Doing the Right Thing at the Wrong Stage

One of the most common pricing mistakes business owners make is applying the wrong strategy at the wrong time.

• Early-stage solopreneurs try to perfect a profit model before they’ve even sold their first offer.
• Growing agencies chase discounts to drive volume when they should be raising prices to protect profit.
• Scaling businesses stick with “starter” pricing when they should be segmenting offers for different audiences.
  

It’s not that these strategies are bad. It’s that they’re mis-timed. The real key is knowing what to focus on at each stage of business.

Pricing by Stage

Here’s how pricing evolves across the growth journey and what to avoid at each point.

Stage 1: Market Need

• Common mistake: Obsessing over exact prices before confirming if anyone even wants what you’re selling.
  What to do instead: Gather insights. Talk to potential clients, research competitors, and sketch out your income targets. At this point, pricing is more about curiosity than certainty.
  

Stage 2: Concept

• Common mistake: Underpricing just to “get someone in the door.”
• What to do instead: Experiment with entry offers and promotions, but focus on collecting feedback, not building your forever pricing model. Think of this as testing the market, not locking yourself in.
  

Stage 3: MVP (Minimum Viable Product)

• Common mistake: Constantly changing prices out of fear of rejection.
• What to do instead: Pick a price and sell it consistently a few times. The point here is proving your offer works, not optimizing every dollar.
  

Stage 4: Stability

• Common mistake: Staying stuck at “starter prices” once you’ve found repeat clients.
• What to do instead: Standardize. Create clear pricing for your core services and make sure your prices actually cover delivery costs and profit margin.
  

Stage 5: Growth

• Common mistake: Adding “more stuff” to packages to justify higher prices.
• What to do instead: Raise your core prices strategically and begin testing premium offers. Use your profit model to see tradeoffs between time, clients, and money.
  

Stage 6: Scale

• Common mistake: Trying to scale with the same simple packages you started with.
• What to do instead: Segment your offers and pricing for different audiences. Introduce new packages, create tiered pricing, and test new markets.

Stage 7: Maturity

• Common mistake: Letting pricing stagnate because the business is “running fine.”
• What to do instead: Build robust systems for monitoring profitability, client lifetime value, and evolving offers. At this stage, pricing is about sustaining efficiency and market position.
  

Stage 8: Exit

• Common mistake: Ignoring pricing strategy when preparing to sell the business.
• What to do instead: Design a pricing system that shows recurring revenue, strong margins, and long-term client value. This makes your business more attractive (and valuable) to buyers.
  

The Right Next Step

Instead of asking, “What’s the perfect pricing model?”, the better question is:

👉 “What’s the right pricing move for my stage of business?”

A few examples:

• If you’re still testing an idea → don’t waste months on spreadsheets, just set a fair starter price and see if anyone bites.
• If you’re booking clients consistently → stop discounting, raise your rates, and make sure your margins work.
  
• If you’re scaling → stop selling everything the same way, design multiple offers for different segments.
  

The strategies themselves aren’t wrong. They’re just wrong if you use them at the wrong time.