Why It Feels So Hard To Price Your Work: For Spiritual Healers, Wellness Experts and Holistic Practitioners

6 days ago
10 min read

Updated: 3 days ago

Why does it feel so hard to price my services?

There’s an assumption that pricing struggles are a personal failing - they’re not, it’s a practical problem of a lack of business education
Lots of spiritual and wellness professionals carry secret messages passed from others that healing should be free or is not worth much financially
Social media hustle culture of extreme materialistic coaches can feel noisy and counter to the spiritual experience - this leads spiritual small business owners to swing too far the other way, and offer too much for free
A surprising number of practitioners in these fields don’t know their business basics which makes pricing decisions very hard
Your financial goals, personal values, and current level of confidence also impact your ability to make pricing decisions and choose a pricing framework that works for your business
Luckily, these are all solvable problems when you develop stronger self-mastery over pricing decision making and daily behaviours

Pricing Is Personal - And That's Why It Feels Like A Problem

For lots of folks thinking about their small business, whether they're self-employed or sole trader, choosing the pricing for their services isn't just a business decision. It tends to be wrapped up in identity and your worth, how you value yourself and the values that you have for your life.

But until you start to separate some of these things, the internal from the external, the strategy from the way you're thinking, no framework, no pricing structure that you choose or that someone else suggests you do will actually stick.

Pricing Struggles Are Not a Personal Failing

If you're a business owner in the holistic, wellness or spiritual service space who really cares about the transformation you're giving your clients and you’re struggling to price your services accurately in a way that is sustainable for you and also accessible for your clients is not a personality flaw.

The suggestion that if you're struggling with pricing, it's all on you, is wrong. There is a real trend of pinning difficulty making financial decisions on your ‘money mindset’ or ‘money blocks’, when the reality is most people have not learnt the financial tools or business strategies you need to make an informed choice for your work.

The people I know who have run successful businesses went into business because they loved what they do. They weren't accountants, they didn’t have those tools to do that, and they wanted to run their business to do what they loved, not necessarily to become a financial, sales and marketing expert. They learnt to make financial and pricing decisions on the job, or hired someone to help them.

We all have emotional baggage around money and we all need to think about how we can develop better mindsets. But the emotional experiences you have when struggling with pricing is separate from the practical tools and frameworks you need to make decisions. It’s not that you’re rubbish with money or bad at business. It’s a solvable problem with you have the right tools.

Practical And Emotional Dimensions of Pricing

So there are the practical, strategic, economic problems of not having the tools, and never being taught how to price your services. And then there's the other problem: what's my feeling, my mindset around this topic? It's not always easy to practise separating out the practical solutions from the internal emotional ones.

Filtering Out The Negative Voices

Practitioners working in spiritual, healing, wellness fields carry what I call secret messages - ideas handed down from the external world about their work. There's a set of philosophies that makes you believe that if you charge too much, too little, the wrong amount, or any money at all for healing work, it's morally wrong.

The secret messages are the little voices in your head that, when you sit down to write your price, whisper: “Are you sure? Are you sure it's worth it? Are you sure it's right?”. These messages come from outside you, from a family member who was negative when you started your business, a friend who still doesn’t understand all that ‘woo woo’ stuff, a former boss who consistently denied you a raise and devalued your work.

These secret messages teach you, explicitly or implicitly, that you aren't to be trusted around knowing what to charge. Charge nothing, charge too much, charge too little - it’s not about the amount, but about the fact that you don’t trust yourself with the amount. You get stuck, you become paralysed because these secret messages come from all sides and you can’t win.

The Enemy Within

Wherever that secret message originated from outside you, it has now become the enemy within. It's so ingrained, so absorbed, that it now feels like your own voice. Identifying that secret message means you can start to identify the part of yourself - the enemy within - that agrees with it.

There's part of you that perhaps agrees that spiritual healing should be free for everybody. Or that someone who charges a premium rate is being greedy. The enemy within holds on to that secret message whether or not it's sustainable for your business, your lifestyle, or whether it's causing stress and resentment with your clients.

So ask yourself: What is that secret message? And what part of me believes it? You might then have a clear sentence to work with - something like "I really believe spiritual healing should be free for everybody" - and you can start applying practices of self-mastery and daily routines that speak to that value.

For example, rather than give everything away for free, you might establish a sliding scale pricing model that offers some lower-cost services while supporting a sustainable business.

The Two Cultural Extremes Of Pricing

Everything in the world of business right now is pitched as an extreme. On one end, we have lady boss, bro marketing, hustle culture - urgent sales messages, graphics, people insisting that if you haven't made 10K a month you need their silver bullet solution. It’s so dramatic and shouty and for sensitive people, it’s exhausting. And sometimes when you're really put off by an extreme, you swing the other way.

In our bid to escape that stressful, shouty, materialistic environment, you can go too far the other way: hugely undercharging, never promoting your services, offering endless free content. You set income goals - which is an important and healthy part of any business - but don’t really think about how to get there. You might even end up outsourcing practical business thinking to astrology, Human Design or numerology, crossing your fingers and hoping for the best.

(By the way, using any of these spiritual or esoteric tools to guide your decisions is fine - but it’s very different from ignoring the manifest reality of your situation and forgetting practical business matters.)

Finding the Sweet Spot

I’ve done all of these things in my journey to developing self-mastery over matters of business. I started coaching by offering an hour for literally the price of a coffee because I wanted to make it available to as many people as possible. But all it did was attract people who valued their self-development at the price of a cup of coffee - people who weren't that committed.

On the other hand, I’ve pushed prices too hard, focused too much on the sale, the money, how much profit can I get … and that was unsustainable too. It's all about finding that sweet spot.

When we are surrounded by loud cultural expectations - digital, religious, ethnic, geographical - our job is not to bounce around like a pinball between extremes. It's to find our sweet spot, the Goldilocks zone where, as individuals, we feel we're doing the right thing in alignment with who we are.

Breakthroughs in your business, in your sales and pricing, are guaranteed when you prepare. Feeling confident and comfortable talking about money isn't an innate personality trait - it's the natural outcome of preparation and selecting the right frameworks. One crucial way to start preparing and find that sweet spot is through your business basics.

Know Your Business Basics

I've seen it over and over in people I’ve worked with - and I’ve done it myself. They try to price a service, a three-month programme or a retreat or one-to-one coaching, and they fail because they don’t have the basics in place.

Your business basics are:

Your true customer
What you do in your business, described simply
The results you get, documented

Without these pricing is extremely difficult. Because, for example, pricing a retreat for single mothers is very different from pricing one for women over 70 on a government pension. They're two different customer groups with different pricing realities. And if you don’t know what you do, described simply, or the results you get, then it’s going to be harder to set and justify your price to that customer.

You've also got to know your numbers - the basic accounting of your business. How much do your expenses cost each month? What does it cost to run your business? If you don't know how much your software subscriptions cost, how much it costs to rent a room for your community sound bath, it's hard to make a financially sustainable decision. That’s because you are really just guessing, and that can lead to you being out of pocket. So many people feel like they're bringing in a lot of money but they’re actually not even breaking even because their expenses exceed their income.

When you have this foundation in place, you can choose a pricing strategy that fits your actual situation - not where you’d like to be, not what a hustle culture coach told you to do - but actually what works for your business and your customers. There are many different pricing frameworks to select from and in The Soulful Pricing Playbook I give you a deep dive into 11 of them, as well as how to decide which one is right for you. But you can start working on these decisions now, even if you don’t buy the book.

Three Things to Define Before Setting Your Prices

Alongside your business basics, think about these three things to take away the paralysis around pricing and stop making it so personal:

1. Your financial goals.

If it costs you £10,000 a year to run your business, you need to make £10,000 just to break even, rather than running a very expensive hobby. So what is your minimum income goal for your business?

2. Your personal values.

Do you care about craftsmanship? Community? Giving back? If you haven't documented your values, it's hard to base any pricing decision on what's actually important to you.

3. Your current level of confidence.

I've worked with customers where I've suggested doubling their price because I see their expertise and value - but if they don’t see it, they can’t set that price.

You must be able to state your pricing with confidence. If your confidence doesn't match the price, then when you say “My day rate is £1000”, your voice and energy will waver and the other person will pick up on it. You don't have to be super confident - you just have to ensure your confidence matches the price you're stating.

Key Takeaways

1) Pricing difficulty in the first instance is rarely about what you think you're worth or your money mindset.

It's about whether you have the frameworks, strategy, and knowledge to price effectively. Most holistic or spiritual practitioners don't - not because they're bad at business, but because they got into this to offer their gifts, not to be financial experts. It is your self-mastery task to learn these frameworks and not outsource everything to the spiritual or assign it to a character flaw.

2) The forces keeping you undercharging, self-sacrificing, or over-delivering are just as much external as internal.

We have the hustle culture extreme on one side and spiritual generosity pushed to an unsustainable limit on the other, plus secret messages from our direct relationships that become the enemy within.

If you can identify and name these issues, that’s the breakthrough. Because naming them means you can practise beliefs and actions that support what you truly value, rather than staying paralysed between extremes or stuck acting unconsciously from a belief that doesn’t help you.

3) There is a version of pricing that is honest, ethical, values-led, and financially sustainable.

I call it the sweet spot, the Goldilocks zone. This is where you want to live: confident, comfortable, exciting and enjoyable in the way that works for you. Not for anyone else’s version of success, but the sweet spot that is yours and yours alone.

In a way this is the thing I want you to remember the most. Pricing is personal - but in the best possible way. It is based on the values, energy, confidence, wisdom and expertise that you bring to your business - not determined by anyone else but by your choices and what you care about.

Every decision is yours to make - the key is developing pricing self-mastery so you can make that decision confidently and swiftly.

The Pricing Self-Mastery Pathway

Pricing is one of the big areas of self-mastery that I coach people on. This led me to develop a pathway of resources to help you with this topic, including articles, podcast episodes, an assessment tool and a book.

If this article has been helpful, then you’ll find the rest of the pathway helpful too.

Step 1

Read Signs Your Pricing Isn’t Working: 5 Symptoms To Look For As A Spiritual Entrepreneur

✅ Step 2

Read Why It Feels So Hard To Price Your Work: For Spiritual Healers, Wellness Experts and Holistic Practitioners

➡️ Step 3

Listen to The Real Cost of Getting Pricing Wrong

Step 4

Read How Much Should I Charge In My Spiritual Business? Your Business Owner Type Influences Your Answer

Step 5

Listen to The Four Types of Service Business Owner (And What Each One Gets Wrong About Pricing)

Step 6