Your Price Point Is a Business Model: How to Price the Offer You Actually Want to Run

More content doesn't automatically create more value. Better support, better implementation, better feedback, and a clear path to the result. Those are things that are going to add way more value than adding another 50 lessons. Today we are talking about offers and pricing. And before we get into pricing, I want to make sure that we're on the same page about what an offer even is. So your offer for your business is basically what someone is buying from you. It includes the results you're helping them get, what you're doing to help them get there, how you're delivering it, how much access they get to you, how much support they have, how long they're in the program, and what they're paying. All of those pieces really work together. And once you start looking at offers that way, you can see pretty quickly why pricing affects so much more than just the number that's on the actual checkout page. So if you've ever wondered how much should I charge for my offer today, I want to give you a completely different way to think about that question because it's not just that simple. Pricing affects a huge part of your business model. It affects how you market, how you sell, how you support your clients, your team, your profit margins, and even how involved you personally need to be. And because of that, how complicated your business is going to be designed to become. So today I want to walk you through a few different price points and explain what I typically see working at each level. Now, obviously there are exceptions to everything that I'm about to say. Sometimes you could find somebody selling a $5,000 course with zero support, or you could find someone selling a $500 program with private coaching. So I want to give you the general framework that I use when I'm thinking about offers, when I'm coaching clients on offer creation, because every price point comes with a different promise, a different level of proximity, and basically a different business model. So that last piece is the one that I really want you to pay attention to and know that you're not just choosing some number, you're choosing the kind of company that you're building around that price. So let's start somewhere around, let's say $497 to $697 range. This is an interesting price point because I think you can still sell a course at this level without needing a full sales team or a bunch of one-on-one conversations. And a really good webinar can absolutely sell a $497 $597, $697, $900 course. And in most cases it can even work really well. For example, work really well in an evergreen funnel. Someone sees an ad, they watch a webinar, and then they go on and buy the program basically left to their own devices after seeing what's included in that program. There doesn't necessarily have to be a discovery call, a sales call, or somebody following up with them individually. And that can make this price point incredibly scalable. Now, the buyer at this level is usually asking themselves something like, do I believe that this system can help me solve this problem? They're looking at your framework, they're looking at your methodology, the outcome, and whether they believe that they can take what you teach and actually do something with it. They're buying the roadmap, the process, and the shortcut. This can be a really beautiful business model because fulfillment doesn't necessarily increase dramatically as sales increase. There's not a huge ceiling on this, right? So if I sell one course, I've already created the curriculum. I can sell 100 courses and I'm not necessarily adding 100 hours to my calendar. Now, this is a very different business than one that requires a lot of personal access. Sometimes I think business owners skip over how valuable that is to give some level of personal access to them. We're constantly taught that higher ticket is better, charge more, go premium, sell high ticket. I'm the tiny offer queen. So I don't necessarily believe that, but there's a lot of pressure around adding a ton of different benefits to your offer that there are ways to do it that I want to talk about today of how you can add value without being personally involved. And you can also increase your price. So if we start thinking about moving closer to that $2,000 price point, the offer needs to start changing. Once you get out of, we'll say that $1,997 range and above, I generally think that you're going to need some type of discovery call or a sales process that's going to become a lot more common at that price point. Again, not always. It's not going to be 100% of the time, but generally that buyer needs a little more certainty. They're putting more money on the line and they probably are, they want to understand how the program can specifically apply to them. Everyone's unique, everyone's special. And usually at that price point, I think people usually want some kind of access to you as well. So there could be a community, there could be coaching calls, feedback, office hours, implementation sessions, something beyond just simply handing someone a library of videos and saying good luck, because as the price increases, expectations and involvement are usually going to increase too. So this is where I think there's a really important distinction between information and implementation. At a lower price point, I can buy the information, the framework, and the roadmap. I'm still saving time, But as I spend more money, I'm increasingly paying for help to help me implement it. Basically, I know if I get stuck, somebody can help me. I want feedback. I want accountability. I want to know whether I'm doing it correctly. And I want somebody who can look at my specific situation and tell me what I'm missing and show me my blind spots. So as that price increases, the value usually comes from access, feedback, implementation, speed, maybe more templates, support, confidence. And helping me know I'm making the right decision and making better decisions. One of the biggest mistakes that I see people making is that they're assuming that more expensive means more content. So if a $497 course includes, let's say, 50 videos, then a $2,000 program should have 100 videos. But the thing is, especially in the AI age, nobody wants 100 videos. More content doesn't automatically create more value. Better support, better implementation, better feedback, and a clear path to the result. Those are things that are going to add way more value than adding another 50 lessons. So let's start moving into a higher ticket range. Let's say around $5,000. Now, if I were designing a $5,000 program, I would probably be thinking about something that's around 12 weeks, an implementation experience. You might have weekly calls, structured curriculum, a private community, Subject matter expert coaches, guest coaches, audits, feedback, clear milestones that clients are working through within that 12-week period. At this level, I'm thinking way more about transformation and what's actually gonna be different for this person when they finish the program. What results are they leaving with? They're not learning something, but what are they— they are, but they're also accomplishing a big goal. So the psychology here is usually something like, I could probably figure this out myself, but I wanna get there faster. I wanna make fewer mistakes. I want to know what I'm doing wrong, and I want somebody to help me who's already been there, someone who already has the expertise so they can help me when I'm stuck. That's what they're usually paying for at this level. They're paying for acceleration, proximity, and somebody helping them to avoid the wrong turns. And that's where the value really comes in at some of these higher ticket price points. So let's talk about communities because I feel like they're having a moment. This has changed a lot with school coming onto the scene, right? Communities usually range From $17 to $497, and sometimes a lot more than that, depending on what is included in the community. And there's a huge difference between what someone expects at $17 a month compared to what they might expect for an ongoing $497 a month. Now at $17 a month, tiny communities, tiny memberships, $17, $27, $47. Somebody might be perfectly happy with access to a community forum, resources, occasional training, accountability, and a place where they can connect with other people like them. Now, once you get closer to $97, $197, $297, people's expectations start increasing. They're gonna wanna see better organized resources, a clear path through the program, more direct feedback, and more engagement from the person who is running the community. And once you're around, let's say even $497 a month in membership, people are gonna expect meaningful coaching and implementation support. They might want monthly challenges or monthly sprints. And I do think platforms like school are really accelerating communities in general. Paid communities are becoming much more normal. People are used to joining communities. I usually look for a community first when I find someone new that I wanna learn from because a lot of times they have trainings, calls, challenges, templates, expert sessions, live coaching, direct access to other members. There's a lot of people who are talking about join my private community and it doesn't necessarily feel in 2026 the way that it used to in 2019 when memberships were having a moment. It feels like it can be a lot more involved. So people are expecting more. They're starting to expect more. And that matters when you're designing a membership, a content library or Netflix of everything that you've ever taught doesn't make sense anymore for people because we have Claude, we have ChatGPT, information is everywhere and it's often free, right? So we don't wanna just throw information at people, but if you are looking to build that recurring revenue, you do have an ongoing responsibility to keep creating value. You have to keep people staying. You have to give them a reason to stay because you're on the chopping block every single month. And that's a lot different than making a one-time course sale. So we move into the next level, this $8,000 and above range. At this level, I'm usually thinking closer to 6 months of access. Again, that's not a hard rule, but I'm thinking about a deeper relationship. You might have weekly or biweekly coaching, a one-on-one coaching community, again, implementation support, specialist coaches, in-person events, in-person, another in-person component, maybe retreats, stuff like that. At this level, the customer is increasingly buying access, personalization, accountability, certainty, speed, and proximity. Of course, proximity. They want somebody to help them make their decisions. And this is where your marketing and your sales process has to become a lot more sophisticated. Selling an $8,000 program is a very different sales process, requires a ton of trust, way more than just selling a $497 course. Now, if you can think about selling something that is $8,000, you're often going to be paying more for ads. Your cost per acquisition is gonna be sometimes in the thousands. I've seen people spend $1,500, $2,000, even $3,000 to earn an $8,000 customer because it does take more. It takes more awareness, it takes more trust, it takes more Of following up. It's just a lot more complicated sales process, involved sales process. So just know if you want that level of program, you're going to spend more in a funnel for an application. You're going to be spending more for a booked call. You might spend $800 or more acquiring the right opportunity or the right customer, depending on how your funnel works. You can always throw a tiny offer in front of it and that helps, but just know your process is going to be different depending on the price point at which you're selling. So your process might include, at this $8,000 level, it might include ads, a webinar, a video sales letter, an application, a setter, a closer, follow-up email nurturing, appointments, CRM, a sales manager. You're going to have people following up with leads for days or even weeks. There could be multiple conversations before someone buys. And now we're talking about a much more sophisticated sales machine, which can be fantastic. I personally love high ticket. I think it can be really fun, incredibly profitable, but it is a different business model. And I think this is the piece that people overlook when they say things like, go ahead and sell 10,000 people into a $1,000 program versus selling a $10,000 program to one person. People are doing the math like it's the same. Which business do you want to run? But when you think about it, 100 times 1,000 is 100,000, the same revenue depending on how you do the math, but it's not the same business. People make it sound like it's super easy to sell high ticket, but it's a much different process than selling low ticket. And you can design it either way. You could do both potentially, but you just know volume is gonna be a different game versus whale hunting. So there's volume on the low ticket side, whale hunting on the high ticket side. You're just gonna have less sales when you're selling a higher volume. And more delivery and a team. And it's a completely different business model. And I think people forget that when they think about, oh, what should I sell? Or what should my price point be? Sometimes we forget that you're designing the business model around it. You're gonna need a different team. You're gonna need a different sales process. You're gonna need a different funnel if you're selling something higher ticket compared to low ticket. You could have a low ticket business that's all AI. It's just a lot different. So when you're thinking about it, if someone is paying you, we'll say $10,000, they're probably gonna expect private coaching even from a team member. if not from you, but they're gonna expect personal feedback, time implementing. You're gonna need coaches, customer success people, salespeople, operations, somebody managing the community or other specialists that are helping depending on how you position the program. They may even expect direct access to you as the founder. So now the founder can become more involved as the price goes up. And that's why I always want people to think beyond revenue. So don't just ask, how much could I sell this thing for? We wanna figure out what does this price require from me as the founder? What does it require from my team? How big does my team need to be to fulfill on this program? And what is the cost to fulfill this offer? Especially if there's in-person stuff, retreats, those things eat revenue like crazy. So revenue can look amazing and the business underneath could be barely profitable. I've seen entrepreneurs build offers that sound incredible. It'll say 6 months of access, weekly calls, unlimited Boxer, private coaching, audits, community templates, guest experts, custom feedback, and they're charging $997. So I might look at that and be like, That's a phenomenal offer, but the economics of that are going to be really hard to sustain. It's going to be very hard to find any profit in that business model. There's very little margin and very little capacity in the offer. If it actually takes off, the fulfillment can become overwhelming really quickly. That's why we have to understand the economics of the offer before we fall in love with everything that we want to include in it, because you don't want to build yourself a job Or put yourself in a work prison. So next, let's talk about masterminds. Once we start getting into masterminds, they're generally going to be $25,000 a year, $35,000 a year, $50,000 a year, even higher. I once paid $150,000 to be in a mastermind, and it's often because the value proposition changes the more that you spend. When people are spending around $25,000, it's not because there's 47 modules inside of the course portal. Having been in a $150,000 mastermind myself, I can tell you that the material that was taught live in person in the room, in the $150,000 room, is the same material that's in the book back here somewhere on my shelf, the Expert Secrets book by Russell Brunson. He taught the same material on the stage in person as what was in the book. Now you might think, oh, that's a waste of money. You could just learn it for free in the book. Maybe, but the reason that I joined that mastermind was not to learn the material. It was to have proximity. It was to get Russell's eyes on my funnels. It was to be in the room with other business owners who are at the level that can pay that much to be in a mastermind. So it's relationships, it's networking. So at that level, we have to remember that people are paying for the room. They're paying for proximity, perspective, relationships, networking, access to people that they might not otherwise meet. So you can have high-level strategic conversations, opportunities, and even sometimes introductions. So we're paying to be around other people operating at a similar level. So at the mastermind level, the room itself becomes part of the product. And this is a totally different kind of buyer psychology. At the low ticket level, when we go all the way back to the beginning, tiny offers, $27 offers, the customer is often saying, just give me the answer. At the course level, give me the system. At the group program level, help me implement the system. At the high-ticket coaching level, help me implement this correctly for my specific situation. And at the mastermind level, it's put me in a room with people, ideas, perspectives, opportunities, and relationships that I probably cannot access on my own. And that is the value ladder. And I think once you understand that, pricing becomes so much easier because you stop asking what number sounds good. And you start asking, what am I actually promising? What level of support am I providing? What does the customer expect? What type of sales process will this require? What does fulfillment look like? How many customers could I realistically support? And what kind of business do I actually want? What do I actually want to build? And that last question is huge because I think a lot of entrepreneurs accidentally design a business they don't even want. They see someone selling a $20,000 coaching program and they think that must be the next level. That's where I'm going. That's what I want to do. And maybe that's for them, but maybe you would absolutely hate running that kind of business. Maybe you don't want to be on private coaching calls all day. Maybe you don't want to be managing a sales team and watching sales call recordings. Maybe you don't want closers. Maybe you don't want customer success managers. Maybe you don't want to manage other coaches inside of your program. Maybe what you want is a beautiful evergreen funnel selling a $497 product every single day on autopilot. And there's nothing wrong with that. Or maybe you love going deep with clients. Maybe you want fewer clients. You want to get to know their businesses. You want to coach, you want to strategize. Then that higher ticket model could be really amazing for you. If you love community, you love recurring revenue, facilitating conversations and seeing people grow over time, then a membership could be an incredibly valuable business for you. If you love high-level conversations, live experiences, relationships, and bringing incredible people together, then maybe a mastermind makes sense. So I hope you can see how it's not just about pricing. It's about the experience that you want to have inside of your business. So the goal is to create an offer where the customer gets an extraordinary return. The delivery is sustainable. The acquisition economics work. Profit margins make sense. And you actually enjoy running your company and what's required to deliver it because your offer determines your marketing, your sales process, your team, your calendar expenses, and ultimately the kind of business that you're building. So before you go create your next offer, or before you decide to double the price of the offer you already have, I want you to ask yourself a few questions. What am I actually helping someone achieve? How much support will they realistically need to achieve that result? How much access do I want to provide? How available do I want to be? How much access even needs to come from me? How much could I afford to acquire a customer? What kind of sales process am I willing to build? How many team members will this require? What is full fulfillment gonna cost? And what kind of profit margin do I wanna have once all of those other things are accounted for? Because when you can answer those questions, pricing becomes a strategic decision and you're designing an actual business. And that's what I want you to really think about after listening to this, because every level has different proximity and it basically is a different business model. So I want you to build a business that you actually wanna own. Now, if this episode helped you rethink your offers. Send it to somebody else who's working on their pricing. And if you're listening to the Start Tiny Show in podcast form, send me a DM. Tell me what you think. I love to hear feedback on the podcast and how these things are hitting, sitting, what aha moments you're having, if it changed anything about how you're thinking about building in the future, what direction you want to go. I love to chat in the DMs, so send me a message. I'd love to know how this helped you, how it changed your mind, gave you aha moments. All of that. And thank you for being here. As always, I love you, and I'll see you in the next episode. Bye.