About This Episode
Welcome to The Overachievers Podcast, where I show you how to achieve lasting success without burning out.
In this episode, I’m looking into a struggle familiar to so many high performers: knowing you should charge more, but still hesitating to do it. Is the discomfort really about the market or your clients, or is there something deeper going on?
I’ll walk you through the hidden reasons beneath pricing anxiety, explain how our self-perception can hold us back, and show you what it really takes to claim your true value.
If you’re ready to break free from undercharging and step confidently into your worth, this episode is for you.
Key Themes
- Discomfort of charging higher prices
- Identity and self perception gaps
- Underpricing as self-protection
- Market vs. personal pricing fears
- Impact of repetition on confidence
If You Prefer Video
Transcript
This is the Overachievers podcast for people who want success without the burnout. If you’ve ever known that you should charge more and still found yourself not doing it, this episode is going to explain what actually is going on. And it’s probably not what you think. Welcome to the Overachievers Podcast with Keith Blakemore-Noble. Because success shouldn’t cost everything. Hello. Welcome back. I’m Keith Blakemore-Noble, the mindset master, and this is where we explore what it really means to succeed sustainably and in a way that actually makes commercial sense.
Now, we have been building steadily through cycle two of the podcast. We started with the Hidden Psychology of Money. If you recall the idea that financial outcomes are shaped by beliefs and not just by strategy. We then looked at why overachievers systematically undervalue themselves. They do that by measuring their worth by effort rather than by impact. And then in the last episode, we examined the hard work myth, the ceiling that effort alone eventually hits. And we looked at what leverage offers instead. Today, we’re getting specific about something which sits underneath all of that.
The discomfort of charging more. Because here’s something that I have noticed. Most overachievers at some point know they should be charging more. They’ve done the thinking. They’ve looked at the numbers. Numbers. They understand intellectually that their pricing doesn’t reflect the value they create, and still they don’t change it. Or they change it slightly nervously, while waiting for someone to push back and confirm their fear that they’ve overstepped.
In this episode, we’re going to look at what that discomfort is actually made of. Because understanding it is the first step to no longer being ruled by it. Now, when people think about why charging more feels uncomfortable, they tend to reach for practical explanations. The market won’t support it. My clients can’t afford it. I’ll lose business. People will think I’ve got above myself. I’m not well known enough yet.
I haven’t got enough testimonials. I need to wait until the next phase. Any of that resonating with you sounding familiar? These do feel like rational assessments, and occasionally one of them might even be accurate. But here’s what’s almost always true. Underneath them, the discomfort isn’t primarily about the market. It isn’t primarily about your clients. It is about you. Specifically about the gap between your self perception and the self perception that a higher price would require you to hold.
Pricing is not just a number. For most people, and for overachievers in particular, it is a statement about Identity, about who you are, about where you sit relative to others, and about what you are allowed to claim for yourself. And when the price you know you should charge is higher than what your current sense of self feels comfortable owning. The discomfort is the gap between those two things making itself felt. It’s not fear of the market, it’s fear of the mirror. Let me tell you about a pattern I have seen play out many, many times over the years. Someone decides they’re going to raise their prices. They’ve thought it through, done.
The numbers know it’s the right move. They feel in abstract, ready. And then a potential client gets in touch. A real person, a real conversation, a real moment where the new number has to be said out loud. Something shifts. The confidence that was there in the abstract suddenly feels thinner. There’s a pull toward the old number, or towards softening the new one, or towards adding extra value, throwing things in unprompted to make the higher price feel more justified. Excuse me.
I worked with someone, let’s call him Robert. And Robert had decided to raise his fees significantly. He ran a small specialist consultancy and the increase was entirely warranted. We’d talked it through. He was clear on the rationale. He was ready. The next week. He told me that he had taken on a new client at the old rate.
When I asked him what happened, he said the new client seemed like a good fit and it hadn’t felt like the right moment to test the new pricing. There’s always a reason why this particular client, this particular moment, isn’t quite the right one to hold the new number. That reason feels practical every time, but the pattern it creates is anything but. What Robert was experiencing wasn’t a pricing problem. It was an identity problem. The new number required him to show up as someone who charged that much and that version of himself hadn’t yet felt real enough to inhabit comfortably. He needed to identify as the person who charges that much. And he didn’t feel comfortable enough to identify as that person yet because of all of those excuses.
Here’s something to think about. Think about the price you currently charge or the salary that you currently accept for your work. Okay, now I’d like you to think about a number that would genuinely reflect the value of. You create a number which you know somewhere is closer to what the work is actually worth. And notice what happens when you imagine saying that number out loud to a client or to an employer. Not thinking it, saying it in a real conversation, and then being quiet, waiting for a response. What comes up for you when you imagine that. What does the discomfort feel like? And what story does it tell you about yourself? That story is worth exploring because it’s running in the background of every pricing decision that you make.
Here’s the distinction I would like us to draw. There’s your price and there’s your self perception. Your price is a number. It can be calculated, justified, compared, adjusted. It is external. It lives on a proposal or an invoice or a website. Your self perception is the internal sense of who you are and what you are entitled to. It’s the felt experience of your own worth, not your intellectual understanding of it, but the version that shows up in real conversations when the stakes feel real.
For most overachievers, self perception lags behind reality. The skills have grown, the results have grown, the experience has grown. But that internal image, the sense of who you are and what you’re allowed to claim, that has not kept pace. Which means the price that feels comfortable is the price that matches the old self perception, not the current reality. Raising prices requires raising self perception first, or at the very least, raising it simultaneously. That’s why telling someone to just charge more rarely works on its own. The practical instruction, that’s easy, but without the identity shift underneath it. The discomfort reasserts itself in the hesitation, the discount.
The moment where the right client is. Where the right client somehow never quite materialises for the new number. The price follows the person, not the other way around. There is a fear underneath all of this that we should probably explore and name directly. For many overachievers, the deep concern about charging more isn’t really about losing the client. It’s about losing what. It’s about what losing the client would mean. I’ll say that again.
The concern about charging more isn’t about losing the client. It’s about what losing that client would mean. If I charge more and they say no, what does that tell me about my value? That question is the real source of the discomfort. Because if the price and the identity are fused, then a rejected proposal isn’t just a commercial outcome. It is a verdict on the person behind it. Which is why for many overachievers, staying at a lower price feels safer. Not because it’s better business, but it feels safer because it reduces the exposure. If I charge less, the risk of rejection is lower.
And if I’m not rejected, I don’t have to face the fear that a higher number might have confirmed. It’s protective and it’s expensive, because the safety of underpricing comes at a cost, not just financially. But in terms of the story, it reinforces about what you are worth. Every time the lower number goes on the proposal, something in the background registers this is what my work is worth, this is what I can claim. And that story compounds quietly, but definitely compounds over time. The antidote isn’t to ignore the discomfort, it’s to understand what it’s protecting and to gently question whether that protection is still necessary. So what’s actually useful here? The first thing is to simply see the discomfort for what it is. Not a signal that the price is wrong, not evidence that the market won’t support it, but an identity response.
The feeling of inhabiting a self perception that hasn’t quite caught up with where you actually are. That reframe is important. Why is it important? Because it shifts the question from is my price too high? To am I currently showing up as someone who charges this much? And those are very different questions with very different implications. The second thing is to notice that the discomfort tends to reduce with repetition. The first time a new number is said out loud, it feels significant. The second time, slightly less so. The 10th time starts to feel normal. And normal is where that shift becomes permanent.
The price doesn’t change the identity overnight, but saying it, holding it, not retreating from it. That is how the identity catches up. In the next episode, we’re going to go further into the territory of value. Specifically, we’re going to look at what value actually means in a commercial context, and why the way most overachievers think about it, keeps them under earning. We’ve touched on effort versus impact over the last few episodes. In episode 17, we look at the distinction in more depth and at what it means to price, position and present yourself in a way that reflects the value you actually create, rather than the time it takes you to create it. That’s episode seven, Value and Effort. I think you’re going to find it a useful next step from what we’ve covered today.
And if you have found today useful, please do remember Give us a Like a comment a Share subscribe to us on your favourite platform. Give us a review on your favourite platform. Share it with your friends. Here is something to take away from this episode. Next time you put a price on your work, or the next time someone asks what you charge, notice what happens in the moment just before you answer. Is there a pull to go lower than you intended? Is there a hesitation? Is there an impulse to justify before you’ve even been questioned? And if there is, just ask yourself, what is that protecting? And is that protection still serving you. It served you at some point, but do you still need that protection? Is that still serving you? Is that still helping you? Hopefully this podcast series is helping you to think differently about your relationship with money and value. Again, follow us so you can stay with it.
We are building across the full 12 episodes of cycle two, just as we did with cycle one, just as we will with cycle three and so on. Each one connects to the next. Head over to KeithBN.link/TOP where you can find this episode and all the other episodes. Within each episode you’ll find the show notes along there show notes in there along with everything else from today including the Overachievers quiz. If you want to understand which patterns are most active for you. I’m Keith Blakemore-Noble, the Mindset Master and I will be your guide as we explore a healthier way to succeed. Catch you in the next episode.
