Latest / Solopreneur Sessions with Fexingo: One-Person Businesses, Freelancing, and Independent Work / The Pricing Pivot That Doubled a Solo Consultant Revenue
Transcript
- Lucas: Luna, I want to start with a number that has stuck with me. A survey from last year found that nearly 60 percent of freelancers and solopreneurs have never raised their rates. Not once. They start at a price, and they stay there. Luna: That's wild. I mean, inflation alone should force a conversation every couple of years. Lucas: You'd think. But the data suggests it's not economics — it's psychology. People are afraid that if they raise prices, clients will leave. And when you're a one-person business, losing even one client can feel existential. Luna: Right. So what do you do when you know you need to charge more but the fear is real? Lucas: Well, today's episode is about a solopreneur who did exactly that — and not just a small bump. She doubled her income in six months. Her name is Jenna, and she's a brand strategist working mostly with early-stage SaaS companies. She started at 75 dollars an hour, project-based work, and within a year she was hitting around 4,000 dollars a month. Decent, but she was burning out. Luna: So the trigger wasn't greed — it was exhaustion. Lucas: Exactly. She was spending too many hours on each project because the scope always crept, and she was too scared to push back. She told me the breaking point was a client who asked for a fourth round of revisions on a brand deck. She'd already done three. She wanted to say no, but she was billing hourly, so she just kept working. Luna: That's the trap with hourly billing — you're incentivized to work more, not smarter. Lucas: Precisely. So Jenna did two things. First, she stopped billing by the hour. She switched to a monthly retainer model — a flat fee for a defined scope of work. Second, she used a tool that a lot of solopreneurs overlook: a simple pricing spreadsheet that calculated her effective hourly rate on retainer. Luna: I love that. Show yourself the math before you have the conversation. Lucas: She realized that if she charged 2,500 dollars a month and spent about 20 hours on a client, she was effectively making 125 dollars an hour — a 66 percent increase from her old rate. But the client saw a flat monthly fee, not a rate. It felt predictable to them. Luna: So the framing matters as much as the number. Lucas: Hugely. She tested the retainer model with her best client first — the one she had the strongest relationship with. She said, 'I'm restructuring how I work. I want to give you more consistent support. Here's a proposal.' And that client said yes immediately. Luna: That's the confidence boost you need before you take it to the others. Lucas: Exactly. She then rolled it out to her other three active clients. Two said yes. One said no — but that client was also the one who caused the most scope creep. Losing them was actually a net positive for her time and sanity. Luna: So she went from four clients to three, but her income went from 4,000 to 7,500 a month. That's the math that matters. Lucas: And within six months she'd added two more retainer clients at the same rate, pushing her to 12,500 a month. That's a 200 percent increase from where she started, and she was working fewer hours. Luna: Okay, but I want to get practical. For a solopreneur listening right now, what's the first step? Do you just send an email saying 'my rates are going up'? Lucas: No, and that's where most people fumble. Jenna's approach was to reposition the offer, not just raise the price. She created a one-page document that outlined the new retainer structure: what was included, what was not, and how it would benefit the client — faster turnaround, more consistent availability, strategic check-ins. Luna: So she sold the value, not the hours. Lucas: Exactly. And she gave existing clients a 30-day notice period where they could ask questions. That removed the surprise. Most of them actually appreciated the professionalism. Luna: What about someone who doesn't have retainer-friendly work? Like a freelance writer who does one-off articles? Lucas: Great question. For project-based work, the same principle applies but the structure is different. Instead of a monthly retainer, you can bundle your services into tiers. For example, a writer might offer a 'basic' package of one 800-word article with two rounds of edits, a 'standard' package with two articles and a strategy call, and a 'premium' package that includes content calendar planning. You price each tier as a fixed fee. Luna: And the client chooses the tier, so they feel in control. Lucas: Right. And you're no longer nickeling and diming over revisions. The scope is built into the package. Jenna actually started with a tiered approach before moving to retainer. She had three tiers — 'Launch', 'Grow', 'Scale' — at 1,500, 2,500, and 4,000 dollars per project. That gave her confidence that people would pay more for more value. Luna: Was there any pushback from clients who had been paying the old rate? Lucas: A little. One client said, 'I can't afford 2,500 a month.' Jenna's response was to ask what they could afford, and then she offered a scaled-down version of her retainer — fewer deliverables, but still a flat fee. She didn't go back to hourly. That client ended up paying 1,800 a month, and six months later they upgraded to the full retainer. Luna: So she held the line on the model but flexed on the scope. Lucas: Exactly. A lot of solopreneurs think pricing is a binary choice — either you charge X or you don't get the client. But it's more like a menu. You can offer different levels of service at different price points. The key is that every tier is profitable and every tier is value-based, not time-based. Luna: I want to circle back to the spreadsheet you mentioned. Can you walk us through what that actually looks like? Lucas: Sure. Jenna's spreadsheet had four columns: Client name, Monthly retainer fee, Estimated hours per month, and Effective hourly rate. She filled it out for each client. The goal was to keep the effective rate above 100 dollars. If a client was below that, she either raised the retainer or reduced the hours. That simple visibility changed her decisions. Luna: So it's a feedback loop. You see the numbers, you adjust, you see the improvement. Lucas: Right. And it's not just about the money — it's about valuing your time. When you see that a client is paying you 50 dollars an hour effective, you start to question whether that client is worth the opportunity cost of not taking a better-paying one. Luna: Let me ask the hard question: What if you raise your rates and you do lose clients? How do you handle that financially? Lucas: You plan for it. Jenna saved three months of expenses before she made the switch. That buffer let her sleep at night. And she also started prospecting for new clients during the transition, so she wasn't relying entirely on her existing book of business. Luna: So the advice is: don't do this from a position of desperation. Lucas: Exactly. Build a runway first. Even a small one — one month of savings — gives you negotiating leverage. Because if a client says no, you can afford to walk away. Luna: That's a mindset shift in itself. Most solopreneurs think 'I need this client'. But really, you need a profitable client mix. Lucas: Yeah, and that's the ultimate lesson from Jenna's story. She didn't just raise prices — she redesigned her entire business model around value. And the result was more income, more freedom, and better clients. Luna: Before we wrap, I want to mention something. If today's episode was useful to you and you want to keep it ad-free, buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo helps. A handful of listeners chip in monthly — that's literally what funds these conversations. Lucas: Yeah, we don't run ads — that's a deliberate choice. If you want to support that, buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo is the place. Even a couple of dollars a month means we can keep producing these. Luna: All right, back to pricing. Lucas, one thing I've noticed is that many solopreneurs underprice because they compare themselves to other solopreneurs, not to agencies. Lucas: That's a huge blind spot. Jenna told me that once she started looking at what small agencies charge for brand strategy — often 5,000 to 10,000 dollars a month — she realized she was leaving massive money on the table. She wasn't competing with other freelancers; she was competing with agencies, and she could win on personal attention and speed. Luna: So the benchmark shouldn't be 'what do other freelancers charge?' It should be 'what value am I delivering relative to the alternatives?' Lucas: Exactly. And that's the mental model that lets you charge 2,500 dollars a month with confidence. Because if a client goes to an agency, they'll pay double and get a team of juniors. With you, they get an expert who knows their business inside out. Luna: So for anyone listening who's stuck at 50 or 75 dollars an hour, what's one thing they can do this week? Lucas: Audit your last five projects. Calculate how many hours you actually worked, what you charged, and what the effective hourly rate was. Then ask yourself: if I had charged 20 percent more, would I have lost the client? The answer is almost always no. And that's the evidence you need to start the conversation. Luna: Start with one client. Test it. See what happens. Lucas: Exactly. And if it works — and it usually does — you'll wonder why you didn't do it years ago.