On Charging What You’re Worth (And Why It Feels So Hard)

Let’s be honest about something: the pricing conversation in PMU is tangled up in a lot of things that have nothing to do with pricing.

It’s tangled up in how much you believe in your own skill. In whether you feel like you’ve “earned” it yet. In what your local market seems to be charging. In not wanting clients to think you’re greedy or out of reach. In the fear that if you raise your prices, the bookings will dry up.

I’m not going to pretend those feelings aren’t real. They are. I’ve had every single one of them.

But here’s what I’ve learned, from my own practice and from watching other artists navigate this: underpricing isn’t humility. It’s a structural problem that compounds over time.

When you’re underpriced, you need volume to make your numbers work. Volume means more appointments, less recovery time between them, less headspace for your own development. You get busy - genuinely busy - but you stop growing. And then a year later you’re exhausted, your results haven’t moved forward the way you wanted, and you feel stuck in a rate that no longer reflects where you actually are.

The price increase conversation is uncomfortable once. The consequences of not having it are uncomfortable indefinitely.

A few things that helped me reframe it:

You are not selling an hour of your time.

You are selling years of training, thousands of pounds of product and equipment, your eye, your judgement, and a result that will live on someone’s face for years. That’s a very different thing to cost-per-hour.

Your price is also a filter.

The clients who push back hardest on price are often the ones who require the most reassurance, the most corrections, the most energy. Higher prices tend to attract clients who trust you before they arrive.

You don’t have to raise everything at once. But you do have to start.

Do you think your prices are where they should be? Or what are the prices in your local area? Start a conversation in the comments...