She's That Founder: Business Strategy and Time Management for Impactful Female Leaders

015 | Price & Raise Your Rates With Confidence As A Female Leader

• Dawn Andrews

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This episode is for you if you’re in business or you're thinking about starting a business, and you don't know what to charge for your services. And I get it. It can be hard to price your services, especially when you're just starting out. We don't necessarily have a track record. 

Maybe you don't have any success stories to share.  You don't want to undervalue yourself, but you also don't want to scare clients away with high prices. And you might be nervous about charging what you're worth, or you don't know what your services are worth yet. 

This process can be a whole lot easier.


In this episode, you will learn:

  • How to set your rates
  • How to find the courage to charge what you’re worth
  • How to communicate that value in a way that feels fair for both you and your clients

This episode at a glance:

[03:13]  I felt like I barely had time to shower, much less spend time having fun, and I was starting to burn out. Being booked solid is a great idea, but not at the expense of having some personal time to yourself.  It was clear that I needed to start looking at my pricing because I was becoming resentful. And not wanting to go to work.

[04:25] Women, upon being hired into their jobs, took what was offered with no further discussion. And here's the staggering part; that could equate to as much as $1.5 million in lost income over the course of a woman's career. Based on the cumulative effect of one negotiation.

[06:50] We need to be bigger and braver than our doubts and insecurities and go for it. We've just got to decide we're doing it and then support each other in doing it. 

[11:54] It's important to really look at all the different ways that you can serve and are serving and where those services overlap with what the client's challenges are. That's where the cash is. 

[19:38] A mistake we make as female business owners that eats away at our profits and has us question our pricing is becoming overly concerned with whether or not we're enough


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My Good Woman
 Ep. 15 | Price & Raise Your Rates With Confidence

Dawn Andrews: 

Hello, my good woman. If you're listening now, you are probably already in business or you're thinking about starting a business and you don't know what to charge for your service, and I get it. It can be hard to price our services, especially when we're just starting out. We don't necessarily have a track record. Maybe we don't have any success stories to share. 

You don't want to undervalue yourself, but you also don't want to scare clients away with high prices and you might be nervous to charge what you're worth or you don't even yet know what your services are worth. Figuring this out can be a whole lot easier. 

In this episode, I'll share how to set your fees, how to find the courage to charge what you're worth, and how to communicate that value in a way that feels fair for both you and your clients. So you can grow a successful business and live a life you're excited to be in every day. Let's do it. 

Hello friends, Welcome to My Good Woman, the podcast for new and future Female leaders. I'm your host, Dawn Andrews, a happily married hockey mom, and the founder and CEO of Free Range Thinking Business Strategy Consulting. Grab a seat at the table with me each week for candid conversations. With culture, shifting glass, ceiling busting, trailblazing, women leading impactful enterprises.

We discuss what makes them tick, how they get it all done, and actionable strategies to help you lead with confidence and grow the visibility, reach, and revenue of your business. We're classy ladies, but we don't bleep the swear words. Listener discretion is advised. 

Let me take you back to October, 2015. I'd been in business for 13 years at that point and I was having a spectacular year. I just ended my sixth client conversation of the day. I was exhausted, I leaned back and stretched. I really needed to get up and move after being glued to the chair for more than eight hours. As I walked the Hills in my urban neighborhood, passing ever more opulent houses than my own in the low lands. I started to feel anger and resentment rising up. 

What was that about? My business was busier than it had ever been. I had a full client schedule. I even had a waiting list. I was doing what I felt was the best work of my career so far. My clients were getting great results. Great press, experiencing two, three or four times growth in their revenue. It was easier for them to hire and the employees they had were staying longer. The company cultures they created were starting to really come together. And create a sense of community among the people that worked for them. 

The founders and CEOs I worked with were experiencing the pleasure and satisfaction and fulfillment of leadership, as well as some of the challenges, but leadership was getting easier for them. They found themselves to be even more productive, having more time for fun and for travel and for their families. Things were going great. Meanwhile, my time was booked solid. And that seems like a top shelf problem. Right? Everybody wants to be booked solid. I was grateful for the full schedule, don't get me wrong. But I felt like I barely had time to shower, much less spend time having fun and I was starting to burn out. Being booked solid is a great idea but not at the expense of having some personal time to yourself. 

It was clear that I needed to start looking at my pricing because I was becoming resentful and not wanting to go to work. So today I'm going to teach you what I did to fix it, which was to review everything about my pricing and set myself up for success.

Hello, my good women. If you haven't met me yet, I'm your host, Dawn Andrews. I'm an executive leadership consultant, business strategist, and female leadership advocate. My company Free Range Thinking, equips entrepreneurs to lead their businesses with confidence so they can ensure future growth, big profits, and happy clients, and make a big dent in the world in a good way. 

 In today's episode, we're going to talk about why for women, it's challenging to set your prices and to stick to them. I'll teach you some ways to determine what your services are worth. I'll share with you the people who have lifted me up and helped me to get so much better at this. And we'll talk about how to overcome the fear of asking for those new prices that you've just determined.

So here you are on day one or day 12,001 of your business. And it's time to look at your pricing, and determine what it is. Why is it so hard to price our services? Obviously we're getting something, right? Because today there are more than 13 million women-owned businesses in America and what's more women in America start 1800 businesses every single day. So obviously we're making things and charging some money and starting these businesses. Now not all of these businesses are gonna make it because that's the life of being in business. 

But I'm going to take you into the corporate world for just a second. To talk about women and how we think about money. And how we handle negotiations, Economics professor Linda Babcock of Carnegie Mellon university. And the co-author of “Women Don’t Ask”, did some research. And showed that men are four times more likely than women to ask for a raise in that corporate environment. And when women do ask, we typically request 30% less than men do.  In a study of 78 master's degree students. Just 12 and a half percent of women negotiated their starting salary versus 52% of men. That means women upon being hired into their jobs took what was offered, no further discussion. And here's the staggering part, that could equate to as much as $1.5 million in lost income over the course of a woman's career. Based on the cumulative effect of one negotiation; because they didn't ask for more in that moment, that could mean up to a loss of $1.5 million over the course of a lifetime at work. 

Now that's inside a corporate environment. I'd like to say, I don't know if any studies have been done, maybe that'll be a project for me in the future. But I'd like to say that for we as business owners, we are probably doing the same or worse to ourselves with the way that we are pricing our services. We are undercutting. Not only our income right this minute, but all of our future income and aggregate income from there, and by extension the income of our employees. That really is heartbreaking. 

So let's discuss why that is. 

I could lay some of that at the feet of a patriarchal society that we were brought up to believe that we needed to ask for permission that our worth was measured in relationship to what service we could provide to a man. That the majority of our time was spent at home and even up until the 1970s, when women really started to enter the workforce in a big way. But that's a cop-out. Because we have other choices now, I'm not saying that workplace bias doesn't exist. That men still don't make more than women. But we've got to start taking this on ourselves. We need to be bigger and braver than our doubts and insecurities and go for it. We've just got to decide we're doing it and then support each other in doing it. 

I think that we also let our personal psychology get in our way. As service providers we are immediately in a conversation about our worth, because we are the provider of the service, whether it's us specifically, or a team that we've brought to service an account. Our psychology is going to show up every time when it's time for us to deliver, because that's what happens when we step outside our comfort zones. All of our doubts and fears and stories and critical voices from the past. Come forward. If you haven't distinguished your limiting beliefs and critical stories, yet it is time and it is necessary. And you can get help and support to do it. 

Understanding those limiting beliefs is foundational to being able to set prices that you feel confident about. For you to be able to grow and charge higher prices for what you do, to be able to continue to develop your services and to grow your business in the way that you need to. You got to hit the therapy. You got to have some conversations with the coach. You gotta be able to talk to somebody outside yourself, a mentor. To address whatever those psychological challenges are, they're never fully mastered but if they are distinguished, then you actually can do something about those stories. Another reason why I think it's so hard for us to price our services is because we think it should be one and done that there's a right answer. Somehow there's a perfect price that we're going to charge. That's going to bring all the clients to our door and we're going to set it and forget it and never go back to it. 

It is simply not the case. Pricing is not one and done, it is a constant shifting experiment. Sometimes we can set prices and they stay that way for a little while, and sometimes we've got to renegotiate re-scope or set completely new pricing and then welcome people into a new tier of work with us. It's never one and done. So let go of the idea that there is one perfect right price for what it is that you do. And also let go that somebody else has that figured out it's simply not true. Pricing, especially in a service-based business is fluid. And then the last part that I think gets in the way of making it difficult to price our services is a little more practical. It could be that we haven't done much market research beforehand to make things a bit easier. We may not be super clear about who our clientele is, we may not know who our competitors are, what our competitors are charging. And we also need to understand what our client's biggest pains, challenges and struggles are, and how we connect to and serve those challenges to be able to set strong and clear pricing for what we offer

Are you ready to set some prices? Let's do it. 

First identify your ideal client. Everybody, myself included wants to skip this part. If you want to make pricing your services easier know who you're selling to and what they're struggling with. It'll be so much easier for you when it comes time to set your pricing, especially in addressing the psychological stuff we talked about before. If you know who your ideal person is and what they are struggling with, you won't struggle with the question of whether or not you're worthy to serve them. It makes things so much easier, have one person in mind and list everything you can think of that helps distinguish them. Where do they live? How old are they? What kind of car do they drive? What do they read? What do they eat? Where do they spend their time? 

Once that's clear, then we make a second list. If you're selling business to business, what are all the pains, problems, and challenges that your clients face? If you're selling business to consumer, what are the pains, problems, and challenges that they're facing in their personal lives that would have them come to you for support. And then we make a third list, a list of all the services you provide. How can you help? All the different ways that what you do, what your expertise is, what your team does, what your business does, can intersect with those pains, problems and challenges. And then look at where the overlap is. 

 I did that for myself. Again, three years ago. It's happened many times in my business. I went back and reviewed the clients that I had served, everything that I offered, and which engagements made the most money for our company, and it had changed over time. On day one of my business 22 years ago, I was coaching anybody and everybody about anything and everything. I literally sent out 250 paper letters to all of my friends and family and previous business contacts to let them know that I had gone into coaching. And that I was available to help them with whatever they needed. I was charging $25 an hour at the time, and truth be told it wasn't a bad strategy for getting started because at the time I had all the time in the world and no clients. But you'll go through different phases as you continue to grow your service-based business. And you'll bring on more clients and you'll develop better skills and better ways of serving people. And you'll have results to be able to share with people. So this goes back to our earlier part of the conversation. 

Pricing is fluid. It's a constant experiment and things are constantly changing. What I had started my business with, what it looked like 10 years in. And what it looks like now had evolved over time. It was not the same thing. The clients I was working with had slowly started to up-level. and the services I was providing for them had become more nuanced and specialized. It's important to really look at all the different ways that you can serve and are serving and where those services overlap with what the client's challenges are, that's where the cash is. That's where the value exchanges, that's where they can really appreciate who you are and who your company is and what you bring to the table in exchange for the service that they received.

So now, you know who your ideal client is. The challenges they're facing and how your business and you can make a difference for them. So let's come up with your scrappy messy just pull it out of your patootie based pricing for your business services. When you look at what you offer, imagine what it would take to create a successful result for that client. One of my clients, Fixer Advisory provides outsourced legal DNI and real estate legal support for high-end luxury retail clients. In each of those areas, they're familiar with the specific challenges that those types of businesses face with their legal requirements with D and I training and with finding new real estate locations for their brands. And they know what they do that specifically helps solve those challenges that they identified. They know what the scope of the problems typically are and how much time and energy it will take someone in their organization to be able to address it effectively and get a great outcome. A simple way to put it is they know what the problem is, they know how to solve it, and they know how much time it takes to solve it. And this is where your service-based business starts to become more like a product. There's an end result that you're shooting for. When you're working with a client, that you can hang your pricing on. 

One of the biggest mistakes I see with service-based businesses is that there isn't necessarily a clear outcome or result that people are looking for. Now, if you're in the beauty business and I'm coming in for a facial, we would call that a service-based business. But I know before my skin looked a certain way and after my skin will look a certain way, there is a before and after that's clearly defined. So if you're looking to do that for your business and particularly if you're a coach or a consultant we need to look at what those before and after moments are because it will help you when it comes to set your numbers next to a little recon so we can come up with a foundational price. 

I find that looking at what your competitors are doing, what they're charging can be helpful. You can do some market research to find out what people are paying for your type of service. You can search other people's websites and finally, sometimes your gut is the best place to look. What do you feel most comfortable charging at the outset? Some clients I work with just pull a hundred dollars an hour out of the year and that's their starting pricing. For some clients it's a thousand dollars an hour. It honestly doesn't matter that much at this stage, if you're just getting started with pricing. You gather information and make the best choice that you have at the moment. Because the challenge is, what you may be offering a client, how you may be solving their problem. Though in wording, it may look similar to your competitors. In actuality, it may not be, it might take you less time, it might take you more time. It might require more degrees and more expertise, more information or it might be really simple. And that's why pricing is a little bit of an art and science, and we're trying not to overthink it. When we're getting those initial price points set up. 

So now you have an ideal client. A set of pains, problems and challenges. A set of services that you offer, an idea of how long it takes you to deliver those services and get the result for the client. And some sort of hourly rate that you've pulled together from research or straight out of your intuition. Now you have a really simple foundational price for what it is that you do. Now add 30% to that price because you don't know what you don't know. I was working with a video production company and the work that they did went from concepting ideas all the way through complete edited and delivered video production for consumer brands. They didn't realize when they were first starting out how much extra time sometimes things took; additional phone calls, meetings to speak with people to get approvals on scripts, travel time, lost days because of weather. There were all kinds of things that they just didn't know, they didn't know. When we looked at their numbers, they really weren't profitable. 

They were able to pay themselves, they received a salary. But there really wasn't any money to grow their business. It was a stagnant business because they didn't know what they didn't know, and they weren't able to take that into account in setting their pricing. And then their sales structure and all of their marketing that went around selling those services. So we've set our base price. We've added 30% for what we don't know. We don't know. And now I want you to add an additional 30%. For what we, as women tend to do when we get nervous, feel self doubt, feel insecure and concerned about our performance level. I want you to give yourself your raise in advance instead of having to negotiate it later. So base plus 30 plus 30.

Now you've got a pretty reasonable price for your services. I will say when it comes to coaching and consulting, I am not a fan of hourly pricing, I'm a fan of results-based pricing. But with what we've done, you can use that information to build out your packages, that base price we did on an hourly basis based on what, you know, it takes to deliver your results to your clients. If you need to, now that you've worked through your entire number go back and give that hourly piece of res or add on a few more hours feel free to do that we've probably covered it off with the 30 plus 30 that we've done but that way you have something to work with. 

So we figured out your ideal client. We figured out their pains, problems and challenges. We figured out your services and how much it takes to deliver a result. We got a base price, plus 30 plus 30. You've given yourself your raise in advance instead of having to negotiate. Now it is time to road test. You have to go out and start selling. You have to start sharing it with people and making offers to people. Because this is where the real interesting thing starts to happen with your pricing, when you road test and start making offers, you get clear on the difference that your services really make to that business owner. What sort of impact they have? 

So for instance, I met with a business owner. And we were talking about productivity, this founder had an email inbox that was devastatingly large. They received somewhere between 104 hundred emails a day. So much information coming in to be processed. And they'd hit a wall where they just were not effectively doing. I'm not a big fan of inbox zero, but you do need to be able to process, your incoming email. If that's where most of your business happens. So they came to us looking for a way to be more productive and to handle their email better among other things. And when we started talking about the solutions that we could offer for them there. I asked, “well, how much money do you think is sitting in your inbox? How many offers? How many potential clients are waiting for you there? What is that worth to you?” This CEO told me that there was probably about $500,000 worth of business sitting there. That at minimum was waiting and a maximum could be lost altogether if he didn't have an effective way to clear out his inbox. This is the gold of pricing. Because you start to see the cost that your clients would be facing if they don't hire you. 

What happens if they don't engage with you to provide your services? This is the magic moment in pricing, in sales, In building a relationship with your clients. Because what happens in that moment is that the conversation for you as a salesperson shifts from your own ego to you being of service and a provider of value to your client. I'm no longer Dawn Andrews sitting across the zoom from somebody, asking myself am I good enough? Am I worthy? Are we good enough? Is our company going to do well enough for them? Do we have what they need? We leave that conversation behind. Now I become the outcome, not the person. I now am a pathway for this CEO to empty that inbox and collect that $500,000. 

A mistake we make as female business owners that eats away at our profits and has us question our pricing is becoming overly concerned with whether or not we're enough. We add on more services, we give more hours than we intend to, We over-deliver, we just want to get it right, and I get it. We want to do well and we want people. I mean, not everybody's this way, but I think most of us want people to like us and be happy with our services. So we overextend beyond the scope. And this is why pricing seems so challenging. For those women out there, for those of you that are the scope police, I love you, I value you. And I wish so much,I had more of those qualities myself and in my business. But most of us are not the scope police, we just get involved. We're excited about what we do. We want to dive in and we want to get good work done for our clients. 

So, now you have a pretty good idea of why you feel challenged or unclear about setting your pricing, you have a strategy to set that initial pricing or to revisit pricing that you already have. And you understand the mindset that it takes to go out and road test it, and make adjustments. I have just a few more quick thoughts and a resource to share with you that I think will up-level this even further. What is the cost of being afraid? How does it impact your life and your business? When you're afraid and not sure what kind of prices to set, you'll start to be resentful of the services you're offering, you'll get tired. You may burn out, you may give sloppy service, and that all undermines the success of your business and the future growth. But when you commit to charging what you're worth, there's peace, there's commitment. You're all in and ready to serve with enthusiasm and innovation. There's a sense of discovery, you close the money part of your relationship with that person for that time being, and you really focus on the service that you want to provide for them. 

And that's a really fun place to be if you're a service provider. Uh, another thing I really recommend is getting support from I'm going to shout out right now, Jennifer Diepstraten of One Call Blue Print, when I worked with Jennifer, I tripled my prices in a month. That was a complete game changer for my family and not just my family. It made a difference for every vendor that I worked with, every contractor that I hired in to help on projects. It made a difference for my clients because I was able to deliver an even higher level of service for them. Tripling my prices sounds great. Just from a money standpoint, it's what money can do for us or what we can exchange money for. That really makes the impact. And if you're ready to revisit your pricing, I have a little tool for you, I have a gift for you. Go to my good woman.com or to the show notes and grab the price guide. This is the guide to determine your value and charge what you're worth. If you're like most people you want to do a great job. And be fairly compensated for your work, but it's not always easy to figure out what your services are worth and the price guide helps you with that. 

This essential guide provides real-world examples and expert tips to help you determine your value and price your services for success. You will learn how to overcome your fear, set prices that attract clients, and boost your bottom line. So don't sell yourself short. Pick up the price guide and get started on pricing your services right away. 

One last thought. It's one that I wish people had given me early on. Anytime you have a waiting list, it's time to raise your prices. When I started my business 20 years ago, I didn't know that nobody taught me that it was only in working with really great women and learning from really great women that I started to do that. But once somebody tells you to do that and you're ready to do it, you start to freak out a little bit. All kinds of stories and self-judgment and doubt got in the way of my success. Hopefully what we've talked about today. Really clears that away for you. And my dream for you is that you run forward with a band on. Because what you were doing is worth it, what you were doing makes a difference for people. And when you find your ideal client and understand their pain and how your services and your unique gifts and expertise can make a difference for them, it is magic and you need to be paid well for it. 

Please take a moment to leave a review, like share subscribe. And if there's a nugget that you took away from this that really changed the game for you, pass it on to another woman. Be a guide, be a mentor, be an advocate. Be somebody who shares and lifts other women up. Thank you for being with me today. My good woman. I'll see you next time.