Fully booked, still broke? Your pricing is wrong ⚠️
The underpricing trap, and how to get out
Busy is not the same as profitable. Mid-month can look fine, then the costs land and the margin is gone.
I’ve lived that version of business. The diary looked packed, the work kept coming, and the numbers still didn’t cover the real cost of delivery.
That’s why I asked Vanessa Ugatti, coach, motivational speaker, and author of True Worth, to share a practical reset for service founders who are busy, booked, and still not seeing it in the margin.👇🏻
Why your prices keep you stuck
Underpricing usually starts as a shortcut to get a yes, then it becomes the rate you’re scared to move.
It changes the kind of clients you attract and the way you deliver. Scope creeps, clients push for more, and the margin disappears into extra work.
If that pattern feels familiar, pricing has turned into a comfort test rather than a decision you can defend.
That’s how underpricing slowly kills the original deal you made with yourself: freedom, control, and work you can be proud of.
Five moves that change the numbers
You don’t need a complete pricing overhaul to get out of this. You need one reset you can actually hold. Here are five to consider:
1️⃣ Price for reality
Pick a number that holds up when the week gets real. It needs to cover delivery time, overhead, and profit, plus enough spare capacity to keep improving the business. If you’re pricing without a view of your weekly capacity, you’re guessing, and guessing usually lands low.
A simple way to sanity check it: work out how many hours a week you can genuinely deliver at a high level, then divide your monthly target by that capacity. If the number makes you wince, that’s useful data.
2️⃣ Raise prices for new clients first
Start here because it’s clean. Set a new baseline for anyone coming in from today onwards and stick to it. You’ll get less noise, fewer negotiations, and better-fit clients faster than you expect.
If you want a line you can use without over-explaining:
“My pricing has changed to reflect demand and delivery depth. From [date], it’s [x].”
3️⃣ Stop discounting, reshape the job
Discounts feel easy in the moment, then they poison delivery. When someone pushes on budget, change the shape of the work. Reduce deliverables, tighten support, or shorten the timeline. Keep the price tied to what you’re taking on.
A simple line that holds your ground:
“If budget is the constraint, we can reduce scope.”
4️⃣ Choose clients on purpose
Underpricing sticks around when the wrong work keeps getting in.
Put a minimum budget on the table early. Be clear about boundaries that protect your week, like response times and revision limits.
If someone becomes difficult before you’ve even started, take the hint.
A line that saves hours of future pain:
“I’m not the right fit for that budget.”
5️⃣ Stop “free work” taking over
The quickest way to lose margin is by expanding the job.
Define what’s included, what counts as extra, and when the project ends.
If you find yourself doing favours to make a client happy, that’s usually a pricing issue showing up in behaviour.
When a ‘quick extra’ lands, keep it simple:
“Happy to do that. It’s outside the original scope, so I can send an updated quote, or we can swap it in by removing something else.”
Price it like you mean it
Pick one change and lock it in before Friday, whether that’s a higher new-client rate, a minimum budget, tighter scope, or dropping default discounts.
Once the price holds up, you stop packing the calendar to make the numbers work and you can deliver without rushing, which is when the business starts to feel lighter.
Better clients usually follow, because people who pay properly respect boundaries and decide faster, and that’s when it feels like yours again.
Vanessa Ugatti teaches the full True Worth approach in her masterclass and shares her best selling book free on her website. You can also find her on LinkedIn.
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Really solid framework on breaking the underpricing cycle. The piece about reshaping the job instead of discounting is smart because it keeps value anchored to deliverables. I ran into this alot early on where scope creep destroyed whatever margin was left. Picking clients on purpose feels like common sense but took me way too long to actually do it.
Resetting rates isn’t about greed; it’s about protecting your margin, your energy, and the quality of the work you can deliver.