You're Not Underpaid...You're Just Afraid

Friends, it’s not controversial to state that appraisers have a variety of issues to address in their businesses, pricing being one of them; scaling, building systems, communication, diversification, and several others. But pricing is kind of a big one. If you think what I'm about to say is that you’re not charging what you’re worth, it's not.

That's lazy thinking. Some of you aren't worth what you're charging and some of you are worth double. But all of you share the same core problem: You've decided, consciously or not, that certain prices are acceptable in your market and certain prices aren't. And you're operating inside those boundaries like they're laws of physics instead of just opinions you never tested.

Your pricing problem, along with many of the other issues we need to address, is that you believe in limits that don't exist.

In this episode, we're talking about how the boundaries of what you believe is possible in your business are almost entirely self-imposed, how those boundaries keep you small and fighting for survival, and how to deliberately take control so you can charge more, work less, and build the business you actually said you wanted.

There's a concept in political science called the 'Overton Window', named after Joseph Overton, who worked at a policy think tank in my home state of Michigan back in the 1990s. Here's the core idea: at any given moment, there's a range of policies and ideas that the public considers acceptable. Some ideas are mainstream and uncontroversial. Some are radical and unthinkable. Most fall somewhere in between.

Sometimes we also refer to this as the Zeitgeist, which is a German word that means 'the spirit of the age' and refers to the dominant beliefs, mood, and cultural climate of a particular time in history.

The "window" that we're talking about that was named after Professor Overton is the window of what's politically acceptable and politically viable at the time. Politicians can only successfully propose ideas that fall within this window without being dismissed as extremists or lunatics. But here's the fascinating part and the part that is pertinent to the topic of this episode, that window moves.

As an example, twenty years ago, the idea of universal basic income was fringe, radical, almost unthinkable in mainstream American politics. Today? It's debated seriously on major news networks, has support from Silicon Valley billionaires and progressive politicians alike, and during the pandemic, we essentially experimented with it through stimulus checks. The Overton Window shifted.

Some other examples of this so called 'window' moving and changing with the times are the views on marijuana, same sex marriage, and cryptocurrency. In the 90's and early 2000's, marijuana was a taboo issue and getting caught with it landed many people in prison or careers ruined. Today, it's legal in half the country, medical marijuana is being prescribed almost everywhere and the window has moved.

Same sex marriage was widely opposed in the mid 90's, it's politically toxic to be opposed to it today. The window moved. Cryptocurrency in 2010 was this weird counterculture scam that only drug dealers and libertarians used, today politicians are talking about cryptocurrency policy, the government is creating its own crypto currency, and the current president and his sons have their own crypto exchange. The window moved.

Of course, the same thing has happened in reverse on other issues. Policies that were once considered mainstream, like supporting certain foreign interventions or specific approaches to criminal justice, have shifted outside the window of acceptable discourse for large segments of the population.

The interesting thing to note when talking about this Overton Windows is that the window doesn't move because the facts changed. It moves because what people believe is acceptable changes. And it changes because influential people, politicians, activists, media figures, influencers, and thought leaders, deliberately push at the edges.

They propose ideas slightly outside the current window. Those ideas get discussed, debated, normalized. What was once radical becomes acceptable. What was acceptable eventually becomes mainstream. The window shifts.

Now, you might be wondering what the hell this has to do with your appraisal business.

Everything. It has everything to do with your business and your life. It has everything to do with the results you're getting…or not getting.

You see, we all have our very own personal Overton Window for our life and business. It's the range of things that we believe, the things that are acceptable to us, the ideas and values we make use to make decisions daily. In our business, it’s the prices, terms, client types, and business models you believe are acceptable and viable in your market. And many of the things that created and define our own window were and are given to us by others.

And I'm telling you right now, because of that, your window is almost certainly too narrow.

Let me give you some examples of this from own business.

When I started my second appraisal company 20 years ago, I set me fees based on what I thought was acceptable to the market based on what everyone else charged and what my clients said was typical for them from other appraisers. Why wouldn’t I? Stay within that window and you get the business. Move outside of it too far or too fast and you lose the client.

In the financial crisis of 2009, everything changed. The window got narrower with the rise of AMCs, and my fees were cut in half almost overnight, as was my client list. What was an acceptable fee yesterday is no longer acceptable today. What was acceptable behavior yesterday was no longer acceptable today. The window moved.

And thank goodness it did because that was the moment that woke me up. That was the moment I started asking myself, 'Why?'. Why do they get to dictate what my work is worth? For that matter, why was I letting my competitors dictate what I was charging even before that?

And as I started to ask more questions about my business and my life at the time, I started to wake up to this idea that much of what we believe and then what we do is based on programming from the outside. Its programming from other people on what is acceptable and why. And I didn’t like that.

It's the moment I vowed everything must change lest I be whipsawed back and forth by what other people, often much dumber than I, believed about certain things. From that moment on, two of the most important questions I began to ask more seriously are 'why?', and 'who says so?'.

Why is this thing the way it is and who says this is the way it's supposed to be? Why does my business card have to look like this? Who said so? Why do I have to believe certain things about certain people, leaders, or even other countries? Who says so and what makes them the authority? Why do I have to behave a certain way to get approval from other people? Where does that come from and who says that's the way it has to be?

The window is built for us when we're very young and impressionable and it tends to stay a certain size for the majority of people throughout their lives, and for one primary reason: they never ask why. It becomes the literal frame through which we see and experience the world.

Like a real window in your home, it dictates what is being seen. It guides your eyes and brain to see what is being framed by the window and only what can be seen through that particular lens. You don’t know what's going on in the backyard by looking through the front picture window. And, if you believe that the front picture window is the only window that existed, you may never know that a backyard even exists.

Here's the problem: your Overton Window wasn't set by careful analysis, strategic thinking, or testing the limits. It was set by fear, by comparison, and whatever was happening when you started your business. You looked at what other appraisers were charging when you started. You charged a little less to be competitive. That became your baseline. Then that became "normal." Everything above that line became "risky." That's your window and that's where most people stay until they die, never asking 'why?'.

You heard someone complain about a high fee once at a conference. You internalized that. Now anything above that number feels dangerous. You had a client push back on price five years ago. You caved. Now you believe all clients will push back at that price.

You operate inside a window that was set by other people's opinions and belief systems, your own fears and limited beliefs, and maybe market conditions that might not even exist anymore.And because you never test the edges, you never learn where the actual boundaries are.

Let me be direct with you if I haven’t already: most of the limits you believe exist in your life and business are complete fiction created by someone else and likely someone who was given their beliefs systems by someone before them. All the way down that chain, beliefs about the world given to us by people who were too weak and scared to ask, 'why?' and 'says who?' and then go see for ourselves.

You think you can't charge $600 or $800 for a 1004. Someone in your market is charging $750 to $1000. You think you can't require five to seven day minimums. Someone in your market has a seven to ten day minimum and is busier than you and likely charging more.

Some of you think you need to be available nights and weekends. Someone in your market turns their phone off at 5pm and still has a full pipeline. In fact, they're turning business away. The difference isn't your market. It's your Overton Window.

Let's go back to politics for a minute because understanding how the window moves there will show you exactly how to move it in your business.

In politics, the Overton Window shifts through a deliberate process. Someone proposes something just outside the current window, not so far that it's immediately rejected, but far enough that it expands what's considered possible.

Let's take marijuana legalization as an example. Thirty years ago, suggesting recreational marijuana should be legal was political suicide in most of America. It was outside the Overton Window entirely.But advocates didn't give up. They started by pushing for medical marijuana. That was just barely inside the window for some voters. "It helps sick people" is a lot more palatable than saying "People should be able to get high legally."

Medical marijuana became acceptable in more and more states. The window shifted. Suddenly, decriminalization became a viable conversation. Not full legalization, just reducing the penalties associated with it, that became mainstream.What naturally followed was recreational legalization in a few progressive states. What was once unthinkable became a legitimate state-level policy. Now it's mainstream in over 20 states and you see it debated at the federal level.

The window moved. Not because the facts about marijuana changed. But because enough people pushed at the edge long enough that what was once radical became normal.

Same thing with same-sex marriage. Same thing with conversations about universal healthcare. Same thing with remote work becoming standard practice after the pandemic.The window moves when people act as if the new boundary is already acceptable.

Here's how this applies to your business:

You don't expand your Overton Window by asking permission. You expand it first by asking 'why?' and 'who says so?' about everything in your business and then by acting as if the new boundary is already normal.

If you want to charge $650 for a 1004, you don't ask potential clients, "Would you be willing to pay $650?" You quote $650 like it's the most obvious price in the world. You embody the new standard and do it with confidence. If you want a seven-day minimum turnaround, you don't apologize for it in your engagement letter. You state it clearly and move on.If you want to stop working weekends, you don't give clients a long explanation about work-life balance. You just don't answer the phone on Saturdays.

Your window moves and expands when you behave as if it's already moved.

Let me give you a framework for deliberately expanding your Overton Window in your business. I'm calling this the Window-Shift Protocol, and it has three steps:

Step 1: Identify Your Current Window

Write down the answers to these questions:

- What's the highest fee I currently charge for a standard 1004?

- What's the longest turnaround time I'm comfortable requiring?

- What's the most demanding client request I'll say yes to?

- What's the lowest-value work I'm still doing?

- What's the worst thing that could happen if I start saying 'no' and demanding more?

And, of course, be sure to answer the questions 'why?' and 'who said so?' with each of those questions. Until you start getting to the bottom of who created these imaginary walls for you and why they were given the authority to do so by you, you'll never change and experience all the things that can experienced be once you throw off the shackles placed upon you by others long ago.

Those answers will start to define your current window or the frame through which you see the world and believe is acceptable and thus, how you make decisions.

Step 2: Next to each answer, write what you think would happen if you pushed that boundary by 20%. "If I charged $550 instead of $450, I think..." Then write it out and be honest. Most of you will write things like "I'd lose half my clients" or "No one would hire me" or "I'd have to explain myself constantly."

That's fear talking and it's probably wrong.This is critical, friends. You need evidence that your current window is artificially narrow.

Step 3: Go find three appraisers in markets similar to yours who are doing what you think is impossible:

- Charging significantly more than you

- Requiring longer turnarounds than you

- Saying no to things you say yes to

- Operating with business models you think won't work

I promise you they exist because I work with them every day and their existence is proof that your Overton Window is too small. Remember, much of what we believe is acceptable has been given to us by others and much of it is wrong, at least for you.

When I work with coaching students on this, I literally make them do the research. Find the appraiser charging $800 for the work you charge $500 for. Call them if you have to and ask them how they built their business so you can learn that it's possible.

Because once you see proof that someone else operates outside your window and survives; thrives, even, it becomes real. It stops being theoretical. Even if you can't see yourself yet adopting all of the same new belief systems, the seed has been planted.

By the way, that's exactly why the Appraiser Increase Academy exists. I have been coaching and teaching people for 30+ years now how to expand their thinking and belief systems so that they can do more, be more, live more and give more. I created the Increase Academy community and coaching material to raise the belief systems of appraisers just like you to see that much of what you've been doing was given to you by others and, in many ways, limiting what you can do, have, and experience.

Go to www.CoachBlaine.com/freemonth and you'll see a community of appraisers doing things that the vast majority simply aren’t doing because they don’t believe it's possible. It's a progressive group, by the way. If you're not ready to hear stories of people leveraging AI, charging way more than their competitors, taking more time off, and actually building appraisal companies the way they should be built and run, don’t go there, it's not for you.

Here's where most people screw this up. They hear this stuff and then they try to jump from $450 to $750 overnight. That's too big a leap. It's like all of these YouTube videos with thumbnails talking about going from $5000 a month to $50,000 a month with one little trick. I just saw one video with a famous tech guru, Dan Martell, and the thumbnail said, "Make $850,000 per Month".

Is it possible to make $850,000 per month? Of course it is! Will your brain believe that when you barely made $8000 last month? No! of course not! That's not the way any of this works. Your Overton Window does not believe that's even possible so, if all of the sudden you tried to go from $8,000 per month to 100X that; you'll sabotage, you'll mess up and eventually give up and claim it's impossible.

You don’t go from $450 to $750 overnight. Instead, you push the edge incrementally.If you're at $450, go to $500. Not $750.You have to ease your past boundaries into the expansion. Go to $500 for 3 or 4 months and then, on just one or two conversations, throw out a $550 price and test it. By 'test it', I don’t just mean test how it goes over with the customer, I mean test it to see how much fear you have inside of you when you say it.

Every time you push the boundaries on an embedded belief system, you're going to run into resistance. That’s the body and mind's way of maintaining stability and equilibrium. Get too far out over your skis, so to speak, and your body and mind rebel. But that's exactly what is required if you're ever to grow.

Start from where you are and push it just a little bit. You'll win some and you'll lose some, but, more importantly, you'll be moving and expanding your own Overton Window to such a degree that you and your business may be unrecognizable in one year.

If you're working weekends, stop working Sundays first. Then Saturdays a month later. You don’t have to go full weekend off the next day. Start small and gradually increase. You're testing the edges and boundaries that you have and you're normalizing the idea that your boundaries can move and that its ok. You have to prove to yourself that it's ok to do that and that you'll be safe.

And here's what you'll learn: most of the catastrophe you imagined won't happen.Some clients will accept the new price without blinking.Some will grumble but they'll pay anyway. And a few will leave and you'll realize they may have been the wrong clients anyway. The window shifts because you acted like it already had. You have to believe it to some degree first, then take some action to reinforce the belief, and then, when you get positive feedback from the market, you realize you've been in a prison of your own making for a long time.

Once you've pushed the edge and survived, you normalize and your price becomes your standard price. You stop apologizing for it and stop explaining it. It's just what you charge. Never complain, never explain. Now you have your new baseline. Your Overton Window just expanded.Then you do it again.

$500 becomes normal. A few months later, $550. Then $600.

You're not trying to make one massive leap. You're moving the window incrementally, consistently, until what was once "unthinkable" is now your baseline. You'll get to the point where anything in the $400 or $450 range pisses you off. What was normal and baseline for you last year will become the absolute basement for you this year.

I'm going to say something I've said many times before and it might sting a little: the real reason your business hasn't grown the way you want isn't your market, your competition, AMCs, or some external force. It's that you've accepted a window of acceptable possibilities that's way too narrow. And you're operating inside that window like it's some kind of law of nature. It's not a law of nature, but it is a psychological and emotional framework that keeps your brain from seeing anything outside of that narrow window.

Someone in a market worse than yours is charging more than you and thriving.Someone with less experience than you has better boundaries and more freedom.Someone who started later than you has built something bigger because they refused to accept the limitations you internalized.The only difference is their Overton Window.They believe different things are possible, so they test them and they learn that most of the boundaries were imaginary.

Let me give you a real example from one of our coaching members: She's in a fairly rural market. Small town, limited demand, lots of competition. By every conventional measure, she should be scraping by charging bottom-tier prices just to survive.

When we started working together, she was charging $375 for a standard 1004. She told me, "That's just what the market is here." She said, "If I charge more, I lose to the guy down the street."I asked her, "What would happen if you charged $475?"She laughed and said, "I'd go out of business!"I said, "Let's test that."

I asked her to raise her fee to $425 for new clients and all private appraisals. Keep existing clients at $375 to soften the transition, but anything new that comes your way, start pushing the boundaries. I also reminded her that, with this particular kind of exercise, you’re not just testing your market and pushing those boundaries, we're pushing our own edges and boundaries to see where the internal resistance exists. Where there is anxiety, fear, and a change in your voice when you say the new price.

Know what happened?Half her new inquiries still hired her. The other half didn’t, likely going to the cheaper competition in the market. But here's the math: she was doing between 30 and 40 appraisals a month at $375. Now she's averaging 25 appraisals a month at $475.

If you run those numbers, you'd say she's losing money.

·Old revenue: $15,000/month

·New revenue: $11,875/month

Except she's working 30% fewer hours, which is massive! Her dollars per hour have increased almost 50%, which is something almost none of you consider when you're doing the fee math. She has time to take on higher-value estate and litigation work that she was too busy to pursue before. She's less burned out, her work quality improved, more importantly, her quality of life improved.

Is it the end of her story? Of course not! Trust me when I tell you once you start moving your Overton Window, it becomes like a drug. You'll want to experiment everywhere you can and with every belief and boundary you have. A mere three months after we started this little experiment, she raised her fee again to $525 and has expanded her non-lending work at even higher fees. The market didn't change, her Overton Window did.

Friends, here's what I need you to understand: the limits you're operating under right now are almost entirely in your head. You think you can't charge more because you've never charged more. You think you can't charge more because you work with clients who send you orders with the fee already on it. Your brain accepts that as law with no room to push back. You think you can't require better terms because you've never required better terms. You think you can't say no because you've always said yes.But the only way you learn where the actual boundaries are is by testing them.

And when you test them, you'll learn something uncomfortable: most of the boundaries you thought were real don't exist.The clients who won't pay your higher fee? They were going to be a problem anyway.The work you thought you had to take? There's better work out there if you make room for it.The market conditions you think make growth impossible? Someone else in a worse market is thriving.Your Overton Window is too small and it's costing you money, time, and freedom.

So, let me give you something concrete to do this week:

Day 1: Write down three things you currently believe are impossible in your business. "I can't charge more than $X." "I can't require more than Y days." "I can't turn down Z type of client." "I can't handle more than X orders in a week." Write down everything that bubbles up during this exercise.

Day 2: Find proof that someone else is doing what you think is impossible. Google appraisers in similar markets. Ask in appraiser groups. Find the person operating outside your window. By the way, if you don’t have connections in your market to do that, that should be a red flag and another Overton Window example of how you've limited yourself.

Day 3: Pick one boundary to push. Raise your fee by $50 for new clients. Add a 5-7 day minimum to your engagement letter. Stop checking email after 6pm. Stop working at noon on Saturdays. Do five pushups.

Days 4-7: Freakin' Do it. Don't ask permission. Don't complain, don’t explain, and for goodness sakes, do not apologize. Just implement the new boundary and see what happens.I promise you, none of the catastrophe you're imagining won't materialize.

Some clients will accept it without question.Some will grumble but adjust.A few might leave and you'll replace them with better clients who respect your boundaries.Your Overton Window will expand and six months from now, what feels scary today will feel normal and it will be your new baseline. Then you'll push the edge again.

Here's the ultimate truth about the Overton Window in your business:The only entity enforcing your current limits is you.The market isn't stopping you. Your clients aren't stopping you. The economy isn't stopping you. You're stopping you.Because you believe certain things are acceptable and certain things aren't. And you've never tested whether that belief is actually true.

The most successful entrepreneurs I know, the ones making multiple six figures, working reasonable hours, building businesses they could sell, creating multiple streams of income; they all did one thing differently than everyone else:They refused to accept the window everyone else was operating in.They charged more when everyone said they couldn't.They required better terms when everyone said clients wouldn't accept it.They said no when everyone else said yes.And they learned that most of the boundaries were imaginary.

Your Overton Window is too narrow. The question is: what are you going to do about it?Nothing changes until you test the edge.Nothing grows until you expand what you believe is possible.And nothing improves until you stop operating inside limits that don't actually exist.The window will move when you move it. So move it.

Until next time, do more, be more, live more, give more.