Best Ways To Take Payment
You have your first client and you’re ready to get paid. Now what? Cash, check, credit card, Venmo, PayPal…which payment option do you choose?
You want to be in control of the payment but you also want your client to rebook and feel comfortable. Even if you’re just starting out as a personal chef, it’s important to have a system in place so it’s easier for your business to grow. I break it down for you in this episode.
Listen to the episode to learn:
How to eliminate the barrier to getting booked
How to prove you’re a professional
How to help your client feel at ease
What to do when you need to split payments
Pros and cons of various payment methods
What I recommend and why
You want your clients to feel like they’re working with a professional. Use the tips from this episode to learn how!
Featured on this Episode:
Ready to book your next summer sizzling client? Click here for my guide on how to get your next 5 clients!
Interested in becoming Fully Booked? Check out my A-Z program on how to market, sell and set up your cooking practice so you can become fully booked - Join the Waitlist HERE. Course is scheduled to open mid-September 2022.
Take a listen to to podcast, and leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcast, take a screenshot of your review and a surprise will be headed your way!
-
Welcome to the chef with purpose podcast. With me, Stephanie Heller. Today we're talking about the best ways to take payment for your personal chef services. This is a fun one because I'm going to let you in on some the way you're taking payment is directly related to how you feel about money and how you feel about your business. But I'm going to lighten it up for you a little bit and give you some options so it doesn't have to feel that serious. So let's start out with the first simple truth. The truth about the best way to take payment is what is absolutely the easiest for your client. You want to make little or no barrier for them to book. You also want to be focusing on the client's convenience and not yourself. So many personal chefs I talk to say that they're losing money. That's why they don't take credit cards, and they're focusing on what they're losing and not what they're gaining. I can always tell the mindset of the chef and their business health when they either don't take credit cards at all or they're very slow to do it. Like, I have to convince them and, like, tell them they should totally do this, or they are consumed with the money that they're losing, not what they're gaining, like I said. Or maybe they sometimes think that it's too hard, or it's like a big tech issue that they just don't understand it. And lastly, sometimes I hear that they're worried about taxes or someone watching what they're doing because they really want to just hide all the money they make and not pay taxes. So those are some of the reasons or, like, the mindset that I can tell when chefs are having trouble getting clients. It's directly related to this. I know it might not seem like it, but this is kind of the underlying thread of why it may be hard for you to charge the price. You want to have consistent, amazing clients come reach out to you. So think of this as kind of the primer on money and taking payment, but I'll focus on actionable things that you can do to incorporate these in your business now. And I understand if you're feeling uncomfortable that you're not used to taking credit cards or you maybe are avoiding starting because you don't have lots of clients. And I'm putting it out in quotes, because your clients now start as what they are, and you want to have the systems in place to take on more clients. And if you're not having a great way to process payments, it will be harder for you to take on more clients as you grow. So I made some pro and con list. I'll just go through them with you and then share with you some things that you can do on your own. First one, taking a credit card really puts a message directly to the client. An unsaid message. And it says I'm professional. It says I take my business and service seriously. It also says I want this to be easy for you. And I think it also says I want you to feel comfortable. When I first started my business 13 years ago, I started just like you. I had no clients, obviously. My first client was my mom and my grandmother and I would go to their houses over and over and practice the whole entire service from going over the menu, sending it to them for review, going food shopping, presenting my food bill for reimbursement, to cooking all the food, packaging, labeling, cleaning up. Those were my first clients. Then I branched out to friends of friends and then I got real clients after that. But I wanted to say to them in the beginning that I'm professional and I take it seriously. But I did not want to lose money on using credit cards because I thought it is unnecessary. That why would I lose another 1020 $30 when they could just write me a check or they could just send me the money through PayPal or some other forum. But it really says something to the client when you take credit card. And it is almost this like unsaid sense of ease that you give them that you're willing to run your business in a way that benefits them. So here's how a credit card helps you as the chef and as the business owner. It helps you have reoccurring clients because you can have their credit card on file. I'll go over that in a little bit and plan on them continuing to book you and be a client. It takes the future work off of constantly having to ask for payment or having them to pay something. It also helps you to track your finances because you can always log in and see what was charged. You can get reports and it gives you something to be proud of. It's really like a moment when you set up your payment processor and you set up your business bank accounts. It's a real business and you're going to have lots of paying clients if you maybe you have a few and but you'll have a lot, lot more. It's a very proud moment for you. It also lets you build your credit as a business owner. And you can have the money from the credit card that you get deposited right into your business checking account. This is kind of a sneaky, forced way to separate your business and personal finance. Another thing that lots of chefs leave to the end or don't even address at all. Also, a credit card helps you because it is an easy way to refund people or give them a partial refund. And you think that that's not going to happen for you, but you always want to have it be an easy, seamless way, because these are all normal parts of business that happen to everybody who makes lots of money and has lots of clients. So here's why clients want this. Clients want to pay by credit card. How do we know this? First of all, we live in an almost completely digital age. I personally almost never touch cash, ever. I don't even have cash in my wallet. I don't have coins. I literally live with cards only, not on credit. But like with my debit card, I just don't use cash for anything. And I know a lot of people feel the same way. So it creates safety for the client to buy. It also lets them split payment with several people. If you have a dinner party with, we would have dinner parties for a lot of bachelorettes and guys, golf weekends that came to Scottsdale. And there would be like ten or twelve girls in one house and they would all want to be paying separately, like all sorts of craziness. And you can literally take twelve different credit cards and it only takes you a couple more minutes to set that up. Or if like a third party is paying, sometimes big fish like athletes and celebrities and major CEOs will have a third party managing their finances and that third party can pay through them on a credit card. Not a big deal. Why clients also want this is they can give you a deposit that you can auto charge later with their permission. So let's say somebody is booking a dinner party. It's $1,000 and you're taking a 50% down payment. You could charge the $500 right away when they book and then let's say 30 days later if it's in the contract, you already have their card on file. You just make the second payment. You don't even have to tell them again. You have their permission ahead of time. They know they're going to be charged this, but they're not making a payment decision. Again, they're not spending time on this. They're not using their brain power. You're making it easy for them. Last reason of why clients want this is it gives them a third party to engage with if there's an issue. Think about it. The credit card kind of serves as an intermediary third party that gets the money on your behalf and then deposits it to you. So if they don't have that safety, then they may be less likely to buy or to use you for larger and larger things like expensive dinner parties, small weddings, stuff like that. I know we recently bought some furniture from a place. It was like the most expensive furniture we've ever bought. And they had offered us to not pay by credit card and do a wire transfer for a certain percentage off. Like we would get, I don't know what it was, the sales tax off, it was a couple of $100. But I said to myself, if something happens with this furniture or we don't get it or it's damaged or the place goes out of business, we'll have nobody to help us recover our money. So I was willing to pay that three or $400 in fees just to use my credit card because it created safety for me as the buyer. Your sale prices will be likely a little bit lower, maybe a couple of $100, or even if you're doing high end dinner parties, $1,000. Your client still wants the safety to buy. This gives them a third party to engage with. So here are some other reasons. If I haven't sold you yet on why to use credit cards, I'm going to go and order from the least attractive to the most. Okay? Actually, I didn't even add cash in here because cash is probably the most attractive to you as the provider, and it might be for the client. I actually had a client once who this is in the way beginning, I was in like, maybe my second year of business, and he would only pay me in cash. So I put it in a wad in my closet. I never deposited it, and I made thousands and thousands of dollars, but I never put in a bank account, so I couldn't build my credit with it. That is probably the least attractive to me at this point. The second would be a check. Here's why I don't love check. They can bounce, they're slow, and it is a barrier to them booking quickly. Nobody wants to mail you a check or wait to start service until you get payments. It's just a slow barrier to entry. The second, and I'm going from least attractive to most attractive, would be something like Venmo or PayPal. To me, it's just really unprofessional. Venmo is like how you pay your babysitter or how you buy, like, junk online. It's not how you pay your personal chef. PayPal some systems and PayPal you can ask for payment or send an invoice, but not that like direct transfer where you're pretending you're not a service so you don't have to pay fees. The next way would be sending an invoice that they can pay online. You can do this through, like, Square or Fresh books. PayPal has that. Wave has that. This is okay. It's again, not my favorite. I know a lot of people do this because it's easy to set up and it's basically almost free. You're still paying the fee of the credit card processing, but you're not in control of when they pay. My favorite and how I run my business for the last ten years. The first three years I didn't do this, but the last ten years I did. We used Stripe and we kept their credit card on file because I wanted to be in control of when they paid. They agreed for their service. They signed an authorization that we can collect their credit card info, and then we would add it to Stripe and destroy the credit card number, so we didn't have access to it or see it. We could only see the last four digits in Stripe. And that's how a lot of credit card processors work. You don't have access to it. The way I like this the most is you're in control of the payments. If they agree to service and they're booking you, then you just go charge their card. If the service is over and you present their food bill, and you could say, okay, I'm charging your card on Friday. And they're like, sounds great. And you get in a rhythm of that. It just makes it so much easier for you and the business owner I'm sorry, you and the client at the same time. Also why I like Stripe is there is no monthly fee, so we only pay with the cards we're processing and the money we're receiving. So if, like, when I didn't have chefs work for me and I would go away and I had no clients, I would not be paying a fee. So I like that part of it. Let's wrap this up with getting to know your real reasons of why you're not taking a credit card yet or why you think it's a problem, and then just asking yourself Why? And also, what does my client really want? Is it easier for them to pay by credit card? Or like, why am I so scared to be losing ten or $12 when I could be making $300? So we also want to go toward automating what you can. This is the same reason why I like Stripe. It's automated. The client really does nothing. We on the back end administratively, will do the work. And you also want to think about this for signing documents, like having your client services agreement with Hello Sign or DocuSign or something like 17 hats that they can just do online. And in the same vein, we also have their food questionnaire that they can fill out online as well. So if you find yourself blocking at the price or rolling your eyes when I say, like, why aren't you taking a credit card? Think about what you're losing instead of gaining. Like you're concentrating on losing the ten or $12 fee or maybe a $50 fee or $100 fee, like I've had for several thousand dollars retreats that I've done for people. I've spent hundreds of dollars in credit card fees, but I gladly do it because it's easier for the client. They feel safe to buy. It's really professional, and they come back excited and they know, like, they know what they're doing, and I'm so glad I booked them. So when you're thinking about taking payment and you're worried about credit cards, or you think, I don't have enough clients to take credit cards now, or I don't want to deal with this right now, start to think about the future in three months, in six months, how do you want to be taking clients, how do you want to be charging them? Reoccurring. Because you're going to have lots of reoccurring clients. Especially if you join my program, the Personal Chef's Secret to fully Booked. But you don't just want to plan for the business you have right now or the side hustle you have right now. You want a plan for the business that you are creating for the future. If you know you're going to have four or five clients a week, all with different credit cards and addresses and tracking their payment, you want to set it up the easiest way possible. And we call this working smarter, not harder. Alright guys, I hope you love this one. I will see you soon. Have a beautiful week. Bye.