Here’s a question I get asked more than almost any other in my work with small business owners: “Am I charging the right amount?”
Usually it comes wrapped in something else. “I’m worried the market won’t support higher prices.” “Clients keep pushing back.” “I just don’t know how to justify charging more.” But strip all that back and what most people are really asking is simpler and more uncomfortable: is my pricing correct, or have I just got used to undercharging?
The honest answer, in most cases, is the second one.
The real problem usually isn’t your prices
When I sit down with a new client and we get into their pricing, there’s a pattern I see again and again. Their prices haven’t changed significantly in a year or more. They feel vaguely uneasy about what they charge. And when I ask if they’ve ever properly tested a higher price and held their nerve on it, the answer is almost always no.
That’s not a market problem. That’s a confidence problem.
I’m not saying the market is irrelevant. Of course it matters. But most small business owners reach for “the market won’t support it” as an explanation long before they’ve actually tested whether that’s true. It’s a comfortable story to tell yourself because it externalises the problem. The economy, the competition, the clients — it’s all out there, beyond your control. Which means you don’t have to do anything difficult about it.
Here’s the thing though. If you’re running a service business at a decent margin, the maths might be more forgiving than you think. And if you’re not already comfortable with your business numbers, it’s worth getting there — understanding your numbers is the foundation that makes confident pricing decisions possible.
The maths that changes the conversation
Let’s say you’re running a typical service business at around 70% gross margin. Not unusual for a lot of freelancers, consultants, coaches, and agency owners. If you raise your prices by 30%, you could afford to lose 30% of your clients and still earn exactly the same revenue.
The same money. With a third less work.
Think about what that actually means in practice. More time to focus on the clients who do stay. More capacity to go and find better clients at the new price. Less of the grinding, draining work that comes with clients who were only ever with you because you were cheap enough.
And here’s the part that always lands hardest when I walk people through this: the clients who leave when you raise your prices are almost never the ones you’d miss. They tend to be the ones who haggle, who push scope, who call at odd hours and take twice as long to manage as anyone else. They’re dragging your hourly rate down without you even realising it.
So raising prices doesn’t just mean earning the same money for less work. It means freeing up space for better work with better clients. If you’ve ever wondered how to use your time more wisely as a business owner, getting your pricing right is one of the most direct levers you have.
But — and this is important — that’s not to say you can charge whatever you like.
One of the principles at the heart of the They Ask You Answer (TAYA) methodology — the content and trust-building framework developed by Marcus Sheridan — is radical honesty with your market. And that honesty cuts both ways. Yes, it means being open about what you charge. But it also means being honest about what justifies it. Pricing confidence is not a licence to inflate your rates arbitrarily and hope the market catches up. The market has a view. Your clients have options. And if your price doesn’t reflect genuine value — value that the client actually experiences — you’ll lose people for the right reasons, not the wrong ones.
So the real question isn’t just “can I charge more?” It’s “am I delivering enough that charging more is genuinely warranted?” If the answer is yes — and for most of the business owners I work with, it is — then the maths above should feel liberating. If the honest answer is that there are gaps in what you deliver, then that’s the more important conversation to have first. Better pricing and better delivery aren’t separate tracks. They’re the same journey. The businesses that get this right don’t just raise their prices — they raise their game alongside it, and that’s what makes the higher number stick.
Three questions worth sitting with
Rather than trying to benchmark your prices against a market rate or do some elaborate competitor analysis, I find it’s far more useful to start with these three questions.
One — when did you last properly review your pricing?
Not a quick glance. A real review, where you looked at what you charge, what it actually costs to deliver the work, and what the value is to the client. If you can’t remember, that’s already a signal.
Two — how do you actually feel about your current pricing?
This is the one that tends to cut through. If you feel a slight wince when you send a quote, if you find yourself pre-emptively apologising for your prices, if you’re mentally bracing for pushback before the client has even responded — that’s your gut telling you something. The discomfort isn’t coming from nowhere.
Three — have you ever genuinely tested a higher price and stuck with it?
Not tried it once, got a bit of resistance, and quietly retreated. Actually held the position, had the conversation, and given it a real run. Most people haven’t. Which means they’re making decisions based on a fear they’ve never actually tested.
If any of those three questions made you uncomfortable, I’d gently suggest that the problem isn’t external. The market isn’t the issue. The economy isn’t the issue. The issue is somewhere between your gut and your confidence, and that’s actually good news, because it means it’s fixable.
What to do about it
Start small if you need to. The goal isn’t to double your prices overnight and see what happens. It’s to take a measured, intelligent look at where you are and make a deliberate decision about where you want to be.
Work out what a 10, 20, or 30% increase would actually mean in practice — use the maths above. Look honestly at which clients would likely leave, and ask yourself whether that’s actually a problem. In a lot of cases, you’ll find the ones most likely to leave are the ones costing you the most energy.
Test it with new clients first if the idea of repricing existing relationships feels too daunting. New enquiries are a natural opportunity to quote at a higher rate. You don’t have to have a big conversation with anyone. You just present a new number and see what happens.
And track the feedback properly. Not just whether people say yes or no, but what they actually say. Genuine price objections sound very different from a prospect who just isn’t the right fit.
Why this matters beyond the numbers
The reason pricing comes up so often in my work with clients isn’t really about the money. It’s about what underpricing does to the rest of your business.
When you’re not charging enough, you have to take on more work to hit your revenue targets. More work means less time. Less time means less capacity to think, to grow, to do the kind of work you actually want to be doing. You end up on a treadmill — busy, stressed, and somehow never quite where you want to be — and you tell yourself it’s because you need more clients. When actually, you might just need fewer clients paying you properly.
Getting your pricing right isn’t just a financial exercise. It’s the foundation of a business that works the way you actually want it to. It’s part of the entire formula for business success — and it’s one of the areas where working with the right support can make the biggest difference in the shortest time.
A sensible next step
If this has landed and you want to do something practical with it, I’ve put together a simple pricing checklist that walks you through the key questions — the same one I use with clients at the start of our work together. It covers how to review your current pricing, how to think about what to charge, and how to have the conversation with existing clients when the time comes.
You can grab it here No catch, no sales pitch.
