Why 'Charging What You're Worth' Isn't Always The Best Approach

Search for advice on pricing your offerings and services as a small business owner and often you’ll come across the phrase: charge what you’re worth. I’ve even said it myself over the years.

But lately I’ve been thinking about how unhelpful that advice can actually be for a business owner trying to figure out their pricing.

Because what is our worth? And how do we even start to define it?

Our worth is such a subjective thing, so often shaped by both our opinion of ourselves and other people’s opinions too.

So making pricing decisions from that place can feel far too complicated, and perhaps not even the most effective for our business too.

Whenever my clients are struggling with making a decision around pricing I encourage them to first get clear on two details:

How much do I want to earn from this offering/service a year for it to feel financially sustainable for me?

And how much availability do I want to have each year for this offering?

Here’s an example: let’s say you’re a copywriter and you have two core packages available for clients - one to create their website copy and another to create their website copy plus their content marketing plan too

Each year you want to make £50,000 from your client work as that’s the number that will sustain the life you want to live.

For your business schedule to work best for you and your life you have availability for two website copy clients a month and one website copy plus content marketing plan clients a month. You also want to be able to take one month off in the summer and all of December off from your client work too.

That breaks down your availability to 20 website copy clients and 10 website copy plus content marketing plan clients each year.

With this example you might feel like your second offering will take around double the amount of work as the first, so it’s simple for you to price the first package at £1250 and the second at £2500 - that makes your £50,000 income goal possible with the availability you have for clients each year.

Depending on your business and the different offerings you have available you may find it helpful to break down how much time each offering will take, or what you want an hourly or day rate to be for you, but hopefully what you can see here is how helpful it is to root into the specific numbers for your business when making pricing decisions along the way.

Because I truly believe that we are all worthy of running businesses that are financially and energetically sustainable to run, where we feel confident and intentional with our pricing, but where we don’t tie our worth as humans to the money we make in our business each year

And if you find that when you get clear on your numbers and the amount you would need to charge doesn’t feel comfortable for you yet, that’s okay.

I’ve been there in the past too and that’s just a great opportunity for you to commit to growing in your craft and getting to the place you want to get to in your work. Sometimes it takes time to get to that enough number and that’s just part of the journey.

But it's when you're clear on what that enough number is and how you can make it in your business in a way that actually works best for you, well that's how we actually make it possible to make it happen along the way.

So here’s to pricing with intention in our business...

And I’m right here rooting for you every step of the way!

Jen Carrington30 April 2021