S22EP07: Why your coaching fees are too low and how to raise them

And what I know about success is that on the other side of it, it can be incredibly lonely. You can feel more of an imposter the more successful you become. And when you're the most interesting person in the room, You're actually in the wrong room. Clients who are more successful, more intelligent, and wealthy. need your support more than they know and more than you can imagine. I coach around insight. Life looks one way. Something happens.

And the world looks different and your entire world changes. It can happen in an instant. And this podcast is called One Insight, because a single insight can change everything.

And I used to call myself an accident. I didn't mean to be a coach. I didn't plan to be a coach. I wasn't intending to be a coach. I had trained in coaching skills because I was training to be a vice principal. But when I lost my job, I had an insight. Actually on a beach, but I had an insight. This thing called coaching. I love it.

I love this thing called coaching. I sit and I talk to people and their lives change. Anyone got that feeling? Anyone know that feeling from the inside out? This is incredible. And then I had the realization, people will pay me for this and that blew my mind. Anyone still astonished they get paid to do what they love and change people's lives in the process? It blows my mind and I love it.

And I've been doing it now for seventeen years. Fifteen of which I've been getting paid for. Not much in the first fifteen, in the first couple of years. The first year I coached, I got paid four and a half thousand dollars. That's all I made. But you know what? I was thrilled to make four and a half thousand dollars. 'Cause I was no longer working in an organization and I no longer had a boss and I didn't have to follow the rules of how things were done. I got to make it up.

I knew I wanted to make more. I didn't have a clue how. I only made seventeen thousand in my second year of coaching. I knew I wanted to make more and I'd begun to find out how. Because I met a man who became a friend of mine. We ended up writing a book together called The Prosperous Coach.

You know what? There's a line in that book where I say 80% of coaches are making$20,000 a year or less. Well, I wrote that book about 10 years ago. And I think the numbers have got worse since then. There are more and more coaches, but there are more and more struggling coaches. There isn't a word in the English language for the opposite of needy. Needlessness doesn't exist. The closest I've ever found for the opposite of needy is prosperous.

And everything I do is designed to help my clients become more prosperous and their clients become more prosperous. And that's not only about money. A prosperous life means you have a healthy life. It means you have a life where you get to do the things that you love. You get to make a difference. And if money is important to you, you get to make money along the way.

Well, welcome to this session. In this session, I said I'm gonna talk about high fees, how and why to charge high fees as a coach. Why your coaching fees are too low? If you see me smiling, it's because I can hear my wife outside with the puppy and she's she's jumping around with the puppy.

Here's my real life. I came home two days ago. I just picked the kids up from school. I did a day of coaching. Had to go and pick up the kids from school. Got back home to my wife saying, I see you, Bobby, with the kids in the back. Uh to my wife saying Oh my God, there's there's there's an emergency. And the puppy's tail has got cut.

One of the kids actually had closed the door on a puppy and the tail got cut at the end. Well, what do puppies do? They wave their tail around. So now blood is coming out of the tail and it's being flicked all around the house. So I come home to a murder scene. There's blood all over the house, all over the outside.

And then I had to spend three hours at the veterinos. I've never had a dog before. I didn't even know what to do. I call up the vet, and luckily her voicemail says, if you have an emergency, call this number. That's my life. Welcome to my life. It's a very real life.

Why are your coaching fees too low? Before I tell you why your fees are too low, I want to tell you something else. I want to tell you what happens when you start to charge high fees. By the way, you don't have to. I'm not telling you to do this. Some people don't want to charge high fees. Some people want to have their coaching be accessible to anyone at any price. That's okay if that's your game.

I'm gonna tell you the difference that high fees will make in a moment. But if that's not the game you want to play, I'm not telling you you have to play that game. And I'm guessing you're here because there's a feeling inside of you that you're not charging enough. Anyone have that feeling right now that you that there's there's something inside of you says that you should be charging more. Yeah. I see that nod, Dave. It didn't hand go up, but I I caught the nod, right? Yeah. So

Here's what high fees do. They help you filter for clients who are more focused, who take action quickly, and who are committed to their long-term success. Money's not the only filter for that, but it is a great filter. When clients invest significantly in their coaching, they show up more powerfully, they take more action and they're more committed to what they want to make happen in the future.

Here's something else Higher Fees does. Higher Fees allows you to work with a handful of great clients, people you love to work with. I've said for years, stop looking for clients who you can inspire and look for clients who inspire you. That's one of the things that happens when you charge more for your clients. Here's the cool thing about having high fee clients. It means you get to do this work over here where you're paid well for what you do.

Draws the clients in too, has them show up powerfully. But then it frees you up over here to do all sorts of other things, to serve on boards, to support nonprofits, to raise money for charity, to give back. To create free opportunities for clients to work with you who couldn't afford to. You can do all those things when you have a handful of clients who pay a lot to work with you.

And higher fees allow you to help your clients whilst creating a great lifestyle for you and your family. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's quite okay.

And then there's a little sense of resentment inside of you. Either resentment of yourself because you wish you'd ask for a bigger number, or a little bit of resentment of the person who paid because you know they could have afforded more. You want that resentment feeling sometimes? You sign a client and a moment later that little sense of creeping resentment comes up. Here's a clue that your fees are too high.

If everyone questions it and everyone balks at it and no one says, Yes, maybe your fees are too high. Anyone got that one going on at the moment? It's a quality problem. Anyone feel that one right now? Too many people are being are turned away. Not so many of you. Okay. You did you great stuff, man. That's good. Interesting problem to have. That's great.

Four main reasons that your fees are too low. If you see my eyes going off site, I've got my notes in front of me. So I want to I'm trying to be present with you and make sure I cover this important stuff. Number one, a lack of professional self esteem. It's the biggest thing holding coaches back the most. They don't believe in themselves enough. They've they they've forgotten that the track record of success they had in another career.

is directly relatable to this world of coaching. They think of themselves as beginner coaches, new coaches, baby coaches. They dismiss everything they've done before. This lack of professional self-esteem. Who knows the truth of that one going on? There's a little part of me that doesn't believe in myself enough.

It's a big one. Yeah, thanks for being honest. I know it took a while for some of you to put your hands up. Yeah, it's a key one. We have to mess with that one. A lack of professional self-esteem.

I might sound like I'm confident in this moment, but I've been honing this skill set for a long time now. But for most of my life, including most of childhood definitely, most of my adulthood too, I lacked confidence. So when I started coaching, I was fa I was I spent two years studying confidence. People said to me, you can't brand around confidence as an abstraction. I didn't care about a brand. I was fascinated by confidence because I'd lacked it for most of my life.

I think that confidenceguy.com is still a live URL, but it it goes to richlitvin.com. I keep it for for for memory's sake.

I know I could serve them, but I'd be too nervous. I'd actually be too nervous. If you sent an amazing client like that to me, I'd actually be too nervous. I might even say no and turn them away. Give me give me a wave if you know that. Yeah, it's that lack of confidence, right? And the last one, lack of confidence around money. How many of you know this one? Feel great when money comes in?

Couple of months of good months, it feels good, your income's high, s slow month, and suddenly you start to feel terrified, all the money's gonna run out. Anyone know that? That journey of confidence, of of cash, this emotional roller coaster? Yeah. By the way, I there's a scorecard I created about this. You can do it now, I'll do it later, but um probably do it later. If you don't if you go to rich litvin.com forward slash scorecard, if someone on my team could put a link into the chat.

That scorecard will take you through those elements of confidence in in your professional self-esteem, client creating clients, uh, serving clients, and even ki creating cash. At some point you can do that. But let me keep going.

Four reasons your fees are too low. One is confidence, right? Lack of professional self-esteem. Two, you're afraid of losing clients. You'd rather get someone who doesn't pay you very much and secretly resent it. than the fear of somebody saying no because your fee was higher. Number three, you don't really believe in the value of coaching.

Most coaches who are struggling have never invested in their own coach. Or they've never invested more money than they feel comfortable to spend in their own coach. Or here's one I see a lot. They've hired one coach and it didn't work out for them. And so they kind of secretly think, well, I paid a lot of money for a coaching and it wasn't any good. So I don't really believe in it. And I'm never going to invest in it again myself. Well, you carry that energy out into the world.

So what one coach didn't work out for you? Then try another. That's your learning. That's your investment. That's how you work out whether this coach is right for you or not. You can have coaches who are great and coaches who are not great. Never had a personal trainer? I have many over the years. Some I loved, some I didn't love. I got to turn on my AC. Sorry, I'm I'm sweating. Like I'm on fire right now. This is important stuff, you guys. So I'm I'm I'm I'm feeling it over here.

Yeah. Y one of the reasons you don't charge high fees'cause you don't believe in this thing called coaching. Okay, here's a secret question for you to answer. Imagine nobody can see you raise your hand on this one. In fact, don't even raise your hand. Just raise one finger. Anybody secretly believe this thing called coaching is a pyramid scheme. It's a scam. It doesn't really work. I'm not even sure I should be in this thing. I don't even know if I believe in it.

I don't even want to invest in it myself. Anyone wanna raise a finger and say that that there's that secret thought in the back of their mind? They don't even believe in this thing. Is it this whole thing a scam? Yeah, you're not alone. I get it. We this is an apprentice-based profession, you guys. It's an apprentice-based profession. If you haven't experienced powerful coaching, investing in it, no wonder you don't believe in it. No wonder you can't raise your fate, raise your fees.

And the fourth reason your fees are too low is you're trying to serve the wrong people. You're trying to help people who are not ready for coaching or people who are not action takers or you're trying to save people. How many of you know this? Like that's what your mission is. I want to save people. It feels really good if I can save people. Heidi Jean, I see you. Yeah. Here's the thing. Let me tell you, there's something called the uh the story triangle.

Every great writer and understands the the story triangle. Uh um showrunners in the T V shows and movies It's the villain, the victim, and the hero. Same dynamic in every single movie and TV show. The villain, the victim, and the hero. There's three parts to this triangle. If you're the hero, then who are you going to attract? Victims People who are struggling people who who who are desperate for help.

There's a place for that. I help people all the time like that when needed, but I don't bring them in as clients. Those aren't healthy clients. If you're in that mode, there are other things that can help you. If you're a coach who slips into hero mode, let me save the day. Then heroes attract victims. And that's one of the other reasons you're gonna struggle to raise your fees.

I have a request for you guys. Get present to this conversation. Be present here right now. These distinctions might change your life. If you're committed to being prosperous in what you do, then pay attention. I'm not doing this for the fun of it. I'm doing this because it makes a difference to coaches' lives. And if it makes a difference to your life, you can go and make a difference to somebody else's life.

But get present to what is right now. And what is right now is a bunch of distinctions that could shift your life. And if it does, it will shift the life of your clients. So stay present to this. If it will serve you to put something in the chat. Then that's okay. But stop trying to create value for somebody else or connect with somebody else for this moment in time. For this moment in time, stay present. Listen for insight.

I don't share this to give you information. If you want information, read my blog. Sign up for my newsletter. I write two long form articles a week. One I wrote this week was three and a half thousand words. Here, right now, I'm sharing distinctions and later I'll share tools. And if you pay attention, any one of them could change your world as a coach.

This is important. It really is. Because as coaches, we make a difference to the planet. And if you're enrolling clients who are in victim mode, who are not ready to pay fees, who are not ready to invest in their coaching, are not willing to take action, then you can't make the difference you want to make. Stop trying to increase your fees and start by increasing your value. That's the mistake we make. So whilst I'm talking about creating high fees, you've got to start by creating more value.

I want to create value for you on something you're not even paying for. How are you creating value for your clients before they even become a client? Here, I'll give you a bunch of ways you can create value for clients and potential clients. For clients, make surprise calls. Hey, checking in. How are you doing? Send surprise text messages. And avoid how's life? Say, how did that conversation go with your senior vice president?

What did your board of directors make of your proposal? How's the relationship with your child after you got that insight on a last call? Get really specific. Send an article to a client, send a book to a client, but never just: here's a great article, here's a great book.

But if you send me a book and you say, hey, read this paragraph, I promise you I'll read it.

That's creating value. That's client astonishment. If you normally meet over Zoom and you feel comfortable with COVID shifting, then invite them to meet you in person. Meet me at a restaurant, meet me at a hotel. Let's go for a walk in nature. They live thousands of miles from you? Who cares? Invite them anyway. I just invited a client to meet me.

He he lives on the other side of the United States. He said I'd love to. And he flew across here and spent three days with me. I didn't charge him anything extra for that. It's client astonishment. How can you crease the value of your the work that you do so that you know, my God, are they getting value from what we do?

Meet them in an unusual place. I've I've coached clients in a graveyard, one of the most powerful places I've ever coached a client. Meet them on the beach. Even if you don't want to meet them in person, you're not ready yet, tell them, hey, for our next call, we're gonna both meet in a graveyard.

Tell me the one you're gonna be in, and I'll tell you the one I'm gonna be in. We're gonna both meet on the beach. It won't be in person'cause we live three thousand miles apart. What beach will you be at? Here's the beach I'll be at. You do 30-minute calls, tell them, hey, next time, next week, we've got an hour-long call. You run hour-long calls, hey, next week, we're gonna run for 90 minutes. Create more value, astonish them.

Here's a great one. Serve two layers deep. Ask your client to tell you What's the biggest problem that your client or your customers or your team or your board of directors or your boss is facing right now? Let's solve their problem. Serve two layers deep. That one is a fantastic way to create value for your client because not only do you go have a great coaching session, they go and do something that has an immediate impact on someone they work with.

If you want to really serve two layers deep, after that session, you can say to them, hey, would you like me to come and do something with your senior team? Hey, would you like me to come and be an observer as you do run the next board meeting? And offer a way to even create even more value.

You'd be my guest. You'd be part of that. What happens when you do that? One, you astonish the current clients by creating even more value for them. But two, you put them with your other clients who start to say, oh, what's it like to work with them one-on-one? And it's what I call advocate marketing. You don't have to do anything. They're just gonna ask. And you create enough value for those one-on-one clients, they'll tell other people about you.

If you want to create improve your client creation skills, A do the scorecard I mentioned earlier, richlipvin.com forward slash scorecard to identify where you need to improve them. B make sure you've read the Prosperous Coach. Oh, there's a few of you got partners on the seat next next to you. Hello Jen and your partner. Okay. So how do you raise your fees? Well, number one, raise your value before your fees. Here's the thing, you guys, clients don't buy coaching, they buy better lives.

They don't buy coaching. Stop trying to sell your coaching. They buy better lives. Focus on value first. So you know, oh, I create value here. Here here's a here's a quick thought for you. I I this is a new idea I've had in the last few months. Because a number of my clients who are in Transition Excellence and Project Kairos who are working with me. Um I might take questions later, you guys, not in this moment. Thanks. Um, who are working with me are They're joining coaching organizations.

There there are a lot of coaching organizations right now that will hire you out to C suite um in in big corporations. You'll be paid$100,$150 an hour, not very much. They'll bill you out of$500 or more. But what it does for you is it allows you to build the confidence that you can coach really extraordinary people.

So it's really worth considering. Whilst whilst I want to help you to be prosperous coaches who can build a business on your own, for some of you, it's r not a bad step to consider working for an organization like that, even part-time. Because it builds that confidence. Huh. I can coach anyone. I've spent six months, nine months working with people in C suite, senior vice presidents, senior team, leadership. I know I can do that. Anyone work for an organization like that right now?

Give me a wave of hands. Yeah, Duncan does, Mats does. Okay, great. That's great that you do. Um, Aries, too. Worth considering for some of you. Cause you've got to build that confidence that, oh yeah, I know I can coach you. Oh, you too, Freddie. That's great.

Th there's a there's a small number of high-level professionals who charge by the hour. And as soon as you start to get over about$100 an hour, people start to bulk out the charge. I remember I was seeing my um a chiropractor. And it was like a hundred and twenty an hour, a hundred and fifty, I forget what it was now.

It started sounding expensive for me. And I had to really reframe it in my mind because I know that value-based fee, I wasn't paying him for the time I spent on his table. When he took the paint out of my back, that was priceless. When you move away from an hourly way of charging, things really change. When you charge by the project, hey, work with me for five months, work with me for a hundred days, work with me for a year, and you coach by a time frame. This is how I work.

Never create a nice round number. So never offer six months of coaching for six thousand dollars at four sessions, because they can divide it all very neatly and go, oh, this is X amount per hour. It's always great to put a it's five thousand four hundred and thirty dollars. for six months of coaching and there are three calls a month. And and then it seems like there's there's a strategy behind that number. Numbers are always made up, but it seems like there's a strategy.

Um I have a a way to work with me, I call a thinking partnership. It's five months of coaching. It's just two calls a month and they're only 30 minutes. Because I work with high performers, people who take action quickly. It's it's a project-based program. People come on there for this relatively short period of time. I have another way that people work with me. It's it's it's by retainer. It's a concierge trusted advisor role.

Basically it's like a I uh oh I I have a concierge medical practice that I use. I pay Significant money once a year to go and have all the MRIs and stuff and scans done. And then those doctors are there for me if I need them during the rest of the year. And I'm hoping I won't need them.

hundred days. And then by retainer, the high end, what I call a thousand dollar cheeseburger, the high-end item on your menu. This we work for a year and we have what I call virtually unlimited coaching.

They're doing big things out in the world. If you charge very little for your coaching and you offer anyone can call you at any time, they're gonna be calling you all the time. If you attract people who are in victim mode, they'll be constantly calling you. So filter that out.

Lisa says, how much should one hour be? Interesting. I'll come to that in a moment. What your number should be. Here are three strategies you can use to raise your coaching fees. Anyone interested after this conversation to raise their fees?

Double it. Double it. If you're charging$100 an hour because you're still an hourly rate, double it. Make it$200. If you're charging uh$3,000 for a five-month package, double it. Double your resentment rate. And that's your price. That's strategy number one. Number two, charge 20% more than you feel comfortable to ask for. Whatever you're charging right now, just increase it by 20%. Number three. Alternate.

Charge your normal rate for the next person. But the person after that, charge your new number, whether it's 20% more or double. Whatever it is, charge more. And then go back to your normal rate. It's okay to do that. You don't have to charge the same amount for everyone who shows up.

Number three, uh alternate. New price, old price, new price, old price. Number three, uh, or four, I've lost it now, make something up. And and the last one, by the way, this is the most challenging one, just double your rate. Forget doubling your resentment, right? Double your rights.

Here's something I have noticed, I would say hundreds of times now over the years, and I've given this challenge to coaches. They get terrified. Anyone terrified at the thought of doubling their rate? Anyone scary? Feeling scared about doing that? Yeah. Here's the first insight for you. If you double your rates, you can afford to get twice as many no's. You only need half as many people. That's the first thing. You only need half as many people.

Every time I give this challenge to coaches and they take it on, they come back to me surprised at how quickly somebody pays the new rate. So if you take nothing else from this call today, go and experiment with doubling your rates. Now you've got to be in this for the long haul. You can't come back to me tomorrow and say, hey, I doubled my rate, didn't get somebody to sign up.

You've got to be in it for the long haul because you've got to build that professional self-esteem. You've got to know that you can create, you can serve somebody. You've got to be in the long haul because you've got to know I create value every time I do this. But double your rates. I think you'll be surprised at what happens.

Uh when you're talking to a potential client, find out what are their fears, their doubts, their insecurities and what they're afraid of. That's really important. And then find out their vision, their dream, what they want to create. Both of them are really key. So it's not one or the other, it's it's both.

You've got to experiment. Here's one of the one of the main reasons I'm more successful than most coaches I know. I have struggled and failed more times than you realize. On a regular basis, I am constantly making mistakes, screwing things up, having things not work. You see the things that do. That's why you're here.

And I try my best to talk about the things that don't. I try if you go back through my newsletters, you see I try and be really frank about that stuff. But most people don't see it from the outside. They put me on some kind of pedestal. When my dad passed away, I had nine months where I had no energy to create new clients. I I could serve my current clients. There's something called helpers high. When you're feeling down, it can be really good to help somebody else.

But but when my dad passed, I I could do nothing to create clients in that moment. I had nine months, my income went down, my savings went down, and then I got back into action again. A few years ago, I had a$300,000 tax bill. It's a quality problem. I'd made a great deal of money that year, but I I hadn't I wasn't ready for it. It took me years to pay that tax bill off.

I've had all sorts of struggles, but I'm in it for the long haul. It's the one thing I've got that I'm not quitting this career. I'm in it. There have been times I've done things I didn't want to do, like helping other people to build their businesses, because I didn't have the clients coming in, but I'm in it for the long haul. Uh Dr. Kathy Knight says

What do you have for those of us who are new coaches? Um I'm glad you put new new coaches and inverted commas in quotes because what I try to do constantly is to help coaches realize you're not a new coach. Unless there's somebody here who's 21, who's just left university and and then got a degree in coaching, um, in which case I would be recommending to you go and live a life first.

But it doesn't look like that's my audience here. So you've been coaching your entire life. You've been leading, you've been doing all sorts of things your entire life. Coaching's just a n it's j it's n it's not a title. It's a tool.

So I'm glad you caught that, Kathy. What I recommend as a pricing model, I recommend you have three options on your menu. A significant period of time someone can work with you, either a shorter period of time or a group coaching. A and and a one-off session. Let me give you an example. Um let's say for Kathy, uh three ways you can work with Kathy. You can work with Kathy for

Five months of coaching. You can work with Kathy for a hundred days, or you can do a a pick my brain session with Kathy, a think tank, like someone said in the chat. That's it. That's the if someone says, how do I work with you, Kathy? Well, here are the three ways people usually work with me. Some people want five months of coaching. They really want to be in it for the long haul to rec make real shifts in their life.

Some people don't need that. They want fast action, a hundred days to get things happening quickly. Some people don't even need that. This session you had with me today that I did you know, you don't charge for that in the Prosperous Coach model. Well, we can do another one of those. If you want to do that again, we block out three hours and and we do a deep coaching session, but a one off single for three hours.

And and what do you charge for that? That's up to you. Uh um you g you gotta make up your own numbers. It always wants to I'll I'll give I'll throw some numbers out for you, Kathy. Make the smallest option the most expensive per hour. So let's say it's uh $700 for a three hour session for a a newer coach, maybe that feels a bit edgy, maybe it's too low, too high, but you work out your own number. If that's 700, then for a hundred days, then maybe it's Seventeen hundred.

And now it's like a no brainer for me. Wow. I could spend seven hundred for a three hour session with you or do a hundred days for just seventeen hundred, it's a no brainer. And then if it's five months, I don't know, maybe that's four thousand. You guys got to play with this, it's all made up, but that gives you kind of the the framework for how you might do that. All right, let me look at your insights.

Annalina wants to double her rates. Maya wants to double her prices. Gia's gonna revise her models for coaching. That's great. Pam's gonna review her resentment rate. Said wants to concentrate on creating more and more value. Great.

Uh Gemma said, how do you put a price against your coaching when you're right at the start and never charge for coaching? Gemma, you make it up. That's all I can say. You make it up. And and if you're a beginner coach, it people tend to price against other beginner coaches. However, be cautious on that one, because you don't have to.

You guys know the story about Picasso? He's sitting at a cafe, and a woman comes over to him and sees him doodling on a on a on the back of an envelope and she says, Wow, that's beautiful. Would you do that for me? He says, Sure. He does one of his Picasso doodles on the back of a napkin. She says, thanks. He says, yeah, that would be ten thousand dollars. She says, what? That took you two minutes. And he looks her in the eyes and says, Madam, that took me my entire life.

This is what you have to realize. People are not paying you by the hour. They're not paying you a little amount of money because you're a beginner coach. Get out of that mindset. You're paying there because the value you create. The way you're gonna change their lives. Hazel says coaching is becoming commoditized, lots of coaching companies, coach hub, better up, et cetera. There you pay about 60 pounds for 45 minutes.

What are your thoughts on standing out and having a sustainable coaching business? Well, yeah, you can't create a business on 60 pounds an hour. They can because they're scaling. They're massive. You can't do that. And you cannot compare yourself to them. If someone comes on a conversation with you and says, Hey, look, I was thinking of working with you, but I can go on better up and there's an app and I can get a coach.

I would say, you know what? I could also put you in touch with a bunch of people from my coach training school who have no experience whatsoever who'd coach you for free. You're not paying for by the hour. You're paying for the value that I create. And af after this ninety minutes we've spent together, only you know. If you want to invest more. If you do, this is what I charge.

I work with one client a year. That makes you really intriguing. That's how you do it. One single client at a time, Marilyn. And if you fill that client and by the way, block out Thursday evenings. This is where you practice the prosperous coach approach. Fill Thursday evenings into the future with serving potential clients. When somebody signs up, that's the spot they get. And if you'll have more space, oh well, I coach on Saturday mornings at 10 a.m. And now I work with two clients a year.

If it's$700 to work with you for a you know two or three hour session, but I can do coaching week after week for for a few months with you, and it's it's less than double the the amount, it's a no-brainer. Why do two of these sessions when I could get all of these? You're drawing them in this direction.

When I'm your friend, we sit in the pub. You tell me about your problems, I tell you about mine. You tell me about your problems, I try and solve them, and you try and solve my problems, because I'm really good at solving other people's problems and vice versa. And that is not the same as coaching. When you walk into my office, when you sit opposite me on a Zoom call, I am a coach. I'm gonna say things to you that make you feel uncomfortable. Hell, I'm gonna say

Things that make me feel uncomfortable. If you're not ready for that, don't say yes to this coaching session. If you're my friend and I'm going to coach you, it's absolutely confidential, which means when I meet you at the pub, I will never say, how's that thing going that we talked about? I'll never mention it. I'll never mention it to any of our other friends. If you want to tell them that's your call,

I will not mention it or talk about it. Do you see the boundaries I create around that? They are so powerful. I've coached a number of friends who've paid me. I had a paid coaching client, a friend. who didn't show up two two weeks in a row was late and then he didn't show up for a call, said we need to have a conversation.

And I said, you know, you're my friend, so I let it slide and I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that. I would never let it slide for anybody else. I'd ask them, what's going on? How are you not showing up for something you're invested in? You say you're invested in. If we had a great conversation, I said, look, if you do this again, let's call this a let's say it's done. Let's say we're complete with the coaching.

He didn't show up for the next call. I called him and said, Hey, I'm gonna fire you as my client. Now you have a choice. We said at the beginning, we both agreed that our friendship was more important than the coaching. And if it's so, that's true for me. I'm not firing you because I resent you, because I'm upset with you, but because this is how I coach powerfully.

And I hope you're able to see it that way. But I'm willing to show up as your coach because that's what these sessions are about. And our friendship wasn't impacted in the slightest. And I fired him as a client and haven't coached him since.

How would it feel if you talk to someone you're interested to work with? coach, a therapist, an attorney. And later you heard them talking about, ooh, I was talking to Monica today, talking to Elena, and she's my one of my prospects, and she's in my funnel. It doesn't feel good to hear that. So I don't use that language internally with my team or externally too.

We we we call it the client journey. I have people who come onto the client journey with me. Some of them, like you guys, come to a masterclass. You don't pay a penny. Some people go from a masterclass to different ways that they pay to work with me. Some people pay a lot of money to be a one-on-one client of mine. They're in my client journey.

The Prosperous Coach approach and anyone who's not familiar with that has just jumped on this as they thinking it's an interesting masterclass. You've got to read the Prosperous Coach or watch my videos to see what I'm talking about. But the Prosperous Coach approach Is about creating so much value for a potential client, serving them so powerfully that they don't at the end of that session go.

Do I want to work with this guy or not? Can I afford this or not? They go, oh my God, I want more of this. And if they don't have the resources to pay you in that moment, they get resourceful and they come back to you at some point into the future.

Who started to say their new number and then kind of either halfway through or before it came out, it was like the old number came out of your mouth. It's like, what's happening? And the old number comes out, couldn't get the new number out. First of all, why are you carrying fear around this stuff?

Why is the fear on your side? Let it be on their side. If it's scary to them to invest that much Sandy, what are you doing here, man? Hello, Sandy. I know Sandy for years. We first met with Steve Chandler years ago. I love you, man. Glad you're here. Um uh w let the fear be on their side. It's a hundred and eighty five thousand dollars to work with me one on one. Do you wanna know why I picked that number?'Cause I was reading an article about Richard Millet watches.

Richard Melee watches are gaudy, ostentatious, covered in diamonds. To me, they're horrific. I like simple watches. There are the average price I read was$185,000 for a watch. Some of them are sold into the millions. And I thought, oh my God, I'm charging too little for my coaching. So I said, that's it. It's$185,000 for my coaching.

I don't want many clients one-on-one. I don't even have a spot for a one-on-one coaching until 2023. That's the earliest you could work with me one-on-one. I made up a number. I don't have any fear around that. Well, okay. No, that's not true. Let me really be honest. I do. But when I read that article on that day and I said I'm going to charge$185,000, you guys can put your hands down, by the way. Um I was on a a a a client creation call that afternoon.

And somebody was interested to work with me. And he said, How do I how do I work with you? What does it look like? I said, There are three ways you can work with me. There's a concierge trusted advisor role where you can work with me for a year and that's$185,000. Basically, I'm there for you. Whatever you need, I support you.

You can do a thinking partnership. It's about four fifty grand. Or you can join uh Transitional Excellence or Project Kairos if you happen to be a coach and they have a different price point. And he said, I think I like the concierge trusted advisor role. How how much does that cost? And I I had that feeling. It was like, Excuse my French, oh fuck. I gotta say my number right now. I just knew it was a choice moment. And it I said it. This is a hundred and eighty five thousand.

He said, How much is the thinking partnership? I said, fifty thousand. Okay. Let me think about that. I said, take all the time you need. I got off the call and I thought, oh, I did it. See, this is the celebration. This is what you celebrate. It's not when they sign up. You celebrate when you say your number out loud. You celebrate when you get a no. You celebrate when you try and say your number and it comes out badly. That's what you celebrate.

I got an email later that day. Rich? No, no. It wasn't later that day. It was ten days later. For ten days I thought, oh. Clearly that was my practice. He was my practice. That was where I got to practice saying my number out loud. At least I said it. I'm now a hundred eighty five thousand dollar coach, even though no one's paid me yet. Someday they'll pay me. He wrote back to me and said, Hey Rich.

Based on what I'm up to and what you coach me on, I think I want both. I want the the concierge trust advisor role and the thinking partnership. Yeah, I I I it blew my mind as well. And I knew I'd served him. Now now look, you guys, just to put that in perspective, this is a man who's who's he built a healthcare business and sold it, made a lot of money in that first initiative, and now he's got a bigger initiative. And he knows that I really served him powerfully.

And so he wanted more, and we've been working together for almost a year now.

I can't promise it'll happen first time round. When I cit decided Years ago, in fact, I just saw Sandy. Sandy and me were in Steve Chandler's one of his first ever schools around how to uh uh build your practice. And I decided I wanted to charge twenty five thousand dollars a year. And I said it out loud. i said it out loud again i said it out loud again you know how long i said that number out loud for 11 months

No one paid me that money for 11 months, but I didn't stop saying it. I didn't stop leading with it. What does it cost to work with you, Rich? It's$25,000 a year to work with me. Nobody paid me. When the first person she she said at some point I served this woman and she said, I said, how much how much did it cost? I'd said 25,000. She said, how do I pay you? And on the inside I was going, oh my God. And on the outside, I said, send me a check.

I can't promise how long it will take you to get someone to say yes if you raise your fees. But I can promise you if you don't raise them, you're not going to get any more money than you get right now.

And after a while I noticed they were all signing up with Steve, but they'd all say, I really wanted to work with you, Rich, but I'm going to go and work with Steve. Cause here's what Steve did. Steve didn't have a number. He would say, Wendy, you know what you need? You need a hundred days. Let's do a hundred days of coaching three times a month.

And then he'd say, hey Monica, you know what you need? You need just a three hour session and then a follow-up of a single hour one month later and another one a month after that. And then he'd say, Dave, you know what? You need seven months of coaching, but just twice a month. And he would make up something different for everyone who showed up.

So they said yes, because it was appropriate to them. And then what blew my mind is they'd keep working with him and they'd spend more than twenty-five thousand dollars. And I realized, don't be too precious about your numbers. Don't try and be the$25,000 or whatever it is for you coach. Be the coach who creates value first. Serve people powerfully. Make up numbers because they're all made up. And be in this game for the long haul.

game of mastery. That's the game of creating clients. I will remind you if you go to richlipping.com forward slash scorecard, you can assess yourself in some of these confidences. And then you can see how that changes over time. Will you put into the chat? What's an action you're gonna take from being on this call, you guys? I'd love to know that before we complete.

What's one single action you're gonna take before we leave today? And if you're watching on the recording, write it down. What's one action you're gonna take before you turn off the recording? Because otherwise this is just information. Turn it into something real. And don't be abstract. I'm gonna raise my prices. What price are you gonna ask for? When are you gonna do it? The next person I speak to, I'm gonna share my new menu. There's something specific. Get really specific.

Here's my truth, I don't know. I've done both. I've put fees on a website, I've had no fees on a website. If there are no fees, they will get sticker shock. They'll get sticker shock. How much? So if you don't have your fees on your website, make sure that as you're talking to them in the enrollment call, tell stories.

Tell stories about uh, hey, I was working with so-and-so. They're invested in a three-month program. You know what? They spent$7,000 so far on their coaching. That's how committed they are. Uh tell stories about your coaching. Uh, you know what? I was working with my coach. I've been working with my coach now for two years. That's that's seven thousand dollar a year commitment. Tell those stories so that when you say your number

Suddenly i it's not like, oh my God, I never thought you're putting the into their mind these other fees. So so uh and and sometimes it's great to put numbers on a website too. So I I truthfully don't know about that one. I've done I've done both. Um thanks for saying that question. Great, some great insights, some great questions from you guys. Um thank you for sharing the actions you're gonna take. Look.

I'm in this for the long haul. And my mission right now, and I am on a mission, I want to help 10,000 coaches become prosperous. I've never said that before. This is the first you ever started saying that out loud. I I I'm done with needy, struggling coaches. I want to help coaches thrive because when we thrive, we help our clients to thrive. We help our clients to thrive. We change the world literally.

So thank you for what you do in this world, we call coaching you guys. You're doing great work. I honor you for doing it. Bye for now, gang. For most of human history, it wasn't called coaching. It was called leadership. And it's what I love to do. to coach people, to lead people and to mess with people's thinking. If you'd like more of this, or if you'd like to learn more about our community of extraordinary top performers, go to richlitvin.com forward slash one insight.