Robin Waite and Suman Randhawa share lessons on brave pricing, partnerships and resilience to help you charge more, cut churn and grow sustainably.
Suman Randhawa, CCO at ATOMIC and host of the Don't Work Harder Podcast, is an award-winning sales mentor and author who helps online coaches and creatives sell with confidence, without the sleaze. Named Businesswoman of the Year in 2024, she brings 30+ years’ sales experience, having led high-performing teams at The Mirror, FHM, Heat and Harrods’ Private Client division. Just before turning 50, she pivoted from corporate sales to build a mission-driven practice centred on ethical, heart-led selling. Her “more heart, less hustle” philosophy runs through everything she does, from helping founders refine their messaging and sales so they attract and convert the right clients, to her book More Heart, Less Hustle. Today she supports small businesses to scale sustainably, proving that selling can feel natural, ethical and empowering, and that it’s essential for long-term growth.
Fearlessness is one of those words that sounds heroic and slightly unhinged. Robin’s view is subtler: being fearless means taking calculated risks and learning to fear the right things a little less. The point isn’t to silence fear; it’s to shrink it enough that it no longer runs the show.
In practice, this looks like saying your prices out loud without apologising, taking the mic when public speaking scares you, and moving away from safe-but-stagnant habits. Each time you choose the scarier but smarter path, you nibble away at fear’s control and widen your field of play.
When the 2008 crisis hit, local agencies raced to the bottom. Robin went the other way and 5×’d his care/hosting plans (from ~£10 to £50 per month). It sounded mad in the moment and caused immediate churn, yet it revealed something vital about price, profit, and fit.
Most service businesses die by a thousand discounts. Under-charging fills your diary with low-fit clients who generate support noise and stall your best work. A decisive price move filters the roster and funds better delivery. You don’t just make more, you build a business you can actually sustain.
The “sales cycle of doom” forces under-priced owners to sprint endlessly: market → consult → sell → deliver → repeat. Higher pricing breaks that gravity. It buys time for better onboarding, stronger SLAs, and strategic reviews, things that create outsized results and referrals.
Robin’s simple tale of Steve, Penny, and Harry shows why hourly billing punishes expertise. Steve (inexperienced) bills more hours for a worse outcome. Penny (expert) finishes in half the time and gets paid less precisely because she’s better. Harry prices the outcome, a landing page plus ads designed to produce leads, and backs it with a guarantee.
This is the heart of value-based pricing. Clients don’t want hours; they want a result and certainty. When you frame offers around outcomes and add a risk-reversal, the higher price makes sense. You’re paid for judgement and responsibility, not minutes.
One accountancy practice turned ~£2m revenue into only ~£100k net profit. A modest 10% price lift, despite fears of client attrition, dropped roughly £200k straight to the bottom line within a month because the overhead didn’t change. With the extra cash, they hosted a training day and gala, then sold about £2.5m in high-value consulting to a handful of clients. One price decision re-capitalised the business and funded a step-change offer.
The lesson is straightforward: price is a lever, not a label. Adjust it with integrity, communicate clearly, and channel the surplus into assets, events, launches, books, tooling, that compound.
Robin’s “accidental coach” era began after an emotional crash. With a baby on the way and an agency that no longer fit, he shut it down, later selling the book of business. What survived was the work he loved: facilitating strategy, interrogating numbers, and asking better questions. Coaching wasn’t a plan; it was the path that emerged when the noise cleared.
A few operational shifts made the second act sustainable. Delivering online by default saved ~20 hours a week of travel. Enforcing red-flags (e.g., clients who demanded in-person by default) protected energy. And instead of carpet-bombing social media, he concentrated on three pillars that reliably create pipeline: speaking, podcast guesting, and books. Depth over dopamine.
Partnerships, not posts, became Robin’s growth engine. This isn’t affiliate links or quid-pro-quo gimmicks; it’s a deliberate, human approach to proximity and usefulness.
Make a Top-10 list of people you genuinely rate. Align your actions to overlap, attend their events, publish where they publish, join the rooms they frequent. Shared context creates natural collisions.
Proximity compounds. Sit where you can connect in the one-minute window after a talk. A warm, specific “loved your point about X” beats a cold DM every time.
Look for immediate friction and remove it. If the venue’s chaotic, direct traffic. If content won’t be captured, produce a mic from your bag and make it happen. Help because it helps, full stop.
Busy principals rely on brilliant teams. Build real relationships there. Coach, troubleshoot, or simply be useful. When a guest drops out, you’re the first call. That’s how one last-minute Ali Abdaal slot produced ~1,500 leads in three months, ~700 signed-book requests, and £250k+ in revenue over time.
Sometimes you pay to play, a small, strategic sponsorship to get on the radar. Or you make thoughtful introductions that benefit both sides. Or you send a client. Money and momentum speak, and goodwill accrues.
Every meaningful move comes with a dip: the awkward middle where costs rise before benefits land. Robin’s been through five such phases. The first felt catastrophic; by the fifth, it was familiar. The skill isn’t avoiding dips, it’s compressing them.
A practical tool here is fear-setting. Define the worst case, list mitigations, then map second- and third-order effects. First-order consequences often look bleak; the later orders usually carry the upside. Decide in advance how long you’ll tolerate discomfort before you re-evaluate, and you’ll avoid pivoting just as the payoff approaches.
A benign brain-stem tumour diagnosis in 2024 sharpened priorities. Work and home life became less about someday and more about now. A spontaneous Dubai trip, booked despite the logistical guilt every parent knows, triggered priceless connections, a sunset yacht mastermind that would’ve cost tens of thousands to replicate, and a reminder: energy invested in joy often returns as opportunity.
The message for owners is simple and confronting: you are not the spare part in your own business. Protect your vitality. Choose projects that light you up. The people you serve benefit most when you are well.
It’s tempting to treat improvement like an endless to-do list. A cleaner frame, start, stop, continue, keeps the signal strong.
The theory is useful; traction is better. Here’s how to move.
Begin with numbers. What’s your current revenue, gross margin, net profit, and true delivery capacity? The point isn’t to be clever, it’s to see clearly. Lift prices for new clients first, then plan a PR-style communication for existing clients with a small value stack. Replace hourly billing with outcome-based packages and a risk-reversal that shows you mean it.
Every in-person habit needs a modern justification. Default to online; reclaim your calendar and your brain. Set a small list of non-negotiables (e.g., no travel unless strategic; defined response windows; structured check-ins). Standardise onboarding and monthly reviews so clients always know what “good” looks like.
Pick three pillars you can sustain and measure. For Robin, it’s stages, podcasts, and books. You may choose different pillars, but the logic holds: fewer channels, deeper assets, better tracking. Kill nice-to-have tactics that aren’t converting, even if they look busy and feel productive.
Write your Top-10 Intentional List. Buy the ticket, sit in the front row, and contribute. Build rapport with the team; look for useful introductions to make. If it fits your strategy and budget, add a small “silver platter” to get on the radar, then let your usefulness do the talking.
Do a short fear-setting exercise around your next bold move. Decide in advance how long you’ll hold through the dip. Schedule rest like a deliverable. You’re not a machine, you’re the system that creates the results. Protect it.
Working harder multiplies motion. Working braver multiplies outcomes. Raise your prices with integrity, design offers around results, and build partnerships that compound for years. The dips will still come, meet them with a plan, with help, and with the courage to keep moving.
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This Scorecard has been designed to show Coaches, Consultants and Freelancers their blind spots and provide instant, actionable steps on how to increase their prices.
