Undercharging Isn't a Pricing Problem

A woman I work with runs a creative services business that includes physical inventory. She's been doing it for five years, is good at it, and her clients tell her so. More than one client has casually mentioned, without meaning anything by it, that other companies charge thousands of dollars more for the same work.

So she knows. She has known for a long time that her prices are low, and she has been able to name the exact figure they should be. Knowing it changed nothing for years, which is the part worth paying attention to.

The Belief Underneath the Number

When we talked about why the prices stayed where they were, the answer had nothing to do with the market or her competition. In her own words, she struggles to justify saying her knowledge is worth it because she has no formal education, and she feels like she's out here winging it. That's not a pricing strategy. That's a belief about whether she's allowed to charge like someone who knows what she's doing.

This is the part most business advice skips. There's no shortage of guidance on calculating your rates, determining your margins, and positioning against competitors. All of that assumes the number is the problem. But she didn't have a math problem; she had a permission problem, and no amount of market research resolves a permission problem.

It's worth noticing how the belief protects itself, too. Every year she doesn't raise her prices becomes more evidence that she isn't the kind of person who charges more, and the longer the number sits there, the more it starts to feel like a fact about her rather than a decision she once made and never revisited.

I Did the Same Thing for Three Years

I'm not writing this from above it. I ran my business for three full years without raising my rates, and I can tell you exactly what I told myself each year because I believed it then.

For the first two years, my reasoning was that I hadn't coached enough women yet to justify a raise. I was counting, quietly, and the number never seemed high enough. By the third year, the story had changed shape, and it became a fear that raising my rate would mean fewer women would say yes. Underneath both versions was the same doubt she named: a quiet uncertainty about whether I'd earned it, measured in years and in how many people I'd worked with.

None of that was a business calculation. It looked like caution and felt responsible, but it was really a belief about my own value wearing the mask of prudence. That distinction matters because you can't fix a belief with a spreadsheet, and I spent three years trying.

This year, I raised my rate and immediately had women say yes to the new price. Those who were right for the work didn't hesitate. The fear I'd been managing for three years turned out to be about a group of people who were never going to be my clients anyway.

What Actually Changes the Price

My client is charging more now. She hasn't rebuilt her business, earned a credential, or found a new market, and nothing about the underlying work has changed. What has shifted is that she stopped treating the absence of a certificate as a verdict on whether her five years of experience count.

That's the order in which these things actually happen, and it's the opposite of how it's usually taught. The belief comes first, and the number follows. As long as some part of you is braced for someone to ask what makes you worth it, you'll keep setting a price you can defend rather than one that reflects what you actually do.

If you're undercharging, you probably already know it, just as she did. The question worth sitting with isn't what your rate should be, because you can likely answer that in about 10 seconds. It's what you believe would happen if you asked for it, and whether that belief is something you decided on once, a long time ago, and never went back to examine.

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If you recognize yourself in this, in knowing your number but not being able to say it out loud, I invite you to schedule a free Money Conversation. What usually holds the price down isn't the price.

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Financial Coach Sabrina

Insight Financial Coaching

Know Yourself. Know Your Money. Claim Your Financial Agency

Serving midlife women in Austin. TX, and nationwide via Zoom