Mark Butler: Hey, this is Mark Butler and you are listening
to a podcast for coaches.
I've been thinking a lot lately about viewing my work as a utility.
So let's think about what do I mean by utility?
Versus something like a luxury experience.
Here's an example.
Yesterday I was talking to a coaching friend of mine and historically I
would call her a kind of exclusive sought after coach whose prices are
pretty high relative to mine anyway.
And we were talking about pricing, what she might do in
the future with her pricing..
And she was asking me about my experience with not low prices, but
lower prices than I used to charge and how I'm experiencing that.
And I said it's been great.
And the truth is I might lower my prices again.
Now I don't know that I will, and I don't know by how much.
And in fact, it, that may not make sense.
And I may increase my prices.
But she was very surprised to hear that I might lower them again.
And her immediate assumption was that I'd be lowering my prices
because demand is shrinking.
Now in simple microeconomic theory, that's how it works.
When demand is lower, price goes down because it's high demand that would
lead to high prices, not universally, but.
as a basic rule of thumb.
And it's not so much that demand has increased.
I'm finding that I'm able to connect with the number of
new clients that I'd like to.
It's more that I want my coaching to keep evolving in the direction of being a
utility that my clients view as a standard semi permanent part of their life.
In other words, when someone signs up for coaching with me.
I liked the idea that they would at least view it as a possibility that
we would work together for years.
Strategically, that's advantageous for me because the longer a client
works with me, the less I have to think about the acquisition of new
clients and the less I have to think about the acquisition of new clients.
Frankly, the easier it is to maintain my own psychology, my
own internal regulation, and it also allows me to focus elsewhere.
And it allows me to focus on.
new topic areas, increasing my expertise or my knowledge in
different areas, increasing my comfort and talking about those.
It allows me to shift my energy toward the product and away
from the selling of the product.
So I want to be viewed as a utility.
Now there are a couple of ethical questions there.
As a practitioner, you would never want to.
Position your coaching or position yourself as something that a client
needs, quote unquote needs, and that they would be hurt if they were to lose it.
Then I think we're occupying an unhealthy, maybe an unethical place where
we're manipulating our clients so that we're achieving our financial goals.
Whether or not it's actually in their best interest to keep working with us.
Now I trust my client to tell me whether it's in their best interest to keep
working with me, but I want to make sure that I'm not doing or saying anything
that would give the impression that I think that they're not going to make it
without me or that they could only succeed or be happy or be calm or whatever.
If I'm shown up in their zoom room a couple of times a month, three
times a month, that's not right.
I never want to be that person.
Person I want to be is someone who works with a client over the long term.
And in the 30th or 50th or 60th session, we have a breakthrough.
We have a breakthrough that's built in part on the longevity of our relationship.
You've heard me talk about this before I don't need to belabor the point, but
I believe in long term support long term coaching I Like to work with my own coach
or coaches for the long term and I like to work with my clients for the long term
and if something is going to be utility, it really has to have renewable value.
So you have to expect it to be worth something new the next time you use it.
Side note, as I think about starting a membership and I think about
memberships in general, memberships don't have long term retention.
Because there isn't necessarily something renewably valuable in them.
And I'm not claiming to have cracked that.
I don't know that I will crack that, a software company could have retention
that runs into the years and years.
And most coaching memberships have retention in the months.
Several months, even really amazing, wonderful memberships
that I wouldn't criticize their content or their intent or anything.
I think they're fantastic.
It just happens to be that after a person's been in a membership for a
few months, maybe a year, most of the members have extracted most of the value,
at least most of the perceived value.
And then they think to themselves, I think I've got what this place has to offer me.
There's probably not.
Additional value in the next month of membership.
And then they cancel.
In other words, it's an easy thing to leave because nothing
significant is being lost.
No problem.
Those can still be amazing businesses, but that's why.
I've had a cell phone for 20 something years and why, if I join a coaching
membership, I may only stay a few months.
It's because the actual renewable utility in those two things.
is completely different.
So when I think about my coaching and when I think about the membership, I
create in both cases, the most important question for me to ask myself, that may
be impossible to answer, but it would be the most valuable question I could
ever answer would be what would make this so renewably valuable and useful?
That a person in a very undramatic way just starts to view it as a basic
utility in their life and their business.
What would its nature need to be?
What would its features need to be?
So that a person thinks to themselves, sure, I'd love to not spend that
money that way, but no, actually I do love to spend that money that way
because I just really like the thing.
It really does give me this renewable utility.
If I cancel it, I lose something that's important to me.
Now FOMO will keep people for a while inertia where, and I've had
this happen with coaching clients where a coaching client will say, I'm
afraid I'm going to miss our calls.
But I think I'm okay.
I think I'm ready to just go work on my own for a while.
And in those moments, I'm always happy to say, I totally agree with you.
You're doing fantastic.
So FOMO or inertia could keep them in my coaching, but that's
not a strong enough reason.
The reason has to be utility.
So when the person comes to that moment, whether it's with my coaching or with my
eventual membership, they've got to look at that expense and the expense has to
be low enough relative to the renewable value that they perceive that they
say yeah, of course I'm keeping that.
So the price is a factor in that if the price is too high, it won't matter
that they see renewable utility.
They'll still have to say my alternative use for that money is compelling
enough that I'm willing to give up this utility for that utility.
Welcome to my econ undergraduate, by the way, happy to all have
you in my econ one on one class.
So they're saying the 97 or one 97 or three 97 per month or whatever
it is that I'm spending on that.
I actually have a clear idea of how I would use that money elsewhere in
a way that I would believe delivers something more important to me.
I want my coaching to be priced at a level that they look at the money they're
spending and what they're getting for it.
And they can't scan their life and find a more compelling use for that money.
So the way I do that is two things.
Number one, I try to make the thing as appealing and as useful as possible.
And number two, I try to keep the price as low as possible.
That friend I was talking to about her coaching prices.
When I said, my strategic view of my pricing is that I want people to
hang around something like forever.
As long as we have a good relationship, as long as they are excited to show up to
our next call, I want them as a client.
And she said, that's interesting because it seems like almost every time I sell
a client at my prices, when we wrap up the engagement, they say, I would love
to continue, but I can't afford it.
Now, do I think that means her business model is wrong?
I don't.
I think there's a whole fantastic strategic position where she says,
I am a person who people save up to work with and work with once.
And it's amazing.
And they love it.
And I love it.
And when we're finished, they look back on it with fondness.
And it was so great.
I think that's a viable business plan.
What it requires of that coach is she always has to find new people.
Who will save up to work with her.
Now, does that mean she has to work harder or more than I do?
No.
What it means is I spend more of my working hours with clients because it's
easier for clients to work with me because my prices are lower and she's likely to
spend more of her working hours thinking about, waiting for, hoping for that
next client who saved up for a while.
To work with her is one better than the other.
I don't think so One of those is more comfortable and more appealing to
me and it's the one where I'm always pretty busy my practice Bumping right
up against too busy building long term relationships with clients enjoying them
so much Seeing breakthroughs small and big having an opportunity to celebrate
those breakthroughs Being able to say things like, Oh, I remember when we were
talking two summers ago, it's really important to me to say things like that.
Oh, but this usually does happen for you in September.
Remember two Septembers ago?
Remember last September?
It's really important to me to be able to, to with my client, draw
those through lines across their life experiences and across different
conditions and seasons in their life.
I find it deeply meaningful and satisfying.
And if part of being able to do that and enjoy that is keeping my coaching fees
comparatively low, they're still not low.
They're not low relative to therapy, for example, but keeping them comparatively
low, if that supports those long term relationships, I feel like I'm winning.
And I have the same thought about the membership that I start.
I want the membership.
To be renewably useful, but I also want its price to be low enough that
a person will look at that price and say, I could probably pay that forever.
That's not an amount of money.
That I would ever look at and say, Oh, I'm paying that.
Therefore I'm giving up this other very important thing or
this other very appealing thing.
I want my price to be an, and price not an or price.
In other words, I want my program to be priced such that a person would say,
I'm in Mark's membership and I'm in this other thing and I'm in that other thing.
If there were three, four or five programs like mine, they could say,
I'm in these five programs and I love this little bit and that little bit and
the other little bit from each of them.
That sounds fantastic to me.
Also as a consumer, I would love to buy that.
I want to be able to drop in for a while, drop back out, not feel like
I'm missing anything necessarily, not feel like I'm wasting money.
I like that.
That feels good to me.
So I think that's how I've got to set my stuff up.
But as you think about how to price your coaching, I do think the pricing
episode I did months ago, I think it's, there's some good stuff there.
But one new lens that I would introduce on that pricing question is, does
your pricing lend itself to longer term or shorter term relationships?
Neither is wrong.
If you're targeting longer relationships, your price will reflect it.
And so will the rest of your strategy.
And if you're targeting shorter relationships, then
your price will reflect that.
And so will the rest of your strategy.
But the food for thought I would leave you with above all
else would be asking yourself
in what ways is my coaching a utility that is renewably useful?
What are my ways of being, what are my approaches that I take with my clients
that would help them to say, although they would never use these words, my
coaching with him or her is a renewable.
Utility and benefit in my life.
I really wouldn't ever want to be without it.
I would feel worse off without it.
Consider that.
I think it's one of the basic questions that we have to answer in our coaching,
because I think it will really define everything we do in our practices.
And with that, I'll talk to you next time.