Martyr Math
The Equation Keeping You Broke but Beloved
I want you to do something uncomfortable with me.
Think of the last time you quoted a price. Or almost did. Think of the number that floated up first — the real one, the one that reflected what the work actually costs you in time, energy, and years of hard-won expertise.
Now think of the number you actually said.
What happened in the space between those two numbers?
That space. That gap. That’s where Martyr Math lives.
And, I’m not immune.
Last year I decided to discount my bookkeeping rate to close more clients. Two hundred and fifty dollars off.
I told myself it was strategic.
Accessible.
The kind of move a generous business owner makes.
What I didn’t say out loud — what I barely let myself think — was that my team was still doing the same work for the same pay. Which meant that $250 didn’t disappear into the business. It came out of my pocket.
Every single time.
Martyr Math is the unconscious calculus where we subtract our worth before anyone asks us to.
It sounds like:
“They probably can’t afford that.”
“I don’t want to seem greedy.”
“I’ll just include that extra thing — it’s not a big deal.”
“If I charge less, more people can access it.”
“I’d rather have them than the money.”
It feels like generosity.
It functions like self-taxation.
That’s Martyr Math completing its circuit.
Broke.
Beloved.
Both true, and I’ve never met a values-driven business owner who hasn’t run some version of it.
Here’s what makes it so hard to stop.
Martyr Math pays.
Not in cash. In something older than cash, something the nervous system values more: belonging.
Safety.
The particular warmth of being the one people can always call. The identity of being generous, accessible, good — the healer who never makes it weird, the coach who always finds a way, the consultant who would never price someone out of transformation.
That’s the beloved part.
And it’s real.
The love is real.
The gratitude is real.
The sense of being needed, of mattering, of being woven into people’s lives in a way that feels irreplaceable — that’s real too.
The extraction economy didn’t have to force anything. It just had to make sure the payment for your compliance felt like enough.
And for a long time, for most of us, it did.
Then the body started sharing the score. The resentment arrives — quiet, acrid, shameful — in the middle of a session you’ve discounted. Restless nights. Looking at your bank account and feeling not just broke but bewildered, because you work so very hard, you care so very much, and you are genuinely beloved by the people you serve.
And somehow the math still doesn’t add up.
Here’s the actual equation your business has been running:
Your real rate minus what you imagine they can bear minus the guilt discount minus the “I want them to like me” reduction minus the “I don’t want to seem too big for my britches” adjustment = what you actually charge.
And we wonder why our bank accounts or our take-home pay never seem to reflect the work.
Martyr Math shows up in your pricing.
It shows up in scope creep — the extra sessions, the late replies, the “of course I can just add that.”
It shows up when you give a discount to someone who never asked for one, because you decided their financial situation before they ever opened their mouth.
It shows up in the late nights and the cold dinners.
On the birthdays you were present at but not really there for.
On the Sunday mornings you spend doing the work you gave away for free on Friday.
It shows up, most insidiously, in the silence between what you meant to charge and what you invoice.
Here is what I want to name clearly, because the confusion about this is costing you:
This is not a mindset problem.
It’s not a confidence issue you can affirmation your way out of.
It’s not a visibility wound you need another coach to heal before you’re allowed to charge what your work commands and your desired lifestyle requires.
Martyr Math is a math problem. And the math is wrong.
Written early and rewritten rarely, it has stopped feeling like a story and started feeling like a fact.
It feels like wisdom.
Like humility.
Like being the kind of person who doesn’t make it about money.
But it was always about the money. The equation just convinced you that desiring more is greedy. Selfish. Beneath you.
The real question isn’t why you do it. Yesterday we named the architecture — the system that found your values and put them to work for free.
Today the question is: what does the corrected math actually look like?
Here it is:
Your sustainable rate × aligned clients × clean boundaries = Sovereign Profits™
Same number of people served. Same devotion. Same quality of work.
You don’t collapse at the end of it.
That’s the whole equation.
Not just a bigger number.
Not just a bolder ask.
A clean one.
An honest one.
A rate that doesn’t require you to disappear inside it or deplete because of it (and, let's be honest, it’s likely to be both bigger and bolder, but for the right reasons).
The people you’re meant to co-create a better world with don’t love you because you’re cheap.
They love you because you’re you.
Period.
Fullstop.
The rate doesn’t change that. It just changes who’s in the room.
The move this week — the one concrete thing:
Name the gap.
Not to feel bad about it. Not to audit yourself into shame. Just to see it.
Pull up the last three invoices you sent. Find the number you almost charged. Write it down. Then write the number you actually charged. Then sit with what’s in the space between them.
That number has a name now.
And what can be named can be changed.
Reflection Questions
What is the gap between your real rate and what you typically charge? Calculate it. Name it.
Where have you added scope without adjusting the price — and what is it costing your body?
If Martyr Math is a tax, who has been collecting it?
Daily Affirmations
I require pricing that reflects the full weight of what I know and what I’ve lived.
I desire clients who eagerly say yes to a number that honors the fullness of my work.
I deserve clean exchanges, sovereign agreements, and accounts that reflect my actual work.
I require the gap between what I mean to charge and what I invoice to close — now and forever.
I am the standard. I set the rate. The right people rise to meet it.
Tomorrow we sit in the hinge — the place where Martyr Math meets your nervous system, your generosity, and your deepest beliefs about who deserves to be resourced. It’s the piece I think about most often. I’ll meet you there.
PS. Profit is Protest and so is refusing to discount yourself before anyone asked you to. The gap between your real rate and the one you spoke out loud is not humility. It’s the extraction economy’s most reliable revenue stream.
Name it once — really name it — and it loses its invisibility. And what can’t hide can’t collect.
Come into the room where the math actually changes.