Why You Keep Undercharging for Your Work

I have a knowing relationship with my knot, that tension that builds and ties around itself and takes shape inside my stomach. It pulls at me until my attention snaps back into my body, and it lights up a billboard in neon that reads nervous, excited, scared, tender, uncertain, insecure.

I used to run from it, push it down, pull an oracle card and pray it would all smooth over. Now I carry it in a beautiful bowl with reverence, and I inspect the tension and get curious, and the curiosity loosens its grip.

In business and in spiritual life, we are almost always carrying some knot, and the one I hear most often from midlife coaches and healers and space holders is this one.

If you keep undercharging for your work, my honest read is that the price is rarely the problem. The number is usually the last place the tension shows up and the first place we reach to fix it, and that is why changing it never settles anything for long.

The knot: I keep undercharging for my work

Do you hear yourself in that sentence? You set a price and then you shave it down before anyone even sees it, and then you mark it up and feel all the feels, and then you add bonus after bonus wondering if it is enough, and you end up exhausted from trying to figure your price out, let alone explain the reasoning behind it.

There are so many reasons for this, and every coach you ask hands you a different one, so the knot only pulls tighter and bigger, and it is genuinely frustrating.

So I'll lovingly raise my hand and offer my own considerations, and my prayer is that I am not adding to your knot but giving it a bowl to rest in while you get curious, and through that curiosity it begins to loosen and inform you.

I believe the soul of your work has a compass, and that when the tension arrives, one of the most magical acts you can take is to find where you are standing on it.

Four reasons you are undercharging, and where each one lives

When you are second guessing your gifts

If you second guess your pricing every other second, every quarter, and it never quite settles, this may be a medicine question and not a pricing one, because underneath it you are second guessing your gifts.

So remind yourself why you began this path as a coach, a healer, a space holder. We are in midlife, and there are only so many years left to us, and when you pass, the fulfillment you feel will rest on the work you did and not the number you charged. If you gave the number less weight, where would you land?

When you cannot name your flavor

Your price may also feel unsettled because, if you truly sat with it next to your offer, you are not quite sure why someone would say yes. The modalities are there and the logic makes sense, and still, if you are not sure of your own flavor, the special sauce that makes your offer sparkle as only yours, the second guessing lands right on the price.

So honor the nuance of your medicine and the way you see your work, because the wisdom in your ideas is valuable, and let yourself bear witness to the transformation and cocreation that unfolds with your client, and that is what lets you believe in your pricing.

When the back end is wobbling

If the tech and the scheduling and the invoices and the contracts feel like the bane of your existence, then fixating on price can be a way to bypass what is really happening, which is that you need structure and systems so your delivery and your client's experience feel out of this world.

When that foundation wobbles, the price, which is also a foundational piece, wobbles right along with it.

When you cannot see who you serve

And if you are not quite sure who you are actually selling to, if your client is still a blur, then of course the price will not land, because you do not yet know her buying patterns, what she values, or what she needs in order to say yes.

It is easy to pour all your attention into the price and the offer and forget that this is only half of it, since part of holding a client well is making her feel seen and valued and supported, and clear pricing is one of the ways that care reaches her.

What the Devotional Compass is

The Devotional Compass is the map we work from inside LUSH Business Academy, with four directions: Medicine Magic, Methodology Alchemy, Sovereign Selling, and the LUSH Ecosystem.

The Seven Energy States of a Space Holder tell you where you are standing. The Compass shows you which way to turn.

When you stand at this compass, most any knot in our business is arising from one of these directions, and my prayer is that today you can walk with your knot instead of away from it.

Set it on your energetic altar, and let's thank it for helping us ask ourselves the powerful questions, so we can untangle it together.

May your knot loosen just enough to show you the next thread, and may the number that holds your life feel like yours.

Walking with you, knot and all,

Sora xo

If you are not sure which direction of the compass is loudest for you, the Magic and Medicine quiz takes a minute and it is the doorway into all of this.