What a Certified Pricing Overhaul Coach® Actually Does (And Whether You Need One)
Short answer first: a Certified Pricing Overhaul Coach® is trained and certified in the Pricing Overhaul® Method, a pricing framework created by Erin B. Haag for service-based businesses. I'm one of them. This post explains what that actually means for you, because "certified" only matters if you know what the certification does.
What is the Pricing Overhaul® Method?
Most pricing advice starts with the market. What do other studios charge? What does the coach down the street charge? What feels reasonable?
The Pricing Overhaul® Method starts somewhere else entirely: your business's own math. What does this business need to earn to cover its expenses, pay its people (including you), and turn a real profit? How many clients can it actually hold? Divide one by the other and you get what each client needs to be worth. Your prices anchor to that number, not to your competitor's website.
The method also deals with the part of pricing nobody wants to admit is the hard part: you. The beliefs that keep you undercharging. The discomfort of raising a price you set three years ago when you were newer and scared. Pricing is math plus psychology, and a framework that ignores either half doesn't work.
What does the certification mean?
It means I trained directly in the method and am certified to coach it. It's not a weekend PDF. Certified coaches learn the full financial framework (revenue targets, capacity math, payroll structure, profit margins) and how to walk a business owner through it without the owner drowning.
Here's what it doesn't mean: that I run you through a template. The method is a framework, not a script. Your numbers, your capacity, your life. My background is nine years owning and running studios before I sold, plus training in behavioral science. The certification gave me a sharper toolset for the thing I was already doing: helping owners see what their business is actually telling them.
Who is this for?
Service-based business owners. Studios (pole, aerial, yoga, pilates, barre), salons, coaches, consultants, wellness practices, anyone who sells time, expertise, or space rather than products.
You're a fit if any of these sound familiar:
You set your prices by looking at what everyone else charges. You're busy but the bank account doesn't reflect it. You haven't raised prices in years because you're afraid of who might leave. You genuinely do not know what your business needs to bring in each month for you to be paid properly. Or you simply want to increase your profit margin.
That last one deserves its own paragraph, because most coaching content treats hiring help as something broken businesses do. You can be profitable and still be underpaid. On $20,000 a month of revenue, the difference between an 8% margin and a 30% margin is the difference between $1,600 and $6,000 of monthly profit. Same studio, same schedule, same work. Owners in that gap aren't in trouble. They're leaving money in the business that was supposed to be theirs, and closing that gap is exactly the kind of project this method was built for.
It's not only the math
Some owners come to me already knowing roughly what the spreadsheet would say. What they're hiring is a person.
A person to work the obstacles with them: the legacy members on 2021 rates, the schedule that's full at 6pm and empty at noon, the offer they know they should retire but haven't. A person to deal with the beliefs underneath the pricing, because the method treats "I can't charge that" as part of the pricing problem, not a footnote to it. And honestly, a person to hold them to it. A date on the calendar and someone who will ask whether the thing happened changes what gets done. That's not a character flaw. That's how humans work, and my behavioral science background is in the room for exactly this reason.
How long have you known your prices are too low? If the answer is measured in years, more information was never the missing piece. Already knowing what you have to do and not doing it isn't a reason to skip coaching. It's the strongest reason there is to get a coach who will walk it with you.
Do you need a certified coach, or just the math?
Fair question, and the honest answer is: it depends on how you like to work.
(Still weighing whether you need a business coach at all? I wrote an honest take on that question too.)
Some owners want to run the numbers themselves first. If that's you, my Pricing Clarity Diagnostic exists for exactly this. Thirty-seven dollars, and you'll know whether your pricing problem is a tweak or an overhaul.
But the math is not a prerequisite. You don't need your numbers organized, or even understood, before you reach out. Plenty of owners come to me precisely because they want help with the math itself, someone to sit in the numbers with them instead of handing them homework. That's not cheating. That's the job.
If it's an overhaul, that's when a certified coach earns their fee. Not because you can't do math, but because rebuilding your pricing touches your offers, your schedule, your payroll, and your nervous system all at once. Having someone who has done it dozens of times, and who did it in her own business first, shortens the whole thing considerably.
Want to know what your business should be paying you before we ever talk? Start with The Need Number. It's free, and it's the first number the whole method is built on. And when you're ready for a person instead of a calculator, that's what I do.
