She Raised Her Fees and Business Improved: Advice from Rachel Michaelov
The Smart Hustle Growth Conference happened on October 25th in Times Square NYC. It was a full day of networking, inspirational speakers, and business learning. Waking the crowd up from their post-lunch drowsiness was Rachel Michaelov, Founder & CEO of Empire Tax Professionals. Rachel was easy to listen to from the moment she started speaking — it was clear she was passionate about her topic and speaking from an authentic place. While she was definitely prepared for her talk, you could tell she was speaking from the heart.
#Goals
You don’t need to be a woman to find Rachel inspiring, though she does encompass #girlboss goals pretty well. She’s not only the Founder & CEO of Empire Tax Professionals {a million dollar company}, she’s also a wife and mother of four boys. Rachel spoke authentically to the audience, and her passion for her business, goals, and client satisfaction was hard to not be inspired by. She also shared details from her early life, and explained how she went into her career to help people; as many of us know from experience, dealing with personal and professional taxes is complicated and can lead to expensive mistakes if not handled properly.
Setting Fees Properly
If you’ve ever worked in customer service to any capacity, you’ve probably had to have to the awkward conversation of telling a customer that the price of a product or service has increased. And if you own a business and have decided to change the pricing, this change might have cost you a lot of sleepless nights. One of the hardest things to learn in life is our value — both personally and professionally. On the professional level, our value can be seen in how we price our services, skills, and products. It’s never easy to ask for more money. FIrst because it causes discomfort, and second because there is a fear that our new fee point won’t be seen as reasonable.
Rachel tackled this topic head-on, offering her first-hand experience in how she hit new revenue goals once she made the hard choice of increasing her fees.
Take It Step By Step
Rachel worked with a business coach to help her stay the course to hit goals. She emphasized how a business coach is important because it allows you to discover things about yourself and your business that you otherwise would not have learned. They can help with accountability, support, and sometimes be the kick in the butt that you need. Rachel and her coach worked to hit her business goals, one of them being to reach a certain revenue number. In order to do this, she needed to increase her pricing.
Rachel implemented her new pricing for all new clients, and grandfathered in a group of her clients to their current pricing. Over time, the goal was to move all clients to this new pricing, with the awareness that there would be some churn along the way.
Along with bringing in more revenue, increasing your fees allows you to hire quality workers. With larger budgets come better resources which will help your business thrive. The only way to really grow and continue to hit revenue goals is to find the clients with the budget you want to work with. It’s not an easy change — no one ever wants to lose business or have to turn it away. But, it does help make space for the clients that will aid in your growth.
These aren’t easy topics to talk about, but Rachel kept the audience interested the entire time with her transparency and deep dive into her journey. It’s a story more entrepreneurs need to hear. Check out next year’s Smart Hustle Growth Conference to hear these stories first-hand.