Should I Raise My Prices?

This podcast will help you to become more confident with your patients , more successful in your practice or business and a leader in pelvic health , and we're going to have some fun along the way . Join us as we rise together .

We're Jesse and Nicole Cozine , founders of Pelvic Sanity Physical Therapy and the creators of the Pelvic PT Puddle , and this is Pelvic PT Rising .

One person in there asked the question hey , I'm thinking about raising my prices , should I ? And essentially , what does that look like ? What have you guys done ?

And one of my responses was one of a million different questions and it was funny to me because some people actually answered that question and I'm like none of y'all should be even answering it because we don't know way more information , and so this podcast is essentially all of those questions that I would need to know if I was going to answer that question

appropriately .

If you're listening to this on the day this podcast comes out January 4th today is the last day to register for the second cohort of the accelerator program , so I've already got a lot of you guys already in there . We're super excited to be working with you guys in 2024 . So any of those late procrastinators , here is your final kick in the ass .

Final kick in the ass . And just as a couple of Q and A's , I'm going to do a real brief thing of questions that we get about this . Is this for me ? Yes , it is for every business owner .

We have literally designed this for people who are just starting off to people who have multiple employees and are doing 30 , 40 , $50,000 a month in their revenue in their business .

If you're just starting out and don't want to fuck around , honestly , and this is one , Nicole , you will always laugh at .

You're really not that special , I promise you . And you might be special in other ways , but not ways that would negate your entrance into the accelerator program .

And getting buy in Two patients literally does pay for the entire program and everything beyond . That is absolute gravy . If you don't think that the program can deliver that , you honestly probably shouldn't be listening to this podcast , because that's a pretty low bar over the space of six months . So we're pumped about it .

If you guys are already in , get excited . If you guys are on the fence , hopefully this is that final kick in the butt that you need in order to go to public PG rising dot com slash accelerator . Get yourself registered , okay . So , nicole , let's dive into . Should I raise my prices ? And this is one of the things .

It's a little bit of a trigger for us , because I feel like every coach out there or every and coaches in quotation marks in my hands , air quotes here but is always just saying this raise your prices , you're worth it . It's like a fucking . Is that a Maybelline , what's the skin product that's like ? Because you're worth it .

It is people will pay and it was more of like a yeah , everybody should , because everybody had to and it was a new market of ways to deliver physical therapy rehab services . Now I feel like overall there's a lot more of us doing it .

Insurance has continued to go downhill over the last 10 years in terms of reimbursement and so kind of even though layperson kind of understands that health insurance sort of sucks and it's not as black and white as people would want it to be .

So in that new world of people understand a little bit at least about out of network services that they might have to quote , pay out of pocket for good care and all these things .

Like now those coaches that are still continuing to prey on your insecurities and just blanketly giving that advice everybody should be charging at least this and you just need to raise it because you're worth it and because that's what cash PT should be .

That's no longer good enough in our opinion and we talked a little bit about in a previous podcast relatively recently on on shit that needs to be said . Business edition and this was one of our things like your bullshit meter needs to start raising a little bit .

If you start hearing that blanket advice because the reality is is that if somebody's asking you what should you charge for your services and and therefore , by extension , should you raise your price , that is a Very much a nuanced answer and , a lot of times , stuff that we don't give it enough credit .

We actually believe that each of you guys could be charging more . But you have to believe it . You have to have the confidence and the desire to make that happen .

And so what happens is if you get pushed into doing that before you're ready , now You're really shaky on the phone , you're Apologizing for your prices , you think you're expensive , you're trying to piss space people's visits out because you're not comfortable with what you're charging .

Somebody gives you a little bit of pushback on the phone and you get defensive or start backpedaling Because you're not comfortable . So telling you to just do it . Is it the price that's causing the problem ? Actually , I don't believe that it is , except in some very extreme cases when people really are pricing themselves out of the market .

But 99% of the time , you probably are not charging enough .

But you have to feel that confidence in order to do it , and that's one of the really cool things that we actually looked at in the first cohort of the accelerator program , 76% of our people raised their price within the program or immediately after , not because we told everybody , hey , you have to be raising your prices , but because they gained the confidence

that they could do that and their business would be better off because of it , and they understood the numbers and why they were making it happen . So it is something I would guess , if you're listening to this product , as you probably are priced too low . We were priced too low at pelvic sanity for years . We probably still are .

That's most people's natural inclination , so it's important to recognize that . But you have to have the confidence to step into whatever your price is when you're raising it and be prepared for pushback and be ready to just basically say , yeah , I've been under price this whole time . I'm , I am raising my prices . I do get you .

Those were kind of results and it really matters now . I think one of the other things that helps people to see this is when we really talk about the importance of your pricing and what you decide to set your price at .

And this is , if you're a wannabe , think about this , going in and price yourself appropriately , but it is one of the easiest ways and sometimes one of your only ways if you're capped with your time To increase your revenue and therefore your profits , and so if you're dealing with a profit margin that is lower than it should be , or you aren't able to come in

and see that many patients , then Increasing your revenue with your pricing is one of the biggest Levers that you can pull in your business , and so I would really encourage you , if you're thinking about running or increasing your prices , run the numbers .

So , if you're seeing , on average , 20 patients a week , every dollar increase over the course of a year is the $25,000 in extra revenue . So run the numbers . How many patients are you seeing a week , and what would that actually translate to over the course of a year ? So that's just gonna be an easy way to think about this .

But , nicole , it would kind of go through the questions that you should be asking yourself and say should

I raise your prices ? I think the first one is what do you feel about your current price ?

And you're just thinking about raising it Just because ? And what's that ? Because ? So again , ask yourself are you confident with your current price ? And a way to sort of See if you're confident . If somebody told you that is way too high of a price , what would your reaction be ? And Jesse , you have a story about this at Pelix Sanity .

That was a really moment , a good moment for us .

It's not the fact that he was a lawyer that doesn't help , but just the guy who was clearly a bit of an asshole .

You said you've been to four other places and haven't gotten any results . Great , keep shopping around , asshole , as you want . To pretend that you're this like rich big shot lawyer who can't afford whatever . It was like $150 an hour at that point and he's like what ?

So you know , maybe not if you're about to bring somebody on or trying to hire and bringing somebody in right that minute , but if you are full with a wait list I mean it's the example we sometimes give when we talk to mentees is , you know , if you had a friend who ran a bakery and every morning it looked like the new release of the iPhone around the

corner , everybody's lining up there , they sell out every single day . Your advice to that person would be raise your prices . Well , if you're full with a wait list , that's your situation . So , looking at it from external factor , yeah , you need to raise your price . That is just business supply and demand .

So if you're full with a wait list this becomes a little bit of an easier question you probably should be raising your prices . Another really good question to ask yourself is is time your limiting factor ?

So if you're in a situation where you are going to be capping or are capped with your time let's say , your mom of young kids and only wanna be working 12 hours a week then it really would make sense . You can't increase that side of your revenue . You can't increase the number of patients you're willing to see .

So the only other way to affect your revenue is to increase your pricing . Now , if you are in a practice that has room to grow , or you've got employees or you're not seeing the total number of patients that you could be seeing , then you might want to keep your pricing where it is and see more patience .

That's actually going to be bigger for your bottom line than raising prices . So you just have to understand if your time is capped , then the only way that you can really affect your revenue is by raising your prices .

So it's not just like oh , it's not just either , or it's like if the one thing is off the table with the amount of time that you can spend or the amount of patience that you can see , there still is the question of should you raise it or not . It's not just like automatic .

And this is actually a little bit of a tough one because sometimes we're around other business owners who are significantly lower than they should be . So I don't even necessarily think about this as comparing just to other pelvic rehab providers or other ortho clinics .

We've had plenty of people come up and say , hey , this ortho clinic down the street is charging $85 an hour for their services . So I put mine at $95 an hour . It's like , well , just because they put their number way low does not mean that you should base what you're doing on them . But what are massage therapists around you doing ?

What are chiropractors or acupuncturists and then adjust for your time and how that works right . So you can't obviously compare your hour session to a 10 minute thing with a chiropractor , but you know , generally on a per hour basis you should probably be pretty similar . So get a sense of your area . What is the general cost of things ?

As you're looking at that and then recognize this , I think this is a big thing as you're thinking about your prices . There really is no value to being in the middle , right ? There's no value to being in the middle when it comes to pricing . So if you go to a supermarket , think about your own behavior .

There's something on the high end and there's something on the low end . So if you're looking for something cheap or something you don't really care about , you get the cheapest brand right . You get the Vaughn's brand marinara sauce , whatever the hell . It is right If you really care about it . We just did this for our Christmas dinner .

We made Nicole made these amazing manicotties . We went down to this amazing , incredible Italian market that had all fresh homemade stuff and paid probably eight times more for marinara sauce because it was something that mattered to us . It was a special dinner , so we went with a high end .

You know , what we never buy is the shit that's right in the middle , right , you're either buying the low end stuff or you're buying the high end stuff . You're not getting the stuff that's right in the middle , and it really is the same with services .

So think about your own buying behavior and recognize that if you're a cash practice , you're already not going to be the low price , because the low price is the insurance practice , then is there really a benefit to being right in the middle of all of your competitors ?

When we are doing that shopping and figuring out what's the low and what's the high , our natural inclination is to be like , well , I want to be in the middle of that , because I don't want to be the lowest and I don't want to be the highest , and so I'm just going to price it in the middle , and what we're saying in this is that that's not where we

want to be . You have to either decide what you're doing with that price , which is also why we can't just answer the question should I raise my price ? It's like I don't know when are you , what are the places around you like and what are the comparable things around you . This also helps by asking this what are the comparable things around you ?

Because there's many people that are like I'm the first pelvic rehab provider in my area . I don't have any other places to compare to , so this is a really good way to . What we're not doing is we don't have to always compare ourselves to other physical therapy or occupational therapy services .

It's what are the like services in our birth world or in our wellness space , that also have prices . And we can compare ourselves to those people as well .

Are you prepared for blowback ? And this is , I think , a really good question , kind of to Nicole's . First point here is how comfortable are you with your pricing ? What would you say if one of your patients said wow , that's expensive . Are you ready for that ? You might have that .

And even if it's only a 10 to $15 increase , someone still might say that , because everybody has their own money mindset issues with everything , and so you have to be prepared to lose patience over the price increase , regardless of how big or small it is . I would say this .

Which just happens anytime you change the price of something . Right ? Is this still worth it to me ? And for some people they ask me no , or they weren't bought in in the first place , or they're getting a lot better and they just don't want to do that . Fine . Yeah are you ready for that ?

Because if you're not , then it's going to throw you into a tailspin of oh my gosh , everybody's leaving . What did I do ? As opposed to if you're ready to raise your race , you're going to know , like yeah , if somebody said that , I'd be like yeah , I haven't raised my prices in a full year and inflation is crazy and all the things right .

I have no hesitation about doing that and I'm going to lose some people and I'm fine with it .

They don't like change , and if you implement change into their world , they are have a tendency to react to that , and so we have to be also thinking about are we ready for that and are we ready to defend that ?

Essentially , do you feel confident enough in doing it that you can be like , hey , sally , like this is what it is and this is what you're gonna do ? And I still recommend that you comment the frequency that you're coming .

But if you are not pricing yourself appropriately , it's going to make it that much harder for you to generate the income you need as a solopreneur . It's gonna make it almost impossible for you to hire employees and pay them a fair salary while still getting any margin for yourself at all .

This is where , a lot of times , your pricing really comes in and bites you in the ass is you can get away with being artificially low . When it's just you and you're running , and that's fine . You're still probably making more than you were someplace else , even if you're not charging what you should be charging .

But all of a sudden , you bring in an employee and you're paying them , and you're paying their payroll taxes and any benefits that you have , and you're paying them for late cancellations and some for no shows , and maybe you're guaranteeing hours or giving them admin work because you're not as full as you want to be , because you're not marketing all that well ,

whatever it is . And you look up and you say , well , wait a second , I just hired this person and it's costing me money when I see a patient . So you need to be thinking that do I have the margin ?

Have I raised my prices to the level where I can afford to hire somebody and pay them and give them an amazing job , while still having enough margin left over to make running the business and taking all the risk that we take worthwhile ? And if you have not raised your prices to that level , you're gonna find that having employees is a real challenge .

It's gonna be really difficult for you to manage that .

So once you have employees , literally everything changes , including how much and how often you should raise your price , and so this is one of the questions that we would be asking you if you're thinking about doing that .

That means that they were doing better for their family , better for their employees , better for themselves , being able to maybe work less and make the same amount , and they did it in a way where they had confidence in doing it and they had a community behind them .

And we can tell stories to each other of all the crazy things that patients said afterwards and support each other with it . But if you're on the fence and that alone would make doing the program worth it for you that price increases going to continue to be increased for decades . Hopefully we're in this thing for the long run .

Think about raising your price now is going to result in tens of or hundreds of thousands of dollars over the life of your business . So if you need the little kick to do it hopefully this podcast can be that and if you need more support and more help , make sure you're checking out that accelerator program closing today .