Began a pay-on-results coaching experiment, made $40,300 since July
https://x.com/ChrisChipMonk/status/1873101046199038301
To validate my research, I began offering pay-on-results coaching in July. Clients have paid $40,300 so far upon achieving their goals:
lifelong anxiety → being called “adventurous”: $3,000 earned
lifelong pushover → assertive: $3,000 earned
“in crisis” → “light and hopeful”: $5,000 earned
blocked on romance whole life → asking out crushes: $3,500 earned
“net suffering has greatly diminished”: $7,500 earned
first week ever of no procrastination: $7,500 earned
eliminating an unwanted habit: $2,000 earned
increased flow during work: $7,500 earned
......... (more cooking)
(I spend just ~8 hours per week coaching.)
An innovation here is a way to measure results: Results are measured by bounties paid by clients one or more months after, in my bank account, since I started. Clients set a bounty in advance (e.g.: “If I learn to feel secure in approximately all social situations by working with you, I will pay $25k.”), then choose whether to pay, when to pay, and how much to pay.
This way, when someone pays, it’s good evidence that real growth occurred.
The rest of this post is rough takes written quickly:
Why did I start doing bounties?
Reason 1) Wanted to know if my research actually works
If I were to charge on a per-hour basis (like ~every other coach), it would be harder to know whether the models of growth I've developed actually work. Basically: “Is the client’s life legitimately changing for the better, or do they just like talking to me?”
I also knew that people would generally be more hesitant to pay 4- (now 5-) figure sums than 3- figure sums, especially if they had to wait multiple months to pay and they’re the one who decides success.
Reason 2) Wanted success cases to produce legible evidence to onlookers
When you read the list of results at the start of this post, then (as long as you believe me) you probably thought “Wow.” They’re specific; you can tell stuff actually happened.
Meanwhile, most other coaching pages have extremely vague reviews: “They were nice, they are cool, I had fun, it was ‘transformative’. Big wow! 10/10.” And maybe growth did happen, but there isn’t actually much signal!
(That said, maybe we’re just optimizing for different things. I’m optimizing for what I mean when I say “results”. But I wouldn’t be surprised if lots of coaching is more like “having a smart friend to talk to”. And that’s ok!)
A partial way to address this is to get clients to be more specific, and I do that too… But also I'm not sure good reviews can ever rule out “Maybe the client is just trying to be nice and please the coach?”
This is where bounties come in: If you heard that someone paid a surprisingly large sum of money — an amount that is likely a 1–10% of their net worth — and you learned that they did so months-later retroactively and essentially voluntarily… that gets your attention!
(I'd guess my median client has a net worth on the order of $200k?)
Money is real. Money is skin in the game! Generally, people try to not give up a significant percentage of their power over the world to anything unless they believe it’s worthwhile.
Reason 3) Wanted to make more money
I thought I had something that could, at least in some cases, resolve lifelong anxiety in a single conversation (see below) … and, I wanted more than 3 figures for that!
Reason 4) Wanted better incentive-alignment
Even if I didn't have the ability to do one-session magic yet, I wanted to be incentivized to develop it.
Coaches who charge by the hour don’t actually have that much financial incentive to resolve issues in a session when it’s possible. Frankly it’s the opposite: they get less money if they do that.
(You may think “But if they were just that good, then they could just raise their rates a ton and still get tons of clients!” But in practice I don’t think so: the marketing would be hard. Also no one would believe them. See Reason #2 again. Would you believe the results I put at the beginning of this post without the $$ citations?)
Reason 5) Who was going to pay me by the hour, anyway?
I had no experience! I didn't want to spend months or years building a reputation for skills I thought I already had.
(I am not a licensed psychologist, psychiatrist, therapist, or medical professional. Not therapy or medical treatment.)
Reasons 6+) Probably others I’ve forgotten.
EDIT: a new version of this post will be released on Jan 2.
Thanks to Stag Lynn, Anna Salmon, CFAR, Ethan Kuntz, Alex Zhu, Brian Toomey, Kaj Sotala, Damon Sasi, and lots more for mentorship and help.
@ChrisChipmonk, chrislakin.com/now
Place a bounty: chrislakin.com/bounty