🤑 Charge more money... to get more motivated clients? 🤔

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 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, $20,000 slash pound 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 to 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. 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, I 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 provider's perspective, 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 it'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 is what some of them got and they just. It was very like a bowl in a 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 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 1 to $200 range. 1 to $200, that's 13 years later. I'm charging 1 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 did 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 then, you know, a 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 used 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 ten 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, I'll 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, so Seoul, number of students who are signing up. But, but in terms of the show up rate, the, the, 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 that experience too. You learn from, you know, these high priced coaches that you got to charge high prices and then 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, stop charging the two thousand dollar 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 and kind of 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. So 2000 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 got back then. And the other thing is when you pay all this money, right, these two thousand dollar 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 provider's bank account. I doubt that it's good for the service provider's conscience. If they had a conscience or if they listened 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? If not 2, 3, 10 times more? That's what I would have wanted, right, to, to see my clients and students get that. So basically I, today, now that I'm charging 10 times less per course than I used to, I'm much happier. My conscience doesn't yell at me for taking a lot, a lot of money from. Because my courses these days, as you can tell, compare my courses with the price of other courses you pa. In the business and marketing arena, most of you are going to say, George, you, you're, you know, your stuff is cheap. Yeah, my stuff is much lower priced than. And for the kind of value I think I deliver than compared to other people who charge a thousand dollars, five hundred, 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 going to 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 going to do it for me rather than me having to work through the creative discomfort, the, the, the discomfort of being consistent, 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 poor, that's all. You're $2,000 poor. 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 going to buy the course. Realize that when you pay the money, all you've done is slightly harmed your bank account. You're now, you're poor 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 $2,000 taken out of your account. Okay? So be aware of this weird psychological illusion, okay, that you pay money you made. No, you didn't. You pay money. You're poor now. Just. That's all you should know that now I gotta. I gotta carve out 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 and A calls if the program allows or has that kind of thing, get your questions answered and then do. And then 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 that area. So if. 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 had 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 $5 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 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 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 and blah, 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 it feels great, like oh, I'm making all this money, but then it's not sustainable over time. Your, your conscience, who, 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 about what is, what is good for the soul and less 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 that much experience yet and who it's really for and 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, 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 going to, this is bad for your soul. You're going to, you're going to be miserable in a couple of years and wish you hadn't done that, right? No, don't. Let's not use money to motivate our clients. Our fees our high. 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 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 more 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 in a program. So 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, you know, I think that's pretty much all I want to say. I guess the final thing is to say that the more consistently you do your authenticity 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, whether they're 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, 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.