245: Pricing Mindset
Brought to you by Pet Sitters Associates
Summary:
Did you raise your prices starting January 1st? There are often stumbling blocks and fears surrounding charging what you need to in order for your business to survive. We debunk several of those and discuss the importance of doing a personal (and business!) budget so you know exactly how much you need to live the life you want. During this first week of the New Year, re-evaluate what you charge and how you determine that price.
Main topics:
Increase letter?
Grandfathering clients?
Can I increase too much?
How do I determine my prices?
Pet Biz Coach
Main takeaway: When determining your prices, look inward, not outward.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
prices, clients, business, people, rates, raise, services, area, natasha, increase, charge, letter, pet, money, set, pet sitters, day, grandfathering, year, pricing
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin, Natasha
Meghan 00:10
Hello, I'm Meghan I'm Collin and this is Pet Sitter confessional an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Welcome to 2022.
Collin 00:22
What a year, it's already been so many hats, we had our first snow day and first sub zero temperatures. So you're set for the year
Meghan 00:28
boy, is it cold. We want to thank our Patreon members like Ashley, Adriana, Claire and Savannah for making today's show possible. Thank you so much. You guys are supporting us every month with the price of a cup of coffee. And we really appreciate your feedback and your input for the show. If you the listener would like to get more information on that or financially support us, you could do so at petsitter confessional comm slash support. And we also want to thank pet sitters associates as well. We hope you had a good last few weeks, the holidays were crazy busy. And hopefully you got a chance to listen to episode 244. With three awesome pet business owners, Natasha, dog and Dan. We they we interviewed them on pricing, which is a really big topic, which is kind of why we're gonna be talking about it again today. Hopefully this will be the last time that we talked about this for a while as far as pricing. But there's just so much to cover here, we thought that we would kind of take our own spin on this for a little bit.
Collin 01:28
Yeah, we really want to focus more today on some mindset reasons why pricing can be difficult for people specifically, some things that have changed for ourselves, and how we approach pricing and budgets.
Meghan 01:40
And one of the first things is whether to send a rate increase letter or not. This has been a hot button topic for the past several months, when people were considering changing their prices for the new year, they wanted to know if they should send a rate increase letter or not, under what circumstances what the letter should say. And basically, we feel that unless it's an ongoing service, a daily, weekly thing that the client is using you and if he has given you, you know, tons and tons of money throughout the year, it's probably fine to send a rate increase letter, but you definitely don't have to, if it's a petsitting client, and they only book you one or two times a year, probably not, you don't have to. But if you decide to send one, stop defending your prices, you do not owe anyone an explanation for why you're raising your rates. Some people may feel self conscious about prices. I mean, I know we do a little bit we sometimes feel like we have to defend or justify why we're raising our prices by a few dollars
Collin 02:42
and not just to ourselves, but also to clients. And that's why we sit and look at these letters and realize, oh, I don't have any good reasons that I can list out. So I end up not raising my rates because I don't feel like I have a good reason. I need to make more money. That's at the end of the day. That's what needs to happen. But sometimes that doesn't feel good or that doesn't feel like justification enough, I need to have three things that happened or five things that happened or word it specifically to justify the rate to my clients so that they believe it. And I think underneath all of that we're trying to come up with things so that we believe it, as well.
Meghan 03:17
Well, and a lot of people were saying a few months ago when gas prices were so high that they were going to raise their rates because gas prices were increasing and that were driving from client to client. But if you do that, first of all, you don't need to explain to your clients that that's the reason. But if you do then are you then going to lower the prices when the gas goes back down like that is something that you really need to consider because that's something that clients might expect. If you're saying I'm raising prices, because gas is going up, they may come back and say okay, well, when they go back down, will you lower them for me?
Collin 03:50
Well, again, fundamentally, here, we may feel greedy about raising our prices. So we become self conscious about it. And so we can't put all that into a letter. But remember, you don't owe anybody any reason.
Meghan 04:04
Well, and we were talking about this earlier. And I think you said that the more wordy somebody is the more wordy somebody becomes it doesn't really look good for them.
Collin 04:13
Well, it's more things for the client to start nitpicking on and start investigating and grilling you on with your really really wordy letter and adding all these explanations and things and yeah, I may start to sound like are they trying to cover something up? Are they trying to hide something from me that I don't want to know or find out? Is it courteous to send as we as you mentioned, Megan, a regular client? I notice. Yes. It's a courtesy though. It's not mandatory. Except everyone. It seems like assumes that you just have to send one. But you don't.
Meghan 04:47
Yeah, I'm not sure where the idea came from to send this letter because most service based businesses don't do this. I go to a salon and spa down the road and they didn't let me know when their prices were increasing. It was just something knew when I booked I noticed Oh, there 60 minute massage is $5 more so because
Collin 05:04
it is a courtesy and you don't owe anybody a single explanation, if you do decide to give notice, and that's very different what we're talking about here, we're not saying don't give a notice, we're saying you don't have to explain or defend what's going on well,
Meghan 05:18
but you don't have to give a notice either just one day, your prices on your website, maybe higher.
Collin 05:22
That's true. So if you want to give a notice, though, this is actually what we recently sent out in our weekly email newsletter to our clients. It said, booking requests after this date will be at the new rates listed below. All confirmed bookings will be honored at existing rates, period, that's always said, That's it. This is nothing more because again, I don't want to get too wordy here and try and convince them that it's worthwhile, or now tie myself into a knot about the reasons that I gave that I may have to walk back later. If I mentioned gas prices and gas prices go back down. I also don't want to put stumbling blocks in my way for putting this out there and actually implementing it. I want to make sure everything is as easy and simple as possible, both on my end and for the clients. So it's easy for them to understand. Now we gave a notice we didn't give an explanation. Now some centers at the end of their letter would say something like, if you have any questions or concerns come talk to me. But again, we don't need to be opening the door for people to come and talk to you about your prices. Why would you let them give input at all, if they really have a problem over this, they will let you know either way those people will find you.
Meghan 06:33
And again, this seems to be a very specific problem to the pet care industry. Because no other industry that I know of really does this. And in fact, people on the app platforms rarely do this, particularly if they have no social media or website. But since we're in a relationship industry, we do feel the need to do this, you know your clients best, we are interacting with them day in and day out. We care for their most beloved creatures. And so the issue here isn't really the letter, because again, it is I feel courteous to let your daily clients know. But it's the fact that people feel like they need to defend their prices. It's a transaction. It's a business, Natasha had mentioned on Episode 244, that once that pet care is complete, that transaction is over. And next time you will enter into a new contract with that person. And so it really is all business, we write a letter and we get emotional about it. The fear, the anxiety, all of that ends up in the letter. You know, when we raise rates, we typically assume two things. One, that people will leave all the people, every single one of our clients, we kind of we kind of catastrophize what's going to happen. So that's the first thing we assume people are going to leave. And then too we assume there will be pushback. But we really need to stop worrying about other people's finances and assuming what they can and can't afford. So these concerns that we have, are, frankly, they're wrong. Because one, your clients are worried about confrontation just as much as you are. Nobody really likes confrontation. They don't enjoy arguing with somebody else. And so just as you as the sitter are fearful about confronting them with your prices, they are probably also on the other end, fearful of confronting you about your prices. And so they're probably not likely to say anything at all confrontations, statistically, it doesn't happen very often, they're used to prices going up. So you raising prices isn't really abnormal. In a world where especially right now the cost of literally everything is going up. And the second reason why these concerns are typically wrong is because your clients love you. They know that you are extremely valuable, especially the ones who use you day in and day out week in and week out throughout the year and give you tons of money and use your services a lot. They love you. So we really build this up in our minds. Because we're extremely emotionally tied up with our own rates, we feel like our rates are our worth and our value. And so we need to accept the rates, we need to embrace them.
Collin 09:09
I love that last part, accepting and embracing your rates because too often we get very weirded or grossed out about the thought of talking about money or thinking about the prices or our income or talking in those concepts. Because again, we are a relationship, relationship based business. We do this out of our passion. And so our rates are how much our costs are for our services, all that since they get put off to be secondary for our business. And we tend to push them aside. And so we don't accept them. We don't embrace them. That's why we have a hard time standing firm to those that's we have a hard time not giving discounts or raising our rates eventually because we don't believe that we're actually worth what we're currently charging. So why on earth would we charge any more but actually sitting down and going through a process to come up with rates that are going to work for you that are gonna balance out your life the way you want them to be. And then embracing and accepting those to be true to be part of your business is really going to help you stand firm when people start questioning them, or when tough times come up.
Meghan 10:12
But before we try to figure out what our rates should be, I want to talk about grandfathering. And people whether you should or shouldn't. And a simple move to this is just changing your prices on your website. So new people have no history of your prices, they don't know that you are $5 $10, cheaper just a week ago, they only see what's right in front of them today. So we get caught up in clients leaving, like I just mentioned, everybody's gonna leave, it's kind of this, this panic, this fear. And I'm not saying we're perfect, like we had this a few months ago when we raised our prices really significantly. And it's really a fear, but new clients won't freak out about new prices, because they're just your prices. But when we looked at the fact, in our personal business, that 90% of our business was from repeat clients, if we just raise prices on new people, we wouldn't actually be making any more money. So that's really the problem with grandfathering. In clients, particularly if you have a large base of repeat clients, you won't be making the money you thought you would be because the ratio of new clients to old clients is super small. So that's something that you have to factor in as well, when you are considering grandfathering in and if you do decide to grandfather someone in we recommend having a plan to still raise their rates, but maybe at a slower pace, because we did grandfather in one of our clients. One. Yeah, one. Well, she's our oldest and dearest client. Yeah, exactly. But we have been bringing her up gradually.
Collin 11:41
Yeah, very slowly, she's on her own kind of stair step plan that's a little bit lower than everybody else. Because you cannot be afraid of one person's feedback about your business, you probably actually have right now two to three people that your debt you're literally thinking about, you're picturing their faces, their voices, what kind of text or email or phone call you're going to get from them. Because you're worried about what their response is going to be if you decide to raise your prices, you cannot hold your business hostage to their feelings. I want to say that one more time, you cannot hold your business hostage to their feelings. It's a business, there are no feelings involved in business. When we raised our prices, we actually had a client say, Hey, I'm going to go to two days a week because it's just more expensive. And we were like, okay, and there were no hard feelings, or anger or sadness from either party. She was simply notifying us of a change to the schedule. And we were accepting that we both understood that it's a business decision. And that's where we have to get to in our point of our businesses, that this is a business decision. This is a calculated decision that we are making and that our clients are making as well. And that's okay.
Meghan 12:53
And our client understood that we weren't raising her prices because we were mad at her or wanted to spite her, or just make her pay more because we were greedy. She understood that it was business. And for us when she backed off to two days a week, we understood that it also wasn't personal. It was simply a financial and business decision.
Collin 13:13
Right? Yes. She wasn't saying, Oh, you are cheating me you're you've lied to me. You How could you do this to me after all these years, blah, blah, blah. It was simply we understood, okay, she that this is too much right now. Okay, she's going to do she's still using us. This is great. If you only focus on an each and every single clients response, you'll miss the big picture here, you're going to miss the rest of your client list. If you only hold your business back because of two or three people that you can picture in your brain right now, you will miss on the 100 or more clients that you have on your list. Because on average, what you're trying to do here is move the price up across the board. Because statistically and financially here, you'll be making more money. Even if a client drops you or client uses your services less because the rest of your clients will keep on using you as they currently do. And that's what we need to focus on not the one or two clients that we may potentially lose or decrease in services. The vast majority of people will move forward with you over your price increase.
Meghan 14:17
Next we're going to talk more about a rate increase. But first, as pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members, pet sitters Associates is here to help for over 20 years they have provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. Since you work in the pet care industry. You can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections and complete freedom in running your business. Learn why pet sitters Associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote today. At pets@llc.com. You can get a discount when joining by clicking membership petsitter confessional and use the discount code confessional at checkout to get $10 off today. Check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again at pets@llc.com. Another common question when talking about rate increases is how much is too much to increase my services by is $2 Too much is $5 Too much 50 cents. But there probably is really no such thing as too much to increase by because it's all about what your customer or potential client is willing to pay. Last year, we raised our prices between 18 and 42%. Based on the service,
Collin 15:26
yeah, which is a big jump 42% increase across just two rate increases. So within one year, the price of one of the services went up 40%. And not a single person stopped using us
Meghan 15:38
for that service. Yeah, we didn't get any negative feedback, nothing. Yeah,
Collin 15:42
nobody said anything, which we were both shocked by because, again, we were kind of afraid to do that. But we saw a real need to do that. So I think when you look at how much should I increase by, I think you need to look at when was the last time I actually raised my prices. If it was a long time ago, you need to be pretty aggressive about raising your prices. 30 cents, 50 cents is really not going to cut it if you'd hadn't raised your prices in five or more years.
Meghan 16:07
But it can be really terrifying. We were really afraid, because we thought everybody is gonna leave. But you have like, for us, we had such a large client base that we realized we had to do something we could not keep up this pace. We were turning people away, left and right. And we had to do something.
Collin 16:26
Yeah. So part of the the massive increase for that service was because we were trying to get people to stop using it by making it so expensive, because it was in high demand. We were like, okay, the demand is there, the price needs to rise accordingly. Because we can't meet it at this current rate. And it didn't it helped a little bit. I feel like but not really. We're still just as busy with that. So
Meghan 16:48
Well, I mean, it has turned away new clients, that's for sure. Some people have called and have literally laughed at you because of the price.
Collin 16:55
Yeah, and that's fine. Again, what that's great, glad we had that discussion. And glad you realize that the service is not as valuable to you, as my prices are dictating right now. And we were able to move on. And that's perfectly fine. When you raise your prices. Again, you may get some feedback, you may have new or potential clients question you about them, or laugh at you or laugh at you. And I I've probably only the second time I've had somebody laugh at me about my prices. But we're insanely busy. I mean that that wasn't a big deal to me or us, because we knew that we were worth that and that those prices work for us. So again, if you haven't raised your prices in a long time, look at a pretty aggressive schedule, maybe two, three rate hikes over the next year or year and a half to get yourself back up to where you need to be where you want to where you want to be. And if you haven't raised, if you raise your prices pretty recently, maybe smaller increases. But again, still set that schedule. And I like that idea of having a set schedule of when you raise prices, whether you think you need it or not. No at X amount of time, that's whenever my rates go up. Because then very, very essentially here, your clients know to expect it. And you don't have to think about it or worry about it. It's January 1, this is when I raise prices, everybody knows we raise prices, I know we raise prices, it stops being a big deal. I think that's really important. Well,
Meghan 18:18
that's a perfect time, because you can look back at the year and see how much inflation went up like last year went up 6%. So out of there, at a minimum, you should have raised your prices 6%. Now as far as setting your prices, we used to give advice of looking at others for your prices and aim for the middle. So this is what a lot of people ask about in Facebook groups. How do I set my prices? What's a good price? What are you charging? What where do I start with all of this? And in previous episodes, we have said, go look at what other sitters in your area are charging and charge in the middle? Or if you're just starting out on the lower end. And we would say that this is not good advice anymore. And we would not recommend that advice.
Collin 19:02
No, because people charge too little. So by looking at people in your area, you'll chronically under charge if you base it off of others. So stop comparing yourself to other sitters and basing your prices on what they charge.
Meghan 19:15
Now it is certainly fine to see what others are charging, but do not set your prices within that range without first doing some other things like setting your personal budget that is important.
Collin 19:28
Yeah, we go in and we start this business and we start doing this stuff and we have no idea what we actually need to survive. So how much are your annual household expenses? Break it down by month by day, then you can start doing how many visits do I need per day to cover my personal expenses and then any profit above and that we want to take home? Then look at how much each service will actually cost you supplies, gas insurance, training. And then now don't forget to take into account setting aside 30% in taxes just so much, it's so much. And then you can actually look at what you're left with. So let's do this from the top. Sorry for the math in advance. Let's say you've done a personal budget, and you've found that you need $30,000 A year for everything to run your household. How many walks is that for you? How many do you need to average per day to make that work.
Meghan 20:25
So most people would take their budget here and divide it by the price of their walk. But don't forget you have those 30% taxes, which are not fun, setting aside extra business income for a rainy day fund or just to cover other business expenses. And remember, we're talking about your take home pay, stop buying leashes and poo bags with your personal money, use the business money.
Collin 20:49
So let's dive into this example. And again, sorry, for the math or, or maths, let's say again, you need $30,000 A year, if you charge $20, for a 30 minute walk, now we're gonna take 30% off of that for taxes, you're at $14. Now, why 30% It's a very safe number to set aside each time, it will allow you to cover any tax bill for that quarter. And it can be adjusted, obviously, but it's a nice round number that's easy to remember and to calculate. Now, again, remember, our business needs to be covering business expenses, things like insurance, things like mileage or gas, maybe you want to save up for equipment or a rainy day fund, that money has to come from somewhere. So out of this service where we have $14, after the taxes, we're going to take $2 out of that. So And honestly, that's really not a whole lot to be setting aside after each walk. So for the $20 walk, I will we actually get $12 it would take 2500 walks in a year, that's seven walks a day, seven days a week to make $30,000 at 20 bucks a walk. If you raise your rates to $22, after taxes, that's 1340, which works out to six walks for seven days a week. With that $2 increase, you've just given yourself back a little bit more time each day. raising it to $25 means only five walks a day to make that exact same income. And by the way, I after doing some quick math, if you actually want to take home that full $20 You need to be at 32 bucks a visit, which I don't know very many people that are that high, not there yet. Yeah. But here again, your prices are what can literally afford you more or less time in your day to be doing other things. Because here's how most people set their prices, they won't have no clue how much money they actually need. They look at prices in their area. And they aim for the lower half of the range because they're new to the market. And they're new to this, they want to get a bunch of clients. And then they never raised the rates out of fear of losing everything, or being too greedy.
Meghan 22:55
Well, and you had said this in a prior episode, if you want the most amount of clients charge $0,
Collin 23:00
you will be so full, you won't know what to do with yourself. But obviously, that's way extreme that nobody would agree to do because we need to be making money from our business. So if you did what most people do, you would look at your area. And you would see that maybe $20 is on the high end, maybe $25 isn't on the high end. So you decide you want 17 bucks a walk, you have no idea how much your annual household expenses are. So you just start at 17, which you're actually only taking home like 10 bucks after everything. If you do six walks a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, that's $21,000, no breaks, no miss days, nothing. Now, that's for you to decide if that's what you if that is enough for you. But if you work at this from my budget down to my visit, you're able to actually price yourself better for the lifestyle that you actually want to eat. Now, yes, we know these numbers will vary and are totally dependent on your circumstances, your goals, your objectives for your business. But the calculations themselves don't change. Start by knowing your personal budget, then back that up into your business. Because again, remember, you have to make your business work for you, not you working for your business. And we've actually broken down our business expenses on a daily, sometimes hourly basis. So we know what we're shooting for what we need, and how are we supposed to fill time. And if you want help breaking down your numbers or want a second look at your approach,
Meghan 24:28
Collin would love to help you
Collin 24:30
to plump spreadsheets, and would totally be happy to help and talk you through some processes and how to kind of back into this in a very, very simple, straightforward way.
Meghan 24:40
The last approach here that we're going to take with prices is the argument that I can't have high rates in my area. And this is a really big topic
Collin 24:50
and one I think we are very passionate about
Meghan 24:53
because that's simply not true. Okay, so our county has about 40,000 people in it. That's it 40 1000 people for our county, not city, county, so not many people, we are an hour and a half away from a major metropolitan area. But we are isolated. Basically, the town 30 minutes away from us has the exact same population size as us, the median income for Our Town is about 24,000. And to put that into perspective, that median US income is 31,000. So we are on the lower end of that for sure, we expanded into a new area last year, that is almost 10 times the population where we currently live with obviously, a higher median income as well. And our pricing is the same for each area. So traditional Facebook wisdom would tell us that we should have higher prices in one of those areas, which doesn't make sense. walks are $25 for 30 minutes, and we're hoping to raise that soon. But we get no pushback in either locality. Our rates are our rates, and there are quite literally two times everyone else in our area. So where does this belief come from? That we can't have higher rates for our area, because we are living proof that you can live in a really small town with not many people and charge a lot of money. Like we mentioned earlier last year, we raised our rates by 40%. That's a lot. So I'm not sure if Facebook at one time said this is it, it must be true that you cannot have higher rates in a smaller town. But it's not true. It could also be that we see everyone else pricing in our area. And we assume that that is what the standard should be. So we never tried to go for more.
Collin 26:40
Again, that's one of the dangers of looking at other people's prices to set your business. Not only do we chronically undercharge, that but then we only believe that the prices that are currently on the market are the ones that are possible in our area. And we forget, oh, maybe I could charge more than that. For some reason our brain blocks that out, we look at the highest one. And we say, Well, nobody's going above that. Surely I won't do that. That kind of limits. Our scope limits our perspective on what we could actually run our businesses and set prices though, even though we desperately would need those higher prices. We fear that there's a cap on our market, because we see what the highest prices and assume that's the cap instead of leapfrogging over that and actually charging what we need. Because we know our finances, we know what we need for our business, and then charging accordingly.
Meghan 27:25
Well, it's the whole thing of being an entrepreneur, right? We are business owners, we are entrepreneurs. And so you can charge whatever you want, your services are worth the value that they give to your client. In your town, there are people who make a significant amount of money. There are doctors and hospitals, there are bankers, there are lawyers, there are people who are going to be able to pay your prices, you will
Collin 27:53
be surprised looking at our demographics in our town, it is shocking the number of people who live in our town that drive an hour or more to a larger city so that they can work at their high end finance or lawyer job there. But they choose to live much further out because they can afford more land or a bigger house. Those are the people that we have been connecting with more and more, and they're in your area too. So don't think that that doesn't exist, it takes a little bit of looking for and those people aren't always on Facebook, or on Instagram, you do have to find them through more traditional style means or networking opportunities, but they are worth the effort to find. So just a little homework for you right now, right now go and Google, my enter your county name median income, you will be utterly shocked to know exactly what it is
Meghan 28:48
I'm sure it will be higher than ours, which was 24,000. Down,
Collin 28:52
not many are lower, I'll say that.
Meghan 28:57
So just know that anything is really possible, you are unique. You have value. You bring your expertise, and your training and your certifications and your insurance that a lot of people don't even have that. That adds value to the client, that you're awesome updates, your awesome pictures, your bespoke services that nobody else in your area offers the special touches that you add your personality,
Collin 29:25
your outlook on life, how you handle conflict, all those quote unquote, soft skills. I don't know why those are categories of soft skills, because it really the hardest skills is interpersonal skills and relationship building things and how you communicate with the client to exactly those are worth something those are so valuable that we forget or don't really know how to price those into those. And that's why again, looking at that budget and backing it up into that way kind of erases all of that. And then you can look at and say, you know, this is actually what I'm worth, this is what I'm bringing to the table. And again, embrace those prices, embrace those things and know that you will find those clients who can pay those.
Meghan 30:05
So where do we go from here? Well, basically, you need to raise your prices. If you do didn't do it as of January 1, you need to do it soon. So do a personal budget, like you keep saying, calling back it up to what you need. And then over time, increase and keep increasing your prices. I don't want it I don't like to see those posts in the Facebook groups about I haven't raised my prices since 2018, or 2016. Or it just it's very frustrating, because inflation keeps going up, all of these things keep going up. But we are not matching what we are worth and what we need for to live on this, we should be able to live on this. So set your prices so you can balance your income with the time that you still have. You can also experiment with pricing around your services to make sure that you're recouping the actual costs of your business. So put them on your website and see what happens, I bet you'll be surprised with new clients continuing to contact you.
Collin 31:03
And all of this is really framed around moving our mindset out of not being worth anything to being a fully functional business that brings value to people
Meghan 31:13
well, and also a lot of us having a fixed mindset around prices versus a growth mindset, we feel stuck, we feel like we can't do this, we feel like everybody's gonna leave, we have this constant fear around charging, what we actually want to be charging what we need to be charging. And so we need to break free from that get out of that.
Collin 31:34
Well, because we don't see ourselves as a legitimate business, we don't see ourselves as legitimately doing something and functioning, we only have to base it off of emotions and base it off of the relationships and based off of feelings rather than business and decisions and facts and numbers. Exactly. That's really the power of knowing your numbers. And understanding what that is because once you know the numbers, feelings stop mattering, whenever you realize, oh, I actually cannot make a living at this rate. That's a cold hard fact that you get faced with whenever you drill down in an Excel spreadsheet, or I
Meghan 32:10
want to hire but I can't because my prices are not high enough. And I wouldn't actually be making any money to be able to pay my employees,
Collin 32:17
I want to save for a house or I want to go on vacation, or I want to buy new leashes or whatever that is, if you don't have the money to do those things, or I want to buy a client's gifts at the end of the year, hey, it is we're in January, start thinking about that for December, if that's something you want to do, again, use your business to give you the life that you want. And that that that starts with money as a business. We don't like to think of it that way we don't, it makes us feel gross, we feel greedy. But that's a business. That's a business, the money that the business gives us allows us to do things with that money, whether from the business side donating to people or that's us getting able to, you know, save for our child's college and education. Like that's something that we get to do with that, that I could only do if I have my prices set accordingly. So match up what your goals and objectives are for your business and for your personal life, do that budget and then realize that that money can help you get to those, because that's that's what the business is supposed to do. That's how it functions.
Meghan 33:20
Just remember that when you go to set your prices, or when you want to raise them, you need to look inward. Instead of outward, you need to focus on what you personally need and want to have in your life. Instead of looking at what everybody else is trying to dictate you do if you just raised your prices January 1, or even if you didn't, we would love to know what your thoughts are around this topic. We know this is kind of a touchy topic. And this is just our perspective. You might agree you might not. But we would love to hear what you think about this. A very savvy pet business coach Natasha opionion is going to answer the question, what does legacy mean?
Natasha 34:01
Legacy to me is having a long standing business that our clients are proud of, we're proud of, and my grand brand brands children are receiving, right? I like that generational wealth. You know, Grandma set the pavement for us, she put it in the ground for us to live off of this, you know, I want them to reinvent and recreate and I want to make sure I've put that structure in there for them to continue to grow throughout their generations. So this business for me, and that's why I'm so much on like not rolling the solopreneur away because it has to grow beyond us. You know, I find I can't be selfish. What I'm creating is something for my clients or my community has nothing to do with Natasha. It's how I can serve them. And that's what your legacy is gonna hold because you mean we all care about our Furbabies you know, we all know the way that it could go wrong or we know the way that it shouldn't be by things we've seen, you know, different app tech platforms that rolled out we're like, Whoa, no, there's a lot of holes there that that shouldn't be the way It is. So you want to be the authority in your space to show clients how it should be and how you're taking care of families.
Meghan 35:08
If you would like to partner with Natasha in your pet business, you can do so at start scale sale calm and use the code P SC 24 15%. off her coaching. We want to thank our wonderful Patreon members and pet sitters associates for sponsoring this episode. And most of all, thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing the episode with other pet sitters for leaving great reviews on Apple podcast. We are so appreciative of you guys listening every week,
Collin 35:34
and we can't wait to see what you make this year out for you and your business and we're so happy and excited to be along the journey with you as well.
Meghan 35:42
Talk to you soon
