How to Make Your Psychedelic Business Accessible in an Ethical and Sustainable Way
Accessibility is one of the latest buzzwords in our community right now, and it brings a good point.
Peeling back our onion layers to dive deeper into our own healing journey with psychedelic medicine should be accessible to all, including those in underserved communities like the indigenous, BIPOC and LGBTQ+.
Not just to the upper class who can afford to splurge on a 10-day luxury Ayahuasca retreat in Costa Rica twice a year.
So naturally, these questions came up:
- Is it possible to be accessible while ethically operating a financially sustainable business?
- If it is possible, how do we do this? Why aren’t more organizations out there adopting this approach?
Well, I don’t have the answers, but I’m happy to share my thoughts with you.
What is Accessibility?
First, let’s get on the same page and define what accessibility means.
According to the Oxford Dictionary, being accessible means “the quality of being easy to obtain or use.”
To me, applying that definition to psychedelics would mean that the medicine and everything else related to it — services or products — is 1) financially affordable, 2) legally attainable, and 3) physically available.
Let’s take a moment to acknowledge and pay respect to the indigenous tribes and traditions that pioneered sacred medicine centuries ago.
Without them paving the way, psychedelics wouldn’t be as progressed as it is today.
Therefore, practicing indigenous reciprocity is one of the best ways for us to give back and help them achieve the highest level of access.
How do we do that?
Well, there are programs like Indigenous Reciprocity Initiative run by Chacruna where people can donate to support retreats that directly work with indigenous people.
Q: How do you define accessibility? Comment below to start a dialogue with us!
Why Is It Important?
I’m a firm believer that businesses are more productive in creating social change than the government.
Take our budding industry, for example.
The public has had a demand for psychedelics for decades now.
Did entrepreneurs get creative and build the infrastructure to grow, make and deliver the supply years before any political party caught up with legal changes?
Yes, we did!
(And our government still has yet to make massive updates to our conservative laws.)
So, if we really want to move the needle and catapult the psychedelic renaissance into the 21st century, then we should want businesses in our nascent market to flourish so that we can serve more people.
To do that, we need to be more accessible to the general public because:
- Not everyone can afford it — Eg. A single 60-minute private psychedelic integration session can cost upwards of $200
- Services may not be reimbursed — Eg. Most medical insurance don’t 100% cover treatments at Ketamine clinics
- Underserved communities can be lifted through education — Being BIPOC myself, I can attest to the social stigma attached to these “drugs” growing up and the lack of awareness in my cultural sphere.
- Rising mental health concerns from COVID — Eg. the social isolation, getting laid off, restricted freedom to travel, negative media everywhere, languishing by Adam Grant, need I say more?
- We all need healing — It doesn’t matter what stage in life we’re in or what socioeconomic status we hold, when one person heals so do we all. That’s what it means to be part of the collective.
So now that we established the ultimate goal is to provide equal access to healing for people from all walks of life, let’s talk about some trends I’m seeing in our space.
Q: Why is accessibility important to you? How do you incorporate it into your business? Share your thoughts with us below.
Five Accessibility Trends
I see that many of us share the same goal, and we’re doing things in our own way to provide that to people regardless of their income status by adopting some of these trends.
Here’s my take on each trend I see. If you have a different opinion or want to add a trend, please let us know in the comments section below.
1 — Sliding Scale Payment
Really what this is is a donation.
This is a perfectly good way to run a charity where you can fall back on an ample amount of funding from the government or big-name sponsors. Unfortunately, it’s not a sustainable way to run a business.
Pros:
- It’s great for the budget-conscious
- It gives people the flexibility in where they spend their money
- People can likely get a high-value service for less than market price
- It allows you — the business owner — to feel good about giving back to those who cannot afford your services or product
Cons:
- It’s difficult for you to predict future cash flow, therefore hard to reinvest in and grow your business
- People may start to perceive your services as low value and not take your work seriously
- You’re practicing price discrimination, being unfair and unethical :(
- You may be unintentionally conditioning people to remain helpless
The last two bullets may be confusing or triggering — let me explain.
It’s an economical concept called price discrimination. It’s not illegal per say, but I think it is discriminatory, unfair and unethical, even if it is unintentional, to have people pay you different prices for the same thing.
For example, if you and I both went to the same psychedelic therapist, and we both bought exactly 1 x 60-minute session with the person for the same type of therapy.
You paid $350 and found out that I only paid $90, wouldn’t you be a bit upset at the $260 price difference?
(I would!)
On a related note, sliding scale payment also conditions people to remain helpless.
Let’s take the same example as above.
When people have certain circumstances that allow them access to your services at $90 — a cheaper rate, why would they change so that they pay more for the same thing?!
As New York Times bestselling authors, Dr. H. Cloud & Dr. J. Townsend, wrote in their iconic book Boundaries:
“We change our behaviour when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing. Consequences give us the pain that motivates us to change.”
2 — Karma Exchange
This is volunteering.
Back in the day, I saw a lot of yoga studios participate in this — exchanging a 4-hour shift once a week for free yoga classes.
It wasn’t a bad deal when I was still a student and had the time to spare.
But when I graduated and started working, my time became scarce, and it just didn’t make sense to continue volunteering anymore.
Pros:
- People can get things for free!
- A safe place for people to learn as expectations are low
- Works well for people with flexible schedules
- Free labour for the business owner
Cons:
- Unpredictable, non-committal workforce with high turnover
- Inconsistent quality of service or product
- Time-consuming for businesses to recruit and train talent regularly
- Potentially stuck with tedious, repetitive tasks to do
At the end of the day, the energy exchange is seldom equal.
The imbalance drives the potential non-committal, unreliable nature of labour, which means it’s not a sustainable model to run a business.
Sure, you can argue that if your Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are solidly in place, you won’t have to spend so much time training new recruits.
However, I rarely see organizations, even publicly-traded, multi-national organizations that I’ve worked in, have all their t’s crossed and i’s dotted.
Even if your SOPs are tight, whenever someone leaves, they take their knowledge, history and connections built on behalf of your business with them.
3 — Trade or Barter
This one is pretty straightforward to understand.
A similar concept to Karma Exchange above, except there, is more accountability on both parties.
For example, X gives Y a 60-minute massage and Y gives X a 60-minute Personal Training session in exchange.
Pros:
- You get services or products for free
- You’re working with another professional, so a certain level of quality can be expected
Cons:
- People usually want to take payment instead of trade and barter
- It’s hard to find things of equal value to trade — isn’t this why money was invented?
- These trades are usually not for the long term
- A lot of trust needs to be formed beforehand
I remember this bartering app called Bunz that I was a raving fan of a few years back.
I traded everything from clothes to jewellery to a sewing machine to a diffuser. In exchange, I received herbal plants, baked goods and art therapy sessions to name a few.
It was definitely fun and an economical way to recycle the things I no longer need while getting things I want.
However, I do not see how a business can survive on the bartering system. Even if you did that on occasion, it would come with more headaches than if you just paid to get the goods.
Why?
Because most of my trades were not equal exchanges.
I gave things away for free — they were personal items I didn’t want anymore, so it didn’t matter if I was “losing out”.
It would be a different story if my livelihood depended on it.
4 — Asking Others To Donate
Although there are very generous people out there who would foot the bill for others, they are few and far between.
Unless you’re a well-known, nonprofit organization that’s devoted to a publicly-backed cause, like cancer research, I wouldn’t count on this method to stay afloat in your business.
Pros:
- A special someone gets a product or service for free
- You have a donation program that both you and donors can feel good about
- You still get your cost covered
Cons:
- It’s inconsistent — you never know how much or how often people will donate
- Extra admin work to show fairness and transparency
- Donors may expect you to issue a tax receipt
Oftentimes, this is how I see businesses run their donation program.
Some simple text about supporting their cause without detailed explanation of how exactly they use donor money or how people are chosen to receive the free service or product.
Here’s an example I pulled from a website:
“Donate today and support our mission to build community and make yoga accessible to all. Your generous donations help provide free and by-donation classes to our global community as well as scholarships to our aspiring teachers in training.”
The donate button redirects me to a simple PayPal.
5 — Charging Below Market
I noticed that a lot of mission-based businesses, especially first-time founders, tend to price themselves really low.
Too low.
Your business is an extension and reflection of you. From your daily operations to customer success to pricing structure and everything else in between.
Pros:
- You’re accessible!
Cons:
- Unequal exchange of energy
- Might feel taken advantage of or resentful over time
- You may not attract the clients you want
- Not enough profit generated to reinvest into and grow your business
Here are some questions to ponder:
- Are you undercharging?
- What made you pick your current pricing structure?
- What does how much you currently charge say about your self-worth?
- What’s the worst thing that can happen if you tell your clients you raised your prices by 15%?
Five Sustainable, Ethical Solutions
First and foremost, I want to remind us all that entrepreneurship is not a walk in the park.
There are many triggers and traumas this journey unearths. Childhood conditioning, especially surrounding money (or lack thereof) that needs to shift.
For example, the majority of our population has a bad relationship with money. That includes everything from not making enough money to not being able to keep money.
We’re not born with these limiting stories, we were taught by our family, and society enforced them over time
As a founder of a company, it’s essential that you become aware of how your relationship with money is and take action to guide it in the right direction.
Growing a business is a journey of massive self-learning, self-discovering and mental fortitude. I would argue that entrepreneurship can be a type of medicine on its own.
So, how do we give access to those in need as much as possible without compromising on ethics, fairness and sustainability?
Again, I don’t have the answers…but here are some suggestions that may work for you if you keep in mind these two golden rules:
- Prices can’t be lowered to the point where it compromises the quality of your product/service
- Prices can’t be lowered to the point where it compromises the sustainability of the business model.
A — Standardization
It means Client A, Client B, and all the way to Client Z get the same thing when they purchase Product 1.
This way you know:
- what exactly is in your product
- how long it’ll take for you to produce
- how much it costs for you to produce
- how much you’ll profit each time someone purchases
Not only does this help you develop a standard of quality and predict cash flow, but once you get more efficient, your production time and cost decrease.
Yes, personalization is important, and you can still bake it into a standardized product to a certain degree.
For example:
Let’s say your core product is a 4-week online, pre-recorded course. It comes with weekly live coaching calls, assigned exercises and homework and a private community where you can get support from your peers. You price this valuable offer at $1000.
Every time you run this course, you know:
- Your container is 4 weeks long
- Your weekly time commitment is 5–7 hours for community management and live calls (here is where you can personalize, by the way)
- Everyone paid the same amount ($1000) to be in the course
- Let’s say it costs you $300 per person to run it for 4 weeks. This time around, 5 people joined. Your profit is $1000 x 5 = $5000 — ($300 x 5) = $3500
Based on these numbers, you’ll have an idea of what to optimize in your evergreen funnel.
For those who aren’t familiar with a funnel, this is the concept:
It’s a blueprint of your entire business — from how you attract traffic to all the services, and products you offer to how you keep your audience engaged post-purchase and more.
It’s an automated system that takes someone who doesn’t know you or your business and turns them into a superfan.
B — Use Technology
This means, instead of paying for manual labour to do repetitive tasks, automate it with software so that you can pass on the cost savings to your clients.
There are so many tools that you can try for free for things like email marketing, calendars, landing pages that there’s no reason not to use them.
For example, if you’re a psychedelic therapist:
Stop manually sending out and confirming calendar appointments to every client for the following week.
Instead, ask your clients to book a time in your online calendar and have that tool automatically send out reminders for you with the meeting link attached.
This way, you can free up your or your staff’s time to build out or optimize your funnel instead.
Why is optimization important?
Because a properly working funnel will attract more qualified leads, help you build the community you envision, and allow you to refocus your time on what you do best — helping humanity move forward through the magic work of psychedelics!
C — Smaller Servings
You can shave off the cost by chunking down your current offering because it would take less material or time to produce.
Let’s continue with the previous example above:
Instead of the 4-week course, you can chop it down into a smaller version. You can strip away and restructure it as a 2-day weekend workshop.
Now, they probably wouldn’t have access to live coaching after the weekend. They probably wouldn’t get all the assigned exercises and homework. And, you can still offer them access to the private community so they can be with like-minded people.
Perhaps, you price this weekend workshop at $300.
Now, you have two different offers: $1000 for a 4-week course versus $300 for a 2-day workshop.
In this situation, I would highly recommend you to position your new workshop as a tripwire offer in your funnel.
A tripwire is a smaller, lower ticket offer that leads up to your core product. Its’ purpose is to give your audience a taste of what’s to come.
D — Shared Access
This is suitable for things that will be there regardless of whether 0 or 100 people are actively using it.
For example:
Access to a public or private community.
Given that things are already set up — welcome posts, member directory, discussion forum…etc. — you can offer it at a relatively low price point or as a complimentary gift.
Especially if the platform you’re using is free and most of the content is user-generated, it shouldn’t cost you much to add another user.
There are plenty of free Facebook or Signal groups alive and well.
If you’re offering free access to your community, use it as a lead magnet in your funnel.
A lead magnet is something you use to attract leads to you in exchange for, usually, an email address.
This way, you can grow your email list — and not be at the mercy of algorithm changes on social platforms — and deepen your relationship with your audience with regular communication.
E — Pay-Per-Use
As simple as it sounds. Allow people to pay only when they use it.
For example:
Think of integration circles. Perhaps you charge $10 per circle, or you offer a 10-session package for $80. That drops it down to $8 per circle for them.
They feel good because it’s cheaper than the regular drop-in fee. You feel good because you encourage people to come in more often. You can also put an expiry date on it to motivate them to use it up quicker.
Oftentimes, people think pricing is decided by how much it costs you to produce the offer X a multiple. Or they look at what 3–5 colleagues in the same niche are charging and calculate the average. Or charge what they think they’re worth.
When you’re in the business of transforming lives, like many of us are in the psychedelic space, these cookie-cutter templates don’t work as well anymore.
Instead, what I suggest is charging the value of your offer.
Value is tricky to figure out because it’s subjective based on who you ask, but not impossible to find out. It all depends on how well you know your audience.
That wraps up our article on the pros and cons of the current five accessibility trends I see and five sustainable, ethical solutions to consider implementing into your evergreen funnel instead.
As a reminder, for these solutions to work, prices can’t be lowered to the point where it compromises:
- the quality of your product or service
- the sustainability of the business model
What do you think about these 5 trends? How can you see these solutions working in your business? Do you know any other trends we’ve missed?
Let us know below!
