Your Price is Your Pedagogy
Why what you charge teaches more than what you say.
Would you rather give someone a fish, or teach them how to fish?
We’ve all heard the classic proverb:
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
It sounds rhetorical.
But is it?
In coaching, consulting, and entrepreneurship, we pride ourselves on transformation. We position ourselves as guides, teachers, mentors—not just doers-for-hire. We speak often about the value of teaching someone to fish rather than just handing them dinner.
But when it comes to how we charge, many of us quietly default to handing out fish in bulk.
We over give. We undercharge.
And we wonder why the transformation doesn't stick.
So let’s push the proverb one step further: Are you actually teaching them to fish?Or are you just giving them discounted bait and hoping they figure it out?
Because here's the truth most won't say out loud:
Your price is not just a number. It’s an energetic, pedagogical, and structural message about what you're really offering, what it’s really worth, and how deeply you're willing to walk someone through change.
Price Is a Pedagogical Tool
Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
Every dollar of your pricing sends a message.
It’s not just a message about your offer’s value, but about the student or client’s role, their capacity, and their responsibility inside the transformation.
If your pricing is too low, you may not just be undervaluing your time.
You may be training your clients to undervalue their own growth.
Pricing teaches. It always has.
It teaches urgency, ownership, and commitment—OR it teaches that this work can be squeezed in between errands, sidestepped when it gets uncomfortable, or treated as a luxury instead of a lifeline.
And when pricing becomes a reflex of empathy, over giving, or insecurity, we’re not being generous—we’re being vague. And vagueness doesn't teach. It appeases.
You can only teach someone to fish if they’re holding the rod—and the right kind of rod.
Too often, we hand out the fish and the gear and the boat—because we’re afraid to ask for what the full transformation actually costs.
We want to help.
We don’t want to seem greedy.
We carry our clients emotionally, financially, even spiritually… and then quietly wonder why the results don’t stick.
Undercharging Has a Curriculum
Most of us didn’t arrive here randomly.
We watched mentors or former employers undercharge—maybe because they could afford to, maybe because no one ever challenged them to expand their self-concept. Many of them were tenured, salaried, or buffered by institutions or companies that offered benefits and budgets. We weren’t. But we copied them anyway.
I’ve lived this mistake.
Early in my career, I charged what my own professors charged for private lessons—even though I didn’t have a university salary and benefits. I was running an independent business—without the institutional scaffolding. But I still mimicked their pricing as if it were gospel.
Why?
Because it never occurred to me that charging more wasn’t selfish—it was pedagogical.
It wasn’t just about paying my bills.
It was about teaching my own clients to recognize, own, and rise into the transformation they were asking for.
But I wasn’t taught that.
So I didn’t teach it.
Affordability Is Often a Deflection
One of the most damaging myths we carry—especially in the arts, education, and transformational spaces—is that people “can’t afford” our work.
The truth?
Affordability isn’t always the real core issue.
But resourcefulness often is.
And resourcefulness is teachable.
We just don’t always know how—or feel empowered—to teach it.
It’s easier to quietly lower the price than to guide someone through a new earning standard. It’s easier to assume lack than to expand capacity. It’s easier to shrink than to teach others how not to.
But if we’re serious about teaching others how to fish—how to rise, how to thrive, how to transform—then we can’t keep making decisions based on their perceived limitations.
We must price in a way that honors what they are becoming, not what they’re currently afraid of.
And to do that, we must first honor what we are becoming.
How Pricing Shapes Behavior
When your pricing is under-aligned, your service becomes crowded with unspoken distortions:
You find yourself overdelivering to “make up” for what they paid.
You tiptoe around difficult feedback because you’re afraid of pushing too hard.
You feel guilty about up-leveling your own standards while your clients stay stuck.
This doesn’t help anyone.
Remember, you’re not the same as the sale rack at TJ Maxx. When your price is too low for the transformation you’re guiding, you unintentionally signal that the transformation isn’t worth that much—or worse, that your client can’t handle more.
But when you price in integrity—aligned with the value, energy, and responsibility required—you give your client something even more powerful than information: permission.
Permission to step in fully.
Permission to invest deeply.
Permission to earn differently, not just learn differently.
And in many cases, that’s the transformation they came for all along.
Pricing as Practice, Not Performance
Let’s also be honest—this is not about inflating your rates for optics.
This is not about performance pricing, high-ticket posturing, or charging more to feel like you’ve “made it” for the sake of it.
It’s about anchoring your pricing in alignment with the role you want your work to play in your client’s life.
Do you want your work to feel like a casual nice-to-have?
Or a decision that calls them into a higher level of leadership, capacity, and self-trust?
If you’re here to teach people how to grow—not just how to cope—then your pricing is part of that teaching.
When you undercharge, you teach them that staying small is noble.
When you price in alignment, you teach them that expansion is safe.
And in the end, that’s what teaching really is:
Not just imparting knowledge, but modeling belief.
The New Pedagogy of Prosperity
I don’t want to live in a world where the only people who earn well are in STEM, finance, or corporate consulting—nor political bribery nor cronyism.
I want to live in a world where artists, teachers, coaches, and visionaries are also well-resourced.
Where people who trade in clarity, transformation, and human flourishing are not just surviving—but thriving.
Not to prove their worth.
But because their work is the rising tide.
This is about more than pricing.
It’s about normalizing a new kind of leadership—one where integrity, prosperity, and pedagogy walk hand in hand.
So the next time you sit down to price your offer, ask yourself:
Am I pricing like a giver or like a teacher?
Am I overly performing generosity, or am I facilitating real growth?
Is this offer designed to keep them comfortable, or to invite them into capacity?
Let’s stop handing out fish.
Let’s stop pretending affordability is always a fixed truth.
Let’s start pricing as teachers.
Let’s start earning as leaders.
Let’s build structures that don’t just support us—they instruct those we serve to stand taller in their own power.
Your pricing is the standard.
Your structure is the integrity.
Your income tells the truth.
We don’t just promise transformation—we deliver it.
PS - If you’re ready to stop over-delivering and under-earning…
If you want to build a business that teaches as powerfully as it transforms…
And if you’re done lowering your price just to be liked—
I work with entrepreneurs, coaches, and creatives who are ready to lead with clarity, integrity, and earning power.
This isn’t mindset fluff or sales theater.
It’s structure, standards, and income—aligned.
Enroll in the next cohort of Grow Your Money Voice or apply for elite private coaching.
Because the way you charge is the way you lead.
And the world is watching.
Click below to explore the offers or send me a message if you have any questions.
