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You wrote the proposal, read it ten times, and your finger flinched before you hit send. That pit in your stomach isn't a pricing problem. You sold the wrong thing.
Two creatives quote the same job with the same scope. One gets two thousand, one gets fifteen. The difference is what they made the client believe they were buying.
In this one I walk through the whole model I run with clients. The outcome ladder, where you keep asking what the work actually does until you land on something with a number attached. The four questions I ask on a discovery call to get those numbers without ever making it feel like I'm asking about money. The math itself, which lands somewhere between 10 and 30 percent of the value your work is helping bring in. And why you send three tiers instead of one price.
Derek, a DJ I work with, booked 5k in his first week after we changed one thing at the end of his calls.
Free custom GPT, the Pricing Architect, is linked in the notes.
Connect with Jonathan:
- Instagram: @jonathandavidray
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathandavidray/
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@jonathandavidray
If you're a creative service provider who's tired of being talented and stuck, check out Wealthy Creatives Coaching → [link]
Chapters:
Creators and Guests
What is Wealthy Creatives Podcast?
Most creatives didn't start their business to burn out.
Wealthy Creatives is a conversation with videographers, photographers, designers, musicians, and creative service providers who are building businesses that actually give them their lives back.
Hosted by Jonathan David Ray — a musician, creative director, and business coach who's spent 21 years in the trenches — each episode explores what it really means to be wealthy as a creative: not just financially, but in inspiration, margin, freedom, and the kind of work that makes you come alive. Expect honest conversations about finding inspiration to create your best work, pricing your work, building a client base that values your craft, and living a creative life as an entrepreneur you don't need a vacation from. If you're a creative who's tired of being talented and broke, this is your show.
00:00:00 @jonathandavidray
Creatives don't undercharge because they're bad at pricing. They undercharge because they're still selling a video, a brand, a website, or a set. But that's the wrong thing. And the second you sell that thing instead of the outcome, you're going to make yourself cheaper before the quote even lands. Look, you've probably lived this exact moment a hundred times over. You've written the proposal, you've read over it ten times, and then your finger flinches before you hit send. After you do, you just wait in agony, wondering if you should have gone lower, and you're just imagining that the client is sitting there looking at your proposal, just off that you gave him this high number. Look, that pit in your stomach is not a pricing problem; it's a positioning problem dressed up as a pricing problem. You're staring at the wrong number because you sold the wrong thing.
00:00:45 @jonathandavidray
Now I've spent 20 years watching brilliant creatives lose tons of money on great work, and the ones who fix this, they don't just charge more. The whole process gets easier. Like a DJ that I worked with, he booked 5k in his first week after closing no gigs for two months, and at a higher rate. And so today I'm going to share with you the exact model that I use with my clients, so that the next time you send a proposal, the number is not going to feel like a guess. When a creative comes to me asking what they should charge, the first thing I think is that they're asking the wrong question.
00:01:15 @jonathandavidray
They're asking, "What should I charge for this?" But the real question that I want answered is, "What does that work actually do for their client, and what is it worth to them?" It totally makes sense why so many of us stay stuck in that thinking pattern. I mean, as freelancers, we were taught to price for our hours, our or the deliverable, the video, the brand identity, the website. So we figured out what the market was roughly charging for that, and we took a little off because we didn't want to lose the gig. And then we sent the quote. But did you notice that entire process had nothing to do with the client? Before we break down all of this, let's deal with the hours myth first, because I don't think most of us even realize how backwards this is. The second I price by the hour, I'm literally setting myself up for failure. And why? Well, now it's in the client's best interest that I finish fast at my loss, because finishing fast means I'm going to earn less. So I'm quietly being punished for being good at what I do. If I price the outcome though, it's a.
00:02:11 @jonathandavidray
Story like if I finish a job faster, that's a good thing for me because I can take on more work. And it's good for the client because they get the thing sooner. Time is a factor for you. It's not a selling point for them. It's how you run your business, not what you sell. Look, the client's not buying your hours. They're buying what those hours unlock for them. Two creatives can quote the exact same job, the same scope, the same deliverable. One gets two thousand bucks, the other gets fifteen thousand, and the difference isn't talent. It's what they made the client believe they were buying. The two thousand dollar version is selling a video. The fifteen thousand dollar version sells the thing that the video.
00:02:47 @jonathandavidray
For the client, look, the market's not going to reward a better edit. I'm sorry, it just doesn't. It rewards a better packaging of that same edit, and that gap between the work and what it's positioned to do—that's where the money lives. Have you ever gone into a convenience store and, on your way to check out, you see that little bottle called Five Hour Energy? I want you to think about this for a second. That company could have called it. They could have called it an energy shot, a vitamin drink. They could have poured the exact same liquid into a clear bottle and listed all the ingredients of what was inside. But they didn't do that. Instead, they named it after the thing you actually want: five hours of energy. The name sells it, and nobody grabs it off the counter for the ingredients. In fact, we probably don't even want to know what the ingredients are. It's probably diesel fuel or something. We grab it because it promises the results.
00:03:33 @jonathandavidray
And prints the results right on the front. So if you want to charge more for your jobs, don't add more. You work on what's printed on the front, the outcome you're actually selling. The second your pricing is all about you and your work, it reads like it was written for somebody in your industry, not for the client. And a proposal full of line items, the second shooter, their rental fee, the edit rounds, it makes the client figure out why each one matters. They're not pros in your field. They don't know what's needed. They don't know why. And look, confused people don't buy. So stop.
00:04:03 @jonathandavidray
Asking what you should charge. Instead, I want you to start asking what your work unlocks for the client and what that unlock is worth to their business. So, how do we do that? Well, that's where the discovery call is going to come in, and that's what makes this whole thing work. And how you can charge way more than you think. Once you start asking the right question, you need a way to actually find out what your work does for your clients. On a coaching call, this is a part I spend a lot of time on, and the move is what I call climbing the outcome ladder. If you do this right, you don't have to set a price. You just pull it out of thin air. The process actually sets the price for you. Now, here's how it plays out. Let's say a videographer is sitting across the table from me, and I ask, "What are you selling to this person?" They say, "I'm selling a brain video."
00:04:44 @jonathandavidray
Okay. Well, what does a brand video do for your client and for their business? They always think about it for a second and they say, well, it tells their story, it gives them marketing material, helps them look more professional, and that's the answer almost everybody gives. But we got to dig deeper. So, what is telling their story actually get them? Well, they attract more leads. Okay, good. And what do more leads do for the business? More customers. And that's where we want to land. Okay, the work is positioned to help them get more clients. That's what they want. That's a real outcome with real numbers.
00:05:14 @jonathandavidray
And that's the one we're going to use to price against. I want you to pay attention to what just happened. We started with the video, and we ended with getting more clients. Now there's a final question that I ask that really positions the value of your work. How long does this video keep doing that thing for them? Years. Okay, so it's not a one-time event. We're not selling a brand video. We're selling a marketing asset built to attract more clients. We just change the description of the entire job, and now when we start writing up the proposal, we're pricing against something real.
00:05:45 @jonathandavidray
Thing that the client actually wants. Do not skip this part. We often stop halfway up the outcome ladder at trust or professionalism because those words they feel important enough, but we have to keep pushing further because if it doesn't have a price tag, it's still like a theory. It's still this thing with no shape and no form. We have to keep climbing until we have something real. But we need some numbers from the clients to make this entire thing work. So on my first call with somebody, I'm listening for four numbers that are hiding inside a normal conversation, and I get them by asking some questions as part of the discovery process. So here's what I would ask: number one, tell me a little bit about who you serve, what you do for them, and why you sell them. I just want them to give me a whole picture of their business. And number two, when someone new comes in, what do.
00:06:29 @jonathandavidray
Usually go for first which packages do people tend to jump on now if they tell you the answer to that they've handed you what a client's worth without ever feeling like you were asking about money and how much money they make the third question I might ask is how many new clients are you trying to bring in over the next year and that's another number that we need the final question I would ask is where are most of your clients coming from right now is this project a main driver of the growth that you're shooting for or is it just another piece of a bigger strategy because that's going to tell me how much is riding on the work that.
00:06:59 @jonathandavidray
I'm about to do for them, and that's going to give you everything you need to do some basic math. Say a new client comes on at around 5k, and this business is trying to get 20 new clients, and they hope your brand film is going to increase conversions and maybe be responsible for about 50% of the growth that they want. Well, that's a real number. That's 50k, and you need to price against that slice of the growth that your work is expected to influence. Just as a reminder, this model is for B2B businesses, right? Creative selling to businesses. If you do one-off consumer work.
00:07:29 @jonathandavidray
Like if you're doing weddings or you're doing family sessions, the math runs differently and the thinking carries over a lot more than you'd expect. Quick thing: if you want help running this on your next quote, I built a free custom GPT called the Pricing Architect. You just drop in your discovery notes and it gives you the outcome value. It gives you a pricing range and a three-tier proposal that you can literally send to that client. The link's in the description if you want that. Now we need to get our outcome number and we need to price against it. Okay, so two of your four questions.
00:07:59 @jonathandavidray
Give us everything that we need to know, and here's the mathy question we're gonna run. Customer value times the number of customers the project is expected to influence. Be honest here though. Don't multiply by every client they want this year. Multiply it by the ones they hope your work is expected to influence. Like if your video is the front door for them for this marketing campaign, if they're expecting it to drive 10 of their 20 new clients, you price against 10. When you multiply those two numbers, you have a clean idea of your work's value to them that your work is helping bring in. All right, get ready to be triggered because the pricing model is simple, but you're probably not going to like.
00:08:33 @jonathandavidray
I recommend charging somewhere between 10 and 30 percent of the outcome value that your work is helping bring in. You're going to start with 10 percent as a baseline when you don't have a track record on this specific outcome yet. The percentage is going to climb though as you get more proof. Here's how I think about it: If working with you unlocks $10,000 for the client, then you're at $1,000. And if working with you unlocks $24,000 in income for them, then the price is $2,400. If it unlocks $300,000 for them, you're at $30,000.
00:09:03 @jonathandavidray
Still a 10%. The outcome's just bigger, and that's a great deal for them. 10% for 10 times return is an insane value. Now I gotta stop here because we need to talk about what you might be feeling right now. If pricing against an outcome makes you feel like you're promising something you can't control, you've got to hold up for a second. Please listen to me. Slow down. You're not guaranteeing the result. You're pricing against the reason they want the work in the first place. They came to you for a video, but they don't want a video.
00:09:33 @jonathandavidray
Clients. The video is how they get there. This isn't a trick. This isn't like snake oil salesman. This lining up your work with the reason they're buying in the first place. You're not inventing a need. You're naming the one they already came to you with. And as you gather testimonials from clients where your work actually paid off for them, you earn permission to climb up in that percentage. And this how you collect that proof. When you ask for a testimonial, don't just ask if your client liked the work. Ask about the outcome they came for. Now your proof isn't wow this.
00:10:03 @jonathandavidray
Person made me a nice video. It's this is the person who helped me get what I want. That's the social proof that earns you the top of the range. Now I watched tons of creatives like stand in front of me and see this new number for the first time, and the same thing happens almost every single time. They look like they're gonna puke, and they want to default back to their old way. I walked through this process with a client of mine a couple weeks ago, and she confessed to me that she almost lied to me. Sent a lower number on the proposal, but she didn't do that. She sent the number she wasn't comfortable with, the higher number, and guess what? They said yes. You can't compare this new number to what you used to charge for your work. It's not going to make sense to you, and it's going to feel a little wrong when you first see it. Like a number, a different kind of person would charge a different kind of business, but that discomfort, that's just you, bro. That's just a feeling. The.
00:10:52 @jonathandavidray
Old number was priced against video. The new one is priced against an outcome. They're not the same thing, so they can't be compared on price. If that's new number still makes you feel like you're gonna crap your pants. Here's something that can help you. I want you to practice saying that number out loud before you ever say it to a client. Get in front of a mirror, get in the shower, get in your car, whatever you need to do to be by yourself, and say that number out loud. Most of the time, we sound unsure about a price because we've actually never said it. If we don't sound comfortable with it,
00:11:22 @jonathandavidray
How will the client feel comfortable saying yes to it? Now, the way you package and present that number is the difference between a quote that sits in someone's inbox forever and one that somebody says yes to quickly. Once you got your number. I don't want you to send it alone. I actually want you to wrap it in three different tiers, and not because the client needs three options, but because three options is actually going to change the psychology of the sales conversation. A single price quote is a yes or no question. Do they want to work with you, or do they not want to work with you? Getting three tiers in that proposal changes the conversation to which one of these is the client going to pick. They're no longer deciding whether or not they want to work with you. They're deciding how much of your work they want, and that's an entirely.
00:12:05 @jonathandavidray
Entirely different frame and converts entirely differently. Tiers also give the client honest place to land with the budget that they have. Without those tiers, a mismatch and a budget and your price just ends the conversation. But with them, you give them options to land on. You don't lose the deal because the number was wrong. You only lose it if there's no fit at all, which is a much smaller pool. So we're gonna build the tiers around the outcome math and not around how much work you feel like doing. The middle tier is like your core offer.
00:12:35 @jonathandavidray
Right, it's going to be your anchor, the one that maps out most directly to that outcome you arrived at when you did the outcome ladder from the discovery call. Now, the top tier is going to extend that asset to more deliverables, a quicker time frame, a longer engagement, and the bottom tier is just a smaller version of the same outcome, not some watered-down deliverable. Okay, and remember, time is not a part of this equation. Every tier should point to the same outcome, just at a different level of depth, speed, or support. Now, here's just like. A side note, piece of advice: your top tier should be a monthly recurring revenue offer. It should be something that's monthly support. The client should understand both, right? They should understand the monthly payment and the minimum term. And honestly, when you list this right, sometimes that top tier feels like a better deal to people. It is wild. Try it on your next proposal. Now, just raising prices, doing this outcome math is not going to just close deals for you, okay? The pricing isn't what attracts them. The messaging attracts them, right? We have to match the outcome.
00:13:33 @jonathandavidray
With the outcome we're selling, those two things have to go together, right? And the right client shows up when the numbers both reflect the outcome and the messaging reflects what they care about. So if you raise your prices but you don't message correctly, you're not going to close the deal. And if you message correctly but you don't do the outcome math, you're going to do great work for less money than you should. Both of those things matter, and that's the model. That's the whole play. I want you to run this on your next quote, and that number you write down is going to stop.
00:14:03 @jonathandavidray
Feeling like a guess, you're gonna know where it came from, why it makes sense, and how to defend it without feeling like you're in a panic fleeing from a scene of a crime. And grab my custom GPT to help you do the math. So pricing your work correctly is one half of the problem. The other half is building a business that actually can scale and scale fast. So click on the video right here or right here, wherever it is, because I walk through exactly what I would do to scale a creative business to a million dollars in 20.
00:14:33 @jonathandavidray
26. I'll see you there.