Fewer clients,
better clients.

Upmarket Pro is a free course on how wealthy clients decide, and on how you, as a service professional, can reposition your business to serve them. You finish with your own repositioning, written and ready to use.

Begin the course

This course is free and consists of 190 lessons. The material draws on Kapferer and Bastien's The Luxury Strategy, Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow, Cialdini's Influence, Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class, and Thaler and Sunstein's Nudge.

Two wooden chairs at a round table in soft light from a paper screen

The same skill, two markets.

Take a photographer. Here is what a business looks like at the market minimum and what it could look like upmarket.

MeasureAt the market minimumUpmarket
Clients per monthTwenty, back to backSix, by referral
Price per engagement$400$4,000
How clients find youSearch, ads, and price comparisonA friend who used you
What they ask about firstThe priceWhether you have time for them
A lamplit lounge with an armchair and sofa facing a low table

Built for professionals ready to earn more than the market rate.

You are a photographer, trainer, chef, designer, coach, tutor, organizer, or any professional who sells their skill. You have a full book and thin margins, and you have met a wealthy client or two and noticed that they decided differently.

The course assumes your business is already running. It does not cover starting one, or finding clients at any price.

Learn the essentials in 19 modules.

Eleven core modules come first, and each one builds on the one before it. Seven electives follow, one for each field, and a capstone turns everything into a plan you can put in place.

  1. Navy wool cloth beneath the foot of a tailor’s sewing machine
    Module 1

    What Luxury Is and What It Isn't

    What wealthy clients buy, and why it is never the deliverable

    9 lessons
  2. A marble staircase with a curving balustrade, seen rising toward the light
    Module 2

    How to Move Upmarket

    Where wealthy clients come from, and how to reach them

    17 lessons
  3. An old private library with a wooden staircase and shelves of bound books
    Module 3

    Who Wealthy Clients Are

    The four wealth types, and the daily life of the client you will meet

    12 lessons
  4. A brass key resting in the lock of a dark wooden door
    Module 4

    Why Wealthy Clients Buy What They Buy

    The behavioral science of how wealthy clients decide

    18 lessons
  5. Two wooden chairs at a round table in soft light from a paper screen
    Module 5

    Real Confidence Is the Absence of Performance

    How to stop performing confidence and let stillness do the work

    15 lessons
  6. A fountain pen resting on a handwritten letter
    Module 6

    How to Speak Like an Upmarket Professional

    The vocabulary and conversation habits of the upmarket professional

    14 lessons
  7. A stone colonnade with vaulted arches receding into warm light
    Module 7

    How Trust Is Built and Kept

    How trust is built, kept, and recovered across a client relationship

    17 lessons
  8. Two leather club chairs in lamplight beneath a palm
    Module 8

    How to Sell to a Wealthy Client

    The first serious conversation, from creating desire to a natural close

    21 lessons
  9. A long hotel corridor with a red carpet and wall sconces, empty
    Module 9

    How to Create Loyalty That Lasts

    Experiences that turn one engagement into repeat work and referrals

    13 lessons
  10. A tatami room with a low lacquered table set for tea
    Module 10

    How to Read Clients From Other Cultures

    Reading the room with internationally wealthy clients

    6 lessons
  11. A library ladder against dark shelves with a small lamp
    Module 11

    Your Own Psychology and Practice

    Imposter syndrome, pricing anxiety, and building the practice itself

    8 lessons
  12. See all 19 modules

Every lesson ends with a decision.

At the end of each lesson, Apply This asks you two or three questions about your own business. Each question comes with an example answer, so you know the size and shape of what to write. Here is one from the lessons on your offer.

Your own repositioning, written by you.

Your answers save on your device as you go, and one email lets you keep them across devices.

By the time you complete the capstone, you will have identified your market, clarified your ideal client, developed your offer, and set an upmarket price. You will have written your pitch in your own words. And you will have a plan for how to put it all in place.

How the Workbook works
A leather-wrapped journal lying open on a dark cloth
Field examples

See what upmarket looks like.

The Field Examples page collects real service businesses that already work at the top of their market, and reads their websites for the signals they send. Here are three of the signals you will learn to see.

See all eight field examples

Brett Wharton seated in a warm restaurant interior
The instructor

He made the move first.

Brett Wharton runs NexusMKTG, a web strategy business he repositioned upmarket. He built Upmarket Pro from his research and from the mistakes he made along the way, so that you could skip the guesswork.

About Brett and the course