The first time I heard someone charged £20,000 for a piece of work, I nearly fainted.
The highest I had ever been paid was £15,000. I danced around the house for hours.
The lowest I have ever been offered? £200. For the same category of work.
That gap is not about talent. It is not about experience. It is an information gap. And the people who benefit most from you staying in the dark are the ones making the offers.
So today we are blowing the whole thing open.
The 5 myths
Myth 1: "I don't have enough experience to charge that yet"
Experience is one input. Outcome is the only one that matters at the invoice stage.
Think about what you actually bring into the room. Are clients coming to you because someone mentioned your name? Are they bypassing months of expensive mistakes because of what you already know? Are they getting in ten hours what would take an internal team ten weeks?
That is not junior work priced at junior rates. That is expertise, and expertise does not have a minimum experience requirement before you are allowed to charge for it.
And please, do not feel guilty about the work taking you less time than they would expect. That is not a reason to charge less. That is called experience. You are not charging for hours. You are charging for the decade that made those hours possible.
Myth 2: "If I charge more I'll lose the work"
Sometimes you will. That is not failure. That is the filter working correctly.
Clients who negotiate you down, push back on every boundary, and treat your rate like a problem to solve almost always cost more than they pay. In time, in energy, in scope creep, in the opportunity cost of the better client you could not take because you were busy managing them.
The work you are afraid of losing is often the work that is already costing you.
Be ready to walk away if the maths is not mathing. Walking away is not arrogance. It is a business decision.
Myth 3: "I just charge market rate"
No you do not. You made a number up, matched someone's rough ballpark, or anchored to what you charged three years ago and never revisited it.
Market rate is not a feeling. It is data. And right now, almost none of that data is visible to the people who need it most.
I do not gatekeep. I have shared publicly what I charge for speaking engagements. I do not have an agent, which means I have had to get comfortable saying numbers out loud, building a system, knowing my walk away point before I get on the call.
Here is what that system looks like in practice. Never ask them what they are offering. Tell them your range. Name it clearly, name it first, then stop talking. If they come back with pushback, reduce the scope, not the price. And if the first number you said felt uncomfortable to say, that is usually a sign it was closer to right than wrong.
Myth 4: "Talking about money is unprofessional"
This belief was not handed down from some universal code of conduct. It was cultivated by the people who benefit most from you not knowing what your peers charge.
When rates stay secret, the information advantage sits entirely with the buyer. They know what the last person charged. You are guessing. Silence is not sophistication. It is a structural disadvantage dressed up as etiquette.
Myth 5: "If they said yes quickly, I pitched it well"
This one is the most expensive myth of all.
The uncomfortable truth is that if they said yes too fast, you probably lowballed yourself. A fast yes is not a win. It is a signal. The client just got a deal, and you just left money on the table.
Healthy pricing creates a little tension. Some consideration. Occasionally a counteroffer. If every single client you pitch says yes immediately, your rate is not your rate. It is their floor.
What we are doing about it
The information exists. People just aren't sharing it. Until now.
The Money Method is the benchmark that changes it. Real rates. Real roles. Named by people actually doing the work across speaking, advisory, fractional, and NED.
I am sharing this because nobody shared it with me. I had to figure it out the hard way, one awkward rate conversation at a time. You should not have to.
Put your number in. The more of us who do, the more powerful this becomes for all of us.
With love,
June x
