Most women in business do not have a capability problem. They have a pricing problem, and it is a decision, not an accident.
Every day, women in business work longer hours, take clients they do not want, and quietly absorb the cost of margins that were never going to work.
Then they tell themselves it is the market.
It is not the market. The market did not open your quote template and type a small number into it. You did.
Let me go first
When I first started coaching I set my rate at about a quarter of what I charge now, and I felt fine about it. Better than fine. I had clients, I was delivering, and after decades in finance I had finally proved to myself I could coach. Job done.
Then it got back to me, through the grapevine, that one of my clients had been telling people I was charging far too little for the support she was getting and the results she had come away with.
Not a competitor. Not my accountant. My own client, who had paid the invoice without blinking and then gone and told other people I was undercharging.
Full face palm. Thirty-six years in finance and business, a Certified Financial Planner, and I had priced myself by feel. What I took from it was this: I did not need more clients. I needed to charge what the work was worth.
So no, this is not a lecture from up here. Here is what is really going on.
Misplaced gratitude
Plenty of the women I coach are the first in their family to run a business. There is no inherited script for what to charge, so they write their own, and it usually reads: I am lucky to be here, I should not push.
Grateful is a lovely way to be. It is a terrible way to price. Gratitude belongs in how you treat your clients, not in what you charge them.
Pride dressed up as humility
You want to be able to say you had a good month. Ten sales feels like a good month. Ten sales at a margin that does not work is a good month and a bad quarter, and you will not find out which one you had until the BAS lands.
Cutting your price to get the yes is a habit, and habits compound. The client who bought at a discount is not going to pay full price next time. Why would she? You taught her the number was flexible.
Low self-worth doing your pricing for you
This is the one nobody says out loud. When you do not believe you belong in the room, you compete on the only thing you are certain about, which is being cheaper. You negotiate against yourself before the client has opened her mouth. You quote low so the no hurts less.
And you still lose. Just quietly, on your own time, with nobody to blame.
The Hourly Rate Calculator inside the FEMPIRE Academy takes your real costs, your actual delivery hours and a profit figure, and hands you back a number. It is not a confidence exercise. It is arithmetic, and arithmetic does not care how you feel about yourself. Most women who run it find they are working for roughly half of what they should be.
Over-giving
Over-giving is rewarded everywhere else in a woman’s life. Family, friends, community, all of it. Then it walks into your business and starts eating your margin.
The extra revision. The ninety-minute discovery call that was booked for thirty. The full strategy handed over to someone who never signed anything, who is now implementing it herself with a small thank you email. Be honest about how much of your week goes to people who have not paid you.
Generosity is worth keeping. Price it in, or stop funding it personally.
No clarity on your own value
If you cannot say plainly what you do, who it changes and what that change is worth, your buyer cannot either. So she falls back on the one variable she does understand, and that variable is price.
Clients rarely argue about cost when they know exactly what they are buying. Vague positioning is expensive. It shows up as a discount every single time.
What this is actually costing you
More than revenue.
It costs you your client base, because low prices attract price-sensitive buyers, and price-sensitive buyers negotiate, push scope, question invoices and leave the week something cheaper appears. So you work harder, for less, with the clients you want least, which leaves you no capacity to go and find the ones you want most.
It costs you your position, because the market reads your price as a statement about your standard. Once you are the affordable option, lifting your rates is not a pricing update. It is a rebrand.
And it costs you years. This cycle does not resolve itself. It has no natural end point. It runs until you stop it.
Now own it
Nobody did this to you.
No client forced your rate down. No competitor set your prices. No economy made you deliver forty hours of work for twenty hours of money. You chose it, one quote at a time, usually because holding the number felt harder in the moment than dropping it.
That is genuinely good news, because a thing you chose is a thing you can choose differently. Today, if you want.
The decision, with a date on it
Vague intentions to raise your prices sometime are how another year goes past. So do this instead.
Pick your next enquiry. Not a future hypothetical one. The next actual person who asks you for a price. Before the end of this month, work out the real number, quote it, and hold it through the silence.
You will find out two things very quickly: what you are actually worth, and which of your current clients were only ever there for the discount. Both are useful.
If you want the numbers behind that quote to be solid, that is the work we do inside the FEMPIRE Academy. Know Your Numbers covers pricing, break-even, cash flow and the financial foundations every serious business owner needs. You can run the Hourly Rate Calculator right now to see where you land.
Do not spend another quarter working harder for less than you are worth.
Trudy Heins, CEO and Master Coach, FEMPIRE
As the owner of Fempire and Trudy Heins Business Coaching, Trudy’s mission is to help women create strong, strategic, and financially resilient businesses, the kind that support the life you really want.
With over 35 years in business and finance including 30 years as a Certified Financial Planner. Trudy has built and sold multiple businesses, led high-performing national sales teams, and coached hundreds of women to achieve lasting success.
She knows what it takes to go from idea to income and from coach to company owner.
Very interesting. Some of it is about those layers of conditioning we women need to peel off. Then there’s acknowledging that there’s intrinsic value in the experiences we’ve individually had; and that even though there are many people that are further down the path than us, there are so many further behind as well, and those are the beautiful souls we can support! I have to remind myself this, often!
Such great words of wisdom, Barbara. Thank you for sharing.
Yes I hear you Barbara. I have worked with so many women over the years that undercharge initially and one of the best things they do, to help them believe in themselves faster, is to surround themselves with like-minded women that have their back.
If they can’t find a sisterhood then they find a coach to believe in them.
It’s powerful stuff. I know having my own coach makes a huge difference in breaking conditioning. Mx
Women are so inspirational and strong more than they give themselves credit for
#truth Emily 🙂 Mx
This is such good advice and putting into practice is more difficult than expected! Barbara is right on the money about conditioning! I always want to be fair but have my worth taken seriously, it is a difficult balance to achieve especially when you are online and working with people in different regions where the income values vary significantly!
That’s a good point, Elle. I had never considered the differences in income, but don’t sell yourself short! As Marnie says, “Focus on the type of giving that comes with over-delivering, rather than giving away your products and services for next-to-nothing.”❤️
Yes it is easy to say “charge what you’re worth” but it is a very different reality when dealing with the variables of business and your own negative self talk…Mx
Now this is a hard one especially in a relatively new business. I can resonate with all the above points and find it a constant struggle to keep my prices firm. I used to discount for “mates rates” a lot and repeat customers – then I started increasing my prices and they still booked – I felt relief and stupidity for previously selling myself (and my time) short.
You go, Kate! It’s so important to charge what you are worth.
I’m glad you pushed yourself to put up your prices Kate! The best evidence is proof that people will pay…well done! Mx
I often get asked (mainly by male clients) to ‘sharpen the pencil’ on my pricing. A sage piece of advice I learned early in my business from my sales trainer/mentor is to never discount. Rather, if I am asked to reduce my price, I instead talk about what aspect or component of the contract work I will take out, therefore changing the price but not undermining the value I offer. I hope that makes sense!
Thank you for sharing, Lesley. That’s a great way to go about it! It’s so important that you don’t undermine yourself or your offer.?
It does Lesley! Discounting is a race to the bottom. Great strategy removing value. I often use a value add approach (if removing value is difficult), not more time or work but something that has high perceived value but low time commitment, like an online course or book or report or something like that. Much better for business. 🙂 Mx