What is up limitless life? So this is a topic and a question that I get all the time I get Instagram messages about it emails, people in my masterminds who struggle with this as well. And so I thought, I’m just gonna record a podcast episode about it because it’s such a meaty and important topic that might be holding you back in your business and in the way that you can impact people. So the topic that we’re talking about, is this desire to make your work accessible. So, in valuing accessibility, you underprice your products or services, because you’re afraid that if you charge too much, or if you raise your prices, then the people that you want to serve won’t be able to afford it anymore. And so you keep yourself kind of stuck in the same pricing that you’ve been in for a long time because you’re afraid to raise your prices and leave those behind. Does this sound familiar at all? Is this ringing any bells for you? Well, here’s the way that I look at this topic. And if you’re wondering, well, should I raise my prices? How do I keep my work accessible? What if I want to help a lot of people and I don’t want price to be a reason why they can’t work with me. Here’s how I feel. You can have a business or you can have a nonprofit. But if you try to have both at the same time, you are fragmenting your energy
and you’re not accomplishing either one.
Now, that might sound controversial, but I have a few ways that you can incorporate accessibility into your work without undervaluing it. So here’s some downsides that I see. When you don’t price your products or services at a price that actually feels good to you. That actually gives you more time and freedom and ability to scale your business and therefore help more people. So some downsides are Number one, you’re probably exhausted. If you’re charging less, and probably far less than what you think your services or products are worth, then you’re going to have to take on more clients or have more people purchasing your products, which requires more work to get more people into your funnels and your systems. So there’s a good chance that you’re going to be exhausted, maybe even to the point of burnout. I’ve talked to a lot of people, especially who have services that get to this point where they’ve undercharged for so long, because they’ve been afraid to raise their prices that they just burn out. And then the impact in the accessibility completely disappears because you can’t help anybody when you are tapped out. on something else that goes with exhaustion and under charging yourself is that there’s no room for overflow. So I think overflow is, is really a big part of generosity because we are generous when we have an overflow. We’ve got our needs taken care of So then we can be authentically generous in the ways that we give to other people. But if you don’t have any overflow, because you’re exhausted, you’re burnt out, you’re working with tons of clients or hustling to get people to buy your programs, then you don’t have the opportunity for overflow. So that’s part of it. Another part of under charging for your products and services is resentment. You can start to resent your clients, your customers, your whole entire business. If you’ve ever been in a relationship with like a human being where you resented them for some reason. That is a really detrimental thing that can happen in partnership. JOHN Gottman, I believe even says that resentment is one of the key indicators of divorce. If you start to resent the person you’re in relationship with, then eventually things deteriorate so much that they just can’t continue. And it’s the same with your business. If you get to a point where you start resenting your business because you feel like you are putting every Everything you have into this thing and you’re still just breaking even, or you’re never quite hitting your goals, you’re always plateauing. You’re never getting to the next level. That is a key part of creating resentment. And so with resentment, you can’t create accessibility either. It’s like burnout. You can’t continue giving, there’s no generosity, there’s no overflow. And then another thing that we don’t often consider when we under charge for our products and services, is we think if I charge less for it, then more people will buy it, then all of the people who need this program will will buy it because they can afford it. That’s actually not true. You aren’t just going to make sales of something just because it’s cheaper. So the people who would want your program won’t necessarily buy it just because it’s less expensive. And actually undercharging enough means that some people will look at what you’re selling and think that it’s not valuable, that it’s not good that there’s something wrong with it that they should go to somebody else who’s charging more because they must know what they’re talking about. So you’re not only undervaluing your expertise and the value that you give to the world, but you’re also causing other people to believe that about you, too. You’re causing them to think that what you’re putting out there, even if it’s freaking amazing, is not all that great. And so you’re training your community, on how to respond to your pricing and your products.
Do you want them to value your prices and your products. So this is the kind of dynamic that’s created when you infuse both business and nonprofit energy into your company, when you try to create accessibility at the expense of charging a fair price for your products. And again, creating this sort of fragmented energy where you’re not accomplishing either one. You’re not making the kinds of sales that you want. You’re staying stuck in this place where you’re like, why is my business number growing, and therefore you’re not creating the accessibility or the impact that you actually could be creating. I know, it’s crazy. It seems like if you just charge less, you’d make a bigger impact, you create more accessibility, there would be more and more people in your community. But it just doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t work that way. And so what happens, what’s at stake? What’s the benefit? When you start to run your business, like an actual business, when you remove the sort of nonprofit energy of just wanting to serve every single person in the world? What is that you start to earn a healthier income, and it removes that resentment and removes the exhaustion because now you’re actually hitting your goals. You’re feeling taken care of. You’ve got all of your expenses paid, there’s overflow. You don’t approach your business with this resentful feeling where you think, oh, gosh, putting so much into it, and I’m barely breaking even or not at all. So it actually creates this joy and this generosity that wasn’t there before. And just so we’re clear, by the way, I’m talking about financial accessibility. There are other ways of thinking about accessibility. But in this episode, we’re just talking about financial accessibility. So how you price and charge for your products and services. So what else happens when you treat your business like a business, you charge a fair price for your products and services, is that you’re also able to scale your company more quickly. And when you scale you help more people. So let’s take an example. Let’s say that
previously, your program was $50.
And now you realize this thing is actually worth 100 bucks. I know it I’ve known it for a long time. I’ve felt resentful every time somebody would buy it at $50 because I knew this thing should be 100 bucks until you finally raise your prices to $100 for that program. Okay, so Previously, you would have needed two sales to get to $100. If it was priced at 50 bucks. Now you only need one sale. And that might not sound like a lot. But what’s really happening is that you have 50% less energy that you need to expend to hit your goal. So you would have needed to expend double the amount of energy to get those two people to buy at $50 then you would get one person to buy at $100. Think about what that really means
for your life, for your business.
For the impact that you can create, what if you only needed to expend 50% of the energy that you’re currently spending on your business? What would that free you up to do? What kind of impact could you create if you had 50% more time? Or energy or space in your life? Could you give away scholarships for free
Could you
speak at events for free? Could you be on the board of directors for a nonprofit that you care about? Could you start a nonprofit on the side? Could you use all of this extra money, maybe you don’t create space for doing other things, but you just put in that effort into your business and now have doubled the sales, could you then donate a portion of that to organizations that you care about or to allowing more people to go through your program for free on a scholarship basis. That’s what we’re getting at here is that it’s not about either generosity, or making money. It’s about finding a way to make the money, create the impact, create scale for your business, and from the overflow being able to use that to create accessibility. So do you see the difference here when you put the accessible energy and the business energy at the same time, then You get this weird fragmented thing that happens, and you under charge, and then you don’t grow your business. And then it’s harder to create an impact. It’s harder to stand out as an expert because you’re just struggling or treading water. versus when you approach your business as a business, you charge your high end or healthy prices, whatever feels good to you. You make more money, you free up more time because of it. And then from that overflow, you’re able to give back in a bigger way, a bigger way than you would have if you undercharged yourself in the name of accessibility previously, hey, limitless listener. We’ll get back to the show in just a moment. But I wanted to take 20 seconds to invite you to the free at home digital retreat that I created just for you. It’s called limitless entrepreneur and it’s all about helping you to create an abundant, fearless mindset. All while growing your online business. You want to join just visit limitless entrepreneur retreat.com to register It’s totally free. That’s limitless entrepreneur retreat.com. All right friend back to the show.
And something else also happens when you charge healthy prices for your programs and you’re able to scale them because of that. You also are set apart as more of an expert or somebody in your field or industry who really knows what they’re talking about. So now you get more media coverage, maybe you’re in some article or on a website, or people are reaching out to you to be on their podcast. So your message spreads more and often in a free way, which is obviously very accessible. You get more opportunities to speak at events. You grow your audience more because more and more people are discovering you talking about how life changing your programs are. Maybe you get to write a book and you can actually get a book deal and that’s very accessible, right if you’re selling something for 15 bucks, There’s a lot of things that open up when you step into this new version of what it’s like to be a CEO. So notice, if when you’re talking about creating accessibility in your business, if there’s some little tangle of energy, that’s also about this fear of being truly seen. Because if you raise your prices, you start to get featured in more places people start to see you as this expert, that is very confronting. If you’ve ever listened to the coaching episodes on this show, you’ll know that almost all of them in some capacity revolve around this concept of being seen in a bigger way. And it’s scary. There will be moments throughout your life, where you get to be seen in bigger and different ways, pretty much forever, so long as you value growth. And so it’ll always be this thing that pops up of being seen deeper and deeper. Taking the masks off more and more. And so notice your relationship to that to notice if the fears of raising your prices are actually intertwined with your fears of being fully seen as a leader. So I want you to think about what would be possible if I raised my prices. If I charged prices for my programs and products and services that felt alive for me that felt exciting that felt worth it. That felt valuable. What’s at stake, if I choose to do that? What would that open up for me? What kind of accessibility would I be able to create from the overflow that I’d experienced from raising my prices? And then what’s also at stake if I don’t do that?
What will change or what would stay the same? If I don’t raise my prices? What kind of impact hacked would I be able to create would it be capped? Because here’s the other thing is that when you raise your prices, and now you’ve got more income coming in, and ideally, you’re able to scale more. Well, it’s not just money that’s coming in, it’s money, you get to reinvest back into your business. So now maybe you can hire people, you can invest in advertising, you can have people help you to create more content so you can create more free stuff, attract more people into your audience, and also help them with your free organic content. There’s so many things that you could do with the overflow of money that you could be bringing into your business. And all of those things help you to scale. And what scaling really means is growing your revenue and growing your community, getting your products and services in the hands of more people. And of course from the overflow, getting your scholarships in the hands of more people, getting your donations in the hands of more organizations. So really Thinking about what would I be able to create if I was able to scale my business because it’s a lot harder to scale when you have only lower priced offerings, especially when you’re doing it yourself. And especially when you don’t have an enormous audience. So as you’re keeping yourself stuck in the frequency of scarcity, you’re also keeping your community stuck there too. Because if you’re able to scale and impact more people, then that creates more abundance and possibility for them too. So the more that you choose scarcity, for the sake of, quote, accessibility, the more that you actually don’t create accessibility, and hold yourself in this frequency where you can’t make the impact that you were destined to make that you desire to make. And just so we’re all clear here, I used to be the exact same way. I used to have the same feeling that I wanted to have inexpensive offerings. I wanted to essentially undercharged for my programs because I wanted to help all of the people in the world. And then I started to realize, oh, when I’m exhausted, when I’m resentful, every time someone buys this thing, then I’m actually not helping anyone, including myself. I’m not helping anyone. And I’m actually borderline steering myself towards burnout, right? So eventually, I started to raise my prices, to a point where it felt juicy and exciting and good for me. Where I was able to scale my business where I was able to affect more people far more people than I was able to affect. When I was charging these low prices. I started standing out as more of an expert in my industry, which that comes with a lot of benefits being featured in the media like we’ve talked about. Being able to hire a team which fastly helps you to reach more people and help more people in a very free way too. By the way. Not everything is about having someone pay for something. When you’re able to grow your team and scale and you have more time, you can create amazing free content that people who perhaps can’t afford your programs or services can engage with and they can learn from. So that was a part of it too. And, of course, just being able to donate to causes that I care about being able to give scholarships on a regular basis to my students, looking now into being on the board of directors for a nonprofit, so that I can volunteer my time in a bigger way to an organization that I care about. So really just noticing that when I i untangled the business side, from the giving back side, and I went just straight into the business, and then from the overflow of that business was able to give back, make more accessibility, create a bigger impact. That’s when the real magic started. But when I was trying to tangle them together, it made it very difficult. And so I want To just think about this for yourself to where are you undervaluing what you put out into the world because you want it to be accessible, and what might be possible.
If instead of undervaluing your creations, you valued them at a healthy price, and then from your overflow, you were able to make a tremendous impact. What if they didn’t have to mesh together into this confusing web? And you could just create a business that was built on the foundation of generosity? What would that look like? And also, how would that feel? Thank you for listening. I would love to hear your comments and thoughts on this topic. So if you look me up on Instagram, my handle is Melissa underscore Griffin, and just send me a message. I would love to hear how this lands for you and if it opens anything up for you. So thank you for being here. I appreciate you and I’m excited to see the impact that you’re able to make Create from this new place of true generosity in your business.