Creating Rates for Your Intuitive Business

Welcome to 3D Business Bytes! A series teaching you about some of the more practical, 3D aspects of running an intuitive business.

Today's topic is a juicy one: I'm talking all about rates and how to decide what to charge for the services you offer in your intuitive business! I cover things like:

• Why "charge your worth" is terrible advice
• How to come up with your hourly rate (and why your hourly rate isn't that important)
• How to price your services and packages
• Whether or not you should research what others are charging
• How to make your offerings more accessible while ensuring you're being well-resourced by your business

Let's dive in!

Charge Your Worth

You've likely seen an inspirational post on Instagram telling you to "charge your worth". And while this is well-intentioned advice, it actually kind of sucks. Can you really put a price tag on your worth? When you think of the ways you want to impact your clients, the difference you'll be making in their lives...can you truly put a dollar amount to that?

The truth is, the value you offer your clients—and the value you hold as a human being—can't be tied to a number. Your value is infinite. 

But you still need to attach a dollar amount to the services you offer. So...what do you do?

How to Create Your Hourly Rate

First, look at how much income you want to generate per year, either gross (before taxes and expenses) or net (after taxes and expenses). Let's say $100k gross revenue because somewhere along the way that became the arbitrary marker of success for an online business.

How many weeks do you want to work per year? Do you want to work all 52 or do you want time off? How much? Let's say you want to work 46 weeks per year, giving you 6 weeks off.

How many hours do you want to be working each week? 60? 40? 20? Let's go with 30.

Divide your desired annual revenue by the number of weeks you want to work. Then, divide that number by the number of hours you want to work each week. The final number is your hourly rate.

$100k / 46 weeks = $2174 per week. $2174 / 30 hours per week = $72 per hour

$72 per hour then becomes the minimum amount to charge to help you hit your goal of earning $100k per year.

BUT WAIT.

As an entrepreneur, you'll likely have hours worked during your week where you aren't generating revenue, especially if you're brand new. Creating content, doing your bookkeeping, following up with clients...all of those tasks fill your working hours but don't have a direct financial return.

So what do you do?

You can either reduce the number of hours spent on non-income-generating tasks, or you can increase your client-facing rates above that minimum (which in our case, is $72 per hour). 

You can do this simply by charging $100 per one-hour session, or you can get creative and offer group programs or create passive income products. 

When all is said and done, understanding your hourly rate is more important for you as the business owner than it is for your clients. I always encourage my clients to move away from charging for the hour and instead charge for the container and the experience, which we'll dive into next.

How to Price Your Services

When it comes to deciding what to charge, what, specifically, are you offering? What is the transformation? What is the experience like? What is the anticipated return on investment for your client?

Remember that you aren't only offering healing services, meditations, readings, or whatever else it is you do. You're offering a deeper understanding of Self. Clarity around a big life decision, or freedom from deeply-rooted beliefs and patterns. Again, you can't put a price tag on those things, but what you can do is come up with a rate that feels good and communicate it with confidence.

Some things to consider when creating your rates are:

• What are you offering? What is the transformation or end result?
• Who are the people you're wanting to help? 
• How much time and access to you will people have? Are you hands-on with them, or are they purchasing a self-paced course from your website with no access to you?
• Are you including any value-adds such as sessions with complementary service providers, customized meditations, or journal prompts?

Take all of the above when crafting your rates for your offerings. And if you're considering researching what others doing similar work as you are charging...don't.

What somebody charges for their services is a reflection of their relationship to money, the value they attach to themselves and their work, and their target demographic. None of that is applicable to you, so why even waste your time going down that rabbit hole?

How to Make Your Services More Accessible

Accessibility is something that's incredibly important to my clients and the members in our community, The Collective. The key is to ensure that in our attempts to make our work accessible that we are still ensuring our own financial needs are met by our business. You can't be of service to something greater than yourself when you're living in survival mode.

Here are some ways to make your offerings more accessible:

• Create sliding scales, offering folks a range in price to choose from.
• Offer group programs that allow more folks to participate at once for a lower investment. It's a win-win for both you and your clients, because they'll pay less and you'll likely earn more.
• Offer scholarships with discernment. Scholarships can be a beautiful opportunity for someone who is ready to do the work but genuinely isn't in a place to invest. However, I recommend checking in with your own intentions behind scholarships. Are they coming from a true place of service? Or are they rooted in scarcity?
• Allow yourself to receive from individuals who are ready and willing to pay more. Are your clients regularly telling you that you need to charge more? Do you have contracts with corporate organizations with large budgets? Allowing yourself to be paid fairly by folks who are able to ensures you can continue to offer accessible rates to those in need and still earn a good living from your business.

So there you have it: all of the points to consider when creating rates for your intuitive business. Just as you will grow and evolve as an entrepreneur and practitioner, so will the things you offer and the rates you charge for them. Allow this to be a fluid process that grows with you.