Why Wealthy Clients Pay for Expertise Differently

Many executive coaches describe what they sell as a program, with a set number of sessions, an assessment, and a framework. Private tutors describe hours and a method, and consultants describe a process and a report. Each of those is how the work reaches the client. Even so, a wealthy client is paying for what the work means to them. When the work is advice, that comes down to one person’s judgment, and to being someone who works with that person.

Imagine an executive coach named Bettany Corvin who works with people who run family companies. In January, Leopold Tobin takes over from his father as chief executive of the shipping company his grandfather started. He is 49. He hires Bettany and pays her himself. “I want to lead my team, not just inherit it,” he tells her.

Bettany has three other clients that week, so she sells him her usual program. It runs six months, with a 360-degree review, 12 sessions, and her framework of five leadership habits. In February, she gives Leopold the 40-page report from the review. The sessions then take the habits one at a time.

In the third session, Leopold mentions that his senior team has gone quiet in meetings. Bettany sat in on one of those meetings the week before. She saw him ask the team for their views and then tell them what his father would have done. She makes a note, and she moves on to that week’s habit, which is delegating. She expects the framework to bring him to the problem in time.

In May, his finance director leaves for a rival. In June, Leopold finishes the program, thanks Bettany, and does not renew. At a dinner, a friend who runs her family’s hotels asks what he is doing differently. “I did a leadership program,” Leopold says. “Very thorough. I have the binder.” The friend hires a different coach.

Suppose instead that Bettany says what she saw, in the third session. “You ask the team for their views, and then you tell them what your father would have done. In the meeting I sat in on, you did it three times. After the third, nobody offered a view. I don’t think anyone in that room will tell you, because they all report to you now.”

Leopold is quiet for a moment. Then he asks what she would do. For the next three months, they work on how he runs that meeting. He holds his own view until everyone has spoken, and he stops quoting his father. In May, his finance director argues with him in a meeting, and she stays. In June, Leopold signs on for another six months.

At the dinner, the friend asks what he is doing differently. “I work with Bettany Corvin,” Leopold says. “In our third session, she told me what none of my own people would.” The friend asks for Bettany’s number.

Bettany knew the same things about leadership both times, and she saw the same meeting. In the first version, she sold Leopold a program, and a program is what he came away with, in a binder. In the second, he got what he was paying for. That was Bettany’s own view of what she saw, said to him directly. Nobody on his payroll would have said it. He also came away as a chief executive who works with Bettany Corvin, and he said so at dinner.

So a wealthy client who hires a coach, a tutor, or a consultant is buying one person’s judgment, said to them directly. They are also buying the chance to be someone who works with that person. Here is why, and what two executive coaches, a coaching client, and the tutors of wealthy families in Moscow found.

A method can be bought anywhere, and a person’s judgment cannot

Here is the course’s view of what a wealthy client buys from a coach, a tutor, or a consultant. The first part is one person’s judgment. That means what you notice in the client’s situation and what you would do in their place. It also means being willing to say it to them. A program, a method, or a set of worksheets is how that judgment reaches the client. Methods are written down in books and courses, and a wealthy client can buy any of them.

A client cannot test your judgment before hiring you. So they hire a person they have heard about. Your name carries the promise that your judgment will be as good for them as for the last client. That is why a client who heard about you asks for you, and not for your program.

The second part is being someone who works with that person. Who a client takes advice from says something about the client, to themselves and to the people they know. Both parts come from the same place, which is you. So the client is paying for access to you: your view, in your words, when they need it.

A coach to more than 70 chief executives spends as little time as the job needs

Marshall Goldsmith is an executive coach based in California who has coached more than 70 chief executives of major companies. In 2007, the website Management Issues asked him how he works.

He began by saying what he does not do. “I have a very narrow focus. I don’t do life planning, career planning, strategy or personal productivity,” he said. His specialty is how leaders behave with the people around them. “The focus is strictly on helping successful leaders get better.”

He also spends no more time with a client than the work needs. After the first meetings in person, much of his work happens by phone. “I interact with people as little as needed,” he said. “Not as little as possible, but as little as needed.” In his words, “My mission is to spend the least amount of time needed to help these people get better.”

Nor does he try to persuade anyone. People often ask him how he convinces clients that coaching is worthwhile. “Answer: I don’t,” he said. “If I’ve got to convince someone that it is worthwhile, they don’t have their heart in it anyway.”

Measured against this lesson, Goldsmith’s clients are not buying hours. They are buying one person’s judgment about one narrow problem. That problem is how a successful leader gets better with the people around them. The time is whatever that takes.

A Dallas coach says a chief executive’s own people cannot coach them

Jeannine Sandstrom is an executive coach in Dallas. In 2008, D CEO described her work with chief executives. One of her clients was told to get help after going through several finance chiefs and chief operating officers.

“He was typical of a CEO who was very successful in what’s usually considered the ‘business’ part of the job,” Sandstrom said. “For a long time, no one wanted to say that wasn’t enough.”

She also explained why the people inside the company cannot do the coaching. “When the CEO is just sharing his thoughts, he risks having those thoughts taken as directives,” she said. “Plus, one big risk is that people can’t resist telling others what the CEO said to them.”

Sandstrom was talking about chief executives, and the step to other wealthy clients is the course’s own. Here is the step. The people who work for a wealthy client hear the client thinking aloud as an order, and some of them repeat it. They rarely tell the client what is going wrong, and the client cannot think aloud in front of them. Someone from outside can do both. That is a large part of what the client pays a coach for. It is also why the coach has to come from outside.

A Dallas investor heard about his “drive-by shooting” management, and went back for more

Harold Rosbottom founded Rosbottom Interests, a private-equity firm in Dallas that invests its own money. In 2008, he told D CEO about hiring a coach. In 2003, the magazine says, Rosbottom saw that he was not only the founder and chief executive. He was “chief-everything-else.” So he hired an executive coach “to gain perspective.”

“He told me I had what he called ‘drive-by shooting’ management,” Rosbottom said. He worked with the coach several days a month, to listen better and to give the people around him more focused feedback.

“I’m going back for more,” he said. “The company is still much too dependent on me if we’re going to grow to the next level.”

What Rosbottom remembered from the coaching was a blunt description of how he managed. He went back for more, because his company still depended on him too much.

Wealthy families in Moscow hire British tutors partly to be associated with Britain

In 2016, The Moscow Times reported on the young English tutors who live with wealthy families in Barvikha, a suburb of Moscow. Most of them are British, and they are known as governors and governesses. A governor can earn up to £1,200 a week.

Young Britons are the most in demand on the estates there, the paper reported. “They like the royalty about England,” said Jason Farrell, a former governor who set up an agency that places English speakers with wealthy Russian families. In the paper’s account of what he said, wealthy Russians want to be associated with the British aristocracy.

One governess, who would speak only if her name was left out, put it more simply. “It’s like importing a British person into your home,” she said.

Measured against this lesson, the families in Barvikha pay for English lessons. They also pay to have a particular kind of person in the house, because of what that person’s country means to them. The step to a coach or a tutor closer to home is the course’s own. A client who chooses you is choosing to be associated with who you are. That includes where you trained and what you are known for. So the person the client deals with each week has to be the person they chose.

Why passing the judgment to someone else goes wrong

Imagine a college admissions consultant named Clementine Lanyon who helps families choose colleges and apply. Parents at two private schools in her city pass her name to each other. Last year, she hired an associate, Hedda, so that she could take on 30 families.

In March, the Dunstans hire Clementine for their son, Ambrose, who is a junior. Clementine runs the first meeting herself. She has four other families to see that week, so she does what she now does for every family. Hedda takes Ambrose from there, working from Clementine’s lists and calendar.

In October, Mrs. Dunstan asks whether Ambrose should apply early to his first-choice college or keep it for the regular round. “Let me check with Clementine,” Hedda says. Three days later, Hedda sends the answer in an email. Mrs. Dunstan tells a friend at school, “We hired Clementine, and we got her assistant.” The friend calls a different consultant. Two years later, the Dunstans hire someone else for Ambrose’s sister.

Clementine was right to hire Hedda, because 30 families need someone to keep track of their deadlines. Her mistake was letting the judgment go to Hedda along with the deadlines, without telling the family. The Dunstans chose Clementine by name. When to apply to the college Ambrose wanted most was the kind of call they had hired her to make.

In the version that works, Clementine tells the Dunstans at the first meeting which parts of the work are whose. “Hedda will keep every deadline and check every form. Which colleges Ambrose applies to, and when, I’ll decide with you and Ambrose myself.” In October, Mrs. Dunstan asks the same question, and Clementine calls her that afternoon. Two years later, the Dunstans call Clementine for Ambrose’s sister.

Telling a powerful client what you see is the part they are paying for

Many coaches, tutors, and consultants hold back what they see. It is hardest with a client who runs a company, or with parents who pay a large fee. Saying it can feel like overstepping. It can also feel like a quick way to lose a client who could hire anyone.

Rosbottom heard that he managed by “drive-by shooting,” and he went back for more. Goldsmith does not try to convince anyone that his work is worthwhile. A client who has to be talked into it, in his words, does not “have their heart in it anyway.” Leopold’s team would not tell him what was going wrong in his meetings. When Bettany told him, he signed on for six more months.

What makes a hard truth usable is how you say it. Give your opinion with its reason, and leave what to do about it with the client. Then the client hears what you saw and why, not a verdict on them.

How to give a client the judgment they hired you for

1. Rewrite how you describe your work, on your website and when someone asks what you do. Name the clients you work with and the question they bring you. Put the sessions or hours in the sentence after it. For example, a chemistry tutor’s “Chemistry tutoring for grades 9 to 12, $150 an hour” can become “I tutor students who are good at chemistry and stuck at a B, and I find what is holding them there. We meet once a week, at $150 an hour.”
2. In the first few weeks with a new client, write down what you see that the people around them have not said. Next to it, write what you saw that makes you think so. That is the course’s suggestion. A view you keep for later leaves the client paying for sessions without the part they hired.
3. Say it to the client yourself, in private, with your reason. Then ask what they make of it, and leave the decision with them. For example, a reading tutor can say to a mother, “Ada reads well when she reads to me. What I see is that she stops whenever someone corrects her mid-sentence. Would you try a month of letting her finish the page first?”
4. Decide which parts of your work need your own judgment, and do those parts yourself. If an associate, an assessment, or a worksheet does the rest, tell the client at the start which parts are whose. For example, a math tutor who runs a small tutoring company can say, “Anna will see Leo on Tuesdays for practice. I’ll see him every other Thursday, and I’ll decide what the two of them work on.”
5. When an assessment or a report is part of your work, give the client what you make of it. Do not hand over only the report. Say what you would work on first, and why. For example, an educational consultant can say, “The assessment is 30 pages. What I take from it is that Theo reads slowly and understands everything. I’d ask the school for extra time on tests before we change anything else.”

Next: You will see how to set up a practice so that wealthy clients take you on as an adviser.