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[Transcript starts at 1:00]
What is up y’all. Welcome to another episode of FitBizU. I’m your host, Jill Coleman. And before we get started, I want to remind you that we are going to be opening enrollment for FBA, which is stands for Fitness Business Accelerator. This is my beginner to business course for those who are in year zero to two of online business and wanna learn everything.
A to Z internet business and start your side hustle or grow your side hustle. So, um, for those of you who are not on the interest list, go to jillfitfree.com/fba-waitlist. That’s jillfitfree.com/fba-waitlist. We are opening up, uh, wait list applications with an exclusive discount and bonuses on March 20th.
So it’s coming. It’s right around the corner. It’s about five weeks away. Super excited. We have a ton of people, uh, champing at the bit to get in this program, and we’ll start soon after that. So make sure you get on there, even if you’re not so sure. If it’s for you, you get all the early details and an opportunity to see the offer before anyone else.
Okay? Let’s get into today’s episode. I wanna talk about raising your prices and this is something that I talk a lot about on my FBA calls, I feel like this is probably the hardest thing for people who are newer to internet business because sometimes you feel a little bit like an imposter. You’re like, who am I to, you know, uh, charge this much or, you know, I dunno if I’m gonna be able to get them a result.
And maybe you have something right now where you’re. Basically charging pennies or you know that you should be increasing your prices. You’re just scared and you don’t know how to talk about it or how to introduce a price increase. Maybe you wanna increase your prices to your current people. I feel like it’s really easy to increase prices to new people because especially if you’re doing something like one-on-one coaching and you’re getting on sales calls, people, you can literally just increase your price point at the very next sales call.
You know, and people don’t know what that is. You know, something I think a lot about, and I think sometimes we worry about is what if our clients talk, or what if our, you know, some, an old client finds out that a new client’s paying this or a new client finds out that an old client is paying this.
Remember, like if you go to, I don’t know if I go to, um, Uh, I don’t know, a store and I buy something for like a certain price point, and then maybe two years later I go buy again and it’s increased. I’m not gonna be like, oh, okay. Or I’m not gonna ask for like, the price it was two years ago. It’s the exact same thing when it comes to your coaching.
And one of the things that I’m very passionate about for you guys especially, is the fact that you guys are not just coaches anymore. You’re not just trainers. You’re literally listening to this podcast because you want to start and or grow your online business. So with that being said, this is the most in demand that your time has ever been up until now.
So you can’t just charge coaching prices anymore. You have to charge pricing for coaching with a digital CEO. Okay, that’s what you are, because not only now are you doing the coaching and the training, but you’re also doing social media content. You’re also doing marketing and sales, and you’re investing in yourself, and you’re doing all these other things.
You’re wearing all these other hats. So for example, at Jill Fit, we have coaches that work with us. Uh, who are Moderation 365 coaches. They don’t do any marketing on their own. They can if they want to, but they don’t do any marketing for us. We essentially give them clients. So no, I don’t assume that they’re gonna show up in any other capacity than just be an amazing coach.
However, if someone wanted to coach with me on nutrition, they’d have to pay a lot more. Not because I’m, I know the information. Our coaches are solid. In fact, I would probably say that our Moderation 365 coaches, because they’re in the trenches, are probably even better at coaching that stuff now than I am.
But my time is worth more, not because I’m better than or anything like that, but because I’m doing so many more things in the business. So, for example, we have amazing Moderation 365 coaches, and they’re just coaches. We don’t ask them to post on social. We don’t ask them to market themselves. And it, you know, if you are someone who has a co-coach and you want to make themselves part of the deal, that’s fine, but we want to pay them coaching wages.
And so when you think about your own thing, you guys are now doing multiple things. Not only you’re the coach, right? You’re the quote unquote talent, but you’re also the business owner. And the fact that you are sitting here listening or walking or doing whatever while you’re listening to this podcast means that you’re investing in yourself.
It means that you wanna learn all the other pieces of business. It might be the hardest to justify it to yourself, especially if you feel like an imposter. Have a little bit of imposter syndrome. Think about it this way. Um, you know, if you, I don’t know, wanna increase your prices, now all of a sudden you might be a little bit more on the hook.
Right? This was something that I struggle with, especially in the beginning. I kind of had this narrative that if I just charged something really low or just gave away more stuff for free. You know, if someone didn’t get a result it was like, well I don’t know. It’s like you paid like no money for it or like, you know, but this thing was free, so I dunno what to tell you.
I’ve had clients do that too, and that’s a trick in my estimation, and this is really strange how this works when you charge more. You show up in a different capacity, you literally show up as a better coach. You’re more likely to go and get additional credentials or continue educating yourself because now you wanna justify the price that you’re asking for.
So it’s like, which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Do we not charge a lot because we wanna make sure that there’s an out, or do we bump up our prices and then we rise to the occasion as professionals? And also, what’s strange about this is your clients who actually will pay more will typically be more compliant, they’ll be easier clients.
I know this sounds kind of counterintuitive, but this was my experience at Jill Fit. We had clients who, you know, paid a hundred bucks a month for one-on-one coaching, especially when we were getting started and they were like, I don’t wanna say they’re problem clients, but they were definitely super needy clients.
Then we bumped our prices like quite a bit, and the people were just so much easier. Not only were they easier, but they were like, grateful to pay versus… at Jill Fit sometimes we have people ask for refunds for free stuff, uh, which I totally don’t get, but it’s a small example of how you can raise the caliber of your clients if you increase your prices.
Now, I love the idea of increasing because you don’t actually need as many clients, right? At Jill Fit, we had over a hundred clients paying like 125 a month, right? And we were making decent money. What’s that? A hundred people paying a hundred dollars a month is what? Uh, Was that a thousand dollars? I can’t do the math.
No, it’s $10,000, which is great, and I was paying a lot of that to my. But if I increase the price, maybe I wouldn’t get, you know, quite as many people, but I would get higher caliber people and I’d probably make more money. And so remember, your time is now more in demand than it ever has been, which is why if you do take on a client, you need to charge them what you’re worth and to justify that to your current clients or to your future clients, or even to yourself.
Look at how much more in demand your time is now. And all of the skill sets that you have, in addition to just being a great coach, you’re actually a better professional because you have all these skill sets you’re investing in yourself. If you do something like FBA Fitness Business Accelerator, or you would invest in a different certification or Moderation 365 or any of these, you know, different course or credentials.
You are literally increasing the value of what you bring to the table. I’ll never forget one of my earliest mentors, Rachel Cosgrove, who was a business mentor, we did an episode, um, about the lessons I learned from her a few weeks ago, and she, I remember she asked me my hourly rate and I didn’t really know what it was, so I just gave my personal training rate.
I was like, oh, it’s 125 an hour, and she goes, well, it’s 250 now. You just got a raise. And I’ll never forget that because, and I, I do the same thing to my own students because I’m just like, they need to be increased. They need to be increased in price. Sometimes you just need someone else to give you permission.
to increase your prices. A couple of things that you wanna consider is, I would not overly justify this. So if you send an email to your current clients, this is a question we get all the time in FBAs, like, what wording do I use now? You don’t have to necessarily, like, I think if you try to over justify, it kind of comes off a little defensive, like you’re almost ready for them to be upset by it.
I always try and remember that your clients, especially your current clients, they wanna stay with you, right? They don’t wanna go look for another trainer. They like you, that’s why they stayed. They have a trusting relationship with you as well. So oftentimes we think if we change anything with the arrangement, we increase the price or we, you know, we take away some of the access or whatever it is.
We just think they’re gonna bounce. And maybe every once in a while someone will. I certainly did that when I was a full-time personal trainer to, in order to create time to work on my online business, I had to increase my prices to sort of start weeding out some of those people that I just needed to get rid of because I needed more time.
And so when you think about this, I really want you to, uh, when you communicate it to them, whether you send them an email or something like that, usually you wanna give ’em at least a 30 day window. So, for example, if you’re gonna change your. You know, come January first, you probably wanna give them a heads up starting like December first.
And like I said, I don’t think overly justify it. I think it’s your business. You set your own rates, you have the right to do whatever you want. And of course they have the right to do whatever they want as a result of that. So they might decide they wanna go somewhere else. They might decide instead of doing twice a week sessions, they only wanna do once a week sessions, something like that.
But if you over justified think sometimes it kind that comes off defensive, um, and aggressive. And instead I would just say, Hey, it’s just a matter of fact. It doesn’t have to be this like very high emotion thing. It can be very matter of fact. You can say. Hey, so and so, um, I wanna give you a heads up that in 30 days I’m gonna be increasing my prices from X to X.
And the reason why I’m doing that is because I’m now growing the back end of my business and I’m a lot busier than I ever have been. And of course, I really appreciate you and value you as someone who’s been loyal to me over the years. And I wanna just give you a heads up. I would love to work with you if we wanna change up anything about your, um, you know, your situation or, or your arrangement based on this.
But, um, I just want you to know that I’m becoming a better professional. I’ve invested quite a bit in my own education so I can bring that to my clients and that’s, this is part of that. And that’s it. That’s all I have to say. And when you say we can talk through anything you know regarding your arrangement.
I always like to give people outs. I like to give them options. So for example, one of the things that I did when I increased my prices was I asked clients who were coming two or three times a week if they wanted to back it down to once or twice. So someone who’s coming twice a week can come now once a week, right?
Uh, I took my sessions from 60 minute sessions to 30 minute sessions, and I didn’t just cut my prices in half. I still kept it a little bit higher than 50% off. Uh, but it was, it was the ability they were saving some cash, right? They were saving some cash and I was getting some time back, which of course is what I wanted.
Um, you can add additional value. So for example, maybe when you train with someone or you talk to someone on the phone or something like that, maybe they don’t have that much interaction with you. Is there an additional piece of education you can give them? Is there any additional sort of, uh, supplemental training they can do on their own?
You can obviously add that you can boost the value of the coaching that something with something that doesn’t require your time. So for example, I’ve had clients like put together Facebook groups for all of their one-on-one clients. So now they’re able to connect with other people who have similar goals, and that’s an additional value add.
So you can say, because I’m increasing my prices, I also wanted to add some additional things that I think is gonna help you be even more compliant. You can add a Facebook group that’s, you know, for everybody. You can, um, you know, take them through some kind of education. You can put them through some sort of educational email series.
You can again, give them some supplemental training to do between sessions, something like that, where they get something else but it doesn’t take your time. You can refer them to another trainer, for example, if it’s like, Hey, this just can’t work for me, you can definitely refer them to someone else who thinks gonna be a little cheaper.
Remember, they don’t always necessarily want the cheapest. So I think the best bet is trying to figure out a way they can stay with you that still fits into their budget. And you as the person who’s walking people through this need to remember and value your worth, and try not to get super emotionally attached to whatever they say.
Just, and this is what I did. I assumed that most people would leave. That’s just what I assumed. I was like, you know what? I’m gonna manage my expectations and I’m gonna increase my prices, and I’m gonna assume that most people are going to either leave or not wanna do it . But I held firm because I knew that it was what I had to do to free up my time and create more time in my schedule to do the online stuff, to do the marketing, the selling.
Course creation, product development, lead generation, right? All the business skills that I had no time for because I was so like down in the trench with my clients and I lost about 10% of my clientele and it was fine. There was no like, hard feelings and I sent them somewhere else. Um, and then the rest of the people figured it out.
Some of them cut back, some of ’em did group training, like I was like, cool, I can pair you with someone else who has a similar goal and you guys can train together, right? You can, you guys can do this online with like little pods. Maybe instead of having one-on-one clients, you say, Hey, there’s two of my clients that are like very similar.
Both of them are in their forties. They have similar goals. They’re kind of the same in terms of their, uh, their struggles and their frustrations or whatever. They’re kind of on the same trajectory. Why don’t I just pair ’em together? So now, instead of doing one-on-one calls with each one of them, each week, do a three person call.
It’s you and it’s two of them. And it actually benefits them too because they get to meet someone else. There’s some accountability built in and now there’s more, uh, what? There’s more ideation between the three of you versus just you and them. And it can actually be more of an value add. So instead of them, so if you wanna increase your price, but they can’t afford it, you can pair them up with someone else.
And now again, you’re leveraging your time. And they’re still getting to keep their rates. So there’s a lot of things that you guys can do there. Remember, it’s not like, you know, this is it. You can give them alternatives. I always like to, to offer some things at the end of it, if they just don’t wanna do it, they’re not gonna do it.
I have some clients right now going through some growing pains. Because they are increasing their prices. They run group programs and uh, a lot of times these clients do the group again and again. It’s more of like a challenge model, and a lot of people do them again and again, and they’re increasing their prices.
Just small increases, right? Like 5%, 10%, something like that. But some of the OG people are like, these are the, you know, I can’t believe you’re increasing your price. It’s like at the end of the day, their time, and this is how I’m talking to my clients about, is like their time is more in demand. So they have to, if they’re going to spend time, like these are people doing live workouts with their clients, like they’re gonna spend time doing that, they have to make sure they’re getting paid their rate.
And as soon as you start an online business, as soon as you start a social media account, your time is now and more in demand than it ever has been because now you have all these other things you’re doing to grow the business. You’re not now working in the business. You’re working on the business, which is a completely different skillset, and you need to get compensated for that.
And there will be a natural sort of attrition. There’ll be a natural sort of ebb and flow of clients not understanding that. And we’ve done separate episodes on how I think that there’s utility in increasing your prices because you do not only attract a different type of client, but people don’t want the cheapest.
You know, my, my hourly rate at this point is $1,500, two years ago was $750. I increased my hourly rate from $750 to $1,500 in the last two years. Jill Fit has doubled its revenue in the last two years. So it’s like, that tells you just how much more output I’ve had to have in the business.
Now I’m managing, I’m leading, I’m still coaching. I’m doing a lot more things in the business. So my hourly rate is way more than it was two years ago, and I’m also okay if no one wants to pay that at the end of the day. That’s the thing you have to get right with is you have to say to yourself like, cool, if no one else, if people aren’t paying for this, then can I create a group program?
And this is the best thing. We’ve talked about the ascension model quite a bit. This idea that you have multiple different offerings for different people and different price points and different needs and stuff like that. And as soon as you have a group offer or a DIY offer, as soon as you create a group offer or a DIY offer, you have to increase your one-on-one prices.
Why? Because not everyone can afford the one-on-one, but now you have other places they can go. So for example, if you only have one-on-one coaching, , you might feel a little bad for increasing your prices cuz you’re like, well, it’s this, or nothing. But now that you have a group program, and you have more of a DIY offer.
You have other places for people who can’t afford the one-on-one causes not everyone can afford one-on-one, right? It’s fine. It’s not a bad thing. It just means like, okay, is there something else for them? And I love this because honestly, y’all, like I have so many containers at Jill Fit. We have FBA, which is for beginners.
We have Legacy, which is for intermediate students, and we have the Mastermind for more advanced students. So to me, there’s really no reason for me to do one-on-one coaching. You know, if I have someone who comes in and says, Hey Jill, I don’t, I can’t do a group thing. I’ll pay you a hundred grand for the year.
I’d be like, okay, I will take on someone. I would take on a one-on-one client for a hundred grand for the year, but why would I do that when I have all these other places for people to go that leverage my time better? And still get them a phenomenal result. Right? Still get them a phenomenal result.
So I love you guys increasing your pricing almost as a filtering system to then force you to leverage your time better into a group offer. Even if your group offer just starts out as like a small group coaching pod we’ve done episodes on, that doesn’t have to be massive amount of people. You have 3, 4, 5, 8 people in a group.
You’ve leveraged your time better, and you know what? They might actually get a better experience because now it’s not just you and them. It’s like they have a lot of other people to bounce ideas off of. It’s kind of like a brain share mastermind situation. And so there’s a lot of ways here, a lot of reasons to justify increasing your prices.
If you’ve been looking for that little kick in the pants. I hope this episode does that for you. And remember, if you areincreasing one-on-one prices just for the next person, just try it out on a sales call and your very next sales call. Increase your price by 25 to 50% and see what happens. People don’t want the cheapest, they want the best.
And when you have a high price point, that’s an aspirational price point for someone. They might not be able to afford it right now, but I guarantee you they’re gonna be thinking about it. I guarantee you they might put it up on their vision board, right? I guarantee you they’re gonna want to coach with someone who is at that high value.
I love that. To me, and I think I’ve told the story before, I actually, um, applied for a mastermind with Brendan Bruchard, who’s, uh, an early mentor of mine, and he had a mastermind a couple years ago, and I actually went through the whole application process. It was $25,000 Mastermind. And I went through the whole application process and as soon as I submitted the application, I got rerouted to a thank you page.
And it said, for a limited time, this mastermind is 50% off. Y’all. I just rescinded my application. I was just like, what? I mean, I think people want a deal, but I was like, is it not good? Why did you just give me 50% off? I was literally ready to pay 25,000. And you just slashed it in half.
I was kind of like, what’s wrong with this thing? Right. It must have been good. And so I still love Brenden, but I was like, that’s not for me. Right. I was ready to pay top dollar. I was in a place in my business where I was looking for a high ticket mentor. When I, um, started working with James two years ago, James Wedmore.
Literally on the phone with him, I said, is this the most expensive thing you have? Because I was ready. And there are people in your audience right now who are not looking for a deal or a discount. They’re not looking for like, you know, to a shortcut. They literally wanna pay your full price because they know that they’re ready for it and they know that it’s gonna put them on the hook to elevate.
And that’s who you wanna attract and that’s what having a price point, that has an aspirational quality to it does. So if you’re looking for a little kick in the pants, I hope this helps you, gives you a little bit of language and helps justify most importantly to yourself that it might be time to increase your prices.
Alright y’all, that is it for me. Thank you for being here, and we’ll see you on the next episode. Bye.
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