10 = Podcast Individual #4
Episode 4
AI Made Me Realize I've Been Pricing My Work Wrong For 10 Years
Vani ran five years of proposals through an AI audit. She was looking for project patterns. What she found instead was a decade-long habit of underpricing the parts of her work clients valued most — and charging full rate for the parts AI can now do cheaper. The math was uncomfortable. The implications were worse.
Play On
0:00
1:32 min
1X
Chapters
0:00
Cold open — the number on the screen she wasn't expecting
2:50
Why she ran the audit and what she was actually looking for
6:20
What the analysis surfaced about ten years of proposals
10:05
The difference between pricing time and pricing judgment
13:40
Reconfiguring the rate card — and what that decision cost her
16:55
The new proposal goes out. She waits.
Key Takeaways
- Time is measurable and therefore replaceable. Judgment is neither. Most creative rate cards price the wrong one.
- AI did not create the pricing problem. It made an existing one impossible to ignore.
- Raising rates is a strategy question, not a confidence question. The two get confused constantly.
Show Notes
Vani was not looking for a pricing revelation. She ran five years of proposals through an AI analysis to find a pattern in project outcomes — which engagements went well, which ones didn’t, and whether there was a variable she had been missing. The variable the analysis found was not what she expected. It was in the numbers she had been sending for a decade.
Key Insight: The pricing problem was not about undercharging for time. It was about undercharging for judgment — the thing clients were actually hiring for, and the thing AI cannot replicate. Those are two very different problems with two very different solutions.
The episode does not resolve neatly. Vani reconfigures her rates, sends a proposal at a number higher than she has ever sent before, and sits with the discomfort of not knowing how it will land. That is where the episode ends — not with a success story, but with the honest account of what it feels like to act on information you would have preferred not to have. The three-question rate audit she shares inside the episode is the practical output of that discomfort.
Topics Covered
The specific pricing shift happening across creative industries right now and what is driving it
What Vani's AI audit revealed about where her real value had been sitting, unpriced, for years
The difference between pricing time and pricing judgment
A three-question audit you can run on your own rate card this week
Vani Aggarwal
Filmmaker, AI Strategist, Host of AI Made Me Do It
With 16+ years across six countries, Vani has directed for National Geographic India, Discovery Channel India, Fox Life, and India Today. She is an AI strategy consultant, ICF-certified executive coach, and the person who used AI to audit herself — and had to do something with what it found.
Website X Linkdin
16+
Years In Media
350k+
Course Learners
6
Countries Worked In
"I wasn't undercharging for my time. I was undercharging for my judgment. Those are very different problems."
- Vani Aggarwal
Resources Mentioned
Tools
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The pricing problem in this episode is not unique to solo creatives. Organizations that buy creative work are also repricing what they pay for — and most suppliers have not caught up. If you need to think through what your team’s work is worth in an AI-assisted market, that is a conversation I have regularly with consulting clients.
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PODCAST
Still sending the same
rate card you built
three years ago?
The market for creative work has shifted underneath most rate cards without anyone announcing it. This episode gives you a twenty-minute audit you can run on your own numbers this week.
Ask Your Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I listen to AI Made Me Do It?
New episodes publish every Tuesday on YouTube and Spotify. Subscribe on either platform to get them automatically.
Is this episode relevant if I work in-house rather than as a freelancer?
Yes. The pricing shift described in this episode affects how organizations value and budget for creative work internally too. If you lead a creative team or manage creative procurement, the dynamic is the same — the units of value are changing.
What is the three-question rate card audit Vani mentions?
A short self-assessment to identify whether your current rates reflect the parts of your work AI can do, the parts it cannot, and where your actual market value is sitting. Vani walks through each question inside the episode.
Does this episode give specific pricing numbers or recommendations?
No. The episode is about the structural logic of how creative work gets priced — not a prescriptive rate guide. The audit gives you a framework to apply to your own numbers.
How do I know if I'm undercharging for my judgment rather than my time?
That is the question the episode is built around. The short answer: if your rate is calculated in hours rather than outcomes, you are probably pricing the deliverable rather than the decision-making behind it. The episode explains the distinction in detail.
GET IN TOUCh
Is Your Rate Card Still Built For The Market That Existed Before AI?
Most are. If you are rethinking how your organization values and prices creative expertise in an AI-assisted environment, I work with teams and individuals on exactly this question.
Vani
Aggarwal
Whether you’re a studio executive looking for a fresh directorial voice, a brand in need of impactful
