What Undercharging Is Really Costing You

Undercharging can look like generosity, but it often becomes a slow leak that drains your confidence, your business, and even your client results. We get real about the internal stories that push well-intentioned coaches to discount their coaching services, then wonder why they feel stuck, frustrated, or secretly resentful. If you’ve ever thought, “Who am I to charge that?” this conversation gives you language for what’s happening and a path forward that doesn’t rely on hype or gimmicks.

We break down the belief loop behind pricing fear: the thought that hits automatically, the feelings it creates, and the actions that follow, like lowering rates, avoiding sales conversations, or not even telling people you coach. Then we zoom out to the uncomfortable truth most people miss: when clients don’t have skin in the game, they often take less action. That lack of commitment can lead to weaker outcomes, which feeds more doubt and sends coaches searching for tactics like new offers, better messaging, or AI shortcuts instead of addressing the root belief system.

We also talk practical strategy for new coaches, including a structured six-week “free” container designed to build reps, create testimonials, and transition into paid work without making free sessions your default. Finally, we separate worth from value: your worth is inherent, while the market pays for the value you can deliver through skill, transformation, and a clear roadmap. If you want to stop winging sessions and learn to coach at the root level, apply for the next cohort of High Impact Mastery Academy at modernleadership.us/academy and, if this helped, subscribe, share it with a coach friend, and leave a review.

Want to go deeper on what we talked about today?

We put together a short video on how to lead high-stakes conversations without winging it.

Watch it here: https://www.modernleadership.us/mastery

Transcript

Why Undercharging Creates Resentment

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So I keep seeing this pattern, and that's well-intentioned coaches who undercharge for their services as kind of like a act of kindness. And then they quickly get frustrated and sometimes even resentful because they can't survive that way. And that's why I really want to talk about this today, because I want to talk about the solution to it. I know it's a difficult one, but you ready to do that with me?

SPEAKER_02 0:22

Yep, let's do it.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Let's go. So you're listening to Modern Leadership Coaching. I'm Mark.

SPEAKER_02 0:26

And I'm Teresa.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

And we talk about what it actually takes to grow as a coach and a leader. Because we really believe the world doesn't need more coaches. It needs more people who can be trusted with influence. So today I want to talk about what undercharging is really costing you. And I mean you, but also I mean you. Because it's not just money, not just like about the trust that you have with yourself, not just about your standards, but it also is how you show up in the room. Because when you're undercharging, think about how that gets you to show up.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Right.

The Stories Behind Low Prices

SPEAKER_00 0:58

So let's start off here. Like, I know we talk a lot about perspectives and stories, but I'm curious for you what comes up when I ask you what story do you believe that a lot of coaches are telling themselves as why that leads them to the path of undercharging.

SPEAKER_02 1:13

Yeah. I mean, there's there's a lot of different perspectives and stories that could be going on. I think one of the ones that I've seen from experience just in coaching other coaches is that they feel that they don't have either the experience or the knowledge that they need to have in order to up their prices. And a lot of times they are qualified, they do have experience, but they feel that if they charge what they think they should charge, that people will say no. That they'll see right through them, right? And that people will just say, Well, you're just overcharging, you just want my money. And I think that that's one of the main things that I see in coaching others.

How Low Prices Hurt Clients

Beliefs Beat Tactics And Reframes

SPEAKER_00 1:59

So let's take it to the end, right? So when you think about somebody having this perspective or story that they tell themselves, like, who am I to charge? Right. Generally it's going to make you feel a certain way. And when you feel that way, let's say you feel discouraged, right? Or unworthy, whatever that feeling is for you. Well, when you feel unworthy in that moment, you do something. A lot of times you undercharge. You don't charge your worth. Then you tell yourself additional stories that make you feel like what you did was the right thing. Then it's like, but I'm just getting started, or you know what, this person can't afford it. They're going through a hardship or whatever it is, the supporting role. We call these the supporting role stories and perspectives. And then what you actually do is you end up undercharging, but then at the end of the day, you cannot create a sustainable business that allows you to help people on the level you want to help them. Right. But I want to go a little deeper here because a lot of people don't see this. And that is when you undercharge, it doesn't just affect you, it affects your clients. And so your clients are now coming to a thing that maybe they don't have any skin in the game for and they're not showing up and they're not taking action because the pain of staying the same is is like they're they're just wanting to stay in that pain more than the pain of them actually having to open their wallet, pay for actual service that you're doing when it comes to changing your life. So when you think about that, when you think about some of the results, it goes even further because you're actually not helping your client get the best results they could. And think about what that puts into their mind, but also into your mind too. And then you start thinking, maybe this just isn't possible. Maybe it's not something that I can do, right? And when you think about all those things, generally what people will do is tell you what you need to do instead. Oh, you need to charge this, you need to do this, you need to take these steps. But remember, that's not the root of the problem. Right. What we're talking about is like that story or perspective that you're telling yourself that is causing that situation. Now, we coach a lot of coaches in our space, right? People who have even been certified before, people who are great at asking questions. And I feel like a lot of them don't understand because I have these conversations with very like veteran coaches who are struggling with this, is that even if that is a subconscious thought, meaning you don't think it on purpose, it happens automatically. And you try to reframe it. You're like, no, let me reframe this. Unless you set yourself up for success to rewrite that belief. It's, oh, if I just immediately retrain it and rethink something different or ask myself a better question, I'll remove that. No, that is the actual root of the problem. This is why we say, like when we're talking about coaching, like it's a responsibility. The responsibility is not to help them listen to a podcast. It's not to help them restructure their program. It's not to use ChatGPT to come up with a better way of describing it. You've got to get to the root of it. And what's crazy is like we teach a lot of coaches this process. And what happens to them when they finally really do get it is their life gets changed, right? Yes, they start charging more, but they start getting their clients more results. When they start getting more results, more people talk about them. When more people talk about them, they get referrals. When they get referrals, they start making more money. Now it's instead of the unconscious side, what we talk about, our growth model. Now you're stepping into the conscious side where you're creating something different. And when you create that, it creates just as much momentum. So I wanted to spend some time doing that because so many people they start to learn coaching and they think that it's just a mere question or a reframe, and then instantly they're gonna be able to get into charging their worth. That is not how your belief system works. It's been built for me 48 years. I know you reminded me I'm gonna be 49 next year. But it's uh this year. Oh my well, you have to hit me with them down. But I know my belief system has been created over this 48 years, a lot of it being developed when I was younger based off of what I saw, parents, teachers, all this kind of stuff, all the accumulated things that I've put into my brain, which is quite a bit, right? And just being asked one different question is not gonna change my life. Getting to the root of it, being able to see it, doing more reps and feedback and getting more coaching in that area, not just one coaching session, which I also hear that. Like one coaching session is gonna change your life. No, it's not. It's not. That's not how the brain works, it's not how our belief system works. And it could get you started, but unless you continue to plug into the matrix, right, of coaching and leaning in and being able to like develop yourself and to rewrite your belief system, which doesn't happen overnight, it's gone. Yeah. I mean, we've seen so many people in the past certification that we taught in, so many people go through it and then disconnect and wonder why their life gets back to the norm, even though they know coaching. The problem is that now that they know coaching, they beat themselves even more because they're like, I know the solution, right? But then guess what they do? Look for tactics. Yeah. They look for, oh, AI is here. So now I'm gonna be able to, and they don't realize that that is the technical aspect of things instead of the adaptive one. So sorry for talking to someone like that.

SPEAKER_02 6:47

No, I mean, this is kind of related because um, when we talk about the whole process of this belief or this thought that comes up that creates a feeling that then drives your actions, it's not just about, hey, I'm not charging enough. It can develop into I'm not charging at all because I'm not even telling people that I'm a coach, that I have this service. If you don't take care of that, then you end up just not being a coach. Like you said, like you disconnect and you just don't do it anymore because why would you? Why go through that pain when you haven't really solved the root issue?

SPEAKER_00 7:22

Yep. And then you've convinced yourself that this just wasn't to be.

SPEAKER_02 7:26

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

You're like, so I should not have taken this path, right? I mean, when you think about just that in and of itself, like so we're talking about it related to coaching and how easy it is when you are confronted with actual real life change in your life, how easy it is to say, Oh, this just isn't for me. It's just not the right timing. It's just that this because it's resistance. Correct.

SPEAKER_02 7:46

Yeah.

How Teresa Raised Prices Gradually

SPEAKER_00 7:47

But it also happens in every other area of your life.

SPEAKER_02 7:49

Right.

SPEAKER_00 7:49

It's why you can't work out consistently, it's why you can't have great conversations with your wife, or it's why you can't connect better with your family. Because we go back into our pre-programming. That's why coaching is so needed and it's not just a temporary fix, it's something we need to lean into. That's why we call it mastery. It's because when we master it, it's just a part of who we are. But also we still have to continue to grow and get better at it and be a part of coaching, whether it's a friend, a mentor, a program, have that routine signal to make sure that we don't revert back.

SPEAKER_02 8:21

Now, let me ask you a question because I want to know from your experience, because you went through that as well, right? We all go through that. So, for you personally, how was that evolution for you from I don't know if I can charge this, you know, charging like very low, you know, when you're first getting started to now what we're charging and how that changed and what happened because the fear of some people is that people would just can't afford it. And like we won't have clients, right? So, what was that evolution for you?

SPEAKER_00 8:52

Great question. So, early on when I started my coaching, uh, first off, I wasn't technically coaching, I was mentoring. Yeah. I was giving advice. Hey, this is how I lost 100 pounds, all that kind of stuff, right? And so I was doing a lot of that for very low or free. For me personally, it was understanding that the amount of money that I charged had direct correlation with the results that people would get with me. Nothing else had to change except for I had to charge more money. When I started doing that outside of our MLM, people were getting more results. Same tools, same exact thing. And I don't want to say it was just the clients, I showed up differently.

SPEAKER_01 9:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:28

There's a difference between when you're getting it's free and you're doing like a free workshop for somebody on YouTube versus you're getting paid$10,000 for a workshop. You're gonna make sure that you do everything you possibly can to help. It's just how we work, how our brain works. It's just the psychology around it, right? And so the more invested we are, the more invested we are, right? So it's like one of those things where going through this process, I realized that that was the case. When I started to charge more, people got better results. They talked about me more in terms of We didn't go from zero to 10,000, right?

SPEAKER_02 9:59

So it's like it's that process that that some people just don't want to go through.

A Six Week Free Coaching Framework

Evolve Your Beliefs At Each Level

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Yeah, yeah. And and I want to call something out though, too, because when we have brand new coaches coming through our certification and just getting them started, sometimes starting off free is a good idea. Yeah. What I highly encourage people to do is for the first six weeks to take our process, our system, what we teach them inside of HIMA and implement it into a free session with people, give them six weeks for free. And as a result, they get a testimonial out of it. I want to make sure they don't say, hey, this is free coaching for you. No, this is actually paid coaching, but in response from me coaching you once a week for six weeks, number one is I get to use these as recordings for our certification criteria. But also at the same time, I would love to have a testimonial at the end. And that is all that you have to pay me for for these six weeks. After that, we can talk about what this would look like if you were to work closer with me as a client, but we set it up that way where it's not just a pure like free thing, but it's you just learning a skill and getting your feet wet. And I've seen so many people pick up momentum because when you get on for six weeks, you learn a lot. Yeah, your client learns a lot and they want to pay you. And so you get to the end, they're like, I want to be your first client. And typically what I tell um a lot of our people is figure out what your rate is gonna be and then give them a discount because they're one of your first clients to do that. But make sure that you get a testimonial from it, right? But you will see this if you have three, four, or five clients that you're gonna have six weeks of free, some of them won't show up. Yeah, some of them will talk themselves out of it because once again, they don't have any necessary skin in the game. But it's a good way for you to get started, making sure that it's fueled by not I'm not good enough. It is fueled by I'm in a certification. My job is to practice my face off. And when I coach my face off, I'm gonna learn so much because I'm gonna bring stuff to Mark and Teresa. They're gonna be able to help me process this, figure out new ways to help them that you are growing so fast in six weeks that by the end of six weeks, it's impossible for you to not charge anymore. Because you're like, look at the results that I got this person, and I've also grown on speed dial and I've got all my six certification calls that I need to submit for the program, right? So that's kind of like what is sticking out to me. Does that make sense? One thing I do want to go back to was when you were talking about charging in terms of like my rate. So I didn't jump from zero to 10,000, right? It was a gradual step up. When I think through this process, is like at every level, I had to think something different. So at every level, it wasn't the same thought or perspective over and over again. I had to evolve and grow, right? And so as I was going up the ladder, I started to think differently. And when I started to think differently, believe it or not, different people were attracted to me. Different people would come to me and go, hey, I've been really needing to reach out and ask you how I can work with you in a one-on-one capacity. And as we've grown, our one-on-ones are now like a lot more money. And now people come to us for the certification to be a part of that because there's a part of like going through a certification where you actually get coaching yourself, but you have me and you there every week being able to help you learn coaching, not only learn it, but implement it and get coaching yourself, then we can help more people at once, right? So it's like as we kept growing, we got to the point where we did a group-based program. But I don't want to get off on a tangent because a lot of people start with a group-based program. I always think that that's, I don't want to say always the wrong way, but if you don't have a big audience, it doesn't make sense. You should start off in a one-on-one atmosphere to really build up your muscle, especially when you're first getting started. But being able to do that now creates a spot where we have, we have very few one-on-ones now. And that's with the intent and purpose of being able to get them into the certification to be able to help them out, right? But the reason why I want to say this is because there's an evolution to it. And in order for me to get from one level to the next, I had to think or believe something different before I could do something different. People rush to the do. And that's why it's not holding on. That's why you're not able to be consistent with it. That's why you're not able to learn about it. You're making other people's actions mean something about you, or your clients leaving mean something about you. Like all of those things are not true. It's just at every level you have to believe something different. And that's really where the power is.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:01

The whole idea of charging your worth and what undercharging is really costing you. What would you say is something important that you want to make sure that people capture from the conversation today? Is there like something that is speaking to you in terms of I want to make sure people leave this lesson with this?

SPEAKER_02 14:20

Yeah. I think it's the importance of the internal growth that happens. It's not about, hey, you know, eventually I'm gonna be able to charge this or just thinking about that aspect of coaching. It's more of how can I grow to the level where I can charge what I'm worth, right? And it's more focus on how can I get better? How can I learn new skills? How can I provide a service that truly helps people and then work your way into charging what you feel is good to charge for your services. But I think that the focus is not necessarily what can I eventually charge? It's more like who can I grow into where the money is not gonna be an issue when I tell someone when I'm on a sales call.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

Yeah. I love it. I love it, I love it. One thing that based off of what you just shared, and also this whole entire podcast, one thing I I want to do, and this might actually be helpful for a lot of people out there who are either just getting into coaching or they're coaching and they're trying to find clients and charge based off of the value they're bringing, is to kind of like separate the whole idea of worth versus value that you bring. So your worth is already incredibly infinite, right? Your worth is infinite. It should not be tied to anything related to business, to results, to any of that stuff. When God created you, he gave you all the worth you ever need. When we think about value, that's what the marketplace pays you for. The marketplace pays you for the value that you bring.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:00

The more transformation you've gone through, the more skills that you have, the higher level of a belief system that you have, the more value you can bring people. By the way, also the more challenges that you've been through, we're going through a challenge right now. And the fact that we have this challenge is going to make us stronger on the other side, even though it sucks when we go through it. When you're going through those challenges, when you're able to use that to now help other people, now you increase your value. And the value is what people are going to pay you for. Help them solve problems that they have right now that you've been able to solve or have a roadmap to be able to guide them to, which is why we have HIMAA. But I want to make sure that you disassociate that even with the word worth. Yeah. Because when people talk about that, a lot of times they're talking about it from a place of a higher level of belief. But in the infant stages, when you say your worth is tied to how much you charge, that can actually get into your belief system saying, well, I guess I'm not worthy.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

Right. So disassociating those things, I think, is really, really important.

SPEAKER_01 16:57

Yeah, that's a great point.

Apply To The High Impact Academy

SPEAKER_00 16:58

All right. Thank you for listening. We appreciate you. And we also want to share this. If you are somebody who is coach trained or you're already coaching and you're tired of maybe kind of like winging the sessions, not knowing how to do what we did today, get to the root of what's actually holding them back. We want to share that we actually have a next cohort of our high impact mastery academy that starts in May. You can apply for it if you go to modernleadership.us forward slash academy. Within 24 hours, we'll let you know if you're a good fit or not. There's no sales calls, nothing like that. But we want to share a little bit about how the program works, which you'll see at that page. And there'll also be a link if you scroll down to apply to just to make sure that it's a good fit, not only for you, but for us. We only keep the cohorts to 15 people maximum. But if this is something that you're feeling called towards, you want to have deeper conversations like we had today and really understand not only what's holding you back, but what's holding your clients back so you can help them apply there and we'll reach out in chat real soon. All right. Well, thank you very much for being here. That was an amazing conversation. All right. You guys have an incredible week, and we'll see you next week. Bye, everybody.

SPEAKER_01 17:59

Bye.