Pricing Strategies for Conscious Business: How to Charge Based on Value

By Terri

Why Pricing Feels So Hard in Conscious Business

You’ve built something that matters. You know it delivers real results. And still, the moment someone asks what you charge and your pricing, something tightens in your chest.

That’s not a pricing problem. That’s a values collision.

I’ve been a serial entrepreneur for almost 25 years. Multiple exits, including an IPO on the NASDAQ. And I can tell you: pricing in conscious business is one of the hardest things I’ve ever navigated. Not because the math is complicated. Because the emotional weight of it is real.

Pricing sits at the center of everything you’re trying to balance. Growth and impact. Profit and purpose. When I started my first conscious company in 2009, it took me about six years to truly figure out how to balance purpose and profit so I made money and still made a difference. Pricing is one of those areas, and this framework is what I wish I’d had from day one.

“Pricing is one of those things that’s a science and an art. It’s both of those. It’s not one or the other. It is tricky, and it does require an iterative process.”

That process starts with understanding what you’re actually pricing for, and what role it plays in your conscious business growth.

Traditional Pricing vs. Conscious Business Pricing

There’s a fundamental difference in how traditional businesses and conscious businesses approach pricing.

A traditional business asks: what will someone pay? That’s market-based thinking. It starts from what you can get away with, not from what the work is actually worth.

“When it comes to pricing, a traditional business says, ‘ What will someone pay?’ And a conscious business says, ‘How much is it worth?’”

That shift changes everything. It moves you from trying to capture as much as the market will pay to pricing based on the value you create. It grounds your pricing in outcomes, not competitor comparison. And it forces a level of clarity about what you actually deliver that most businesses never develop.

Now, I want to be direct about something. Conscious business pricing does not mean underpricing yourself in the name of accessibility or generosity. One of my favorite conscious leaders, James Creeden at Scale LLP, put it plainly: no money, no mission.

I say it a different way: no profit, no purpose.

A business that can’t sustain itself cannot expand its impact. If your pricing is driven by guilt, or disconnected from your real costs, you will eventually hit a wall. Business growth requires a foundation of sustainable pricing. The goal is to price in a way that makes both purpose and profit possible.

The Two Pricing Models Most Businesses Use (And Why Neither Is Enough)

Two pricing models dominate most businesses. Understanding both is what makes the third option make sense.

The first is market-based pricing. It answers: what is the market willing to pay? You assess competitors, read demand, and price at what buyers will tolerate. Apple is the textbook example. They know their customers perceive high value and will pay top end for it. It works but it anchors your strategy to external expectations rather than your internal economics.

The second is cost-plus pricing. You calculate what it costs to deliver your product or service, then add a profit margin. Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs is the clearest version of this: here’s the cost, here’s the markup, full transparency. It feels rational and fair.

Here’s the catch. Market-based pricing can disconnect you from your real costs. Cost-plus can disconnect you from the value the market already recognizes. Neither one, on its own, addresses the tension conscious businesses are navigating. That’s the gap value-based pricing fills.

The Floor, The Ceiling, and Value in Between

Value-based pricing isn’t a philosophy. It has a structure. And it starts with two numbers.

The first is your floor. Your floor is your cost-plus number. The minimum you must charge to cover real costs and still have room for profit. I always throw people off when I say this, but you want to mark up your base costs by 60 to 100 percent. The reason is straightforward.

“There are so many costs that you have not calculated in your business. I can’t even begin to tell you how many costs you have not considered. There’s your website. There’s marketing materials. There’s networking events you’re going to go to. There’s the coach that you need to pay. There’s the accountant who’s going to manage your books. There’s the taxes that you forgot to put in.”

When those costs aren’t accounted for, you undercut your price. You quietly subsidize your clients out of your own sustainability. The floor protects the business from that.

The second number is your ceiling. Your ceiling is market-based. What are competitors charging? My approach: just search your category. If I search business growth training and coaching, I get all my competitors and their published prices.

Now you have two real numbers. Value-based pricing lives in between them.

“Value-based pricing is in between the floor and the ceiling. We are not the lowest cost solution. But we are way away from market-based pricing. I believe we’ve just created a better business model.”

You’re not racing to the bottom. You’re not blindly charging the maximum. Instead, ask a better question: how can I increase the value I provide so my pricing makes clear sense within that range? Design the offer around what it actually delivers. Refine it to solve more of the buyer’s problem. Then price accordingly.

Value-based pricing isn’t about competing harder. It’s about building better.

The Costly Lesson of Ignoring the Ceiling

Floor and ceiling aren’t abstract ideas. They determine whether a business model can survive. I learned this the hard way.

The first product I ever invested in had an ingenious way to hang pictures on the wall. If you’ve ever tried to hang a picture straight, you know the frustration. This product solved it. A small piece of plastic with a dot that you’d press into the wall, align with a level, leave a mark (not a hole), and then put your nail in perfectly. It was brilliant. I loved this product.

So I put money in and we got to work. Ten thousand dollars in research and development. Fifteen thousand for the patent search. Eight thousand to manufacture. Five thousand for packaging. Twenty thousand in overhead for customer support and operations. Ten thousand budgeted for marketing. For 500 packs, we were looking at $116,000 to $136,000 in costs.

Then we checked the market.

Competitive products for a 20-pack were selling for 20 dollars. You don’t need 500 of these dots. You need about 20. There was no way we could be price competitive. Our floor was far higher than the ceiling. I lost everything I put into that product.

The founders and I agreed: we couldn’t launch. And my lesson was to do that research earlier in the process. Optimism isn’t enough. Purpose isn’t enough. A brilliant product isn’t enough. Pricing must make sense within both your internal economics and external market reality.

The Equation That Makes Value Win

Once you know your floor and ceiling, stop obsessing over competitors. Know what they charge so you understand your ceiling. Then focus entirely on value.

Here’s how I define it:

“Value is the equivalent of the benefits of your product divided by the cost. When you have a high-value equation, your business will grow organically, you’ll get referrals, and customers will stay and buy again.”

When the benefits significantly outweigh the cost in the buyer’s mind, value is high. And when value is high, conscious business growth becomes structurally easier. Referrals increase. Retention improves. Marketing costs drop. Across my portfolio of businesses, the ones with the strongest value equations spend the least on marketing and grow the most organically. That’s not a coincidence.

When you focus on building a solution that genuinely delivers for your buyer, you never have to compete in the traditional sense again. That’s what I call “Value Wins”.

Releasing the Guilt Around Profit

I want to close with something personal, because I think it’s the piece that unlocks everything else.

When you’re building a conscious business, there’s a guilt that can attach to charging well. A quiet discomfort with margin. A hesitation to fully own your profitability. I see it in founders every time we get into this conversation. So I want to share something my grandfather told me.

He was my first real entrepreneurial mentor. He ran a juice bar in Sarasota, Florida.

One afternoon, I came in after school, and he had a stack of bills on the counter. He put them in front of me and asked: Terri, do you know what this is?

I said: It’s money, Grandpa.

“This isn’t money. This is profit. And profit is the tip that customers give you when you serve them well.”

That reframe changed everything. Profit isn’t something you take. It’s something people give you because you delivered something of genuine value to them.

James Creeden says no money, no mission. I say no profit, no purpose. You have to build a profitable business to grow, scale, and create the impact you’re here to create.

Determine your floor. Know your ceiling. Create an offer that delivers exceptional value. And release the guilt around being paid well for work that is genuinely good.

When value wins, pricing stops feeling conflicted. It becomes a reflection of what you built, and what it actually does for the people you serve.

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