When I first started Wondry, I had no idea what to charge.
Like a lot of first-time founders, I turned to Google. I read the pricing advice blogs. Downloaded the templates. Shamelessly scoured other people's websites, hoping they listed their pricing and trying to reverse-engineer their decisions.
And I got a lot of advice—most of it bad:
"Double your W2 hourly rate."
"Start with your annual income goal and work backward."
"Keep it under $5K because anything above that drags out the sales cycle."
I thought I was getting the inside scoop.
But here's what I didn't realize: everyone is just guessing.
The dirty secret of pricing isn't that people are charging too little (though that's common). It's that most people have zero system. They're just clocking what their peers are doing and adjusting accordingly.
But pricing isn't something to guess at. It might be the single most important decision you make. It shapes who you work with, how you deliver your work, your stress levels, your confidence, your long-term business health.
It's a bit of a landmine, but I am hoping that by sharing my mistakes and real numbers, I'll be making a small dent in the world of pay transparency.
This is a dense topic and therefore a longer email. Be forewarned.
Let's get into it.
Why Bad Pricing Advice Sticks Around
To start, that "double your W2" style advice is completely disconnected from reality. Your old salary has nothing to do with the value you provide as now. Different systems. Different goals.
One founder friend told me to keep my price under $5K because "it just moves faster." I asked if he made this decision based on any specific framework.
"No, that's just been my experience."
Which is fine, but not a financial model.
We've reduced pricing strategy to business telephone. Original thought gets diluted into vague rules we repeat without questioning.
Even the fancier advice—like "value-based pricing"—often misses the mark. These strategies usually involve calculating ROI for your client and pricing accordingly.
But here's the rub: people don't make buying decisions based on objective ROI. They make them based on reference points, emotions, and what something feels like it's worth. In short: they're irrational.
We approach pricing like an engineering problem when it's actually a psychological one.
Let's Talk About Money 😬
A Seth Godin-ism: Understand the system you're playing in.
1440's piece on salary transparency is worth a read here. They trace the roots of our discomfort with money talk back to the early 1900s, when Americans started to equate salary with intrinsic worth.
We think it's polite not to talk about money. But that taboo was designed. And it protects the people already ahead.
In fact, one of the kindest things we can do is start talking about money.
I'll admit it: I felt nervous sending this. Not because I'm ashamed of what I charge—but because the moment you share your income publicly, there's an assumption that people will start telling themselves new stories about you; that you're greedy or lucky or don't make enough.
Maybe they will. Maybe not. But what I know is this: the story people tell themselves about me has almost nothing to do with me.
The Experience Economy Shift
A lot of my thinking clicked into place after reading The Experience Economy.
The core idea is this: we've moved beyond a service-based economy. People don't just want outcomes. They want experiences. That changes everything about pricing.
If you're designing an experience—and let's be clear, we all are—then you're not just selling your time or your deliverables. You're selling memory, identity, and emotional resonance.
And when you realize that, it's clear: pricing is part of the experience, too.
Low prices signal low stakes. High prices don't just reflect value—they create it.
That's why the endowment effect is so powerful: when people pay more, they value the experience more. Even if the wine is the same, the $90 bottle tastes better than the $12 one.
For those of us in the business of crafting experiences and facilitating change, this changes our calculations. We're not selling hours or deliverables—we're selling emotional states, memories, and transformations.
This is why companies like Disney can charge what they do. They're not selling rides or food or even the physical space—they're selling the feeling of magic and the memories that last a lifetime.
The Most Expensive Lesson I Ever Learned
In 2022, I took on a client at a steep discount because I believed in their mission.
Big mistake.
They messaged me at 11 PM on Saturdays. Demanded constant meetings. Ignored every recommendation I gave.
At the same time, my full-price clients respected my time, showed up prepared, and actually implemented what we worked on.
That wasn't an accident. It's a pattern.
When clients pay more, they:
- Are more committed
- Take your advice seriously
- Come to calls prepared
- Implement and iterate
Money isn't just a fee—it's buy-in. And cheap rates breed resentment. Ask me how I know.
So How Do You Price?
Let's break this into three parts.
Part I: Start With Your Life
Yes, there's merit to working backward from your income goals. But only as a part of the whole.
Ask yourself:
- What kind of life do you want?
- How many clients or projects do you want at once?
- How many hours do you want to work?
- What kind of work drains you?
- What kind of clients energize you?
For me:
- I want no more than 3 clients at once.
- I want time to build additional revenue streams.
- I don't want to manage a team again.
- I want to live below my means and have enough to invest and give.
That last one's important. I grew up in foster care and became a mother at 16. I've spent most of my adult life playing catch-up. My pricing isn't just about today—it's about rewriting my financial legacy.
Part II: Then Add the Soft Stuff (Qualitative Guesses)
You're not pricing just what you do. You're pricing what your clients want to feel.
Most of my work falls into two categories:
- Helping clients launch or scale community
- Auditing and fixing their audience experience
In both cases, they're asking people to show up—digitally or physically—and feel something.
That's vulnerable. And failure in this space is personal.
My job is to ensure their events or communities don't flop. That their guests don't awkwardly say "look at the time…" halfway through. That the thing they've imagined actually comes to life.
There's no spreadsheet for that. But it matters. And it costs something. I suspect that this is the hardest part to contend with, because we don't really know how to put a price on that fear, but it's a huge part of the story. So you have to.
A very important thing happened to me a year after starting Wondry. A company paid a lot of money for an hour call. They had a very specific community struggle that they couldn't resolve (specifically, whether to close their community). Once on the call, I solved their problem in the first 20 minutes. It was actually pretty simple…to me.
Afterward, I felt guilty. These folks had paid this money for an hour of my time and only needed me for 20 minutes. I told my friend Angela that I felt bad that I didn't do more for them, and in her very typical and loving way, she told me "stop being ridiculous. They're not paying for your time. They're paying for your institutional knowledge."
This was a huge unlock for me. I've been at this for almost two decades. I've read and learned and watched and executed and failed and succeeded and and and…
It was those two decades that provided the 15-minute solution.
(Angela reads this newsletter, so I gotta stop and say thank you for this business-changing moment)
Part III: Support It With Quantitative Data
I then looked at all the credible public data I could, including comparable services. I also looked at what sort of salaries companies were offering for senior community and experience design roles. This gave me an idea of not only what the market was bearing, but how much money I felt I could save clients with a proper strategy.
One huge mistake I made: I wasn't diligent about keeping track of data for the first batch of clients I worked with. Eventually, I got far more disciplined at this, which formed the basis for my first price increase.
I found, for example:
- Our community strategy work has reduced churn by 30-40% for most clients. Since I know that existing customers, on average, spend 60-70% more than new ones, I can look at what clients are charging and make some pretty reasonable guesses about business outcomes.
- Customer journey audits have increased LTV by 40–80%.
- Broken experiences cost companies 25–40% in potential revenue through lost referrals, bad reviews, and abandoned carts.
If you don't have this data yet, start collecting it. It won't make pricing easy, but it'll give you confidence.
And confidence is contagious.
Where I Landed
I charge $8,000 a month for client work (with 90% margins). No hedging. No stuttering. In prospect calls, they'll sometimes say something along the lines "now for the hard part..." when transitioning to discussing cost. But I don't find it hard.
This number came from trial and error. Client feedback. Outcomes. And watching what happened when I raised my rates:
- The quality of clients improved
- My energy improved
- My work got sharper
If someone says "that's too much," we're not a fit.
They're not wrong. I'm not wrong. We just believe different things about value.
As Seth Godin said: "Price is a story. Price is not about money. Price is about what we believe we're getting."
My clients are paying for confidence, clarity, to avoid expensive mistakes and shortcut the learning curve. They're not paying for my time—they're paying for my decades of accumulated, tested knowledge.
One thing to note: people will say to keep raising your prices until you come against resistence, but that's a bit reductive. The resistence may be because you need to tell your story differently or start looking at a new category of clients.
Multiple Streams = Pricing Power
One of the smartest business decisions I made was saving enough margin in my life to create multiple revenue streams.
I'm not dependent on any one client to make rent. That gives me power to say no—and I do.
My mix:
- Limited high-ticket client work
- Digital products
- Paid speaking
- Facilitations and workshops
This is also a strategy for anyone designing experiences. The Experience Economy isn't just about charging more—it's about creating diverse touchpoints for different levels of engagement.
And as I wrote in this earlier piece, stop chasing performance. Start designing for actual impact.
Copycat Pricing Is a Losing Game
This isn't just about consultants or early-stage founders.
Event producers charge $15K for one ticket while others charge $25K. It rarely has anything to do with cost of goods.
MasterClass vs. your local rec center? Same basic service. Wildly different price.
What's the difference? Narrative.
The companies that win aren't pricing services. They're pricing change. They know exactly what story their customers want to tell themselves.
That's the real price.
This was a hard write-up. Once I started teasing this topic apart, I found there was more and more to say. I'm hoping it was at least a little helpful, but if you need any more clarification, hit reply and I'll do my best not to make things worse.
Onward,
April
