There is a version of business ownership that looks like dedication from the outside but feels like slow suffocation from the inside. You work constantly. Generosity flows from you freely . You say yes when you should say no, charge less than you’re worth, and pour every available hour into serving clients — leaving almost nothing for the actual development of the business itself. And underneath it all, there’s a missing foundation: sustainable business pricing.

It looks noble. However, it is not sustainable.

In Episode 3 of the Victoria & Nettie LinkedIn Live series, Victoria Whitfield and I turned our attention to a pattern we both see constantly among the women we coach: businesses that are being starved. Not through laziness or lack of effort — quite the opposite. These are hardworking, talented, genuinely mission-driven leaders who are under nourishing their businesses through undercharging, underinvesting, and chronically deprioritizing the time it takes to build something that lasts.

This conversation touches on money, self-worth, people pleasing, and the uncomfortable truth about what it actually costs to run a healthy business. Moreover, it addresses the foundation of sustainable business pricing for women entrepreneurs. So let’s have it.

WHAT IT MEANS TO STARVE YOUR BUSINESS

When a body is malnourished, it doesn’t shut down all at once. Instead, it compensates. It redirects resources from less critical systems to keep the essential ones running. Over time, the compensations compound, the deficits deepen, and what looked like “getting by” reveals itself as a slow decline.

Businesses work the same way. And as I said during the episode:

“Your business needs to be nourished with good healthy resources, with good healthy nutrients. And so when you are not putting those good healthy nutrients into your business, you are actually starving your business.”

— Nettie Owens

The malnourishment metaphor goes deeper than most people expect. You can be running a busy, active-looking business while it is quietly depleted underneath. As I put it during our conversation:

“You can be malnourished and overweight. And that is a possibility in your business.”

— Nettie Owens

A business can look full — full calendar, full inbox, plenty of activity — while being starved of cash flow, of development time, of the quality resources it needs to actually grow. Busy is not the same as nourished. Similarly, activity is not the same as progress.

When you chronically underprice your services, you create a cash flow problem that makes every other decision harder. Furthermore, when you treat business development as the thing you’ll get to after everything else, you cut off your own lead flow. Additionally, when you default to the cheapest tool or the workaround instead of the right resource, you save money in the short term and pay for it in time, quality, and momentum.

None of these choices feel dramatic in the moment. That’s what makes them so dangerous.

THE PEOPLE-PLEASING CONNECTION

Here’s what Victoria and I kept circling back to during this episode: the decision to starve your business is rarely a financial one at its root. Rather, it’s an emotional one. And Victoria named the pattern with precision:

“How you do anything is how you do everything. So it shows up in their business as undercharging, over giving, doing more than what they’re paid for, or like sacrificing themselves in order to show up and serve others.”

— Victoria Whitfield

Victoria was candid about her own experience with this pattern — the ingrained habit of people pleasing, reinforced through years of networking culture that celebrated generosity and self-sacrifice while quietly shaming anyone who took up space for their own offers or needs. Consequently, she captured the beautiful, painful irony of it exactly:

“The bright, the innocence, the beauty in always showing up to serve is that I’m there to help and add value. And I do. And everyone around me is— I always leave them better than I found them, right?”

— Victoria Whitfield

The impulse to serve is not the problem. However, the problem is when that impulse runs so deep that it becomes impossible to also claim space for your own sustainability. When you undercharge, avoid selling or business development, or feel shame around your own offers, you are feeding an old narrative of self-sacrifice as virtue. And while leaving everyone better than you found them is a beautiful thing, it becomes impossible to sustain if the business that makes it possible is starving.

Research context:

A study published in the Journal of Business Venturing found that women entrepreneurs consistently set lower initial prices for their services than their male counterparts, even when controlling for industry, experience level, and objective quality of service. The researchers identified socialization around likability and accommodation — not lack of confidence in the work itself — as a primary driver of the gap.

The pricing problem is not a math problem. It’s a worth problem. This is why sustainable business pricing for women entrepreneurs requires addressing both the practical and emotional dimensions of pricing.

Victoria also raised a question during the episode that every business owner needs to sit with periodically:

“Is this a business or a hobby?”

— Victoria Whitfield

It is not a judgment. Instead, it is a clarifying question. Because hobbies and businesses have different requirements. A hobby can run at a loss, on leftover time, with minimal investment. In contrast, a business cannot — not if it is meant to sustain itself, grow, and keep serving the people who depend on it. Therefore, answering that question honestly is one of the most important things a leader can do.

A REAL-WORLD WAKE-UP CALL: THE $1 MEMBERSHIP EXPERIMENT

I want to share something from my own experience, because I think it illustrates this more clearly than any abstract principle.

A few years ago, I launched a community priced at $1 a month. The reasoning felt sound: remove the financial barrier entirely, make it impossible for anyone to say no, eliminate the discomfort of the sales conversation. With a low enough price, people would simply say yes.

What actually happened:

“At that price point, I never got to thousands of members. In fact, I struggled to get to 50.”

— Nettie Owens

Expenses consumed whatever revenue existed. And even at $1 a month, people told me they couldn’t afford it. The community I had envisioned — one that provided real support, real accountability, real results — required real resources to deliver. At $1 per member, there was no budget for those resources.

That experience was clarifying in a way that no business book had been. Price does not remove resistance. In many cases, a price that is too low actually creates it. When something costs almost nothing, people assign it almost no value. They don’t protect time for it. They don’t show up consistently. Similarly, they don’t engage with the same seriousness they bring to investments that feel meaningful.

“Charging appropriately is not just about your revenue. Rather, it signals to your clients what the work is worth — and it shapes how seriously they engage with it. Sustainable business pricing honors both your business needs and your clients’ perception of value.”

Charging appropriately is not just about your revenue. Rather, it signals to your clients what the work is worth — and it shapes how seriously they engage with it.

NO TWO BUSINESSES ARE THE SAME — SO STOP COPYING SOMEONE ELSE’S PLAN

One of the most important things Victoria said during the episode wasn’t about pricing or time management. Instead, it was about whose advice you’re actually taking — and how much of the noise out there is drowning out your own best judgment.

“No two bodies are built the same. No matter how many weight loss diet plans I’ve tried, bought, checked out, or just tried to come up with… No two bodies are the same. Meanwhile, there are plenty of talking heads yelling through the device saying, do my thing, my thing worked for me. That means you can do it too. No, no, no, no.”

— Victoria Whitfield

The same is true for businesses. What worked for the coach selling you the program, the influencer in your feed, or the colleague who blew past her revenue goal — it worked for them in their context, with their audience, their offers, and their particular combination of strengths and circumstances. However, that does not mean it is the right plan for you.

Victoria shared how she actually thinks about the input she takes in:

“60% needs to come from me focusing on me. Only 20% is actually coming from getting inspired from them, and then the last 20% comes from God and the industry trends.”

— Victoria Whitfield

That ratio is worth writing down. Sixty percent from your own self-knowledge, your own data, your own reflection on what is and isn’t working in your specific business. Twenty percent from external inspiration. Twenty percent from broader trends and context. Most people have that completely inverted — consuming endlessly from the outside while giving almost no structured time to the inside.

Both Victoria’s Strategic Meditation approach and my Momentum Strategic Planning System are built around this principle: before you borrow someone else’s strategy, get honest about your own. What does your business genuinely need right now? Where are you succeeding? Where have you been looking away? The answers are already there — but they require you to create the space to hear them.

THE THREE PLACES BUSINESSES GET STARVED

Based on our combined experience coaching women leaders, Victoria and I identified three consistent areas where businesses get undernourished. Each one looks like a reasonable trade-off in the moment. However, each one compounds over time.

1. Time for Business Development

Building a business requires two very different modes of work: doing the work, and building the business that does the work. Most entrepreneurs are skilled at the first and chronically neglect the second.

Business development — lead generation, relationship building, strategic planning, visibility — is the kind of activity that never feels urgent until the pipeline is empty. And because it doesn’t feel urgent, it gets pushed to whatever time is left after everything else. Which is usually no time at all. The businesses that last make a different choice. As I put it directly during the episode:

“The businesses that succeed, they do things differently.”

— Nettie Owens

One of those things is protecting time for development even when — especially when — things are busy. The feast-or-famine cycle is entirely predictable and entirely preventable. It requires treating business development time as a non-negotiable, not a reward for finishing everything else.

2. Investment in the Right Resources

The arrival of AI tools has been genuinely useful for many business owners. However, I am watching a pattern emerge in which “use AI” has become a substitute for strategic thinking about what a business actually needs. The cheapest tool is not always the right tool. Similarly, the free version is not always sufficient. And the workaround that saves you money upfront often costs you hours, quality, and client experience downstream.

The question is not “How do I spend as little as possible?” Rather, the question is “What does this business need to operate at the level I’m promising my clients?” Those are different questions with very different answers.

3. Pricing that Reflects Real Value

Cash flow is the oxygen of a business. Without it, every other problem gets harder — you cannot hire support, invest in tools, take a week away without panic, or make long-term strategic decisions when you are in a constant state of financial triage. This is where sustainable business pricing for women entrepreneurs becomes critical.

I used a comparison during the episode that I think lands for a lot of women leaders:

“We do not expect a child, a baby, to figure it out. … we don’t say, ‘But wouldn’t it be more noble if you just figured out how to feed yourself?’ … but yet it’s almost the same that we’re doing to our business and we are starving it.”

— Nettie Owens

We extend so much grace to those who need nourishment. We build systems to ensure children, patients, communities are fed. And then we turn around and refuse to feed the business we have built — calling it humility, calling it accessibility, calling it service — while it starves.

“Sustainable business pricing ensures you have the cash flow to invest, develop, and deliver on your promises.”

HOW TO START NOURISHING YOUR BUSINESS

None of this requires a dramatic overhaul. Instead, what it requires is honesty, and then a willingness to make different decisions. Here are the practical places to start:

First, look at your numbers honestly. Not the revenue number in isolation — the full picture. What are your expenses? What does it cost to deliver your services at the quality you’re promising? Is your pricing covering those costs and leaving enough margin to actually build? Understanding sustainable business pricing for women entrepreneurs starts with knowing your true costs.

Second, put business development on the calendar. Not as an intention — as a scheduled, protected appointment. Treat it with the same seriousness you treat client calls, because your future clients are depending on it.

Third, audit your tools and resources. Where are you working around inadequate resources rather than investing in better ones? Where is the cost of the workaround — in time, quality, or stress — actually higher than the cost of the right tool?

Fourth, recalibrate where your input comes from. Try Victoria’s framework: 60% from your own reflection on your business, 20% from external inspiration, 20% from broader trends. Before you buy another program, spend structured time with your own data.

Finally, ask the clarifying question. Is this a business or a hobby? There is no wrong answer — but there is a dishonest one. And the answer shapes every decision that follows.

YOUR BUSINESS DESERVES TO BE FED

Here is the truth that Victoria and I come back to, in our work and in our own businesses: you cannot build something sustainable on a foundation of self-sacrifice. Generosity is a value. Martyrdom is a pattern. And there is a clear difference between the two.

The most generous thing you can do for your clients, your community, and the people who depend on your leadership is to build a business that is genuinely healthy — one with the cash flow to invest, the time to develop, and the resources to deliver on what it promises. That business can serve people at a level that a starved one simply cannot.

Feeding your business is not greed. It is not arrogance. It is not a betrayal of your mission. Rather, it is the precondition for everything your mission requires.

And if you have been running on empty — undercharging, underinvesting, treating business development as the thing you’ll get to eventually — it is not too late to change course. However, it does require making a decision: that your business is worth what it costs to run it well. Embracing sustainable business pricing for women entrepreneurs means recognizing that your business deserves to be nourished, not starved.

In Episode 4, Victoria and I are going to talk about what happens when you put yourself out there and the response is silence — the experience of launching something you believe in and hearing crickets back. If you’ve ever felt that particular sting, you won’t want to miss it.

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Nettie Owens, CPO-CD · The Sappari Group · sapparigroup.com · © 2026