Why I Refused To Discount And Had My Biggest Year Ever

If you’re constantly being asked to “just do a quick favour,” lowering your prices to keep clients happy, or feeling weird about charging what you’re actually worth… you NEED to hear this.

Right now, with tighter budgets and more competition, it’s easy to slip into undercharging, over-delivering, and giving away your expertise for free just to stay relevant.

But that pattern doesn’t build a sustainable business - instead, it builds resentment, burnout, and clients who don’t value what you do.

This episode is a direct, honest conversation about what’s really happening when you discount your work, why free advice isn’t as harmless as it seems, and how pricing impacts more than just your income.

Tune in to discover

✅Why discounting your services can quietly damage your business
✅The difference between being flexible vs. devaluing yourself
✅What people are really saying when they ask for “free advice”
✅How undercharging creates imbalance, resentment, and burnout
✅Why higher prices often lead to better clients and stronger results
✅The connection between money, energy, and sustainable business growth
✅What changes when you start treating your expertise like it actually matters

Key moments:

00:00  Intro
01:20  Why discounting without reason is a hill worth dying on
02:00  Meeting someone's budget vs. being bargained down
03:40  What your prices are really telling the universe
05:00  The "quick question" problem
06:40  What people are actually saying when they ask for free
08:40  The one-line script that redirects unpaid requests
09:00  The PT example: tiered support done right
10:40  Money as energy exchange
11:40  Why incomplete exchanges breed resentment
15:00  The $650 coaching call I was excited to pay
16:40  If premium prices trigger you, read this
19:00  Why higher prices create higher perceived value
20:40  Skin in the game: why paid clients actually do the work
21:40  What happened when I raised my prices 30%
22:40  Know your worth, then add tax

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https://iconiccoaching.com.au/coaching/

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👉Here’s how to connect:

https://www.instagram.com/tellmeaboutit__podcast
https://iconiccoaching.com.au

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Have you ever given away your expertise for free and then felt absolutely disgusted with yourself afterwards? Have you ever had somebody ask you for just a quick question that turned into your entire free coaching session? Have you ever felt guilty for charging what you're worth? Yeah, same. And in today's ep, we're gonna talk about all of it. We're talking about why discounting is fucking disgusting, why free advice is disrespectful, and why I literally get excited to pay$650 for a one hour of coaching. If you've ever felt undervalued yourself or let other people undervalue you, this one is for you. Kate Muir here and I'm back again with another Ep of Tell Me About It podcast. Today's episode is called Know Your Worth and Then Add Tax Class. And honestly, if you've ever felt that icky feeling in your stomach when someone asks you to lower your prices, or if you've ever given away your expertise for free because you didn't know how to say no, or if you've ever felt guilty for charging what you're actually worth, then buckle up buttercup because this episode is about to light a fire under you. I just want to crack straight into this one pretty much because I need to start this episode with something I'm very passionate about. And when I say passionate, I could mean I could probably rant about this for approximately seven hours straight. Like I can rant about anything for about seven hours straight. But that is the topic of discounting, and specifically why it wants me to crawl out of my own skin. Discounting is disgusting, and that is a hill I will fucking die on. There is this massive, enormous canyon-sized difference between meeting someone's budget and bargaining. And I think a lot of people, especially people who are in their early in their business journey, conflate the two. They think that being accommodating means slashing their prices whenever somebody pushes back, and they think that being a good business owner means making themselves accessible like at any cost, literally at any cost, including the cost of their own financial well-being and self-respect. So let me break this down for you because I teach this to my clients all the time, and I think it genuinely, well, the feedback is that it genuinely changes the way that they operate. Meeting someone's budget is when you're having a genuine conversation about what someone can afford and you work together to find a solution that serves both of you. Maybe that means offering a payment plan. Maybe that means adjusting the scope of what you're delivering so it aligns with what they can invest. Maybe that means pointing them towards a different offer you have that's a lower price point, but it still delivers value. It's collaborative. And this is respectful. Okay, this is a healthy energy exchange. This is you being a good human while also being a good business owner. Bargaining, on the other hand, which is something I see all the time at the moment because everyone's money is tight, is when someone looks at your price, decides they don't want to pay it, and expects you to just lop a chunk off for no reason other than they asked. There's no adjustment to scope, there's no conversation about what would work better, there's just an expectation that you'll devalue your own work when they raised an eyebrow. And here's where you really need to hear me. When you discount without reason, when you drop your prices just because somebody pushed back, you are not being generous. You are not being accommodating. You are telling the universe, and more importantly, telling yourself that you don't actually believe that you and your work is worth what you are charging. You are reinforcing a story that says your value is negotiable, that your expertise is up for debate, that your prices are just suggestions rather than reflections of genuine transformation and the service that you offer. And that is not a story that I want any of you living in. That story is fucking garbage. Throw it in the bin where it belongs with all your ex-boyfriends. Okay, girl? Now, when someone asks me for a discount without any context, without any genuine financial hardship, without any willingness to adjust what they're receiving, my answer is fucking no. Full stop, no explanation required, and oh full sentence. And the reason my answer is no isn't because I'm greedy or difficult or any of those things that people might think. It's because I respect my work. I respect myself. I respect that I have been doing this for eight, oh sorry, nine years. And I respect that I have been in business for like fucking ever. And everything that led up to me actually launching this business has created who I am today. I respect the years I've been developing my skills for that entire time. I respect the energy and effort I pour into every single client that I work with. And if someone doesn't respect that same thing, then honestly, they're not my fucking client. Go to some cheap whatever business coach and go to them. You'll see why people paid the big bucks for me. They were never gonna be my client. That's completely fine. I don't lower myself to get a client. So if you take nothing else from this, please take this. Your prices are not a negotiation unless you allow them to be. You get to set the terms, you get to decide what your worth is, and anyone who makes you feel bad or guilty or ashamed, they are not your people. You will find your people. And okay, next topic. If I had a dollar for every time someone slid into my messages or cornered me at a networking event, or even cornered me at when I'm out and about somewhere, or hey, can I just ask you a quick question about my business? I would be writing this podcast from my private yacht. I would have so many dollars, an obscene number of dollars. And look, I want to be clear here, I'm actually a very generous person. I love helping people, I love sharing knowledge and watching people have those light bulb moments. That's why I pay a fortune for a podcast producer and give this to you guys for free. That is literally why I do what I do. But there is a difference between being generous and being exploited. And that difference is whether the person on the receiving end acknowledges what you're giving has value. The amount of times people slide into my DMs and ask me 55 business questions, not even a hello, how are you? How's Cam? How's the dogs? How's life? What have you been up to? And just want my advice for free is crazy. And I know that happens to a lot of you guys too. So here's what I need people to understand. When you ask someone for advice in their area of expertise, when you ask a coach for coaching, when you ask a consultant for consult consultation, when you ask a strategist for strategy, you're asking them to do their job. You're asking them to perform the service that they have spent years learning, practicing, refining, and building a business and a career around. The fact that you're asking casually doesn't make it casual. The fact that you're asking over coffee doesn't make it free. And this is where I need to get a little bit spicy because honestly, this one really gets under my fucking skin. When someone asks me for free advice, what they're saying is, I value your expertise enough to want it, but I don't value enough to pay for it. They're saying, I think your knowledge is so useful that I want to know the answers, but it's not useful enough for to be worth actual money. They're saying I want the benefit of your years and years and years of experience, but I want it for free because apparently your rent isn't due this month and you don't have a mortgage. Do you understand? This is literally my job. This is my livelihood. This is how I support my family. This is how I feed myself. This is how I pay my mortgage. The thing you want from me for free is the exact same thing that I charge people money for. And those other people, the ones who pay, they understand that expertise has value. They understand that my time has value. They understand that the advice that I'm giving them isn't pulled out of thin air. It's the result of years of education, of experience, of being in business, of trial and error, and it's genuine hard work. So, no, I'm not gonna answer your fucking quick question. I'm not gonna give you a free strategy session disguised as casual chat, and I'm definitely not taking your phone calls. I'm going to solve your business problems over Instagram DMs because you were too cheap to book an actual call. I really want you guys to start to adopt this. And if that makes me sound harsh, then call me tire fucking banks because I don't care. Here is the flip side of this equation. Every minute I spend giving away my expertise for free is a minute I'm not spending on my paying clients. It is a minute I'm not spending building my business. It is a minute I'm not spending with my family or resting or doing literally anything else that serves me and my life. Time is finite. My energy is finite. And I refuse to keep pouring both of those things into people who won't acknowledge their value. And if you're nodding along to this, if you've been that person that gives and gives and gives and gives and wonders why you're exhausted and broken, your clients never sign up for you. It's because you give away whatever you're trying to sell for free. Why would they sign up with you when you're gonna do it for free? I need you to start practicing this phrase. I'd love to help with that. Here's how you can book a session with me. That's it. That's the whole script. You don't need to explain, you don't need to apologize. You just redirect them to the appropriate container for that conversation, which is a paid one. And look, I'll give you another example of this because I do coach coaches as well, and I coach people in the industry as well. I have a PT who I work with very closely has different tiers. So she does a lot of online coaching. And so she has clients that pay for basically unlimited support. So you can call her, text her, whatever, any time of the day or night, she'll she'll answer. Then she has the lower tier ones that pay for one PT session a week. They get their plan, they have to stick to the plan, and then they go into like an accountability group. So it's like a lower tier. And then she just has ones that she doesn't train at all. She just gives them the plan and then they just come and be a part of the group thing. And she had one of these group clients continually call her messages and be like, hey, when are you free for a call? And she's like, I keep answering and I feel really bad. Like, I just want to charge her more. And I was like, so charge her. And she was like, but I can't charge her, she's already paying me. And I said, So you need to go back to her and say this. If you want to upgrade to unlimited support or if you would like more phone support, you can go into this option or this option. This is how much it costs. Let me know when you're ready to sign up. Otherwise, I'll see you at group. And it's the same thing that happens in my business. My clients are awesome because they get it. They know they can move up and down the tiers as much as they wish. But they get for what they pay for. Don't just accept their rebuttal, don't just accept their demands. You just go back to them and be like, hey, that's cool. I actually have a group option for that, which is XYZ. You just got to pay more to be in it. And they can either upgrade or they can keep doing their normal support. Crazy, right? I want to talk about the energy exchange that happens with money too, because we don't talk about this enough. And money is energy, and money always has to be moving, and energy always has to be moving, otherwise, it gets stagnant and it gets stuck. So this leads really naturally into the next thing. And I know this might sound a little woo-woo for some of you, but stick with me here because this is actually really practical and really important. When you give something to someone, whether that's your time, your knowledge, your emotional labor, whatever it is, you are putting something into the world. You are depleting your own reserves in service of another person. Who I actually find, and you guys might find this too: the people who are the ones that usually ask for free shit are the ones that would never do anything for you. Do you know what I mean? Like they're never the generous ones. You can usually spot them a bloody mile away. So you're depleting your own reserves in service of another person, and when that's reciprocated, when they give something back, whether that's money or appreciation or support or whatever, there's a balance, which is why we need to ask for money whenever we give something in our careers. The exchange is complete. You've given, you've also taken. They've taken, they've also given. Both parties walk away having given and received. But when you give and give and give, and the other person just takes and takes and takes, there is no energetic balance. The exchange is incomplete. And there's the thing about incomplete exchanges, they create resentment, they create exhaustion, they create this heavy, sticky, gross feeling that sits in your chest and makes you dread interactions with that person. We've all had those friends, right? We've all had those family members, we've all had those people in our lives. I've experienced this so many times in my life, both business, personal relationships. I've been the person who gave too much and who said yes when I should have said no, or who bent over backwards of people who didn't even slightly inconvenience themselves for me. And I can tell you from experience that it is not sustainable and it will hollow you out. It will make you bitter and tired and disconnected from the work you once loved. And this is the same when you employ, right? I employ you to do a job. You come to work, you do that job, you get paid. You work more, you do an exceptionally great job, I pay you more because that's being mirrored, right? And this is where the frustration grows if you are an employer. You have this great staff member. All of a sudden they start not pulling their weight and going down and down and down and making you less and showing up less and being less present. And then you're still paying them the same. You're giving them, they're not giving back to you. That's where the resentment breeds, right? Because they're still taking, but they're not doing. It's the same in the reverse roles. If you're an employee and you give and you give and you give and you overdeliver and you exceed your KPIs and you're taking on the extra clients, and you're being a great team leader and you're being a great team player and you're doing all the things, but your boss never gives you a raise, or the boss never even acknowledges your extra effort, resentment, right? Because the energy exchange is not complete, it's not a complete circle. So it will make you bitter, it will make you tired, it will make you disconnected for the work you once loved if you keep giving. The thing about money is that it's really, really clean form of energy exchange. When someone pays me for my services, there's no ambiguity about the exchange. They give me money, I give them expertise and time and energy, and we're square. There's no lingering obligation, there's no weird power dynamic, there's no resentment brewing on either side because both parties have contributed something of value. We've both given, we've both received. When you work for free or when you chronically undercharge, you remove that clean exchange. You create a situation where you're constantly giving and never receiving. And whether or not you consciously realize it, that imbalance affects everything. It affects how you show up for that person, it affects how much energy you have for your paying clients, it affects your relationship with your business as a whole. It also, I would also go as far to say it affects your relationship to self, your relationship to your home, and your relationship to your family. If I'm depleted at work, you can bet that carries down into my marriage. I'm sure that's true of most of you. So this is your reminder that protecting your energy isn't selfish at all. It's not greedy at all. It's not mean or exclusionary or any of those things your imposter syndrome might jump in and tell you, or your ego is probably telling you in your head. Protecting your energy and putting a value to your energy is really essential, and it's what allows you to keep doing this work long term. It's what allows you to show up fully for the people who actually value what you fucking do. I want to shift gears a little bit here and tell you a story about something that happened recently that I think perfectly illustrates everything that I've been talking about. So I've been following this coach online for a while now, and her name is Social Coach Ash, and she's incredible. I've watched her content, I've learned from her free stuff, and I've reached this point where I was like, you know what? I wouldn't mind actually working with her. I wouldn't mind learning what she can actually teach me. And I went to get in the room with her and pick her brain and get specific about her advice on my situation. So I went to book a consultation with her, which is just a one-hour session, not a consult, sorry, an actual coaching session. And I saw the price and it was circa$600. And you know what my immediate reaction was? Not, oh my God, that's so expensive. It was not, who does she think she fucking is to charge that much? My immediate reaction, and I'm being completely serious here, was fuck yes, Queen. And you must be really good. Like the juice is obviously worth the squeeze for you because I see your content and I already feel value in you, but now you're gonna charge me really well for your time. Get it, sis. And then I thought about putting my own prices up. So I was genuinely excited, and I was excited because that price told me something about her. It told me that she values her time. It told me that she's confident in the transformation that she provides and the value that she provides me. It told me that she's not desperate for my business and that she has clear boundaries and expects to be compensated fairly for her expertise. All of those things made me trust her more, not less. And I want to pause here because I know that some of you listening might have a different reaction. Some of you might be thinking,$600, one hour, that's insane. I would never pay that, or that's such a rip-off. And if that's your reaction, I honestly need you to hear what I'm about to say with love, but also with absolute blunt honesty, because I'm Kate Bureau and that's what I do. That reaction is not about her, it's about you. When you see someone charging premium prices, your immediate instinct is to be critical or dismissive or salty about it, that's not them triggering you, that's you triggering you. That's your own stuff coming up. That's your own money blocks, your own worth issues, your own limiting beliefs about what's possible for you and what you actually deserve. Because here's the truth: if you genuinely believed you could charge$600 for an hour of your time, seeing someone else do it wouldn't bother you at all. It would just be normal. It would just be someone operating at the level you operate at. The fact that it bothers you, the fact that it brings up all this judgment and anger and resentment, that's information dulling. That is your subconscious waving a giant red flag saying, hey, we have some work to do here. And most people will not take that on board or they won't see it that way. But if you're one of those people that sees high prices, sees to sell them down the road, charging way more than you and wonders how the fuck they do it, and then goes and bitches about it. If you immediately go to a critical dark place, you'll see them as why can't I? Whatever. You need to do some work. You need to do some work. Because I guarantee you it's not about the other person, it's about what you believe is possible for yourself. This is why all the successful people say that so many of their friends and family members and people drop off. It's because their life's changing and those people can't ever see that sort of life for themselves rather than being happy for them. They just fade into the background. So the moment that you do the work, the moment you start genuinely believing in your own value and your own potential, you'll start seeing those prices differently. You'll see them as aspirational rather than offensive, you'll see them as proof that it's possible rather than evidence of someone being greedy. And eventually you'll be the person charging those prices, maybe even more. So a lot of people don't like me saying that. Glad I did though. So this brings me to my final point, which is something that might feel counterintuitive, but it's actually backed by psychology and totally backed by my own lived experience. Higher prices actually make people perceive higher value, and that's exactly what that last example did of me. Not only that, higher prices create higher value for a lot of cases. So if someone said to me that can completely transform your business for$3,000, I'd honestly probably laugh in their fucking face. Because not that$3,000 isn't nothing, it's a significant amount of money, but because that price point doesn't match the magnitude of the claim. You're telling me you could transform my business for three grand. Are you fucking kidding me? Completely transform my business? I don't fucking think so. That sounds like MLM to me. That sounds off like worse than when I started. If someone said to me I can completely transform your business for$25,000, I'd be leaning in. Be like, all right, I'd love to know what you can teach me. Tell me more. I'd be asking the questions and I'd be taking them seriously. And the transformation they're promising could be exactly the same. They could be the same deliverables, they could be identical offers. But the way I perceive them, the way I engage with them is the level of trust of buy-in. And the difference in that jump, it's completely different. Yeah. This isn't me being weird, by the way. This is well-documented psychology, like it actually is. If you study the psychology of buying, it's very fucking cool. I've read so many books on it. When people pay more for something, they value it more. There's more skin in the game. There's more um, what's it called? There's more like investment, like they're more invested. They engage with it more, they're more committed to doing the work and getting results. And anyone who's ever bought a cheap online course and never finished it versus an expensive program they were fully invested in knows exactly what I'm talking about. I'm gonna share something with you. I am coaching one of my best friends. Her name's Katie Alexander, you should give her a follow. She's been on the pod, she's amazing, um, into a new business venture that she's going into. And I was like, don't worry about it. You're my bestie, like, I'll do it for free, but let's do it probably. We'll do it over Zoom. We'll set it up like a proper client call. And she goes, No, I need to pay you, otherwise, I won't do anything you tell me to do. And I was like, oh my god. And she's like, I need to have skin in the game. I offered her a friendly discount because she's done a lot for me. But she wanted to pay me. She values me, and she knows how she operates is probably very similar to how I operate, which is if I don't pay anything, I don't do anything. So it's true of many people too, and you can charge your friends and you don't have to discount them. She's just one of the many people that I would. So when you price yourself low because you think it makes you more accessible, you're actually shooting yourself in the foot in multiple ways. You're attracting clients who don't value the work. You're training people to see your expertise is cheap, you're making less money, obviously. You're creating less transformation because your clients aren't as invested as they would be if they'd paid more, and you're working way fucking more for less money. Price high, so it makes you a little uncomfortable. And then watch what happens. I put my prices up 30% this year, and we've had the biggest intake we've ever had. Crazy, right? I promise you, it will change the way that you do business and it will change the way that you feel about yourself when you start to just put the prices up and just go with it. I actually believe, and I don't know who actually said this to me, it must have been one of my coaches many years ago. If you put your prices up and you don't lose any clients, they haven't gone up enough. You're actually meant to lose 10% because you're also opening yourself up for 10% more high-paying clients. So put them up, pull the trigger, get it done. Look, I could keep going on this topic for another day. Um, but here's what I need you to take away from this conversation. Your work has value, your time has value, your expertise has value, and you have value, sister. And anyone who doesn't recognize that doesn't deserve the access to it, stop discounting without a reason. Stop giving away your genius for free because someone asks nicely or you feel bad for them. Start creating clean, balanced energy exchanges where both parties are contributing. Get excited about investing in yourself and in others who charge what they're worth and stop letting your own money blocks convince you that premium prices are somehow offensive. If you're offending people with your prices, good. I hope so. I hope you hurt some people's feelings with your great prices because you are worthy of charging what you want to fucking charge. You are worthy of being paid well. You are allowed to set boundaries, and you are not obligated to make yourself accessible to anyone at any price. Know your worth, then add tax. Thanks for tuning in, and I'll see you at the next one.