Design your pricing.Not inherit it.
A one-page framework for redesigning any hourly service as a defined-scope, flat, or subscription-based fee.
Pricing is one of the most frequently inherited parts of a practice. Most professionals never chose the billable hour. They absorbed it from the practice they trained in and priced their work that way for the rest of their career.
Inherited pricing punishes efficiency. When AI compresses the time work takes, an hourly practice sees its revenue collapse even as its value stays constant. When a matter takes longer than expected, a flat-fee practice absorbs the loss.
Neither is a failure. Both are information.
“You cannot design a thriving practice on inherited pricing.”
Choose one service you already deliver well. You have handled it more than twenty times. Complete the six blocks below to redesign it.
01 · The Service
Name the one service you are redesigning today. Be specific. If your first instinct is to name a broad category, narrow it down.
02 · The Client
Who is this service for? What is the shape of the client who most benefits from it, and who is easiest for you to serve?
03 · What Is Included
List every deliverable, session, document, and touchpoint the client can expect. Be granular.
04 · What Triggers Additional Fees
List the specific conditions under which the flat fee no longer applies. Common triggers include extra meetings, additional rounds of revision, or changes to the project timeline.
05 · The Value Statement
In one or two sentences, name what the client is actually paying for. Not the hours. Not the deliverables. The transformation or the outcome.
06 · The Price
Set a price that reflects the value in Block 5, not the time in Block 3. If the number feels high, you are likely still thinking about your costs rather than their gain.
- 01Test it on the next new client who asks about this service. Do not rewrite it. Run the process exactly as you have defined it here.
- 02Refine what did not work. The first version is a draft, not a monument.
- 03Return to this asset in a month. If you have delivered the service under the new terms, update this document to reflect what you learned.
- 04When the scope is stable, use it as the template for the next service you redesign.
The Pricing Scope Sketch is the introductory version of the pricing work in The Business Plan Playbook, Second Edition. The book takes this exercise from a single service to an entire fee architecture.
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