 Should you charge higher fees so that your clients will take the work more seriously? Let's talk about that in this video. I was actually asked this question from one of my blog readers and I'll read you the question and you could Let me know what you think in the comments below if you'd like So the the person wrote we often hear that we only commit to things that we pay a dear price for Today a coach tried to sell me a 20,000 pound Program twenty thousand dollars slash pounds almost equal these days to work with him one to one Weekly sessions for a year and he justified the price with the need to commit if you pay for a cheap service You won't likely commit the change and as a healer I wonder if selling high-priced packages might actually help my clients stick with my healing programs Instead of being distracted by the next thing they find online. I remember you've talked about self-worth and money But I'm not sure about the relationship between the money we pay and the client's commitment All right, so if you want to share your thoughts on this question below Before we move on you can pause the video if you like and comment below I'd be very curious to know what your experiences. Maybe you've been charged a high price and Did you commit more? Were you glad that you were charged that high price or Were there things that you paid little for that you did commit to I'm curious I'm wondering is that a good mechanism to get clients to commit more So I'll first start with my own history around this and then I'll go on to what I think Is my position today, but again, I'm all of us have experiences with this This kind of thing from both the client's perspective paying a lot or paying a little and how that affects our commitment And from the from the service providers perspective that have you charged a lot and how have you felt as Clients have clients committed more to the work or has it been the same etc. So I used to sorry something in my nose here, but So when I started my business in 2009 I didn't know any better and I was just listening to the the big boys of online marketing who are all Charging $2,000 per course. Yeah, you buy a course and you barely get access to them and you pay $2,000 for it And they justify by saying well, that's not right then you get money back guarantee you can always it was it was And and some some of them upwards of 50% refund rate. This is what some of them got and they just it was very Like a bowl in the china shop kind of business and marketing. I just churned through a lot of people And don't care if it's the right fit or not. You just you know sell a bunch and then get a bunch of refunds requests and all that stuff and I I guess what I paid dearly for multiple programs like that and I Noticed it didn't affect my Commitment very much, but I thought well, that's the way you do it. Okay, so I charge $2,000 per course Okay, so let me repeat this as of this recording my courses are somewhere between the one to $200 range one to $200 That's 13 years later. I'm charging one to $200 per course back then I was charging $2,000 per course and plenty of people paid it plenty of people I Got rich in the first, you know year or two or I didn't get rich I mean not forever. I gave a lot of the money away just FYI because I felt guilty afterwards. That's another story, but But I didn't make a lot of money. I remember One webinar where I was presenting and selling a program, of course I made $75,000 on in a single hour webinar $75,000 for an hour per hour not bad. Of course, I could have gone out and said I make $75,000 per hour. Let me show you how to do it but of course it's BS because you know I paid half of that to an affiliate partner and then and then that only happened like once that month and and you know, I Lot of people who use high numbers are not telling you the full story and if you knew the full story be like That's not that impressive actually And of course, I got a lot of refund requests too just like the big boys of internet marketing did so it was very profitable but Was it good for client commitment? Well, like I said today I charge around $200 per online course so one-tenth the price I had to charge 13 years ago even despite inflation Okay, and guess what? It's about the same level of commitment Yeah, it's slightly less But not that not 10 times less commitment from the clients from the students I don't know what percentage less I would say I mean because commitment level it's hard to measure But I am getting Well say this I'm getting a lot of comments on my online courses that I know for sure I'm making about this. I'm making slightly. I'm making more sales That's true in terms of the number of units sold number of students who are signing up but but in terms of the show-up rate the Attendance rate for my live sessions. I would say it's about the same so basically what happened was I Was charging a lot of money to people 13 years ago 10 to 13 years ago And I noticed that a lot of them still weren't doing much with the program they bought And so I started developing this guilty conscience like I'm taking a bunch of money from people and They're not doing much with it and Some of you may you don't have to comment below if you don't want to out yourself But some of you may have had the experience to you learn from you know, these High-priced coaches that you got to charge high prices. I mean when you do you're maybe a little frustrated that the clients aren't taking the work as seriously as You think they should based on the price that they paid Okay, so Because of my guilty conscience, I kind of had eventually, you know, 2012 2013. I had this Spiritual breakdown breakthrough, you know, my conscience got louder and louder over the those years And I said I can't do this anymore. So I closed down the previous version of my business stopped charging the $2,000 per course price and I started 2014 I just did one-to-one for like a year just low price one-to-one because I wanted to really be with the people I'm gonna start over in a more humble way or see what that meant to me and then 2015 I started charging for courses again. It was at first 2015. I think I did it for free 2016 I started charging $25 per course now these courses were much less time than the $2,000 one $2,000 was much more comprehensive, but still I started charging a little bit $25 and then $45 and then 60 and then 90 and then 120 and then 150 and then, you know, these days it's somewhere around $200 per course And it's not still not as comprehensive as it was back then, but it's still it's very targeted topics It's about around the same amount of engagement as I did got back then and the other thing is when you pay all this money, right? These $2,000 courses they come with You know in such a short amount of time you barely get contact with the with the leader the course creator and You know, you're overwhelmed with you know, 85 modules or whatever it is And it's like not only are you overwhelmed with a fee that you have to pay but overwhelmed with the amount of content they expect you to integrate so all in all That kind of model is not good for the client or the student In my opinion, it's good for the service providers bank account. I Doubt that it's good for the service providers conscience if they had a conscience or if they listen to their conscience They'd say people are paying me all this money. What kind of value are most people actually getting? Are they getting at least that amount of value of not two three ten times more? That's what I would have wanted right to see my clients and students get that so basically I Today now that I'm charging ten times less per course than I used to I'm much happier My conscience doesn't yell at me first taking a lot a lot of money from because my courses these days as you can tell Compare my courses with a price of other courses you paid in the business and marketing arena Most of you're gonna say George you you know your stuff is cheap Yeah, my stuff is much lower price than and for the kind of value I think I deliver then compared to other people who charge a thousand dollars 500 a thousand two thousand easy per course, right? So Here's the here's the very here's a very important I'm glad you're still here with me because I'm gonna share a very important psychological dynamic for For you as a student and you as a client that you need to pay attention to which is When you pay a lot of money Your mind gives you the illusion that you've made a lot of progress. This is really key actually one of my clients Kind of told me this that that they realized this was happening for them They like my god every time I pay money. I feel like I've made progress I feel like maybe even the program that was so hyped up is gonna do it for me rather than me having to work through the creative discomfort the The discomfort of being consistent blah blah blah blah all the habit development that's needed to succeed with any project or any skill growth Paying a lot of money has a mental illusion that you just made progress You didn't You're just poorer. That's all your two thousand dollars poorer. Whatever you whatever you paid You didn't make a single lick of progress because now you have to actually watch the videos or read the things and Try things out and make mistakes and those things take risk and take time So please be aware when you next time you see a course you're gonna buy the course Realize that when you pay the money all you've done is slightly harmed your bank account You're now your poorer now. We now you have to do stuff to make up for that It's ironic like you pay the money now you're poorer You actually have to do even more like to make up for the fact that you just got two thousand dollars taken out of your account Okay, so Be aware of this weird psychological illusion Okay, that you pay money you made price. No, you didn't you pay money. You're poor now Just that's all you should know that now I got it I got a car about the time. Did you carve out the time? That's what a lot of people do they pay the money and think oh great The program's gonna somehow solve like no, it's not you're just poor and then did you carve out the time? To actually consume the program's materials and then do stuff with it make mistakes take the risk Get come up with the questions go to the Q&A calls if the program allows or has that kind of thing get your questions answer and then do and then to make more mistakes ask more questions make more mistakes ask More questions until you actually develop the the right kind of skill to move forward in the area So if this is the only thing you remember from this video Hopefully I will have saved you thousands over the years because again This is the key illusion that so many students and clients have now Back to the original question of okay So George are you saying that we shouldn't use the price as the motivational method for our clients? Correct because if you now that I have all this experience I can tell you from this grounded perspective and you may need to go through the experiences yourself that no It makes almost no difference It certainly does not make the difference that the price suggests that you charge more therefore the clients have a higher commitment No, that's not what I found. It's not what I found. I mean in fact some of my most dedicated students and clients When I write a book, I mean I Was heard this from a from a from a client the other day. I was so honored They had bought my five dollar book And they said that it's on their nightstand. They read a chapter every morning and reflect on it Like it was the some sacred Book that they used to have on the nightstand or something. I mean I was like, okay, that's not compare it that But but that's what they do. I mean so so so the most dedicated students and clients Will take seriously even a five dollar book Even a five dollar book. They will take it seriously It's not the price people It's the right fit of the client to the program The client to the product the client to the service if it's the right fit They're going to naturally feel energized to do things with it So How do you find those clients? Well, there's two pieces here one is you got to design your program well enough to motivate Well, you got to design a program well enough So that your marketing is getting the right people in and turning away the The people that are less right for the program So they don't waste their money and you don't waste your time. They don't waste their time Okay, so your marketing needs to be clear about Okay, this is this program is for this type of person And uh, it's not for this type of person perhaps But it's for this type of person and this is what you're going to get blah blah blah. Okay, and and the higher the price you charge the more Aware you should be about this weird dynamic Of they're going to think they got something done by by paying a high price And you are going to have a conscience problem Over time if you're not seeing the value that people are getting you're going to feel Bad that and rightly so you're going to feel like you're taking a bunch of money from people and not giving the value back At first you feel great like god making all this money, but then it's not sustainable over time your your conscience That which is always with you in my opinion our consciences are The connection to divine source That is educating us maybe even past lives and lessons we learned the past lives are embedded in our conscience Which then educates us in this life Uh about what is what is good for the soul and that's good for the soul. So So How do we get the right how do we how do we motivate clients number one? It's in our marketing of the product or program Are we are we do we understand what the what the client the right client is for this program? It's not for everybody The more you say oh this thing is for everybody the The more you show me that you don't have is that that much experience yet And who it's really for it who is really not for because but that's okay And that at the beginning you don't know you have to just take a bunch of different clients and see what happens But that's why at the beginning you don't charge as much. That's why I have the tapering strategy for getting clients google it tapering strategy for getting clients and you'll find my blog post about about this where you You you as you grow your skills you grow your prices And that's the right thing to do because you understand who you can best help And the more you take money from people the more value you should be giving back Not should but that's just how the way business good business that's sustainable Works, okay, so first your program has to be described properly, but secondly your program has to motivate properly The people who say no i'm using money as a way to motivate my clients is i'm like come on really You know you're using money because you're making money and you haven't had enough experience with your conscience Over time to know that you're gonna this is bad for your soul You're gonna you're gonna be miserable in a couple years and wish you hadn't done that Right. No, let's not use money to motivate our clients our fees our hyphen. No, that's stupid. I'm sorry But that's true. It's not as smart as it could be. There are smarter ways to motivate your clients right things like um Co-working sessions like you know, you either tell them to use focus mate and you talk about all the time like i do Or you set up co-working sessions or you have check-in you have maybe Especially if you're charging a high price You probably have some kind of assistant that checks in with them or facilitators that check in with them on a regular basis You may have buddying systems. You may have Uh, well live calls obviously where you have them share their celebrations or whatever So there's different ways of motivating clients and i've been learning a lot over the years about how to do this Well, you know in a program. So um Let's not use fees To motivate clients. Let's use fees As a an indicator Of how much value We can see that we are giving to people who pay us that that money Okay, so, uh, you know, I think that's pretty much all I want to say. Um, I guess the final thing Is to say that the more consistently You do your authentic marketing authentic marketing is the act of caring enough For your audience That you talk with them about their wants and their purchase patterns You know, what are they spending the money because that gives you a good clue into what they're wanting to You know, what what they're what they're seeking from someone like you So the more you can understand your your audience's wants and And purchasing patterns the more you can shape your program to be right for them Okay, and then secondly the more consistent you are showing up with content that serves Your audience from an authentic place in your heart the more people find trust and will The trust actually is what leads to commitment To working with you no matter your price so I hope that this is helpful and I look forward to very much to seeing if you want to share What your experience has been paying dearly for coaching and healing and mentoring programs And uh, and maybe charging for that if you want to share that as well So i'm always open to your feedback and your questions and comments and thank you so much for watching and joining me for this