Two years quoting the same number before anyone said yes. The work was the same and the offer was the same; what changed was the voice doing the asking. Why pricing sits downstream of identity.
For two years I quoted the same number and got no's. The work didn't change. The voice doing the asking did.
When I started my first proper agency, my partner and I quoted our agency at 3,000 USD a month per client and watched no one say yes to our offer. Was the number we chose wrong? Not really, what was wrong was the voice we were using to ask for it: thin, almost apologetic, the kind of voice that tells a client they should be allowed to lowball before they have even thought about it or the value brought to the table. Fast foward years later and we got a yes. Thing is nothing about the work that had changed. And nothing about the offer changed either. The only difference was that I believed we were worth three thousand dollars a month, and when we had to pitch a client we didn't have that shake in our voices when we asked for 3k.
Probably the hardest part to write about, because it really isn't about prices. The journey of becoming the kind of person who can name a number out loud without asking for permission is the difficult part. Something I've been thinking about for years, partly because I am still experiencing, its something my work still exposes me to, and partly because I have started to suspect that most designers I are quietly experiencing it too, it's this discrepancy between what we think we should do versus what actually takes to get results and to change.
What I used to do when I started doing design work
At the beginning of my career I did not underprice giving out discounts, but I did underprice at the very start, on instinct, before any number was on the table. How? Mentally I would walk into these situations ready to overdeliver, but with a very low price, as if to make up for the gap that existed only in my mind. Despite this low price high effort combination I was often met with bad attitude anyway, which I took personally. One of the people that mentored me taught me this one rule which he was unbendable on: never say I'm sorry. Sure, address the issue, take accountability, find a solution, but do not apologize, because the moment you apologize a certain kind of client smells the opening and starts to walk all over you. I have spent more years learning how to properly live by that one rule than I have spent trying out different pricing models, hoping that the right price will magically improve the quality of the clients I had.
And my anxiety about this was real.
Just imagine, the second a client asks the question about the price your heart drops down two stories. So you look at yourself through a broken mirror where everything about you is suddenly wrong, feeling beyond an impostor into something more like a fraud for even being in the same room with these people. And it happens fast enough that you cannot react in time to pick yourself back up, and actually stand your ground.
What was actually happening?
Behind all of that anxiety and self-doubt, the conversation actually runs on mirroring, and the number you ask for is just a reflection of how you perceive yourself. If you walk into a negotiation sure that you are worth that sum, the other person mirrors back certainty. They trust you in the same amount you are able to trust yourself. But if you are still asking yourself the same question: am I good enough? they mirror back the question and they become less confident that you will be able to deliver the work that they demand. It is pretty common knowledge that people with less experience and more confidence go further than people with more experience and less confidence for this exact reason. It is unfair to watch. But at a psychological level it is just how negotiation works. To some degree I don't think we evolved much past our animalistic instincts, so we still pick up on subtle things that tell us who we can safely associate with. In my mind the thing that has priority to address sits earlier than the actual price you're asking for, in the part of you that decides whether you deserve it or not. And the more you put effort towards firstly convincing yourself that you indeed are worth every penny you ask, the less effort you will put in trying to convince others of something you yourself don't believe in.
But in truth there are situations where if you grew up being held to impossible standards, attacked for not meeting them, taught that asking for more than the minimum is greed, you are bringing a programming that works against you into the negotiation room that has nothing to do with this client. Changing how you frame this, and doing your best to constantly re-learn these aspects of confidence is super important for how successful you will be. This doesn't apply just for agency work, even in a job you still need to advocate for yourself and so on.
Two books that reframed how I price my work
First let me be honest here. I have not read most of the marketing-and-sales books designers cite when they write about pricing, but the two books that actually reframed my thinking were both written by artists.
- Show Your Work by Austin Kleon - The idea that you have to be findable, you have to put process out before product, and that the right clients then arrive in your inbox having already pre-selected based on your taste helped me reframe my view of my process. This shifted my pricing conversation more than any negotiation tactic could have. It recentered my mind around what's actually interesting in my work, the actual process and what makes me different. By the time the right client reaches out, they have spent ten hours looking at what you've already made. The price talk arrives as a confirmation of a decision they already half made, and there is nothing to defend.
- The War of Art by Steven Pressfield - Resistance is the force Pressfield names as the thing that wants you not to do the work, including the work you're being paid for it. Naming it once meant I could see it in real time and track its effects. The voice that says you should ask for less, that maybe this number is too much, that maybe you should throw in another thing for free, is just Resistance. Once you have a name for it, you can stop being a victim of it.
I am leaving out the pricing books on purpose. I would rather be honest about that than cite a value equation I never actually used.
How to price a creative service in Romania
Most American pricing advice assumes a market with money that moves easily and clients who can pay for what they ordered. Romania is a market still recovering from communism, still scarred by corruption, and operating at a level of inherited financial fear most of the books do not name. Clients here often expect a discount as the opening move. The cultural weight of asking for more than the scope of the work is very powerful within them, as if fooling someone into delivering more will somehow make them win. Most of what counts as resistance from a Romanian client is fear they inherited from the same economy that taught you to undercharge.
The horror story that taught me to take this seriously: a client once asked for a discount, then ghosted us after I invoiced. Romanian law required that invoice to be declared in accounting before payment, which meant I owed tax on a sum I never received. I opened a case with a lawyer. The lawyer could not recover the money. The state still wanted its share of what nobody paid me. So to me really understanding your clients is very important, in order to avoid as much as you can situations like these.
The defensive plumbing I use now: structure payment in halves. Invoice the first 50% before the work starts, the second 50% before final delivery. The tax-on-unpaid-invoice trap only triggers when you invoice for full or final amounts upfront, so splitting the invoice splits the risk.
It is also why I am now developing a brand kit priced at a level designed to feel like a no-brainer for the kind of small business that just opened, and structuring the payment terms so the same kind of loss cannot happen again. American pricing books do not have a chapter on this, because the market they assume does not have this problem.
How I structured my current agency to help me avoid these issues
The honest version of what I do now is this: my business partner handles the price conversation. I came to know myself well enough to see that I am a better designer when someone else is in the room defending the pricing, and I built my business around that instead of pretending I should be able to do everything. It took me years to admit this. Designers I respect are often slow to admit it too. It can read like failure from the outside. Underneath, it is the work of knowing yourself well enough to design your business around what you actually do best. The same instinct shows up in how I do strategy work and in how I write with AI without losing my own voice. The price conversation is the third domain where I made that call.
When I am asked for advice by another designer still in the freeze, I would just advise to push yourself past the comfort zone at the beginning, because experience is more valuable than the money you will lose getting it. It's a difficult process but your own experience of trial and error will give you the insight you need to organize yourself better around what you actually love to do and avoid the parts that bring you down. Be hungry to learn, build the work, put it out where it can be found, and let the clients who pick you do so because of what they have already seen of your work. Hold a price even when your voice shakes, and let the shaking be a thing your future self stops noticing. The voice settles. You stop noticing the question. That is the moment the work changes.
What I actually believe now is that the price talk is the last thing to fix. Underneath every freeze is something deeper: whether you believe you have a right to be in this conversation at all. Sit with that for a while. The pricing will get easier on its own.
