In this blog, I’m breaking down how you can stop charging hourly for coaching and instead, price your coaching packages so you can make more money, without working longer hours.

If you’re a business coach, life coach, spiritual coach, healer or consultant (graphic designer, social media strategist etc), and you’re tired of hustling to sell your work, keep reading.

I’ve worked with hundreds of clients in my seven years and counting as a Certified Master Life and Business Coach, and if you’re anything like my clients, you:

• Aren’t making as much money as you want to be.
• Are working long hours with little time to play.
• Worry about going back to your 9-5.
• Undercharge and overdeliver, obsessing about giving “enough” value to your clients
• Feel stretched beyond your limits. You’re tired and you don’t have time to spend with your partner or your kids, let alone have any “you” time.
• Take on bad-fit clients because you think you “should.”
• Want to charge more money but you feel bad or guilty about “asking” for more money. And you wonder…would people even pay? Wouldn’t you lose the only clients you do have?

I. totally. get. it.

When I first started coaching, I followed my own coach’s model. She charged by the session, so I assumed that’s what all coaches did. I started off charging $125 per session, or you could buy 6 sessions for $600, and save yourself $150.

At first, it felt great, but the more I sold, the less great it started to feel.

The Money Shortage

It felt like such a hustle to fill all those spots with coaching clients and before I knew it, I was right back on the hamster wheel of working hourly, pinned to someone else’s hours—when my clients wanted to book me for coaching.

So when I say I get it, I mean it. I’ve been there. And, I want you to know there is a way out, and it’s a lot closer than you think.

In this post, I’m going to share how to price your coaching packages so you can make more money, enjoy your life and get out of the time for money trap, once and for all.

What To Do Instead of Charging Hourly: How To Price Your Coaching Packages Using These 3 Principles

The reason I quit my 9-5 was because I wanted more freedom, but as a new coach, I calculated that if I continued to charge $125/hour, I’d have to sell over 800 sessions in a year to replace my old 6-figure salary.

If you know anything about lead generation and attracting new clients, you’ll know that as a new coach with little to no audience, that’s really challenging.

>>Tip: If you want to get a customized client attraction plan, take the quiz to get one delivered right to your inbox.

When I first quit my job, most people told me I was dumb. Leave the security of a good job? How dare I?

Even my husband, who supports my dreams, looked at me like I had two heads. We had two little kids, we’d just built our dream house on his family’s land, and our lifestyle depended on my income. Failure was not an option. Not to mention, the thought of having to go back to work felt like it might destroy my soul.

I needed to figure out a way to make this work, so I could replace my old 6-figure salary, and fast.

The Time Shortage

On top of the money shortage, I also had to consider how much time I had available to spend with my 1-1 clients. When I was working as a marine regulatory expert, I worked a traditional 9-5 in the oil and gas industry, and was often on call after hours dealing with ship emergencies.

I’d get calls at all hours—sometimes from a captain who was out of coffee filters (and he thought I was the right person to call for that?!), to ships on fire, broken bones at sea, and oil spills that needed to be reported.

It’s not like I was afraid of hard work or putting the time in. But the whole reason I quit my job was because I was tired of handing my kids over to a nanny and barely seeing them. Not to mention, when I did see them, I was exhausted and not present.

That meant that I needed to make the same money, or better, in a lot less time.

My initial goal as a coach was to work 4 days a week and 6 hours a day, so I could be the full on mother that I had always dreamed I’d be.

When I realized this, I knew I needed to focus less on the hourly model and more on a package style model like the one I’d used as a marine regulatory consultant.

What About a “Project Fee” Model? Could I Price Coaching Packages Like That?

As a consultant, I charged companies a premium price to have access to my full expertise to work on projects. After I understood the scope of work, I’d present 2-3 prices to them, with varying levels of commitment—both from my end, and theirs.

My highest ticket price was the one they would need to pay for me to get my hands dirty on their work site—doing audits, training employees, completing risk assessments—and a lower fee if they wanted more of a “done with you approach.”

This meant they got to choose the level at which they wanted to invest and I felt adequately compensated and invested in showing up for them.

I loved working like this as it allowed me to focus on the outcome and project results, instead of the amount of time it would take.

So why not apply that to my new coaching business?

Would I be able to find coaching clients who were willing to pay a flat fee for a coaching package, instead of paying by the hour or session?

And then the next question: How much would I charge? How would I price my coaching packages?

I started experimenting to see what worked, what was fair, what felt good and ended up creating a simple framework that not only worked for me, but it’s worked for the hundreds of coaches and consultants that I’ve coached in the last 7 years.

A Simple Formula to Price Your Coaching Packages

This formula considers 3 factors:

1. Your Revenue Goals
2. The Value, Results and Transformation
3. An Intuitive Gut Check

Let’s break each one down, starting with:

1) Your Revenue Goals

Step one starts with the money. This may seem counterintuitive, but it’s like creating anything from scratch—you need to consider the end goal in mind.

As a business owner, you need to be super clear on the money that you need to make, in order to run a profitable business, and pay for your lifestyle.

You can’t hit a goal if you don’t know what your goal is, so start by calculating how much your business needs to make annually. Ask yourself:

• How much you want to pay yourself (for this you’ll need to know your lifestyle costs)
• Costs to pay a virtual assistant or any team members you plan on hiring
• Total cost of your monthly subscriptions like Zoom, acuity, slack, and website maintenance
• Phone, internet, and power
• Training or education
• Bookkeeping, accounting and legal costs
• Cost to hire a coach (I know a good one if you’re looking 😂)
• Money for both your personal taxes and your corporate taxes

You need to be super clear on the amount of money your coaching or consulting business needs to make in order to think about how to price your coaching packages.

Let’s say after you’ve done your calculations, you’ve calculated that you need to make a minimum of $120,000/year. (Remember, just because your business makes $120,000 doesn’t mean YOU make $120,000/year).

Think about where you are in your business and the size of your audience.

If you’re like the majority of people that I work with, your audience is small. This is relevant because it means that you don’t necessarily have access to hundreds of buyers—at least not yet.

I recommend that most coaches and consultants have a signature offer that is priced so that they can sell 2-3/month and they’d be able to hit their monthly revenue goal.

>>Related: Coaching Packages With Examples: How To Create Irresistible Signature Offers

For example, if your monthly goal is $10,000/month, you want a signature offer that is priced around $3,500-$5,000.

Let’s look at the math. In order to hit the target of $10k months, you could sell:

• 100 sessions at $100 dollars/session = $10,000
• 50 sessions at $200 dollars/session = $10,000

OR you could sell:

• 4 packages at $2500/package = $10,000
• 2 packages at $5,000/package = $10,000
• 1 package at $10,000/package = $10,000
• 1 x $5,000 package and 2 x $2,500 packages (or some similar combination) = $10,000

What sounds easier to you? Selling 2 things or 100 things? Doesn’t selling 2 things sound a lot easier than 100 things?

If you’ve got a smaller audience, then selling 100 things every single month is going to be challenging.

There are of course exceptions to this rule. I worked with a client who had a monthly membership that cost $47/month to join and she makes over $10,000/month from this. But—she had a pretty advanced funnel in place and it took her some time to build that up.

You can also sell digital offers at lower price, but again, you need to sell a lot, to make the kind of money you desire.

My recommendation?

Have a signature package that is priced so that you only need to sell a few per month, to hit your revenue goals.

2) Price Your Packages Based On The Value, Results & Transformation

Coaching is life-changing work. Period. The power of coaching has huge ripple effects in people’s lives. The same with consulting. So how do you make the mental switch out of the hourly model?

You need to think about what you are *actually* selling. As a coach, you’re not selling an hour of your time. You’re selling what becomes possible as a result of the work you do with your clients.

First Example:

One of my recent clients came to me with debilitating anxiety. She said she’d lost all hope and was uncomfortable in social situations. After three months of coaching, she feels grounded and stable in her body, her anxiety is gone, she’s been able to look after family members without spiralling, and she even took her first vacation in years.

What do you think that has been worth to her?

Second Example: One of my recent clients is an almost 7-figure real estate agent. She’s married with 2 daughters and when she came to me, her marriage was on the fritz, and she felt a deep guttural sadness. She’d done therapy and taken other programs, but still felt lost. After six months of coaching, her inner and outer world have both transformed.

Her marriage is better than ever, she’s travelled to three countries, her relationships with her kids have improved and her business is thriving.

That’s worth a lot more than $125/session!

Third Example:

Even my own journey—my entire life has changed because of the power of coaching. I quit my job. I’m madly in love with my husband. I have a strong spiritual practice. And I’m running a multiple six-figure business on 20-hours/week. That is almost beyond measure.

Fourth Example:

The same can be said for consultants. If you’re a web designer for example, you’re not selling a website package. You’re selling what happens to a person when they have an online presence they’re proud of. They’re more confident. They’re excited to sell. They show up for themselves and their work.

How to Make the Switch To Selling Coaching Packages?

Ask yourself this:

What happens as a result of the work we do together?

What becomes possible for this person?

How do their lives change? What’s the value to them?

And one more thing. Think about the last cheap thing you bought. Maybe it was an online course. Did you give up after the first module? Did you fill out the workbooks? Or consider the last piece of fast fashion that you bought on a whim. How many times did you wear it? Did you look after it?

People show up when they‘re invested. They commit to doing the work, they come to calls on time, they respect your boundaries. And they don’t ask for special treatment or deals or favours. They’ve invested in themselves.

Someone who pays $2,000 or $5,000 or $10,000 is so much more likely to show up inside of that container, than if they were to join a $500 low-ticket program. (And way more likely to get the transformation they seek).

So in this sense, you’re doing both you and them a favour by creating these types of coaching packages and containers.

When you sell a price your coaching packages this way, you:

• Stop attracting clients who try to get more than what they paid for
• Attract high-quality clients who are obsessed with getting their own results
• Can focus on less clients in less time
• Can niche down to serve one type of client really well

People who pay larger sums of money are more likely to show up fully to your coaching. In the right context, money can be a tool for transformation.

It’s also an invitation for YOU to show up fully. When you feel financially nourished, you are going to be so committed to your craft.

The ONE time I ever offered one of my coaching packages at half price, it was for a long-time client. The thing is, she missed her calls and she didn’t show up to do the work. She totally dropped off the radar because she didn’t have anything at stake. She hadn’t put much in, so she didn’t have much to lose.

It was a lesson learned in what happens when you undervalue YOUR time as the coach. You often get a direct reflection of this back in the people who buy.

Honouring yourself and your time is an invitation for your clients to do the same. And what you put out is what you’ll get back – so think about who you want to magnetize.

By focusing your packages on the depth and level of transformation that’s possible with your coaching, you tap into the key factor that motivates almost every purchase: who they want to be and what they want to accomplish.

This is also why it’s really important to be an active listener on your discovery calls—to make sure you are the right coach for that person and that they are a good fit to work with you.

>>Related: How To Structure A Sales Call

3) Do a Gut Check

We’ve talked about your revenue goals. We’ve talked about the client results and what it’s worth to your clients. I could list a few other considerations to think about when you’re pricing your coaching packages, but I want to end with this:

Go with your gut. Let your intuition guide you.

Stop comparing yourself to others or worrying what others are doing or what your mother in law or annoying friend will think.

Does this price FEEL right to YOU?

Will it call you forward?

Is it exciting and scary all at the same time?

My prices have changed a lot and they continue to be an edge for me. What used to feel “too high” now feels “too low.” It’s a process. Go with something that feels right and once it starts to feel heavy or no longer aligned, change it.

Lastly….

Ask Yourself: WOULD YOU PAY FOR IT?

This year alone I have invested over $40,000 in high-level coaching. I’ve hired a team to support my business growth so I can focus on doing the work and not the admin. And I’m launching a funnel shortly that I also invested heavily in.

If you want to command top dollar for your work, you need to know what it feels like to put money on the line in belief of yourself. You need to know what that risk feels like.

And you have to be willing to support your clients through that as well. Be willing to stand by them and coach them through the process. It’s okay if they’re scared. It’s normal to be scared! (Learn about coaching objections here).

One of my favourite stories is from when a woman who initially said no to coaching saying my prices were too high, messaged me 6 days later to sign up. After our first call, she went out and sold her first $2,500 coaching package. Then, she had her first six-figure year.

Investing in herself helped her become the next-level version of herself.

It’s time to check in with yourself and your business:

• Are you undervaluing your coaching at your current pricing?
• What’s in service to your clients? Or to yourself? What would that look like?
• Can you hit your financial goals reasonably at your current rates? How many hours are you working? How would you like to price your coaching packages?
• Can you make it work at the rate you’re going? More importantly…do you want to?

If what you’re doing now is no longer serving you, it’s time to try something new—in this case, pricing your coaching packages with this framework.

If you want some support unravelling sales myths and learning about the energetics behind sales, check out my $37 Sales Program.

And if you need support on creating irresistible offers, I’ve got a masterclass and workbook to help you.