Remember that underearning is the pattern of earning below your potential. In order to avoid it, you must charge appropriately for your time and you must protect your time. If you are in a service based business, you must make sure your time stays filled with clients. It doesn’t matter if you always charge your full fee if you are plagued with no-shows and late cancellations. This requires two things: you must have a cancellation policy and you must enforce your cancellation policy.

Give every new client a written copy of your cancellation policy. It can be simple and included with other information, such as how to pay you. Here is mine:

Cancellation Policy: I require 48 hours to cancel your appointment. (This allows me to sometimes put other clients in your cancelled spot.) When possible, I will attempt to accommodate a moved appointment with less notice. But if the appointment cannot be moved to a different slot in the same week, this will count as a cancelled appointment if there was less then 48 hours notice. No shows and last minute cancellations will be billed at the full rate as a private session.

Feel free to use it. But here is a crucial point. It is not enough to simply hand new clients a form and have them sign it. You must point it out and talk about it. Give them examples. For instance, I say, “Yes, I really do have a two day cancellation policy so I can fill your spot. So if you are going to cancel on Wednesday, please let me know by Monday. And if you are not feeling well on Monday and think you MIGHT cancel your appointment, let me know what is going on…..”

You MUST talk about it. Out loud. But even that is not enough. Every January, I remind all my current clients about my cancellation policy. I give them the written policy again and tell them, “I know you already know my 2 day cancellation policy, but every January I give everyone a copy again…” (So they don’t think you are singling them out.)

Lately I’ve found that even THAT is not enough. People are very squirrelly lately with the economy. So last week I took a bright green stickie and wrote “48 hours” on it and put it in my appointment book. Every client that booked with me last week received a verbal reminder about my cancellation policy. The stickie just reminded me to remind them. So tighten up your policy!