In this episode, Loren and Tillie get into one of the most emotionally loaded topics in creative business: pricing your work without selling your creative soul. We unpack why pricing feels so personal — because it’s never just numbers. It’s tangled up in self-worth, money stories, confidence, fear of being seen as “greedy”, and the very real pressure of trying to build a sustainable business in a world where everyone wants a bargain (especially in those chaotic Facebook group comment sections). Tillie shares the mind-bend of moving from a senior corporate salary into running a creative business — and how identity, income, and self-value can get painfully intertwined when you’re suddenly responsible for creating your own paycheck. From there, we talk about one of the biggest pricing traps creatives fall into: pricing based on what you think people will pay, instead of what your work actually costs (in time, skill, expertise, and energy). We also get practical: know your minimum, cover your costs, pay yourself (seriously), factor in strategy and emotional labour — not just deliverables — and reverse engineer pricing from the life you want to build, not just your weekly expenses. We talk about the difference between flexible payment plans (hot) and discounting your value (self-sabotage), and why confident pricing is a filter for dream clients, not a lure for anyone with a wallet. The conversation also gets spicy around pricing culture online — from “proximity marketing” and inflated offers to the reality that high-paying clients can still be the hardest to work with. We explore the idea that you can overcharge if the value doesn’t match, and ask the uncomfortable but necessary question: if you doubled your prices tomorrow, what would need to change about the way you show up and deliver? We wrap by agreeing this topic needs a part two, because pricing touches everything: confidence, positioning, boundaries, sustainability, and the kind of business (and life) you’re actually trying to build.
