How to Price Your Services, Avoid Scope Creep, and Land Your First Clients

So, you’re just starting out in business, and so far, you have: 

✅ A skill, 

✅ A service, 

✅ And a fairly good idea of who you want to help. 

Great! So far, so good. 

But now you have to price that service and actually sell it. THAT’S where things start to get complicated. 

You end up spending all of your time tinkering and perfecting your offer, only to second-guess the price you came up with. Then second-guess the second guess. 🫠

So you put off launching your offer. You tell yourself you’ll sell your service once you do a bit more research, once you’ve figured out exactly what to include, and once you finally feel like the price is justified. 

But here’s the problem:

The longer you spend perfecting your service package, the longer it takes for your business to actually get off the ground. 

This isn’t just a you problem. 

Pricing your services for the first time is messy for everyone. There’s no perfect formula and no magic number, but there is a way forward. 

In this post, we’re digging into the unglamorous truths about pricing and selling your first offer. We’re talking scope creep, why your first price is never going to be “right,” and why the fastest path to a validated offer is simpler than you think.

Let’s dive in. 

Pin this to your Marketing Board 👇🏼

Pricing Your First Service is Just a Starting Point (Not a Life Sentence)

Before I was an Instagram marketing coach, I was an actor and a bartender. Social media management wasn’t even on my radar. So, when I got a request to manage a yoga studio’s social media account, the words, “Nope, no thank you” couldn’t get out of my mouth any faster. 

But the owner of a yoga studio refused to take no for an answer.  For some reason, he was sure I was the one. (Still no clue why tbh)

One day, he jumped right in and said, “Jenna, when’s a good day this week to discuss your rates?”

I had given pricing ZERO thought, but I told him I would do it for $300 a month – a somewhat random number but one I thought felt right in the moment.

How did I come up with that number? When I was bartending, if I made $300 in one night, that was a great night. So, I applied that same thought process to pricing my first social media service package. 

Was it the “right” number? Probably not. But it didn’t have to be.

When you’re creating your first offer, all you can do is guess. You don’t fully know what to expect yet. You don’t know how much time it’ll take, what your clients will want, or what you’ll wish you had charged once you’re knee-deep in delivery. 

And that’s okay! There’s a lot of trial and error involved! 

Just remember: your first price is NOT a lifelong commitment. 

You’re not marrying this number. Think of it as the origin story that you, your services, and your business grow and evolve from. Once you actually get your feet wet, you’ll figure out pretty quickly what needs to change. I know I did.

Because little did I know, scope creep was already crawling its way in…

How Scope Creep Affects Your Pricing and What to Do About It

After a while, I reeeally started loving the yoga studio social media gig. 

Next thing I knew, I was schlepping borrowed lighting equipment across Toronto on a streetcar, contacting yogis from all over the city, inviting them to the studio, and photographing them in exchange for shoutouts on their platforms. I was also running contests at the front desk, teaching myself graphic design from scratch, and creating content I was proud of.

I had finally accepted my fate and I was ALL in. 

But then scope creep entered the chat. 

All the yoga teachers started reaching out. Each one wanted their classes and workshops promoted on social media. They’d send me materials that didn’t work – like flyers that clashed with the company branding and images that weren’t sized right. 

Meanwhile, I had to take it all in and do my best to make it look cute. 😩

And on top of that, I was corresponding with every single one of them individually.

What had started as one straightforward social media package had quickly transformed into something much, much bigger than I had signed up for.

What is Scope Creep?

When tasks keep growing and the job keeps getting bigger and bigger than what you originally agreed upon, that’s called scope creep. 

Scope creep is the gap between what you signed up to deliver and what you’re actually delivering. And what’s worse, if you’re not watching for it, scope creep will eat your profit quietly and quickly. 

You’re doing more work, spending more time, and getting paid exactly the same amount you agreed to when the job was a fraction of the size.

So, let’s talk about how to spot scope creep and what to do to prevent it.

The First Sign of Scope Creep to Look Out For

Let’s be honest…when you first launch your business, you probably didn’t price your service properly. 

And that’s fine! We’re all learning here! 

BUT when you start resenting any additional tasks that you have to do or doing work that makes you think, “I’m not getting paid to do all of this!!” that’s a clear sign that you’ve entered the dreaded scope creep territory. 

The problem is when you’re a contractor or self-employed, YOU chose this rate. You can’t be mad at the client, but you CAN fix it. 

The moment you clock that resentment, you have two options:

Your first option is to pull back and reset the boundaries around what’s included in your offer. The second is to find out how important those extra tasks are to your client. If they want you to continue doing them, then they need to pay more for them.

And that’s it! Honestly, that’s like $10,000 worth of business coaching right there. 

Get Specific About What’s Included in Your Offer BEFORE You Sell It

Whether you’re a social media manager, coach, healthcare provider, or any other service-based business, the best way to prevent scope creep before it starts is to get specific – like really, reeeeally, specific! – about what’s included in your offer BEFORE you sell it. 

When you’re pricing your offer, you need to think about all the tiny tasks, consider how much time they’re going to take, and find out if your client is expecting you to do them. 

Take social media management as an example. If you’re managing someone’s Instagram… 

• Are you also responding to their comments? 
• Are you responding to ALL the comments or only some of them?
• Within what timeframe are you responding to comments?
• If a DM comes in that’s clearly a sales lead, are you handling that conversation or passing it off? 
• If you’re passing it off, how? 

When I had my agency, we learned this the hard way. We eventually landed on committing to only responding to 90% of comments instead of 100%. Because sometimes a post gets 20 heart emojis, and there’s really nothing to say back, or sometimes you can tell it’s a bot. So, we added that 10% buffer, and it’s spelled out clearly for every client.

And this kind of specificity applies no matter what service package you’re offering. 

A coaching package: how many calls does the client get? Is there Voxer support between sessions? Are they able to submit any materials for review? 

A web design project: how many pages will the website have? How many revisions do they get? Do you charge for revisions? Is copywriting included or will they have to provide the copy?

Get all of that figured out before you sell. Because the more specific your offer is upfront, the less room there is for scope creep to sneak in later.

➡️ Have you already landed a few sales on your offer? That’s my cue! 👋🏼

If you’ve already priced your offer and made a few sales, the next step is to sell it MORE –

and that’s where I come in. 

In my program, Magic Marketing Machine, I help my clients build an organic Instagram content strategy that gets ALL of the eyeballs onto their content and helps them land more sales naturally. 

So, once you’ve sold your offer to two or three people, come find me so we can sell it to even more. 

4 Tips For Validating Your Business Idea and Selling Your First Offer

By now, you know that the price you set for your first offer isn’t forever. You also know what scope creep is and how to keep an eye out for it. 

Now, it’s time to get into the part that actually makes you money. 💰

Here are four tips for getting your first offer out into the world. Because at the end of the day, all the specificity and planning means nothing if you never sell the dang thing!

Pro-Tip 1: Start with Your Pre-Existing Network

Here’s a tip I give to business owners who are just starting Instagram, but it applies to launching your business too:

When you’re ready to sell your first offer, start with your internal network aka the people you already know. 

You don’t need to ONLY pitch to strangers. 

Your friends, family, former colleagues, your aunt’s neighbour’s cousin twice removed… all totally valid first clients. 

In fact, my first handful of clients came entirely from my pre-existing network. I wasn’t even taking Instagram that seriously at the time, yet. I just started talking about what I was doing, and a friend I’d met through improv reached out because she knew someone with a brewery who needed social media help. Then – TA-DA!! – that person became my first international client.

Even if your network feels small, the people in your life WANT you to succeed. 

You might not see it yet, but there are people out there who have your back. Just start talking about your offer, put it allll out there, and you might be surprised who shows up.

Pro-Tip 2: Skip the Busywork. Just SELL.

What I’m going to say next might ruffle some feathers but…

You don’t need a website. (There I said it!)

You also don’t need business cards or to wait until your branding is 100% perfect.

What you DO need is clients and money coming in. All that other stuff can wait.

I’ve had people push back on this, and honestly, I’m doubling down with all ten toes. 

This is coming from my lived experience – from having thousands of people around the world buy my programs and from being behind the scenes of dozens and dozens of businesses over the years.

Any high-level business book will tell you the same thing. Busywork like perfecting your logo or designing business cards means nothing if your business idea doesn’t have legs. And the only way to find out if it has legs is to get out there and validate your business idea by selling it.

This is especially true for the helpers, healers, teachers, and mentors of the world. You know what your people need. Now go sell it to them. 

The fancy branding and website building can wait. 

Pro-Tip 3: Don’t Create a Course as Your Offer Without Validating It First

Please, I am begging you, do NOT create a course as your first offer. Don’t spend six months recording videos, making worksheets, building out lessons, and setting up Kajabi and just try to sell it. 

That’s not how the big players do it. And it’s definitely not how I did it.

Here’s what I did instead: I went boots-on-the-ground and sold my service first. 

Then I based my course and crafted all of my materials around the service I already knew how to deliver. 

When it was ready, I sold a beta round where I launched the content week after week to a group of people I already knew were interested.

And because I was building the course based on live feedback from real people, the materials were SOOOOO much better.

Creating a course as your first offer is the biggest mistake I see service providers making. 

I’ve seen people spend months building something nobody ends up buying – either because they assumed there was demand without checking, or because they had no clue how to actually market it once it was done.

Those are two very different problems but both will sink you.

So, here’s what I want you to do instead: sell the thing first. 

Make sure people want it and are willing to pay for it. Validate your business idea and your offer and confirm that there’s a demand. Then you build from there.

Pro-Tip 4: Sell What You Want, Give Them What They Need

You KNOW what your clients need. That’s literally why you launched your business! You saw a problem, and you knew you could sell something to fix it. 

BUT here’s where service providers end up going wrong: They build an offer around what they know people need instead of what people actually want to pay for. 

For example, imagine you’re a health coach whose clients want to lose 10lbs by summer. You know that what they really need is a complete lifestyle overhaul. But leading with “I’ll help you develop healthy habits to change your lifestyle and shed the weight!” sounds like a lot of work. 

You’re leading with the process instead of the outcome. Sure they’ll lose the 10lbs by making healthy lifestyle changes, but that’s not what your audience gets excited about. They get excited about results.

So instead, lead with the 10lbs to get them in the door first. That’s what they’re already lying awake thinking about.

This is the popular business concept of “Sell them what they want. Give them what they need.”

Personally, I think it should be, “Sell them what they want. Give them what they want AND need” but that’s not as catchy.

The point is: when you first launch your business, your offer will succeed fastest if you’re building it around what’s important to your clients, NOT what’s important to you.

Find out what they want and what they’re willing to pay for, and build from there.

Start Selling Your Offer BEFORE It’s Ready (Just SELL Already!!)

I want to leave you with one last tidbit of advice:

There are no rules about whether or not you’re “allowed” to sell your offer. 

That’s not to say go practice medicine or give people legal advice if you’re not qualified. (Please don’t do that! And if you do, don’t tell anyone it’s because I told you to. 🙈😬) 

But if you’re a service provider with a business idea that you think people will want, just get out there and sell it already!!

Too often, I see service providers doing everything else but selling their offer. And I get it, it feels safer. But you’re never going to get your business off the ground and start making money if you don’t take action. 

And the only way to know for sure that your offer is as good as you believe it is, is to get out there and try to sell it to someone. 

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You launched your business. Now, all you need to do is get started. 

Your first offer doesn’t have to be perfect, and you don’t have to stick with the price you set for it forever. 

All that matters is that you get out there and start selling. Get your offer in front of real people, avoid scope creep (if you can), and let your business and your offer evolve as you learn.

But if that pricing piece is still tripping you up, don’t worry. I’ve got you. 

In my free mini training, How to Price Your Offer in 2 Steps, I walk you through everything you need to name a price for your services without a shred of a doubt. 

It’s free, it’s quick, and by the end of it, you’ll have a number you actually feel good about charging.