55. Stop raising your rates! Why higher rates could be killing your business growth

In this solo episode of Soulpreneur Scaling Stories, I’m breaking down why the common advice to simply “raise your rates” may be the worst move for service providers looking to scale sustainably. 

I share my own experiences and those of my clients as we unpack the chaos that often comes with hourly retainer packages, client overreach, and blurred boundaries. 

Discover why increasing your rates without restructuring your business can leave you overworked and burned out, and learn the smarter, simpler path to higher income with less stress.

Whether you're a virtual assistant, OBM, or service provider tired of working in a chaotic, capped-income structure, this episode will guide you on how to shift to a business model that allows you to earn more while working less.

Key Points Covered:
✨ The “rate raise trap” and why it leads to more pressure without the payoff
✨ Real stories of chaos from hourly and retainer-based businesses
✨ Why a core offer with a clear framework is the most sustainable way to grow
✨ How having a signature offer transforms you into a recognized expert, attracts premium clients, and builds boundaries that protect your time and energy

👇🏽 If you're ready to learn more about creating your own core offer, DM me "FRAMEWORK" on Instagram!

Thank you for being a part of the Soulpreneur Scaling Stories community!

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🎧 Podcast produced and edited with love by @FerAssists 🩵

Transcript

[00:00:00] Andrea Elibero: Hello, and welcome back to solopreneur scaling stories. Today. I'm going to be talking about something very interesting. And this is the rate raise trap. And why are raising your rates is not the way to grow as a service provider may sound counter intuitive, but stick with me on this one. So. Today, we're going to talk about the easiest, most sustainable way to earn more in half the time, which is not increasing your rates, how this allows you to attract high value clients and the secret to reclaiming your time in your service pro business.

[00:00:33] I have been chatting with a bunch of you guys lately, and I'm consistently hearing the same story from a lot of you. And that overall your business as a VA and OBM whatever type of surface. Prior to you are, is feeling very chaotic. And growing it and its current structure is literally just a scaling of that same chaos. So things like that, you're telling me that your clients and your personal boundaries, they don't agree. 

[00:00:57] You are not on the same page, your boundaries, their [00:01:00] boundaries, opposites. They often expect you to be available all the time. Because something might come up, they might have a question and they need an answer. There's a fire that needs to be put out, even though you're only being paid for part-time support, you're getting the slack notifications all of the time. 

[00:01:16] And when you're working like this, when there's all these interruptions and you're moving in and out of focus, You actually can't focus on anything and it takes you so much longer to get your work done. And even when you try to do things like enforce boundaries, You cave, right? Because let's be real. Okay, because you don't want to disappoint them. 

[00:01:34] They were clients they're paying you. You want to do a good job. The other things that you're telling me is that you are doing so many random tasks. You're undercharging, you're overworking. And these hourly retainer packages and at the same time, You realize that in this structure, your income is actually naturally capped. 

[00:01:52] There's only so much you can work. And there's only so much that you can earn this. There's only so much you can actually charge per hour, right? [00:02:00] You can't charge like $150 an hour. To work as a VA. Let's not, it's not a thing that's available. And then the other things are that maybe are you from feeling taken advantage of by your clients asking you to do last minute things constantly. 

[00:02:12] They're not getting back to you, the things that you need from them in order to do your work, they're asking you to do things outside of your scope, and maybe you're doing things that you don't even like doing. Maybe sometimes I don't even pay you on time. The communication's confusing. There's disorganization. 

[00:02:28] Your tasks are being delegated and all sorts of random places, even though you try to create the system. He asked me how I know I have been, I have experienced all of these things at one time or another in my own service provider business. And so here's the thing, right? So you're like, okay, I'm doing all of this. 

[00:02:44] Let me raise my rates. I know I'm undercharging. And what I've been told by some of you guys, clients, people I've been chatting with online is that, oh, you're like, well, crap. Now I'm charging this much. Now I need to do even more. I need to deliver even more. What I'm doing now is not good [00:03:00] enough. So now you're putting so much extra pressure on yourself. 

[00:03:03] So now you're stressed more pressure. You're earning a bit more, but what is it costing you? Right. So, so does this resonate with you? I feel like you're probably listening to this meeting. Oh yeah. That's kind of me, right. So let's talk about why this is happening. That's because you're getting crappy advice. So the, I hear all the time ago. I want to grow my business. 

[00:03:23] Okay. We'll charge more money. Okay. That works. But to a point. So I'm going to give you myself as an example.

[00:03:31] I did this right. So I started as a virtual assistant. Charging $37 an hour. And then I became certified online business manager, monthly retainer packages, and both of them charging $90 an hour. 

[00:03:43] That's a huge hourly increase. Right. And that should, you would expect my M could come to grow the same amount, right? So did it, did it grow the same amount sorta? So if we break it down as a VA, at one point I had like 14 clients. I know. [00:04:00] And I had a couple of subcontractors helping me out and they're doing the things I'm overseeing the whole situation. 

[00:04:07] That's the different story was not my cup of tea. Not simple at all. Um, and as an OEM. I have, it's only possible to have three clients maybe for all that stretching at max, because the work is just more detailed. You have more responsibility. You're overseeing the teams you're putting in systems. There's launching going on. 

[00:04:27] You're making sure everything's happening. It's not just, it's not the same type of work, so you can not have nearly as many clients, you're really much more involved in their business. And because of the way the work is. It's a lot more difficult to have help on your team to do it. Cause you're the one who's had a personally involved in most of this. So it's something that's not easily to outsource or to get help in for yourself. 

[00:04:51] So basically either wri your hours are kept, your hours are just kept when you have monthly retainer packages. And OBM work is more [00:05:00] stressful. Period. So ultimately.

[00:05:04] Because I could didn't have the help. I couldn't take on as many clients, even though I'm earning more per hour, my income grew, but not to the, it didn't match the effort that I was putting in. 

[00:05:14] If that makes sense. In terms of working as a VA versus working as an OBM on the VA side, when you have so many clients, I was doing things that didn't like me up, things that were not challenging to me. I was managing people. A lot of things were, you know, it was very chaotic. There was so much going on. 

[00:05:29] So that was not an either and either ones. And so I ended in the second part of. The OBM,

[00:05:37] And the end that caused me to be burnt out for like almost an entire year. And this is not just my story. I hear this so often. So maybe raising your rates is not the answer. That doesn't solve the problem. If your business structure is hourly, monthly retainers, if it's just chaotic raising your rates is not going to help you to magically just have this [00:06:00] simple business that you love doing. That energizes you, you. So if that's not the answer, what is, what is the answer? I'm going to tell you. Hands down the easiest and most sustainable way to grow your business, that allows you to double your income while working half the time is through having a core offer with a clear framework. That has a system. 

[00:06:22] And I'm going to tell you why. First of all a core offer with a clear framework allows you to have a process where you can deliver results consistently more efficiently, and at a higher level, allowing you to serve your clients at this high level charging, amazing prices. Not horribly. Wow.

[00:06:45] It allows you to do this. Without working. More and allows you to do this easily. And it allows you to even train team members to help you with parts of this. 

[00:06:57] If that's what you want, I'm going to give you an example. [00:07:00] Let's take my client F she was a general VA charging, like 20 bucks an hour. Now she is, we created her core offer together as a podcast manager for a specialized type of client. So this core offer allows her to easily do her client work in two days per week. You heard me two days and that's it. 

[00:07:21] No other days for client work. And with only four clients in this one offer, that means that her income is easily or 5k months. With only four clients working two days a week. On client work. Then when we add in internal offer, which is something that I also teach in my framework, plus. The other offers that kind of fill out her offer suite. Um, which really are essentially. Uh, pieces of this core offer the income potential is huge now, right? 

[00:07:50] Because she has. Offers that don't take up so much of her time that she gets to structure. That really aligned with her life and what [00:08:00] she wants to do. Plus right now she's working on putting systems in place. She's working on the SLPs and the documentation. Because her plans are within the next few months to bring on a team member, to help with parts of this, like the editing and the show notes writing, which are very easily trainable. 

[00:08:14] So that way her time is freed up even more to focus on her favorite thing, which is strategy. So now she gets to serve more clients. Without working more and do it so simply.

[00:08:26] So the second reason for having a core offer and why this is so simple is not when you have a proprietary framework, that's your own when you say, oh, this is my framework. 

[00:08:36] You are automatically transformed from just another service provider into a recognized expert. And this justifies your premium pricing and it naturally differentiates you in the market and this calls in premium clients. So right now, if I asked you who comes to mind, when I say things like, oh, launching or content repurposing, or email funnels or YouTube, I bet [00:09:00] you that you thought of specific people. What if that was a you, what has the person that somebody thinks of is you imagine the day when you are scrolling and you see a post online of somebody looking for something specific, like a dumps auto specialist or whatever in their field in particular, And you see that it's your name being commented by people that you don't even know? Because you're known as a D go-to person for this thing. How cool is that I have a hundred percent recommend to people that I have not personally worked with because their name. Is in my head cause they're the go-to person, right. 

[00:09:35] They're known as a thing.

[00:09:37] And then third.

[00:09:39] When your core offer aligns with your strengths and your passions. Explaining your value and creating content becomes effortless. Making both marketing and sales feel authentic and easy. So I'll tell you a story to illustrate this one as well. I was on a call with a potential coaching client earlier this week. 

[00:09:58] And when she asked me why I do what I [00:10:00] do. And why am I focuses on creating these offer flows as the answer? I couldn't stop talking. I couldn't shut up about it. I could talk forever about this with so much passion because of how much I believe in my soul that your offers are the key to everything. And how much, both my life and my clients' lives completely change. 

[00:10:18] How much easier everything became, how it gave them so much more competence. You know, I can go on and on forever because of this. So what if on your next discovery call, you absolutely lit up when talking about what you do and how you help people. Then it's a no brainer. People want to hire you. Right. 

[00:10:34] They feel that energy and like, oh yes, please sign me up for that. And then finally, when you have a signature offer with a clear framework and clear deliverables, you automatically have built in boundaries. So it's really cool because now you're not the bad guy anymore. You can say goodbye to those last minute request. 

[00:10:52] The scope creep that never Enix slack matches. Messages nonstop fires that have to be put out and the being undervalued and overworked. Now you're in [00:11:00] charge. Now you have set out from the beginning. This is my process. This is how it works. And if it doesn't happen, then. You don't get, you know, we don't get to do this thing. Oh my God. 

[00:11:09] How cool is that right? To automatically be in charge of your business lay pot. So if you take my client L she went from general VA with nine clients charging $25 an hour to a tech VA. And a launch strategist. Who now works at 20 hours a week with a couple of core clients who she now can charge double for. 

[00:11:30] Plus her launch projects. Her income is easily doubled. This is the most she's ever earned. Her days are peaceful. Her there's no cop and. There is there's no limit. So, can you see how having a core offer with a clear framework calls in these premium clients that then allows your business to feel so spacious and fun and enjoyable and easy. 

[00:11:52] Can you see having this core offer focused on your strength? And what you love to do is a simple and fun way to ultimately earn [00:12:00] way more while working half as much as you do now in this chaotic business that you have. And can you see yourself applying? Some of what you've learned here, what we've just been chatting about to grow your business. In a way that feels really peaceful and really at ease. So, yes, I'm so curious what your biggest takeaway from what I've been chatting about with you here is, and so you can find my Instagram in the show notes, you can find it below and please let me know. Um, what you've learned in this episode, and if this is something that you are interested in working on. I have things I have created some things. I am not going to share the details on here because actually something that I am talking about on the back end only. 

[00:12:48] So if you are curious and you want to know, okay, what's this offer having brand new beta offer. That I am very close to selling out of. And if you want to know [00:13:00] more, let's chat on Instagram, a soulful business. Coach Andrea and just T M me offer flow and we can chat about it, but all in all, I really also want to know what your takeaways are. 

[00:13:12] So please, please, it is completely possible for you to have a business that is peaceful, where you feel at ease, where you're making money and when you're doing things that you love. So with that, I leave you for today and I will see you on the next one.