The top three major reasons for business failure are undercapitalization, undercapitalization, and undercapitalization.
Starting a business and growing a business takes much more money, resources, and time that we are expecting in our initial planning. For women, the form this usually takes is undervaluing their time and/or services by raising too little capital or charging too little. When I worked for the U.S. Small Business Administration with women entrepreneurs, most of the women under charged by at least 100% of what it was actually costing them to offer their service. They didn’t believe that they could ask for that much.
In the holistic management training which is usually taught to farmers and ranchers though is applicable to everyone, they give a great example of this. Most farmers decide to grow tomatoes because “all farmers grow tomatoes” and then price them around what everyone else is pricing them. This is backwards. You figure out what it will cost you to grow and market your tomatoes including a reasonable overhead. Then you look at whether the market will pay that price for those tomatoes. If not, you don’t grow tomatoes. Period! Otherwise you will always be playing catch up.
To under charge will obviously not work with the least result being burnout and the greatest result will be failure of the business.
In the example above, the farmer could not imagine his market garden without tomatoes so had to go back and rethink his whole business strategy. Better to change where you are going than bleed to death over losing products. Better to be energetically aligned with your pricing from the beginning.
I had one client who found that her products could not make any real money at the price she was offering for them. She was really frozen on this pricing issue so I suggested that she dowse for “the best price for all concerned”. The dowsed price was actually a little higher than my suggested price which totally unsettled her. I suggest that she sleep on it and make a decision the next day. When we talked again, she had talked to her husband and a few friends and realized that the dowsed price made a lot more sense. It did however mean that she had to redo her marketing plan.
When your raise your prices to be sustainable, take ownership and charge what you need to charge.
If you have any complainers, say something like “I understand that these products or this service is not for everyone.” with confidence. Ensuring that your pricing correctly reflects the energy of your endeavors and business is just another aspect of consistent energy flows which lead to success.
Holistic Management: A New Framework for Decision Making by Alan Savory 1999 is a little dense.
Holistic Management Third Edition: A Common Sense Revolution to Restore Our Environment by Allan Savory is more updated
Try the website for trainings Holistic Management International