Discover Robin Waite’s advice on pricing, strategy, and overcoming fear to build a sustainable, client-focused coaching business.
In a recent insightful episode of Coach Me if You Can, host Peter Charles Weller welcomes Robin Waite, a business coach, author, and the mind behind The Fearless Business Blueprint. What begins as a personal story of burnout transforms into a rich, actionable masterclass on pricing, niching, marketing, and building a sustainable coaching practice.
For anyone launching a business, transitioning to coaching, or simply trying to price their services with confidence, this session delivers hard-earned wisdom and practical strategies.
The conversation opens with Robin sharing a deeply personal moment of breakdown. One Sunday morning, while cycling with friends, he found himself at the bottom of a hill in tears. Although his agency was successful on paper, serving 180 clients and reaching £250,000 in annual revenue, it had become a source of chronic stress and unhappiness.
He describes the crushing demands of client work, the relentless late nights, and the sense that despite financial stability, something essential was missing. When he told his heavily pregnant wife he planned to shut it down, it was both a shock and a relief. Her support helped him realise that closing the business wasn’t a failure but a much-needed decision to reclaim his wellbeing and focus on what truly mattered.
Robin’s experience highlights a trap many service business owners fall into: confusing external success with genuine fulfilment. The business was financially viable, but it didn’t serve his life or values anymore. His honest story of recognising burnout, making a hard decision, and stepping away is a powerful reminder of the importance of clarity and courage in business.
After winding down his agency, Robin found himself without a clear plan. He started attending networking events with no sales agenda, simply telling his story. To his surprise, people wanted to buy him coffee and cake just to hear how he navigated the closing of his agency, how he sold the client base, and how he managed that transition with integrity.
What began as informal mentoring quickly revealed itself as a new calling. He realised these were strategic conversations that lit him up in ways agency work never had. This organic discovery of his next career didn’t come from elaborate planning but from showing up, being vulnerable, and listening to what others valued in his experience.
One of Robin’s most instructive anecdotes involved a client who refused to think beyond wanting a basic website. When Robin tried to discuss the business model and revenue goals, the client shut him down. Rather than taking the money and building something doomed to fail, Robin chose to end the meeting early.
This was a major moment of growth. For years, his agency had taken almost any project for the revenue, often at the cost of alignment, quality, or results. Learning to say no became a turning point, not just for protecting himself from stress but for protecting his clients from buying the wrong solutions.
Robin framed this as a universal business lesson: your goal is not to please everyone or to enrol as many clients as possible. The real aim is to build a profitable, sustainable business that delivers genuine results, which often means refusing work that doesn’t fit.
A key theme in the session was the need to prioritise strategy over marketing. Robin observed that many businesses obsess over getting their branding, website, and social media polished before they even know what they’re selling, to whom, or at what price.
He likened this to turning on the rocket’s afterburners before it’s properly built. Without solid strategy, pricing, and sales processes, marketing is wasted effort, it simply amplifies a broken model.
Instead, he argues for a clear sequence:
This approach ensures that when marketing does begin, it can truly scale a sustainable, profitable operation rather than magnifying inefficiencies or losses.
The podcast then shifts gears from interview to live coaching, with Peter sharing his vision of turning his podcast into a viable coaching business.
Peter explained his motivation: helping people who feel stuck, making coaching accessible beyond elite executives or athletes, and using the podcast to demystify coaching. He also shared broader goals, such as growing an audience, writing a book, and eventually earning £100,000 per year.
Robin encouraged Peter to go beyond these broad hopes and get specific about the offer itself. They settled on the idea of a six-month “Confused to Clarity” coaching programme designed to help clients identify and focus on the most important aspects of their life. This programme wouldn’t just sell sessions, it would promise a meaningful transformation.
One of the most powerful moments came when Robin challenged Peter’s initial pricing model. Peter had originally planned to charge €1500 for the six-month programme, calculating based on individual session rates. Robin urged him to abandon this session-based thinking and price the outcome instead.
He illustrated that pricing is often emotional, not purely logical. Robin ran Peter through an exercise of hearing progressively higher price points, helping him notice where discomfort turned into possibility. They landed at €3600, a number outside Peter’s comfort zone but within the realm of what he could confidently charge given the life-changing value he aimed to deliver.
Robin explained that outcome-based pricing better reflects the true value of coaching:
Just as a marine engineer doesn’t charge for hitting a pipe with a hammer but for knowing where to hit, a coach charges for insight, guidance, and the structure to make lasting change.
Robin then offered a practical challenge: if Peter could conduct 10 proper consultations and all of them said no, Robin himself would pay Peter €3600.
This bet was designed to force Peter to move beyond theory into action. According to Robin, typical conversion rates are about 20–33%, meaning that even a novice coach should secure one to three clients out of ten conversations.
The message was clear:
Robin helped Peter think about his target market in three layered ways:
The most important layer, Robin argued, is identity. Being authentic, showing up as yourself, telling your story, naturally attracts clients who resonate with you.
Another turning point in the session was Robin’s approach to marketing. Instead of seeing client acquisition as a slow, one-by-one grind, he encouraged Peter to think about leverage.
Robin suggested partnering with other businesses or creators who already have the audience Peter wants. Rather than spending 30 hours a week on social media posts, he shared his own example of doing one podcast interview that yielded 3000 leads and £250,000 in business.
The key takeaway was:
Robin also introduced the concept of goal-focused pricing. Instead of picking a number arbitrarily, he recommended starting with the income goal and working backwards.
If Peter’s target was £100,000, and he charged €3600 per client, he’d need around 30 clients in a year. That plan was far more achievable than trying to find over 60 clients at €1500 each.
They also discussed moving from one-to-one coaching to group programmes over time, allowing Peter to increase capacity without sacrificing quality.
When Peter worried about being asked, “How many clients have you coached?”, Robin suggested a strategy of full honesty paired with trust-building questions.
Instead of dodging, Peter could say:
“You’d be my first client, but let’s talk about what you need, and how I can help you get there.”
He also recommended asking:
“On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you trust me to get that result with you?”
Exploring the answer builds rapport and turns doubt into an opportunity to strengthen the relationship.
Robin also answered questions about other businesses. For a carpenter considering hiring, he emphasised:
For a SaaS founder struggling with pricing in a niche market, he recommended:
Robin closed with a two-part challenge to anyone starting a business.
First, don’t get stuck in endless planning and analysis paralysis. Take action, even if it’s imperfect, to test your ideas in the real world.
Second, remember that being “fearless” isn’t about having no fear. It’s about fearing the things that hold you back slightly less. That small shift can unlock the courage needed to act.
Finally, for those experiencing chaos, he advised simple self-kindness. Sometimes the best thing you can do is stop trying to fix everything and allow yourself to rest.
This episode wasn’t just an interview; it was a working coaching session. Robin didn’t simply share theory but challenged Peter’s assumptions about pricing, marketing, and growth, leaving him with a clearer, more confident plan.
For anyone launching a business or service, Robin Waite’s message is clear:
“You need to fear the things in business ever so slightly less that stop you from achieving your goals.”
It’s a powerful reminder that the biggest barriers often live in our own heads, and that the path to clarity and success starts with the courage to act.
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This Scorecard has been designed to show Coaches, Consultants and Freelancers their blind spots and provide instant, actionable steps on how to increase their prices.
