Let’s talk about the thing keeping you up at 2am, stress-eating chips while your business idea sits in draft mode:
Pricing.
You’re paralyzed because you don’t know what to charge. Too high and nobody buys. Too low and you’re working for pennies while secretly resenting every customer. Or maybe your product is an entirely new category and pricing feels like a total shot in the dark.
So you do what any intelligent, thorough person would do: you research. You analyze competitor pricing. You build spreadsheets. You calculate your costs down to the last penny. You try to create the “perfect” pricing model before you’ve made a single sale.
Here’s what we learned after building and selling two seven-figure companies. You won’t get it right the first time. Or the second time. You might get it right the third time, but then it’s wrong again. Sometimes you look brilliant. Sometimes you leave money on the table. And all that is okay.
Because the truth is, you can’t price perfectly day one. You don’t have enough information yet. You don’t know which features your customers actually value. You don’t know what they’re willing to pay. You don’t know whether they’ll see your offer as a nice-to-have or a must-have.
You won’t know any of this until you actually launch and let real customers tell you.
When we launched a completely new product line, we thought we had it figured out. Since it was a new market segment, we researched comparable products and reverse-engineered their pricing. We agonized, analyzed, and built more financial models than you can imagine. Finally, we landed on what felt like a competitive price.
Then reality hit. We discovered we were missing a crucial reporting feature that made our pricing completely irrelevant. Clients loved us and wanted to hire us—but without that feature, it was a nonstarter. We ended up netting about 20 percent of our expected price for the beta product.
Back to the drawing board. We retooled, pivoted, and launched again with adjusted pricing.
The pricing roulette wheel strategy
In the early days, pricing is less science and more educated guessing game. You’re spinning the roulette wheel. Adjusting your bet until you land on a winning strategy.
Here’s how to do it without losing your shirt:
1. Start with value, not just costs.
Don’t just add up your expenses and slap on a margin. Think about the problem you’re solving. What’s it worth to your customer? If you’re saving them time, money, or headaches, that’s a great value proposition. Price accordingly.
2. Identify what they actually care about.
Not every feature matters equally. Your customers will tell you (directly or through their wallets) which capabilities they value most. Build your pricing around those, not around everything you think is cool.
3. Give yourself permission to test.
Launch with a price. See what happens. If people aren’t buying, it might be too high. If they’re buying instantly without hesitation, it might be too low. Both scenarios give you data.
4. Adjust as you learn.
This isn’t “changing your mind.” It’s called market research. As you get feedback, as you add features, as you better understand your buyers—your pricing should evolve too.
The real secret to pricing
Stop trying to get it perfect on day one.
Your first price is just your opening offer. It’s a hypothesis. You’ll test it, tweak it, and probably change it multiple times before you land on something that sticks.
And that’s not failure.That’s just how business works.
The women who succeed aren’t the ones who nail their pricing on the first try. They’re the ones who launch anyway, gather feedback, and aren’t too proud to pivot.
