Pricing That Reflects the Work You Want to Do, Not the Work You Have Been Doing

Most pricing decisions are backward-looking: they start from the work already being done, the clients already being served, the practice as it currently is. The rate emerges from what already exists. This produces consistency — the rate matches the current reality — and it produces a specific constraint: the rate anchors the practice to its current state rather than pointing toward where it’s going.

There’s a different orientation possible: pricing toward the practice the practitioner is building, not just reporting on the one they have.

What Past-Anchored Pricing Produces

What past-anchored pricing produces is a rate that attracts clients appropriate for the current practice — which is sometimes exactly right, and sometimes limiting. When the practitioner is actively developing toward deeper or more specialized work, the current rate may be attracting clients who fit what the practice has been rather than what it’s becoming.

This creates a specific kind of drag: the current client base is calibrated to the current rate, and raising the rate means potentially replacing some of those clients — a transition that requires both the internal willingness to navigate it and the forward-looking positioning to attract the next type of client.

What nobody explains about pricing is that the rate is also a signal about the type of work the practitioner does. A rate calibrated to what the practice has been is sending signals to the clients who fit that practice. A rate calibrated to what the practice is becoming sends different signals — to different clients, with different expectations about what the work involves.

Pricing Toward Who You’re Becoming

Pricing toward who you’re becoming is a specific application of the Be-Do-Have sequence to pricing: rather than having the rate follow the practice as it is (Have → Do → Be), the practitioner sets the rate from who they’re developing toward (Be → Do → Have). The rate reflects an honest assessment of where the work is going, which then helps attract the clients who fit that direction and shapes the work toward that destination.

This isn’t pretense. The forward-oriented rate needs to be honest — the work must be at a stage where the rate is defensible, even if the practitioner is in the process of fully developing into it. Setting a rate that wildly exceeds current capability is misrepresentation. Setting a rate that reflects honest trajectory — where the work is clearly heading and where the current depth is meaningful — is different.

Positioning the practice you’re building accompanies the forward-oriented rate. The rate signals direction; the positioning communicates it more specifically. A practitioner who is deepening into a specific specialized area can begin communicating about that specialization while the deepening is underway — making the trajectory visible rather than waiting until it’s fully complete.

A Reason Why That Points Forward

A reason why that points forward acknowledges both where the work is and where it’s going. It doesn’t claim capabilities not yet developed — but it also doesn’t artificially limit the rate to what the practice has been when the honest trajectory supports more.

The practitioner who prices only from the past tends to experience a practice that slowly follows the rate upward in small increments. The practitioner who prices toward the practice they’re building often finds that the rate helps pull the practice in the direction of where they want to go — attracting clients who fit the trajectory, creating incentive to develop toward the rate, and making the future practice more accessible rather than always deferred.

Developing a pricing orientation that points toward the practice you’re building is part of the Abundance GPS Skool community’s ongoing work. Join us here.