Pulling Back the Curtain: Pricing, Packages, and Money Mindset

Did you know that 61% of women would rather discuss the details of their death than money? This statistic came from a study done by Merrill Lynch and Age Wave. That statistic is shocking and sad. I dream of a world where women feel comfortable talking, discussing, and charging what they are worth for their services and time.  If I hope to see that statistic change, then I need to start talking about finances and normalizing conversations around money and women in business.

For the first time since starting my business, I feel confident in what I am charging for my services. I am not charging what someone else said I should charge. I am not lowering my prices to please a potential client. My prices support my big goals and dreams, and I want to share my process of getting to this point with you! I will be giving a peek into my prices in the hopes that you feel more comfortable charging what you are worth. Let’s start normalizing these types of conversations.

Figure Your Business Expenses

We can’t dive into a conversation about money, without taking the time to sit down and evaluate your actual financial situation. So the first step for me in gaining confidence around my prices was evaluating my business expenses. I sat down and looked at what am I paying for each month to run my business. What recurring subscriptions do I have and how much is that costing. 

For me, many of my monthly expenses are paying for my website domain, Quickbooks, Dubsaod, and website hosting. After adding these I knew exactly how much money I would need to make to cover my monthly expenses.

Find Your Monthly Salary

After determining my monthly business expenses, I took the time to address my personal financial needs. I wanted to figure out how much my dream monthly salary would be. This was a two-step process. First, I calculated my monthly expenses for rent, utilities, groceries, car insurance, ect. Secondly, I started a list of big financial dreams and goals.

This was the easiest and most fun part for me! Some of my big goals and dreams include paying off all our student debt, buying a home with land, and traveling to Europe once a year. Then, I researched how much money I would need to put towards debt to pay it off in one year. I researched homes and looked at one that fit our dream list and got an average price. I also looked up how much it would cost to fly first class to Europe, car rental, accommodations, and food. I wanted to get specific about my big financial goals and see the cost associated with each one.

Once I had a list of big goals I started to prioritize them. Right now our top priority is paying off debt. Therefore, I added our personal monthly expenses to the cost per month to pay off all of our student debt in one year. After taking into account my husband’s monthly paycheck I came up with a number of how much I would like to pay myself each month!

The empowering part of this process was that I could see what that number supported. It wasn’t just a number I randomly selected. It was a purposeful number that moved toward really big goals!

Find Your Hourly Rate

Okay now that I had my monthly business expenses and the monthly salary that I wanted to pay myself. I calculated taxes. For this I estimated high so I added monthly expenses and monthly salary together and multiplied it by 1.5. This gave me my monthly revenue goal. 

Once I had my monthly revenue goal, I sat down and thought about how many hours per week I wanted to spend working on my business. Specifically, I wanted to know how many hours per month I would be serving clients. For me, I want to spend 25 hours or less each week working on my business. Let’s say out of the 25 hours per week I spend 15 hours serving clients and 10 hours creating content, marketing my business, and building systems and structures that support my business. I then multiplied the weekly hours working for clients by 4 to get my monthly total of 60 (15 X 4) per month.

Now that I know a.) how much revenue I need to make each month to support my goals and dreams and b.) how many hours per month I will devote to client work; I can figure out my hourly rate by taking my monthly revenue divided by monthly hours. For me, an hourly rate of $175 supports my big goals and dreams.

Create Your Packages

Now that you know your hourly rate you can create work with me packages that reflect that number. For example, your base package may take you 5 hours a month to complete so you would charge your hourly rate time 5. For me, that would be $175 x 5= $875. My next work with my package maybe 10 hours a month resulting in a service charge of $1,750 (10 x $175). My premium package may take my 15 hours to complete a month resulting in a monthly fee of $2,625 (15 x $175). 

There you have it! This was the process I took to gain clarity on my business finances. I am confident in what I am charging and how I can serve businesses with these packages. It can be uncomfortable to talk about money and what you charge, but it is my hope that in sharing my process and prices you feel comfortable to confidently share yours.

Live in your power and own your prices!