Image of the Acupuncture Marketing School podcast on an iPhone with the text, How do you know when to raise your rates at your acupuncture practice?

How do you know whether you should raise your rates?

Today I’m answering a listener question: “I raised my rates by $10 recently. I now charge $100 per treatment. How do I know I made the right choice?”

This episode covers four things to consider to help you make this decision.

Honestly, if you’re already asking yourself this question, it’s probably time to raise your rates!

And if you’re worried about potentially losing people when you raise your rates, don’t worry, we talk about that, too. It probably won’t be nearly as many people as you’re imagining!

Raising your rates has all kinds of benefits – listen in!

🎙️Episode #32: Is It Time to Raise Your Rates?

Show Notes:

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Transcript:

Hi there, my friend, welcome. Today we’re talking about whether it’s time to raise your rates, and spoiler alert, if you’re already asking yourself this question, the answer is probably YES.

Before we dive in, I want to let you know that my Done-for-You Email Templates for Acupuncturists Bundle is on sale this week for $30 off. I launched this last year and it’s been helping reduce the workload of so many acupuncturists since it’s release. Basically, you get to steal the emails that I send to my own patients. I recommend sending at least two emails a month to your email subscribers, in order to stay top of mind. Now, don’t panic, this is NOT too much, and you’re not going to scare your email subscribers away with two emails a month.

But a once-a-month email newsletter is really not often enough to stay top of mind with your people. And most acupuncturists I know aren’t even emailing once a month, even though they say they have a monthly newsletter. One email a month makes it easy for people to forget their good intention to schedule an appointment with you.

But I also know that writing two emails a month can feel daunting or just not doable. It takes time, and what are you supposed to write about? That’s why I’m sharing my best emails with you. A Year of Email Templates for Acupuncturists. It’s 26 emails that you can literally copy, paste, edit to match your own office, and hit send. Or, if you’re feeling fancy, you can schedule them inside your email provider, like Mailchimp, Constant Contact or ConvertKit, for example, and have them auto-publish in the future. That’s hands-off marketing at it’s best.

This week only, these email templates are $30 off. Again, that’s $87 for 26 emails, enough for a whole year with a few extras. The topics focus on pain, digestion, and anxiety, so if those are patients that you enjoy seeing, these area a great fit for you and your practice. I’ll put the link in the show notes. Use the discount code EMAILMAGIC to get $30 off before it expires next Tuesday, Feb. 8th. Let me help you with your email marketing and make it super easy for you. Of course, if you have questions about the templates, you’re more than welcome to email me at michelle@michellegrasek.com.

I released an audience survey about a month ago and one of the responses to a survey question was a question about feeling confident raising your rates. I knew right away this was an important question to answer for everyone. If one person is wondering, I know there’s a dozen more people in the background who have the same question but didn’t raise their hand. So let’s talk about this.

There’s still time to participate in the survey, by the way. It’s still live. It’s your opportunity to tell me what kind of help you need the most in building your practice this year. I’d appreciate it so much if you took three minutes to fill it out. Seriously it’s only three minutes. And it’s totally anonymous. I’ll put the link in the show notes for you.

Basically, I have some space in my calendar this year for new projects, and I really want to know, what kind of classes, coaching or even just general topics do you want to learn about this year, or need help with, to really move forward and be successful in 2022 – whatever successful means for you.

Okay, let’s get into the details, because I love this question that the person submitted. And as I said, responses are anonymous so I don’t know who submitted this, but if you’re listening, I just want to say thank you so much for taking the time to complete the survey, and for submitting this question.

The specific question was, “I recently raised my rates $10 and now I’m charging $100 a treatment.” And basically they’re struggling with this change and making it permanent. “How do I know if I made the right decision?”

Again, I want to emphasize that if you’re already asking yourself this and wondering if it’s the right thing to do, it probably means it’s time.

So, to the person who submitted this question – how do I know if I made the right decision? For all the reasons we’re going to cover today, I’m sure you did the right thing. I’m also sure that you chose $10 for a reason, and that you gave this a lot of thought and consideration already. I’m also willing to bet that the change was just fine with most of your patients. And if you lost a few in the rate change, that it okay. I bet you didn’t lose nearly as many patients as you anticipated.

I find that most acupuncturists very rarely raise their rates. We’ll wait six, seven years before finally feeling pushed to raise our rates, and then when we do, it’s still not really enough considering the amount of years that have passed.

There are a couple of things to think about or ask yourself if you’re debating this question.

Inflation goes up every single year, typically 2-3%, and most of us are not raising rates to match that number. And I think this is normal. I don’t know any acupuncturist or any wellness practitioner who raises their rates every single year. You don’t have to do it every year.

But if it has been three years and you haven’t changed your rates, I think it’s time.

If this scares you, start with $5. And to ease your way into the transition, a really nice way to do this is to let your patients know a month or two in advance that this change is coming. Put a sign at your checkout counter. Send a couple email newsletters – make the announcement and then remind people.  

And I want to add here so I don’t forget to mention it, but you don’t have to tell people why your rates are going up. You don’t have to justify this decision to anyone. If it makes you feel better, you can, but honestly, it is not necessary. You’re the boss. You can send an email that’s as simple as, thank you for being a loyal customer and supporting our business. We’re raising our rates on March 15th and this is going to be the new cost. If you have questions, let us know, we’re here to support you. But you don’t need to get into the nitty gritty of your choice.

Okay, so just do your best to let people know, we’ll say, six weeks in advance. Four weeks, eight weeks, you get to decide, but six weeks is a nice sweet spot. And then you get feel good because you’re confident it’s not a surprise for your patients.

Some people will take the opportunity to get on your schedule while your rates are lower, which is a always good, adding more people to your schedule.

I think that you’ll find you get very little pushback, because patients know that inflation is happening. Many people work in jobs where their pay does go up pretty regularly to match inflation. So it’s not going to be a huge surprise to them if you want to raise your rates for that reason. People are realistic and they understand that we live in a world where it happens.

The second thing to think about is that the cost of doing business in a pandemic has definitely increased. In my clinic in 2020, 2021, I spent a lot more money on overhead than I normally would have, because so many things changed with the pandemic.

That was obviously unexpected to begin with, but even now I’m still purchasing things for my office that I wouldn’t have in the past. Masks are the first thing that come to mind, and sanitizing wipes and spray.

I don’t know what the rules are where you live, but here in New York as a healthcare provider, patients are required to wear a mask for office, but if they show up without one, I have to provide one. So in addition to buying masks for myself, I have to keep some in stock for the people who show up without one, whether they forget it in their car or drop it outside in the snow, whatever.

So I’m constantly buying more masks to give to people. Okay. And for many people, many of my marketing clients I’ve been speaking to have said that their rent has gone up. This is true for me as well.

At the start of the pandemic, I had been in business almost one year in this new location. When lockdown happened in 2020, I was initially renting from a massage therapist. We’re in a space that includes four treatment rooms and a reception area. And there was a little extra space that I have since made into a laundry room.

But at the time I was renting just the one room. During the lockdown, the massage therapist decided she’d like to move her office into the mother-in-law suite in her house, and practice there. She asked if I wanted to take over the lease for the whole office. Pre-pandemic, we had talked about doing this in the distant future. But she asked, do you want to take over the office now I’ll practice out of my house.

I really didn’t want to lose space. It’s a great little space with great parking and a good price. With so much uncertainty, I was worried that if I let the opportunity go, I’d never have it again.

So I said yes, but that meant my rent more than doubled. And of course at that time I had no patients because we were in lockdown. Yikes. But my point is that changes in the cost of renting, or having to move to a new location, having difficulty finding a location, have all been common themes in the past two years. There have been some big shifts like this for a lot of people.

In a nutshell, the cost of doing business has gone up for many acupuncturists and small business owners around the world. But at this point in the pandemic, patients are not going to be surprised by the idea that the cost of doing business has gone up.

So that is another really good reason to raise your rates because at least where I live, I don’t foresee any change coming soon in terms of the masking and sanitizing requirements. So I’m still going to have to purchasing those things every month because that that is literally the price of doing business right now.

Consideration number three is that if you’re already burnt out, then raising your rates is a great way to gently reduce your patient numbers or at least keep them where they’re at while still maintaining the same income.

Now, I get it. Your initial reaction might be that it feels bad to raise your rates and risk losing a couple of patients.

But remember that if you’re already on the edge of burnout, you know you simply cannot continue at this pace. So what are you going to do about that. Something has to change.

One of your options would be to hire help. To hire an associate acupuncturist or front desk staff. Or if you already have employees, give them more responsibility. Be willing to let go of that control and let them take things off your plate.

Of course the idea here is that you can’t pour from an empty cup. Take care of yourself first, you’re your oxygen mask on first before helping others. It will serve you better over the life of your career, trust me.

Because if you burn out, or if you continue showing up at 70 or 60% of your capacity for your patients, then you’re not even serving them to the best of your ability. Most of the acupuncturists I know are looking to really serve – and it’s hard to serve, genuinely be of service, if you’re only bringing 60% of your ability to the table because you’re worn so thin.

We want to show up at 90 to 100% because that’s who we are. That’s our passion for this medicine.

So think about it from the perspective of raising your rates in order to give yourself the rest that you need. The mental space between patients or maybe just a little break in your schedule.

Or here’s a thought which a lot of acupuncturists don’t do: What if you took a lunch break, a real one? What if you had a whole 30 minutes, where you didn’t do patient charts, and you didn’t try to eat and write herb prescriptions or do your Instagram marketing. You just had 30 minutes where it was just lunchtime and you listened to music?

I know it’s hard when patients want that lunchtime slot – it’s hard to turn them away. But I bet that more often than not, if you say, I’m sorry, I take lunch from 1-2 o’clock, those patients will be able to adjust and find another time that works for them. Just don’t give in right away. When you say no, offer them another time and then stay silent while they look at their schedule.

Okay and my last thought here is that if you are female, or female-identifying, there is a very strong likelihood that you’re undercharging for your services no matter what. If you haven’t read Rachel Rodger’s book yet, We Should All Be Millionaires, please do. I’ll put the link in the show notes. I ranked this book as the best book I read in 2021. Rodgers talks about increasing financial security for women, and one of the first things she discusses is how we are under-earning in part because we consistently under-charge compared to our male counterparts.

It’s not just that pay is not equal in salaried jobs, it’s also that female freelancers, small business owners, coaches and consultants, etc., consistently charge less when we’re able to set our own rates.

You may be thinking, but I don’t set my own rates, the economy sets my rates, or the other acupuncturists nearby set my rates. False. You can be the highest priced acupuncturist in your town. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Now, as an aside, if you’re thinking, the insurance company sets my rates then that is tougher, because you literally do not set those rates. However. If it comes down to it, you can choose not to accept that insurance anymore. I know that’s hard, because you want to serve the people who have that insurance. But if you feel like the amount they pay is so little that it’s contributing to your burnout, that’s something to think about. Not accepting that insurance carrier anymore. You can send those people home with a superbill and let them process their own reimbursement instead.

But if we’re not talking about insurance, and you have the power to set your own rates, it’s a different story. Again, just because other acupuncturists in your local area are undercharging doesn’t mean you have to as well. There’s strong research behind the idea that consumers don’t necessarily trust the cheapest option when given a choice. You definitely don’t want to be the cheapest. Cheapest is not viewed as best for most people. Paying more is a sign of quality in terms of consumer trends.

Okay, I hope these four considerations help you decide whether to raise your rates in 2022. Honestly, please raise your rates. Everyone listening can probably use do this with no problem. You deserve to earn an amount that makes it that you’re not just getting by, but that allows you feel financially resourced and stable. And you deserve to charge a rate that doesn’t contribute to your burnout. Remember that raising your rates can create space in your schedule while still making the same amount of money. And that this allows you to serve your patients and your community better, for many years to come.

Thank you for being here with me today.

Don’t forget that A Year of Email Templates for Acupuncturists is on sale this week only. Let’s kick email procrastination to the curb! With these templates you don’t have to wonder what the heck to write for your email newsletter. It’s all done for you. On sale this week it’s just $87 for 26 emails, enough for a whole year with a few extras. Again, the focus of the emails is pain, digestion, and anxiety, so if those are patients that you enjoy seeing, these area a great. I’ll put the link in the show notes. Use the discount code EMAILMAGIC to get $30 off before it expires next Tuesday, Feb. 8th. Any questions, email me at michelle@michellegrasek.com.