Issue 19: Do the Thing, Then Charge for It

Last week, we discussed your brand promise. Your brand promise will dictate your process and your price. I’ve been saying:

Get your mind right.

Get your price right.

Get your process right.

But getting the process right can help you get your mind right and get your price right. The price and process must be free of emotion. When you get your mind right, you realize the process is logical and practical, but it still has to feel good to the client.

Let me explain.

Mental Health System

How many times have you, or your clients, bought something because you got swept up in the experience?

Maybe they offered you a beverage when you walked in the door. It could have been a greeting from a beautiful woman. There’s also that email that sounded like it was written to you personally, even though it was autogenerated.

Whatever hooked you, drew you in, kept your interest, and eventually got you to pay, it was a logical process that played on your emotions.

Think about your brand promise from last week. If you completed that exercise, this next part will be easier. Your brand promise says a lot about you.

Take Supercuts, for example. They call it Supercuts, not because you’re going to receive a super good cut, but because their cuts are super fast. You are going to get in and out.

If you walk in and 30 minutes later you walk out, they delivered on their brand promise. They don’t say it’s super service or super amenities. To get you out fast, they can’t focus on extras. They have to focus on one main thought:

Get him back out that door so he can get back to his life.

You want your clients to see your brand promise in their experience so they feel a certain way and tell others about that feeling. So the question you need to ask yourself is:

How do you want them to feel at the end of your experience?

You promised them a luxury haircut, the most precise haircut, or maybe a comfortable haircut. What haircut are you promising them?

When you go to Supercuts, you leave there saying, “Wow, that was the fastest haircut I’ve ever received.”

Like Supercuts, you need to make sure your client can say, “Wow, that was ______.” (Fill in the blank with your brand promise feeling.)

Money System

What’s the value of that wow? That's how you justify your price. The price makes sense because it wowed your client.

If you haven’t downloaded the pricing calculator to help you add up the cost of doing business, you may not know. Download it now if you want to get your price right.

However, you may already be a pro at calculating your numbers, but still have fear around raising your price. Once you calculate the value of that wow, you’ll better understand WHY the price is the price. When it makes better sense to you, it will be easier to deliver.

I worked with a barber who took four months just to get his mind right around his price. He actually had a great process, but he wasn’t clear on his “wow factor.”

After he asked a few of his clients why they come to him, he felt more and more confident about the feeling his brand promise was producing.

I suggested this same exercise to you in an earlier issue. Did you ask your clients why they come to you? What did they say?

When you get the focus off of the money they spend and put it on the experience they have, the money isn’t the problem. This takes us back to what I mentioned earlier. Remember that thing you spent money on that you couldn’t explain? Somehow, the process made you feel like it was worth it.

When your wife tells you she bought a $1,000 purse, you might think she's insane.

But if you walk into the store with your wife and the salesperson takes your coat and hangs it up, they are subconsciously telling you they are not in a rush. They are focused on you. Letting you know you can get comfortable because you’ll be here for a while.

Then they offer you a drink. And when they hand it to you, they smile and say, “I prepared this for you exactly the way you requested it, with just a little bit of lemon.”

Now you feel taken care of, listened to, and a bit spoiled. You feel like you’re at a friend’s place, but it’s the best friend you’ve ever had.

You see the smile on your wife’s face as they tell her how beautiful she looks today. Then they remind her how amazing her husband is for coming with her because most husbands don’t come in. How wonderful he must be and how lucky she is.

Even though you know it’s all part of the sale, when she narrows it down and she doesn’t pick the $1,750 bag, she chooses the $3,000 one because it was really her favorite. She reminds you that her friend already has that other one and she can’t carry the same bag her friend has; she has to get the bigger one.

Somehow, with your heart beating fast, you get that credit card out and pay for it, calculating the distance between Christmas and her birthday and neither date is close enough to count this as a present.

But the process doesn’t end there.

They tell you to go back and have a seat, and they’ll bring you another drink. They need to prepare your bag.

Surely, you’re not going to get the one from the showroom that everyone has touched. They have to get a fresh one for your wife.

They disappear to the private, employee-only space. Then they bring back a bag, but all you see is a little cloth pouch. That's because her bag is inside.

They open the drawstring and show her. She nods her head. You see that big, beautiful smile again, and you feel like “The Man.” Nobody can make her smile the way you do.

Not too far away, still in sight, they start preparing the bag. Just as you start having buyer’s remorse and they know it, they up the fanfare. Their beautiful wrapping process is going to take all those emotions away.

They let you see them dust off the bag with a feather duster, open a box, and place the bag inside. Then they open another box and place that box inside. Then they put a bow on that box and put it inside a sturdy, bright-colored bag with a simple logo and a satin strap.

Your wife’s $3,000 purse is inside of about $300 worth of wrapping paper and boxes.

And when you walk out that door and through that mall, everyone knows where you’ve been and they know who you are.

A man who spoils his wife.

That husband that little girls wish for.

And you stick your chest out and forget that you paid $3,000 for that bag. Because you didn’t. You paid $3,000 for that feeling, you got it, and your wife got a purse to go along with it.

While you are saying, “Wow, I feel like the best husband in the world.” Your wife is saying, "Wow, my husband spoiled me."

However brief that feeling is, before she asks you to take out the garbage and clean the garage, you felt connected.

You think about the favors you’re going to ask for and the high heels you’re going to buy to go with her bag, imagining her with the purse and heels on and nothing else.

Hoping it happens by the time you get back from taking the garbage out.

Okay, back to your brand promise feeling...

I’m painting a picture. Whether you’ve experienced this or not, you know how it feels to feel like you “did the thing.”

When your clients get what they came for, you feel like you did the thing. That "thing" should help you feel confident about your price. That thing is your brand promise feeling. The process overrides the price.

When your clients feel like you did the thing, they feel more comfortable with your price.

So why do you charge what you charge?

What does it cost for you to do the thing? That's what gets factored into your price.

But more importantly, like I said in issue 13, what price do you pay when you don’t do your thing because you're afraid to charge for it?

Business System

You don’t have to be ashamed if you don’t know how to calculate price. There was no business math class in my barber school, and I’ll bet there wasn’t one in yours either.

That’s why I often do clarity conversations with barbers to help them map out a clear pricing structure. Not just for their haircuts, but for all their services.

I go through their brand promise and feeling, and then we get clarity around their process so they feel confident about their pricing.

Pricing isn’t emotional, but money is.

If you need to work through your money emotions in a clarity session with me, book time on my schedule.

Some of this you may already know, like what it actually costs you to run your business and live your life. However, some barbers only look at what other barbers are charging to determine their price.

I understand why.

It feels easier to look around the shop or check somebody’s booking site and say, “Well, they charge this, so I should charge that too.”

But that is not pricing.

That is guessing.

Your price has to account for your business and your life. That means your rent, products, tools, software, licenses, education, taxes, insurance, take-home income, investing, and anything else it actually takes for you to stay in business and stay sane.

I ran the calculations in issue 14 if you need a breakdown. I used 200 cuts in the example, but your number might be different. When you see how I broke it down into a logical formula, you will be able to replace the example numbers with your real numbers.

From the Chair

This week, use your downtime to check out the resources and past issues you may have missed.

If you want the pricing formula, revisit Issue 14: Pricing Clarity for Barbers Who Are Ready to Stop Guessing, or share it with a barber you respect.

And if you are still comparing yourself to other barbers, revisit one of my favorite issues, Issue 9: Judging How Far You’ve Come.

One last resource you may want to consider has all the links you’ll need. Whether you’re thinking about scheduling a session with me, sending me your biggest questions, or want a meditation exercise to help you get into Calm Optimal Brain State about your pricing, go here.

The point of this journal and these resources is to remind you that you are not alone.

Keep reading the journal and remember to share it.

Love you muchly!

See you sooner.

Kiné

P.S. Send this issue to a barber you respect who is considering raising prices but isn’t sure how. Tell them to subscribe so they can follow the next six weeks.