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“how much should i charge”

Six Reasons Coaches Make Less Than Minimum Wage

After being a coach for 18 months I was earning more than six figures (a somehow magical number for coaches) and yet I often connected with coaches who had:

  • multiple certifications
  • years of coaching experience
  • stories of amazing workshops
  • and ton’s of books on coaching and business on their shelves.​

And yet . . . many of them were making minimum wage. Sometimes they made a bit more $50k – $70k a year, but often they were baffled at why they hadn’t achieved the success of their peers. I get it. I’ve been in the coaching industry, what sells is fast, short cut, get rich quick trainings, and books.

I know a coach who teaches FB messenger strategies and his group is full of coaches. Another coach I know teaches big live workshops that are always sold out. But in the shadows of both groups and beyond the success stories that are on their websites, many coaches who continue to struggle blame themselves for not being successful.

After working with and training coaches for several years—many who have gone on to run highly successful coaching businesses and even become CEOs of major coaching companies—here are the six things I’ve seen that keeps coaches from being successful.
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1) No Purpose and No Identity –

Often when I talk to new coaches the reason they go into coaching is because
A) they had a great coach or
B) people always come to them for advice.
While both of these are great reasons to get curious they aren’t enough to keep a coach going through the challenges of building a practice.

What I’ve noticed is that coaches who have a clear sense of themselves and a clear purpose for their work stay focused, work through resistance, and build their practices with consistency and creativity. If you want to be successful you need a good reason to be facing your fears and resistances.
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2) An Inability to Create Commitment –

Building a practice takes personal commitment, but it also requires that you learn how to support others to make powerful and lasting commitments in their own lives. Some people call this skill “sales”, others call it “enrollment”, but behind it all is an ability to support people to make commitments that scare and confront them.

If you don’t know how to do this you’ll either set your bar so low that your fees won’t pay your bills, or struggle to get any clients at all. Learning to create commitment is a learnable skill (aka NO ONE IS BAD AT SALES), but it requires a willingness to learn to create clients with integrity and a little bit of fun.

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3) A Lack of Connection –

Consistently the most successful coaches I’ve seen are the ones with pre-existing networks.

These coaches have professional networks that enable them to tap into a bank of connections they have built with skill their entire career. But if you don’t have this kind of network that’s not a problem. I didn’t have one when I got started. Before becoming a coach I was living at a monastery which gives me a cool resume but not a great place to look for clients.

You can learn how to attract and connect with people. Some people call this marketing but really it’s just about connecting with people. If you do this consistently and powerfully you can build a practice from nothing. But many coaches avoid connecting in the hopes of using brute force (aka bad marketing) as a way to get clients.
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4) Not Enough Personal Integrity –

Most people relate to integrity as a moral issue. If you don’t have integrity you’re a bad person. I know because that’s how I used to relate to it. But for me low integrity is like a leaky boat. The boat isn’t evil, it’s just leaky. And while a leaky boat can get you somewhere, you’re going to be spending excess time and energy bailing it out.

Integrity is really just about doing what you say you’re going to do. You don’t need to be perfect (which is impossible) but you do need to be reliable. When you have integrity people feel it and your business grows because of it. When you don’t it tends to be very stop and start.

And again integrity can be learned. Most people fail with integrity because they lack the systems and processes that support it OR they don’t empower the structure they’ve created. When this happens coaches don’t take consistent action which is what is needed to build a practice.

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5) Thinking You Have Too Little (or Too Much) Time –

Most of us have an unexamined relationship with time. It always feels like we have too little or too much of it. I can’t tell you how many coaches have blamed a lack of time on their ability to build a practice or (ironically) having almost too much time on their hands.

Time is much more flexible than you realize. Every coach in the world has the same 24 hours you do to build a practice and many of them do it with families, elderly parents, and even second jobs. This doesn’t mean that it can be hard to work with time. But it DOES mean that if you have a crappy relationship with time you’re likely to struggle as a coach.

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6) You have a Weird Relationship with Money –

One year as a coach I made over $300k, but in my books I lost $10k. The reason for this was that I had a weird relationship with money. I liked making it, but I didn’t like managing it (or dealing with it, as I used to say) so I didn’t do a very good job.

Being ‘successful’ as a coach for most people means making money, but many coaches think they need to make some money before they can deal with their issues around it. That doesn’t make any sense. When I see coaches with a weird relationship with money I notice they often struggle to make any money or hold onto any of it.

If you want to make good money as a coach and hold onto that money, you need to be able to deal with money in a powerful way. If you don’t, you’re going to have a hard time achieving the goals you want.
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Final Thoughts

None of these challenges are terminal for you or your coaching career. I’ve spent years working through these issues with myself and with the coaches I’ve trained and worked with, but 90% of the training you can get won’t address this stuff directly.

Instead it’s WAY more likely they’ll just hack their way around these issues.

Well it doesn’t have to be that way. You can actually shift these things, but the key is to deal with them directly. Create a purpose for your business, learn to master commitment, connect with people, develop integrity, overcome your challenges with time, and develop a new relationship with money.

This is exactly what I do with coaches who are part of my Embodied Coach Mastermind.

I help them move beyond the surface level strategies and tactics to the deeper issues underneath. Yes I teach them the systems and techniques I’ve used to build my practice (including the mistakes I’ve made along the way), but the center of what I teach is all about how to overcome the big things that stop most coaches from creating success.

It’s not a skin deep approach but a bone deep one. So if you want some support in overcoming these challenges Let Me Know.

And if not then please, please, please find another way to get supported. Anyone who wants to become a coach has the intention to help others and NO coach should struggle in purgatory trying to get there. The solutions aren’t rocket science, they don’t require secret knowledge, but they do demand you fundamentally shift something about yourself before you can create an incredible impact for others.

10 Thing You DON’T Need To Do To Raise Your Rates

Most coaches I meet don’t charge enough. And when I say enough I mean enough to live on, create commitment that are meaningful, and be aligned with the depth of work they are offering their clients. 

And most often the reason why is that they think they need to do something in order to raise their rates. They’re wrong. And here’s a list of the top 10 things you don’t need to worry about. 

 

  1. Become a better coach – Yes you should always try to be a better coach. But becoming a better coach is an endless game. If you’re very new to coaching then charge less and get some experience, but if you’ve been at this a few months to a few years, have worked with a good coach and gotten some training you can probably still raise your rates.

    There’s no magic ability to cash connection in the coaching business. YES better coaches sometimes make more money, so work on getting better and ALSO raise your rates. If you want to become ‘good enough’ you’ll never get there. 

 

  1. Change your packages or offerings – Back when I charged $1000 a month my packages and offerings were more complex than they are now. Over the years they’ve gotten simpler and simpler. If you want to shift what you’re offering because you’ve changed or it feels aligned GREAT, but this isn’t needed to raise your rates. In fact it’s probably better to charge more for something you’ve gotten good at doing than charge more for something you haven’t worked the kinks out of yet. 

 

  1. Sign more inspiring clients – I don’t really even know what this means anymore though at one time thought this was THE answer to becoming a better coach. The truth is being inspired by my clients is on me not on them. Yes it looks good on your website if you coached a king or presidential candidate, but it does NOT make you a better coach. It may make you a more well connected one, but not much else.

    Some of your current clients might struggle to pay more. Some of them could pay more right now. Some of them may not even be able to ‘afford’ what you’re currently charging. New clients or more inspiring clients change nothing. If you want to raise your rates do it, the clients you serve will likely change. But clients do NOT make the coach or the higher rates. 

 

  1. Update your website – My first website was horrible. Even now my website needs an update pretty bad but it doesn’t stop me from getting clients. So go ahead and update your website. But a new website has never gotten any of my client’s to pay more money. If your website is total dirt and you can afford to pay someone to help you, do it. The money will be well spent. But your website should be a reflection of your being not a fake it ‘til I make it kind of thing.

    Your current website is probably fine and also a year out of date, which are the same things. Again your website should slightly follow or slightly lead your level of success. If you want to raise your rates do it. Don’t wait for a page full of copy which probably won’t change anything. Besides websites are about attraction, enrollment is about commitment. Don’t confuse the two. 

 

  1. Discover some new fancy way to ‘sell’ – When I was new and charging very little for coaching I thought coaches charging $10k+ a year had some magic formula. Now that I’m a coach that makes 10x a year I can assure you there isn’t. Yes there are techniques. Yes there are different ways of being. But it’s become less and less gimmicky. The processes I learned in the past, the sales books I’ve read have helped a lot, but they never ‘fixed’ my fear. They just gave me new things to fill my mind with and ‘use’ on my prospects.

    Yes you can use the techniques and methods to close sales but they are a bridge to something deeper and more meaningful. As you get better at enrollment you will increase your rates. As you increase your rates you’ll get better at enrollment. But there’s no fancy short cuts. 

 

  1. Get better at ‘handling’ objections – No one likes being handled. I know I have tried to ‘handle’ people’s objections. The whole concept comes from this weird idea that sales is adversarial. It’s sort of like a psychological arms race. The prospect gets more clever at evading my tricks and I develop more ways to ‘trick’ them into buying.

    Don’t trick people into buying. Support them to commit to something they want. If you try new tricks you simply get new ways of saying no. And again learning to say higher numbers with a process that already works is generally easier than trying to get more commitment from a new method. 

 

  1. Pay a new coach a lot of money – This was tough to write because in truth I’ve seen the impact of this. I have hired coaches for big sums and then ended up charging more.

    Here’s what’s true about it. If you get into a conversation about making a big commitment and learn to sit in the center of that tension you can empathize more with your clients as they commit. If you haven’t ever made a big commitment then you are more likely to identify with your clients as they express doubts and concerns.

    They may even end up enrolling you in why they can’t do this and why the coaching won’t work (which is easier if you’ve already got some doubts about your coaching). 

    The problem is this isn’t a ‘FIX’. You can certainly make a big commitment to a coach and raise your rates as a result, but what matters is how you relate to that commitment. Hiring ANY coach will have a BIG impact on your ability to raise your rates, but throwing money at the problem won’t work at all.

    YOU DO NOT NEED TO PAY A COACH A BUNCH OF MONEY TO RAISE YOUR RATES!!!! Instead of worrying about the pay/pricing connection you’d be better off putting your attention on the way a coach changes your relationship to commitment. Money is one way they might do this, but it isn’t the only way and it’s not a magic bullet. 

 

  1. Change your niche, the type of coach you are, or your networking sales pitch – For a while I agonzied about what I called myself as a coach. I hated the term life coach. Executive coach didn’t really capture it either. It took me a while to see that what I was really wrestling with was my identity. I was trying to answer the question WHO AM I? and it was hard.

    You are already somebody as a coach. Let me say that again. YOU ARE ALREADY SOMEBODY AS A COACH. You may not know what or who that is, but it’s true. Every person I’ve ever trained has an essence as a coach that shines through. It may take time for it to emerge and working with a good coach can help it emerge. But it’s not really something you need to make up or figure out.

    A niche can help you hone your marketing, a good pitch can make you memorable, but neither is likely to impact what you charge. At least not immediately and you can raise your rates without having either of these filled out. 

 

  1. Make a certain amount of money or have asked for that amount before – For a while I sort of thought well I can’t say my rates are $1k a month until I’ve got some clients who are paying that. I’m sure you can see the insanity of that and yet many coaches think this. I can’t charge that until I can charge that. I can’t make that amount of money until I’m making that amount of money.

    The mind does weird stuff with you. It sets a barrier to you being present to what’s possible. What you can really do. The beauty is that all you have to do is charge $1000 a month to be charging $1000 a month. And to get someone to pay you that you have to start pitching it.

    The hook here is obvious and luckily the solution is too. Doing it is the way out. No one is going to give you a permission slip to raise your rates. It may take some time for you to learn how to enroll at your new rates and feel more natural saying the numbers, but you’re never going to get better by waiting to start. 

 

  1. Doing anything else that you think will ‘make it easier’ to raise your rates. – If I was only going to make this a 1 item list this is the item I would choose. Before I was charging more than $50 a session for my coaching and often even now when I raise my rates I think, well when I do x then it’ll be easier to raise my rates. But the truth is that nothing really makes raising your rates easier.

    Anytime you ask for more or commit to more, fear is likely going to show up. As my dear friend Adam Quiney says, “fear and possibility often show up in equal measure”. While there are many ways to work with fear there’s really no way to avoid it. Nor do I think you should try. Increasing your capacity for fear is essential to be a great coach and leader.

    So instead of trying to hack or avoid fear you’d be better off accepting it and learning to work with it. If you can do this then raising your rates can just be another part of your practice to be with and hold the vastness of human experience. 

 

Final Thoughts – 

There is one thing that you can do that can help you raise your rates and that’s upgrade your commitments and who you’re being in the world. If raising your rates is just about making more money or proving yourself, it’s probably going to be harder to do. But if it’s in alignment with a bigger commitment you’ve made or the result of you doing work to deepen yourself and how you show up, then it will be easier. 

That doesn’t mean it will be free from fear. In fact facing the fear of raising your rates will likely have you deepen who you are as a coach and a leader. It’s a powerful practice. Not a thing to get right or figure out, but part of the journey of becoming a master coach.