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“You don’t have to brag to be seen—you just have to stop whispering your worth..."

Dear Karen,

When you set your rate as a coach, consultant, service provider or nursepreneur, what voice do you hear? Because for a lot of nurse entrepreneurs, that voice sounds something like: "Who am I to charge that? I'm a healer, not a businessperson. If I really cared, I'd make it affordable."

That voice feels like conscience. But I want to offer you a different lens — because that voice might actually be the same system that burned you out in the first place.

Affirmation: My pricing is an act of healing — for me, for my clients, and for the nurses who come after me.

The colonizer virus lives in your pricing page

Author and activist Edgar Villanueva coined the term "colonizer virus" — the way colonial systems continue to divide, control, and extract from our communities and our ways of being, even when we think we've left those systems behind.

Nursing was built on that story. Selflessness as the highest virtue. Serving = suffering = noble. And when you move into entrepreneurship carrying that conditioning, it shows up exactly where you'd expect it: in your rates.

Here's the hard truth. Undercharging doesn't protect your clients. It replicates the same extraction you left.

Money as medicine — and what that means for your business

Villanueva asks a question I keep coming back to: "How can we use money for the sacred purpose of restoring balance — of healing our communities, our families, businesses, and cities?"

That question reframes everything. Your pricing isn't just a number. It's a declaration of what you believe about the value of healing work. A business that can't sustain you can't sustain your clients either. The Next Economy MBA puts it plainly: you cannot design a practice that benefits all life if it's depleting yours.

Charging what your work is worth is regenerative — for you, and for the broader ecosystem of nurse entrepreneurs watching what you do.

Coach Yourself

• Where in your business are you pricing from the servant identity instead of from your actual worth?
• What story are you telling yourself about what your clients can afford — and is that story yours, or is it inherited?
• If your pricing were truly an act of healing, what would it look like?
• What would change in your work if your rates fully sustained you?

The full article goes deeper into Edgar Villanueva's framework, the Next Economy MBA principles, and what values-aligned pricing actually looks like in practice — including why pricing is a form of boundary-setting, not greed.

Read the full article on Substack →

With love,
Karen

This article was originally published on karenretardo.com.

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