8: ADHD entrepreneurs with pricing challenges - this episode will help!

ADHD entrepreneurs pricing challenges!

Do you realize that you're being greedy by not raising your rates?

In this episode, I'm going to tell you, the ADHD entrepreneur, how you can charge what you're worth.

One of the most common topics that I have with my newer clients is how do you tackle raising your rates when you've been undercharging for so long? Now, this is the same conversation I have with my clients who haven't even set up their pricing yet. So just follow along wherever you are in the pricing conversation.

One of the things that comes up for my clients, who have already set their pricing super, super low and already have a handful of clients is they are terrified of upping their pricing and losing their clients or upping their pricing and poisoning the relationship with their clients because their clients will feel like it's a bait and switch. And here's a couple things that I want you to remember about setting your pricing. Setting your pricing is not a vanity metric, okay?

It's not you having this massive opinion about how wonderful you are. You setting your pricing is a survival mechanism for you not only to create this business to be sustainable, but to also be able to afford important things like food and shelter and water and a place to sleep. And occasionally something, you know, a luxury, like maybe shoes, so you can walk around without stepping on splinters and rocks. If you don't set pricing that actually allows for you to pay for a living, you're not going to be in business long. And actually, what ends up happening is you sign up all these clients for too little money, you can't stay in business. What happens to your clients? They get dropped because you have to quit on them. So you can go back and get a J-O-B that will pay you enough to live. Okay? So first and foremost, before we get into the conversation about how you even set up your pricing, I want you to recognize that it's not you just bragging about how amazing you are. It is genuinely how you make sure that you stay alive. And that's not vain. That's not selfish. That's not unkind. That is a completely reasonable f*&king ask.

Now, a couple fears that come along with this is, yes, the bait and switch, I'm going to up it on my clients, and they're going to run away screaming. They're going to badmouth me, they're going to think I'm evil, whatever. That's a whole conversation, and we'll get to that.

But one of the things that also comes up is, well, what if I'm not good enough? I especially hear this with people who are new at going out on their own.

So new coaches, new consultants, new copywriters folks who have learned the service that they provide. They are experts at it, but just haven't done it a long time. It's incredible the amount of times I've heard someone referred themselves as a baby coach, as a baby copywriter, as a baby consultant, and not like they're a coach for babies or copywriter for babies.

Like they downgrade themselves in the ranking of how good they are because they just haven't gone and done it that long. Guys, this is such backward thinking because if you approach your pricing and your packages like that, let me tell you who you're going to attract. And let's use the example of a copywriter for this, okay? So if you are a quote unquote baby copywriter so you're starting out and you're giving everyday a very steep discount on your services.

You have your baby prices and you go out into the world and you start getting clients and you're getting clients who are paying you pennies on the dollar of what they should be paying a copywriter. Now, what's going to happen with these clients is they are very likely to go into your copy after you've painstakingly written it and smashed all the pieces because you have charged so little that it really doesn't matter to them to respect your work. You have built zero authority with them that what you're doing is going to be at all effective.

And so they're going to look at what you've done with the perspective of, well this person doesn't think they're good, so I'm not going to think they're good either. Let me fix what they've done. And let me tell you, they have not been trained as a copywriter. They are not writers, they're not copy editors. They have no idea what they're doing. And what ultimately happens is they take all of your hard work, smash it to bits, make it completely ineffective, and whereas you were hoping to get a good testimonial from them, they're going to be completely disappointed with the results from having you write this copy because they've turned it into this little weird Frankenstein of your writing and their thoughts and what they think might work. And there's a reason why they hired a copywriter in the first place because they weren't good at writing.

 When you charge enough for the things that you're writing, guess who you attract? You attract clients who when you send them the blog post, the white paper, the instagram captions, whatever kind of copy you're writing, when you send it to them, they have a couple questions or small edits. But because you charge so much, because you have positioned yourself as an expert, as if you know what you're doing, which give yourself credit here, you do know what you're doing. They're not going to go in with a sledgehammer and their own words and edit everything. They're going to trust that you know what you're doing.

The same thing goes for coaching. If you're a coach and you're starting out with clients and you're charging $20 an hour, first and foremost you can't afford to live on that. There's just no way in hell, okay? Unless you are already affluent in other ways and are independently wealthy. If you're already naturally independently wealthy, then sure, you can survive on $20 an hour. But here's what happens. You attract clients who want to talk to someone for an hour for $20, and they're really just 'Lonely Lous'. They really just want to have someone to chat with, and they're not committed to doing anything that they say they'll do in your sessions. They don't do the work. And six months will pass and you will be so flipping frustrated because they've shown up and they've just chatted your ear off and haven't seen any progress.

And the testimonial that you were hoping you'd get on the other side of this after taking a hit financially is never going to come, because what are they going to say in their testimonial? Oh, Dorothea was so lovely to talk to. We chatted twice a month. Why would anyone agree to pay for that after that? That's not a testimonial that will get you new clients. The clients who will show up and do the work are the ones that are paying like $500 an hour.

They're the ones who show up. They know that they have some skin in the game. They know that they're paying enough to ensure that there's some accountability on their side. And even if you give them some homework that is way outside their comfort zone, they're far more likely to do it. Because why? Because they've paid this much money and they didn't pay this much money to not make some progress.

So when you charge baby prices, you get baby progress and you get baby testimonials that attract more baby clients, which attracts more baby money. And nothing wrong with babies. I mean, they're great. Like, we need them to continue the human race. They're adorable. You know? Like, who doesn't love a funny video on TikTok or Instagram of a baby being adorable? I know I do, but that's not what we base our businesses on. Unless you have a baby brand, then, you know, have at it. Which, by the way, anyone out there who has kids, how expensive are baby things?

**SIDEBAR**

Could you imagine if the whole baby industry charged so little, like more people would be having children? They'd be able to afford it? Actually, I think I've just solved, like, the population issue in some countries. I think I think this is the answer, guys, we need to convince the brands that produce all the products that we need for babies to just charge a lot less. Like, that's it. Boom. I'm glad I solved that. All right, moving on.

**ON WITH THE SHOW**

So moving on from baby prices.

So here's the next problem that a lot of ADHD-preneurs and neurotypical preneurs also struggle with. They fear raising their rates because they're worried that it'll set expectations even higher for their performance to which I say, what's the problem with that? I want you to imagine I have five clients, and I charge them each $100 a week. That's $500 a week.

That's not enough for me to live on.

So I'm going to have to go and get maybe 15 more clients. That's $2,000 a week that I'll be making. That's still not a whole lot. That's a lot of work for me to be doing. Because I want you to remember, I'm going to do the 20 hours of work with those 20 clients each week. I still have to do another 20 hours of marketing. I still have to do another 20 hours of background stuff. The work will not end at 20 hours. It's going to end up being like a 70 hours a week job. Okay? So 70 hours for $2,000 a week is not fair compensation.

But for those clients, if I'm only charging them $100 a week, you can probably get away with providing some pretty mediocre service, right? Let's just be real. You don't have the same expectations when you go to a Motel Six as you do when you go to the Four Seasons. When you go to the Four Seasons, if you were to get the service that you'd get at a Motel Six, you'd be pissed, and rightly so for how much you're paying. Right? Likewise, if you went to a Motel Six and they started giving you service, like at the Four Seasons, you'd get a little creeped out. Like, no, sir, do not follow me to my room with my bags. I got it. Thank you very much. Go back to your desk. Thank you. We don't want to charge Motel Six prices and give Four Season service, and we don't want to charge Four Seasons prices and give Motel Six service.

So the key here is if you want to make more money with less time, you have to charge Four Seasons prices. Which imagine you take those five clients and you charge them $1000 a week, that's $5,000 a week. I wouldn't need any more clients at that $.5 thousand a week, 52 weeks out of the year.

That's pretty good. And because I'd be able to work with only those five clients, guess what I would have a surplus of? Time.

I'd have so much time to check in with them and over deliver and circle back and maybe even have some meetings that should have been emails!

Who knows? Like, knock your socks off. Also, with that amount of money that you're bringing in, you can now afford to hire some people who can help you elevate this experience for your clients. And I want you to notice I'm being very vague about the industry that this is in, because it really doesn't matter. You can find ways to overdeliver and give exceptional experiences to your clients and justify that new, higher rate, but you have to charge for it first. And again, the types of clients you're going to attract at Four Seasons rates is very different than the Motel Six kind of clients. I also want to point to what kinds of referrals you're going to get. When you think about asking for referrals from your client base, I want you to remember that your client base is always going to refer people who are like them. So if you are in the Motel Six space, you're going to get a lot more Motel Six kinds of people who are lovely people.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not sh^%ing on them, but they're not the best clients. They don't have a lot of money. They don't have a lot of capital to invest in your services.

And that means you have to work with a lot more of them to make the same amount of money. I'm in your camp. I want you to be able to make the most amount of money for the least amount of time here, okay? Whereas if you're working with Four Seasons type people, guess who they're going to refer into your business? They're going to refer in their peers, people who expect to pay around the same amount for your work.

So, sure, you're going to have higher expectations, but you're going to be better able to deliver on those higher expectations. Lastly, one of the things that comes up for most of my clients, and it really doesn't matter what industry you're in, is this fear that when you charge more money, that means that you have to guarantee that your clients are going to get a result. Now, let's talk about how this would work in the legal industry, right? Could you imagine if there was a lawyer out there who could guarantee that you would win every single court case? Oh, my God. They would be the busiest lawyer in all the lands. They would also probably be in jail because there's no way that they could do that legally.

You hire the lawyer who has the best chance of winning, knowing full well that there are so many factors that are outside of their control in fighting this court case for you, you have no way of getting a guarantee from them because it's impossible to guarantee an outcome when you don't control all the factors.

Likewise, if you're a coach, say you're a fitness coach, there's no way that you can guarantee that someone is going to lose a certain amount of weight and a certain amount of time because you're not standing with them 24/7 controlling every single bite of food that they put in their mouth. You could absolutely make that your service. You'd have to charge a lot of money for it to make it worth it. And I guarantee you, your client would hate you at the end of two months.

Like, how many times can you smack a slice of pizza out of their hand without them wanting to hit you in the face or something? So maybe that's not the greatest business idea. Don't do that. And back to a copywriter. The copywriter can't ever guarantee that their writing is going to get results. However, they're an expert at writing copy. Their copy, if it's unedited by you, is far more likely to attract your ideal clients. You're more likely to get results using what they do. And if you're paying enough for it, you're less likely to go and mess with it. When my prospective clients ask me, do you offer any guarantees? I'm very straight up that I cannot offer a guarantee because I can't guarantee that my clients are going to do the work. My answer is this is why I charge so much. Because I used to charge less and people would sign up and they wouldn't do the work. Me charging the amount that I do is actually a benefit to you because you're far more likely to have some skin in the game when you're paying this much. And if you have skin in the game, guess what you're going to do. You're going to follow through on your commitments to me. You're going to have some accountability. You're going to do the work. Results lay on the other side of work. The closest way you can give a guarantee is by charging a lot of money to get clients to be committed to doing the work, because they've paid a lot of money for it.

Now, let's talk about how you figure out your pricing.

Now, if you want to download a very simple guide to figure out your pricing, I have a link in the show notes to the money map for coaches and consultants. You want to go and download that. Again. The link is in the show notes. So let's dive into it, shall we?

 So how much money do you want to make each year? And when I ask this question, I usually get two answers. My clients will say, oh, well, the first answer is, I'd be fine if I made $50,000 a year. Like be able to afford to live somewhere, and I'd be able to buy ramen noodles. And my children may get food occasionally. I don't know. Like the complete weenie answer. That's not the answer I'm looking for. I'm asking. What do you want to make? Now, when people typically answer this question, their voice changes. They get a little hushed, as if they're not allowed to even say it.

Like they might get in trouble for naming what they actually want. And it's so funny because what they actually want is, like, the going rate for a lot of jobs. You wanting to make $150,000 a year? Great. That's completely reasonable. You want to make $250,000 a year? Great. That's also completely reasonable.

I want you to remember that every single goal or dream you have is reverse engineerable. The only thing that will keep you from getting there is you not doing the work. So if you want to make $250,000 a year Great. Take that number, we're going to divide it by twelve months. So $250,000 a year divided by twelve months is $20,833.33 per month. You take that number and you divide it by how many clients you want to be carrying when you're full time, and that is how much you need to charge per month, per client. So imagine you want to carry 15 clients at a time. That's only $1388 per client.

That's not an insane amount.

There are actually people who charge a hell of a lot more than $1388 a month. And I'm talking coaches, I'm talking copywriters, I'm definitely talking lawyers, I'm talking consultants. They charge way more than that. So full permission here, decide what you want and base the math off of that. Or I want to go into a little side note here. It may actually take you a little longer to get a higher paying client when you first start out. And that's normal. I don't want you getting freaked out like, oh my God, no one signed up. This isn't working. I'm going to scrap the whole thing. Going back to being the cheap coach or the cheap consultant or the cheap lawyer, okay? These clients take a while to find you, but let me tell you, it's so much better to wait for them than to discount yourself.

 So here's where the pricing conundrum affects people with ADHD so much worse, okay? Because people with ADHD are moderately good at a whole slew of things, right? Because we get into hyperfocus on weird hobbies all the time, okay? But what happens is they get in the hyperfocus on something. So, for instance, I was in hyperfocus on knitting for a really long time now. I'm a good knitter, okay? I'm not an excellent knitter, I'm not a pro knitter, okay? There are things in the knitting world that I still don't understand or know how to do, okay? So if I were to start a business on teaching people how to knit, and I used to actually teach people how to knit, I may get in my own head and be like, well, you're not the best. You're not the best. So maybe don't charge as if you're the best. Charge as if you're moderately good. And so entrepreneurs, who have ADHD, they're so used to being moderately good at a lot of things that they really apply this mentality to where they're an expert.

They apply the moderately good generalist identity to the work that they do in their business. And because they're aware that there is some stuff out there that they don't know, they think, well, I can't charge as if I'm an expert here.

I need to charge as if I'm just moderately good. And I can help people with the next few steps. Because who am I if I'm not an expert, if I'm not the perfect human when it comes to this thing, who am I to charge a lot. One of the things that people with ADHD deal with a lot in our lifetimes is getting called out for being imperfect or screwing things up. And this happens as a kid if you forget to clean your room in high school when you screw up a science project.

I remember distinctly Ms. Flint's class.

She gave us this massive project for biology, and I misread one of the main instructions at the very beginning, and I lost 50 points on the project out of 100. I failed that project because I missed one line of instructions. Something like that will affect you for the rest of your life. It sounds so silly, but you could take something like that and just think, well, I'm no good at science. I'm no good at this. You start applying it in weird ways as to like, well, who's going to trust me if I'm not perfect at everything? Who's going to trust me with stuff if I may miss an instruction? And when we start our businesses, we preemptively create these scenarios, and it's subconscious. We don't mean to, but we assume everyone else does everything perfectly. And so when we set up our relationships with our clients, we want to make sure that we're doing it perfectly, but we know that we're not likely to do it perfectly. We know that we're likely to screw it up. We're actually far more likely to screw something up at some point than anyone else.

And so when we think about charging more money for our work, that's the thing that usually holds us back, because we're so terrified that someone's going to tell us, you know what?

You screwed this up. You're not worth the money that I agreed to pay you, because deep down, that's what we believe of ourselves. And I just want to remind you that humaning is hard. It's hard if you have ADHD. It's hard if you're neurotypical. It's hard. And mistakes happen. And mistakes are absolutely going to happen in your business, and some of them are absolutely going to be your fault. But they don't affect the worth of the work that you do. They don't affect the results that your clients are going to get through you, and you absolutely can charge more.

So I had this one client who was an organizational change consultant. So they would basically go into a company when the company realized that their technology was way, way, way out of date and they needed to switch over to a better system. Now, this client, they were such an incredible consultant. Like, they could go in and narrow in on exactly where the technology was failing.

They were an expert at all the different technology types that would sub in for this thing. Like, I honestly didn't understand half of what they did, but one of the things that they did, even more than dealing with the technology sh*t, was they knew how to work with the people leaders in the organization to calm down their employees.

Because employees hate change, especially in big companies, because everyone's afraid that, oh my God, something is going to change and I'm going to be made redundant or my job is going to go away and then what do I do then? So this client of mine went and dealt with the technology stuff, but had this amazing way of coaching and being with the people leadership so that they knew how to communicate the changes to their people. Sometimes they didn't have time to do this. Sometimes they were so wrapped up in the technical stuff because it was just such a freaking mess. That's all they were able to do. And so they really only charge for the technical stuff because they couldn't guarantee that they'd be able to do the people stuff. They couldn't guarantee that they'd be able to go in and coach the managers and coach the people leaders and help them get on board with what the communications needed to be with this project. Now, 80% of the time, that's exactly what they would do. And in doing so, they were basically giving $150,000 of worth for $50,000 in invoicing. And their major fear was that sometimes it wasn't effective with companies. Sometimes the people leaders weren't receptive to learning how to communicate. Sometimes things that were outside of their control prevented it from being effective.

And because they had this ADHD book of evidence that if you don't do it perfectly, you don't get to charge enough for it, they didn't see how they could justify charging what they should have been. Now, the first time they went into a proposal presentation call and presented this $150,000 deal where they would not only help with the technology shift, but the culture shift alongside it and they got a yes. They are completely astounded. They were blown away by how excited their client was to bring them in.

And actually the next time they had a conversation, they upped their rates because they realized the company was far more likely to implement all the changes that they had signed on for when they paid more for it. Now, when you start doing this in your business, you stop undercutting yourself in other parts of your life. Because how we do one thing is how we do everything.

So when you stop settling for less than you deserve in your money and your business it can get uncomfortable because you stop settling for less than what you deserve in your relationships as well, you stop settling for less than what you deserve and your living situation, you stop settling for less than what you deserve all over your life. But the key is you have to start asking for what you deserve. And I know we started with this whole conversation on the bait and switch and I said we were going to get to it and I haven't gotten to it yet, so we're circling back because I know my mom is listening, and if I don't circle back to this, I will get a phone call later.

Okay?

So here's something that's really interesting about folks with ADHD is we have a very, very high expectation of justice. We get flipped, the eff out when injustice happens. So bait and switches or how do you see the plural of that? I don't even know. So when there's a bait and switch in our world and we feel like it's unethical and we feel like we've been tricked, we get so upset about it, and we want to see justice done because we're so sensitive to this, it is very rare that we would ever do this to someone else. Okay. Because we know how it feels, you know, to feel like you've been tricked into something. We would never do that to our clients. Okay, so a couple of ways that you can actually help your clients deal with the price raise in a way that makes them feel honored and also keeps that exchange fair.

 There are a few different ways that I like to recommend. The first one is you can grandfather in their former rate for a period of time, but what you're doing is you're basically saying, hey, Steve, I've so enjoyed working with you for the last six months. I just want to let you know I'm at the point now in my business where I'm going to have to raise my rates. Now, I love working with you, and I am so proud of all the progress that you've been making. So here's what I would like to do is I would love to grandfather in your rate for maybe the next six months, and then if you wish to continue with me at that point, then my rate will be going up to this amount.

 So you're giving them plenty of lead time for them to continue working with you. And if they choose to continue at that higher rate, then they absolutely can. But you're honoring that relationship. Another way you can do this is you can, again, have this conversation about, hey, so and so. I'm at the point in my business where I'm going to have to raise my rates. I understand that you've been paying X, Y, and Z amount. So here's what I would like to do for you. This is my new rate. If you can afford that and you want and you see the value in this, we'll move you up to that. But if it's out of your budget or you don't feel like you can justify that, then let's talk about something in the middle that would work better for you. So you're basically saying, hey, listen, I care about you. I want to honor our relationship, but I also need to honor my income, and let's make a deal. Now, the third way you can do this, and I recommend doing this with clients that you do not want to work with anymore is just tell them, okay, my rates are going up next month. And it's funny how often when you say your rates are going up, people are like, oh, thank God. I have felt so weird about how little you've charged me. I get so much from this. It just feels so uneven, the amount of value that I get from working with you, with how little you charge.

Because here's something we don't realize. Exchanges have to be equal for both parties to feel fully committed. It has to be equal. We all have that one friend who is such a helpful human being. Like, if you're moving, they're volunteering to help you move.

Okay? If you had a baby and you need someone to come over and just, like, help you do laundry, they're over there helping you do laundry. You are going to be out of town and need someone to watch your fish and water your plants. They're over there feeding your fish and watering your plants, but they refuse to let you help them with anything to the point where maybe they broke their leg at one point and you offered to come over and help them set up, like, a ramp for their wheelchair. And they're like, no, I got it.

What happens in those friendships, usually you stop letting them help you with stuff because you feel so indebted to them that you just can't continue letting them help you with stuff. And what happens at that point is they take that as a rejection, and ultimately it hurts the friendship. So you not charging enough can actually communicate to your clients that they're being so greedy, that they're being a taker. It's so one sided, like they're getting all the value for so little that they just can't do this anymore. And sometimes those clients will just go away because they feel like they're getting too much from you and you're not letting them make the relationship more even. So don't do that. Make an equal exchange. Everyone feels better when it's an equal exchange.

© 2022 Katie McManus – Business Strategy For Weenie ADHD-preneurs