I’m writing this in voice, as a California provider who finally stopped apologizing for her rates last year. I’m telling the story because I think a lot of providers are in the version of where I was, and the shift is worth describing.
For years, I priced my program slightly below what I knew it actually cost to deliver. I framed it to myself as accessibility. I framed it to families as fairness. What it actually was, in hindsight, was discomfort. I was uncomfortable charging real money for the value I knew we were providing, so I quietly subsidized every family’s care with my own labor, my own savings, and eventually my own health.
I told myself I’d raise rates next year. Next year arrived. I didn’t raise them. Next year arrived again. I still didn’t. Every fall, I’d run the math, see that I was barely breaking even, and convince myself that raising rates would lose families. Better to keep the families I had, I’d think, than risk losing them over a small increase. So I absorbed another year. And another.
The thing that finally shifted me wasn’t a financial crisis. It was a conversation with a peer. Another small-center owner. We were comparing notes over coffee. She mentioned her rates, casually, in passing. They were 15% higher than mine.
I knew her program. I knew it well. It was good. It was not 15% better than mine. The only thing that was different was that she had been willing to charge what her program was worth, and I had not.
I went home and looked at my P&L for the past three years. I added a hypothetical owner salary at market rate. The result: I had been operating at a loss for three years. The ‘profitability’ I felt was actually me subsidizing my own business with my unpaid labor.
I sat with that for a few days. Then I made a plan.
I raised rates on new enrollments first. A 12% increase, communicated honestly. I lost two tours. I gained three new enrollments at the new rate within the next two months. Existing families weren’t affected. The math began to move.
Six months later, I raised rates on existing families with 90 days of notice. I sent a real letter. I named the costs. I acknowledged the load on families. I offered a private conversation for anyone in real hardship. Two families left over the next quarter. Three families thanked me for the transparency.
Within a year, my margins were healthy. I was paying myself a real salary. I had built a 60-day reserve for the first time. The team felt steadier because the business felt steadier.
What I learned
Apologizing for rates was not respect. It was discomfort dressed as ethics.
The families who chose me at the right rate were more durable than the families who chose me at a discount.
The discount I had been giving silently for years was costing me — not just money, but my own well-being and my team’s stability.
The transparency of stating real costs honored my families. Many of them had assumed childcare margins were comfortable. Telling them the truth built more trust than vagueness ever had.
Stopping apologizing didn’t mean being callous. I’m still warm. I’m still flexible in real hardship. I still have a small scholarship fund. But the baseline price is honest, and my business is sustainable.
If you’ve been carrying your families on your own back for years, you’re not alone, and you’re not wrong to consider stopping. The math is honest. Most of your families will be fine. The ones who aren’t will let you know, and you can decide what to do for them privately.
Stop apologizing for your rates. Your program is worth what it costs.