Sometimes in business we realize that we are heading in the wrong direction and we either need to (A) jump ship. OR (B) Change the way we’re doing things.

This realization came to David Lano & myself while we were working on our Control Yours business last month. We realized that our current pricing structure was not designed for long term growth or future employee involvement (even though we were providing a hell of a deal to small businesses). Something needed to change.

Changing price is a tricky thing because of what it does to your brand (it can help it by making it look more exclusive, or it can hurt it by making you look like you are a money whore), and because of what it does with your current customers (if something isn’t added to your products/services and your price increases dramatically, it can really hurt your business because of how greedy it makes you look). $$ is a very emotional topic with individuals, and unfortunately for us, individuals run businesses, and businesses are our clients.

David and I took an approach that you may have seen many times over and we believe that it was the best thing for our business. We raised our rates from 75% (on our smallest package) to almost 300% (on our largest package). We have created different subscription packages that people can choose from (4 main packages), as well as offer different services within the different packages (to help differentiate between them). Before we were just including everything to everyone at one really cheap price, on our way to business suicide.

Did we gouge the current customers that were with us from the beginning and hit them with the 300% price increase right away? No, not even close…we “Grandfathered” them into our new pricing structure while keeping their current monthly pricing (and they will pay that same price until they either quit our services or upgrade to a new package). It’s a good deal for them since they were with us since the beginning, and because we didn’t burn them, they can and will remain fans of Control Yours.

If you’d like to take a look at our current site with changes in place, please copy and paste the following link into your browser [ https://www.controlyours.com ], click on the ‘details’ tab and choose ‘price’. If you have any constructive criticism for us (or just bitching & moaning), we are open and willing to receive it!

Thanks again & have an Awesome Day!
~Chais Meyer

Hello All!

We have recently redesigned our website for our business Control Yours. And as we went through and created new images, we also changed our pricing structure. We went a couple of different routes before we decided on the final one (if you want to see it, click on the details tab after you click on the link above).

So…Here are some vector boxes that were trial and error. Have them, use them, enjoy them…Just don’t sell them! Click on the sticker below for your download to start.

Until next time…Have an Awesome Day!
~Chais Meyer

I was talking with my business partner today David Lano about how we have been putting 10 - 15 hours a week into one of our businesses (Control Yours), and how that would be considered part time or less than part time. Normally when you invest only a small percentage of time into something (a hobby, business, relationship, etc.) you can’t put 100% of your focus on it. And not putting 100% in immediately sounded like a negative thing with us, like we weren’t trying hard enough or something, but was it really like that?

As we dug deeper into this topic we realized that if we would have put 100% of our focus on this one business (going after sales everyday, Building a lot of websites right away, etc.) we could have very well damaged ourselves more than we were helping ourselves.

With our business Control Yours, the online technology business that it is, there are a lot of little things that need to be just right before we jump the gun on other things. An example would be that we just found and are working out some kinks with managing our customer’s monthly subscription payments (being able to downgrade or upgrade our customer’s subscription services fluidly and easily for the our customers and us). If we would have sold 100 websites in the first month we were in business, it would have been a nightmare to transfer all the subscriptions to our new customer management system (mainly for our customers). Looking at this example, we see that we couldn’t have noticed this problem immediately and it had to be noticed by time and testing. Working part time on this business is allowing us to build a very secure and steady foundation (all marketing, financial, investment, and management aspects), and being that a lot of businesses fail because they don’t have a solid foundation…this seems pretty important!

Working for our businesses part time has actually allowed us to grow in business maturity and not be rushed into making rash decisions that might have haunted us for a long time. In that way, I am so glad that we have done things the way we have.

Don’t be afraid to start up slow…As long as you are progressively becoming with your life and your business, you’re always moving forward!
Have an Awesome Day!
~Chais Meyer