How Much Should a Woman Entrepreneur Charge for Coaching?

The answer isn't 'whatever feels good.' It's math. Here's the framework we use with every coach who joins our community.

Why Is Pricing So Hard for Women Coaches?

Because nobody taught us how to do it with math. We were taught to 'charge what we're worth' — which is terrible advice because your worth as a human has nothing to do with your pricing as a business. Your pricing is a math problem. Your worth is an existential one. Mixing them up is why so many women coaches are charging $75 an hour and wondering why they can't make rent.

I've also noticed something specific to women over 40: we compare our pricing to what we earned per hour in our corporate jobs. So someone who made $45 an hour as an employee thinks $100 an hour as a coach is 'a lot.' It's not a lot. It's significantly less than what you need to charge once you factor in taxes, health insurance, software, continuing education, marketing time, admin time, and the hours you spend doing all the work that nobody pays you for.

The pricing conversation is also loaded with guilt. Guilt about charging too much. Guilt about making more than your partner. Guilt about pricing out people who 'really need' your help. That guilt is real, and it's costing you your business. We've written a whole pricing framework that tackles this, but let's get into the actual numbers.

How Do I Calculate What to Charge?

Start with this: how much money do you need to take home each year? Not want — need. Your salary. After taxes, after expenses, after the business keeps what it needs. Write that number down. Let's say it's $80,000.

Now add your business expenses. Software, insurance, marketing, education, contractors. For most solo coaches, that's $15,000 to $30,000 a year. Let's call it $20,000. So your business needs to generate $100,000.

Now figure out your capacity. How many clients can you realistically serve at once? If you're doing one-on-one coaching, and each client gets 4 sessions a month, and you can handle 12 clients — that's 48 sessions a month. But you also need time for marketing, admin, sales calls, and rest. So realistically, you're delivering maybe 35 to 40 sessions a month.

Do the math: $100,000 divided by 12 months equals $8,333 a month. Divided by 40 sessions equals $208 per session. If your sessions are an hour, that's your minimum rate. Not your 'premium' rate. Your minimum. The rate at which your business barely sustains itself and pays you what you need.

Most women coaches I meet are charging half that. And they're working twice the hours because they need more clients to make up the difference. See the problem?

Should I Charge Per Session or Per Package?

Per package. Always. And here's why: per-session pricing turns you into a commodity. Clients compare you to every other coach charging by the hour. They cancel when money gets tight. They nickel-and-dime the time. And you're on a revenue roller coaster where one cancellation derails your month.

Package pricing does three things: it commits the client to a result (not just a conversation), it stabilizes your revenue, and it signals that you're a professional, not a freelancer hoping for repeat bookings.

A typical coaching package might be 3 months (12 sessions) at $2,500 to $5,000. A 6-month intensive might be $5,000 to $12,000. Group coaching runs $500 to $2,000 per participant for a cohort. These aren't pulled from thin air — they're based on the math above, adjusted for the value of the transformation you deliver.

The women in The Ecosystem who've restructured their coaching offers from hourly to packages consistently report two things: they make more money and their clients get better results. Both things happen because the package creates accountability. You're not selling hours. You're selling outcomes. Price accordingly.

What If My Market 'Can't Afford' My Prices?

Then you're talking to the wrong market. I'm not being glib — this is one of the hardest truths in coaching. If the people you're marketing to genuinely cannot afford $2,000 for a coaching package, you either need to change your audience or change your offer structure. Adding a lower-priced option (like a group program or a self-paced course) lets you serve price-sensitive clients without discounting your core offer.

But here's what I've learned after years of watching women coaches undercharge: most of the time, it's not that the market can't afford it. It's that the coach hasn't communicated the value clearly enough. When someone understands exactly what they'll get, what outcome to expect, and what it costs them to stay stuck — the price becomes secondary to the result.

One of our members raised her one-on-one coaching from $150 a session to a $4,000 three-month package. She expected to lose clients. She lost one. And she gained three new ones who took the work more seriously because they'd invested more. That's not an anomaly. That's the pattern.

Do the math. Know your numbers. Price based on sustainability, not insecurity. And remember: a business that can't pay you is a hobby. A noble hobby, maybe. But still a hobby.

Cheers to your success,

Lori Walker

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