How to Price Your Services When You’re Just Getting Started

One of the hardest things to figure out when you’re starting your business?

How to price your work, especially when every client feels different and you’re still building confidence.

In this episode, we walk through the key differences between offering fixed-price packages and quoting custom rates. Whether you’re consulting, freelancing, coaching, or delivering a service, your pricing model sends a message and affects your ability to scale.

We cover:

• Why fixed pricing can help you look polished (even when you’re new)
• When custom quotes give you the flexibility to learn faster
• How to avoid undercharging, overservicing, and unclear expectations
• What to include in your scope, out-of-scope, assumptions, and success criteria
• Why your pricing should evolve as your clarity, confidence, and capacity grow

The truth is, you can’t pick the “perfect” pricing model from day one. But with the right awareness and structure, you can start with what works now, and adjust as you go.

If you want more support around pricing, packaging, and launching your business with clarity, join the Launch360™ Course & Community waitlist. You’ll be the first to know when doors open and get exclusive access to early enrollment bonuses. Find out more here.

“In the beginning, you’re not just pricing your work. You’re learning what your market will pay.” – Anna Angelova

Transcript for “Fixed Packages vs. Custom Quotes: What’s Best When You’re Starting?”

The transcript below was automatically generated. Please ignore any errors or inconsistencies in the text.

Anna Angelova   0:05
Happy Thursday and welcome to another episode of More Than Just Task Management, your favorite daily podcast where we help you build a thriving business with me, Ann Angelova, business coach and consultant, and my favorite co-host, Joris Minusman, a business consultant. Hey, Joris.
He’s yours.

Jores Minasvand   0:24
Hey Anna, how are you? Happy Thursday.
They.

Anna Angelova   0:28
Doing very, very well and interested to hear our conversation today. And I’m saying this because this is not pre-recorded, this is not pre-transcribed or anything like this. We don’t have any kind, even even pointers or anything like this. We just have a conversation.
So what we’re discussing today is, especially when you’re starting your business, how do you decide between having a fixed price and charging custom price? It could be based on based on who you’re talking with.

Jores Minasvand   1:05
E.

Anna Angelova   1:05
And this one, especially when you’re thinking about starting the business in the early stages, when you might do work for pennies to just to get the, just to get the experience, just to get in front of the people, just to get the use case, right? Not use case, but.
Yeah, the case like the the case study, the the review, right. Just to get that this person did this for me. It was fantastic. You might do things even for free. Now we’re not talking about free, of course, we’re talking about a payment.
And I would start with saying that in the beginning, yes, it’s good to have an understanding of this is how much it is, especially when we’re talking about offering some kind of a service and even if you’re offering a product that you might, you might also do.
The same thing. Definitely have a price, something that you know like this is how much it is. However, stay open. Stay open to being able to.
Charge less or more or more like stay open to to negotiations because again, especially when you are starting, it’s more about really validating that the idea it makes sense that it’s it’s a good business idea.
Is.
That your solution makes sense. It’s more about the experience. It’s more about getting the feedback. It’s more about getting those reviews and doing for the few what you can’t do for the many. And this might mean that those first few people can pay you less, but then it might mean that they pay more because they get more of your.
Time they get more of your personal attention. So I would say absolutely yes, have a have a price, know the price, but do it more of an open, open in a way where like.
Like it’s not a set price that everyone pays this thing. Have it more as a conversation when you talk with people and this will also see as you work with different people, as you get to deliver your product or service to different segments of your audience.
You might see that this segment looks like the price is like $50.00 but this segment is willing to pay 150 and I like working with these people more, so maybe these are the people who I want to focus on.
And having that flexibility in the beginning, like the custom pricing in the beginning really helps you learn more. And like one of the things that they’re saying about building a business nowadays that like the faster we learn the better. Like this is a constant cycle of learning of what’s going on, what are the.
The needs of our customers and yeah, this is where I I I know I talked a lot, but and I see you, Joris, you look very thoughtful. So I’m curious to hear your thoughts on the subject.

Jores Minasvand   4:22
I think pricing is is optional and when we’re talking about optional, it’s optional on both sides like you mentioned as a new business owner, new starter, you choose to, especially if it’s a service.
You choose to open more doors, so you say it’s a fixed price, it’s this much and this is what you get. And it’s not about free stuff, it’s about you investing more of your time into giving the customer more value to in return of what you mentioned, the referral or the the testimonial.
So when it comes to customers, I find that that there are literally like a 50, not 5050, but literally there are two types of customers, one type they are.
More conservative. They want to know exactly what they’re going to pay, so they come and ask you for a fixed price. So you give them a fixed price. They feel safe. They know exactly what you’re getting. The other cost is it’s exactly.
I compare these two investments, right? There are you invest in Dow Jones or or is an index like S&P 500, you know it’s going to grow over the next 10 years like real estate, right? You know what you’re getting, it’s a steady increase, but it’s very small.
Same thing with with fixed price. You know what you’re getting. It’s fixed every month. You’re going to get, you know, pay X amount of dollars and you’re going to get the product for it. Time and material is more volatile, but if you as a customer or your customer.
is very uh able and you’re giving them time and material, they have a chance of, if they cooperate with you, they have a chance of getting the work done faster.
On the time and material, that means the project ends earlier. And don’t worry about this because most people think, oh, if I have $130,000 contract and I finish it, that 100,000, that $30,000 is lost.
Absolutely not. And this is an absolute guarantee that at the end, if you do a good job, the customer will say, OK, out of 130,000, I did that at 100, that’s 30% savings.
If I work with this guy and get him to use, spend the other 30,000 dollars, 34,000, I’m going to get another 30%.
Value out of this. So they will 100% come back and say, oh, by the way, let’s go to phase two, let’s add ABC and D At the end you’re going to end up charging the same 134,000, but maybe for more work. But you see where this is headed, right now your customer wants to work with you.
Now your customer understands. So the other thing is that if you’re going and this is the customer already knows this and if you’re haven’t done it, you will lose. When anyone quotes time a fixed price, you put a 20 to 25% contingency there.
The customer knows it. You know it.
But if that’s what they want to pay, it’s like insurance for them. They want to pay that insurance. They want to know exactly what they’re going to pay for for it. So and you have to be very, very good at estimating because if you estimate the wrong way, you add 20% and you’re still off by 40%.
Then you’re in trouble. So but all the time you will learn as when the question comes, which one? Ask your customer. Most of the time they tell you their preference.

Anna Angelova   8:18
Oh yeah, the kid asking again, like we mentioned it yesterday, that sometimes we forget about the simple things we like asking. The other thing as you were sharing, like you said about estimates, especially when you have a fixed price, like a fixed package with estimates, knowing how things go, especially when you are doing.
Some kind of work for people. This is where where the other consideration comes in.
What you do, how how predictable and consistent is it? Is it like clicking a few buttons and and take you know that it’s 10 hours of work no matter what and like there’s no deviation. This is it.
Then they could say you can go towards a fixed price and they could really say this is what it is. But if it’s really volatile, if if you have no idea what the scope would be of the work and things like this, then and and again, especially when you are starting, you might not know.
You.
You might not know even where your focus, where you want your focus to be. So you might actually have a scope with someone where the scope is very small, but then someone else where I could double that scope or triple that scope. So of course in that in that case like it’s not a fix, like it’s a completely different work you’re doing.
This is the other thing to consider with your business as you’re starting and the work that you will be doing. And again, this really applies more to service like when you have a service business. This is where it’s thinking about how systemized, how predictable it is, what you do.
And if it is relatively stable, predictable, and you know that this is it, yes, there might be some things that you might need to do in a different way or spend a little bit more time on, but more or less this is what it is. The fixed approach may make sense.
And when it’s a fixed approach, of course, like you, it simplifies things a little bit because you have the, this is the price, this is what it is. Sure. It’s like you said, your customers know what they’re getting into and they could what they’re paying, what they’re getting from this. So it’s fantastic.
Where it’s a custom quote like if we’re talking about custom quotes like fixed price, like not fixed price, sorry the one you mentioned about time and material. I just want to mention that if you are just starting and you don’t know what it is like time and material is ultimately you charge per the hour.
Like we are saying that this is the estimate, the estimate, it’s not a fixed project like it’s not 130,000, it’s time and material where our estimate is that it’s 130,000 because we will need whatever 1000 hours.
But you might finish it in 900 hours and you’re left with whatever you’re left, like the 13,000 or something you’re left with. So if we’re saying like it’s $130.00 per hour, so this is time and material that just in case you don’t know, this is.
What it is like it’s you still estimate it like you still give an estimate that this is how much it would take in terms of time and material. But then you might and of course time and material like in service it’s usually time, but it’s time and material because sometimes it also be the material right? Like you you might to have some.
Something that like in the online world, this might be consumption, might be licensees, things like these that you need to incorporate in whatever you’re doing, which is a bit of a side note with the thing. But yeah, this is, this is what I actually wanted to share that.
Really depends. Again, it really depends as you’re starting. It really depends on how how simple or complex is what what you’re trying to do, and I would still recommend having a.
At least some kind of a package in mind, because people, this is one of the other things that a lot of people feel good about knowing that you as the expert, you know, you know what you’re talking about and you know that, OK, this is it like this is the package, this is how much it costs, this is how much it the time it takes.
But because you’re starting and you might actually not even have that understanding yet, that’s why it might be a really good idea, at least as you in the beginning, as you’re exploring even different customer segments to go more of the route of exploring and seeing, OK.
Custom code for these, custom code for this one and.
Yeah, I think, I think that this is the main thing that I wanted to add. There was something else, but when I remember it, I will, I will mention it.

Jores Minasvand   13:25
Couple of items you mentioned about scope. It’s important to have. I think it’s important for both, but more important for fixed price to have a very clear scope.
And a very clear out of scope. Not only identify what you deliver, but you also identify what you do not deliver, what will not be included.
And this is a bit counterintuitive, but if you for your protection include this part, the second part, and again for the fixed price, this is a lot more important if for a fixed price.
The project you don’t have a page of assumptions. One whole page of assumptions. There’s something wrong. You need to stop. Don’t get that signed.
You need to understand the solution. You have to and and what assumptions do is tell your customer read this thing and if the if the customer says no this is not what I this assumption is incorrect then your scope is incorrect or you’re out of scope is incorrect.
So it’s very important to have this like listed like what’s in scope, what’s out of scope. Some people even go one step further, which I’ve only done a few times, but it’s.
Extremely time consuming tool, but if it’s like a important contract, include a success criteria where bullet by bullet explains what the customer will accept, what the customer will sign off on.
On what would render this project successful because there’s a lot of customers that would deliberately delay your payment.
Do throughout the fixed price to make sure that they get what they what you told them and at the end they can dispute if you delivered what they wanted and not pay you. So these contracts, especially a fixed price, have to be very, very, very iron clad.
And you need to be careful. Those four four areas are must have.

Anna Angelova   15:54
Oh, oh, great points. Oh, great points. And uh.
So in terms of consideration, just just to sum things up a little bit, how complex is it right? If it’s a work that is pretty straightforward and you know what’s going on, you can go with fixed package and when you go with fixed package of course Joris will everything you mentioned with.
The assumptions, even success criteria, like what success looks like, absolutely. It could be very clear with this and with fixed price. The thing is that.
In a way it shows that people, people, some people feel comfortable with this. It shows that you know what you’re doing. This is the package and this is the solution. That’s it with the custom quotes, whether it’s time and material or some something, some other way of deciding on the custom quote. This is where especially when.
When you’re starting like it gives you an opportunity to learn. It gives you an opportunity to see what’s the upper limit. What are people willing to pay for these different segments are willing to pay for this. It gives you an opportunity to expand or limit the scope so you can see what you want to focus on.
Makes sense for you to keep on offering as part of your business. So there’s no right or wrong answer. You can explore both. You can try either way. You can try. I do think that in the beginning it makes sense to be open to negotiate.
To be open to offer custom quotes based on different, based on the different needs of the different clients. Because again, in the beginning, most likely the work you’ll be doing is more like what you do for the few you don’t do for the many. It would be things that don’t scale. It would be a lot of your.
It would be a lot of your effort, so it makes sense to start with the custom quotes. It makes sense to start with this way. And then as you gain experience, as you hone in on OK, this looks like the segment that you want to focus on, then you can actually package something and have it at a fixed price where this is the package.
Package. This is what I’m offering. This is the price and like you said, George, this is the scope. This is out of scope and make your life easier and a little bit streamlined.

Jores Minasvand   18:25
Fantastic. Fantastic. Very well, Cortana. Love our conversations.

Anna Angelova   18:29
Me too. Now it’s time to wrap up as we are recording this. It’s already past 6:00 PM and end of the day we both had full day. So thank you Joris. Another great conversations like you said and.
For you, if you are listening this and you’re wondering, how do I decide on the the the price? How are do do I decide on these packages? I need more help. Well, our community and our Launch 360 course is.
Coming, coming up very, very soon. So I will add the link to the wait list for you if you didn’t get a chance to join the wait list. So you are one of the first to get notified when the doors open. The doors will be opening very, very soon.
And it’s a community and a course where we help aspiring business owners to start successful businesses and like whether you want to start something like a brick and mortar, like a bakery or or a restaurant or you want to build a SAS product.
Our our goal is to empower visionary founders, visionary leaders who want to build a successful business, a successful small, medium-sized business.
If you have ambitious to build a big corporation, absolutely. This might be for you as well. Like we we love ambitious founders as well. Like people who strive for the stars and want to get into like the Unicorn world, absolutely.
No, but it’s really about building a business that makes sense, a business that makes sense for your life, a business that makes sense for where you want to be and the difference you want to make into the world. So if it’s something that you’ve been looking into, if you need more answers.
After all the the whole conversations we had, check the wait list, like check the description of the community. We would love to see your name in there and we will be back tomorrow with the last episode for this week, like the last conversation for this week where we introduce a topic.
And it’s one of our favorite acronyms out there. How can you use AI without replacing the human touch?

Jores Minasvand   21:05
Oh yeah, yeah. Agent. Agent. Agent.

Anna Angelova   21:12
Uh huh. Uh huh. Five years, right? Right. Five years, five.

Jores Minasvand   21:13
Mhm, mhm.
Five years. Five years. We’re done. We’re all dead. We go on on the beach and sit down. AI will take over. It’s such a fallacy that in 2015 they said EVs will be will take over by 2019. We’re 11 years from 10 years from 2015, six years from 2019.
And they canceled all the EVs and we’re going to hybrids and big engine ice engines. Anyways, I rant.

Anna Angelova   21:46
AI is tomorrow, AI is tomorrow. I’ll let you rant in the episode tomorrow.

Jores Minasvand   21:51
All right. Thank you, Anna. Have a good day.

Anna Angelova   21:55
Thank you too. Bye, bye.