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Lining Up Pricing and Value for Business Success

Guest post by: Loren Fogelman

Article Overview: Are you truly dedicated to your profession? Absolutely love what you are doing and your clients are getting great results, but no matter how hard you try your bank account does not reflect your efforts? Well you are not alone. It's really common, particularly with health care and support professionals.

Lining Up Pricing and Value for Business Success

Are you truly dedicated to your profession? Absolutely love what you are doing and your clients are getting great results, but no matter how hard you try your bank account does not reflect your efforts? Well you are not alone. It's really common, particularly with health care and support professionals. This past week I was working with a healing practitioner, Jane, who was unsure how to charge for her services. I see this over and over again. Jane is struggling so hard to make ends meet; she is working extremely long hours. In fact, she works harder than her husband. All those hours spent caring for her clients cut into time she could be spending with her family. She didn't feel like she had a choice because her family needed her income.

When we first began working together, Jane was providing high value services but charging rock bottom prices. In fact, Jane is very highly trained; extremely qualified. Her clients are fortunate to be working with her. Her services make a significant impact in their lives.

Jane, however, comes from a family which views wealth and money as bad. In addition, there are some cultural beliefs about women earning more than their spouses which were affecting her ability to earn a decent living wage as well. For these reasons, and more, she was holding herself back.

Jane's beliefs about wealth, money and earning potential subconsciously conflict with her desires for success. She realizes the value of her healing abilities is priceless. Logically, she ought to earn a living wage from her work.

She was experiencing a disconnect. Something was holding her back. It didn't make sense. Jane understood she could easily charge double for her services. No matter what, the conversation about raising her fees felt uncomfortable. She could feel the resistance.

Jane had an internal, core belief concerning money, wealth, and her own value which conflicted with the obvious logical fact that people were more than willing to pay for her services. Before any actions could be taken on changing the structure of her practice, her beliefs needed to be aligned with her goals.

Her thoughts, actions and beliefs were out of alignment, affecting the energetic flow. No matter how hard she worked on increasing her income, she continued to be in an internal struggle. Jane couldn't understand why things around money were difficult for her. Since she didn't realize what she was doing, she was unable to change anything. So she continued to be in this struggle.

She claims she wanted to increase her income. Jane's thoughts, however, were that no body would pay more for her services; her clients were already struggling. The end result, she avoided asking for payment and felt very uncomfortable with raising her fees. Like many service based professionals she believed she ought to be working with everyone, not excluding based upon ability to pay for her services.

So what makes one person motivated to charge for her services, making a nice, comfortable living, versus someone else who is giving away their education, information and time? Your underlying beliefs affect your decisions. In a nutshell, that is it. Sounds simple, but not always easy.

The goal is to have your beliefs, feelings and actions align. You want to identify, then change, the beliefs and thoughts which keep you stuck where you are. This is like gardening. If you were to weed your garden, you wouldn't just pull the part of the weed you can see above the surface. You dig down and yank out the root as well to prevent the weed from returning.

When something happens to you there is a need to make sense of the experience. You provide meaning to it, beginning to create a story to explain the experience. We all do this. Life circumstances change over time, but the meaning you created usually continues to remain unchanged. This contributes to sabotage, avoidance, overwhelm and perfectionism.

Well, you might need to dig around and figure out where your belief originated. What happened in your life, or what message did you hear repeatedly, about money, wealth and success that is preventing you from growing your business? Identify where it began. Once you change the meaning around the original experience, or message, you create an opportunity to overcome your current barriers for business success.

This process does not have to be a long, painful struggle working through all of your old stuff. You don't need to re-traumatize yourself with events you experienced when you were younger. You cannot change what happened to you, but you are able to change how you perceive something. That is significant. Changing the perception is powerful. By releasing the old meaning, then creating a new one which is more appropriate for your current goals, you are making a correction.

Jane and I identified her belief concerning payment for her services. As a child she learned her parents valued charity and service work more than a job. Her father always talked about the struggle of making ends meet. He worked long, hard hours and would be traveling for extended periods of time to support the family. Her mother, however, stayed home and did a lot of volunteer work. She spoke often about the importance of charity and volunteer work being an expectation.

Jane created meaning around these messages. She knew the importance of being charitable. She also learned about the struggle to make ends meet. Subconsciously, she created a business where she gave away much of her services and she was earning just enough to maintain her practice.

Together, Jane and I developed new meaning to business operations. We explored the benefit her clients received from working with her. Because she had a purpose-based practice, her work was energizing and easy. She was a natural healer. Work did not have to be a struggle for her. Her clients experienced amazing results quickly.

Next we focused on aligning her energy concerning her clients paying her. We used the Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) to quickly clear the resistance concerning self worth and money. Once her thoughts and emotions were aligned we focused on strategy. We created new rates, established a system for payment and connected a portion of her profits to a charity. Jane was excited about the possibilities, eager to implement the plan.

Clearing the mindset obstacles is primary for business success. Create your strong foundation before you can build up. So often, you will experience a disconnect between where you are now and where you want to be. Finding the core beliefs holding you back are typically not what you think they are. Change will happen more quickly when you work with a coach who has a fresh perspective. Others are able to see things, you are unable to see yourself. The shift in mindset is transformative. Opportunities to grow you business will begin to appear.

Activity:

Do you find you have set goals for yourself, but progress seems to be slow? Explore your mindset and your beliefs preventing you from reaching your goals. Write down anything contributing to sabotage, resistance or overwhelm concerning your goals. Next see if you can figure out where your belief came from. See if it is possible to find a new meaning for that circumstance. Try out the new meaning and see how it feels. The key is to find a new belief which supports your goals for business success.

Did you feel your beliefs about your services, receiving payment and success are all lined up? What has been your experience?

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Article Tags: business success, earning potential, EFT, Emotional Freedom Techniques, Loren Fogelman, tikkun olam



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