The Health Coach Sales Lab
Welcome to the Health Coach Sales Lab -- the place where health coaches and wellness pros go from learning to earning. I’m Jamie Jones, and in each episode, I’ll break down simple, actionable strategies to help you sign more clients and grow a thriving wellness business.
The Health Coach Sales Lab
Your Coaching Rates Don't Define Your Worth
We debunk the common pricing myths in health coaching that create unnecessary pressure and lead to unsustainable business models. By separating your rates from your personal worth and focusing on realistic pricing structures, you can build a health coaching practice that aligns with your values while providing stable income.
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Hello everyone, welcome back to the show. It is Jamie here, and this week we are going to be talking about something that makes me a little nervous to talk about, because I wonder if anyone's put it to you this way before. So we are talking about how to price your health coaching services, and I mean I'll start by saying pricing is probably the question I get more than any other, like what do I charge? What do I charge for this and this and this? And you've probably heard that question yourself and you've maybe even asked it to me. Most people don't like my answer because I usually say I cannot tell you that I there's so many variables and I actually hold a lot of beliefs that are contrary to what business coaches tell people. So I I just don't know how to have that conversation in a short sentence when someone asks me that. So I am going to have a long conversation here. So I mean because I'm going to have a long conversation here. So I mean because I'm going to tell you what most people don't Many of the rules about pricing in this coaching space are just made up.
Speaker 1:They're myths and they come from generic business advice and inflated numbers and comparisons and prestige, and I believe they often do more harm than good, making you doubt yourself and overextend yourself and pretend you should be something that you're not, and so I I actually really strongly have feelings about this. So I hope that you hear what I'm saying today and I hope that you leave feeling lighter because I really think you will if you listen to this episode. So I want you to leave this episode thinking differently than you ever have before, not just about higher ticket offers, but about what pricing actually means for you, for your way of working and for the value you deliver and for your sanity and for all those things. Because we can pick our number and you have to be the one that does that. So I'm going to walk you through all the beliefs I hold around that and hopefully at the end, we will be able to settle on a number for you that feels right. So, number one your rate is not a reflection of your worth. I truly don't believe that. It's just a business decision. So let's zoom out for a minute, because the whole like charge your worth thing we need to call it what it is Like maybe it's well-meaning at best, but it's really manipulative.
Speaker 1:Pricing your services just doesn't have anything to do about your worth as a human being, and the more we let that narrative keep circulating, the more we pull coaches, especially women, into these emotional gymnastics every time they go to adjust a price. And here's what I mean. No brick and mortar businesses are pricing their services based on self-love, like your local massage clinic didn't sit down and go. Well, I really need to believe in myself today, so I'm going to raise my prices $80. They ran the numbers. They looked at rent and supplies and payroll and time and demand and margins and that's it. That's how they chose their prices, because that's what businesses do. That's what people go to business school to learn about. Like they're not having an existential crisis over whether a 90 minute lymphatic massage is $150 or $175. Like they're looking at the business model, the market, their expenses. They're making a decision, not a declaration of value.
Speaker 1:So why are online service providers being told that their price is a statement about their self-worth? It doesn't make any sense. Why are we teaching new coaches that if they choose a lower price, they must not believe in themselves? It doesn't add up. You can love your work, you can believe in your mission, you can be incredibly skilled and still price your services based on a structure, capacity and sustainability, not your self-esteem. So let's call it what it really is it's just a business decision. Just like any smart business decision, it should be thoughtful, it should be data-informed and it should be rooted in the model you want to build, not the emotions you're trying to heal, because that doesn't make sense. And when you separate pricing from your personal worth, you free yourself up to make clearer decisions and you start pricing from your head and your goals, not from a place of trying to prove something, and that's where real peace around money starts.
Speaker 1:I promise real businesses don't do this, so we don't need to. We do not need to either. Number two you can totally make a sustainable living without charging $2,000 for three sessions. So let's talk about numbers for a minute, because the internet would have you believe that, unless you are selling a $2,500 offer, your business is broken. And I get it, because high ticket sells. It looks nice, sure, everyone. That sounds great, but there's this undertone that says, if your price isn't premium, then your offer must not be valuable, and that is simply not true and deep down, I think we truly know that. Like even if you think that in your head. I think you know in your heart that that's not true, and I mean really.
Speaker 1:Think about a time before you ever knew what online coaching was. Maybe that was when you were 20, working in a medical office as an assistant for $12 an hour. Think about telling that version of you what you've been told over and over by business coaches now, like what would she say? What would that you say before she was trained to think that coaches should charge as much as business coaches tell us to? I told a friend this once and she said she thought about it like for weeks because it's true. What would 20 year old you making $12 an hour say to someone telling you that a health coach should charge $400 an hour before you were indoctrinated that that should be true? It just think about it.
Speaker 1:I won't go any further, because you can make a solid, sustainable income in your health coaching business without offering those ultra high ticket packages. In fact, many coaches find that once they stop trying to contort their services to fit like that huge price point, that everything starts to feel clearer and more clients say yes, because $2,000 or $2,500 for three sessions might work for someone with, like a hyper-specific niche or a large, warm audience or years of results stacked behind them. But for many coaches, especially those just getting started or working in general wellness, that price doesn't make sense in any context and it doesn't feel right and that is so important Like if your gut tightens when you say your price or if you find yourself over delivering or burning out just to justify it. Because it's not just financial, it's energetic, that number is energetic as well. It is not sustainable. So sustainability just isn't about how much you charge, it's about how often people say yes.
Speaker 1:So let me say that again sustainability is not just about how much you charge. Sustainability is also about how often people say yes, because it's about retention, it's about referrals, it's about enjoying your job and peace of mind, a predictable income, and sometimes your $400 a month client who works with you for six months is worth more emotionally and financially than chasing $2,000 clients. There's just so many ways to make this business work and the moment you let go of that pressure of making every offer high ticket, you create the space for offers that actually fit and make sense and make you money and make this a job for you. So number three is something that's really I'm nervous to say it, but if you charge what business coaches tell you to help, coaching becomes a luxury item. So now we have to get into the values right, because when you charge what the online business world tells you to, without critically thinking about why, you can end up creating a business that's out of alignment with the very reason you got into this work in the first place.
Speaker 1:I believe health coaching should be accessible and supportive and real, and for a lot of coaches, that mission is deeply personal. Right, you got into this because you care, because you've been there, because you really want to help people. So when a business coach says, charge $2,500 for three sessions minimum and you do without checking in with your values, you may be finding yourself like feeling disconnected, and you're. You are disconnected then from the people you wanted to serve in the first place. So I want you to sit with this question Do you want to build a business that only serves the ultra wealthy? Do you think health coaching should only be accessible for people with a lot of money? And if that's a genuine yes for you, then okay, I'm sure you'll do well, but for many of you the answer is no. I would say for most of you you want to work with the everyday woman, the mom who's juggling hormone issues now and four different schedules and she's overworked and she's burnt out. And the teacher who's exhausted but trying. And the midlife woman navigating all of these things.
Speaker 1:When you charge luxury prices and you make your offer exclusive, whether you mean to or not, it cuts so many people out. It cuts the normal everyday person out, because a normal everyday person cannot afford that, and so I think it's really worth examining Like is this pricing aligned with the people I want to reach? Does this number create trust or does it create intimidation? Does it completely cut out most people? And so I think, when we don't ask these questions, we start to measure our businesses in a way that that like by metrics that were never meant for us, and then we end up building something that number one doesn't even work and you're not making money and that you also just feel disconnected from and you don't enjoy running because you're disconnected from it, from it. So number four is I I I don't know what to title this like maybe common sense, common sense pricing.
Speaker 1:And I want to ground this in real life for a second, because a lot of business coaches in those that advice comes from inside a vacuum, right, like they've started business coaching, teaching people how to business, business coach, teaching people how to coach businesses. Like they're inside this vacuum, right, and it assumes that your clients are just this, just like theirs, and you run everything on your own and and that you never consider the world outside of instagram. And it's just what I said like inside this vacuum. But let's say you're working inside of a clinic, like you're partnering with a medical practice which I highly, highly, highly recommend, and I think that people don't do this enough and maybe, after I talk through this, a light bulb will go off and you'll say, oh, I really need to look more into this because this makes sense. This is real. This isn't some ideological stuff that we're learning about on Instagram and trying to make work and it's not working Like. This is how real people work.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about the functional medicine practice my family goes to. We live in Columbia, south Carolina. We go to this functional medical practice. It's amazing, so amazing. They have a resident health coach on staff and she's amazing. She sees patients as part of their care team. She supports them between appointments and helps them implement the lifestyle changes that then actually move the needle. She's actually helping people. So imagine if she tried to charge $2,500 for three sessions. She'd be billing more than the physician she works with.
Speaker 1:It doesn't make any sense. No medical practice is ever going to bring you onto their team if your pricing structure contradicts the hierarchy of the care model. It's not a value judgment, it's just a reality of how collaborative care works. When a business coach says, just raise your rates without asking where you work or how you deliver, it's just a red flag, it's just a blanket Like. It doesn't make sense. And health coaching in a clinical setting needs to be priced in context, right when you're part of a system and that pricing aligns with that system. It creates trust referrals, which is so huge in a long time partnership. It also makes your work more sustainable because instead of constantly hustling for the next premium client, you're embedded into this model where people come to you as part of their healing process, and that is probably different than anything you've been taught online, because you've probably been taught to do all the social media stuff and all the splashy stuff and that works for some people. It works for a lot of people, but it is exhausting. It is so exhausting and I bet most of you don't want to be a part of that machine. So this might be exactly what you're looking for and was exactly what you were looking for when you started this career in the first place, because this is a business that grows with the help of others not completely on your back and is consistent, and it is good and it feels good. It is all the things like. It checks all the boxes.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about numbers, like how to actually price your offer with clarity. So let's talk about numbers like how to actually price your offer with clarity. And let's get practical, because if we're not basing your rate on your worth or the industry's obsession with premium pricing, then how do you come up with a number? So let's walk through a basic version of this together. Like, start with your income goal, like not a fantasy number, not $10,000, because that's just the number online. Like, of course, everyone would love $10,000 a month and you will get there when you grow, but you probably won't start there. So let's set, like just pick a number. Okay. So what would allow you to pay yourself, cover your taxes, invest a little bit back into the business and feel solid? So we're just going to go with $6,000 a month.
Speaker 1:Now we'll look at your capacity. How many one-on-one clients can you truly support at one time while delivering well, resting well and not burning out? Maybe for you that's 10. So 10 clients per month is your max and your goal is 6,000. Then your baseline monthly package would need to be around 600. And you can even take that further by playing with combinations, like maybe it's five private clients at $500 a month in a group offer that brings in the rest. There are so many ways you can blend this with lower ticket and other things, intensives, all kinds of stuff. So I won't get too deep into that. Like I'm sure you've heard all of these options and you can think for yourself when it comes to what you even want your business to look like.
Speaker 1:But if you're working in a clinical or office-based setting, especially if you are embedded in, for example, the functional medicine practice, a chiropractor office, a wellness center, the pricing shifts. It shifts because you, in this context, you're not just setting your rate based on your goals, you are working inside of an ecosystem and your pricing needs to make sense within that structure. So I'll give you an example of the place that we go to Full-time health coach there. She works full-time Monday through Friday. I think. Their hours are like eight to four and on Friday they close at noon.
Speaker 1:She doesn't market herself, she doesn't have to chase leads or run discovery calls or post on Instagram or do any of that, because the doctor refers to her constantly All of their clients, all of their patients. She's supported and she's respected and she's trusted and she is full. And they charge $97 an hour to see the health coach there. And because of that volume that the practice brings in, she sees a steady stream of clients because they probably have hundreds, if not thousands, of patients there and so she's just in the system, right, she's in the ecosystem of every single time a patient comes to the doctor needing help, the doctor runs the labs, figures out what's going on and then sends them to the health coach to implement those habit changes. And that's not just a one-time session, they're coming back and they're coming back so they don't need to charge $300 an hour to make it work, because she's part of that structure where the volume and the referral flow makes that rate sustainable.
Speaker 1:And from there you can do the math. Like, let's say, she sees five clients a day, five days a week, that's 25 sessions at $97 an hour. That's $2,425 a week, or roughly about $9,700 a month before taxes. And again, most importantly, there's no marketing required, there are no funnels, there's no content machine. She's just doing excellent work in a steady rhythm that is sustainable, is grounded, and that is what real health coaching careers can look like.
Speaker 1:When you stop trying to mirror the online coaching industry and start paying attention to actual structures that work and that is what I want you to take away today is there. This works, this works, but maybe what you've been doing hasn't, because what we've been taught about all of this when you break it down, it just starts to crumble. It doesn't, it doesn't stay together, because when you start asking questions and poking holes, it just crumbles. It doesn't make sense. So let's think about it with common sense and sustainability and what real people who go to work every day do and charge, and they are safe there because they are making it work, because it makes sense in that way, and I know you can do that too.
Speaker 1:So I think I'll do another episode on getting into these practices and working with you, know, in this kind of atmosphere, because I think that I know that this isn't like a new concept, but I I don't see coaches doing it enough, and I think that this is what you're actually searching for, and I think that you actually want to be part of a true medical team that are helping people actually heal and get better, and I think that that is probably what's lacking when we're trying this online by ourselves and trying all these other things that are so exhausting.
Speaker 1:They're so exhausting, and I know you're probably exhausted from it if it's not working yet, and so chew on all these ideas today and maybe listen to this again and really let it sink in and see what you actually believe, and hopefully this lightens a big load for you, because if you have been stuck in this thought process as well and maybe you're like, oh okay, this is a lot to think about, maybe I should go on a walk and think about this and listen to this again. I would love to hear what you think, even if you disagree. I would love to hear why you disagree. I truly would. So hop in our group. The link for it is in the show notes here, or you can go to jamiesgroupcom. It'll take you straight to our Facebook group. I would love to hear your insights, your thoughts and everything about what we talked about today. You are welcome to come share those with me in there and I will talk to you next week. Bye-bye.