If you want to charge more for what you do, then do it.
You will need to match up the experience to the price tag, but I'll bet you have something absolutely special enough to charge more for, so all you're getting wrong is the positioning and the message.
Here's an example
Say you run a Chinese takeaway. Now, for all I know you are a brilliant Chinese chef—your chow mein is amazing. But on your menu you have 500 items (possibly a slight exaggeration, but it always feels that many to me!). And when I come in to your takeaway and order your amazing chow mein, I'll probably have pot luck choosing it from that long list and you'll hand it over in a foil tray with a cardboard lid (why don't we have those cool boxes they have in America?) and I'll have no idea how amazing it is. Because I'm thinking that's a £5 chow mein—£6 maybe if we're going posh with King Prawns. So I rank it accordingly in my mind in terms of value and quality. You're more expensive (but not much!) than me going to M&S for a 'Chinese banquet for one' but you're saving me the trouble of putting said chow mein in the microwave.
So here we are with your £5 chow mein. How are we going to make this a £50 chow mein, you might ask? It's pretty simple actually. If you really are great at chow mein cooking (and this is a very important caveat—you can't be selling low quality for higher prices, that's just wrong), we just need to position you in the right way and get your message out there.
Picture this... instead of a foil box (with cardboard lid), what if instead you opened a restaurant and dressed the room in a way that's making me think I could spend a couple of hours here really enjoying my Chinese meal experience. You hired great staff who made me feel welcome, made great drink suggestions and tempted me with a great starter. What if you educated me about what to look for in a great chow mein and told me the story of why chow mein is so important to you and why you love cooking it.
In fact, I'm probably there because you're a little bit famous for your chow mein. You've blogged about it, shared videos on YouTube about your technique and recipes, you're always commenting on Facebook on Chinese food appreciation pages (where I hang out) and maybe you've even written THE book about chow mein.
Now, when I come to get my chow mein from you I'm pretty convinced this is going be one spectacular plate of noodles. And it will be because that's what it is.
You'll actually be serving me the EXACT SAME noodles you used to serve up for £5 in a foil box, but now you've wrapped it up in a great experience and changed your message, I am very happy to pay £50 for it.
Can you see how this works?
IF you ALREADY do something that's brilliant but you're delivering it up the same way as everyone else, in a perceived low quality way at a low price (and it's ALL about perception), then that's all I'm going to pay you and value you for. And you've got to sell a LOT more Chinese takeaways to make the same money as a £50 chow mein meal. Because it won't just be the meal you'll be selling me then—I'll be buying your book and your woks and maybe even your brand of noodles.
THIS is exactly the point of Being a Business Celebrity. And you might be the first person ever to charge £50 for a chow mein, but if you have people who are excited and happy to pay you that, then give them what they want. Maybe even put up the price.
What's your chow mein and are you hiding it in a takeaway menu or building your business around it?
Want to talk more about this?
very thought provoking.
Glad to have made you think! :)