Published December 4, 2020
My clients are generally pretty fun to be around.
One in particular I only see every other week for 1/2 hour. It isn’t a big project by any means and she keeps getting a lot out of it.
Basically I listen to what she is doing lately and give feedback and ideas. She works with successful woman managers and executives. She does one-on-one coaching as well as running a number of groups.
The groups are where it gets exciting. And when she comes on the call and talks about “money coming out of her ears”. She is a sweet retired woman with grandchildren, extremely humble, and very very talented in how she helps the women she works with.
So in this last meeting, she was pondering about a new twice a year group she wants to run. She wasn’t sure if the price was too much of a jump. By the end of the 1/2 hour it was clear the price was a good “pilot” price and the for real price would be higher and this could easily bring in an additional $80-$100K/year for her. Given the success of her existing groups, that doesn’t surprise me.
I sometimes wonder if I’m giving her enough value given I don’t do much. Except I do a lot. She is paying an INCREDIBLY reasonable price for my insights and feedback on things she wasn’t considering. I’m probably responsible for multiple $10s of thousands in extra income for her. I’m probably under charging and I’m ok for that in this case. It’s good experience, referral opportunity, testimonial opportunity, and shows me what a successful business can look like.
She is definitely an ideal client.
We even worked out how her doing a three times yearly happy hour meeting could go from “those can be expensive” to “those would be amazing for bringing new people into her circle”. The trick is her past clients can bring guests to the event. No charge. Hold it at a wine bar. Serve finger food. Given lifetime value of each client is in the high multiple thousands, if she only gets one new paying client for her intro group (which costs multiple hundreds), the events at least break even.
Yes, I’m writing this partly to justify that I’m “under-charging”. It’s an incredible learning opportunity for me. Working with her helps validate and prove out ideas I have on how to do business (they are good ideas).
And it’s fun. And fun seeing her have the time of her life not working very hard (her goal from the start of us working together) and bringing in a LOT of extra income.