Wendy (00:02.13)
Hi there, welcome back to The Coaching Edge. Happy New Year. I wanted to talk about a component of planning for this next business year that I did not have time to chat about in the last episode of The Coaching Edge where I gave you three really big pieces of strategy and goal setting for this year. We talked about in the last episode,
about goal setting and mapping out a very clear roadmap to profit. And I really encouraged you in that episode to download the free, Two Times Your Profit Masterclass and Workbook that is available at wendymcallum.com forward slash two times profit. Again, I'll put that link in the show notes. Then we also talked about the importance of creating a balanced offer suite and of, you know, over time working towards having a
free offer, low ticket offer, mid-tier offer, and a higher priced offer. And we talked about how to determine where you want to focus this year in terms of broadening your offer suite. So it's not about doing all of those things all at once. It's about where am I now? Where are the gaps in my offer suite? And how can I start working on filling those in this new year? And then we also talked about strategies and planning around time.
which is directly connected to how you want to feel in your business. So I really focused in on talking about batching content creation, whether we're talking about podcast episodes or social media content or newsletters or any of the other valuable content that you're putting out there to help build that like no trust with your audience. It might also be content creation for paid programming that you're doing. And then we talked about
looking at your schedule and looking at how you schedule clients and making changes to that to support that feeling-based goal that you set around your business for this year. And then we also talked about the importance of bottom loading your day that is doing the hard stuff first and why that is such an important strategy for a coach. So if you haven't listened to that episode yet, that's the previous episode.
Wendy (02:17.116)
Go back and listen to that one as well. In this one, I wanted to talk more specifically about auditing your pricing in this new year and really thinking about what your pricing says about you, says about the services you offer, but also how it's serving you right now and how it's not serving you. This is one of the things we talk about the most in the BBB. would say pricing comes up in almost,
every office hours call, which are the live coaching calls that happen within that container, I am constantly pushing people, pushing my coaches to take a hard look at their pricing, whether that's on a one-on-one program or a group offer that they have, or maybe even a self-guided course. Like, where is there room here to tweak and adjust the program and the pricing to serve you better when it comes to your bigger roadmap or plan?
for profit and revenue this year. So I wanna talk more specifically about pricing in this podcast episode. It probably won't be a super long one, but that's okay. I wanted to make sure that I covered this off. Before I get into that, I really wanna make sure that you are aware of and feel welcome to come to the next open house for the BBB, which is my business building bootcamp for coaches. It is a one-year membership program. It is a very intimate coaching container.
that provides you with not only a very comprehensive content library that basically covers every aspect of building a business as a solopreneur coach and gives you not only step-by-step how-to instructional videos for me, but also templates and tools, the very systems that I have used to build my really successful coaching business, I share those with you. Many of them are in a format where you can go and rebrand them and use them in your own coaching business. So I am helping you create efficient,
reliable systems in your business that will get you to profit faster. And that all happens within the BBB. So we have a content library, we have live coaching calls every week with me. The group is small, you will always get your questions answered, you will always get the support that you need. I also host a variety of master classes and bring experts in to do master classes on a variety of very important topics when it comes to being a business owner.
Wendy (04:32.616)
And then we have a couple of other calls on a monthly basis, including a tech and socials call where you can ask all of your questions about all of the complicated pieces of tech that coaches are now using in their businesses, including social media, platforms, websites, and course creation platforms, and then all of the AI tech and the other apps that are out there. And then we also have one copy call a month, which is where I do a very kind edit.
of your draft copy and help you tweak your copy so it serves you better, whether that's your podcast pitch letter or it's a section of your website or it's a newsletter or it's a piece of marketing content or a landing page for an offer. So all of that is included in the one year membership of the BBB and we have an open house happening on January 23rd at 11 Eastern and I would love to see you there. This is your chance to meet me.
virtually, but in person, interact with me, ask me questions. I'd love to get to know you a little bit about your business and where you are really knocking it out of the park and where you're feeling like you're struggling right now. And then you'll get to join a live office hour session with the existing coach members of the BBB. And they're so amazing. They will welcome you in and you will get to see what the vibe is like in that group so that you can determine whether it's a good fit for you. And you're also gonna learn a lot.
about what other coaches are doing. You're gonna get inspired. You're gonna get some new ideas and you're gonna get a chance to ask me questions about your business. So again, that open house is literally open to everyone who is a coach and it is also gonna include all of my existing BBB coach members. We did one like that in November and it was just, it was awesome. And so I'm really excited to do this again. To register for that, you can go to the link in the show notes or you can go to wendymichellum.com forward slash BBB.
The form to register for the open house is at the very top of the page. I would love to see you there. If you've been to an open house before, but it wasn't the right time for you to join the BBB and you want to come back and see whether now is the right time, I'd love to see you there. You can always come to more than one open house. If you have any questions about it, feel free to send me a note, either an email or DM me on social media. Okay, now that I've got that invite out of the way, let us talk about pricing, your prices and how
Wendy (06:51.024)
your prices literally can dictate how this year goes for you in terms of revenue. Are you charging what you are worth? This is the very base question that I want to start with. In my experience as a small business coach for coaches, the biggest mistake that coaches make is charging too little.
This is probably the number one reason why coaching businesses fail. And again, the statistic is 82 % of coaching businesses fail in the first two years. That is a staggering failure rate. I want you to be in the 18 % that succeed. How do we do that? The first thing we do is we take a hard look at your prices because if your prices are too low, you cannot create a sustainable, profitable model for business. I know that...
when you're starting out as a coach, there's a lot of imposter syndrome happening. There's a lot of underconfidence. That's something that we work on every single week in the BBB with the newer coaches is really getting them feeling confident about what it is they bring to the table and their ability to transform lives and the value of those sessions. So the first thing I wanna say to you is if you have not yet accessed the $37 one-on-one pricing masterclass that I offer, go and get that and work your way through that.
that is gonna provide you with like step-by-step considerations to setting the right price for your one-on-one offer. And it's also going to give you all kinds of information around what other coaches are doing and give you a bunch of options and ways of thinking about pricing that you probably haven't thought of before. I actually have not had anyone who's gone through that pricing masterclass who hasn't changed their offer and their pricing afterwards. So it's just really, really helpful and impactful.
So I wanna encourage you to go and get the one-on-one pricing masterclass. It's only $37 and it is well worth it. Coaches literally call it gold. I get emails and notes from people who take that masterclass all the time to say thank you. That was so, so helpful for me and so impactful. And I have actually immediately increased my prices after watching it. So that is available through the link in the show notes. But let's talk through some of the key things that I talk about in that masterclass just to get your wheels turning here.
Wendy (09:06.802)
So the first thing we talk about is this sort of propensity tendency to under price as coaches and how we can shift our mindset around the value that we provide to allow us to increase our prices and sell with more ease because coaches often will say, look, if my prices are lower, I feel more comfortable on a sales call. I just feel more comfortable talking about my prices if they're lower.
If I was to increase them, that would really make me uncomfortable in the sales process. First of all, newsflash, you're probably gonna be uncomfortable in the sales process until you're not anymore. That's just part of this. And the dollar amount of your one-on-one program shouldn't really be the thing that makes that more uncomfortable or less comfortable or more uncomfortable or more comfortable for you. What's gonna make it more comfortable is just...
practice honestly and also probably in a shift around the way that you look at the purpose of the sales call. For me when I'm going into a sales call and I've talked about this in a separate podcast episode, it's all about figuring out whether me and the potential client that I'm meeting with on the call are actually a good fit. Whether I'm actually the right coach for them and whether I actually have something that might help to change their life.
And if I do, and if we are a good fit, and if I do have the right offer for them, I am absolutely going to invite them into that offer. I'm going to tell them about that offer. I'm going to let them know how I think I can help them, and then I'm going to leave it up to them. It is an invitation. They get to decide whether to accept it or not. I am not in control of the outcome of that call, and I'm not attached to the outcome. What I do wanna do and what does...
mark success for me in a sales call is I wanna show up in a really positive, open, curious way. And I wanna articulate my offer clearly to them and invite them in very clearly into that offer if it is the case that they're a good fit and I have something that I think is really gonna help them. So shifting your mindset can help on that. Pricing, it should take 30 seconds, honestly, in a sales call. In a 30 minutes discovery call or sales call for me, I spend about,
Wendy (11:19.368)
30 seconds to maybe a minute talking about the pricing and the actual nuts and bolts of the offer. So if it was a one-on-one program, I might say something like, you get 12 55 minute sessions with me. You also get access to a couple of really amazing online programs that are on their own. sell separately, but I give to all my one-on-one clients and the pricing for the package is X dollars. And that's the end of that. And then I move on to the next point. So.
it shouldn't spend, it shouldn't take a lot of time in your offer. And if you're finding yourself like kind of, know, waffling around on the price and having really trouble discussing it, I would just practice saying it in one sentence over and over again. You will get better at this. But the number that you charge shouldn't be the stumbling block here. If the number is something that you can get behind that feels like a really fair, valuable number for you, then you are going to be able to say it with more confidence. And
It's not necessarily the case that that confidence comes from offerings of really low price. There's not a correlation between like reduced prices and more confidence in selling. It doesn't work like that. What I want you to do is take a look at what it is you actually have to offer. The value of the transformation that you help to affect for your clients, whether you're a brand new coach or you're a seasoned coach. And I want you to assign a really good number to that in terms of a price, something that you feel
really great about. I always want to feel like I'm actually over providing for them and that it's like a no-brainer, obvious choice to work with me because of the value of the transformation that I'm going to help them to effect. So, if you're a new coach and you're struggling with this, take a look at your pricing. The first thing I want you to think about is what am I bringing to the table as a coach? And it is not just your certification. It's not just your last training or certification as a coach. It is everything that you
have done, experienced, and learned before that. And it's also everything that you have done, experienced, and learned after that. All of that contributes to the value. When you show up on a call with a client, you bring all of that to the table. And it's important not to undervalue that and to incorporate that in your value and therefore your prices. For example, I have 12 years as a lawyer. So I spent seven years or so as an associate at a large law firm and then the last four or so years as a partner.
Wendy (13:42.51)
And in the course of that work, I learned all kinds of skills that are transferable to my coaching business. I am really good at listening. I'm really good at asking questions. And, you know, I am a really competent public speaker. I have a lot of different skills that I bring to the table as a coach that I didn't learn from my coach training.
and a lot of experience when it comes to what it's like to work in the corporate world, the real life stressors that people struggle with, the things that contribute to burnout, the things that contribute to an over-reliance on unhealthy coping mechanisms. All of those things are things that I bring into my practice as a burnout coach, an alcohol coach for professional women, for example. So I'm not just bringing my last coach training to the table.
I'm bringing all of those things as well. And so are you. I'm also bringing my personal experience. The transformation that I affected in my own life that led me to start coaching people in this area. And I feel pretty confident that that's the case for you, because it's the case for almost every coach. We end up coaching in the area that we have mastered ourselves, the place where we have been able to make the change and seen the transformation. All of that is the value, guys. All of that. And then I want you to look at like...
Even if it's just been practice coaching sessions that you've done, maybe you haven't even had a paid client yet. Look at the time you have spent with actual people coaching and look at the results that they have gotten from that time with you. What is the value of that to them? And if you're not sure, ask them. Go back and ask your practice clients, what did you get from that session? Are there things you're still thinking about?
If you are working with paid clients, ask them at the end of every session, what are your biggest takeaways from this session? What was the value of this session for you? How can you use this session going forward to change the way you go through the next week or two weeks or whatever? Ask about the value. All of that is gonna help you to build confidence in that and confidence in your pricing. Now, when it comes to pricing, there are some tactical, practical things that people do not consider and these are all laid out in the one-on-one pricing masterclass. Things like how much time does it take?
Wendy (15:49.874)
for you to get one client. How many nos do you have to get to get to a yes, right? So what is the actual funnel here that leads to a sale and how much time marketing time is involved in you getting to that one sale? You have to be accounting for that in your pricing. If not, you are working so many hours and not getting paid for them. So that I think is a really critical piece of this. It's also a critical piece in determining
your goals when it comes to sales. So if you can increase your prices on your one-on-one price program package, then you need to sell less of those things to make the same amount of money a month, right? And that means that you will have less time spent in marketing for that because you're trying to sell less of them. So when it comes to like that conversion rate, you need to have fewer people coming into the funnel to convert to sell.
the lower number of offers that you need to sell at the higher price. So these are all things to be considering in pricing. But the most important piece of this is like, what are you actually worth? What is the value to your clients? And have a look at like whatever you're charging right now to hit your net gross and net goals for the month, which hopefully you have mapped out now by now. That is what we talked about in the
The last Coaching Edge podcast episode, that's what the Two Times Your Profit Masterclass and Workbook are designed to help you do. So look at that goal that you have for yourself on a monthly basis, your net goal and your gross goal. Take the gross goal and reverse engineer it with your current pricing. How many offers do you need to sell to get to that gross goal right now? If that number is overwhelming to you, so if you look at it you're like, my gosh, I have to sell eight one-on-one coaching slots a month, that is a lot.
of one-on-one clients to get in a month. Take it from someone who's been doing this for a really long time and has a busy one-on-one practice. I do not bring on eight new one-on-one coaching clients a month. First of all, so much marketing that goes into that. That's just a really, really high number of private clients to be getting. And second of all, I don't have the time in my schedule to work with that many people every month. So what could you do to reduce that number so it doesn't feel as overwhelming? Well, this is not rocket science. You could increase the price of your package.
Wendy (18:06.438)
If you increase the price, you need to work with less people, which makes it feel less overwhelming right out of the gate, both from a marketing perspective and also from a time and scheduling perspective, right? Pricing is so important, you guys. So this is the one-on-one stuff. And again, I would encourage you to go and get that $37 masterclass, because it'll take you through this like step-by-step and help you figure out what the right.
program price is for you. do, take you through like three different scenarios. One is a really low pricing model. One is a medium price model and one is a higher price model. And we kind of work through the consequences of each of those pricing packages in terms of marketing time, overhead, and also schedule. You know, how many hours are gonna have to be committed to clients in each of those scenarios. So it's a really, really helpful overview and includes a...
a variety of lenses that you probably haven't used before when it comes to setting pricing, things that I've learned over the years. Okay, so that's the first thing I wanna talk about around the pricing, that's the one-on-one stuff. But we also wanna talk about group program pricing. This is something that we talk about a lot in the BBB as well. And there's a module on group coaching that includes a discussion on pricing your offers. group programs also get notoriously priced too low by coaches.
Coaches think, my gosh, I can't possibly charge these people on an hourly basis when I'm charging my one-on-one clients. I have to slash my prices because there are going to be 10 people or 20 people in the group. And so nobody's gonna wanna pay anything near what they pay for one-on-one coaching. First of all, that's not true. I have been in lots of group programs where I have paid more per hour than I have paid for a one-on-one coaching session with a coach. So it very much depends on the value of the program for me, what I'm willing to pay for it.
And the other piece of it is you don't have to charge as much as you charge for one-on-one sessions, but you can certainly charge a good percentage of that. The goal with a group program is to be making significantly more for every hour of your time than you would be in one-on-one coaching. That's why we do it. It's to scale our revenue without, you know, we can double, triple our revenue without doubling and tripling the amount of hours that we need to spend coaching.
Wendy (20:24.124)
Take a look at your current group coaching rates for next year. What do you have planned for next year? How much are you making on an hourly basis if you charge that rate? Now, at this point, we're not gonna be including the amount of time that it took you to create the content. I that's a whole other factor. And I think like...
If we were to factor that in here, you'd probably realize you're not making very much by the hour at all. But let's just assume you've already run the program and you've made up for and been paid for those hours that it took you to create the program, which usually the beta, the first run of the program is for that. It's just paying you back for all the time it took for you to actually create the program in the first place. But now it's about how do I profit from this program? Look at how many hours you're coaching. Let's say it's eight group coach sessions as part of this program.
and you're charging, you know, $1,000, let's say for those eight sessions. I'm going to get my calculator out now so I can like to do the live math while I'm going and I can't do anything in my brain.
Wendy (21:33.608)
That's $125 per session. A lot of coaches would say that's too much for a group coach session. And I would say it is absolutely not too much. That is not too much for a group coach session. If you are coaching market rates, could be charging at least double that as a coach. I certainly charge double or more that on an hourly basis now as an experienced coach. So that is not too much. And it's definitely not too much if you include content with your program.
So are you also including a video course that goes along with this, or are you sending out emails and PDFs or workbooks or meal plans or something else that goes with this program? We've got to account for that value too. And as soon as you assign a value to the content and subtract that from the total group price, you get a lower amount per hour. You should not be coaching people for like $25 an hour guys on a group coach program. It's just not a sustainable model unless it's a...
absolutely massive group program, which most of us are not running. The other piece to remember here is that you're probably creating an intimate group coaching environment and you can charge more for that. So if your groups are small, so, you 15 people or less, you can charge more per session for that. But take a look at the pricing for your group program and challenge yourself to raise it somehow. How can I raise it?
Can I just flat out raise it? Because it's just obviously way too low when I look at it and I consider how many hours I'm spending on coaching this program and the hourly cost per client. If so, raise it. If it feels uncomfortable to raise it when you do that exercise because they are paying what seems like a pretty decent amount of money on an hourly basis and you're making a decent amount of money on the hourly basis, I still challenge you, how can you raise it? Could this program, instead of being an eight week program, be a 12 week program and cost 33 % more?
Could this program include another course or something else? Is there something else you could add to it as bonus content that would allow you to decrease or sorry, to increase your pricing on this program? Could you have more group members in? Could the group be larger? Could you run two cohorts or could you add an extra call time so that you could double the enrollment in this program? So for example, take my BBB.
Wendy (23:54.364)
When that first started, we had a smaller group, maybe 20 people in the group in the beta, and we had one office hours call a week. As the group grew, I added another coaching time a week because it was just simply allowing me to access and leverage the same content, add one more hour of my time a week and bring in another 15 or so people into the program, still provide that intimate feeling of community and access to me as a coach.
but not double my effort overall, right? So how can you get creative with your group programming and charge more for it? That is going to be a critical piece of you increasing your revenue next year. This is not about working so much more. This is not about adding more hours to your week. This is about taking the existing proven valuable offers that you have and making sure that you are charging what they are worth and making sure that honestly you're not leaving money on the table. Is there a way for you to
charge more for that program? Are you undercharging right now or is there a way for you to add value and add to the price of this group program? That's really what I want you to think about and that was the piece that I wanted to cover here today. Again, if you're looking at your one-on-one pricing and you're thinking to yourself, gut tells you that it's too low, know other coaches are out there charging more but you can't bring yourself to raise your prices, please check out the $37 one-on-one pricing masterclass. It is worth its weight in gold.
and we'll give you all the confidence you need, I promise, to increase your prices right away. If you've got group offers out there or you're considering creating group offers, I encourage you to think about joining us in the BBB. We love to create group offers in the BBB. We love to create online courses and programming, self-guided courses. We love to create additional revenue streams for coaches so that you can take a breath.
and not feel like you're constantly in hustle mode and on that revenue roller coaster. So one more time before we wrap up today, I wanna say I'd love to see you at the BBB Open House on January 23rd at 11 a.m. Eastern to get the details on that and register. can just click through the link that I'll include in the show notes or go to wendymcallum.com forward slash BBB. And I hope that everyone is really, really excited about this next coming year. I know I am and...
Wendy (26:17.168)
I hope that your new year is off to a terrific start. Have a great day, everyone. I'll see you next time.
