Ep #61: 3 Essential Pricing Boundaries to Embrace in Your Coaching Business

Welcome to a greatest hits episode. This is where I occasionally like to reintroduce you to one of the greatest hits of the podcast.

The truth is, after doing the podcast for long enough now, there are a lot of great episodes that if you’re a newer listener you may not have heard at all, of if you’re a loyal long time listener, that you’ll love hearing again because you’ll hear it even more deeply this time round.

This greatest hits episode is one of my favorite, most impactful, most insightful podcasts. And it’s one that we’ve definitely received the very best, highest feedback about. So even if you’ve heard this episode before, I really encourage you to listen again and enjoy picking up new insights because you’re in a different place in your evolution with money today, than you were before.

And if you haven’t heard this episode yet then you are in for a treat. Enjoy!

Welcome to The Money Coach School Podcast. To really excel at coaching women, you have to be skilled, confident, and even fearless at money coaching. If you're passionate about women holding genuine money power and love supporting women entrepreneurs, then this is the show for you. Now, here's your host, money feminist Kendall SummerHawk.

Hello, beautiful coach. This is such a good episode that I have here for you. Of course, I think every time I talk about pricing, it's a great episode. It's one of my all-time favorite ways to incorporate money work, thought work, mastering your emotions, raising your sense of self-respect, and creating an empowered self-concept. So all good things to talk about with your pricing.

So today we're gonna talk about pricing and boundaries, which are so needed and so much easier than you may have realized. Now this is a powerful piece of work I'm sharing with you here today. So you're gonna wanna pay close attention. And the good thing is it's really, really simple.

Coaches already typically struggle with boundaries because they think that holding a boundary somehow means that you're not a nice person or that you're gonna hurt someone's feelings. So they feel uncomfortable standing up for what they want or telling someone, nope, that's not gonna work for me.

I get it. I am a former people pleaser and I hate telling someone no. I, to this day, I hate saying no. It can feel incredibly uncomfortable, but that's because most coaches are going about setting boundaries in totally the wrong way. And today I'm going to show you how to reverse that.

I'm gonna show you how to create boundaries that are easy to hold. We're gonna focus on boundaries related to three key areas of your pricing here today, because playing loosey goosey with your pricing boundaries, that is going to cost you in lost time, lost money, lost confidence, and a lot of drama that you just don't need in your coaching business.

On the flip side, having clear boundaries that you can stand behind in these three areas I'm gonna share with you here today is how you stand in your power with grace and strength from day one in your business, or as you add your first client, or as you add your 10th client or your 100th client, it doesn't really matter.

Pricing boundaries are how you create trust within yourself. And that, my beautiful soul, is how you create a coaching business that you are 100% in love with. So I'm gonna clarify for you the difference between standards and boundaries so that there's no confusion about that because they are two different things. And then I'm going to give you three boundaries that you're gonna want to integrate into your coaching business so that you're not caught by surprise the next time a client or a potential client wants to push on those boundaries.

All right, Number 1, let's get clear on the difference between standards and boundaries, because this is the key to upholding your boundaries easily. So the way to think about standards is this, standards are the level of expectation you have for yourself and what you want. Standards are very, very closely related to your values.

So for example, my core values are honesty and integrity. So the standard I hold myself and everyone in my company to is that we are trusted and trustworthy. I hold us to the standard that we are consistently open, honest, ethical, and genuine. We do the right thing, and we do the right thing even when it's not the easy thing. And that's why I have this incredible reputation that I do in the coaching industry. It's why we have the trust of our clients and the respect of my peers.

So I think of standards as my way of being or living my values. Again, standards are the level of expectation I have for myself and everybody in my business. Now boundaries are how you uphold your standards.

So for example, my standard with my pricing is that we charge what we charge. We don't discount, we don't trade, we don't make custom payment plans when someone wants to enroll in certification. Our standard is we charge what we charge. So you can hear how clear and simple that is.

So our boundaries are easy. And I actually just named a bunch of them. If someone asks, can they pay a lower deposit to get started? The answer is no, because our standard is we charge what we charge. If someone asks if we can lower the payment plan amount and extend it for longer payments, the answer is no, because we don't monkey with the amounts.

If someone runs into a payment issue once they're inside certification, we definitely work with them, but always coming from the standard that we charge what we charge. So our energy around this is confident because we're standing on the solid foundation of our standard. Our energy is also compassionate and has a yes feel to it because we know we don't have to be hard-assed or defensive or angry or apologizing and upholding our standard.

It's like we can relax into being in rapport and relationship with our clients, right, inside a certification, because our standard is we charge what we charge. So there's no emotional heat to any conversation we have about it. It just is what it is.

So to summarize on clarifying standards and boundaries, standards are the level of expectation you have for yourself, and boundaries are how you uphold your standards. So from a hierarchy standpoint, standards come first and then they're upheld by boundaries underneath them.

All right, so now let's talk about three boundaries that you definitely wanna have with your pricing.

Boundary number 1, Don't discount your coaching. So the standard here is you charge what you charge. Someone asking or trying to get you to lower your coaching fee is not an option that's on the table. You don't need to apologize and say, I'm sorry. You can just say something as simple as, discounting isn't an option. What I do have as an option is a shorter term coaching program. That's a smaller investment if you're open to hearing about that. So a very, very simple script. And if you heard how there's no apology in there, It's simple, it's direct, it's respectful for both the person hearing it and respectful for me as the coach.

By the way, coach, if you want over 15 scripts for knowing how to talk about money, and if you want my step-by-step method for how to talk about money easily and comfortably without the money drama, then definitely check out my new training, Mastering Money Conversations, and I'll link to that in the show notes.

All right, boundary number 2, don't discuss the investment before it's time. There is a right time and a wrong time to discussing your coaching fees. The right time is after you're clear what challenges your prospective client wants to solve and what results that they're looking for, not just a result today, but what their ultimate results are. In other words, what challenges do they no longer want to be experiencing and what do they aspire to experience instead?

Discovering and outlining that can happen in 15, 20, maybe 25 minutes of a conversation, or it can happen in back and forth in the DMs as well. But giving a price prior to that is always a mistake. The standard here is you decide when to discuss money.

The boundary is simply not doing it before it's time because remember your boundary upholds your standard. So When someone asks early on in the conversation how much you charge, definitely be honest, be confident and let them know you have a few different options and that you'll be happy to share those and what the investment is once you've asked a few questions first. In other words, don't give the amount first.

All right, boundary number three, don't take it personally if someone says you're too expensive. First of all, hearing that does not mean there's anything wrong with your pricing. Yes, you're going to be "too expensive" for some people. You're also going to be too low for others. What matters is that you are crystal clear what results are possible for someone when they coach with you. And I talk about this in a number of different episodes and I'll link to those in the show notes as well.

And this is the beauty of choosing to become a business coach for women entrepreneurs because the results you coach clients to create, they're easy to identify and easy to talk about. All right, so let me give you an example. Our standard is our certification trainings are worth 10 times the tuition. Our standard is a woman coming into certified coach training can experience a full return on investment with just two, three, maybe four clients. Our standard is someone coming into certification can start making money within the first few weeks of training if that's what she chooses to do.

So we absolutely do not take it personally if someone says we're too expensive, because we know we're worth every penny and worth so much more. If you have a standard that your pricing reflects a return on investment, then upholding that standard with a boundary of not taking it personally is easy to do. No drama, no emotional heat, no defensiveness. And if you're not crystal clear about the results clients get from coaching with you, then that's a place where you need to do the work, because not knowing that is keeping you from feeling a thousand percent confident in what you are charging.

Every one of these three boundaries with your pricing is going to make you feel confident and secure about what you're charging. And they're going to help you feel connected and confident talking with potential clients. This is you having a standard of standing in your power with your pricing. Don't you just love it?

Now, I founded my company to start a revolution, and that revolution is to create a world where women hold genuine money power. We are women. We are soul driven. Your pricing is just another manifestation of your relationship with money. So get clear on your standards regarding your pricing. And remember, your business gets to run your way.

And then anytime someone is asking for something different than how you have your pricing set up, just run it through the filter of your standard. And if it doesn't fit, it's a no. And you can be fully in the space of positive yes energy, even as you say no. And that means no defensiveness, no blame, no guarding, no apology. It just is the way it is.

So if you want more support around this topic of discussing money, definitely check out my Mastering Money Conversations new training. It's a really quick training that will give you the skill of masterfully handling any type of money conversation with all of that grace and ease and leadership that is so you.

And plus I give you over 15 scripts and you get to hear me model each of these for you so you can catch all of the nuances of voice tone and energy. All right, my beautiful soul, thank you so much for tuning in and I will see you here next week for our next episode on all things money and coaching.

Thank you so much for tuning into this week's episode of The Money Coach School Podcast. If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you follow so you never miss an episode. Also, I would so love and appreciate if you would leave a 5-star review. Your review supports women just like you in discovering all of the juicy tips and insights I’m sharing here on how to coach women on money.

And if you want to learn how to excel at coaching women on money, definitely go to KendallSummerHawk.com and check out the wealth of money coach trainings that we have for you. Thanks so much for being part of this money coaching movement and for tuning into the show every week.