No, I promise you it was. Did you look it up? I bought two of them. No, I know, but like, did you look up the pronunciation? No, I didn't look up the pronunciation. D-E-I-K. Anyway, all that to say. Bought one, used it for a little while, it was fine, it broke. Bought another one, used it for a little while, it broke. Then I had to buy a Dyson. Then I had to spend the money. Now, could I have done a little more research and found something that would cost less than a Dyson and probably got the job done? Yeah, I probably could have done that. Probably. But at that point, it's not about the the cost, it's about the perceived value. And there are things that you buy that are inexpensive that are also a bad value. I would say those, the the two cordless vacuum cleaners, off-brand vacuum cleaners. And ladies and gentlemen, you can they are currently on sale uh for $99. So they're not that, it's not like I bought a $20 vacuum cleaner. No. But I spent significantly less than what a Dyson cost, and it wasn't a good value because it didn't last. It didn't, it didn't survive. Yeah. And for the cost of what you ended up spending, you should just bought the bad value. I mean, we get it. If I bought a Dyson for a hundred bucks, it'd be a great value. That'd be great. We get we get emails from people a lot where they tried to go buy a custom suit somewhere else. And because it was less expensive, that presumably is probably one of the only reasons they chose to go somewhere else is because it would have been less expensive. Half the price, maybe even less, probably less than half. Yeah, less than half. So sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. And then when it doesn't work out, we often will get emails from people saying, Help. I tried to go to this other place. I did go to this other place and things aren't going well. They either are gonna miss my deadline, or I got the product and I hate it and they won't do anything, or I got it, I hate it. They're trying to help, but they can't really help. Whatever the circumstance is, I'm, you know, I'm so sorry. I should have just come to you in the first place. And we turn them away. We don't turn them away to be rude, but usually we don't have enough time by the time we get this email to do anything, and or they've blown a portion of their budget already and they do not have the money left over to be able to actually use us. Both of these things have happened more than once. And we're in a position where there's nothing we can do because their priority was on spending significantly less the first time around. And had they just sucked it up and used the true experts and spent what it was going to cost, they ultimately would have been better off, would have got what they paid for, and would have spent around the same amount when they come come around to it, and they would have got a better value. It would have been a much better value than saving money, but still spending significant money on something that they don't like, doesn't fit them well, or and or won't be here by the time they have their deadline. So we kind of went off on that a little bit. Signs you're undervaluing, you may be, maybe undervaluing yourself and talking about the association of like cost-based thinking. So here's one that's not caught, that's not price related that I thought of. Oh. A sign that you may be undervaluing yourself is if you have a subservient persona, either on online, like on social media, andor in person. One thing that drives me absolutely crazy, I've mentioned it before, but I'm seeing it again this time of year, is the apologies for the holiday hours. I'm sorry for the inconvenience of closed on Christmas. Of being closed on Christmas and Christmas Eve. Like, knock it off. You don't need to apologize. Everyone else on planet Earth is also taking work off that day. You do not need to apologize. But I think that is very undervaluing of yourself and your business when you feel the obligation to apologize for doing something literally everyone else is doing. The same is said for when you have a planned vacation. Chunk of time off, not surrounding the holidays, but you know, in the middle of summer or around spring break or whatever it is. Oh, I'm so sorry. We're closed this week. So sorry for the inconvenience. No, no, no. Just thanks for the flexibility. Thank you for understanding. You don't need to apologize. I feel like that is really undervaluing yourself and your expertise and like your ability to run a business and and to live a life. I just thought of one. Oh, let's hear it. Here's another sign you're under undervaluing your business is if you feel the need to uh additionally incentivize somebody for hiring you or having worked with you. Sure. So not really price related, but not really, no, it's not price related. It's somebody comes in and they work with you and you feel like you need to give them something more than what they came in and bought from you. Sure. Otherwise, they're not receiving the value. There's a sign that you're undervaluing. Like throwing in extras or yeah. Just any sort of above and beyond. Now, I'm not saying you can't reward your great clients, give Christmas gifts to people who mean a lot to you in your business. What I'm saying, if you're doing like kitschy things and all sorts of like you're you're throwing all sorts of stuff in on top of what somebody bought, you're undervaluing your business. There's another sign that you're doing it. We've done that before, though. Not like if we have, we did this line of beanies once. We still have some. But we sold them. They have our old logo on them now. So they're right vintage. Vintage. We should jack the prices up on those. But we sold them for a season. And actually they did, they, I thought they did pretty good. We sold a bunch of them. But we were we gave them away and we ended up giving them away to clients for you know gifts, or you know, they you came in and get a beanie. I don't have a problem with that. No. What we're saying is like we if they come in to buy to get a haircut, for example, and you're like giving them coupons for you know half off next time and incentivizing and all of this extra stuff that's totally unnecessary and that's not why they're here. They're not here because they want to get some sort of a steal of a deal, they just want to use you, but you you're for some reason feeling like your product or service doesn't justify the price point. Yeah, that's a good one. I get that. If any of these things are are making you feel some kind of way, like in conviction mode, where you're like, oh, I think I might forget. Oh yeah, whoops, then listen to that and and and pay attention to it. Don't silence that in you. I think that's telling you what you need it to tell you, which is maybe stop doing that. And we're not we're not above feeling those challenges either. We shared a couple stories of times where we learned these lessons ourselves. And it was from situations we had gotten ourselves into, things we heard from clients, whether it was raise your prices or give me a discount or deal or I'm waiting until you're on sale, whatever it was. Uh, we've learned these things too. So we are certainly not immune, but it takes something sometimes to learn that lesson. And maybe this podcast now is that thing that you needed to tell you in order uh for you to make those changes that you might want to make. By the way, this is the perfect time to make those changes. Absolutely. As we're leaning into the beginning of a new year, coming up soon. We're like a week or in some change away. This is absolutely the time. This is the time to make the biggest changes of your career. Any time of year, any year, any day, wake up in the morning, raise your prices, it won't matter. You won't, you will hardly hear anything from people about it. That's been our experience. I stand by it. But if you're looking to really make some big changes from like the fabric of your business, new year time is the time to do that. So this is actually the perfect time to make big changes and to really start taking yourself seriously and valuing yourself and your business in the appropriate way. Another way that you may be undervaluing yourself is you're not trusting in yourself. You're so hesitant to do what you know you should do because you don't value your business, you don't value your convictions, you don't value your gut instincts. Lean in, make those changes, believe in yourself that you will be able to see it through and do what you need to do. Just do what you need to do. There's never a an awesome time to make changes. There's never the right time to start valuing yourself. So why not do it today? Why not do it at the start of 2026? You're operating here. You are unapologetic about operating here. You are not underpricing people anymore. You are not only on the level of the people you used to underprice, but you're actually a level above. Is that time of the podcast your favorite time of the podcast where we talk about bad business advice? We have compiled a list, and every episode we plan very little what we're going to say. We end up scrolling through it. One of us scrolls through it on our phones. We find something that we want to mention, and then we talk about it. I found a good one. I was trying to find one that sort of fell in line generally speaking with what we're talking about today. And I would like to uh I would like to take the charge on this one as the captain and the number one host, the lead host. Bad business advice offer more services to reach more people. I mean there's a sign you're undervaluing yourself. You're casting way too wide a net. You have no focus. You have no target you're after. You're trying to be everything to everybody. Uh news flash no business is everything to everyone. No business owner can speak to everybody. And offering more just for the sake of having more to attract possibly more people is never a recipe for success. Offer more so you what was the what was the rest of it so you have offer more so you get more clients or something like that. You don't want to work to reach more people offer offer more services or different services to reach more people. You don't want to reach people who are interested in what your business is about. Also uh I don't want to reach more people I want to work I want to reach better people. Yeah like we work with plenty of people already I want to work with more like I want to work with fewer people but higher quality that repeat. I would imagine most of you regulars would rather have fewer people that mean more to your business than a whole bunch more who mean virtually nothing to your business. The 8020 rule right does that have an official name the 8020 rule no I mean I don't know maybe where 80% of your your business comes from 20% of the people and there's variations and riffs off of that that people in in all sorts of different industries experience. We are no different that's ultimately the way it's gonna go I think in our industry our business I've heard I've heard versions of this from many people who provide us with the actual uh fabric the material that we sell but one of the high one of the the most uh high-end luxury mills that in existence in the world he told us I believe it was 90 10 wasn't it he said about 90% of their business comes from 10% of their accounts so no you don't need more to attract more people you're never going to be everything to everyone you're never going to grow your business by watering down what you do. You're gonna grow your business by becoming the best at what you do by having a targeted honed in clientele that you are after and unapologetically going after them, speaking their language and being an expert at something not just okay at a whole bunch of different things. Wouldn't you rather be an expert at something than just okay at a bunch of stuff yeah I would be so yeah I think that that's terrible advice expand what you do water down what you do get a whole bunch of more things that you do so that you can work with a whole bunch more people or get more clients whatever the phrase was it doesn't matter what industry you're in that's not the answer. The answer is becoming even better at what it is that you do becoming more honed in more focused doing it better charging more getting better margins and being the leader in the industry that you're in. And just remember more is not better better is better. Thanks so much for coming to this appointment uh we we hope that you've thought a little bit about the value you're placing on yourself not the cost right not what not what it costs the value and where that falls in relation to your own business your own priorities and really what your goals are. If you haven't already please subscribe to the newsletter we send one every week it's another way for us to be in touch with you and to uh make sure that we're filling you in on the on the happenings we appreciate you being here we appreciate you listening please feel free to give us a five star rating make sure you're subscribed to the pod so you don't miss the episodes when they come out this appointment is over we will see you for your next one and that's that today's appointment is over this has been appointment only your time is valuable and we're very appreciative of you spending some of it with us. Thanks for showing up thanks for being on time thanks for being receptive to what we have to say and if you have a question you'd like us to answer here on appointment only please shoot us a DM we would love to hear from you we would also appreciate a five star review. We'd love if you'd follow along follow us here however you're hearing this and follow us on Instagram at appointment onlypod