Why You're Working Too Hard for Too Little

Most solopreneurs are working too hard and charging too little. When I sat down with Carly Ries and Joe Rando on The Aspiring Solopreneur, that was the whole conversation. I ran a marketing agency for thirteen years and by year eight I was done with it. The work still paid, but the passion was gone. What pulled me out was coaching, and the pattern I kept seeing in the people I coached: they were undercharging by about 50% and doing 30% more work than the job required. I have audited thousands of offers, and that gap shows up almost every time.

The fix is not a new funnel or a bigger audience. It is making the thing you already sell simpler and more profitable before you try to scale it. Here is how that played out in the conversation.

Start with the life, then build the business

A lot of solopreneurs never decide what they want the business to look like. They took an old employer's formula and turned it into their new job, or they copied a competitor and called it a strategy. Then the service gets bloated. You bolt on extra deliverables, bonuses, and guarantees because you are scared people will leave, and now you are doing a mountain of work to defend a price that is already too low.

My 2022 is the version of this that worked. I spent the year in 38 cities across 10 countries and three continents, opening my laptop for a few meetings a week. That does not happen if every client has you on two calls a week. You have to design how the business runs first. Once you know the life you want, the offer and the pricing have something to answer to.

You cannot raise your price until you believe the work is worth it

Years ago a friend of mine, someone I still consider one of the sharpest operators I know, was pricing a half-day LinkedIn workshop for a company the size of Office Depot. He wanted to charge about $2,200. I stopped him and asked what happens if ten percent of the room pays attention and deploys a quarter of what he teaches. His answer: a hundred to a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars in new revenue for that company. So I asked why the price had a zero missing. He repriced it at $9,500 and the client said yes without blinking.

That is where people get stuck. People treat pricing like a yearly chore, bump it ten percent, and move on. But if you do not believe deep down that your work is worth more, your subconscious leaks it in every sales conversation and quietly kills the deal. So I run a simple exercise. Draw four columns: one month, three months, six months, twelve months. Then picture what happens to the client if they never solve the problem you solve. Missed hires. Stalled growth. No predictability in revenue. Sometimes the business does not make it. When you see how the pain compounds over a year, the price you were nervous about starts to look small next to the cost of the problem.

People buy when they feel understood

The favorite line I gave Carly and Joe is the one I come back to constantly: people buy when they feel understood, not when they understand you. Every time I put up a new page or launch something, I read it and ask whether it is written in my language or theirs. Am I sounding smart, or am I making them think "I need that"?

That belief also reframes selling. If your work fixes a future pain and you know you are good at it, moving the client forward is your responsibility, not manipulation. The flip side matters just as much: vet people first. I have clients put together a ten-point checklist for who they can help. If a home service company would send every new lead to a voicemail or a shared Gmail with no CRM, more leads will not help them, and a bad fit will blame you later. Turn some people away, and the right ones start asking to work with you.

Simplify the back end before you scale

Two moves keep the business light. First, build a three to five step process where each step is named for the outcome the client cares about, not your jargon. Nobody buys "keyword research and campaign setup." They buy the shortest path from stuck to solved. Second, get the work out of your head. Record a Loom of every task, even a rough forty-five minute walk-through, so a VA can take it. And stop hunting for a unicorn VA who edits video, manages your inbox, and books your travel. List your tasks, bucket them by type, find the bucket that causes you the most pain, and hire against that one.

One client was charging $1,300 to run a company's entire email program. We repriced him to $6,000 plus 3% of top line, he cut his client base in half, and he quadrupled his revenue. Four kids, and now he gets to see them. That is the point. Premium price, simpler operation, a business built around the life you wanted in the first place.