Is Charging More For Health Coaching Unethical?
If you’re a health or fitness expert, I need you to watch this video for the next few minutes because I’ve got something really important I need to share with you.
My name is Yuri Elkaim. I’m the founder of Healthpreneur and health and fitness experts come to me as the guy to help them start or scale a successful health coaching business online. Part of what we teach our clients to do and help them do is to increase their prices.
Recently I’ve been getting a lot of backlash because a lot of people believe that charging more is unethical, especially in the health space. So I want to take a few minutes right here to remind you that as a health or fitness expert, I believe you should be the most highly paid professional on this planet.
Why I Believe Health and Fitness Professionals Should Be Charging Premium Pricing
Yeah, and that sounds like a bold claim, but let me ask you this. A lawyer gets paid $500 an hour for what, drafting up a contract or responding to an email but you can take somebody from years of struggling with their weight, their eating habits, maybe going through a disease to a better outcome. You are an alchemist. You can take someone’s dirt and turn it into gold. Why should you suffer? Why should you struggle financially? Why should not have a business that is extremely profitable?
I don’t know what it is in the health and fitness space. Listen, we’re all healers. I have a very successful health and fitness business myself. I’ve been in this space for 20 years. I lost my hair when I was 17 to an autoimmune condition. I’ve been through my own health journey. I understand we want to help other people but nobody wins if you can’t take care of yourself. Being poor is not noble. I believe being poor is selfish because if you can build a business that earns a great amount of money, do you think that you could do more with that or less with that? Obviously more.
So, why is it that so many healers and health professionals have a problem when it comes to charging more? What I want to do here is I want to give you some perspectives and insights that will hopefully get you thinking about this a little bit differently, but before I share that, the biggest argument people come to me at with is they’re like, “Okay, Yuri, health should be available to everyone. Everyone should have access to free health.” Well, first of all, I live in Canada, so if you want to get free health, come up to Canada, but secondly we pay that in the form of our taxes. Let’s just be honest about that, but second of all, I really believe everyone should have access to better health, but we all know that when we don’t pay, we don’t pay attention, right? The more you invest, the more you are invested.
When a lot of people talk to us or have issues with the fact that, hey listen, I believe that you should be charging more, the first thing that comes back is, “Well, how dare you? Those people over there who can’t afford your services, they don’t get any help, they’re not good enough?” Here’s the thing. When you can work with clients at a higher level, and we’ll talk about the benefits of premium pricing in a second, but let’s just say that you have your cohort of clients that pay you top dollar to transform their life. Now again, as I mentioned a few minutes ago, you have more income, you have more profit in your business.
Serving More People And Giving More
Now, when your cup is full, are you able to give more or less? Naturally you can give more. So for everyone else who can’t afford to work with you, you can give all of your great stuff away for free if you wanted to and that’s what we do in Healthpreneur. We don’t have the $7 eBooks. We don’t have the lead magnets that lead to the $10 offer and the convoluted upsell funnel. We don’t have any of that stuff. We have two ways we work with our clients and they are very high levels, and for those people who can’t afford to work with us, that’s totally fine. We give everything else away for free.
The reason we’re able to do that is because our business generates a lot of income and we’re able to serve a greater portion of our audience who are health and fitness experts and practitioners and coaches perhaps like you, but if we were struggling in our business to make that $4 to $7 eBook work or that 30 day challenge, that free 30 day challenge and getting people into paying $97 afterwards, if we’re trying to make that work, there is no way we could be serving the number of people that we do.
The Benefits of Charging More
I want to encourage you to think along the same lines because you not charging what you deserve is hurting your business but it’s also hurting your clients. Let me put it this way. Let me talk about some of the benefits of charging more, okay? Number one, the number one benefit of you charging more is on you. It’s you show up at a higher level to produce and create the most incredible result or experience for your clients. If somebody pays you 50 bucks, do you think there’s a level of engagement there that might be a little bit different than if they paid you $5,000? Absolutely. So, charging more is beneficial for you because you don’t mess around.
Listen, I’ve written three published books including a number two New York Times bestseller. It sells for, what, $27 on Amazon or the bookstores? We’ve had hundreds of thousands of people read my books. We’ve helped half a million customers with their health in our health and fitness business and through my products, but I can tell you that the people who’ve read my books, their lives haven’t changed. Their lives haven’t transformed. I wish I could say every single person did. There might be the small minority who applied something and really ran with it, but the majority of people, we know that if they’re buying a $20 book or if they’re getting free information from a blog or a website, they’re not taking action on that.
So it’s actually a disservice to be selling more of your stuff at lower prices. That’s the unethical thing. So charging more is beneficial for you because you show up to the best of your ability and when that happens, you do whatever it takes to help your client get an outcome. That’s the first most important piece of charging more. The second piece of charging more is that you attract your best clients, the clients who actually want to do the work and get the results.
Listen, we all know that everyone’s suffering with their health but we all know that not everyone is ready to make the change, right? You can only preach to the choir. You can’t try to convince people they should be eating healthy if they’re perfectly fine eating at McDonald’s seven days a week. If you’re explaining and convincing, you are losing. You can only attract people into your business who agree with you and get what you’re talking about. Just like this video, there will be people watching this who are like, “Yuri, you are effing crazy if you think you should be charging more to help people with their health.”
Listen, I’m not talking about necessarily just helping people with cancer or heart disease. I’m talking about getting people in shape, helping them lose weight, helping them work out better, helping them eat healthier. Whatever it is that you do, you should be charging more. You show up better, you attract more committed clients, and the more committed the clients show up, it’s a lot more fun obviously as you know to work with those clients, but they’re going to get results and that’s good for them and it’s good for you.
Premium Pricing Is Reassuring
The third reason premium pricing is extremely beneficial for you and your clients is that premium pricing is reassuring. It’s reassuring to help somebody at a level where they can justify the price, being like, “Yeah, this is a pretty big problem. I think this price justifies that.” When I talk about premium pricing, guys, I’m talking about some type of coaching program that’s four, six, eight, 10, 12 weeks that’s going to be anywhere from $3 to $5,000 or beyond that. If you have a tough time wrapping your head around that, it’s all good. That’s what we help our clients do.
In fact, if you like this and jive with this, I have a special gift for you at the end of this video which I’ll tell you about in a second, but the thing to remember is premium pricing is reassuring. It’s reassuring. We had a client. Her name was Judy. When we first met, she was charging $97 to help people get through cancer naturally. Now, the challenge that she was having was that nobody was biting on her bait. Why do you think that is? Well, do you think cancer is a small or a big problem? It’s probably a big problem for a lot of people. Do you think $97 justifies or reflects the gravity of that scenario? Absolutely not.
So we worked with her on how to create a more compelling offer, to really go above and beyond to help her clients, and now she’s charging $15,000 to work with people and doctors at a very high level to help people with their journey through cancer. Just before you say to yourself, “Okay, Yuri, how are people going through cancer paying that amount of money?” It’s not that. She’s working with some really interesting ways to help not only individuals but the whole medical profession with what she’s doing. So because she thought outside the box and started thinking bigger, now she’s expanding her reach and really helping people in a bigger way than just one on one.
Impacting Lives
That is what we’re here to do, is we’re here to impact people’s lives. We’re here to transform the world and we can’t do that if you are a martyr in your own business. There is no reason why if you are a healer of any way … However you want to define yourself, there is now way that you should be suffering financially and if you are, listen, all it comes down to is making the decision to change things.
I don’t know if you’ve ever stayed at a hotel, but as you probably know, there are many different types of hotels. You’ve got Motel 8 which is going to cost you, what, $69 a night and you’re going to have sheets with stains on them, dirty floors. I actually was unfortunately enough the recipient of one of those hotel room night stays several years ago driving from Toronto to Florida. It was not a very enjoyable experience. On the flip side, the Four Seasons hotel, as you know, is probably one of the nicest hotel resorts in the world and they charge easily upwards of $500 a night.
I was actually staying at a resort, the Four Seasons, in Punta Mita, Mexico earlier this year. Their daily rates start at $1,500. Now I’m not saying this to brag because we actually had a special group rate for the mastermind I was there with, but I tell you this because the Four Seasons is not hurting for business. It’s not hurting for business. What I want to suggest to you is this, is that it’s your choice whether you want to run a Motel 8 type of business or a Four Seasons business. That’s it, end of story. It’s on you. It’s your choice. So, I want to encourage you to think about, “Listen, am I happy with my results? Am I happy with the life I’m living? Am I happy with the results I’m getting for my clients?”
If the answer is yes, then keep doing what you’re doing, but if there is any shadow of a doubt to the back of your mind where you’re thinking, “Man, I wish I didn’t have to worry about the bills. I wish I had more freedom, more room, more profit to be able to do the things I really want to do in life. I wish I was able to attract clients who saw the value in what I provide and were willing to pay me top dollar to work with them because I’ve got amazing magic that can help them.”
If you feel any of that then you’ve got to change and again, it comes down to making a simple decision, and obviously we can help you with that if you like, but anyways, I want to get this off my chest because this is something that comes up and up and up over and over and over again, and I just don’t understand. I just do not understand why internet marketers should charge more or lawyers can charge more or other professionals can charge more, but when it comes to health, all of a sudden, everyone’s poopooing top dollar premium pricing.
We’re not trying to alienate people, guys. We’re not trying to alienate people from better health. What I’m saying is work with those clients who can afford your services, transform their lives, earn more money and then give everything else away for free. You can only help others if your cup is full, so why choose to run a Motel 6 business when you run a Four Seasons type business, generate great amounts of income, transform your clients’ lives and then help others in other ways that you don’t have to charge for?
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My Gift To You
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