274: Fully Booked but Underpaid: Ingrid’s Path to Doubling Her Rates (Without Losing Clients)

0:00Imagine being slammed with client work, deadlines piling up, and still looking at your income like, wait, why does this not match how hard I am working? That was Ingrid Lange, a fully booked freelancer, wildly underpaid, and what she calls a busy fool. In this episode, Ingrid breaks down how she shifted from underpriced project work to hourly work for protection, and then back to premium project pricing based on value, plus how she doubled her rates with existing clients and got zero pushback. Quick heads up, we had a few choppy connections moments early on, but the insights are gold. Let's dive in.

0:33Hey, fashion freelancers, can we talk pricing for a sec? Here's the thing. Too many designers I know are charging way less than they should. That's why I created a free freelance price list just for fashion professionals like you. It breaks down what to charge for tech packs, fashion flats, product development, 3D work, and more. Whether you're just starting off or scaling up, it gives you a real starting point based on what actually works. Go ahead and grab it at soheidi.com slash price or tap the link in the show notes. Stop guessing. Start charging like a pro. Let's get into the episode.

1:01Ingrid Lange:Welcome to the podcast, Ingrid. I am super excited to dig in with you today on the high-level topic of how you went from fully booked but massively underpaid to where you're at now in your business, which is a much different place. uh would you start i guess by sharing what are some of the key changes you made in your business to start earning more for the work that you are doing

1:31okay hi so what are the key changes that i've done

1:37Ingrid Lange:I started realizing that so my first first I started having a lot of clients and I wasn't really focusing on how much I was charging them or whether that was right or wrong I was just taking it work and work and work and at some point during that I realized that the way I was pricing things were so wrong that I wasn't really I had become what I what I used to call a busy fool so I was really busy I was not nearly not making it to deadlines but at the same time I wasn't like the end result when you see the money amount wasn't reflecting the fact that I was super mega busy so at some point I had this moment of saying like hang on a minute like this needs to like this needs to make sense like not only having projects not only having clients like this needs to make sense as a whole and it's not um so what i did at that time was i stopped charging per project and i actually moved to hourly which is something that made a lot of sense in the context of how i used to work or like the clients that i used to have i work mainly through Upwork.

2:57Ingrid Lange:And my clients through Upwork are mostly people that like have a full-time job that has nothing to do with fashion and they want to start a brand. So, they have like they have some savings. This used to be my typical client. So, with them, I used to price per project and because I was doing that so wrong, I was just a Pricing really, really low. So I decided to, in order to protect my time and my value, change to hourly. So I would just move the project, like offer hourly milestones and hourly projects instead of fixed price projects. That was the first change that I did that at the time felt like that way I was protecting my time and value.

3:53Ingrid Lange:with that I started to understand how long things actually take me I make really really detailed tech bags I make like I'm very detail oriented I take a lot of care of everything that I put on a tech bag or an email and that takes a lot of time if you're not charging per hour then that you know the project price needs to reflect all the time that you're going to take on that so with with the time with the hourly pricing i felt like i was in a safer space and i was but then the next step was once i was comfortable with that i started raising my rates and i started changing a bit the nature of the clients that i was having mainly because as you raise your rates you just get a different profile right of people people that can afford me now are a bit different than the people that could afford me before so with changing the hourly rate and raising it I've come to a point where thanks to fast mainly coaching too fast i understood that i needed to change back to project because i need to price what i bring to the table by the value that's that's something i got from you so no um not by the hour so at some point your hour sounds very expensive right so you just need to approach it a whole different way so i've now transitioned to going back to project pricing except for some specific clients where i just do a lot of really variety things and project pricing wouldn't work yeah yeah um i mean it sounds so simple on paper i was doing project not making enough went hourly raised my hourly now back to project base but it obviously took time and maybe some confidence and some strategy to get there.

6:08Can you talk us through, I know that with some existing clients, you were able to double your rates without getting any pushback. Can you talk a little bit about how you approach, I want to know twofold. One, how you approach that in your own head, like how did you get the confidence to do that and what were you thinking and about in that moment and second like how did you what how did the conversation go what did you say how did you present that price increase to get the client to say yes without any

6:40Ingrid Lange:kickback okay uh so yeah it's definitely like a it's one path that comes before the next one right the first one was well there's a number of steps like the first one was identifying that i was not charging enough at whatever stage of that process right like when I was really under charging and then when I raised it and for that there's a number of like alarms that sound in my head when I'm doing something and I either start resenting the work uh I don't know feeling like you know if you're not getting paid enough you're like I need to finish this fast yeah I don't know and you like get annoyed with the client and it's just bad

7:31sorry you you wind up getting really annoyed with the client and it's just bad for everybody when they're when you feel like you're not getting paid enough yeah yeah yeah exactly like i i just i just wanted to get things done rather than like being there fully like fully present into what i

7:52Ingrid Lange:was doing so that was one of them i remember at some point i attended a like a monthly workshop or was about like signs that you need to raise your rate and i was a textbook example of everything that was a sign that i needed to raise my rate so i was like okay this is really really clear at the very first moment when i was massively undercharging uh was very evident right like after a few things where I started understanding how much things take me time it was very clear that I was undercharging but later on throughout this process so first I needed to like see those signs myself and say like Ingrid you need to raise your prices before Ingrid you need to raise your prices came like Ingrid you're ready to raise your prices like I built the confidence within myself of like what I am bringing to the table is important it's a lot like I have experience and I kind of like first all these conversations happen in my head and happen through the process of being in fast and interacting with the other the other students in fast and with my coach and kind of like building that confidence of like actually I know what I'm doing I really know what else but so i i needed to to get all of that once i had the confidence of like you are worth it then i was like okay you need to you need to take this to the client so how i did it um the the example that is most vivid in my head is the last one where i actually doubled my rate like again and again right um this was so the way i approached the conversation was um first i i approached it from a yearly perspective of like okay the year there is closing we're starting a new year that in my case with this plan is completely irrelevant but i needed some anchor from something like hey i'm coming up with this now so okay december um so i said that i said also that i haven't raised my prices with them in all the time that we have worked hourly together, even though the scope of my work with them has changed entirely.

10:21Ingrid Lange:Because with this particular client of mine, I've become more and more and more involved. And I really deliver crucial, critical work for the actual materialization of everything they have. I'm almost like their department of everything. So that was, and that took a while for me to understand that. I didn't, you know, I didn't even realize that at the beginning, like how crucial I am to the execution of the things that my client wants. Right. And that's something that took me learnings mostly from, from, from fast, where I started to understand these things. so I said that I felt like it's another year I haven't written your prices with you what I'm doing now is a lot more than what we just started and I did a few checkbacks for you and um and also I explained to them that I am fully booked and my current rate is actually like double what I have uh what I've been charging you or what I am charging you and so I had a video call with them right so this was an actual life conversation and I explained like that uh maybe I should have been more clear about that maybe I should have been more clear in the past that it was kind of like a bargain um I don't know I phrased this better right but I kind of like wanted to give them the context and also with um yeah what else would I do I said that and then with Upwork what helped me is that you can put your rate in Upwork and so I was like look this is what I charge now in Upwork you can see it's not like I'm just charging this to you right so it's kind of easier to like show them like show where I was at with them so they could like publicly see like look this is what I charge people so with all of that oh and I said look I'm I'm fully booked so it's hard to sustain the rate that I have with you when I'm fully booked and I have a waiting list client but at the same time I really love working with you so I want this to be a conversation where we find a way that works for us for all of us but this is where I am and so I've given them like different options so that they can like they have the feeling that they can choose and i'm not just saying look i'm doubling this is it or nothing goodbye right so i kind of like gave them a platform to say like look what would you like from this and i think the conversation went went really well like they ended up kind of so they didn't say much and i can answer from them right away but i the only thing they said is kind of like thank you for charging a little until now they were like thankful so this is good I was like okay I think I also for myself because I'm raising the rate that much imagine for whatever service all of a sudden they turn around and go like hey double how would you react to that so I had to give a lot of context and I think it was important for me to make them understand that look it's not that I'm doubling now, it's that I've given you a great deal in the past.

13:56Ingrid Lange:You just didn't know that. I didn't communicate that. And I should have. Yeah. Yeah. What were, so what were the options you gave them instead of just the rates doubling? And it sounds like I, I, I know a little context of this client, but this is a client where you do such a big breadth of work for them. And it's, the workload is a little bit variable. and so you do still charge the hourly rate is that correct yeah not project yeah with them I do hourly because I have a lot of different things yeah the scope is not really tight every month or every week for each project so what were the options that you gave them for raising the rate one was I imagine just double the hourly rate what else did you give them so I gave them I gave them the option of like a little bit over doubling the hourly rate and just pay for the hour or then doubling the hourly rate on a retainer basis and then I also gave them the option so for these option one and two I kind of played with the fact that like there's a currency exchange thing and there's a platform like Upwork, in Upwork, outside Upwork.

15:20Ingrid Lange:So I kind of like played with those things so that I was being transparent and honest, but the options were like, if you do it, you know, inside Upwork, then this is this much, but they will pay more. We have to pay Upwork more. Or doubling my rate, effectively doubling it, but on a retainer basis. or the other option that I gave them was something that we may do in the future which is a hybrid model where I'm going to reduce my hourly rate a little bit from where I am now but I'm going to get a percentage of the profit from the collections that we develop together this is a model that we're going to have to fine-tune together so it's not you know i just wanted to put on the table and see if this was an option for them you know how what their faces would look like when we do it but like when i say this yeah um and and they were they were like happy with that they were like oh yeah i like the incentive idea yeah we can talk about that yeah so yeah we're we're in a retainer now and then we'll we'll probably move to this but this will require a lot more investigation as to how to do this right how to like you know to make this work.

16:43Yeah, that's amazing. We'll get back to the episode in 20 seconds, but real quick, a question. If you have ever caught yourself thinking, is this too much to charge or what do other freelancers quote for this? You are not alone. I created a freelance price list just for fashion freelancers like you, and it's absolutely free. It outlines real world ranges for design, tech packs, pattern making, and even 3D. It is based on my 15 years of industry experience and over a thousand fast grads, many of whom are now out earning their old full-time salaries. Download it now at soheady.com slash price. The link is in the show notes.

17:13Now back to the episode. So an hourly retainer. So you're doing like X hours per month at X dollars per hour for those hours.

17:24Ingrid Lange:Yeah. Yeah. That's what I'm doing. And because there's a, there's, there's just a lot of work. So the hours, the reason I'm, I'm not, I wasn't doing more hours with them is because one, I'm fully booked, like I'm constantly fully booked. And two, I was starting to, sorry, I was already earning a lot more money with other clients. So it didn't make sense to work more hours for this particular client, right? Totally. And this is something that I told them as well. Like when I was raising my rate, I was like, what does this mean to you? This means I'm going to allocate this time to you. this means you're going to get faster responses more strategy more of like they really need that um but i wasn't giving them that because i was just you know if you're charging 50 more to another client that makes more sense to allocate you know to put your effort in the other client right yeah so and i make them understand this and the way we're doing it now is because they really need more than the hours like we're on 20 hour retainer but they need more than that and now I'm happy to give them more than that.

18:31Ingrid Lange:So what we say is, look, this is the retainer and then I need to work more hours and I just work more hours and I bail you. And they're happy with that. They want me to be more and more involved and they need it really. Yeah, that's amazing. Sounds like it's such a great win-win for both of you guys. Yeah, yeah, totally, totally. And I really enjoy working with them. They enjoy working with me. We've been together to India. We've been together to Paris. they came to Barcelona so like I know them by now like we've gone through stuff yeah yeah well talk about that because I know you shared with me that you charged for your trip um you went to them went to Paris and India with them and you charged for that travel uh which I think was a big business move for you no yeah that was huge so uh so in terms of charging like what what sounds really cool is that I charge for five days more more more than what used to be my monthly salary back when I was working for a brand in the UK that was the garment technologist so technical designer for for next UK which is like a really big brand in the UK and one that I'm and now for this like five day trip I charge more than what I used to earn for a month at Next.

20:00Ingrid Lange:This is because it's like I needed to understand what my worth was and once I was comfortable with this and I had a lot of conversations with mostly with Alice my coach about what I was bringing to the table and how this is is worth um that i was comfortable bringing this offer and going like look guys this is it like yeah wow that's amazing that's amazing where uh where are your other so it feels like you magically more than doubled your rates and kept you keep getting new clients at these new rates is everybody coming through upwork most of them are but not anymore not all of them uh so i used to get all my clients through upwork absolutely all of them and i really fine-tuned like at an early stage i really fine-tuned how do the proposals when upwork um how like screen what clients were a good chance of getting a job and what weren't which ones where and blah blah but then what started to work really well was a consultation so people hire me for like a consultation on app work because they want to know what the steps are to setting up a brand and launching and then when we do this consultation I kind of like walk them through what they need to do and how the whole process looks like and then that becomes me working with them to make all of this happen so most of the initial contact does come through Upwork but then once we do the consultation sometimes the rest of it doesn't happen through Upwork anymore I also got some jobs by like recommendation of someone else yeah um but to be honest I don't have a website I don't have a LinkedIn it's it's being updated right now as we speak yeah so it's great to have a deadline it's great to have a podcast because thanks to that now I have a working LinkedIn that doesn't say that I work at a place I don't work for the four years oh it was that outdated like it said you still worked at next uk no no like the the place that i worked after that okay okay but it was super it was outdated like four years outdated it didn't say freelance anywhere uh yeah oh my yeah but i'm changing that today like i've changed it today so it's amazing Great to have a deadline.

22:54Yeah, amazing.

22:56Ingrid Lange:Yeah, so if people click on my name, they want to find me now, they can find me and they'll find, they'll see what I actually do right now. But that wasn't the case. So yeah, most of my clients, the vast majority of them were through Upwork or somehow started with me through Upwork. Yeah. But you were able to just double the rate on Upwork and you're still getting leads. It didn't break your lead flow. no it didn't actually so um the thing is the the way app work works is that when somebody posts a job on app work app work shows that person suitable candidate so the person that is posting a job can click and invite people and say like hey i think you're going to be a good match for my job and for whatever reason um the algorithm liked me or likes me now i i don't i don't get as much i'm not so busy on upwork right now so but i could see that the algorithm was proposing me for a number of people that were posting jobs because at some point i stopped pitching on up work and i was to respond to individuals.

24:20Ingrid Lange:There was also the rare case where people just directly hired me without calls, without discovery calls, without nothing. But that happens most of the time with people that don't know how to use Upwork. So they understand that they are hiring me. They get that, but I don't think they fully get what's just happened, right? So I still start without discovery calls, even though I could like click and start earning. but I'm like I didn't need to talk but mostly mostly what happened is that um after a number of jobs in Upwork then the algorithm was offering like proposing me so I started just replying to interviews which is a very comfortable place to be because I'd be like well you contacted me and so yeah um I would have discovery calls with them and in most of the cases when there is a discovery call then it was like it was a yes and we'll work together i think a lot of like um a lot of the change in my rate was like the rates reflect an internal change that had to happen with me and that needed time really um and that's like there's a number of things like I needed to understand what I can offer because I used to be only an employee where I would not think in terms of how long something takes me or what I, yeah, I just, I don't have an entrepreneurial mind, right?

25:55Ingrid Lange:So I was just, I'm very, very good at my job and I know exactly what I need to do for the job. But then I didn't know anything about what comes around this that needs to happen for you to do the job, right? so like how to price how to explain what you do um how to like understand how this works apart from once you already have the job yes i know how to do a tech bag really well i know how to fit things really well i know how to walk in a factory and understand what's right and what's wrong but um the rest of the process that is then reflected on the final result of having higher and higher rate is really my transformational process of confidence in my knowledge and confidence in what I'm solving for the brand confidence in like where I'm sitting I'm like I can do this like I am doing it like yes yeah yeah that's amazing and I know you've worked really hard to build that confidence and to build that mindset to really see and understand the value that you deliver and the worth that's attached to that for the compensation that you get so that's it's amazing to see your growth and your progress over the last less than year you've been working on shifting less than a year it's been about 10 months that you've been working on shifting all this in your business yeah yeah yeah yeah it's been it's been 10 months but like when I started I was still like overbooked but undercharging at the the worst of the configuration of these two things together yeah um yeah it's been in a real change but that also came with like a lot of personal transformation I I in in the time that I spent just before joining fast in this month I I started freelancing when I had a baby that was less than a year old then I had another one in the first like I know two years of freelancing before joining past so that also came with like a lot of personal transformation of like used to work full time then I decided to take a huge break of like nearly two years and dedicate myself only to to like raising my children to then needing to be more than a mother needing to like expand myself again and into like having more than that and that comes with like building a confidence in myself that I think that's something that had it but then I lost it throughout motherhood or I was just focused on other things so now I was like okay I need to rebuild that um and yeah that that then resulted into like very nice and very good like outcomes out of all of it yeah so now you're still fully booked and you're charging twice as much in some cases more than twice as much right so like how has that shifted things in your business

29:05um so uh one of the so how does this shift the things in my business is that now i sometimes

29:14Ingrid Lange:hire people to do it. That was part of me understanding and learning what my service offerings are, like what I can offer to people and then understanding that I can also offer more than only what I can do myself because a lot of clients need more than that. For example, they need pattern making. I don't make patterns. They need 3D renders. They need 3D fittings and stuff. So there's a lot of things that I don't know how to do that could be part of my offering so that I have just a fuller, like a broader service where I solve clients' needs. And I understood that I could scale by offering these things and just hiring other people to do those things.

30:09Ingrid Lange:So that's how I now work with some clients. Like I don't shy off of something that's bigger than what I can do. I'm like, okay, that's fine. Let's do it. Let's do it. And then for this, you know, I can, I can like reach out to people in my team and go like, yeah, you want to, you know? So I, I've just, that's one of the ways that I, that I like to stay on more now than what I used to. How do you handle those projects? Do you just connect the client with the pattern maker, for example, and then they work directly? Or do you manage the whole project and manage the pattern maker and the client only works directly through you and all the payment goes directly through you and you pay the pattern maker separately?

31:00Ingrid Lange:So everything is managed through me. And I am like, this is a work in progress and I'm learning how to do this better and better. but what I understood from the beginning is that if I just refer somebody else what happens is that the word is very fragmented and what I do is intimately linked to what the pattern maker needs to do so you know if I make a you know say the client has a design idea as a more or less clear idea or a sketch or something and then I turn that into a tech pack I make the decisions on trends on fabric I translate all of this into a tech pack that a factory could understand but first we're going to have a pattern and we're going to make a sample for example so when the client changes his mind or has questions or has whatever like what I do is so intimately linked to what the pattern maker needs to do that it didn't make sense to just refer someone because um we would we just have to liaise constantly anyway and there would be like a triangular communication that doesn't always work or that triangular communication would not be reflected in either what i charge or what the pattern maker charges right so i was like i think i need to be involved in this and be like i don't i so and be the connection with the client in many cases when i hire somebody like subcontract somebody to do a part of when i'm a bigger project that i'm doing with a client they also have contact so we have like bidding sessions for example um that's one no no like it's completely like open and everybody needs like everybody needs to be okay with it if not then this just isn't the way to go so there is no there's full transparency into how we're doing this and um uh so they they also have contact with the client like i'm not hiding them or pretending that i'm doing something that i'm not doing um but it does go through me because what i learned from doing this several of times now is that there's it takes a lot of time as well so this this like stop contracting is something that i need to understand when like when i do this i need to understand that they take a lot of my time it's not like okay so somebody else makes the pattern so they just make the pattern no this is going to take hours of my time to like have clarity on what the client needs maybe there's a like they make changes or there's this like change the change in the mind or whatever how this is also translated to the parameter or yeah yeah this takes a lot of time so I started very accurately tracking how long things take me because that helps me um understand all the times that I charge so little it's something that you think is just going to take you a few hours yeah when you really track it you're like oh my god this took me double what i thought yeah yeah and what was taking me double was not the action making of the tech pack was like the communication the relaying information what i i i'm also like very very detailed when i send an email when i'm like you know i there's content there so yeah yeah it's fine how does your business feel now versus before you said before you felt like a busy fool and you're in a much different position now how would you describe it um i am like i'm very proud of where i am but i completely understand that i this isn't the end of it or no one needs it and i'm just continually learning how to get better and like pricing and rate is just one of the aspects of it i have to learn from so many other aspects that i am learning and uh so i think what i am right now is a place of like um like proud of of what i've achieved so fire and at the same time go like okay i i can do it there's a lot of work but i can handle it it's gonna be fine it'll be fine yeah it'll be fine yeah yeah i love that it is just like one stepping stone in your growth trajectory and i know you have so much more to go um so you're leaning maybe a little bit into linkedin and building your own website i'm curious to know So are you, you're looking to grow outside of Upwork and maybe take some control in your lead flow?

36:14Or what are your plans for that?

36:16Ingrid Lange:Definitely, definitely. I mean, I understand that it's like, it's a weak position to be to rely solely on one platform for all your income. Even if that's not the case anymore, still, I need to build the ground on me that doesn't only depend on one thing. Imagine if they ban me from one day to the other. Whatever. So, yeah, definitely thinking about LinkedIn now. So I've updated my profile right now. and um and the next thing for me really is start to look at how to pitch or i don't know how to get clients because i i'm i'm very fortunate in the sense that i didn't have to look for clients in a real long time but that also made me just completely out of practice really for that yeah well i've never had practice on that yeah i need to learn that Yeah, yeah.

37:22So it sounds like this first big move in your finance business was creating a more sustainable base for you, better rates, fewer clients, and now you're going to look to optimize getting more leads.

37:39Ingrid Lange:yeah like the I think what really changed on me is the rates reflect the fact that I find what my offer well like what I can offer what I what I have so there's a lot more systems and procedures that are in place now like I have contracts now for inside out work outside out Spanish and English like I have templates of things that I use and I have like things that need to be built so that you can then use them right so it's not it's it's been it's been a journey of like getting my rate like increasing my rate and making them better and reasonable and more but also it's been a journey of like the content and like how robust my offering is and what I can offer, right?

38:31Because I feel like I can do a lot more.

38:34Ingrid Lange:I had the experience from my background to do a lot more than just tech bags, but I didn't understand how I could offer that too in the freelance world. Yeah. So yeah, I have a lot more clarity on that now and I have a solid base to now offer those things outside of Upwork, for example. Yeah, that's amazing. I am so excited about your growth and to watch you continue to do great things out there in the world with your freelance business. It's really phenomenal, Ingrid. I'd love to ask you the question I ask everybody at the end, which is, what is one thing people never ask you about being a fashion freelancer that you wish they would?

39:16Ingrid Lange:so generally I think it's a really healthy question for everyone to ask ourselves and to get from other people is whether you're happy doing what you're doing and if you're not then something needs to change whether that's your rate because we've been talking about rates or whether that's what you're doing in general or whatever that is it's like the health checkup with yourself

39:48Ingrid Lange:to just like how do I feel with it? Am I happy with this? It doesn't mean you have to be happy at every given moment like maybe filling numbers is not my favorite thing to do instead but generally do I feel good about this? Does this feel aligned with who I want to be, where I want to be? like does this make me look at the glass half full or half empty yeah that's such an important question I don't know how often we really think about that yeah you feel happy doing where you're at right now in your business totally yes I see there's a lot ahead but I love it that's amazing well where can everybody connect with you online it sounds like obviously Upwork and it sounds like now your LinkedIn is updated.

40:39Is that the best place to find you?

40:43Ingrid Lange:Absolutely. LinkedIn now. Yep. Okay, cool. We'll link to that in the show notes. Thank you so much for chatting with me, Ingrid. It was lovely to hear about all the work you've done and the success you've seen. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening. And real quick, before you go, do yourself a favor and grab my freelance price list just for fashion. It is absolutely free. It breaks down price ranges for tech packs, pattern making, drafting, sourcing, and more. It's clear, actionable, and specifically created for fashion freelancers like you. Head to sohuddy.com slash price or hit the link in the show notes.

41:14Your time and skills are valuable and this guide will help you charge like they are.