"Should I raise my prices? I haven't touched them in three years."

Someone asked me this recently. Before I get to the answer, here's what else they told me in that conversation:

• Material costs are up.
• Their team has gotten faster and better.
• They're turning down work because they're at capacity.
• They were thinking 12 to 15% across the board.
• And they were worried about losing clients.

This question comes up a lot, usually with some real anxiety attached. Nobody wants to rock the boat with clients who've been with them for years.

So let me get the answer out of the way first: yes, you should raise prices.

But not for the reason you think you should.

It's not because three years have passed. Believe it or not, that part is irrelevant. What matters is whether the underlying cost of delivering your work has gone up in a meaningful, non-temporary way, or whether the value of what you're providing has increased.

In this case, both were true. Their materials cost more. Their team had gotten faster and better. And they were turning away work because they were at capacity.

But that's not a capacity problem. That's a pricing problem the business had been solving by saying no.

When more people want your work than you can deliver at your current price, the market is telling you the price is too low. Capacity is just the symptom.

So the 12 to 15% they were considering? Wrong frame. Don't derive a percentage from where you've been. Figure out what you'd charge a brand new client walking in the door today, with the team you have, the quality you deliver, and the demand in front of you. That's the price. For everyone, with some staging for longer relationships if it's warranted.

A few other things worth saying.

The price is the price because that's the value you're providing. The trap most owners fall into is attaching a price to what they think the client will emotionally tolerate. The price isn't a guess about their reaction. It's a reflection of what your work is worth.

How a client reacts does matter, but only in how you present the price to them, not in what the price is. The same number lands very differently depending on:

• Whether they learn about it in a controlled, expected way, or get blindsided by an email at 4pm on a Friday.
• Whether you were upfront about what they should anticipate.
• Whether you've thought about which parts of the pricing might give them pause, and addressed those first.

And consistent pricing doesn't mean everyone gets the same blanket increase on the same day. It's okay to stage it. Bring new clients on at the new rate immediately. Walk longer-tenured clients up over a project or a renewal cycle. That's not inconsistency. That's relationship management. The new price still applies. It just lands at different times.

What's not okay is keeping two clients on different prices indefinitely for no reason other than discomfort. That's not loyalty. That's avoidance.

And I say that from personal experience.

~ Nolan