E96 Transcript
There are three types of people in this episode. One of them might be you. I know that because all three of them make the same move, they just use different tools and have different justifications.
Last week we laid out the whole picture. We’re talking about pricing confidence and the different behaviors that get in the way. And we mentioned four patterns of pricing behavior. Same result, different root cause. Today we start doing something about the first one.
Avoidance.
What it means, who does it and why. There are three personalities inside this pattern, and I've met all of them in real life. We're going to get into that. But first, let's look at what's actually happening when avoidance shows up.
Avoidance is protection. That is what it is. Some people mistake it for laziness or procrastination, but that's not really what's going on.
The maker who avoids the real numbers has probably looked at them at least once. They got a result. They might have gotten a little panicky. And then they made a decision, not necessarily a conscious one, not to look again.
Now here's the logic. If you consistently know the real number and you still don't charge it, that's a different problem. But avoidance keeps the problem theoretical. If you don't do the math, you can't be proven wrong. You can keep making, keep selling, and keep believing the system is sorta working without ever having to confront whether it actually is. It's easier not to know ‘for sure’ than to know and have to act on it.
I get it. It’s disheartening when you discover you calculated 130 hours on a twin blanket and your labor ends up at $2.50 an hour. Everyone will tell you that’s too low. Well, yeah! But for you, maybe not for the customer. You see, we can do just enough math to get a number. Not enough to understand what it means. That's avoidance in action.
The number is not the scary part. What you have to do with the number is the scary part.
I've watched this play out for thirty years. In classrooms, at shows, in professional settings where the stakes were pretty high. The makers who avoid the numbers are almost never avoiding the math, per se. They're avoiding the reckoning that follows it.
And that's the important distinction. All three of the personalities in this pattern are doing that same thing. Just with different styles.
So let’s take a look at the three personalities found within the avoidance pattern.
Our first personality is the ostrich. ‘The Ostrich’ is avoidance in its most complete form. Head in the sand.
This isn’t because they don't care. Often, they care very much. It’s because looking at the real numbers produces a result they don't know how to act on. So, they don't look.
You might recognize the Ostrich by what they do: they price based on what feels comfortable to say out loud. They know what their materials cost, but they've never actually added labor. They just double and go. Ask them how they priced something and you get a vague answer. "I just kind of figured out what felt right." They may have done the math once, years ago, got an uncomfortable result, and never did it again.
They tell themselves they’re pricing for the market. What's actually happening is they're pricing to avoid the discomfort of knowing.
Here's the irony: The Ostrich is usually working significantly harder than the price suggests. They’re often the most skilled people in the room. The avoidance has nothing to do with the quality of the work. It has everything to do with the fact that the number produced feels like a verdict on whether the work deserves to exist in the market at all. If nobody pays that number, then what? Avoiding the number avoids that question.
The fix is not complicated. Do the math. Once. All the way through. The point isn't to immediately charge whatever it produces. The point is to know the actual number so that any decision you make after that is a conscious one. Pricing low on purpose is a choice. Pricing low by accident is the problem. (Maybe add a how this helps- or a situation where knowing this would help.)
Our second avoidance personality is ‘The Flat Rate.’ The Flat Rate looks more organized than the Ostrich. They have a price. It's just the same price for everything.
A set number for a small bag, whether it took 45 minutes or three hours. One price tier for an entire category, regardless of complexity or materials. A small, medium, large system that doesn't actually track to cost. Ask them how they arrived at the number and you get: "I just priced them all the same. It's easier."
And it is easier. Doing individual pricing on every piece requires doing the math every time. That's exhausting, and it's uncomfortable. One flat rate sidesteps all of it. It feels fair. It feels consistent.
What it actually does: the quick, easy items carry the labor weight of the detailed, difficult ones. And in some cases, this is exactly right. Left unchecked though, this can lead to a warped incentive to keep making the easy things and avoid the complex work that might actually be most valuable and sell better.
The Flat Rate is often someone who did the math once, picked a number that worked-ish for the middle of their range, and applied it everywhere to avoid doing it again. Simplicity as a way of not having to make the decision over and over.
The fix: you don't need to price everything individually down to the minute. But you do need at least a few meaningful tiers based on actual complexity and time. If you're flat-rating a set that takes twice as long as another at the same price, you're working for half what you think you are. Again, nothing wrong if you are doing it intentionally to fill a one time slot. Big time trouble if it’s your go-to method of pricing.
Our third and last personality in the avoidance group is the ‘One-Man Show.’
The One-Man Show is the most common of the three and the hardest to see from the inside.
What they do: price based on what they personally think they should make. Not what the work costs. What they think is comfortable and right. “It’s just me here. I’m not a business.”
You may have heard this (or possibly said it): "I just need to cover my materials and make a little extra." "I don't need that much. I just want it to be affordable for people." They price based on their own financial comfort level rather than the actual cost of the work. They often price differently for people they know versus strangers. You know, the friends and family discount, full-ish price for everyone else.
The logic is: I'm not greedy. I'm not trying to get rich. I just want to make a little money doing something I like doing and I don't want to price people out.
I watched this play out in the “I do custom stuff at home for people I know” world. A designer would quote a client based on what she thought the client could afford rather than what the project actually required. Three years later she's exhausted and undervalued and can't figure out why.
Here's what's underneath that: "I don't need that much" is often not a financial philosophy. It's a belief about what the maker deserves. And that belief has nothing to do with what the work is worth.
Personal humility is one thing. Applying it to your pricing is a business decision with real financial consequences. What the maker deserves and what the work is worth are two separate questions.
Pricing for what you think you need, rather than what the work costs, means you’re consistently doing one of two things: leaving money on the table when buyers would have happily paid more, or burning yourself out producing more volume to compensate for the per-unit underpricing.
You may be the only human running the show, but I recommend you start pricing to cover everything - labor, overhead, and a profit for the one person doing all the work - and let it build from there.
Separate what you need personally from what the work costs objectively. Do the math on the work. Then have a separate conversation with yourself about what you want to do with that information. Those are two different decisions and they need to stay that way.
All three of these are avoidance. Different shapes, same root.
The Ostrich won't look. The Flat Rate looked once and applied it everywhere to avoid looking again. The One-Man Show looked, but at the wrong thing, their own comfort instead of the actual cost of the work.
None of them are dishonest. None of them are trying to cheat anyone. And all of them are something we have all done at some point.
They're all protecting something, the peace of not knowing, the simplicity of not deciding, or the humility of not asking for too much. Those protective moves feel reasonable. They just have costs.
The cost of all three: you don't know what your work is actually worth. Which means you can't make good decisions about what to make, what to prioritize, what belongs in Fill-in versus Steady in your portfolio, or whether a particular stream is worth the investment of time and energy it's getting.
The fix is not complicated. It's just a little uncomfortable. Do the math. All the way. With your eyes open. Then make a conscious decision. I’m not saying you can’t change the price once you know what it really is. There’s a lot of strategic moves you can make, but it’s only strategic if you know all the information underneath it. If not, it’s just avoidance.
If you haven't started with the Income Math PDF, that's the place to begin. Go to virginialeighstudio.com/incomemath to get started. After that, there are a few other ways to climb the ladder to better pricing and an easier sale. I’ll link everything in the show notes.
Avoidance is understandable. We’ve all done it. But it's costing you something you can actually calculate if you're willing to look. The biggest takeaway I can give you is the courage to do the math, calculate the real cost, the real labor, and cover the overhead. THEN, you can make a strategic decision on how to manage that information. Then saying I’m going to take a smaller margin on this piece becomes an intention business decision that you can justify and stand behind all day long. And if things start to shift, for better or worse, you have knowledge behind the decisions to make quick, easy, and strategic choices to address the shift.
Next week we tackle Fear. Same math. Different problem. The Fear category is the biggest one. It is sometimes the one lying underneath avoidance. And it seems to be the most popular one of all
Meet me back here next week to get the skinny on fear-based pricing.
