The first time I sent a five figure invoice, i held my breath as I hit send. The number was exactly what the service was worth, and fair compared to market value, yet the little voice inside me carried this imposter syndrome that I lowered it before I sent it. Of course I did. I told myself it was "strategic", that I, somehow, was protecting the relationship, that I would raise it next time. Next time came, and I rounded down again. No surprise.
Here's the thing about why we undercharge, and I say this as a lifelong offender: it's rarely on work quality.
The discount comes from a quieter math, that says it's safer to be wanted than to be paid, but the cookies were mine, after all.
The quiet math most of us were never taught to question.
It's Rarely About Confidence
We love to blame confidence. The story goes that women charge less because they believe in themselves less, have imposter syndrome, or feel guilty. I've never found that story useful, mostly because the women I know who undercharge are not timid.
On this week's podcast, I talked with brand strategist Pamela Delgado about why perception runs the whole game, and she said something that rearranged my brain:
Most businesses are not underpriced because they are bad, she told me, they are underpriced because their positioning hasn't caught up to their value.
Read that twice, please. The problem isn't about your ability to deliver quality work, it's about perceived value. The good news about this dilemma is that it's figure-outable.
We did the research so you don't have to
Here's where I want to be careful, because "just ask for more" is incomplete advice. There's a real, measured penalty sitting underneath all of this.
Decades ago, Linda Babcock and her colleagues published a now-famous Harvard Business Review piece, Nice Girls Don't Ask, showing across three studies that men are simply more likely than women to negotiate for what they want.
Women often don't get what they want and deserve, the authors wrote, because they do not ask for it. That finding launched a thousand lean-in workshops.
The trouble is that the same body of work found women who do ask are often penalized for it, judged as less likeable in a way men are not. That means the advice to negotiate harder quietly hands women a coin that lands on tails either way.
According to the Pew Research Center, women in the United States still earned an average of 85 cents for every dollar men earned in 2024, a figure that has barely moved in two decades. Younger women have closed more ground, at roughly 95 cents on the dollar, but "almost equal" is still a tax you never agreed to pay.
None of this is a personal failing. It's just the fact of the matter. We can wish it weren't that way, but the reality is that we're just sticking our heads in the sand if we think that this problem is going away anytime soon.
The system penalizes the ask, then blames you for not asking.
What You Need To Do Differently
There's really only one move when a game is rigged at the edges. You stop playing the version where you wait to be chosen, and you start playing the version where you make the value undeniable and let everyone else catch up.
Look at who is reaching the top. Women now run a record share of the largest American companies, and according to Fortune, most of them got there through internal promotion rather than a dramatic outside rescue. They were already doing the work, in plain sight, for years.
The lesson is that documented, legible value compounds, and the women who track their own outcomes get repriced faster than the women who wait to be noticed.
The ones I know who finally raised their prices did one unglamorous thing first. They started quoting their work in outcomes instead of hours. Not "this will take me twelve hours," but "this is what it is worth when it works." Hours invite negotiation. Outcomes invite respect.
How to Raise Your Prices Without Spiraling
This isn't the place to get a pep talk, this is the place for actionable advice.
You need a few moves you can make this week with the exact same nervous system you already have.
Write your real number down before you talk to anyone, so you're negotiating from your figure instead of toward their comfort.
Quote the outcome, not the time, and let the price reflect what the result is worth to them.
Raise prices on new clients first, where there's no history to renegotiate and no apology required.
After you say the number, stop talking, and let the silence do its job instead of filling it with a discount.
Most of us don't get talked down by clients. The quiet feels like disapproval, I know, but it isn't. It's just quiet, and you're allowed to let it happen.
A raise is not a reward for hustling harder. It is how you buy back your time.
It's OK to Be Paid and Liked
Charging more isn't about the money.
It's about which version of your life you are quietly funding. Every time you round down, you buy a little more approval and a little less freedom.
I think often about the women who get criticized the loudest for winning, and how much of that noise is really other people's discomfort with a woman who decided she was allowed to be paid well. I wrote about that strange phenomenon in a recent edition, and the throughline is the same as this one: the resistance you feel about charging more is usually just the residue of being taught that wanting was unseemly.
You’re allowed to be both wanted and paid.
The invoice that scared me years ago is laughably small to me now, because I finally stopped measuring my own work against that I thought I should be charging, but behind real numbers, data, and proof of work.
You belong in the rooms that pay you fully.
You always did.
