Can you charge $10k for your service?

As a professional service provider, you might think it’s difficult to charge 10 thousand Dollars for a service you offer - it sounds big and I understand your restraints.

I want to challenge you to think again about the maximum you can possibly be charging. My single goal today is to make sure you don’t undercharge for your services and leave money on the table - and I’m here to give you practical steps to up your pricing game.

Before we begin, let’s share a gem dropped by Naval - arm yourself with specific knowledge. Specific knowledge is something that you cannot be trained for. If society can train you, it can train someone else to replace you. This is taught through apprenticeships not schools, it is often technical or creative and cannot be outsourced or automated. Now when I say specific knowledge, you might be thinking of professional companies like those who are responsible for cleaning up oil spillage in the deep ocean or those guys responsible for tracking space and detecting alien invasion. Far from it

Look at this guy for instance who made 500k from this powerpoint template sale

You'd think powerpoint presentations are so 2009 but here is a guy cashing out almost 1 million Dollars selling a template. If you think that is crazy, prepare yourself for what is coming next:

Now, lets make this make sense. Lets break down specific knowledge - graphic design is a skill that pays and pays really well. Remember our powerpoint guy? You can take a template, edit it and boom, you are a graphic designer. Tools like Canva puts the power of design in your hands for free and you can do designs which would normally set you back a few thousands just a few years ago. A lot of graphic designers have built careers with Canva as their major design tool. So using graphics design as our example, can you build specific knowledge from it? Well, yes and no. This Accenture logo cost the company a cool 100 million Dollars. Now, before you think the agency spent a month designing the prototype and running stuff through UI UX designers and pulling off complex designs, the logo itself used a popular font called Rotis Sans Serif with the following setting: extra bold. The size of the font is 75. This logo was just delivered in 2017. There is nothing mega about this logo so what would warrant Accenture to pay 100 million Dollars for it? The specific knowledge used by the brand here is the story behind the logo! I know you think that’s crazy but the story goes like this: it inspires customers to communicate with the brands focus which is progress and the future. This was well communicated by the design agency using the greater-than sign above the words.

Yes, Spotify podcasters are making $18k a month with white noise. You should totally be following Hala Channel on Youtube. Get a hint of what white noise is in our upcoming video later today. Follow us on Youtube

Now, lets make this make sense. Lets break down specific knowledge - graphic design is a skill that pays and pays really well. Remember our powerpoint guy? You can take a template, edit it and boom, you are a graphic designer. Tools like Canva puts the power of design in your hands for free and you can do designs which would normally set you back a few thousands just a few years ago. A lot of graphic designers have built careers with Canva as their major design tool.

So using graphics design as our example, can you build specific knowledge from it? Well, yes and no.

Enter Accenture.

This Accenture logo cost the company a cool 100 million Dollars. Now, before you think the design agency spent a month on the prototype and running stuff through UI/UX designers and pulling off complex designs, the logo itself used a popular font called Rotis Sans Serif with the following setting: extra bold and a font size of 75. This logo was delivered just recently in 2017. There is nothing mega about this logo so what would warrant Accenture to pay 100 million Dollars for it? The specific knowledge used by the brand here is the story behind the logo! I know you think that’s crazy but the story goes like this: it inspires customers to communicate with the brands focus which is progress and the future. This was well communicated by the design agency using the greater-than sign above the words.

Now, over to you, how are you using specific knowledge to enhance your skill?

The people who charge a lot offer more than just basic service. They offer a story behind every concept but that’s a topic for another day.

1. Social Proof:

People who pay that much need to see that you are thought leader in your space. How do you do this? By being very visible. Lend your voice to the industry, be vocal about the upcoming trends. Blog a lot to show your expertise. If you have a lot of testimonials, share them all over the place. Don’t zip them up in a folder. Social proof is the ultimate persuader. If you have a website, ensure your proof is displayed on every page. Do you have endorsements from experts or other notable people in the industry? Share them. Were you mentioned in a publication by a leading newspaper or blog? Share. Social proof is the number one way you can swap public opinion and demonstrate your expertise

2. Money back guarantee or unlimited revisions?

Doing creative work often means people will criticise your works and reject most of it most of the time. People will have confidence in you and pay top dollar if you openly agree that we are all a work in progress and often, the need for adjustments, revisions or even refunds will come up. The standard money back guarantee is usually 7 days. These guys offer 30 days money back guarantee. Whether Money back guarantee or you are promising customers revisions, keep your customers confident by utilising any of these options.

3. Be bold about your offer:

All birds is a company that makes sneakers. They have a bold claim - the most comfortable shoes in the world! Thats a pretty bold claim so they backed it up with up to 30 days money back guarantee. They are so confident in their sneakers that they even have a service called Afterpay which allows you buy shoes on credit and pay them later - they believe so much in their shoes that they know you won’t return them once you test them on.

4. People want to speak with important people:

There’s a reason banks have a lot of Vice Presidents. Those who have a lot of money to save usually don’t deal with the cashiers at the counter. They want to feel important so they ask for a VP or somebody with a position and a closed office to deal with. If you run an agency, get a lot of VPs also. If you run a solo business, reword your website to allow people connect with the founder - not just contact us. Yes, its a one man business but your official emails should have all the departments from sales at your domain name to support to marketing to partnerships. That way, the perception of people is that the company is large with different units handling different requests. Then, offer a chance to connect one on one with your CEO - which, you guessed right is you! People say you don’t judge a book by it’s cover, hate to break it to you but people do judge books by their covers. If you are doing business with someone who charged you a hundred, it’s totally different if you are about doing business with someone charging you 20k or above. You’ll think twice before releasing the money. I’m speaking in Dollars by the way. So create the perception of a large agency, then on social media, except you are into NFTs, use your actual picture and look the role.

These are just basics you can start implementing today. I’ll be happy to walk you through every stage of your transformation through experience and knowledge others have shared.

Thank you for joining me today.

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