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Hello, hello, hello. My podcast people and thank you for joining me for yet a another episode of my favorite online business, a podcast if you are listening, tuning, watching in, I messed it up, but we're going with it on the day that it drops. It is Monday, September 15th. Happy middle of September. Today I am sharing with you my thoughts on price.
Increases. But first a little bit isn't a little life updates first business update. I am raising my prices. Just kidding. That'd be funny if that was what we're talking about, but it's not. Uh, no, my not raising my prices. The actual business announcement is that if you are on the wait list for round 17 of my Instagram intensive, right?
That is my online business program that teaches health and fitness professionals how exactly how to use Instagram for online business. Uh, if you're on the wait list for that for round 17, that's the final round. We're calling it quits folks. Check your email because doors are open for you. Registration is open for you.
The wait list people you have for the end of the week, that is September 19th to grab the exclusive wait list pricing and save 100 mayonnaise. Also, if you buy today, the first day it's open, you get some other bonuses, but on Saturday the price will go up from 4 97, 2 5, 9, 7. So make some moves. Guess it is a price increase, but not really do it every time.
Um, it is a price incentive. If you weren't on the wait list, but you wanna save the monies, unfortunately I cannot help you. But if you still want in for the final round, uh, because the intensive age is going away, make sure that you are on my email list. Or if you hate being on email list, then just make sure you mark your calendar because doors will be open for you starting next week, September 22nd, and they will close on September 26th, and then we will start on Tuesday, September.
30th, but if you're on the wait list, go make moves. Okay. Life updates. Uh, l and I did our monthly deep clean. We do it once a month. Um. Suck him back to, to forest, right. I call him. I call him Les bro. And he was like, you only do it once a month. And I was like, yeah, motherfucker, what's happened in your house?
But they have three dogs. And I was like, that makes sense. We have Rupert who sleeps on my desk for 23 hours of the day and Moose who doesn't shed? Um, though dogs are just so fucking gross. They're so gross, but she doesn't shed, which is really nice. Um, so yeah, we do a deep cleaning of a robo vac as well.
Um, like to do in between and and whatnot. But we do deep cleaning once a month. I realized it is helpful when I share some of the stuff that I use because when I do share, people write to me and they're like, oh, I have that thing too. And I love it. And I'm like, bitch, why didn't you share that? You had this before?
Why are you keeping the good good to yourself? So I am not keeping the good good to myself. I'm sharing that there was like, I think it's probably an Instagram post that was like an ad that had a mop in it by O cedar and the bucket part spins around to ring out the mop. And I was like, that. It's great because that's the worst part, right?
It's like, how do you get the water out? I don't want, I don't want the big yellow bucket. Right? So maybe you've seen it, um, maybe you haven't, but after you listen to this, then you probably will. 'cause that's how the internet works. But I bought it and it was like 35 bucks. It's super cheap and it's great.
It is absolutely great. I do think that the actual stick could be a bit longer and like, a bit more like durable, but like conceptually, this, it works great. And I was like. This is awesome. So if you are looking for a good mop and you are ready to stop lying yourself, lying to yourself about, uh, you know, and pretending, I should say, lying yourself and pretending that Swiffer WeChat actually cleans the floor.
It doesn't, it just pushes the dirt around. We all know this, but we kind of still stay with it 'cause it makes things smell nice. Um, but if you're really, if you're ready to be like that, I don't want to sing anymore. Check out the o Cedar mob. I have no discount code, I have no affiliation, nothing. Um, I did tag them in the stories and they wrote back.
They were like, oh, thank you. Um, but I got nothing from them. So I have the basic one. It works Great. Go check it out. Okay, onto the main topic for today, which is my thoughts on price increases. Today's episode is inspired and brought to you by ConvertKit's recent price increase. Yes, I did do a post on it, Courtney, if you link that.
Thank you, Joe. Thank you as well. Um, who knows though by the time that this episode drops. Who knows what will have happened by then. Uh, 'cause I, I'm recording this on September 8th and today the email came out. Motherfuckers were prepared because if you write an email back to them, they have like an autoresponder already up.
It's like it's being handled by a bot and we're gonna send you to somebody. But, um, the price increase went into, into, it didn't go into effect today. It, we got the email about it. It'll go into effect next month, like October 15th or something. And who's to say like, 'cause people did push back against Canvas price increase and Canva didn't keep the increase.
So who maybe, maybe it ends up being okay, I don't know. Maybe they could roll back. I don't fucking know. I, I don't think they will. But, um, either way, this would inspire today's episode. And if you haven't already written to them and you wanna write to them and you want to, you know, have them, you want them to hear your voice, you should write to them.
Absolutely. Um, but. Regarding my thoughts on price increases as a blanket statement, I will say that price increases are not bad, right? They're, they're not just objectively a bad thing. Um. I want y'all to make money. I literally did an episode, it was last episode, talking about launching your first high ticket offer, right?
Commerce is not bad. Commerce is different than capitalism, especially this extractive capitalism that we are so fond of here in the United States, and it's gonna kill us. All right? Extractive capitalism is going to be the end of us. Um, let's see the few definitions, right? 'cause I want us to be on the same page here, right?
Capitalism. Capitalism is an economic sy, an economic and social system where the means of production factories, land businesses, resources, et cetera, are privately owned and operated for profit. That is, that last part is like probably the most important. To highlight that it's operated for profit, which is not inherently a bad thing.
It's when you want endless profit, year over year profit, year over year, increasing profit, infinite profit from finite resources that it's like, well, that doesn't fucking make sense. How do you do that? What has capitalism become? It has become an economic system that is dominated in the United States.
I'm talking about it has become an economic, economic system that is dominated by large corporations and fin financial institutions where wealth and decision making power are fucking concentrated in the hands of a small elite. You call this really the capitalist, uh, community, right? Like the, um, what is the word I'm looking for?
Um. It has escaped my head, but when we're talking about that, there are different class. There we go. The capitalist class or the capital class. I talked about a podcast episode on my last episode, and I'll link it again, I'll, I'm gonna refer back to it that, that money Katie did. Um, but she speaks about this and it's like, yeah, it's kind of the haves and the have-nots, right?
But instead of fostering competition, which is what is always cited and talked about and touted, right, people are like, we need capitalism, because without it, then people won't have be incentivized to work hard. And it's like, what the fuck is wrong with you? No. Right, so instead of fostering competition, it often, this is what it's currently become, instead of fostering competition, it often operates through monopolies.
Yes, that's exactly what happens. Few companies own everything. They're so big, they just fucking gobble up these other companies. It operates through monopolies and oligopolies. It's a fun word. That limit consumer choice, suppress smaller competitors and entrench market dominance. That's exactly what we have going on right now.
This model favors capital owning class, right? Shareholders, executives, investors, through mechanisms like financialization, through tax advantages and political influence. We fucking seen that. We're living through that. While workers see stagnant wages, declining job security and reduced social mobility in practice, it functions less as a free market and more as a system of corporate consolidation and wealth extraction, where economic growth disproportionately benefits those who already control capital.
That's what we're living through. Just so we're also clear on the same page. Free market and capitalism are not like mutually dependent, like they are different things. You can absolutely have a free market without capitalism. They absolutely abso fucking, literally. The big problem here is that last part of the, of that like very short definition I gave you capitalism, whereas operated for profit, nothing wrong with making a profit, but for endless infinite profit.
This pro, it's not real. The math doesn't math. The math doesn't matter. You have to go into this extractive nature for this to happen, right? Commerce, which I said before, capitalism, commerce different things. Commerce is great. Commerce is simply the activity of exchanging goods and services, especially on a large scale between businesses, individuals, or nations.
It covers the entire system of buying, selling, and trading, including transportation, communication, legal and financial in infrastructure that makes markets function. Which absolutely allows for price increases. Like I said, I'm not here to say as a blanket statement, the price increases are bad. No, not at all.
Right. This whole episode is really simply just a discussion about fairness and doing right by your people. Like we don't need to make it more complicated than that. Yes, our economy is complex because of the size of it and everything that's intertwined and interrelated, but like, fuck. Doing right by your people isn't complex.
We are in this predicament that we're in today because capitalism has become what it's become because our system in the United States was built on not doing right by people. The US founded its wealth by having fucking slaves by enslaving people. Come on. Understand this again, I'm gonna plug that episode like I alluded to earlier.
It's an episode on the podcast, diabolical Lies. It is, uh, that's a podcast by Katie Gati. Katie Gotti Tossin. She's my mc, Katie and, uh, Carol Claire Burke. We will link it. Thank you, Jojo. Thank you. Court. Court. Uh, it's good. It's a long episode. It's like two and a half hours, but it is fucking good. And it says all things I'm saying, but gives you examples and gives you facts and gives you dates, and gives you, you know.
The actual like history goes through history and shows you and you're like, yeah, wow. Mm-hmm. Right. Wow. Yeah. Does it give you hope? I don't know. Maybe, but information is always nice to me, uh, for me. Right. But the whole thing, what I'm getting at here is do right by your people. Right. When it comes to price increases, when it comes to running your fucking business, do right by your people.
I get it. We all got different values, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But this is my podcast, so I'm going to tell you how I do it and how I would do it based on my values, and you can decide for yourself how you're gonna do it. Alright, so when it comes to raising your prices, yes, there's time and a place for it.
It makes sense to do it. Sometimes you need to do it sometimes, right? Especially if it's a new service. Right? And within new service, it could be that you've made improvements on a service, right? And over time, how you delivered the same service. That could just be the improvement. Is that like you learned more, you know more now you are more efficient at it, right?
So it's, it becomes an improved service than what you were offering before. That's fine. It's justifiable, right? I'm not reaching there. It's also fine, in my opinion, raising your prices for new people or new episodes of care, right? So I don't love selling packages. I never fucking sold packages. But it's like when this plan of care, you know, for, for in the health and wellness space, because this plan of care expires, it's done, it finishes, then they come back and it's like, okay, new.
If you wanna have new prices, great. But if they're like seeing you and you're like in a plan of care and suddenly just raise it, it's like, whoa, whoa. What the fuck? But when people leave and come back, that's fine. Right. It's totally fine. I get that there can be a bit of a gray area as well if you've like worked with someone for a zillion years, especially if you, they started with you and you know, there's personal training, but you know, ideally they understand and might they want to pay you more.
'cause they're like, man, I've been with this person. Um, and so yeah, I can get that. There are some like gray areas, but again, the fact that you're even thinking about this and you're like, let me, how do I do right by this person? How that, that's all that I want. You're not, you're not just like, fuck them.
They're gonna figure it out. Right. The, the area that introduces, introduces like friction difficulty for people that I don't really think it should is continuities. And that's what's going on with ConvertKit. Continuities, meaning it's an ongoing like monthly or ongoing recurring services. You could also be paying for this thing annually, right?
Of note, fucking always let people know when their subscription is renewing, whether it's. Every month or every, you know, year, the software, does it have it, send out an email, you know, a week before, three days before whatever this thing is gonna renew so the people can fucking cancel if they want to. I just got hit with HoneyBook and I was just like you for the fucking worst.
They sent an email after it's already renewed, and I'm like, you are the fucking worst. This is shady. Let people know. Doesn't matter if it's weekly, monthly, annually, whatever. Let fucking people know. Let 'em know and give 'em enough time to cancel if they want. Alright? I do not believe in raising prices for these people that are in these continuities if they haven't discontinued their service.
Right. The exception here would be, you know, a price increase that's commensurate with expense increases, right? The price of the software goes up, so like the price of the service goes up. But one of the best things about an online business is that the margins are so fucking good. 'cause there's no overhead, right?
There's no fucking rent to pay. So yes, software prices, that's one of your, you know, expenses there, it can go up, but. For the good companies, it's incrementally going up. It's not going up like a zillion dollars, which means that oftentimes it can be absorbed and you have to change your prices, but that also will depend on the size of your business.
Right. So a k the number of customers you have so you can spread cost across. Um, and this is different than if it was like a per user increase for something like, you know, like true hero train heroic or like, um, QuickBooks. I'm thinking about, um, my bookkeeper. Like if the price per customer or per user goes up, then yeah, like that can be really difficult for you to absorb.
But if just the price of the thing goes up and let's say it goes up a hundred dollars for the year, it's gonna be a lot easier to absorb. If you, you know, across, if you're like, yeah, I have a hundred people and they're paying a hundred dollars, whatever, then you're like, yeah, I can absorb that. And it's like not that big of a deal because of the margins and you don't have to like do an immediate price increase.
Whereas if it's like. This is a subscription thing that you are paying for and it's per user. And like per user, it goes up $50, which means that your price would go up a lot, right? If, if you had a hundred users, it goes up by, you know, $5,000 and you're like, yeah, I have to raise the prices. But for the most part, that's not how online business or online software works.
But that's not the case with ConvertKit, which is why folks are justifiably pissed. They just did a 30, you know, per percent plus increase and one fell swoop. That's crazy. That is too much. Right. Ideally what they should fucking do is grandfather people in, right? The worst case, the best of a worst case is like let people know that it's gonna be changing and then be like, okay, but we'll give you a discounted rate if you like.
I don't know, pay for the year. I don't know something, offer them something. Nest just did this. We have a Nest thermostat and. They're discontinuing, discontinuing support for the older models. And so they sent an email out, they sent out a few, and they were just like, Hey, we're gonna give you 50%, that's like 46% off of a new thermostat, which is like kind of annoying.
I'm almost like, give it to me for free. 'cause like my current one isn't broken, but at least they're doing something right. And I'm gonna be grateful for, uh, the, the gesture there. I. But in general, just fucking grandfather people in, like I did raise the price of my continuity, my membership, which is the mafia.
But that's because they changed it. And all of the people that were in from a four, they kept the same price. It was just raise price for new people. 'cause I put together a whole core curriculum, self-based course in it. I introduced an affiliate model. I introduced alpha testing so people could, could practice with their presentations and make money, right?
But all the OGs, they fucking stayed the same price. That shit hasn't gone up since 2020. It's the same price, right? I think the biggest issue here is a lack of objective foresight and poor fucking planning. That's based on easy math. Yes. Think about what's needed to turn a profit. Not against making a profit, calculate it and then calculate how feasible that is.
Easy math has people out here being like, well, WIL shares a hundred dollars per person per month, and we'll get a thousand people in here and then we'll make a hundred thousand dollars a month. No problem. They get investors, they promise them these crazy returns. They talk a big fucking game, and they never consider how fucking hard it is to get and retain a thousand people, especially at a price point, like a hundred dollars a month.
Right? We see this with gyms. Alright. But we definitely see it with online memberships because they get sold the golden goose by some shitty business coach. Right? So side note, please check out episodes of 430 and then I think I brought it back for some episode in the five hundreds. I don't remember. Uh, that was entitled Why you Should Not Start a Membership.
We will link that in the show notes. Thank you Courtney. Thank you jojo. Alright, so with the shitty planning that they're doing, they launch this thing a hundred dollars a person. They're, they're like, we're gonna get a thousand people, but instead they get a hundred people. And over time they're like, well fuck, we gotta like get this money back and we gotta like try and make a profit.
So what do they do instead of charging them a hundred dollars? They're like, well what guess we're gonna raise it to a thousand dollars. And you're just like, what? What? Like that's the equivalent of what's happening. Like these loyal, you have your initial people, you have these initial a hundred people that are like, we love you, we support you, we wanna help you build this thing.
And the owners are like, fuck you. It's 'cause they did bad math. They did fucking bad math, right? So I'm not here to make you feel bad about your pricing or whatever it is that you're doing your business. I'm here to simplify things when it comes to business, when it comes to online business, and encourage us to all simply do right by our people, right?
Capitalism, especially this extractive model that, that it's become in the United States. I think honestly, that it's always been, it's fucking always been that it ain't it. He ain't it. I am absolutely here for you, starting your own business and running your own business and controlling the means of production.
And by all means, but like I've been saying, if you're gonna build something, alright, you're gonna build a business, build one that doesn't perpetuate the bullshit. Okay, I'm excited. Gonna calm it down. Gonna wrap it up here because that's all for today. As a reminder, doors are open for the Instagram intensive wait list.
Homies is the last and final round. We'd love to have you if that's you. Run. Don't walk. Save the monies, get bonuses. That is me doing right by my early action, early adopter people. Anyone else? The doors open for you, y'all. Next Monday. Circle on the calendar. Alright, as always, endlessly, endlessly appreciative for every single one of you into the next conference.
Maestro out.
Watch this episode on YouTube!
My post on ConvertKit’s price increases
The Rise & Fall of Capitalism podcast episode
MOTM #430: Why You Should NOT Start an Online Membership
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