I spent the first year of my AI consulting business guessing at my prices.
Not wildly — I'd ask ChatGPT what a fair range was, then ask Claude, then check with Gemini, and pick something in the middle. Which is a reasonable starting point. But it's basically still guessing.
What actually taught me how to price correctly was a simple experiment: I raised my price every single engagement until someone said no.
Not once. Not twice. But a few times in a row. That's when I knew I'd found the ceiling.
The “Raise Until No” Method
Here's the principle behind it.
If a client says yes too quickly and without hesitation, you've probably left money on the table. The best price isn't the one that gets instant agreement. It's the one where there's a brief pause, maybe a question or two, and then a reluctant yes.
If everyone says no, there are two possibilities: your price is too high, or your value isn't landing. Those are completely different problems. One is a pricing fix. The other is a positioning fix. Knowing which one is the issue tells you what to change.
The only way to find out is to keep raising until you hit consistent resistance. Then you know where the edge is.
For me, starting at $500 per workshop, raising to $800, and eventually offering agency services starting at $10,000 with top engagements reaching $45,000 — none of those numbers came from a spreadsheet. They came from seeing what the market would actually pay and adjusting upward each time.
The Referral Variable Nobody Talks About
Here's the part that surprised me more than the pricing method itself.
The same service can have two very different price ceilings depending on one factor: who sent the client to you.
I noticed this most clearly when I was working with the Padel Society on investor outreach. We were talking about who should bring in capital for the club. The dollar amount mattered, obviously. But who wrote the check changed everything — a well-connected athlete investor brought credibility, a story, and their own network. Generic institutional money brought none of that. Same dollars. Completely different value.
Consulting referrals work the same way.
When a highly respected founder sends me to one of their peers, I walk into that room differently. The peer has already made a preliminary decision about my credibility before we've exchanged a single word. The introduction carried weight. I don't have to earn basic trust from zero — I start from a much better position.
When a casual acquaintance sends me to someone, I start from scratch. Nothing wrong with that. But it's a different room.
The same work, the same quality, the same outcome — all worth more depending on where they heard your name.
What to Do With This
Two questions matter when you're figuring out what to charge:
First: What's the highest number they'd uncomfortably but willingly say yes to? Not the number that makes them shrug. The number that makes them pause and then nod. Find that number by raising your price until you hear consistent pushback.
Second: Who sent them? Be honest about the weight that referral carries. A client from a top-tier referral source can support a significantly higher price than the same client coming in cold.
These two things together — your market-tested ceiling and your referral quality — are what actually determine your real price. Not what you think you're worth. Not a pricing calculator. Not what someone else charges.
The market tells you, but only if you keep pushing until it pushes back.
One More Thing
Most people set their prices once and then leave them there for years.
That's almost certainly wrong, in both directions. Your skills compound. Your reputation grows. Your referral quality changes as you work with better clients and build relationships with more influential people. All of that should be reflected in your rates over time.
The “raise until no” method isn't just a one-time experiment. It's an ongoing calibration. Every quarter or two, test the ceiling again. You'll often find it's moved.
Thanh Pham is the founder of Asian Efficiency and an AI consultant based in Austin, TX. If you're looking to build your own AI consulting business, check out the 4-Day AI Sprint as a starting point.
