Your clients love how flexible you are.

You have never had a client complain that you were too accommodating. That is rather the point. Nobody sends an email saying the extra work you did for free was excessive.

So where does it actually go?

Four places, and they compound.

• The discount you gave before anyone asked. The founding client rate, the mates rate, the number you dropped because she hesitated on the call.
• Scope creep. Rarely one big thing. It is the extra round, the quick call, the report that was never quoted, repeated across every client.
• Hours worked and never invoiced. Delivered, real, and never put on a bill.
• The price rise you keep not making. Usually the biggest of the four and the easiest to ignore, because nothing happens when you do not do it.

A client's budget does not determine your value. Their budget is not your business model.

Why does none of it show up in the accounts?

Because none of it is a transaction. A discount is not an expense, it is revenue that never existed. Unbilled time is not a cost, it is capacity you gave away. A price rise you did not make leaves no trace at all.

Your profit and loss can only report what happened. This is all the things that did not.

What to do about it this week

Take your five biggest clients and ask one question of each: what am I giving them that they are not paying for? Write it down. Put a number on it.

That list is usually most of your Nice Girl Tax, and it is the cheapest money you will ever recover, because it needs no new clients, no new marketing and no new hours.

If you would rather have the whole figure in one go, the calculator does it in about three minutes.

One more thing. Most founders assume raising prices means losing clients. Run the numbers before you assume it. At most margins you can lose a surprising number and still be better off, because the ones who leave are generally the ones costing you the most to keep.