Most people price based on what they experience — the hours, the effort, the difficulty. The buyer prices based on what they receive. These are two completely different numbers, and confusing them is the most expensive mistake in business.
There are only two ways to price anything: by input or by output.
Input pricing asks: how long did this take? How hard was it? What do my competitors charge? What feels reasonable? This is how most people price — and it systematically undervalues expertise, because expertise makes hard things look easy and fast things look effortless. The better you get at something, the less you can charge for it under an input model. That's not a pricing strategy. It's a punishment for competence.
Output pricing asks one question: what measurable outcome does this create for the person paying?
CT10 strips every pricing decision to this variable. If you know the output value, the price is a percentage of it. If you don't know the output value, you're not ready to price — you're ready to measure. Everything else — market rates, hourly benchmarks, competitor pricing, "what feels fair" — is decorative complexity sitting on top of this single structural variable.
Chronic underpricing is not a business problem. It's a psychological one. The same schema that causes impostor syndrome at the threshold moment (see: Installed) causes pricing failure at the quoting moment. The mechanism is identical: the rational mind knows the number, but the installed programming overrides it.
Three forces compress pricing below output value in almost every case:
Your brain anchors the price to your experience of producing the work — the hours, the stress, the difficulty. A tax strategist who spends 90 minutes restructuring a client's entity setup and saves them $340K in annual tax liability will instinctively anchor to the 90 minutes, not the $340K. The 90 minutes "feels like" a $500 interaction. The $340K says it's a $34K engagement at minimum. The strategist quotes $3K because the effort anchor won.
You look at what others charge for something that appears similar and calibrate to the range. This fails because it assumes the output is comparable — and it almost never is. A brand strategist who repositions a company in a way that doubles its acquisition valuation is not performing the same service as a brand strategist who updates a logo. They look identical on a vendor list. The outputs differ by millions.
Underneath both of these is the schema: who are you to charge that? This is the same cultural installation described in Janteloven, working-class programming, and corporate credentialism. It fires at the exact moment you're about to name a price that matches your actual output value — and it compresses the number downward before it leaves your mouth. You experience this as "being reasonable." It's not. It's the program running.
Input price: "I charge $250/hour. This project took 40 hours. That's $10,000."
Output price: "My recommendation restructured your supply chain and reduced costs by $1.2M annually. My fee is $120,000 — 10% of the first-year savings."
Same consultant. Same work. Same 40 hours. The only difference is which number the price is anchored to: the consultant's experience or the client's outcome. The client paying $120K is getting a 10x return. The client paying $10K is getting a 120x return — and the consultant is subsidizing the difference with their own expertise.
Input price: "Logo design, $2,500. Brand identity package, $8,000. Website, $15,000."
Output price: "The positioning I built for your company changed how the market perceives you — from a regional service provider to a national brand. Your inbound pipeline tripled in six months. My fee for the next engagement is $60,000."
The deliverable looks identical on a proposal. The output is not comparable. One is a commodity measured in pixels. The other is a market repositioning measured in revenue. Pricing the second like the first is giving away the most valuable part of the work for free.
Input price: "One hour of my time, $500."
Output price: "In a single session, I identified that your acquisition target's valuation was based on a revenue multiple that didn't account for customer concentration risk. You renegotiated the deal $4M lower. My advisory fee is $200K annually."
The session lasted 45 minutes. The insight took six seconds — it was a CT10 reduction that stripped the deal to its single structural variable. The $500/hour model values the 45 minutes. The output model values the $4M. The advisor's speed and pattern recognition — the thing that makes them valuable — is the thing the input model punishes most.
Input price: "It costs us $12/month per user to host and maintain. We'll charge $29/month."
Output price: "Our platform saves operations teams an average of 14 hours per week. At a blended rate of $85/hour, that's $61,880/year in recovered labor per team. We charge $18,000/year."
The cost-plus model prices from the seller's expense. The output model prices from the buyer's gain. One is a margin calculation. The other is a value calculation. They produce numbers that are orders of magnitude apart.
If you suspect you're chronically underpriced — and if you've read this far, you probably are — here's the CT10 process for correcting it:
| Objection | What It Sounds Like | The CT10 Response |
|---|---|---|
| "It only took you an hour" | The client anchors to time, not outcome | It took an hour because of twenty years of pattern recognition. The alternative is hiring someone who takes six months and charges more in total. Speed is the premium, not a discount. |
| "Your competitor charges less" | The client treats all providers as interchangeable | If the outputs were identical, that would matter. Ask: what was the measurable result of their last engagement with the competitor? If they can't answer, they're comparing inputs — which is precisely the mistake this framework corrects. |
| "That's above our budget" | The client has an internal ceiling unrelated to your output | Budget is an input constraint. ROI is an output measure. If the engagement produces a 5x return, the budget is the wrong frame. The question is: can you afford not to? |
| "I feel like I should charge less" | This is not a market signal. This is the installation running. | Name the schema. Identify the sentence. Is it "who am I to charge that?" Is it "people like me don't make that kind of money?" That's not pricing intuition. That's Janteloven in a spreadsheet. |