Episode 194: How to Charge 10 Time More Your Current Rate?

November 4, 2020·36 min·3 clips

Tom Ross and his co-hosts explore how to charge 10 times your current rate without doing 10 times the work.

The hook is knowingly cheeky. Tom frames the promise like a salacious cliffhanger, then the room immediately laughs at how clickbait the whole thing sounds. Dustin gives the real context: the idea came from Seth Godin's marketing seminar, where a prompt pushed people to imagine charging dramatically more. Nobody treats it like a magic trick. The panel starts testing what would need to change before a designer could ask for that money without flinching. Client quality becomes the pressure point. Better clients are not only easier to work with; they are more likely to understand value. Dustin does not buy the softer answers. One response about being fully present falls flat for him, and Lisa's reaction turns that vagueness into a shared joke. The room keeps asking for something sturdier. They are really circling the gap between feeling dedicated to a job and making a client feel the work is worth more. Seth Godin stays mostly offstage. Dustin explains that the seminar runs on prompts, peer discussion, and a strong group rather than direct personal consulting. That distinction matters to them. The value is not just access to one famous marketer; it is the feeling that the structure attracts serious people. The pricing lesson lands a little sideways. If people believe the thinking, the group, and the structure are unusually strong, a higher price starts to make sense. The conversation stays practical and a bit scruffy. By the end, the show has wandered back to the honest routine of showing up most weeks, even when bed sounds better.

As heard by us

A candid design-business conversation turns a clickbait pricing question into a sharper look at value, clients, and what higher rates would have to justify.

Charging ten times more starts as a deliberately clickbaity prompt, then settles into a more useful design-business conversation. Tom Ross, Ian Barnard, Dustin Lee, and Lisa Glanz treat Seth Godin's seminar question less as a pricing hack than as a way to ask what would need to…

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Why you'd press play

If your rates still feel glued to old habits, this one gives you a cleaner way to think.

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