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265. The Psychology Behind Pricing That Actually Converts · The Life-First Solopreneur

• 0:00
  Carly Ries: In the first SoundByte episode of 2026, Joe and I answered the question solopreneurs ask all the time. How should I price my services? We unpack why pricing is about fairness and value, not greed, why underpricing attracts the wrong clients, and how to charge for outcomes and expertise, not just time. So tune in because you'll walk away with a clearer, more confident approach to your pricing. You're listening to the Aspiring Solopreneur, the podcast for anyone on the solo business journey, whether you're just with the idea, taking your first bold step, or have been running your own show for years and want to keep growing, refining, and thriving.
• 0:38
  I'm Carly Ries, and along with my cohost, Joe Rando, we're your guides through the crazy but awesome world of being a company of one. As part of LifeStarr, a digital hub dedicated to all things solopreneurship, we help people design businesses that align with their life's ambitions so they can work to live, not live to work. If you're looking for a get rich quick scheme, this is not the place for you. But if you want real world insights from industry experts, lessons from the successes and stumbles of fellow solopreneurs, and practical strategies for building and sustaining a business you love, you're in the right spot. Because flying solo in business doesn't mean you're alone.
• 1:14
  No matter where you are in your journey, we've got your back. Okay. So, Joe, this is our first sound bite recording of 2026. And we in the past, we've come up with topics that we think would be helpful for solopreneurs. We've gone through the book, and a lot of our SoundBytes from q3 , q4 last year have been around Solopreneur Business for Dummies.
• 1:39
  And now we've been getting a lot of questions, and we work with a lot of solopreneurs. for our SoundByte episodes moving forward, the ones that we launch on Thursdays, we are going to be answering specific questions that solopreneurs have time and time again. And so for today, one of the questions we get all the time is, how should I price my services? How should I price my product? And we've talked about it in other episodes, but let's just speak to it directly today.
• 2:10
  Joe, you are the I don't wanna say guru, but you are
• 2:14
  Joe Rando: That would be too strong.
• 2:16
  Carly Ries: Yeah. guru's a little overkill. But this is kind of a realm. You wrote about this. This is one of the chapters you wrote about in the book.
• 2:23
  So do you want to start things off?
• 2:25
  Joe Rando: Yeah. I mean, it's a pain point for anybody getting started or even people that are up and running for a while and say, you know, am I charging enough? And it's hard because, I mean, one of the things about solopreneurs that I didn't expect, but turned out to be true is that they're really nice people mostly. And the problem with being a nice person is that you know, you wanna be nice to people. And people start feeling greedy about charging too much money and that kind of thing.
• 2:56
  And that really isn't the right way to think about this. It's really about fairness. And what I mean by that is, you're good at what you do. You're adding value. You're doing something that's solving a problem for somebody, and that has value, and you should be paid that value. It's not a function of a certain, rate per hour, you know, that's right or wrong. It's really looking at what you do, what you've put isnto getting good at what you do, and what value it adds to people and charging fairly. So we can just start this off by saying this is about fairness, not about greed, and it's not about just being nice to people.
• 3:35
  Carly Ries: Well, and the other thing to add on that is when people think of their retainer or their hourly, they think of the work that they're doing in the moment. And they're not charging the years and years, sometimes decades of expertise that went into that moment as well. So you're not charging for that specific project, you're charging for the project plus your knowledge. And you need to factor that in.
• 3:58
  Joe Rando: There's an old joke about there's a I think it was like a ship engine or something, and and they couldn't get it to work right. So this guy says, look. I can fix it for you, but it's gonna cost $15,000? He said, that's fine. Just do it.
• 4:13
  So the guy comes in. He's got a hammer. He walks around, bangs on the the engine at one spot, walks over another spot, bangs on that at that part, and the engine works fine. And he said, that's $15,000. They said, $15,000? it only took you three minutes. And he goes, do not pay me for the three minutes. You're paying me for all the time that I spent learning where to hit the hammer.
• 4:38
  Carly Ries: Yeah.
• 4:39
  Joe Rando: You know? And that's really what this is about. It's, a function of you've done a lot of work over the years, and you're not getting paid for the hour. You're getting paid for the hour plus, you know, amortizing all that time you spent getting good at what you do.
• 4:54
  Carly Ries: Well, I think a lot of the time people have impostor syndrome when it comes to pricing their services. And within our community, we have these things called Monday meetups. And we had one today, and this conversation just seems relevant, where you may not seem like you may just be getting started. And you may not feel ready to be the quote unquote expert in your field. And maybe amongst your peers, you're not.
• 5:17
  But for your ideal clients, you are. So charge like you are the expert. I mean, people are gonna choose a higher dollar amount rather than a lower one time and time again because they think that there's credibility behind it.
• 5:33
  Joe Rando: And you're kind of getting into the nitty gritty here, you know, the main thing is when you get started, trading time for money is fine. It's a good way to start really because you know, really it's kind of like a boot camp for learning how to do what you do as well as you can learn how to do it, and see what people need, seeing the real problems and so on. So it's a really good way to start. But that mindset shift you talked about, you know, looking at all the stuff that went into learning how to do what you do, you gotta consider that.
• 6:11
  And so when you get going, you might be charging less just to get some work. but there's a risk here. You don't want to be the low price leader. You know, there's this temptation to say, Well, I'm half the price of those other people.
• 6:30
  But what you're gonna do is you're gonna attract the wrong kind of client, You're gonna get people that are you know, we used to call them bottom feeders, which isn't very nice, but the idea is they want something cheap. And a lot of times they want a lot for very little money. So they're not even your best clients in terms of being easy on you. And so you need people that come in with respect for you and respect for your value, or you're really gonna be miserable.
• 6:59
  Do you know what I'm saying?
• 7:01
  Carly Ries: Yeah. And if you take on all these people that are paying the lowest price, you need to take on a lot of them to make the income you wanna make, and then you're just gonna face burnout. So why not Filter and find the people that really value your services, get fewer of them, protect your personal time, and charge a higher price.
• 7:19
  Joe Rando: do you remember Amy Rasdal? We had her on the podcast. Must have been a year ago at least.
• 7:24
  Carly Ries: I like of Amy all the time. It is so funny you say that because she had some sound bites from that episode that I repeat in my mind often. Anyway, I digress. But yes.
• 7:35
  Joe Rando: But yeah. But she suggested that, if you're a typical kind of consultant, somebody that comes out of corporate, has some skill set, and goes out she says the average charge a $150 an hour when they get started. That information's a little bit old, not too old. You know, it sounds reasonable to me, but it's probably a lot higher than a lot of people are thinking when they're, coming out and looking at doing something like coaching or consulting or something, contracting. But that's what she argued is a $150 an hour.
• 8:08
  If you're working for somebody, a few hours a week, that is, you know, not unreasonable to charge that because you've gotta basically, get into the mindset of working for them. And, you're not doing forty hours or thirty hours or something. You're doing, a few hours a week with different clients. $150 an hour isn't crazy.
• 8:30
  Carly Ries: Mhmm. Because, yeah, if you're let's say, contracted for five hours a week, I mean yeah, it doesn't add up.
• 8:40
  Joe Rando: Yeah. it's, because you've gotta shift into the mindset for that particular client, and do all this stuff. And so, you're working, you're billing for, three hours or whatever, but a lot of times you're putting in more than that just to, get it up and running and get back into the mode. So it just sounds to some people like, my god, that's a lot of money. But then when you think about the fact that if you're self employed, you're paying self employment taxes.
• 9:06
  Yeah. There's a lot of reasons that you need to charge more than you might feel like you need to charge.
• 9:10
  Carly Ries: Well, the other thing is your clients may not often know I mean, they're hiring you for reasons. They may not know how long things actually take, how much time. So when you stop charging hour for hour and end up in retainer or whatever. Again, with this Monday meetup, we had a solopreneur say that he quoted that it would take two months to get this project done and it took him eight days. And so he underpromised, over delivered by a long shot, but still like pocketed that money because he still priced it for the value and the outcome, not the time and effort that went into it.
• 9:51
  Joe Rando: Yep. Another thing that can help to get your prices up and to charge more. And I know we're talking about figuring out how to price, but this is something you really do wanna do. And we say it all the time for everything is niching down.
• 10:03
  If I come in and go, I'm a writer. I'll write stuff for you. Well, you know, okay. But if I come in and say, I write really killer copy for fintech SaaS products, landing pages that convert twice what anybody else does. Well, now if some, FinTech company needs somebody to do some copywriting, they look at me and go, well, I'll pay for that.
• 10:30
  You know, this person obviously knows my business and is good at talking to my potential clients. I'd rather pay more for that. So that niching down makes you a lot more attractive than being a generalist.
• 10:43
  Carly Ries: Yep. Absolutely. Well, I think we covered everything I wanted to say. Do you have anything else you wanna add?
• 10:50
  Joe Rando: I think it's important to think of pricing not as a decision, a onetime decision, but as a process. When you start off, you're probably gonna charge a little less. You're probably going to work hourly. And then as you grow, maybe you move to retainer, some kind of retainer model or a project based model.
• 11:11
  But then over time, as you get really, really good at doing what you're doing for who you're doing it for now with your business, you know, maybe you can then come up with a product of some kind, a package of some kind or a course or something that you can sell and the hours aren't really considered. It's easier to sell the value. Maybe if it's something that's recorded like a video, maybe something that you can scale, theoretically infinitely. So just a way to think about this as not just this decision you're gonna make and live with for the rest of your life, but an incremental process.
• 11:51
  Carly Ries: Yep. I love it. Well, Joe, well said. I'm so glad we did this today because we get that question all the time. Solopreneurs, thank you so much for tuning in.
• 12:01
  As always, please leave that five star review. It really does help us spread the word to other people in your shoes, which is the most important thing to us. Be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, including YouTube, and share this episode with a friend if they are struggling with pricing their services. And we'll see you next time on the Aspiring Solopreneur. You may be going solo in business, but that doesn't mean you're alone.
• 12:25
  In fact, millions of people are in your shoes, running a one person business and figuring it out as they go. So why not connect with them and learn from each other successes and failures? At LifeStarr, we're creating a one person business community where you can go to meet and get advice from other solopreneurs. Be sure to join in on the conversations at community.lifestarr.com.