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One of the most confusing—and most important—decisions you’ll make in your location-independent Alpha 2.0 business is how to set your prices. Get this wrong, and you’ll work too much, make too little, and resent your clients. Get it right, and you can quit your nine-to-five with just one to three clients.

Let’s walk through how pricing actually works, and just as importantly, what not to do.

Most new entrepreneurs are given terrible advice when it comes to pricing.

Mistake #1: Pricing in the middle of the market
You’re told to look at the cheapest competitors, look at the most expensive ones, and price yourself somewhere in the middle.

This is completely wrong.

Pricing in the middle gives you the worst of both worlds. You’re not cheap enough to attract price-sensitive buyers, and you’re not premium enough to command authority, respect, or serious margins.

Mistake #2: Charging by the hour
Never charge by the hour. Ever.

Hourly pricing creates multiple problems at once:

• You have to track your time like an employee.
• Clients get angry the more hours you bill.
• You create a conflict of interest, where you’re rewarded for taking longer.
• You cap your income once your calendar is full.

This is the mistake many consultants make early on, and it leads to 70–80 hour workweeks with no way to scale. Charging by the hour turns your business into a glorified job.

In the Alpha 2.0 business model, there are only two acceptable pricing structures.

1. Flat project fees

You define a specific outcome, list exactly what you’ll deliver, define the time frame, and quote a single price.

No ambiguity. No hourly tracking. No creeping scope.

2. Monthly retainers

You define a clear set of responsibilities or outcomes delivered every month for a fixed fee.

Both models align incentives properly. The client pays for results, not your time. You’re motivated to solve the problem efficiently, not slowly.

Your price has nothing to do with how hard something is for you.

If something takes you two hours but saves a company $200,000, charging $1,000 is absurd. Effort-based pricing punishes competence. The better you get, the less you earn.

Instead, you price based on value.

Here’s the core question you ask during a sales conversation:

“If this problem were solved, how much money would your company save or make over the next year?”

Clients usually already know the answer—or at least a rough estimate. That number is often far larger than new entrepreneurs expect.

Once you have that number, you charge a percentage of the value you create.

If solving a problem saves a company $250,000 over the next year, charging $20,000, $30,000, or even $50,000 is completely reasonable. From the client’s perspective, it’s still a massive win.

This is where most people get stuck—not because of logic, but because of emotion.

When you’re new, you may not have the confidence to quote $25,000 or $50,000, even if the value justifies it. That’s normal.

The solution isn’t to underprice yourself at $1,000. The solution is to charge as much as you are emotionally capable of charging and then raise prices as your confidence grows.

Your first clients might be $3,000–$5,000. Then $7,000. Then $10,000. Then $20,000. This progression happens faster than you think once you see real results and client outcomes.

“What If My Problem Doesn’t Save Much Money?”

In practice, this almost never happens.

If you’ve followed the correct process—narrow niche, real conversations, identifying the biggest problem—that problem almost always has a meaningful financial impact.

Sometimes the value isn’t obvious at first. It may be reduced churn, lower absenteeism, higher conversions, fewer mistakes, or faster execution. Every one of these has a dollar value. You just have to quantify it.

If the problem truly only saves a company a few thousand dollars a year, something is wrong. Either the problem isn’t big enough, or the niche is wrong.

When you price based on value instead of time, everything changes.

You no longer need hundreds of customers.
You don’t need massive traffic.
You don’t need to sell cheap products at scale.

One to three properly priced clients can replace a full-time salary. That’s the entire point of the Alpha 2.0 business model.

You’re not building a business that traps you in more work. You’re building a business that buys you freedom—geographic, financial, and personal.

And it starts with pricing your services like a professional, not like an employee.

AI did NOT write this article. The article comes 100% from me and is 100% my content. However, AI was used to transcribe this content from some of my other social media which is why the voice is a little different. It’s still 100% my content and not written by AI. AI will never “write” my content!  Remember that you can always go to calebjonesblog.com and subscribe to my Substack if you want articles physically written by me with no AI involvement whatsoever.

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