High-ticket coaching is one of many incredible new business opportunities offered to Christians who know their way around social media and online marketing.
Is it the holy grail like some high-ticket business coaching programs suggest? (…who sell high-ticket coaching teaching you how to sell high-ticket coaching…)
No, but it works, has many positives as a business, and can help you impact many people, very deeply.
As with all things, a balanced, nuanced approach is required to best understand whether this is the right path for you.
Below you’ll learn my experience as both a customer and business owner of high-ticket coaching programs, along with things I’ve learned from colleagues along the way.
Why Listen To Me?
I spent November 2022 to July 2023 building a high-ticket coaching program, in the third year of running DadWork.
I’d offered everything from men’s groups to workshops to courses to 1:1 coaching, and decided, after seeing inside of another high-ticket program as a customer, that this would be my next evolution…the one thing I’d spend all my time building.
There’s a longer story behind why it was so short lived…not lack of results, but conviction from God. You can read a little bit about my thoughts at the time here.
Anyway, we did about $200K in less than a year running this program, and God was glorified in the impact we made in many families.
Prices ranged from $3600-$5000, and our programs we sold programs for both 12 week and 12 month commitments.
I also know a bunch of other coaches in the “industry” who do 6-7 figures/year with this model.
Like any business model, it can work. Let’s spend the rest of this article diving into the what, why, and how-to around this business model so you know exactly how to start if you’re considering this path.
What Do I Mean By “High-Ticket Coaching”?
Let’s make sure we’re on the same page here. What is it?
High-ticket coaching is a business model whereby you charge a fairly high rate…typically for a fairly significant outcome.
Some do 1:1, but I think the group coaching model works best for this, and that’s where I have experience, so that’s what I’ll focus on, since it is also more scalable.
So, high-ticket group coaching is when you build a program that you run people through to achieve a particular result, while offering coaching and feedback in a group setting (though usually with opportunities to get 1:1 coaching here and there as appropriate).
There’s usually accountability, lessons, coaching calls, and an online community attached to the program.
I have joined coaching programs for anywhere between $1000 and $10,000. I think a good place to start is between $2500 and $5000 for MOST high-ticket coaching programs. That seems to be an accepted tier.
Lower than that and you are dealing with a fairly different clientele who have different expectations. More than that and you’re once again dealing with different clientele who are likely looking for an absolute slam-dunk, game-changing outcome that is going to be worth a lot more to them.
Try to deliver 10x the value you charge. Easier to quantify for business coaches, but you get the idea.
Read Hormozi’s books, or watch his courses to get an understanding of how to position yourself as worthy of charging high-ticket prices, and how to actually fulfill them. Not totally necessary, because I’ll break down the most useful basics/overview here, but not a bad idea if you want to learn more.
Why Consider High-Ticket Group Coaching As A Christian Coach?
Honestly, it’s one of the most attractive business models in my opinion.
You automate a large portion of the teaching, show up for a 1 hour call or two per week, reply to messages, eventually hire coaches to help you in the community, and then spend the rest of your time marketing (which can be as little as posting on social media every day).
AND, high-ticket means you’re making a good amount of revenue per sale, which means you have to make fewer sales to be successful.
So, it makes sense as a business owner.
But, it also makes sense from an impact point of view.
I am a strong believer that people get the best results in a community environment. So, while I’m a proponent for 1:1 coaching in many cases, I would argue that it is NOT something to choose INSTEAD OF group coaching.
1:1 coaching is usually best used in a specific season of life, or for a specific project or outcome, in combination with being enrolled in a group coaching program.
Because you’re distilling your best stuff into a training program, putting a bunch of like-minded people together, and then coaching them on topics that are relevant to almost everyone in the program, you can have a MASSIVE impact on more people without much more work than 1:1 coaching.
It works for you as an entrepreneur, it works for your clients, it’s scalable, you don’t need a ton of clients to have a thriving business.
How To Run A High-Ticket Group Coaching Program
I’ll break down some funnel options below, but let’s cover the logistical stuff first. I get this question a lot, so hopefully this can serve as a place for me to send people from now on!
First, you’ve got to build your program.
What are you amazing at? What outcome can you “guarantee” (assuming that your client perfectly followed all your advice and had no external issues pop up)? What could you spend all day talking about?
It doesn’t have to be crazy or overwhelmingly large and detailed. People will pay a lot of money for a specific issue to be solved. Obviously they’ll pay high-ticket coaching prices if the issue to be solved is really painful for them.
Poll your audience, ask your 1:1 clients, or just look back at how you conquered whatever problem you coach people on.
Then get to work building it.
I suggest having the following sections of your program:
- Habits & Accountability
- Knowledgebase/Lessons/Courses
- Coaching Calls
- Community
Habits & Accountability
Give your people a set of daily actions to perform that will get them closer to their end goal.
In fitness programs, get your workout in, hit your macros, submit a picture, weigh yourself, etc.
For us there were things like waking up early, exercising, wife service, kid connection, gratitudes, etc.
For business, maybe it’s create a social media post every day, write 1000 words, cold call 20 people, etc.
Make sure to build accountability into it.
Most people have a channel in whatever app they’re using (Slack, Trainerize, Telegram etc.) where people have to post their accountabilities every day. Screenshot of what you did, pic of you working out, etc.
This keeps people engaged but also gets them results.
You become what you do every day, so set them up for success.
One more point on this…
I sent a weekly message to every member asking for a weekly update.
This is both incredibly useful for the member (because they get more accountability, more touch points with the program, more access to the coach) and the coach (because you get deeper, private insights into what your target market is struggling with, more abilities to help clients who may not be able to articulate their issues on a group call).
It adds a fair bit of work each week depending on how many clients you have, but I found it very valuable and I know most of my clients did, too.
This is not strictly necessary, but I would say you need to consider it considering the price point you’re considering (high-ticket usually requires high-touch to some degree).
Knowledgebase/Lessons/Courses
I suggest having a video course section of your program where you can point people to rather than having to answer questions about the basics over and over again.
For example, inside the DadWork Brotherhood, I had courses on communication, emotional mastery, fatherhood, marriage, anger, etc.
These are common issues men struggle with, and instead of downloading my brain into each man individually, it made WAY more sense to build courses and record videos that would benefit everyone.
For fitness coaches, this could be your workout database/daily workout. For business coaches, it could be how to setup your funnel, how to create a FB ad, etc.
I broke this up into two sections for my own program. We had all the training videos, but I also created what I called the Leadership & Legacy Framework, which I dripped out, one piece per week, over the first 12 weeks of the program.
This was an action-oriented part of the training.
Clients could access the training courses at any time to improve their skills, but I wanted to make sure they actually wrote things down and did specific processes with the L&LF, which is why I dripped it out (to make sure they had time to do each week’s assignment).
This worked for me, and allowed men to create a document that gave them a vision and map to achieve their vision for their family. If you have something similar, it can be a good way to serve your clients, while also keeping them engaged and actively involved.
Coaching Calls
These are incredibly important.
I’ve been in groups that had one weekly coaching call, I’ve been in groups that had daily coaching calls (focused on different topics, usually run by other members of the team).
We had 2 group coaching calls, one in the morning, one in the afternoon, on different days of the week, to give more men an opportunity to make a call. (One of our weekly accountabilities was to attend a call.)
This is where you will provide direct coaching to your clients.
It’s common for the coach to start off with a lesson or something that they’ve learned/implemented/noticed recently.
If you bring the fire and energy to your clients, it’s a great opportunity to start the call with that energy.
Then, transition over to Q&A.
If there aren’t a lot of questions, feel free to call on people and ask them how things are going, poke a little bit and see if there’s something you can help them with. But, you’ll usually have plenty of questions.
Record these and keep them handy for members to watch. Next level would be to have your VA categorize the calls, or create a growing Q&A document that links to specific sections of each call. This is a huge benefit for your clients, and also saves you a ton of time. Throw it up on Notion or something and make it searchable.
These can be however you want to make them, you’re the coach, don’t overthink it.
Since we did weekly calls and I like having certainty in my schedule, they were the same time every week. I’ve also seen people make them different times and days every week or month, though, to ensure clients have a chance to attend a call if they have a scheduling conflict with the usual time.
Community
Slack, Trainerize, Circle, Skool, FB Group, simple Telegram or WhatsApp group, whatever.
Whatever the case, the community will become one of the most important and valuable parts of your coaching program.
I often join things just because it saves me the headache of having to find friends and colleagues randomly in the wild. If someone’s built a program or community around people who share specific traits with me, I’d rather just pay to join the community and instantly grow my network.
Same goes for coaching. Most people don’t know how valuable this is, so it’s not necessarily something to lead with in your sales copy, but the relationships built in the community are insanely valuable for people.
This is where your accountabilities should go.
This is also where you should post your own thoughts, recordings, resources you create or find, etc.
Encourage clients to post questions here between calls, then answer them. Be VERY active in your community.
Create a culture where people feel comfortable sharing wins, too. The more vulnerable you can be leading the group, the more you’ll get people sharing both wins and losses/lessons.
Do what you can to make this community invaluable in your clients’ day to day life so that it becomes something with a life of it’s own.
Eventually consider hiring a community manager…either one of the OG members who’s had a ton of success and wants to give back, or one of the coaches you hire to scale.
That’s about it. You can update as you go. You can see what works and what doesn’t, add courses later, etc. Get it out the door, be available to your first few clients and serve them incredibly well…give 10x the value they paid.
Get some testimonials from early clients, and use those to build your membership. Rinse and repeat.
Scaling
I was brainstorming how to scale before I pulled the plug on DadWork, but here are a few thoughts.
One, hire and train up your best students. You will have a small percentage of students who just CLICK. They get it, they are your biggest fans, they are active in the community, they are forever grateful to you for solving their biggest issue.
Some of these people will LOVE the idea of joining your team and helping others.
You can also hire other coaches in your industry who are amazing coaches but perhaps don’t care as much about the entrepreneurial side of things.
You might know a few of these in your space…they’ve got small IG followings, they don’t really seem to “get” marketing, business, branding, etc…but you know their content is actually amazing.
Reach out to some of these people and ask them if they’d be willing to chat with you about joining you under your brand name.
They get to coach, they get consistent income, and they don’t have to worry about all the ups and downs of entrepreneurial life.
Train them in your program, set expectations, introduce them to your community, and start to give them work to do like running the calls, being the point person for answering Qs in the community, etc.
How To Sell High-Ticket Coaching (Funnels and Sales)
Most high-ticket group coaching programs I know of are the main part of the coach’s business.
If you do have other sections of your business, this will be the highest upsell possible, the most intense (and expensive) experience you offer.
So, everything you do should be designed to get your ideal clients pointed toward the only way to get into your program: usually an application + phone call combo.
Most people I know, including myself, ran a funnel that looked like this:
- Traffic (social followers, ads, email, podcast, etc.)
- Free training (30-60 minute video)
- Give high level overview of how to solve a specific problem (focused more on what to do than how to do it…give free information…people will pay for implementation).
- Tell them there are two choices now that you see what lies in the way of you achieving your goals…try doing it alone (costly, time-intensive, uncertain) or do it with you (less costly, less time-intensive, more certain).
- Book a call to learn more about how we can help you achieve your goal
- Usually consists of a Typeform which redirects to a Calendly, or, simply use Calendly and add a bunch of application questions
- Do the call, close the sale
Obviously each piece can get complicated if you let it, but that’s about it.
You can try different trainings, you can turn your entire YouTube channel into videos that all eventually lead to booking a call. You can offer free lead magnets on social that include a CTA to watch the free training as the next step in the journey.
There’s a million ways to do it, put on your marketing hat. The point is, every step should lead to the next step…and there shouldn’t be many steps between when they see you and when they book a call.
Now, especially for high-ticket coaching (in my experience), people usually need to spend time getting to know you so they can tell whether they like and trust you enough to shell out $2-5K.
Therefore, you must maintain an active presence elsewhere such that people will always have you top of mind when they finally trust that you can solve their problem (and they’re ready to solve it).
The vast majority of my clients had followed me for months before becoming a client.
They listened to my podcast, they were on my email list, they followed me on Instagram.
Most of them had subscribed to more than one lead magnet, too.
Now, I was in a very vulnerable niche (dads who were willing to admit that they weren’t doing a great job as a dad or husband), so I assume I had a longer sales cycle than fitness/business coaches, but the point remains regardless…
Assume your funnel is hitting only a few percent of your following at any one time, and spend the rest of your time building trust with your followers by serving them, providing free value, and growing that audience of followers.
I see too many people try to do this with only a funnel. Probably won’t work.
Even ads can be hit and miss depending on the industry. I know people who built 7 figure coaching businesses on FB ads at a pretty good ROAS, but I also know many people for whom that didn’t work.
And even if you do hit it off with ads, you will need a place to nurture the vast majority of people who don’t buy right away.
So, have your actual sales funnel, but also make sure everything you do serves and nurtures everyone else who is not ready to buy right away.
The Actual Sales Call
You can go down a huge rabbit hole here.
I really tried to make scripts work, and always felt unnatural.
I ended up winging it for awhile and just connecting with people on calls.
What were they actually suffering from? Could I actually help them? What did I actually offer inside the coaching program?
Through hundreds of these calls, I ended up with something of a natural script. All my calls ended up following the same sort of path, and I could more easily tell who was a good fit and who was not.
If they gave the usual pain points, I was able to tell them what we’d do to help them. If they gave new pain points, I’d either explore more and tell them how what we did would impact them, or I’d say we weren’t the right fit.
Don’t fall into the trap of being needy if they’re not the ideal client!
The Lord is faithful. He will send those He wants to be in your program. Don’t try to do it all on your power. I’ve fallen into that trap and it’s always had bad results. Patience!
I started with 30 minute calls then made them into 20 minutes because I was spending a lot of time on calls each day.
20 mins was fine once I knew the usual script and how to showcase the value we provided succinctly.
I know some people do DM sales, which is awesome if you can wing it, and have a slightly lower cost program, OR are extremely well known. I don’t suggest that to most people. Get on the phone!
At the very least, it’ll illuminate the actual problems your clients are facing, and you’ll be able to better tailor your solutions for them.
On the actual calls, I was myself as much as possible. Don’t be weird.
- Told them what I had just been up to, ask how they were, be very energetic.
- Tell them I read the application, kind of get it, but want them to explain in their own words so I get a better sense as to what they’re struggling with.
- Ask a few questions.
- Tell them whether I think I can help them or not (and be honest…I sent dozens of people to other coaches or programs I knew if I knew we weren’t a good fit).
- Ask them if they want to hear how we might be able to help.
- Tell them the pillars and why they’re going to work for their specific situation.
- Ask if that made sense and if they followed that could they see why it would work in their own life.
- When they said yes, told them that it’s an investment because it works and because it’s way cheaper than [consequence of not fixing their problem](…for me it was divorce, messed up kids, etc.).
- Told them the price, asked if they were ready to join.
- Handled objections and pushed back a little…I truly believed my program would change their lives and save their family. If you aren’t willing to spend $5k for that outcome, what are you doing??? How else will you solve it? Are you seriously not willing to make this the most important thing you’re focused on in your life? Don’t push too hard, be respectful, but I always framed it as part of my coaching, starting right away. “How will you make the decision, if you don’t join now? How will you know when it’s time to stop suffering XYZ? Let me hold you accountable.”
Either way, I sent an email afterward (and tracked it all through Close.com as a CRM) with what we covered, the pillars of the program, a link to testimonials, and a link to join (either pay in full or payment plan if they needed one).
For those who joined, they’d go through an onboarding sequence, including booking a 20 minute onboarding call with me. They would have been sent videos to watch, links to join the Slack and coaching app (Coach Catalyst), etc., so I just got them fired up, told them what to expect, and made sure they were getting active right away.
A Note On Nurturing
Most successful coaches I know have invested in long form content.
Yes, most are crushing a social platform like IG.
But, most are also providing a ton of value on YouTube and/or a podcast.
I share this in another article, but I had a client tell me he stopped listening to my podcast once he signed up as a client because he felt it was unfair that he knew me so well and I didn’t know him.
That’s how impactful podcasting can be for coaches…people feel like they KNOW you, which leads to SIGNIFICANTLY easier sales calls.
Can’t tell you how many sales calls I got, “I can’t believe I’m actually talking to you!” Now, to me that’s absolutely insane and ridiculous because I didn’t even have a huge following, but when you provide real value that really changes peoples lives via podcast or social media, people genuinely end up rooting for you and being so grateful for you.
Spend time pouring into your audience. It serves them, makes sales calls way easier, and will pre-sell a ton of people who don’t care how much it costs because they just KNOW you are the right coach for them since they’ve heard so much of you.
Start a podcast and consistently publish helpful things for your audience.
Get in touch if you want our help to launch or edit/produce it.
Niches
High-ticket group coaching programs can work in any niche where you can solve a problem that is worth more than your coaching program to your client.
I helped married dads build the family and leave the legacy they knew they were capable of (on the flip side…helped dads save their families/marriages).
I know pornography recovery coaches, fitness coaches, fitness business coaches, family business coaches, marriage coaches…but there’s also a ton of sub-niches that can work.
Evernote power user coaches. How to find a masculine man and get married within a year coaches.
The list is endless.
Whatever your unique gifting and superpower are, that you have legit experience in, you can teach people.
The high-ticket part all depends on whether you can justify charging that much for the value of the solution.
For example, if you save someone a couple hours/year with a few excel formulas you’ve learned…probably just put out a free lead magnet or a $7 course.
BUT…if you help overworked HR professionals use macros and AI and specific systems and virtual assistants in such a way that saves them literally 50% of their week at a fraction of the cost they’re currently spending…that’s a much easier sale at $5k or $10k.
And don’t forget…the niche is less important than how you position the solution.
People expect results with high-ticket programs. AND…the people who join high-ticket programs are usually much more likely to actually execute what you as their coach tell them. Charging more is often a great way to get better results for your clients, because they’ll be more bought into the process.
Couple other ideas:
- Leadership coaching for executives
- Non-profit organization launch coaching
- Financial coaching
- Parenting coaching program
Wrapping Up
If you’re a Christian coach looking to launch a high-ticket group offer, feel free to get in touch at curt@proclaimpodcasting.com if I missed anything.
And again, get your socials pumping regularly with VALUABLE content, not just sales content.
Start an email newsletter on the back of your free lead magnets.
And START A PODCAST. (Book a call with us to save a ton of time and headache…you just record, we do the rest).