Hi lovely,

Let's talk about pricing, because I think it's one of the most uncomfortable things we do as therapists. Not just working out the number, but actually asking for it. Especially when the client sitting in front of you feels more like a friend than a client, someone you've genuinely enjoyed spending time with, and it suddenly feels hard to charge them what you should be charging.

When I trained at college, I was told to look at the salons in my area and price myself somewhere in the middle. Not too high, not too low. And on paper that sounds sensible.

But the trouble is, everybody has different overheads, different costs, different things they personally need to earn. And the business also has to make a profit.

That's exactly how I priced when I was doing mobile beauty. I based it on the treatment hour, roughly in line with what others nearby were charging. What I wasn't accounting for was everything else that hour actually cost me.

When I made the move to open The Hideaway, I stopped looking at the treatment hour and started asking a different question: which treatments were actually serving my worth? Not just my time, but my skill, my experience, and what I was bringing to that treatment.

Then I layered in three more questions:

From there, I worked backwards. I factored in the real costs, not just products and overhead, but that hands-off work too, and figured out what my actual profit needed to look like. That's how I landed on what to charge per hour, rather than copying what everyone else nearby was charging or guessing at a number that felt “fair.”

I won't pretend I wasn't nervous. Raising your prices, especially by a noticeable amount, feels like a risk. I fully expected to lose a few clients over it.

My diary is full, and most importantly, full of repeat clients who are willing to make me part of their monthly budget. That's a completely different feeling to constantly chasing new faces through the door.

This is Confidence in action, really, the same C I talked about in my very first newsletter. Believing in your own expertise enough to actually charge for it properly, not just recommend the treatment, but stand behind what it's worth.

Because here's what I've come to believe: when you undercharge, you attract clients who don't necessarily value your time and expertise. Charge properly, and you naturally attract clients who do.

There's a psychology to pricing that we don't talk about enough, too. If something is cheap, people sometimes wonder whether it's actually any good. Charge a premium price, and clients naturally assume you must be good at what you do.

Because The Hideaway was also a completely different offering to my mobile business, I didn't ease into new prices gradually. I announced them from the very start, tied to the new treatments and the new experience I was creating.

If you're not launching something new alongside it, you don't have to do it all in one go. You could start with new clients only, at the new price, while keeping your existing regulars at their current rate for a set period before increasing theirs too. Or you could raise prices gradually over a few months, in smaller increments, rather than one big jump.

There's no one right way to do it. What matters is that you actually do it, rather than staying stuck at a price that no longer reflects what you and your time are worth.

If you're starting out, or thinking about a reset, ask yourself the same questions I did:

Then work backwards. Add up your real costs, including the invisible ones. That's how you find your number, not by looking sideways at what everyone else charges.

Pricing is one of those things that feels so uncomfortable to talk about openly, even therapist to therapist. But I think the more we talk about it honestly, the more we help each other stop undervaluing what we do.

And if you're worried that charging properly will change things with a client who feels like a friend, in my experience it doesn't. If anything, it shows them you take your own work seriously, and that's something worth respecting, not resenting.

So if this newsletter does one thing, I hope it's giving you permission to actually sit down and do the maths, rather than guessing.