90: The Mindset Shift You Need to Raise Your Prices
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Welcome to Therapy in the Great Outdoors, the podcast where we explore the business and practice of nature based pediatric therapy of all kinds. If you're an outdoor loving pediatric practitioner in the fields of occupational, physical, or speech therapy, social work, or mental health, this podcast will help you start and grow a successful nature based practice or program.
I am the ever honest, always a hundred percent real. You'll hear it all on this podcast. Dr. Laura Park Figueroa. I'm a pediatric OT with over 20 years of experience and I run a thriving nature based practice with profitable locations in two different states and multi six figures in revenue. I also host the free online community at therapyinthegreatoutdoors.
com to help you pursue your nature based therapy dreams too. Are you ready to take action on those dreams? Let's jump in.
Hello [00:01:00] friends. It is November 4th when this comes out, which means it is two days before I leave for the nature based business retreat that I'm running in. Santa Cruz, California. I am. So excited about this weekend. I literally can't wait. I'm packing and getting ready and it's just, I'm in a happy mode right now. I'm going to meet so many of you that I've only known online.
So it's, just going to be really awesome to be there together. I have all the workbooks printed. I have been planning. It is. Going to be a really great time planning for our businesses for next year and doing our yearly business plans together and setting goals and really getting into a lot of the like nitty gritty stuff that is really hard to do. When you are in the thick of it, running the business on a day-to-day basis.
So I cannot wait. I am so excited. I've probably said excited 10 times. And after [00:02:00] that, I am, I think my excitement is maybe. Extra, because I leave straight from the retreat for my trip to Nepal and Indonesia with my son. And some of his friends, family. So my son is going to be at the retreat for a day or two, helping me with some photos and video of the event. And then. He is going to leave with me from California for our trip.
And we will be gone until December 3rd. It's the longest I've ever been away. And it's super exciting. It's kind of a dream world that I'm living in right now. I can't believe it's my life that I get to do this trip. And. Even to do the business retreat, it just feels like such a fun time for me. This is just going to be a very fun season. So the upcoming episodes that I do here on the podcast are going to be a mini series on business topics.
And the reason that I share that I'm. [00:03:00] Doing this series is because I'm going to have limited access to the internet. So if you post. Questions inside of the Tigo community on the podcast episodes. I may not see them for a week or so, so feel free to share your questions there. We always do a podcast post and these topics of business and money often bring up feelings for people. If you find yourself getting defensive or feeling weird in any way about the topic of money, it is totally normal.
And. One of the reasons that I am sharing this episode today, which was content from my old podcast, mind your OT business. It is all about thinking around those mindset issues that we have about money.
I want you to know that you are not alone. If you are a therapist who feels weird talking about money, he doesn't like talking about money, who feels embarrassed.
If you want your business to be really successful. And you feel like you [00:04:00] can't actually say that because. You are someone who is a helper, and you should be more interested in helping people. I say it all the time. I will say it again and again and again until the day I die, it is okay to want to make a good living while you also help people. The best businesses in the world actually solve the biggest problems and help the most people. So it's okay if you have those weird feelings and the therapy in the great outdoors community is a really safe place to talk about those things.
I think it is a sign of the health of a community of people can be vulnerable and say things that might be hard. And so please share your thoughts inside of that community. I will weigh in as soon as I am back online. All right. One of the reasons that I am doing these episodes on business at this time of year is because a lot of us see the new year as a time to hit the reset button on the business we're currently running or [00:05:00] thinking about running. And we're in planning mode.
We are thinking about the goals that we may have for the next year. And so I think this episode in this series on money and pricing and things like that will get your gears turning and thinking about these things for the coming year. My business coaching program will be open for a cohort probably from January to June.
I have not done my annual plan yet for my online business, nor for my practice yet. I need to look at my calendar and plan out all the dates, but I think we will be opening for a six month cohort from January to June. Of 2025 at the time I'm recording it's 2024. Podcasting is weird because people could listen to this two years from now or four years from now or whatever.
So if you are someone who is running a nature based business of any kind, whether you're a consultant or a therapist or an educator, You might want to consider joining us inside the business [00:06:00] hive, my business coaching program. If you want to set your business up for success, where you can actually work less as the business grows bigger. I know that sounds crazy, but I've done it myself.
And that is my goal for every single person that is in my programs. I want you to be able to actually work less and have more freedom in your life as your nature based business grows. And I think it's interesting because maybe it's good. I started this whole intro talking about my trip to Indonesia and Nepal, because the only reason. That I can do that trip is because one, I have a supportive family and two, I have a supportive team in my business who can run my business while I am gone. For a pretty extended period of time.
I mean, it's not six months or something, but it is at least four weeks of time. I'm not a passive owner. Like I am involved in the running of the business, but the thing that has allowed me to leave and [00:07:00] feel competent that my business will be fine is that I have created systems, which is the whole point of my business coaching program is to help you set up systems in your business. So that those systems can help your business function on a day-to-day basis.
And also when your business grows, it can grow effectively and efficiently. And you'll have a team. That lets you free up your time as the business owner. So just a little plug there for the program. You can check it out at therapyinthegreatoutdoors.com/hive. H I V E like busy bees working in a hive.
Okay. So this could be a whole episode in and of itself my long intro. So let's dive into the mindset shift you need to raise your prices.
Welcome to a short but sweet episode today where I am going to share why you should probably be raising your prices.
Do you [00:08:00] charge enough for your services or products in your business? Even if you are listening to this, just getting ready to start a business, this is going to be very helpful information. If you've been running a business for a while and you feel like you resent the fact that you are not getting paid enough from your business, This will help as well.
So before I dive into these quick tips that I have, I want to clarify that the content that I am speaking of in this episode mainly refers to businesses that are offering a service or product and not billing insurance for their services. But there are ways that you can increase revenue using these tips, even if you run an insurance based practice.
So stay tuned. All right. First one. Is that you need to stop thinking in per hour rates. And this is something funny. I just mentioned insurance practices, because this is something that when we go to occupational therapy school [00:09:00] or PT or speech therapy school, we are. Taught to think in per hour rates.
We are taught to think one unit equals this much money, right? And especially if you're running an insurance based practice, you have to think that way because that's part of running your business budget is figuring out how much money can you make per unit, per code, per treatment session, per patient, et cetera, et cetera.
But if you are running a practice or a business that is offering a service or product, and it's not insurance based, that still seeps into our thinking. We still tend to think one hour of time for X amount of dollars. And until we can break free from that thinking, we aren't going to be able to raise our prices.
Instead, what we need to start doing is thinking about the value that we are offering our clients. Do you know the actual problem that you are solving for your clients? Do you know it like inside out? Are you able [00:10:00] to describe it? And are you confident that your service is going to be the solution to that problem that your client has?
You have to be so confident of that. In addition to that confidence about being able to solve your potential customer's problem, you need to also remember how much work it took you to gain the expertise that you are offering in your service or product. So most of us, when we think about this one hour per dollar amount, we're not thinking about valuing ourselves, especially for OTs.
I have to say this, OTs do not value themselves. OTs, we need to step up. We need to start charging more for our services and really being confident and owning our expertise. And until we do that, we're going to have a very hard time raising our rates because we're not confident and we're not feeling like we're seeing the value that we're offering to clients.
Really think about how much training you went to, how many courses or how much time [00:11:00] have you invested in yourself as a business owner to offer this valuable service to your clients. And when you think that way, we start. Understanding the concept of pricing based on value. It's not about a dollar amount.
It is about the value that you offer to people and solving a serious problem that they're willing to pay you money for. So a good example of this that many of you I think will relate to is that. When you think about, if you run a private practice, and if you don't, just imagine this, stick with me and you'll get the, you'll get the metaphor or example that I'm giving here.
If you run a private practice, and you charge someone 150, 200 an hour, whatever it is in your area that is the typical thing that you'll charge, let's just use 200 for easy math, you charge 200 per visit for your client. That 200. It's not just for the time that you are with your client. You are spending [00:12:00] time prepping for that session.
You are spending time probably on the phone, maybe with other providers or with families or loved ones, whatever, to provide that service to the client. And then you are also spending time afterwards documenting and that has to be covered in the rate that you charge for people to get your service. Now, it's not enough to be confident and to know the value that you offer if you cannot communicate it clearly to your potential clients.
You have to be able to communicate that value clearly to your potential clients in a not confusing way, in language that they understand, that speaks their language. A great way to do this is to think about What you always hear clients say to you, either about the results they got from you or about the problems they have when they come to you and use that same language when you communicate about the value you offer to potential clients.
Raising your [00:13:00] rates also requires that you get fairly comfortable talking about money with clients. And that is something that I think we all need to do mindset work around, but it goes back to that confidence piece, right? I have grown in this so much over the last five or six years as I've been a business owner.
At first, it feels really awkward to talk with people about money, but now as I've become more and more confident in the services and products that I'm offering to people, my courses and my online products. I feel so confident in the value that these things are offering to my customers that I do not shy away from saying, yes, it's a 1, 500 product or no, I won't give you a discount because X, Y, Z.
So, you know, it, it definitely becomes easier with time, but I would encourage you that if you have a hard time. Talking about money with your potential clients or talking about paying, right? I would encourage you to really think about why, why do you have a hard time talking about money when [00:14:00] you, if you flip the tables, right?
If you flip the situation and let's say you go get a massage, you don't feel weird paying that massage therapist for the massage that they just gave you. Of course, you're going to pay. People expect that they're going to pay us, right? So really try to get more comfortable talking about money and price with your potential clients.
One practical thing you could do is actually write out a script for what you want to say when you talk to potential clients about your products or services. So that's it for today. I want to keep this short and in future short and sweet episodes, I am going to talk a little bit about psychology of pricing, how to make pricing less painful or paying less painful for our clients, as well as some of the ways that I have helped my business coaching clients move from thinking in per hour rates to package pricing and offering add ons and other things to increase revenue in their business, essentially raising their prices in a way [00:15:00] that feels good to them. So think about the value that you offer to people and take a small step towards raising your prices.
Hey, before you go, if this podcast has helped you in your nature based work, will you take one minute to leave a five star review for the podcast, wherever you're listening right now? It helps me keep producing free content for you when I see that it is actually having an impact in the world. So thank you.
Thank you. Thank you so much for doing that. And now go get outside and enjoy therapy in the great outdoors. See you next week.
