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In Episode 53 of Built by Margin, Laurie Chen sits down with Etinosa Agbonlahor, founder and CEO of Decision Alpha and a behavioral economist who has spent more than a decade studying how people make financial decisions.
The conversation explores one of the most emotionally charged decisions every business owner has to make: what should I charge?
Etinosa explains why pricing often becomes tangled with identity, confidence, fear of rejection, and self-worth—and why the better question isn’t “What am I worth?” but rather, “What value does my service create for the customer?”
They also unpack Decision Alpha’s approach to pricing, including the “pricing house” framework: understanding your cost floor, identifying the customer’s willingness to pay, studying competitors and alternatives, and determining the price ceiling. Etinosa explains why founders shouldn’t simply copy competitor pricing and why customer research can reveal entirely different markets, positioning, and willingness to pay than expected.
The conversation goes deeper into how to raise prices without unnecessarily damaging customer relationships, why price increases should be framed around the value already delivered and the value still to come, and why businesses should treat pricing as an evolving feature—not a decision they make once and forget about.
Laurie and Etinosa also discuss difficult pricing conversations such as back-billing customers after an error, payment plans, sales-tax mistakes, and when preserving a valuable client relationship may matter more than recovering every dollar.
Finally, Etinosa shares how Decision Alpha is using AI to make sophisticated pricing thinking more accessible to smaller businesses through Fred, its AI pricing guide, as well as how her team uses AI to stress-test ideas, support research, manage pipeline visibility, and accelerate content and product development while remaining cautious around sensitive financial data.
If you’ve ever wondered whether you’re charging too much, too little, or simply presenting your price the wrong way, this episode offers a practical behavioral-economics lens for building a pricing strategy that reflects the value you actually create.
Quotes
- " As business owners, all our fears, our anxieties, our doubts, our worries show up in the pricing." – Etinosa Agbonlahor
- “My price is my price, and I think it’s fair given the scope of work." - Laurie Chen
Laurie Chen
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lauriechencpamba/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauriechen/
Risk Worthy: https://www.riskworthy.co/
Etinosa Agbonlahor
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/etinosasere/
Website: https://etinosaa.com/
Decision Alpha: decisionalpha.co
📘 Behavioral Pricing Playbook: https://playbook.decisionalpha.co
🤖 Meet Fred – AI Pricing Advisor: https://fred.decisionalpha.co
