Value Over Market. Pricing Your Pet Services / Ep. 410

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Transcript:

Welcome, everybody, to an all new episode of Bella in your business. My name is Bella Vasta. Today we’re gonna go off script again. So buckle up. We’re gonna have a lot of fun. I have two different clients that are, they have some questions and I always tell you guys to submit questions and thus you have. And we’re gonna have some fun today. But before we do, I wanted to say thank you. Thank you so much. It is so exciting to know how on fire you guys are for marketing. We announced last week that beta marketing with Bella, doors are open and a bunch of you guys flooded to sign up. And that was just, that literally made my heart so happy because the people that were signing up are people who are go getters. They’re the ones that I know I can literally say my success is going to be your success. I know what we have planned for first semester next year, January to June. I know all of the emails that we have scheduled for you guys to go out. I know the types of engaging graphics and talking points that we have simultaneously. I’m also getting, if you guys follow me on my Instagram Stories, you’ve seen this already, but you’ve seen the engagement shoot up up to 1000%. That much. Okay. And that not only are the, is the marketing strategy that we employ with you on the one on one calls and the group calls helping you get new clients, but it’s also helping you attract the right kind of employees. And because it’s fourth quarter and there’s so many events to be had, as we’ve talked about already, that you guys are easily able to break the ice with people in your community and start these events happening. So I’m really, really excited. We give you Facebook covers, we give you email, emails to send out, we give you graphics, we give you videos, we give you the strategy. We keep you up to date every single month about all the different changes. Do you know that there’s ten to 15 changes that happen on social media every single month? Yeah. And if you’re not sure on what’s going on or you need a little direction, honestly, with our program, it is meant to do it for you, but also to teach you how to do it. And it’s. It’s meant to. To really empower you to be able to create the SoP, to then hand it off to someone in your company. And we show you exactly how to take our professional stuff that we give you and match it with your personal stuff that you have ready at your fingertips. It does not take a long time what takes a long time with social media is when you don’t know what you’re doing. What takes a long time with social media is when you do not have a strategy. And we’re here for that. We’re here to help you with that. And I love it. The results are, like, within weeks when people actually do the things we tell them to do. And it makes me so excited so that. That I’m going to leave that right there. And if you get excited by that, or if you’re sitting there and you’re like, oh, shoot, I hate social media, I have to figure out what I need to post on there. Okay, I’m going to post this picture, but now, shoot, what do I say for this picture? Or, oh, gosh, I don’t want to look dormant. How do I actually use social. How do I get clients from it? Social media doesn’t work. It’s my area. No, it’s not. I don’t care if you’re in, like, the cornfields of Ohio or you are in downtown New York City, all right? Social media works. And if you’re not reaping the benefits of those three things, the trifecta, clients, partners, and employees, then you need to talk to me. Please jump on my calendar. Jump consulting.net, forward slash 20. Let’s talk about it. I will be the first person to tell you, no, you are not it, and or you are not at the right place for it. Okay. Because I believe it or not, I don’t want. I just don’t want your money. Like, and I’m going to show you that. Actually, in today’s episode, I’ve got two different clients that I’m going to talk to you about who came to me with questions. And you’re going to hear the honest to God advice. The first girl is. The first woman, rather, is Carrie Ann. And I told her she knew that we were going to do it on the podcast. The second person I’m going to keep anonymous, but she is an avid listener. In fact, every time I hear voice notes from her, I hear myself in the background playing on Bella in your business. So. Which is pretty, pretty amazing. Okay, so let’s first get into Carrie Ann. She said she’s feeling so stuck right now. She knows she needs to raise her prices, not just for medication fees, but for her services, too. Because if she doesn’t, she’s never going to have enough money to actually work with me. That’s what she said. She said she’s closed out all her credit cards. So that’s not an option anymore for covering expenses, and it’s stressing her out. Well, first of all, I know how scary that can be, so I’m really proud of you for taking that bold step. But she continues on, and she says that it’s not like most of my clients are simple either. I mainly have clients with three or four cats, and many of them need multiple medications. And it’s a lot of work every time, and it’s adding up quickly. Her prices are already on the higher side, but it’s also extremely expensive in Nashville. And, you know, her apartment is, like, really expensive, so she has already adjusted the medication prices, but she’s hesitant to finalize everything. And so she’s scared, and she doesn’t want to make the wrong move and regret it later. And she’s like, do you have any words of wisdom on how to move forward with this? I know you’ve got all the math figured out, but I’m feeling so overwhelmed and unsured. So what I told her, and then she kind of. We went back and forth, and then she asked me again, and she said the only thing I had a question left is how to handle it if I set my prices to start at a certain rate. How do you manage clients who might try to manipulate the time, saying it will only take a few minutes so they can avoid paying full amount? I’m sure you have strategy for this in your program, but something is always stood out to me, as I know clients might try to downplay the time that it actually takes. That’s a loaded question. Right. And I’m sure you guys all have felt the same exact way. So, um, give her a shout out wherever you see this. We would love it if you would leave us reviews, honestly. And in that review, just, you know, talk about how she’s not alone, because I know you have also felt this way as well. The interesting thing about pricing, strategy, and structure, that’s not. That’s not what, you know, a lot of people talk about. A lot of people talk about the dollars and the time and the tit for the tatinous and what other people are charging. And that is a really great way to drive yourself into a hole without a shovel. And I’m. I’m not. I’m not kidding about that. I’m not. I’m not exaggerating. It’s absolutely how everyone. How people get into this mess. Okay. And so I want you to really think when you do, your next price increase is, where is your profit margin? Is it where you need it to be. To be happy in your own life is your business have a profit, and are your people being paid well because you don’t want to be a slave laborer? Okay. Um. And so when you get into something like this, she has a unique business where it’s all cats and they have multiple, she said. And there’s medications and such. Well, sometimes, maybe instead of watching the clock, a one price full service might really work. And you guys, if you’ve worked with me, you’ve heard me talk about this before, I truly believe that our. Our. Our industry. It’s a luxury industry. Nobody needs a pet sitter or dog walker or cat sitter. They can get their friend, family, or they could leave their. Their cat at a veterinarian inside of a cage. They really can. But why don’t they do it? Don’t. But, Bella, I can’t do that. Yeah, I get it. I get it. And so we’re gonna come into your home, and we’re gonna take care of whatever you need to get to get taken care of. For x amount of, like, timeframe, I used to say between 20 to 40 minutes or so, and that includes everything. And the other thing I used to say is that I’m not going to penalize you for adopting more cats or dogs or pets. We’re going to get one price. Full service. And while the service price might start at $35, I might quote you, sir, $42, because you have a farm. You see what I’m saying? And so if you take the structure off of it, of the. Oh, it’s this for this much medication, and it’s this for this, you know, litter box scooping, and it’s this for a dog walk, and it’s this for 15 minutes. And it’s this for 20 minutes. Oh, my gosh, please. If you have a 15 minutes service and a 20 minutes service, stop the madness. Five minutes does not make that much of a difference. Pick one. Okay. And the other thing, if you worked with me before, you also know that I know. I say stop taking the. 1530, 45, 60 minutes. Take that away. We are not the cheesecake factory. We’re not giving you every single option, okay? I want you to look at your numbers and your profit margin, and the minute that you are afraid of it, I know it’s because you’re not. You’re not secure in the numbers of it. And so when you do the profit margin and you figure out, do I want to do 20 visits a day for $1,000, or do I want to do ten visits a day for a $1,000. Okay, I exaggerated the numbers, guys, but I’m doing that to prove a point when you can figure that out. And then now you have a goal of. I need ten clients at a thousand or $100 a visit, right? Let’s just say, now you have a goal. Look at what happens when you break it down with the numbers. Now you have a goal. And I’m saying this just in regular speak with you. I’m not going to use all the big jargon and the sound all hoity toity, because this is just you and me right now, okay? And. And if you’re scared about it, first of all, it’s okay to be scared. What matters is what you do with fear, okay? And fear comes from not knowing. It comes from thinking there’s a boogeyman in the closet. Until you put the lights on, you realize it’s a coat hanger, okay? So you need to get the education wherever you want to get it. Don’t go get it on free Facebook groups, okay, because everybody has an opinion, and they don’t all have your goals or your rent or your savings goals or anything like that. So what I say to her is, I understand that you’re scared. That tells me that you need to live in the numbers a little bit more. You need to get a little bit more convicted with the numbers that you’re going after. And once you figure out those numbers, then you figure out how you want to market it and when you want to market it differently than every other Tom, Dick, and Harry out there, now all of a sudden, you are worth even more because you just took away the measuring stick of time versus money and made it more about guilt and love. Okay? So I know that to address her specific last question here, because we went through a lot of it, and I just kind of took you through it. She said, how do I say a start at rate? You say whatever your lowest rate is based off of. So when I sold my pet sitting company in Scottsdale, Arizona, for six figures in 2016, my prices ranged between $25 to $35 for an untimed visit. That was approximately between 20 to 40 minutes. Yes. That was eight years ago. Eight years ago, I was charging. My lowest price was dollar 25. You know, my other competition, they were at 20 and 18. I always was highest. Most of my clients these days are charging anywhere between 35 to 42. And if you’re charging anything less than 25, I’m respectfully going to say you’re prostituting yourself. And that will go into my next one, too. Okay. My mentor told me that a long time ago, and it never left my head because, yeah, guess what, guys? When I first started, I, too, was not charging enough. You can’t teach what you don’t know, okay? And there’s a lot of people out there teaching what they don’t know. They’re just regurgitating. So be careful. Side note. And so what I used to say is, prices starting at 25. And so to that point, when someone says, but wait, what’s that dollar 25? I’m like, oh, well, that’s for people who want regular Monday through Friday dog walking at least four or five times a week. I can do it for $25. Otherwise, our visit price starts at 35. And then I would negotiate based off of what their situation was. And it was 35, 33, 29, and 25. I had my mathematical equation done on the $25.01. So what happens when I charge 29, 33, or 35? My profit increased because my, what I paid my sitters didn’t increase, but my profit increased, which was great, because then I had more money to put into the business. All right, now I want you to really think about, what do you need? Because that’s where it all comes from. Everyone always wants to look at the competition. They want to look at their, their area. They want to look at all this stuff. But what they don’t realize, and this is the next part of this, this discussion I want to have with you guys. I have this other new client that came to me, and God bless her, she is all that in a bag of chips. I love her. She is so fun. She has such an awesome personality. She is such a survivor. She has this amazing story that she was like, basically like, dogs in the dog park saved her. She was almost homeless, and hanging out the dog park with dogs saved her. And she just started taking care of dogs. And then, lo and behold, now she’s up to five to $6,000 a month on her own, which is exhausting for me to even think of that she’s generating that much. But she’s basically never home. She’s always doing overnight. She’s always doing visits. She’s always, always, always okay. And so she came to me because she wants a life, and she deserves a life. And so we actually had a 20 minutes conversation, and it turned into 40 minutes with a very deep, touching conversation. And I told her, listen, she doesn’t have a website yet. And I told her that, I need you to go to jumpconsulting.net forward slash marketing, and go talk to my girl Erica. And get you a website, because you can’t do anything that you’re thinking about doing unless you have a website. You need a website. You need Internet, real estate. Real estate that’s out on the Internet that makes you look like a million bucks. If you’ve heard this this before, you’ve heard me talk about Cinderella showing up to the ball, either on one hand, with her hair on top of her head, makeup dripping down her face, barefoot, sweatpants, like, hanging off her hips, you know, and just looking very disheveled, or all in her gown with both shoes and her little magic wands, and just looking gorgeous, right? Hair and makeup, all glam is done. That’s how your business is showing up online. If you have a crappy website, then you’re the first part. If you have a great website, you’re the second part. And guess what? People believe what they see online. Or if you don’t have a website, what they don’t see. Your website is a big part of your branding. It is the beginning stages of people cyber stalking you. Because if you are giving them, if they are giving you their most beloved pet and access to their home, you bet your bottom dollar they’re going to be stalking you online. And if you don’t have anything to stock, then it’s not going to be convincing. If you have crappy things to stock, like not a really good social media that lets your brand and who you are come alive, and it’s just a bunch of pet pictures, it’s not good. You’re going to be the frumpy Cinderella. And so we had this conversation, and I said, listen, I don’t want your money. I don’t. Give me your money. Don’t do anything. The very first thing, if I never talk to you ever again, I need you to get a website. Need you to get a good website. Need you go talk to my girl. And she said, okay. And then she also decided she wanted to join the mastermind. And I was like, okay, all right. And so six days later, she finally actually got into the group and she said, I’m sorry, I’ve been really busy, and I’m going to be busy the next two days. I was like, girl, I don’t think this is the right time for you to be in here, because if you don’t have the time in your life right now, then you’re not going to be successful. And unfortunately, what happens is we need to be. We need to be able to carve out time. We need to have discipline with ourselves. We need to take a deep breath and we need to take a step back. She can’t have her revenue go down any, any than what she’s at right now because of her living expenses. So I said, all right, any new client you get, you need to start getting them on the higher price. And then any existing clients, you need to start raising them as you get confident. All right? That’s how we’re going to work. Less for the same amount of money. While this is happening, you need to get a website. And when you get that website, that’s going to help you, because your clients are going to be able to book online, your clients are going to be able to learn, new clients are going to be able to learn about you without you having to talk to them. And they can sign up with you, and then you can go do the consultation or virtual, whatever you want to do, okay? But your website is like, you need a storefront. You absolutely need a storefront. And what happened was it was actually this past weekend, she was like, actually, I’m not gonna get a website. I’m gonna just try to get scheduling software, and I’m gonna carve out. I’m gonna have 3 hours a day to work on the business. I’m like, okay, how are you gonna do that? And the thing is, is that I don’t believe that she’s lying to herself, right? Or like intentionally doing it. But I know what it takes, and it’s gonna take diligent, disciplined work every single day, or at least every other day where you have time. It’s not that everything else runs your schedule. It’s you putting in the big rocks first. I’ve talked about this on the podcast. I don’t know what episode. Guys, we have over 410 episodes. Big rocks are like when you put in your priorities, your big things first, and then everything else settles around that. And so what I encourage this person to do is she, she needs a website first, because the website is going to instantly make her look like a million bucks. It’s going to make her look like the glammed up Cinderella. And guess what? People will find her online. People will pay her more. And at this point, because she is a one woman show and because she is overworked, her supply and demand, right? Her demand is very low herself. She has like no time, not even for herself, but her demand is high. Then we need to start separating our ego. And I say that lovingly. That’s not a bad thing, right? But we have to realize that we can now charge more than what we’re really comfortable charging because there’s only one of us. Now, on that same note, if you want to hire people like she does want to do in 60 days, first of all, it’s not going to happen because she needs to do the whole hiring process, right. And we need time to do that. And at this rate, where she doesn’t have a lot of time, it’s going to take a minute to get there. Unless she’s all, unless I could be completely wrong in this week, all of a sudden she has 3 hours a day open to work on the business. But as it is right now, that’s going to be a difficult goal to achieve. Now in the mastermind, we do 90 day goals. And that’s really cool because most of the time you fall on your face the first couple times. But that’s the part is if you keep practicing how to make goals, then you realize, okay, these are the goals I can make. And so it’s why I really like Vietnam. How do I say strongly suggested to her that first you get a website, then you get the scheduling system, then you got to build out the hiring process, then you hire people because you’re not going to want to hire people if you don’t have a website. And if you don’t have a website, you’re not going to be able to put your scheduling services anywhere because then you’re going to be emailing people like some random link to something floating out there and it’s not attached to your brand or your website. And that’s not good either. We need to have a home base and a foundation to build off of. And I know, I know that it feels so overwhelming and it’s like, what thing do I look at and focus at first? But I’m nothing telling you when you work with me, I’m not going to sing Kumbaya to you. I’m not going to also tell you, this is, you got to do it my way or not. I am going to lovingly and respectfully tell you this is the strategy that’s going to work. I’ve been doing this for two decades, okay? I’ve done it myself. I’ve done it for hundreds of businesses. And I can see where the strengths and the weaknesses are and what needs to be triaged and addressed first. That’s why you come to me. That’s why you, you. That, that’s why I have so many success stories. I have every single week, you guys, I have success stories of people achieving things. I talk about them all the time. On here. Okay. I have more. This podcast today is already getting too long, so I’ll save those. But, like, I want to see you succeed. And when I see you walking down a road where I twisted my ankle and busted my knee and I had to go to the hospital, and then I had to, like, rehab it, and it took a long time to recover. I don’t want you going down that road. Please. I don’t say it for myself. I do it because I believe in you. I work with people that I believe in. I work with people that I like. The people that I don’t like. I don’t work with them. I am so thankful to be at that part of my career where I get to work with the people that I love, because, let’s face it, I’m not for everyone, and you aren’t for every coach, right? There’s a lot of different coaches out there, especially these days. Oh, my lord. Just make sure that they’re worth their weight in gold. Make sure that they don’t just have, like, a fan club, but they got, like, testimonies deep of actual results because they really, really care about you guys. I’ll never forget back in Covid, like, I was on the phone with you guys crying. I’ll never forget one week of shutdowns, and then the next week two, and week three, guess what we had. Every single day, I had experts in a. In a private group where we were boosting you up. We’re saying, okay, what does this make possible? What did we. What did I do in Covid? In Covid, I sat there and poured into you, and I cried with you on the phone during COVID I said, all right, let’s get out that to do list that you say that you never have time to do, because now you do. Let’s do it. I brought in the experts to talk about all of the different cares acts and all that stuff. We brought in all kinds of experts. We planned your grand reopening, because that’s what I do. Nobody else did that. Nobody else did that. And I’m not saying that to toot my horn, but I’m saying this because, you guys, I love you, and I care about you, and I’m so excited that I get to do this every single week and talk to you. All right, so let me know what you thought of this podcast episode. I know you will. I love getting those DM’s. And please, I never say this enough, and it’s probably why we don’t have a lot of them. I would really appreciate it if you would leave us a review wherever you listen on iTunes or Spotify or Pandora or, like, wherever you listen. Can you leave us a review, please, and let other people know what you think of this? And if you’re, you know, really feeling happy, you could share this on your feed or in a group and share the minute marker or a takeaway or something that you have loved. I’ve been hearing more and more and more, and our. Our downloads have been skyrocketing lately, which is amazing. I honestly, when you dm me, I would love to know, what kind of episodes do you like the most? Do you like. This one’s now 25 minutes. This is a little bit longer one. Do you like the actionable ones? When I’m like, all right, five tips for this. Do you like it when I’m just sitting here talking to you and we’re just talking back and forth? I wish I could hug you right now. Thank you for listening. Um, please remember, seriously, when life gets you down, always keep jumping. And remember, when things aren’t going your way, remind yourself, when you say, why is this happening? It’s because you get to. All right, I’ll see you next week. Bye now.