Feel that we want to be very aware of who we work with, because if you onboard the one client too quickly, you're going to tolerate them for a very long time. And there's a cost to that. There's the stress of working with someone who doesn't respect you, or they nickel and dime everything that you're doing questioning you. They don't follow through.

They wait for everything, including paying your invoices. The other part is that they, are probably looking for champagne services at their prices. So they want a lot, but they want to pay a little. And the other part of it is they just take more time because they want exceptions or they don't get back to your communications in a timely manner.

So those low value clients might have helped you get your firm off the ground and started. But by saying yes to everybody, you're actually doing a disservice because by telling those wealthy clients, it's keep you working more closely with those clients who are just a drain. Yeah, I love that. And along the same lines with that, so there's a you know, we know a lot of accountants out there who took on those clients.

There's low value clients and they've never raised their rates since then. And so, you know, they you know, they often want to raise their rates months or years before they actually do so. How do you advise or how do you coach your clients when they're ready to raise a raise where they want to raise them? They just don't know how.

I'm going to answer that in two parts. Okay. So this will take a little bit of time. The first thing I want you to think about is if you're looking to increase your fees, whether this is with new clients or current clients, I encourage you to realize that going from either a fixed or hourly rate over to value pricing is similar to first learning how to ride a two wheel bicycle, and in the beginning you're shaky.

You probably fall down a little bit and skin your knees, so you put training wheels on to help you get that balance. The good, better, best pricing I'm going to explain. It's like the training wheels towards value pricing. What you want to do is you're going to have new clients coming to you. And then what you want to do is calculate what you would initially charge them as a fixed fee if they were to engage your services.

But now we want to offer them in a new good way. So you're going to take that initial fixed fee that you were able to charge and multiply it by 1.5. That is your new good rate. I want you involved three people at that new good rate. After that, we're going to go up to tier two, which is going to be a better rate.

People come to you come up with that original set fee that you would have offered, and now we're going to multiply it by two. That means that you're now earning double than what you originally would have charged. You realize that clients aren't as price sensitive as you thought that they were, and we're going to have you enroll three people at that new, better rate.

You're also starting to get a better quality client, and you're understanding how to have those initial consultations so that they can see the value of engaging your firm's services. You enroll three people at that new battery. We go to the top tier, which is your new best rate at this tier? You're engaging a lot of clients that really value you.

They respect you, they follow through, they have questions, and they want your insight and expertise. Because we're now charging three x. What you originally would have charged. That means that you don't need as many clients in order to be able to hit your revenue needs. So once again, with that new best rate, people come to you. You're going to calculate what you're, which we would have charge them.

We're going to multiply it by three x and engage clients at the higher level. So that's how to start moving away from an hourly or fixed fee over to its value. Pricing is by doing that good, better, best pricing model. And eventually your best rate will need to be recalibrated and you can go through the whole matrix all over again as a way to start bumping up your fees and working with a better client.

The other part of what you were asking Adam, was how to start doing this with your current clients. And what you want to do is first send them a letter where the email was snail mail. However you communicate with the client that you're making some changes in your firm. You don't want to justify you have higher expenses because the cost of living has gone up and everybody's raising rates.

So you're going to pass it on to them because that's true too. They don't want to hear about that. It's passé and it doesn't really matter to them. So what you want to do is you want to inform them in a communication that you are making some changes to your firm to better serve your clients, and that you want to have a conversation with them after you send them the letter you want to have you or someone to your staff reach out and counter that appointment meeting.

If you have a staff member to do that, that's even better. If not, then go ahead and reach out to them. Get something on the calendar. After you get something on the calendar, you want to have a value conversation, and during the value conversation, you want to focus on things from their perspective. And basically it's asking questions to understand their needs, their wants, and their desires.

They all complimentary, but they're a little bit different. The needs are the essentials to be operational and have a great cash flow. They want all the things that they know that they ought to have in place, but either they don't have the capacity themselves or they don't know the have the know how, and they need you to help them with doing that.

And then the designs are future focus. That's actually the sweet spot. The more you can connect your services to something that they want to achieve at some point in the future and show them how you can help them do that better, faster or even easier than what they could on their own. That is where your value really shines.

You're being seen now as that advisor, an expert as opposed to that technician. And after you do that, you want to prepare for some objections, because current clients are going to want to know why you're changing things. What are they going to get out of that? That's why you're charging me more. You already do all this for me, and you want to prepare for those objections so that when they come up, they don't tell you off, and you went ahead and just cut a rate, gave them a rate discount because you didn't want to have the pushback.

It felt confrontational. And then the last part is you want to be able to talk about how to move forward in this new capacity. And when that starts, what the terms for, how that is the scope and cover all those expectations. So that's how you raise your rates with your current clients is you send them a communication, you get something on the calendar.

You had that value conversation that focuses on what's important to them. You talk about what the investment is moving forward, prepare for those objections and then make sure that you set, expectations so that it goes ahead and takes care of the scope as well. Oh, I love that. I think there's two very important things that I wanted to just highlight.

The first is when you send the initial email or snail mail, you're asking them to get on a meeting or a call, and it's all about connecting with them, which is going to it's going to do wonders for showing them your value. And, and I think a lot of I don't want to I don't want listeners to gloss over that.

It's all about the relationship. They can trust you and they. And then the second part of that is you're you're saying find out what they value as the value, and then you can communicate that you will help them get what they value, which means you can automatically you'll be in a category of one, and you won't have competitors.

And you can raise your fees at exactly. I think the other thing is, having this conversation with current clients is something that firm owners tend to avoid because they don't want to rock the boat they're afraid of losing on their clients. My clients will pay that much. And research actually shows that if you already invest in the client relationship, then 82%.

If I've seen as high as 100% when my clients follow this formula, but 82% statistically audit continue to move forward with you at your new pricing model. Those clients, if you've invested in the relationship, they are sticky. They don't want to go and they trust you with somebody else. They trust they they they they have to trust. You've already a proven resource and they're more likely to move forward.

So I know that is scary. But you are able to do this. One is client centered in a way that is a win win. Because even if the that 18% doesn't move forward, the ones that typically wave where you're headache price sensitive clients that you secretly wished would go away anyway. So this is just a recalibration is how I, I love it.

Well, Lauren, this has been a fantastic conversation. Where can people learn more and get more help from you? Really, what I would love is if you felt that you got value from this and you want those steps to be able to value price your services the good, better, best pricing that I shared and how to start to move away from, time and tasks over to packages to be able to charge 2 to 3 times more than grab my resource.

That goes with this. It's a business success solution.com/package. And you can immediately get those steps that I shared on how to be able to move your firm forward. Or a ton two times, 2 to 3 times more without working any additional hours and work with high quality clients. Oh, I love it. So business success solution.com/package. All right. We'll put we'll put that in the show notes.

Lauren, thank you so much for being with us today Adam. Absolute a pleasure. Every time that we talk together I always learn from you as well. So thank you so much. Same here. And to everyone listening or watching. Thank you so much for spending the last few minutes with Lauren and myself as we discussed how to escape the accounts trap.

Bye for now.