Shift 3: From Swapping Time for Dollars to Pricing for Value
Welcome back to the Six-Figure Freelancer Recipe! I’m Jaz, your pricing queen, and in this episode, we’re tackling a challenge that stops so many talented creatives from reaching their income goals—undercharging for high-impact work.
Ever found yourself delivering massive results for your clients, only to feel a pang of regret as you send off an invoice that barely scratches the surface of the value you’ve created? Trust me, I’ve been there. In fact, I share a story about a $2,500 project that brought in an extra $30,000 for a client—and the lesson I learned from underpricing my work.
This episode is all about making the shift from pricing your services by the hour, tying your income to your time, to confidently charging for the real value and outcomes you deliver. If you’re stuck adjusting your hourly rate, padding your hours, or saying yes to busy work just to justify your fees, this conversation is for you. I dive deep into why these “fixes” don’t actually solve the root problem, and why your creative brain is the true asset.
I’ll introduce you to the mindset and practical questions that help you stop justifying every dollar and start anchoring your pricing to the real business impact you create—think leads, conversions, growth, and transformation, not just tasks and hours. Plus, you’ll hear about real freelancers, like Jackie, who dramatically increased her rates (and income!) by shifting her pricing approach.
If you’re ready to work less, earn more, and stop tying your worth (and your client conversations) to the clock, this episode will show you how to step up and own your value. Don’t forget to grab the free guide at creativebusinesskitchen.com/6figures for the questions and reflection exercises mentioned—I want you to get clear, confident, and ready to charge what you’re truly worth.
Let’s leave behind the hours-for-dollars mindset and move towards pricing for results. You’re halfway to your six-figure recipe, and the next shift is one of my favorites—so stick around!
Transcript
Hey there. It's Jaz, your pricing queen, and welcome to episode four of the 6 figure freelancer recipe, a bite sized podcast series for creatives who are ready to build the 6 figure freelance business that they actually left their nine to five for. So picture this with me. You've spent three hours on a project that will generate your client around about 50 k in revenue. You send your invoice for $300, which is your hourly rate of a hundred dollars times the three hours that you spent on it, and realize with a sinking feeling that you have massively undercharged again. Confession. I did this back in 2019 with a 2 and a half thousand dollar web build that added $30,000 to a client's income in the first year. Not replaced, added an extra $30,000 of an income stream in its first year.
Jaz [:Yeah. Never doing that again. But how do you justify charging more when it only took you a small amount of hours? It's no secret that when you charge by the hour, you're literally putting a ceiling on your income. There are only so many hours in the day. And honestly, do you really want to be working all of them? The deeper issue is that you're selling your time and effort instead of the value and the results that you create. This keeps you tracking hours instead of impact. It keeps you justifying your rates based on the time spent with clients and feeling guilty about charging more even when you deliver massive results and create a direct conflict between your efficiency, so getting better at your work, and your income, needing to log more hours to earn more. So the solutions that you have probably tried and that totally aren't working might be raising your hourly rate incrementally but still keeping that ceiling, padding your hours, which feels dishonest and ultimately damages client trust.
Jaz [:You might be creating unnecessary work to justify higher fees or keeping your rates low to stay affordable, hate that word, while resenting every single minute. These fixes don't work because they are still tied to time. Raising your rates, padding your hours, or adding busy work just masks the real issue. You're still pricing effort, not impact. If your work delivers $30,000 in value, it shouldn't matter that it only took three hours. You're that good. Own it. And I'm not saying if it makes 30 k, charge 30 k, but don't be tied to the dollar value that you came up with when you multiplied your hourly rate by how long you thought it would take.
Jaz [:That's a good base, but you can add from there. If you're charging by the hour, you're training clients to focus on your time instead of your impact, and that's a losing game every single time. So I wanna gush about one of my students. One of my master freelancer graduates, Jackie, she literally five times her rate. She had a package that was charged at $600 to turning it into a $3,000 package for fundamentally the same ingredients. The result of this shift, she lost two of her five clients, but it didn't matter because now she's working less, making more simply from charging her true value. I'm gonna say that again. Work less, earn more.
Jaz [:Yes, please. So here's how we're gonna make this third shift together. Just like last time, I want you to think about the freelancer that you were before you picked up this episode and the future freelance you that we're working towards. Old you used to price by the hour or by the deliverable and justified their rate with time spent and effort. They also probably got ghosted on quotes because clients can't see value when we're just talking about how much effort you're putting in, and you felt guilty for asking more. But future freelance you, they are all about anchoring price to outcomes that your clients actually care about. When they speak about their offers, they are selling transformation, not tasks, not time, and they're building offers that reflect the true value that they deliver, confidently naming their price knowing it's a fraction of the value that they could create for them. Now at that questions part again.
Jaz [:And if you haven't downloaded the free guide, you'll need to grab it. It's at creativebusinesskitchen.com/6figures, and I'll pop the link in the show notes. I'll ask them here. Take your time. Pause me if you need, and think through each answer for yourself. Would I pay me for the results that I get my clients? Be honest. If someone else got your results, what would you pay them? Where am I undercharging because I'm still thinking in hours, not impact? That $500 invoice for work that made them 50 k? Yeah. No.
Jaz [:We don't wanna be there anymore. And that includes all of the hours, the thinking time, the emails, everything. If I wasn't allowed to charge hourly ever again, what would I charge instead? Think outcomes, not effort. Your creative brain is the asset. What's the real business result of what I do, and am I actually pricing for it? Is it leads, conversions, sales, growth, clarity? Your work fuels this, so you need to charge accordingly. How would I price this if I backed myself 100%? Go with your confident gut before your fear kicks in. Now for your action step, take your last three client results, the ones that impressed the hell out of you. What's the real business impact of your work, not just the deliverables or the hours? What's the value of the problem solved? That's your new price for your next client.
Jaz [:Now working up value is not easy. To do this, I want you to think about how much that problem you solve for them is costing them if they don't solve it. What sort of revenue could it bring in that they will miss out on if they don't take action and they don't hire you? Where are you increasing their value? Whether that be their customer paying more because they have a higher perceived value because of the branding that looks luxe. Maybe you've added a revenue stream that they didn't have before, or maybe you've simply given them back time to do more valuable tasks in their own business. Value is difficult to quantify, and it changes constantly. But think about it as the outcome of your genius and the value of a problem solved. Okay, friend. We are halfway there.
Jaz [:Shift four is up next, and it is one of my favorites. Shifting from whatever you need to core productized and recurring offers. Cannot wait to dig into this one with you.
