 When you're looking for coaches and mentors, you might encounter some people who are going to say, you need to pay me more or I charge high rates so that my clients take my work seriously so that you will take my work seriously so that you will really get results. I don't know if you've ever encountered that. I have and I got an email recently from one of my viewers who says, someone is trying to charge me 20,000 pounds to work with him one-to-one weekly sessions for a year so that the justification is if you pay for a cheap service you won't likely commit to change. So then this person was asking me, so should I charge more for my clients so that they will also be less distracted by other services and programs and that they will take the change more seriously? So let's talk about that in this video. I'm open to your thoughts. If you wanna add your questions and your comments below the video. So here I wanna first share my own history with this. When I first started doing business, back in 2009 I was selling large group programs for $2,000 a ticket. Yes, and why? Because I was being brainwashed by the marketing and business experts who were saying you gotta charge more so that people will take it seriously and if they don't like it they can always use the money back guarantee or whatever. So I'm like, okay, fine. I'll charge $2,000 just like they are. And I sold, people came into my program. Sometimes there were a few dozen people, sometimes a few hundred people per program, $2,000 per ticket. So now the question is did my students and clients take it seriously? Now I charge $150 a month for my group program. I charge $60 to $100 per course that I teach. And it's the same kind of engagement rate as I did before when I was charging $2,000 10 years ago. So the engagement rates have not gone up or down just because people pay more doesn't mean they will be more engaged. And in fact, some of my most dedicated students take my $5 books and they implement it fully. They take it seriously, $5 books that I sell. So based on my own experience, I have not taken, I have not seen that to be the case for my clients and my students. And me as a student and client of other people, when I have paid less or more, it hasn't changed how I engage with the work. So here's what I really recommend, okay? Because when people are saying you charge more in order to get your clients to take it seriously, it is true, okay? First of all, it is true that people will think twice about hiring you if your rates are that high. And so they have to take it more seriously. They have to take the decision more seriously. But once they make that decision and they start paying you, there's a weird psychological factor here, which is because they're paying so much, it's almost like they feel like they got a lot done. It's really strange. And you might have experienced the same thing. You pay for something and you feel like you got something done, like you have made some progress in solving your problem. So ironically, you might actually not do as much because you feel like you paid a lot. So hopefully the program will do the trick for you. Do you see what I mean? Oh, I paid so much for this, so it'll do it for me. Rather than I paid a little bit and I know that I have to put in the effort because I'm only paying a little bit here and I have to match it with my effort to get the results. It's interesting psychological dynamic. No matter what you paid, you feel like you made some progress just by paying for it, which you haven't. You have to put in your own efforts, right? So that's one point. But the other point is that the people who are teaching you to charge more, so the clients will be serious, is basically saying we don't know how to motivate our clients really, except for charging them more money. And do you really want to motivate your clients? Okay, so here's what happens. Let's say it worked. Let's say you charge clients more money and they feel like they have to put in the work because they're paying money. If they're not putting in the work, they will feel bad. That's the idea, right? Oh, if you don't pay all this money, if you don't put in the work, you're gonna feel bad and that feeling bad will get you to take action. Is that how we want to motivate our clients by making them feel bad? Are we not smarter than this? Can we not figure out a different way to motivate our clients than making them feel bad because they paid so much money for it? Come on, the real justification is not our clients were, the real justification is that we make more money. And that's what the coaches are doing who are saying, no, I'm charging you $20,000 to work with me because then you'll take it seriously. What they're not telling you is obviously it's super profitable for them if you're gonna pay so much money. And think about this. You're paying all this money to one person? To one person? Do you think that person is gonna change your life? Give me a break. I would rather you take the same $20,000 and pay it to 200 people. Then you have a lot more opportunities for who might change your life or pay it to 20 people, fine. Pay $2,000 each to 20 different coaches and mentors and see who changes your life the most. And please don't pay it all at once and please don't commit to paying $20,000 or even $10,000 or even $5,000 at once. I know some of you charge $5,000 packages and I apologize for saying this but I don't think anybody, I no longer believe in paying one time fees of thousands of dollars. I just don't think that's a smart business decision. Okay, so let's say, well, George, how much does it cost to work with you? Let me tell you how much it costs to work with me. If you were to work with me instead of charging you $20,000, here's what I would do. I would either have you sign up for my group coaching program which is $150 a month. Now the commitment is for one year but I'm not gonna, you know, people do occasionally drop out before the year and I'm not gonna force them to stay. I don't want anybody to stay who doesn't wanna stay, right? This is another dynamic that people don't think about is when you sign a contract with a coach, if you don't like the coach, you don't like how it's going, are they gonna sue you? Are they not gonna give you the money back? That's terrible. I don't want that dynamic among any of my clients. I don't wanna say, no, no, you paid so you better keep going. No, I'm not gonna give you any money back. You better keep going. That's a terrible way to motivate people. It's not a way to build a relationship with a client or to motivate them. I have smarter ways to motivate clients, okay? And when I put the blog post up as associated with this video later today, I will link to the blog post where I talk about motivational methods. So I've written about that already. But here's how much you would pay to work with me. My group coaching program is full at this time and it's usually full year after year but if you were to work with me one-to-one, here's what I would do. I would say, fine. Pay me my 50 minute session hourly rate of $200 but do that not every week, do that only once every two months. So think about this. What do you really need? What do you really need to move forward in your business when you're working with a coach or a mentor or a consultant? Here's what you really need, okay? You need number one, you need to know what you need to do so you need some knowledge, some steps. Okay, here's how you build a business. Here's how you do marketing. Here's how you run Facebook ads. Here's how you fill in the blank, whatever you need to learn how to do in your business you need to learn, you need some knowledge. Number two, you need some accountability to make sure you're doing it. And number three, you need some troubleshooting help. Oh, I tried following the steps based on the knowledge but I couldn't figure out how to do it for my type of business. I need some customization and troubleshooting. You need those three things and you may need to do some outsourcing. If you have some things that are too technical you need an assistant to do some technical things for you. Graphic design, Facebook ads, website, technical stuff, fine, great. So you need four things, knowledge, accountability, troubleshooting slash customization and maybe some assistant technical work. Four things. So here's how you would work with me. You would buy my courses. Let's say you bought all of my courses, $800. That's more than you can do in one sitting but let's just say you bought all my courses for $800, all of them, okay? That's only $800. That's not $20,000. All my courses for $800. Secondly, you would hire me to, you would hire me, you wouldn't even hire me for accountability. You would use focusmate.com for accountability. Okay, focusmate.com is free accountability. Soon they might charge $20 a month but that's, okay, another $240 a year. That's not that much, okay? Let's add it together. Now you're paying $1,000 for all the knowledge you need. I think that's all the knowledge you need plus accountability for $1,000 a year, okay? All right, you got knowledge and accountability set. The third thing you need is customization and troubleshooting. Personalizing the knowledge to your business and troubleshooting, hey, I tried this, it's not working, what should I do next? That we could simply do that once every two months as you're trying to apply the knowledge you can email me in between the sessions but let's say $200 every two months, okay? Or fine, $200 a month, let's even call it that. So that's $200 a month. So that's now you're attacking on $2,400 a year. So now you're paying $3,400 a year for all the knowledge, accountability and troubleshooting and customization and then you might need a technical assistant that do certain things here and there for you. Let's tag on another $600 a year. Maybe you wanna do another $1,600 a year. Now you're doing $5,000 a year for all the knowledge, accountability and if I don't have some knowledge that you need, I will give you the resources, somebody else, I will send you an article or a video that's free, okay? All the knowledge, accountability, troubleshooting, customization and assistance for $5,000 a year. You have just paid only $5,000 a year versus $20,000 a year or even $10,000 a year to work with many one-on-one coaches who won't even give you the technical skills or all the knowledge that you need. So I just don't get it. Some people, many of you may have already paid $10,000 or $20,000 to work with a business coach and I apologize for that. I really don't, I think you were not lied to because those business coaches are trying to make a living themselves and that's what they were taught. So that's what they know how to do but it is a waste of money. So back to what should you do with your own clients instead of charging them high rates to try to motivate them? Again, I'll give you the link. If you wanna look it up on my blog, it's called the Five Motivational Methods. So you can read about that. So you can find smarter ways. Use those five motivational methods and customize it to work with your own clients, okay? There's, you can just adapt that article to working with your own clients. So number one, use honest and better methods to motivate your clients, okay? Number two, charge based on enoughness and compassion because here's the other thing you'll discover. Pricing your rates, pricing your services and programs should not be, oh, some business coach said I should charge as much, no. It should be based on enoughness and compassion, okay? Enoughness, what do I need, okay? And you can't say, well, I'm going to only serve three clients and make all the money. It's not realistic, okay? So that's the other part of it, it's compassion. Compassion means what would my clients say, wow, that's a good deal. Your clients are probably shopping around a little bit and so they're seeing prices here and there. So they have a sense of what the prices should probably be and whatever you charge, can you charge a price based on what you offer, okay? So the value you give and the price, the balance of that, well, they say, wow, you are a really good deal, you are a really good deal. So that's the work you need to do to figure out your pricing based on your enoughness and based on compassion, which works in the market rate because the market rate is what they're aware of and they're like, wow, you are a really good deal based on the market, based on what you offer, based on your expertise, your experience level, okay? Based on your care, you offer a great rate compared to other people who are at your level of expertise and your level of care. Awesome, great. See, when clients feel so good about what they're paying you, they're gonna feel great about it and you're using smart motivational methods, honest ones to motivate them. And thirdly, right, I should say, when you charge a higher rate, you're going to get fewer inquiries. I experienced it myself. I've seen a lot of people experience this also. Try it out. You charge higher rates, you'll probably get fewer inquiries, okay? You charge lower rates, you'll get more inquiries. So the third thing, use honest motivational methods, number one, number two is charge based on enoughness and compassion. When I add my blog post later today after this video, there will be a link to my article about charging based on enoughness and compassion. And thirdly, you have to do enough marketing to get enough inquiries. And when you get enough inquiries, you will be able to say yes to the right people based on your exploratory call with them, your discovery call with them. You can say, you will learn over time which clients are better for you. Because here's another important element in all this. The right clients will already be naturally motivated. You don't need to charge them more. You will already want to solve the problem, you help them solve or achieve the goal you want to help them achieve. They will be motivated already. And then your motivational methods will just be an addition to their own existing motivation. So if you're not getting clients that are motivated, it's because you're not doing enough marketing, you're not doing enough authentic marketing, so you're getting the right people contacting you. That's the problem. It's not that you're not charging enough, you got it? So you've got to do enough authentic marketing to get enough inquiries from the right people so that you barely need to sell. I don't sell at all anymore. I mean, I'm honest and transparent with what I offer, but I don't try to sell anybody. I don't try to convince anybody or persuade anybody. No, if they're not motivated to work with me, I don't want to work with them. You know what I mean? So that's the kind of clients you want contacting you. People who are so motivated to work with you that you don't have to sell them at all. And if they're motivated to work with you, they want you to keep working with them, so they will have a natural motivation to work with you, no matter how low or higher prices are, okay? Number one, use honest motivational methods at work, which you don't have to do a lot if you have the right people. Number two, price based on enoughness and compassion, enoughness and compassion. And three, do enough authentic marketing so that the right people are contacting. So you don't have to persuade anybody. You don't have to try to motivate anybody barely. You can add your own motivational things that help, but they're already motivated, okay? So, and sometimes, by the way, sometimes the lack of motivation is not your domain of expertise. Sometimes you need to ask them to work with somebody else at the same time, some kind of accountability coach or some kind of more of a psychotherapist or some kind of life coach that is responsible for the motivation where you are responsible for your own expertise. If you're a health coach, right? If you are a nutritionist, if you are a relationship coach, if you work with people on the spiritual development, you don't have to, at the same time, be an expert accountability and motivational coach. They might have to work with somebody else at the same time for that, you see. To have the motivational muscles to make life changes, to not be afraid to make life changes. You are just needing to be in your own domain of expertise of the kind of things that you teach people and work with people on. The accountability and motivational part may have to be worked with by somebody else or by another system, you see what I mean. So, I hope this is helpful. I look forward to your comments and your questions and I'm gonna go and see if there are any comments and questions right now. Give me a moment to kind of pull that up here. I'm using a different type of Facebook Live here. I'm using Zoom instead of doing the straight up Facebook Live partly because Zoom, this is funny for me to say this, but Zoom actually does some natural touch up. So, I look a little bit better on Zoom, slightly better than just straight up Facebook Live. And I wanna thank those who are joining me live here, Amanda, Kim and Sarah, Lisa and Laura. So, Lisa, thanks for your comment there. Enough to some compassion, yes. And yeah, Lisa says, you know what? I fell for a $12,000 program that did not work. Me too, I have paid $30,000, well, over the course of mine, my business, seeking business trainings and coaching. I paid $30,000 to various people and I regret just about every dollar that I paid. Certainly the higher price programs didn't make more of a difference for me than the lower price program. So, yeah, it's really about spending smartly on your coaching and your mentoring. Heather, thank you for your comment there. Yeah, just about everyone, every one of us have hauled them for higher price programs because the higher price programs usually have a larger budget for marketing so they make their graphics, they make their brand look amazing, right? They make their brand look amazing so that seduces us and that's in part, you know, one more thing I'll say is, in part that's why I don't make my brand look amazing. I don't want to seduce you. I mean, honestly, my brand kind of sucks to be honest. I mean, I'm pretty good at, I'm pretty sophisticated with my graphic eye. I'm pretty good at graphic eye and I know my graphic design sucks. But, you know, and partly because I'm lazy, I don't have to because I have enough of a fan base where, like, yes, if I touch up my brand, make it look amazing, right? Work with a real graphic designer, all my stuff will be much more seductive. But I don't want to do that because I want people to look past my dumb graphics to saying, well, this guy seems real and this guy is smart enough to guide me in the right direction. So I kind of perfectly want that. I don't dress up. I've said this in the past. I don't dress up. I don't have a great background. You know, this is my office. This is my home. This is my second bedroom, by the way. I work out of my home. So I, it's like, it's almost, I'm also really happy that I can have the luxury of not looking amazing, right? Because I don't need that many people. I don't need to make a million. I want to make a million dollars, but over 40 years, rather than I want to make a million dollars right now or I could, I'll probably make a million dollars in the next 20 years in terms of savings, in terms of actual savings, 20 to 25 years. But I don't, I, you know, and if you pay a little bit more for graphic design, you will be more seductive and you'll get more sales. That's bottom line. But I almost want to model what if someone could do their own graphic design? That is not very good. I use Canva. I use just like really, really basic stuff. I'm not a graphic designer, even though I have a good eye for it. I don't have the chops to do it. So I have really basic graphic design. I'm not seductive in terms of my graphic branding. And yet I make enough sales. I make more than enough money to live in the most expensive city in the world. I live in San Francisco, middle of, not, not, not somewhere in the outskirts. I live in San Francisco on 19th Avenue, highway, I live in an expensive place and I make all the money I need to live here. I don't need enough to save, save some money away every month towards my million dollar goal savings. 1.5 million is what I'm going for. 20 years, 25 years, that's on track to get there. So, you know, it's all I need. It's all I need. And I, so in other words, I'm not trying to solve the money problem. This is what I think, this should be another video, but it's like so many people think money is a problem to be solved. And I think that's such a shame because what is money making? Money making is taking money from other people and giving something back to them. Money making is an exchange of value. And so if you're trying to solve the money problem, you're just thinking about getting money for yourself. You've forgotten the other side of the equation, which is the opportunity to work your calling, the opportunity to contribute to somebody to make their lives better. Why would you want to cut that short? Why would you want to solve your money problem so you could stop contributing and having that reciprocal exchange? Well, I want to have all the money so I can just do my volunteering and give money to people. Fine, but the very making of the money is a sacred calling. Why are you trying to solve that problem? Stop seeing money as a problem to be solved. Start seeing money as a sacred exchange of you figuring out your calling and exchanging that for other people's hard-earned money. You see, that's what I see money making as. So I want to keep making money for as long as I possibly can because it keeps me honest in providing real value to other people, okay? So anyway, two videos in one. Thank you, Amanda and Heather and Kim and Lisa for your comments here. I'm not seeing all the comments. I think Laura also had a comment. So the way I'm seeing the comments here, if not everything is coming through. So I apologize if I didn't call your name here, but that's all I'm seeing. Thank you and I will see you in the next video. And until then, may you approach the livelihood as a sacred calling of saying, how can I take just enough money from others and give more than enough back so that they say this is such a great deal. They will tell all their friends after they've experienced your services, right? They will tell their friends about it. Word of mouth is the most honest type of marketing there is and it's because you gave them such a great offer, such a great deal, all right? Be well, blessings and see you in the next video.