EPISODE 61 OF WHAT WOULD THEY DO? THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PODCAST FOR SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS
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Feel like you’re undercharging, but also low-key terrified to raise your prices?
In this episode, I’m joined by pricing strategist and self-declared “Pricing Queen” Jasmine Parasram to unpack what’s really going on when you price your services too low.
Spoiler: it’s not just about money. It’s about mindset, emotional baggage, customer perception, and the kind of clients you end up attracting.
Together, we explore how undercharging doesn’t just hurt your income, it quietly erodes your confidence, your boundaries, and your customer experience.
What we cover:
Why undercharging isn’t a pricing problem
The hidden link between pricing and customer experience
The psychological barriers stopping you from charging more
How to communicate your pricing without sounding unsure or apologetic
A practical starting point for recalculating your pricing
Soundbites:
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen: “To find your billable hour rate, you need to start with what salary you’re wanting to make per year. You then need to add in the expenses that a general year would bring or what you would like to allocate for those expenses. And then you need to divide by the amount of time that you have to spend on that. Having that deep intrinsic understanding will make it easier because it will be based in logic, not emotion.”
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen: “If someone said you get what you pay for when speaking about you, what would you want that to mean? Would you want that to mean that, they get what they pay for, therefore it was a cheap thing and therefore they’ve gotten the cheap thing? Or would you want it to mean, I got what I paid for because I invested well into it. And I think that if we’re wanting the latter, we literally have to be the one to set those higher prices. We have to be the one to create that psychological safety because when they pay a lot for something, they show up differently. They actually take the time to have conversations with you.”
More about my guest, Jasmine Parasram:
Known as Your Pricing Queen, Jasmine Parasram has spent 15 years as a freelancer and now teaches other freelancers how to logically and creatively put a dollar figure on their own creative genius. Over 6,000 clever creatives have accessed at least one, if not multiple resources served on her website, Creative Business Kitchen, each focused on Pricing for Freelancers and mastering all the spinning plates of running a successful business. She takes pride in being the little voice in hundreds of freelancers cheering them on and asking the question “What could you do if you charged a little more?
Website: https://creativebusinesskitchen.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yourpricingqueen/
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Episode Transcript:
Nadine Nethery (00:01)
Hello, hello and officially welcome back to the podcast. I am super excited to see that you’ve decided to tune back in or tune in for the first time. I have another guest episode lined up for you today and one that is very close to my heart because it is a problem that I struggle with personally and try to master. So today we are answering the following question. I feel like I’m undercharging massively.
Obviously that impacts my bottom line, but is there potentially more to it? And to answer this amazing question, I welcome to the show Jasmine Parasram, the founder of Creative Business Kitchen. And Jasmine is an amazing human who supports makers, coaches and creatives to present themselves with confidence and coherence. So their pricing and positioning actually reflect the value they provide. Welcome to the show, Jasmine.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (00:56)
Thank you so much for having me. Can you please introduce me to every room that I now go in? That was fantastic.
Nadine Nethery (01:03)
It’s just, yeah, it does you justice. my God. I think you’re doing something that is so important, particularly in the female online business space. feel men don’t seem to struggle as much with this problem as ⁓ women do.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (01:14)
They really don’t.
They really don’t struggle with it nearly as much as sometimes if at all. And I really do feel like it is my duty to be able to create that space partially because one, I’ve been accused of creating girl gangs and girl groups. And I often in my emails will say, if you were a nineties millennial
Nadine Nethery (01:20)
Mmm.
Hahaha.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (01:33)
Um, you were a millennial growing up in the nineties and had obsessions with sanity and ice accessories and you and I are probably going to get along. And so like, it’s a lot of the things that I talk about are, uh, female, female leaning problems. So there’s a lot of people pleasing. There’s a lot of perfectionism and there’s a lot of stuff that simply men don’t have to deal with. And that goes so much further than just.
Nadine Nethery (01:41)
Mmm.
Mm.
Yeah.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (02:02)
what you like and what you don’t like, but what you’re dealing with in a day-to-day basis, what you’ll deal with within your life. And all of that then comes back into, if you are a freelancer and a creative, you are tasked with the situation or tasked with the challenge to put a dollar amount on the access to the genius that is you. And as a female, we generally are pretty good at undercharging or undervaluing what we do both in business and in life.
Nadine Nethery (02:04)
on our right.
you
So true. It’s like that job application situation where a male reads a job description and ticks two boxes and goes, yep, totally, totally overqualified for this job. And then, you know, if there’s one unticket box, women just go, no, I can’t, I could possibly not put myself forward. Right. But yeah, I think we could talk for hours and try and unpack what’s going on, but let’s focus on the pricing aspect because I think it’s going to go beyond this episode. But yeah.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (02:43)
That’s what I
Well, well.
Nadine Nethery (02:53)
Do you want to give us a bit of an overview of your journey and how you got to become the pricing queen? Because I’m intrigued. I’m sure you didn’t start out as the pricing queen.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (03:02)
I
definitely did not start out as the pricing queen or your pricing queen. I do have a crown. I stitched it together myself with felt. It is beautiful and I love it. But I myself have been a creative and freelancer for the last 16 years. For the first six of those, I was freelancing on the side of my day job, which was in design studios, in print houses, in aged care, retirement living houses, where I was the sole print
Nadine Nethery (03:23)
Mm-hmm.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (03:29)
and graphic designer. And so I had quite a bit of experience in the business side of creativity whilst being an employee. And for most people, when they are an employee, they’re kind of going in and doing the job. But I was actually really interested in, how do these people make this work? How do people make a business and utilize creativity and creative problem solving in that? And so I learned lots of bits and pieces along the way and then was given an opportunity to
escape an incredibly toxic studio. It no longer exists, which is really enjoyable for me. But I left that after six months of really experiencing what the toxicity could be of creativity and went into what I like to call my gap year. So I did a year of a part-time creative role in just this little business company you might’ve heard of called Rolex. And
Nadine Nethery (04:13)
Mm.
Yeah, I think I have.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (04:21)
⁓ And
for all of the design nerds out there or anyone who has ripped apart an illustrator file before, I want to let you know that every single one of those pieces of creative that has a watch on it is all vector. Just sit in that for a bit. Think about the fact that those files are like massive and like all vector was really, really cool. But I did that for a year where I was churning out 150 ads a month and it was really like.
Nadine Nethery (04:46)
Mmm.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (04:47)
take this, resize this for Vogue, send off. And so it got me really mentally prepared for the fact that when you’re a creative, you need to produce and outcomes are really important, deliverables are really important. And sometimes you just need to get the things done rather than having an existential crisis about the color blue that you’re using. And so then by the time I jumped into full-time freelance, I had to start thinking about, where do I want to go? What do I want to be perceived as?
And I actually had the opportunity to go back into career creativity, but I ended up doing the freelance thing instead. And so over those first couple of years, I really truly started to understand that creativity as a commodity was something that I was getting pretty good at. I had pretty strong creative skills always.
learning, always growing, always refining. And I definitely know that if I look back at some of my earlier stuff, I’m like, cringe, gross. ⁓ including the pricing that I was paying that I was charging for that. And so I think one of the biggest things, and I hope you’ve enjoyed the tangent, we’re taking the scenic route. but I think one of the biggest things is that for those first couple of years, I was trying to price myself, not on the basis of my creative skills, but my business skills.
Nadine Nethery (05:37)
Hmm?
Ha
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (06:00)
And my creative skills were like an eight or nine out of 10. And my business skills, because they were new, because I had just started, were a two. And so was charging maybe $50 on some things, charging a logo for 200 bucks. Like it was all of the things that I know now that I’m like, it sucks in the moment, but it’s going to suck even more if you don’t change it and don’t go and alter those kind of approaches to it.
Nadine Nethery (06:15)
you
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (06:24)
And so then fast forward after freelancing myself pretty consistently for, think it was after about 10, 12 years, I then finally hit my million dollar moment, which meant that I had made a million dollars from solo freelancing since I started. So it took me 12 years to get that first million and then only took me four years to get the second. And the big difference was the business skills had been developed in a way that I could actually charge for it.
And so now I turn those lessons and those that information into ways that other creators can digest it because and we kind of touched on this at the start is that the creative education space is very, very male dominated and very much there. is some incredible creatives who are, who are educators, who are women, but the men that are out there definitely dominate the space. And some people can’t learn from men.
Nadine Nethery (06:50)
.
Mmm.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (07:18)
Some people can only learn from women and that’s not a sexist read. It’s just the way that some people are wired. Just like some people can read from, as I learned from a lecture and others have to have slides. It’s just the way that we learn that’s different.
Nadine Nethery (07:30)
And sometimes it’s also, you know, you want to learn from someone who understands your lifestyle. Nothing again, you know, like it’s, we’re going into the gender stereotypes here, but I feel often, I mean, even the online business coaching space, separate from the creative space, there’s often all these males telling you, need to work harder. You know, like it’s all about the hustle. I’m like, well, that’s impossible. As a mum of three, who’s running a business, who’s literally chasing her tail most of the time anyway. So your approach just doesn’t work for me.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (07:35)
Hmm?
Absolutely. And I’m, I’m childless by choice. So I’m not someone who even has those three elements of children that end up impacting what your not only time capacity is, but your mental capacity and your deep interest. Because, you know, if I have a client who is going to take five hours of my time, which is a currency that I like to work with, like it’s not just about the dollars, it’s about the time currency. It’s about the mental currency. If I’m having that five
Nadine Nethery (07:59)
So, mm.
Yeah.
Mm.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (08:28)
five hours invested into that company or that business, I need to make sure that it makes sense for the dollar amount or dollar value that I put on my time, whether that be within business hours or outside business hours. And what could I be doing otherwise?
Nadine Nethery (08:35)
Mm.
Yeah, it’s so true. And that’s where it’s such a nice transition to like the connection between pricing and customer experience. Because ultimately, if you keep working for years and years and years on end, undercharging, eventually you’re going to despise the work you do, you’re going to feel, feel unfulfilled and ultimately your customer experience is going to suffer, right? Because you’re not showing up as your full self in your best.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (09:00)
Yes?
Yeah.
Nadine Nethery (09:11)
you know, best mental state. And I wholeheartedly believe that emotion is the currency of customer experience. So that’s why pricing is so critical because it can evoke very strong feelings in us as business owners, but also in our clients, because, you know, certain dollar value then needs to also line up with the experience, the expectations, perception, all the things we’re going to unpack.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (09:17)
Mm.
Mmm
Nadine Nethery (09:37)
in this
episode. my God. online business is just so interesting because one aspect might seem like a tick in the box, but it just really flows into so many other, things that then impact your business long-term.
When you talk to your clients about pricing, what’s usually that first emotional or psychological barrier that you see them coming up against?
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (10:03)
The first one is that they fear the no, and because the no to them means that that’s no to you, not no to the price. And that is generally the first kind of instigator. And then they start going, well, if one person has said no, then everyone will say no, because they believe that everyone is the same and they’re not. The second one that comes up a lot, and I actually have a like,
Nadine Nethery (10:05)
Mmm.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (10:24)
free workshop that I have available all the time which is called Money Hungry Mindset which is, it kind of goes through understanding what your money stories have been up until now. So you might have money memories that have found their way through your life as children or as a teenager or as an adult and the way that you buy but also the way that you interact with money massively impacts how you charge it.
And so, you know, when we’re, we’re children and we’re playing shop with the plastic bananas and a little, like all of the little checkout situation, you are taught that if you see numbers and it has a price tag at the start, or it has a dollar sign at the top, at the start, you are taught that you need to work out whether you can afford that. that when, then when we flip that script and we’re the one actually setting the price tag.
Nadine Nethery (11:15)
Mm-hmm.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (11:20)
We are so used to asking ourselves, can I afford that? But the fact of the matter is that I would say none of your clients represent you. I know that we like to say, I’m my unique avatar. You’re not babes, like you’re just not. Your unique avatar or your unique customer has very, very different experiences that have led them to where they are. They’ve had very different emotions when it comes to
Nadine Nethery (11:32)
Ha ha.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (11:44)
business and pricing, and they have very, different skills because if they’d had the same skills as you, they wouldn’t need you. So they’ve put a different price tag on the access to your genius that likely you have as well. And I think the more that we downplay, the more that we undercharge, the more that we then over deliver and the more that we feel like we have to go above and beyond to be valuable, the harder it’s going to be unless we have put enough currency in the tank to actually get there.
Nadine Nethery (11:51)
Mm.
Mm, so true. And again, coming from my perspective here, like it’s not necessarily the hours you spend on the project. You need to also factor in all of the time and energy and money you have invested in your education, the skills, the experience beforehand, because that all comes into it, right? It’s not just five hours of your time. They’re getting all that expertise that’s been bottled up. ⁓
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (12:31)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think that we get so caught up in, this is what I do, that we forget that there are other people out there that are charging the same, if not more, that just simply aren’t as good as us. I know that sounds so egocentric and driven, but there are people out there who are charging the same as you who don’t know what a master page is in InDesign. They don’t know what a Bezier curve is. They don’t know that
Nadine Nethery (12:40)
for years.
Mmm.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (13:04)
If you use blue in a food brand, that it will actually be a detriment to them because blue as a color is a food suppressant. And so these little micro things that you know about brand or you know about your specific thing, because if you’re a creative and you’re a freelancer, there’s a high point at high chance that you have some kind of neurodivergence and therefore you have deep dove into something that is so specific that your
Nadine Nethery (13:19)
Mmm.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (13:32)
that the person that they’re considering elsewhere doesn’t know, you already have a value that is much more than them. And yet you’re comparing yourself to them thinking that you’re the same. You’re not the same. You’re different and you’re more valuable in the right situations. And so the challenge becomes instead of trying to fit the mold, find the situations where you your creative genius, your specific hyper fixation fueled creative genius.
Nadine Nethery (13:45)
Hmm.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (13:57)
not only shines, but is 10 times more valuable simply from existing.
Nadine Nethery (14:01)
So much to take in. Oh my God. Isn’t it? There’s so much complexity. I’m just processing as I take it in going, yeah, guilty, guilty. Oh my God. It doesn’t help either. Like little story again from my early days in business. So I started out quoting every copy projects like back in my copywriter days. Separately, so I’d look at, you know, like how many pages, every project.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (14:03)
I feel like if we had… No, I appreciate it.
Nadine Nethery (14:25)
price separately, of course, totally undercharged. And then I shifted to VIP days, which really works with my busy lifestyle. It was very predictable. I didn’t have issues because people weren’t delivering things when they said, and then it rolled all into one giant mess. And my original price tag, which is half of what I charge now, I presented to my husband at the time and he goes, you couldn’t charge that. That’s like,
surgeon territory. And I’m like, what do you mean? obviously his attitude has changed nowadays. that pushback, even from people in your environment, it can really play with your perception on, can I actually charge it? I thought I was pretty reasonable. And then you look at other
competitors out there who are definitely charging more and they’re selling. So it’s just, there’s so much complexity and stuff to work through in your own environment. But then also, think sometimes just looking at your business in isolation and quietening all the noise out there and actually just going, doing the maths, what do I need to make?
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (15:15)
Absolutely.
And I think that so many of us, when we’re sitting in that place of setting the rate, go over what, and I literally had this in my inbox this week. Someone said, I’m moving to Melbourne and I need to know what the pricing that I should be charging is because I’m moving to Melbourne. And I’m like, that’s got literally nothing to do with it. Like, and in the same, like the week before I got someone on, who commented well-meaningly on a piece of content that I had created.
Nadine Nethery (15:45)
Mmm. Yeah.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (15:56)
basically saying, I believe that all freelance pricing should be unionized. And I’m like, absolutely not. Because like, I understand that the whole idea is like, then we can have consistent pricing and everything. No, absolutely not. Because at the end of the day, I leapt from my nine to five to have more control over my time, effort and prices. And if I then have to conform to a set of pricing,
Nadine Nethery (16:03)
yeah.
Mm. Mm.
Yeah.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (16:25)
I’m sorry, that sounds like an employee and I am, I would be the worst employee ever right now because I have too many ideas that I will turn into business ideas that I will try and fail, which is risky for an employer. I have too much outside of the box thinking to be boxed in. And I want to be able to say, and I literally did this a couple of months ago.
Nadine Nethery (16:43)
Mm.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (16:47)
were you, you’re briefing me in on a Friday and you need this by Monday. So my capacity that is being taken into account is the weekend. Sure. I can do that. That’s $10,000. And I literally charged $10,000 for that job to do that over that weekend, which then in turn, because they had those scope creeps, those elements that just kept going, that ended up being a $28,000 job for me.
And I would not be able to do that if my pricing had been standardized. I would not be able to do that if I was told what to charge. It has to be a choice that you make to understand what is the value on my work time, but also my downtime. And also what is the value of the problem solved? And I talk about this all the freaking time is that if we can try and understand what our creativity solves as a problem and put a price tag on that solution.
Nadine Nethery (17:13)
Mm.
Mmm.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (17:38)
They will be less interested in what that price tag says and more interested in how much it’s going to cost them to not solve it tomorrow.
Nadine Nethery (17:47)
Yeah, I love that. And a lot of service providers, it’s so easy to put a price tag on, if you outsource to me, you’re going to either make that much money, or you’re going to save that much time it’s about making it very clear that cost of not acting or the benefit of acting and actually having you do it for them. Now let’s…
switch it to customer mindset because that comes into the picture as well. So we’ve worked out there’s a lot of noise and problems going on when it comes to business owners, but there’s that same emotional work that goes on in our potential customers minds when we present them with a price tag for the project that they’ve come to us with. how do you feel pricing alters how a customer perceives your business, your brand, your offer?
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (18:22)
Mm-hmm.
Nadine Nethery (18:34)
as a whole.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (18:36)
I believe that premium pricing actually creates a bit of a psychological safety for a client. if someone said, so wherever you are right now, whether you’re listening to this in the car or while doing the dishes or whatever it is, ask yourself, if someone said you get what you pay for when speaking about you, what would you want that to mean? Would you want that to mean that, they get what they pay for, therefore it was a cheap thing and therefore they’ve gotten the cheap thing? Or would you want it to mean,
I got what I paid for because I invested well into it. And I think that if we’re wanting the latter, we literally have to be the one to set those higher prices. We have to be the one to create that psychological safety because when they pay a lot for something, they show up differently. They actually take the time to have conversations with you. They don’t just put N.A. in all of the questionnaire that you send out to them or one word and answers. And they actually like put the effort and the energy in because
Nadine Nethery (19:28)
Uh-huh.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (19:32)
They’ve paid for a service that is the situation that they’re wanting to actually get out. They respect your time. They’re more engaged and the budget clients, the ones that are like annoying, they’ve got this friction of just like, I’ve already feel like I’ve paid less. Therefore I feel I want to control more. And so I myself love when I one, am too expensive for someone because it gives me a really good indication of the person that don’t want to work.
Nadine Nethery (19:53)
Mmm.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (20:01)
And that’s not an elitist thing. It’s a, know that if we go down this path, it’s not going to be good. I once said to a client, I could charge you less, but then we’d both be disappointed because you wouldn’t get the result that you’re wanting. And I would have to cut corners to be able to make this work. And neither of us are going to be happy. And so your pricing really sets the tone for the entire relationship because it’s your client saying, this is how it’s your you saying to a client, this is how this is going to go.
Nadine Nethery (20:16)
Mm.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (20:27)
This is me creating psychological and situational safety by showing you that I am worthwhile producing this solution for you. I am giving you a guarantee that this is the price tag and this is what the experience that you’re going to get is. And you’re creating that safety. Whereas I actually myself recently hired someone else to do some stuff for me. And it’s not a exorbitant price tag. It’s like,
just under $2,000 a month to get the service that I’m wanting. And I’ve found myself saying, I’ve paid enough for this to make this work. So therefore I’m pushing back on things. I’m actually like making sure that I invest the time in it to make it good. We’re jumping on a call this afternoon to discuss stuff, to work out how we can best equip ourselves for the future ahead, which is going to be another $20,000 that I invest in this. So when people pay, they invest mentally and
Nadine Nethery (20:59)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (21:26)
monetarily as well. And it creates that situation where you will be trusted more because your pricing is higher. And that’s ultimately what we want. We want to be trusted. We don’t want to be having distrust and distrust comes from lower prices. cheap prices attract cheap clients. So therefore expensive prices attract expensive clients.
Nadine Nethery (21:40)
Mm.
Absolutely. it’s so true in my business. have different types of offers and people who come in, via that entry level offer. they’re looking for an order taker almost. It’s like, well, not, there you go. Yeah. It’s like you get your list. They’ve got in their mind what they want and because they’re not paying much, they’re
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (21:56)
Mm-hmm.
Mac Monkey, we used to call them.
Nadine Nethery (22:09)
assuming, well, you’re just going to tick off my list and there’s not much more that goes with it. ⁓ So often my clients are then surprised when I come forward with ideas and extra bits and they go, this is so good. It so valuable. my God. wasn’t expecting it. Whereas the top of the range offer attracts people who literally go, I trust your expertise. I’ve come to you because I want your ideas. I want to hand this over.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (22:13)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Nadine Nethery (22:34)
let me
know what works best. And the most fulfilling projects usually are that top level project because I get to work my magic. My client loves the outcome because they get all this out of the box goodness, something that really works. It’s strategic, it’s researched, it’s different. And it also then works within my boundaries, you know, because they’re paying a premium price, they’re getting all of my attention. And
like I can offer to deliver because obviously they’re covering enough of my energy and headspace to make it worth my while.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (23:06)
I’ve actually got this client of mine that I worked with a couple of years ago. It’s, going to be a very left of field one, but I saw I paint murals as well as part of my freelancing. So paint murals, build websites, do branding, all that sort of stuff. and I was in this incredible situation where I got to paint a three story mural for someone inside their elevator shaft of their home.
Nadine Nethery (23:18)
Mmm.
Wow.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (23:34)
you want to talk about rich people problems this is one of them ⁓ and so like the i was on the project for two years and so it was quite a large project i was there from when we had like wooden beams and a slab to when it was completed and so the the mural that i created was a three story storytelling piece that encapsulated everything about their relationship it had things that were meaning things like
Nadine Nethery (23:36)
Yeah…
Mmm.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (24:02)
For instance, they do letters of the alphabet for their anniversary, which we now do too. And so I hid the letters of the alphabet in the waterfall that was on the bottom level. And they had a Mr. Whippy van for their wedding. So that was the clouds in Mr. Whippy van ice creams. And so we did this incredible project and we took the time to really create it and really hand do it. It was painted digitally and then put inside the elevator shaft for printing.
Nadine Nethery (24:10)
Mmm.
Yeah.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (24:31)
And on install day, we installed all the bits and pieces. And as my sign writer or installer was getting out of the elevator shaft, something in his back pocket scraped the mural. And we literally were just about to finish and he jumped out and it scraped it. And I was like, okay. And I came to them and I said, look, the situation is that this is what’s happened.
I’m devastated that it’s happened, but I’m going to fix this. I’m going to get it fixed. And Andrea, if you’re listening, I love you. Andrea, my beautiful client said to me the words that I’ve used time and time again in that we don’t blame you for the problem, but we hope you helped to fix it. Or we hope we hope you provide the solution. We trust that you will try to solve this. And that’s, think the responsibility that we’ll have when we do charge high is that
Nadine Nethery (25:02)
Mmm.
Mm.
Hmm.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (25:27)
Not if, but when things go wrong, as they sometimes will. You don’t quit, you find the ways that it works and you utilize that creative problem solving brain that you have to find the solution. Cause it’s not about everything going perfectly. I just wrote an email last week about the idea of a perfect game.
Nadine Nethery (25:48)
Hmm.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (25:51)
that if you’re going to discount all of the things that go wrong, even if they end up being the 3 % of the things that go wrong and make it so that the whole thing sucks and is like, it’s a failure. Dude out there in employee world projects fail every day. They reroute, they get ditched, they completely take a new direction. And so if the same thing’s happening for you and your freelancing, congratulations, you’re a business and businesses pivot.
Nadine Nethery (26:06)
Yeah.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (26:19)
and alter and change. And it doesn’t mean that things are bad. It just means that you’re trying to find the right situation to pivot towards.
Nadine Nethery (26:19)
Mm.
Yeah, it’s taking ownership, isn’t it? Yeah. Yeah. I reckon I’d much rather take responsibility and prepare for something going pear shaped ⁓ and then showing up for my customer. And ultimately, if you fix a problem, people are much more likely to recommend you and talk about you positively because you
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (26:31)
It’s taking ownership because being expensive is responsible.
Mmm.
Absolutely.
Nadine Nethery (26:52)
Pivoted in the moment, you found a solution and you went above and beyond. So often those customer experiences that aren’t just too perfect, too scripted, they work a treat, but it’s when something goes wrong, how you react in that moment, what’s going to make you stand out and memorable and trustworthy, right?
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (26:56)
Mm-hmm.
It’s not human.
Mm-hmm.
Nadine Nethery (27:12)
pricing. It’s just like so complex, so good, multifaceted. I feel it’s far too easy for us business owners to go, I was just too expensive. The price was the wrong one. I need to lower my prices. When in fact, often it is the way we communicate the price and the price tag and talk about that price that’s associated with it. What’s your
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (27:32)
Mm-hmm.
Nadine Nethery (27:34)
or experience with that.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (27:37)
So I often talk about the price that you give is not the whole story. Like the dollar amount is not the whole story. It’s how you deliver it. And then when people hear that, go, that’s sales. No, darling. It’s just communicating it. It’s having conversations that have price tags attached to them or woven within them. And a client that walks away because of a price probably wasn’t your person. If it was about the price.
Nadine Nethery (27:43)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Yeah.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (28:04)
But if it was about the delivery or how confidently you said it, so for instance, I see quite often, it’s just, it’s not communicated in a way that instills the confidence for what that price tag was put on. If it felt confusing, defensive, or like a negotiating way, negotiation or hostage negotiation waiting to happen, then that’s a loss that we could have prevented. Because if we present our price as the confident
Nadine Nethery (28:16)
Yes.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (28:32)
a packaging of that experience. It makes it so that they can be confident of the work. And if you’re apologizing, apologetic pricing is one of the biggest ones that I see. If you’re apologizing for it already, it makes it really hard. for instance, like if you like your scope is unclear or you’ve just kind of slapped a price on that
Nadine Nethery (28:44)
Hmm.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (28:56)
hasn’t taken into account the listing of things that need to be done, then they can tell. They can absolutely tell. Another one is if you discount too fast, perception then is, the first price wasn’t even a real one. It’s kind of like I’ve just gotten back from Thailand and last week there was a cab that we needed to take literally five, maybe 10 minutes down the road, if that, and we just didn’t want to walk.
Nadine Nethery (29:07)
Mmm.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (29:21)
We just didn’t want to walk. It was really hot. We were about to go get massages and he was like 300 baht. And I’m like, there’s four of us. Like that’s not a big deal. It was fine. But then we bartered down to 200 baht, but we were ready to and willing to walk away. That was fine. And that’s part of it as well, being ready and willing to walk away. But
Nadine Nethery (29:30)
Mm-hmm.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (29:43)
because we were able to have that conversation, it’s got nothing to do with the value or anything like that was the value of not having to walk to the massage place. And it makes you sit there and go, was the 300 baht wherever real? Was the higher price actually real or were you, and no one wants to be in that situation. No one wants to be in the situation where they’re being misunderstood for what they’re delivering. And I think the last one of that is that like,
Nadine Nethery (29:51)
Mm-mm.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (30:11)
If you’re hiding your prices or being evasive about them, clients pick up on that energy and they find it really stressful. Like I myself have sometimes gone, just tell me the freaking price so I can just make the decisions that I need to. Because when someone is listening to you talk about what you do and then they hear the price, that’s part of the puzzle that they’re making up in their mind. Now, if yours matches the puzzle that they’ve been creating along the way of that conversation, great. But if it’s then,
Nadine Nethery (30:15)
Hmm.
Mm.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (30:42)
massively off and I’m talking both high or low, more often low, then it really changes the way that they then build that picture. So if I’ve said that we’re going to do a branding deep dive and it’s going to be this, this, this, this, this, and I tell you it’s a thousand dollars and you had in your head that it was going to be 5,000, you’ve then gone, instead of it being like, my God, I’ve got to save $4,000.
Nadine Nethery (30:47)
Mm.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (31:10)
I as a client will sit there and go, they’re too cheap to be of anything of value. Therefore, everything that I’ve made up is a lie in my brain because it’s going to be so much worse than I think it’s going to be. There are people out there that expect you to be more expensive than you are. And by giving them a cheaper price, you are doing a disservice to both you and them.
Nadine Nethery (31:31)
Yeah, yeah, so true. So true. What’s your take? I think you touched on it in some respect, but what’s your take on listing your price on your website?
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (31:41)
I think it’s situational. I think that there are some situations where I would highly recommend listing your pricing on a website. And it also depends on the package that it’s put together. So in a recent workshop, I talked about the bento box pricing method, which is having four different ways of working with you that all feed into each other. And one of them is a productized service. So a productized service, your VIP days are actually a perfect example of this.
Nadine Nethery (31:42)
Hmm?
Yep.
Mm.
Mm, yeah.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (32:11)
but something that has a set process, a set way of doing things, a set price and a set expectation and quite often a set problem that is being solved. So if you have that, there’s not really much wiggle room in what the price should be. And the great thing about a productized service is it can be checked out while you sleep. And then it actually often will then give that kind of almost
Nadine Nethery (32:20)
Mm.
Yeah.
Mm.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (32:34)
paid test of what it’s like to work with you, which really sets you up beautifully for your bigger offers, for your next steps. And then sending them into those next steps of maybe it’s a tiered service that you have that has different situational setups. Maybe it’s a bespoke project, because if you are quoting everything from scratch, you are putting effort and energy into so many things that won’t turn out. They just won’t. So if we’re doing a bespoke project, it has to be high. It has to be
Nadine Nethery (32:57)
Mm.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (33:01)
generously priced. And then you’ve got your retainer stuff. So something that’s a recurring revenue model. And so the recurring revenue model, probably wouldn’t put on a website because I don’t actually want anyone to be able to capture or fall into that bucket because I don’t marry on the first date, ⁓ which is what a retainer is. And I don’t put my prices for bespoke stuff because that’s naturally going to be high because it’s based on the situation.
Nadine Nethery (33:02)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (33:28)
So I might put my tiered pricing and I might put on there from X because when we do tiered pricing, we’re generally building the middle tier from the center, building a minimum viable product that takes away all the things that they might want, but has the price tag they probably think they’re gonna get. And then over stuffing the top ones so that they generally go in for the middle tier. And I might have that on my website or might have it so that it’s accessible and available.
Nadine Nethery (33:33)
Mmm. Mmm.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (33:56)
And I will probably have the product I service with the pricing on it, but the other stuff, probably not because I don’t know the price yet. I literally don’t know the price of what those are going to be. And I want to make sure that when people access me, it’s in a way that I’m comfortable with. And that is around like putting pricing on, and experience on websites, but also.
Nadine Nethery (34:00)
Hmm. Hmm. Yeah.
Mm.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (34:16)
Making sure that when you communicate stuff, you’re not just focusing on the ingredients and the deliverables and the time and the effort and the energy. You’re actually focusing on what is more valuable, which is the outcomes, the deliverable process that happens after the thing is done and the experience that you’re creating. That’s more valuable than how many rounds of changes they get.
Nadine Nethery (34:37)
Yeah, totally agree. And in my instance as well, learning curve, right? Like I’ve been in business coming on 10 years now. So there’ve been many past versions of Nadine who’s learned, you know, they’ve all learned bits along the way. And one thing that I started doing pretty early is for my top tier project product type offer.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (34:42)
Yeah.
Yes, absolutely.
Nadine Nethery (34:58)
is adding from prices because I felt too many times. I was jumping on calls with people to work out whether we’re a perfect fit who then went, Ooh, that’s actually not any way near my budget. Again, people clearly not the right fit for me. And, so adding a from price definitely has reduced the calls with time wasters who yeah, are looking for something that clearly is not me.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (35:12)
Mm-hmm.
Nadine Nethery (35:23)
So that’s really helped. And yeah, having the price on my VIP day. It’s all on the website, it’s all transparent and it automatically weeds out people who aren’t for me, which was great.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (35:35)
Yeah, I’ve also got on my so I’ve got that you can book a call and then submit a brief. And when you submit a brief, there’s a what is the investment you have allocated for this project? And then I have a little thing that says click here to see my prices. And I say like, what I’m here for and what I’m not. And so I say like brand and packages that range between five and 10 K long form documents, website developments, and I give like indicative prices of this to this.
Nadine Nethery (35:40)
Mmm.
Yeah.
⁓ so clever.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (36:02)
generally and I say I’m not here for just a logo. I’m not here for any project that is under this particular price. Another way of doing that is also like if you’ve got someone filling out the stuff and you’ve got a drop down of like what is your budget, don’t put an option where you don’t want like don’t put zero to 500 if you don’t want to take under $500 projects. I know that sounds like really obvious, but I can’t tell you how many times I look at people’s briefing or their inquiry forms and they have stuff on there that they don’t want to do.
Nadine Nethery (36:02)
Mmm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mm.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (36:30)
The easiest way to be chosen to do something that you don’t want to do is to offer it up.
Nadine Nethery (36:30)
Mmm.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (36:34)
And if that’s cheap prices and cheap projects, get them off your website. Get it off. Stop pandering to the situations where you don’t even want to be picked for.
Nadine Nethery (36:38)
Yeah.
it’s so clever that contact form really is your first opportunity to filter out anyone who’s not the right fit. And, if you go into a dropdown and it starts at 3k, 4k, and that’s not what you’re willing to pay, you’re not going to proceed and book that call, So little things in your customer journey, can make a huge difference to your capacity as well. Because all these people.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (36:53)
you now know.
Nadine Nethery (37:05)
end up in your inbox, you got to reply, you got to tell them, nah, that’s not what I do. So really consider every step, even how you communicate things on the website, being transparent with what you do, what your budget, expectation is for client projects. So many good things. Before we wrap up, I would love some, I know, right? It’s been half an hour, my God.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (37:09)
Absolutely.
Gosh that’s gone fast! Could we not do this for another hour please?
Nadine Nethery (37:28)
What would you say to listeners who are going, I’m definitely undercharging. I know that it’s impacting my capacity, the way I feel about my client work. Where should they start in the process to work out what that appropriate, perfect, perfect’s probably not the right word, but appropriate, better.
pricing would be for their business and their offers.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (37:50)
This is such a wonderfully loaded question because there’s so many ways you can start. But the fact of the matter is if you’re someone that’s sitting there going, I don’t charge hourly and therefore I’m not going to work out the price of my time. Please just let go of that. Like you don’t have to price hourly and so you don’t have to charge hourly to understand that the value of your time is the building block that you probably need that you’re ignoring. Now, to find your
Nadine Nethery (37:53)
Ha ha.
Mm.
Hmm.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (38:19)
billable hour rate, you need to start with what salary you’re wanting to make per year. You then need to add in the expenses that a general year would bring or what you would like to allocate for those expenses. And then you need to divide by the time of like the amount of time that you have to spend on that. So how many days a week are you working? How many hours a day? How often are you going to take time off? And that’s
like having that deep intrinsic understanding of this is what my time costs to exist and be running a business and using that as the baseline for how you then build all your prices will make it easier because it will be based in logic, not motion because pricing is a logical experience with an emotional attachment. And if it is too attached to you, you’ll find it really hard. If it’s attached to them,
Nadine Nethery (39:01)
Mmm.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (39:12)
That’s actually okay. You want them to have an emotional connection in some way, or form, because whatever they’re trying to solve with what they’re trying to buy from you is costing them in some way, shape or form. But the whole idea is to start with what is your number, your dollar number that you put on your time or your billable hour, and then building all your pricing around that. So that’s why my main freebie that I have for all of my stuff is a pricing calculator.
That’s been downloaded by, 7,000 people in the past four years, which is amazing. But it means that everyone’s able to kind of go through that process, say, I want to make 100K this year. These are all my expenses. And I only want to be working four days a week. And I only want to be working six hours a day. And I want to be able to take a two-week holiday here and a three-week holiday there. This is the exact number that I need to charge, because sometimes we just need a permission slip to
Nadine Nethery (39:41)
Mmm.
Mm.
Yeah.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (40:08)
see what that actually looks like. And then where do I go from here? How do I build from here?
Nadine Nethery (40:13)
And going through that process totally then makes you confident to communicate your price as well. Right? Because you went into business to have more freedom, more control over the amount of hours you work, who you work with, et cetera. So going through that process makes you crystal clear on, that’s my price. If you want a chunk of my time, that’s what it’s got to cost you. Yeah.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (40:19)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
It’s just a ticket price. It’s not got
anything to do with who you are or your worth. Worth gets me the shits. Sorry. ⁓ It’s not. It’s a value that you bring to the table and it’s simply a price tag that you’ve put on the access to your genius to make their life or their business better. And so if you can understand what that costs you, then you can have a better understanding of what it’s going to cost them and make sure that those two are either matched or what you charge is way more.
Nadine Nethery (40:40)
Mm. Yeah, charge your worth. ⁓ my God. Yeah.
Mm.
Mm. Mm.
Yeah, so good. So I’ll add to my list, download the calculator and sense check pricing. So that’s my first port of call after this episode. While we’re talking freebies and how people can connect with you, do you want to let people know where they can find you and how you can support them beyond this episode?
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (41:09)
Absolutely.
Hell no.
Yeah,
absolutely. So just some people make all these different bits and pieces where you can go and like do a backflip and then access that. No, no, no, no. Let’s just jump over on to Instagram. I want you to send me a DM on the biggest takeaway that you had from this episode so that I can screenshot it and share it and we can share your show and share the experience as well. But then we can actually start having a conversation because as soon as you send me a DM about this, I will send you access to the pricing calculator straight away so that you can start with this process.
Nadine Nethery (41:31)
You
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (41:52)
And I am a chatty Cathy. So I hope that you are ready for voice notes. I hope that you are ready for back and forth. And I hope that you are ready for millennial puns that will make you giggle because you’ll feel seen and heard. And that’s, think ultimately what we need to do is just to be connecting seen and heard and charge well for that.
Nadine Nethery (41:55)
Hahaha.
And when you can vent about your pricing problems to someone who gets it, how good is it? Right? It’s like Jasmine, she’s got to know, she’s going to get me. She’s got to understand.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (42:13)
yeah, absolutely. Yeah. She’s got to know. Yes, exactly.
So, jump over onto Instagram. I am your pricing queen, but it is more than likely that you have got the link somewhere in the exactly. So come over on your pricing point on Instagram. Let’s have a gap.
Nadine Nethery (42:27)
That’s right. Yeah.
Yes. I’ll link it all up in the show notes. And then last, last, I promise last question. What are you currently wondering or struggling with in your business when it comes to your own customer experience?
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (42:44)
So it sounds like when I talk about all of this that I’ve got my freelancing dialed. And I think that the reality is that my freelancing evolves with me. And so I’m currently working through what is one of my biggest challenges, not to go too deep, but I have a real connection with unfinished business. So I’m really bad at the last 10 % whenever I work with clients. I’m a great worker. I am really good at
Nadine Nethery (43:04)
Mmm.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (43:09)
like creating things and doing things, but it’s the last 10 % that really catches me out. And it’s only in this last year that I’ve realized that the reason why the last 10 % catches me out is because I’m no longer needed. Once the job is finished, I’m no longer needed. And it’s breaking through that mental side. It’s breaking through that mindset for myself to go that, no, once this job is done, you can do the next one. So if that’s something that helps you today, that you’ve kind of sat there and gone,
Nadine Nethery (43:20)
Mmm, yes!
Yes.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (43:36)
that’s me. Let’s have a chat. We’ll work through it together.
Nadine Nethery (43:38)
Hmm.
It totally is a remote and emotional roller coaster as a service provider, isn’t it? Like you get so invested in your clients and so much fulfillment. And then it’s like this, you know, project high, and then you hand it over. And so it’s emotional, just like pricing, all emotional, but I’m here for it.
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (43:43)
What?
Yes, no one’s got it perfect.
Yeah, it’s all that
deep intrinsic element to it. And just accepting that like, you see the people online who seem like they have it together. They at best have it in like piles with decorative throws over it. And they’re just as much going through their own process and and developing as you are.
Nadine Nethery (44:06)
Hmm.
Yeah, we keep evolving, isn’t it? Even pricing, you need to revisit pricing all the time because of inflation, even those things, mortgage going up. my God, let’s not go there. So it’s a never finished process, pricing, also mindset. So I’m so glad we got to cover a little bit about
Jaz, Your Pricing Queen (44:21)
I’m
Frequently, if anything large changes in your business.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Me too.
Nadine Nethery (44:41)
pricing and all the things that go with it. Obviously, if you want to learn more, connect with Jasmine. Other than that, if you are not following the show yet and you enjoyed this little chat, please go and follow and subscribe in all the places and potentially even share it with a business buddy who might need a bit of encouragement today. And yeah, thanks for tuning in. I’ll be back in your AirPods next week.
