People pull their prices out of their ass. They panic and make it up. Cis men tend to make it up in their favour. The rest of us — the ones who have been conditioned to shrink and devalue ourselves — we have a minor mental breakdown and then undercharge.
This isn’t a personal failing. It’s a conditioned response to a lifetime of being told, in a hundred different ways, that our time and expertise are worth less. We internalise it and then we build businesses on top of it. The undercharging becomes structural. It compounds. And it doesn’t just affect us — it affects every woman, every queer person, every person of colour who comes after us and looks at what we charged and uses it as their reference point.
That’s why I think of pricing as a feminist act. Not in a bumper sticker way. In a practical, this-actually-matters way. When you charge what your work is worth, you are setting a data point for everyone around you. When you know exactly why you charge what you charge and you can explain it without apologising — that’s not arrogance. That’s the thing cis men have been doing reflexively for decades.
The data exists. Go find it.
Here’s the thing people don’t realise: pricing data is more accessible than the business world wants you to think. You don’t need a consultant or a course. You need to go looking.
What businesses like yours actually charge. Not just the ones that look like you — check the cis men too. Find the top end of what the market bears and understand why it commands that price. That’s your ceiling research.
What you need to live the life you want. This is not a soft question. Sit down and calculate the actual number. Then divide it by 80% of the customers you can realistically serve in a year. That’s your floor. If your current prices don’t clear it, something has to change — either the prices or the volume.
What your average customer earns, and what your price represents as a percentage of their income after living expenses. This reframes the affordability question entirely. A $200 service is a different thing to someone earning $40,000 and someone earning $120,000. Know who you’re selling to and do the maths honestly.
What your real cost of goods and cost of doing business actually are. Not a rough guess — the actual number, including your time. If you’re not pricing in your own labour at a rate you’d pay someone else to do it, you’re subsidising your customers with your own unpaid work.
The profit margin benchmarks for your industry. These exist. They’re published. They’re findable. Look them up and know where you sit relative to them.
That’s a whole lot more than guessing.
The challenge
Pick one number from that list you don’t currently know. Just one. Go find it this week.
Not all five. One. The one that makes you slightly uncomfortable to look at directly — that’s probably the right one to start with.
What did you find? Come and tell us in the group.
Want to do these challenges with a group of women who are actually doing the work? Join us — Women. Not Doing Business Alone.