After completing Charge with Confidence, Stephanie knows that she can ask for a higher price and has a plan in place to achieve her financial goals

Stephanie is a freelance copywriter who works with a variety of customers. She spends a lot of time researching both her clients’ brands and industries before she starts to write their content. Stephanie also provides coaching, sharing tips and offering her customers done-with-you copywriting as well as done-for-you copywriting.

After participating in my 2021 February Finance Challenge, Stephanie decided to take Charge with Confidence. When we started working together, she had been running her content writing business for three years. She didn’t have a clear direction for her business and wasn’t sure of the steps she should be taking in order to make progress.

The challenge: helping Stephanie think about her pricing differently to give her the confidence to ask for higher rates

When Stephanie signed up for Charge with Confidence, she was struggling to know how much to charge and how to get her business to where she wanted it to be. She had started trying to implement day rates and getting clients on a retainer, but she realised that her income was limited by doing this.

What’s more, Stephanie didn’t feel as though she could command a higher rate. She was constantly taking training courses so she could ‘justify’ putting her prices up, but then she’d find that she wouldn’t actually increase her rates. Unfortunately, Stephanie just didn’t feel as though she was worth charging more.

Because Stephanie was picking numbers out of thin air, she was finding it hard to look at her pricing objectively. She was always trying to be nice by accepting lower rates, but she realised this had got to the point where it was ruining her business. I therefore wanted to help Stephanie change the way she thought about her pricing to prevent it from having a negative impact on her finances.

The solution: providing Stephanie with a range of prices to quote between that would enable her to reach her financial goals

I showed Stephanie how to calculate her rates, explaining exactly what she needed to be taking into account when coming up with her final figures. By demonstrating the importance of both her business and living expenses in her calculations, I was able to help Stephanie understand the reasoning behind her pricing and see the impact that her prices could have on her business as a whole. This gave her confidence in the validity of her rates, helping her charge an amount that she not only felt comfortable with but that she knew made financial sense for her business.

While calculating her rates, I also helped Stephanie develop a range of prices she could quote between. I taught her how to use her expenses and the number of hours she had available to work each day to arrive at her minimum rate. We then looked at what she’d like her life and her business to look like in the future to put a figure on her aspirational rate too.

Having a range to quote between has given Stephanie the flexibility to take into account what she thinks her client’s budget is likely to be. If she’s worried about going in too high, she can quote at the lower end of her rates. Whereas if she feels as though the customer might be expecting a higher fee, she can propose a price closer to her aspirational rate.

In addition, I shared all the spreadsheets and tools I’ve created that I thought would help Stephanie in her business moving forwards. This included my rate calculator spreadsheet, which I hoped would take some of the guesswork out of quoting for future projects.

The results: Stephanie is now able to quote objectively and feels confident enough to price her services towards her aspirational rate

Six months on from Charge with Confidence, Stephanie says she has found the process of pricing her services far less emotional now that she has a range of rates to quote between. However, when she is struggling to be objective, Stephanie imagines she has multiple people managing different parts of her business and that the finance controller is telling her how much she needs to charge for the job to be viable. So far it seems to be working as she hasn’t accepted anything less than her minimum rate since completing the programme.

Recently, Stephanie also had the opportunity to quote for a mentoring role with a university. She was initially unsure how much to charge and was tempted to go low to win the job. At the same time, and having received feedback from another client that made her think she could quote higher, she didn’t want to risk being seen as unqualified or unprofessional by charging too little. Instead of spiralling and allowing herself to remain paralysed, she opened the rate calculator spreadsheet I’d shared with her and played around with the numbers. She finally settled on a figure close to her aspirational rate, which the client confirmed!

As well as giving Stephanie even more confidence to command higher prices, this particular contract has made her feel so much more secure in her business overall. At 20 hours per month, the rate she has achieved will almost cover her living expenses.

Stephanie is paying more attention to her business expenses too. She now has a budget book where she writes down anything she’s tempted to spend money on before reconsidering it after 24 hours. She’s found this has helped to reduce some of the impulse spending on courses that she’s been prone to in the past.

I’m so glad Stephanie feels as though she’s future-proofed her business finances. Not only is she no longer hesitant to look at her numbers, she’s confident that she’s doing well financially, and she has a plan to reach her future goals.

As freelancers and small business owners, it’s so important to understand the impact that getting our prices right can have on our businesses and our lives as a whole. If you’d like to feel confident in your rates and the direction you’re taking your business in, you might want to consider doing Charge with Confidence too.