The Performance Doctor: Raise Your Rates in 2025

Happy 2025!!

I hope you had a great time celebrating the end of 2024 and you are starting 2025 strong. If you slept in, that’s okay — you must’ve celebrated the end of 2024 pretty hard😊.

But it’s time to kick it into gear and make 2025 the year you create systems that fast forward your goals 10x.

For the last 3 years, I’ve held an end-of-the-year review with a handful of colleagues (exactly five). We started this to keep each other accountable throughout the years and make sure that we continue to grow and scale without staying stagnant and too comfortable in life.

Needless to say, it has been a game changer in various aspects of the business, from different offers, to marketing and even helping with cases throughout the year.

During our yearly review, we take a look at various metrics (KPI’s) — I’ll do a deep dive on these metrics at a later time. We use these metrics to make decisions on what needs to change for the next quarter.

One of the metrics we look into is, the number of times we raise rates.

Let me preface this, there’s no magic number to how many times you can raise your rates. Some businesses raise them once a year (around new years), others may raise it every quarter, and other may raise them twice a year.

As solopreneurs, the most amount of times any of us has raised our rates in a year, has been three times. This was done to keep up with market volatility over the last couple of years and minimize profit loss by the increases in rent, utilities, and other monthly and yearly expenses.

But that can’t last forever, can it?

No, at some point you have to take a look at the value that you are providing to your patients, the lifetime value of a patient, and the community and avatar you are serving.

Can you raise your rates yearly?

Absolutely.

That’s what I am telling you here.

Regardless of where you are in your business journey. The New Year is one of the few times in the year most people expect rates to be increased everywhere. From grocery departments and restaurants, to retail and service businesses.

9/10 of the gyms around me sent out letters describing their new prices. Most increased only by $5, but that is still an increase.

Back to our end-of year review.

This year 4/5 of us did NOT raise our rates after January 1st 2024. Meaning for the rest of the year, they continued to charge the same amount. I wasn’t one of them. In fact, this year I raised my rates once.

As some of you may know, I moved my office (The Athlete Spot) to a new city, 3.5 hours away from its original location. On January 15th, 2024 I opened the doors to my office in a new city, to a community where I knew relatively no-one, other than my in-laws and three high school friends whom I was still in touch with.

For the first six months, my rates stayed the same they were when I was in a larger city. I was (still am) the most expensive private practice in the area. I am okay with that.

My monthly overhead is $980/mo - not including the yearly insurance I pay for.

Within the first two months, I was covering my overhead and making 20% profit.

The more my office grew, the more profit the office started to make. A great problem to have.

However, like many of you, I do not want to be a volume clinic. That’s not my goal at all.

As I grew busier, I noticed myself rushing between patient care, and even in some instances getting annoyed at some of my patients. Not a good thing.

Around June, I picked up one of my favorite books to this date: Book Yourself Solid.

Within the first chapters it told you to get rid of the “clients” in this case “patients” who robbed your energy, who zapped your emotions and who didn’t fit the avatar of your ideal client.

A horrible way to describe patient care considering we are in the healthcare business, but we can’t help everyone always.

As you grow into business, you can’t control every aspect of the type of patient that comes to see you. Even if they fit your avatar, they may zap your energy, bring down the mood in the office, and in the end make you feel like they are a burden. You have some control over this, but sometimes, enough is enough.

While I have fired patients for not showing up to appointments, for chronic-cancelling syndrome, and for being rude in the past, I had never fired patients because they were zapping my energy. I always gave them the best of me, but it started bleeding into my life at home.

The solution? Raise my rates.

I’ve raised rates since January 1st 2020. Usually with a 30-day notice in advance.

This time, I did it with a weeks notice.

A very aggressive move on my part.

I raised my new patient price by $20, and my recurrent visit by $5. Not a huge increase, but enough to make a difference in the type of patients who were coming in.

Within a month, I lost 15 patients - some cancelled their appointment as soon as I sent out the email, others were a no-call no-show and a few just didn’t reschedule after their last appointment.

Since then my office has grown exponentially - and if you know something about me, is I SUCK at marketing (I’m working on it).

After raising my rates a few things happened:

• The quality of patients showing up was higher

• The high level of quality care I was able to provide increased as I didn’t have to expend higher amounts of energy.

• Profit margins increased to 30% even after losing 15 patients in a month.

• Patient care stopped bleeding into my life at home.

Was I surprised?

Not really. This was the same outcome that occurred every time I raised my rates in the past.

“I’m in! But, how do I raise my rates, and by how much?”

Let’s dive into that.

A quick Google search will tell you anywhere between 2-20% of your current price.

Not bad, I try to stay within inflation averages, which is a number that you can easily find with a quick Google search.

If you look at inflation rates, they vary year per year. My rule of thumb is to increase New Patient prices by 5-10%, and Recurrent (follow up) Visits by 10-15%. Off course, I also take into consideration the patient demographic I am serving, the value I am providing, and in the end the profit margin I am looking for.

If you are in a very wealthy area were most businesses’ rates increase by 10-15% then, you are in a position were you can also increase your rates by 10-15%.

If you are in an area were most businesses’ rates increase only by 2-5% then, you have to take into consideration how strong your patient list is.

Take into consideration that during price increases there is an expected loss of patients anywhere from 10-20%.

The goal is to make up the lost revenue with additional profit from the price increase as you continue to grow and attract new patients. Ideally within the next 3 months.

Let’s say you’ve decided to play it SUPER conservatively and you only raise your rates 10% throughout.

Great! That’s a start.

If your new patient price is $150 - your new rate is $165.

If your recurrent visit is $50 - your new rate is $55.

It’s a good start.

Now it’s time to communicate this with your current patient list.

Here’s the exact email I use for my patients:

You can copy-paste the above and edit it to fit your audience.

I’ve found that keeping it simple and direct yields the best outcomes — just like in rehab.

You now know why you should raise your rates, by how much, and how to do it.

Now you simply need to take action.

If you haven’t raised your rates in the last year, plan on doing it in the next 30 days.

Let me know how it goes!

Have a great week!

In health and strength,