Welcome to Make Bank. I'm a CPA, MBA and founder helping other founders think bigger about their money. I share the financial intelligence you need to scale from six to eight figures, build real wealth, and create a business that gives you options.

Price your work by what it's worth to the person receiving it, not by how tired it makes you.

I learned that during a car ride in Jacksonville Beach, but I almost missed it.

The windshield was hazy with salt, the way everything at the beach gets. I wasn't watching the ocean, though. I was doing math out loud, bouncing numbers off my husband like a tennis ball off a wall.

"How much should I charge for a tax return?" I asked. 

Then, before he could answer: "If I charge that, I'd need like 100 clients. That's way too many. So I'd have to charge more. But can I actually do that?"

My life was loud at the time. Two months after I started my MBA journey at the University of Florida, we had moved from Norfolk, Virginia, to Jacksonville Beach. Only planning to be in Jax Beach for few months because we were headed to Rota, Spain, on Navy orders. We had two kids in daycare, and it was COVID, to top everything off with a cherry.

Meanwhile, my day job had me buried in the weeds of tax returns, wrestling with the nuances of the IRS code while the list of returns on my plate kept growing.

I wanted OUT. That wanting was an emotional response, not a data-driven one.

My husband listened. He was supportive and, if I'm honest, probably a little tired of hearing me complain about work. He never once doubted I could run my own practice.

Then it hit me in that car. I wasn't afraid of the math. I was afraid of what the math was telling me: the work I did every day was worth far more than I had been willing to charge for it.

Hold onto that thought. It changes the meaning of every number in this story.

Before you say "my situation is different"

While many of you may not be juggling a Navy PCS move, an MBA, and two kids under the age of 5, this same thing could show up for you at 10 p.m. with a proposal open on your laptop. The cursor blinks next to a price you're about to delete and retype lower. Or it shows up when a prospect asks "what do you charge?" and your answer comes out smaller than the work deserves.

Four lessons came out of that car ride. The third one is the one that stings.

Lesson One: Wanting out is a feeling. Leaving is a number.

A feeling can tell you it's time to start. It can't tell you when you can go, or how. I wanted out of my day job, but wanting isn't a plan. It's weather.

You may know this one. It's Sunday night, the laptop fan is humming, your chest is tight, and the unread count in your inbox is climbing. You feel the dread. I felt it too. What I found was that the dread got quieter once I turned it into a question with an answer: 

What would it take to replace my income, and how long could I fund the gap?

A feeling gets you to the edge. Math builds the bridge across it.

That was the easy part. The next part is where I nearly talked myself out of everything.

Lesson Two: When the math needs 100 clients, the price is the problem.

Work backward. Start with the income you need, divide by a price, and see how many clients you would have to serve. 

If the equation demands a volume that would bury you, your ambition isn't too big. Your price is too low.

I could have taken the 100-client number as proof that my dream was unrealistic. Instead, I treated it as a signal. The right price keeps your calendar sane and your bank account healthy at the same time. The wrong one gets you a full inbox and an empty tank.

You've probably felt the other side of this. You quote a number and your voice climbs at the end like a question. Your throat tightens. You hear yourself say "it's usually around..." as if the price were someone else's idea. I felt that hesitation too. What I found was that serving fewer people at a higher price gave me room to do better work for each of them, and to have an evening.

If the math only works when you're exhausted, the math is telling you to raise your price.

But why was I so hesitant to charge more in the first place? Lesson Three has the answer.

Lesson Three: Exhaustion is not a valuation.

I didn't think tax returns were very valuable. Looking back, that makes sense. I spent my days deep in them, so they felt ordinary. 

Familiar work always feels cheap to the person doing it.

Picture your client right now. She's staring at a shoebox of receipts with her shoulders up around her ears, dreading the pile. The thing you could do half asleep is the thing she would pay almost anything to never touch again. You feel bored by it. She feels dread. I felt the boredom and the overwhelm for years, and what I found is that the two feelings sat on opposite sides of the same transaction.

The gap between how easy your work feels to you and how impossible it feels to your client is exactly where your price lives.

Keep that in your back pocket.

Lesson Four: Say the number out loud to someone who won't flinch.

A number in your head is negotiable. A number spoken out loud is real.

You've likely typed your rate into a notes app, watched the cursor blink, and deleted it. I did the same thing in my head for months. Then I said it out loud, in that car, to the one person who never doubted me, and the number stopped feeling like a confession and started feeling like a plan.

Choose your person carefully. 

You don't want someone who will talk you out of it, and you don't want someone who only cheers. You want someone who will hear the number, ask the hard questions, and still be in your corner.

Remember what I said at the beginning of this issue?

Price your work by what it's worth to the person receiving it, not by how tired it makes you.

Here's what I didn't understand in that car. I thought the years buried in IRS code, the never-ending pile, and the nuance I had absorbed until it felt like background noise were the reasons my work seemed cheap.

They were the opposite. That exhaustion was the receipt for my expertise.

The very thing I wanted to escape was the thing so many people were (and are currently) paying for. 

I didn't need to run from the work to find its value. I needed to charge more for it.

The Recap

I wanted out of my day job, and I was running on emotion, not data. So I did the math out loud in a car, and the math surfaced a pricing problem I had been too tired to see. 

The four lessons:

1. Wanting out is a feeling, but leaving requires a number.
2. If the math requires 100 clients and that feels like a burden, your price is too low.
3. Exhaustion is not a valuation. Familiar, easy work to you could be highly valuable to your client. Price accordingly.
4. Say the number out loud to someone who won't flinch.

Your next step

If this hit a nerve, let's keep going. Sign up for the bi-weekly Make Bank newsletter. Every other week, I share the financial intelligence founders need to price with confidence, keep more of what they earn, and build a business that lets them make bank while they build real wealth.

And if you're earlier in the journey, still at the "thinking about it at two in the afternoon" stage of starting your business, I’m building The Founder’s Runway, an online financial sprint designed to help corporate employees work through the business startup process. It starts with the runway math I wish I'd had in that car.

About the Author

Caroline Beasley is a CPA, MBA, and Big 4/Big 8-trained accountant who works as a strategic CFO for founders scaling past $1M in revenue. She helps business owners trade gut feel for real financial clarity by showing them true profit margins, protecting cash flow, and building a dashboard that shows in seconds whether the month is on track.

She's especially passionate about helping women founders and creators access the CFO-level thinking that fuels sustainable growth. A military spouse and IRONMAN triathlete, she believes lasting success comes from discipline and boundaries, not burnout.

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