Simone Seol

I love being well-paid. I believe an angel gains a wing every time a practitioner with real skills gets paid handsomely. I often talk people into charge more.

AND here are some terrible reasons to raise your price.

1. “That’s what other people are doing.”

So what? You have no idea if they’re even selling successfully at that price. Higher prices does NOT mean someone’s making more money (take it from me, who coaches people everyday who are struggling AF to sell high ticket offers.)

Also, there’s a lot of gross industry practices that feed on evaluating the worthiness/readiness of clients based on how much they’re able to pay, thereby jacking up average prices. That’s… fucked. Just because it’s a common practice, doesn’t mean you have to jump on board.

2. “I can work less and make more money.”

This is sometimes a valid reason. But it is a bad reason if it’s the PRIMARY reason you’re raising your rates. Your clients shouldn’t have to pay more just because you don’t feel like working.

And moreover, this concerns me because it is literally bad for business — as in, it will slow down your business growth.

When you’re not rock-solid in your skills and demand, and you try to “charge more so I can work less” now, that’s trading the ILLUSION of “more cash now” for the reality of a robustly profitable business later.

3. “Because I’m worth it.”

My love, I know you’re worth it. A hundred times over. That’s not in question. 

Your pricing is NOT a representation of your worth, or the value of working with you, both of which are infinite.

Your price is determined by the intersection of (1) how good you are at your job, and (2) the demand for your services that is created by your reputation. 

I don’t care if you do a better job helping people than Tony Robbins. He’s worked his whole life to build a reputation, so he has more demand. 

Want demand? 

Go out, carry yourself like a professional, be confident, kind, honest, and generous, and benefit many people as possible with what you know how to do.

If you keep the focus on doing that, your reputation (and therefore demand) will take care of itself. And raising your prices will be a no-brainer.

4. “Because I already invested so much in myself and I want my business to pay off already.”

This is gonna sound harsh, but I say this with love: you clients don’t give a shit how much you invested in. 

And they most definitely did NOT ask for the responsibility to solve your finances.

This is a self-serving reason which will ultimately show up as a weird energetic incongruence that will subtly repel clients no matter how hard you market.

5. “Because I CAN (also known as: because people will pay it, because I can get away with it)”

This, too, is sometimes a valid reason. Sometimes, you should absolutely charge something because you can.

I’ve worked incredibly hard over the years to create a ginormous body of work that gives outsize value to tens of thousands of people weekly. An hour of my time now is much more valuable than it was, say, 5 years ago… and I will charge handsomely for anything that requires my time and energy.

If you have high-end “luxury” type positioning, and have a proven track record of correspondingly high quality of client results to back it up, it makes sense to charge a lot.  

(And I love luxury, I believe there is a place in the world for fine, exquisitely-crafted, highest-quality, expensive things, and will always advocate for its existence and defend it.)

But also, there is such a thing as a self-serving price hike. Whatever that douche pharma bro’s name was… he charged a gazillion dollars for a lifesaving drug because he “could,” cutting off access to people who would get sick and die without it.

Granted, that’s an extreme example. Nobody will get sick or die because they couldn’t buy life coaching, for example.

(Okay, that’s debatable… but you know what I mean. If you try to equate coaching with an essential diabetes drug, you are also a douche.)

But, to avoid going down a sketchy slippery slope, you want to be mindful of (1) making the price reflective of actual VALUE delivered, and (2) not having your price be a giant middle finger to people who WOULD be good fits for what you have, and would suffer without access.

In the end, at some level all pricing is arbitrary, this is your personal decision, and no one else can tell you what the right number is.

I’m always incredibly wary of all morality police…

… and I’m even more wary of those who associate “goodness” with financial martyrdom, and think people in any helping profession should get by with as little as possible. I have always argued that this is actually an insidious form of sexist oppression, as “helping professions” tend to be women-dominated. Fuck that. I love being financially comfortable and want you to be the same.

But the point is this: we’ll all be better off when pricing, in some way, remains tethered to actual value and the realities of the people the product is meant to serve, and isn’t a giant “fuck you” to the majority of the world.