💸 What causes you to charge less

Summary: Charging low prices creates a vicious cycle - it attracts bad clients which then keeps you trapped in the low-prices cycle. Having bad clients is more damaging to you than having no clients at all. Fire your bad clients. Charge your worth, or you will encourage bad clients.

DEPTH:

It is easy to get caught in a trap of charging low prices. That trap can be very difficult to escape from.

Not all clients are created equal. The customer is not always right. Bad clients exist.

Having bad clients is more damaging to you than having no clients at all.

I once had a client who would email me at all times of the day and would get mad if I didn’t respond within an hour. And you know what, that was my fault. I built that expectation and I allowed it to continue for too long.

I changed things, and now I have a very respectful relationship with all of my clients. I would genuinely consider most of my active clients to be some of the best people I have had the fortune of meeting. I now only work with people I consider to be good people.

Unfortunately, not everybody has this situation.

I often work with business owners to break this vicious cycle of low prices. The first two steps often feel scary but are absolutely necessary: we need to fire our bad clients, and we need to make our offer more appealing to good clients.

Think of the worst clients you have had in your business. What do they have in common?

Often, the worst clients are those that have paid the least. They may be the people who beat you down to a low price, or those that you dropped the price for.

When people push for a low price, it is for one of two reasons: they cannot afford to pay you properly or they don’t value you and your offer. Both are terrible for you.

If they cannot afford to pay you properly, they NEED your thing to work. Usually, they need it to work quickly or everything comes crashing down around them. They are usually busy and distracted, which leads to them not completing their parts of the process effectively or on time. These people become extremely high maintenance, they ask questions all the time and try to extract every iota of value from you, while simultaneously making it harder for you to deliver any value at all. This is draining. This causes you to divert valuable time and resources to serving a client with low potential.

If they do not value you and your offer, they simply don’t give a damn about you. They are likely disrespectful, and equally high maintenance. They have unreasonably high expectations and unreasonably low understanding. This causes you to loose self-esteem which erodes both you and your business.

The solution?

Be willing to fire clients. Hold firm to your prices. Charge your worth.

Good clients not only don’t mind paying proper prices, they actively seek out the suppliers charging proper prices. They know that the best suppliers know their worth and charge proper prices.

It can be difficult at first to fire clients and charge your worth, but I promise it gets easier. You just need to start.

What bad client are you going to fire today?

💡 Quote I'm pondering

“Doing the right thing at the wrong time is like using the right key in the wrong lock”

Click here to share this quote on Twitter

The order of operations is MUCH more important than people realise.

Over the last few issues I have highlighted a few ways that I use to make sure I am doing the right things in the right order.

Doing the right thing at the right time poorly is still more valuable than doing the wrong thing at the wrong time absolutely perfectly.

I shared this in my Work Smart Wednesday newsletter. Want the full set of related insights? You can read them here: https://worksmartwednesday.substack.com/p/work-smart-wednesday-november-22

👋 Want to work together?

When you’re ready, here are 3 ways I can help you:

🔍 Clarity Call - we will discuss your situation and create a step-by-step action plan together so you know exactly what you need to do next for maximum impact

👓 StartSmart - Achieve a 6 figure income within 6 months, whether you only have an idea or you have already started your business

🧘 Overload to Optimal - reduce your workweek to 20 hours or less within 90 days while running your 6/7 figure business