How Much Should a Business Mentor/Coach Cost? (And What You're Actually Paying For)

If you're googling this question, you've probably already tried the cheap options.

You've worked with a £50/hour coach who gave you a content strategy you didn't use.

You've built marketing plans in ChatGPT that are still sitting in your Google Drive.

You've taken courses. Read books. Watched YouTube videos.

And you're still stuck.

So now you're wondering: is high-end mentoring actually worth it? Or is it just the same thing with a higher price tag?

Here's what I've noticed after ten years of working with founders: the people asking "how much should a business mentor cost?" are asking the wrong question.

The right question is: "Am I the person who needs this kind of help?"

You don't need a business mentor if:

You just need information. Google is free. YouTube has thousands of hours of business content. Most local councils offer free business support programmes.

You just need a plan. ChatGPT will build you a strategy in three minutes. It'll be decent. Probably better than a inexperienced coach would give you.

You just need someone to tell you what to do. There are plenty of people who'll do that for £50 an hour.

If that's what you need, don't hire me. You don't need to pay for what you can get for free.

You DO need a business mentor if:

• You've got strategies you don't implement.

• You keep making the same mistakes in different contexts.

• You know what you should do but somehow keep not doing it.

• You can't figure out why you're stuck when everything looks fine on paper.

• You've hired coaches before and got plans you didn't use.

That's a different problem. And it needs different work.

What this kind of mentoring actually is

A founder came to me saying she couldn't stay consistent with content.

She'd tried everything. Content calendars. Batching. Accountability partners. Templates. Nothing worked.

Within ten minutes, I spotted the pattern.

Every time she had a difficult client conversation coming up, her posting disappeared for two weeks. She was using "I need to focus on this client situation" as a reason to avoid being visible.

She'd been doing it for eighteen months. Never connected the dots.

That's what you're paying for with this kind of mentoring.

Not the content strategy. She already had three of those.

The pattern-spotting that shows you why you're not using the strategies you already have.

Another founder kept hiring the wrong people. Five times in two years. Different roles, different backgrounds, same outcome.

She'd hire someone who interviewed brilliantly – articulate, confident, said all the right things. Then three months in, she'd realise they couldn't execute without constant direction.

The pattern? She kept hiring people who needed her to do the thinking. Because if someone else could do the strategic thinking, what was her role?

She didn't see it. Couldn't see it from inside it.

That's the work. Spotting what you can't see yourself.

Why you can't DIY this

You can DIY strategy. You can DIY information. You can DIY plans.

You cannot DIY pattern recognition on yourself.

It's not possible. You're too close. Your brain justifies every decision as distinct. You don't see the thread connecting them.

A founder told me she had imposter syndrome about sales. Every call, she felt like a fraud.

Turned out she didn't have a sales process. No structure. No questions. She was winging every call and then wondering why she felt uncertain.

That's not imposter syndrome. That's accurately sensing you don't know what you're doing yet.

I spotted it in five minutes. She'd been stuck in it for a year.

Not because she's not smart. Because you can't diagnose your own patterns.

What creates the price difference

A £50/hour coach will give you a strategy.

I'll give you a strategy too. But that's not where the value is.

The value is in spotting that you've had three strategies already and haven't used any of them. Then figuring out why.

That's pattern recognition. And here's why it costs what it does:

Most people can't do it. They can give advice. They can build plans. But they can't spot the behavioural pattern underneath the surface problem.

It requires years of experience. I've spent ten years watching founders make the same mistakes in different packaging. I've built a pattern library. When you tell me your problem, I've usually seen it fifty times before.

It's faster. A £50/hour coach needs multiple sessions to figure out what's wrong. I usually spot it in twenty minutes. You're not paying for more time. You're paying for less.

It addresses cause, not symptoms. Surface-level coaches fix the content calendar. I show you why you keep sabotaging the content calendar.

Different work. Different price.

(Not sure what the difference between a coach and a mentor is? I've written about that here.)

The question you should actually be asking

Are you someone who needs strategies, or someone who needs to understand why you're not using the strategies you already have?

If it's the first, hire a cheaper coach. Use AI. Take a course. Access free business support through your local council.

If it's the second, that's when you need someone who can spot patterns.

Most founders I work with have spent thousands on business coaches before they find me. They've got folders full of strategies. Notion workspaces full of frameworks. Plans they've never executed.

One session, we figure out why: they're treating strategy-building as the work, not implementation. As long as they're planning, they don't have to find out if the plan works.

That realisation is worth more than all the strategies combined.

What you're actually paying for

The ability to see your blind spots.

Someone who'll tell you what's actually wrong, not what you want to hear.

Pattern-spotting that interrupts behaviour you didn't know you were repeating.

Accountability that's not "did you do the thing?" but "why didn't you do the thing, and what does that tell us?"

So how much should a business mentor cost?

The wrong question is "what's the hourly rate?" The right question is "what's it costing me to not see this pattern?"

If you keep hiring the wrong people, what's that costing you?

If you keep undercharging, what revenue are you leaving on the table?

If you keep saying yes to the wrong clients, what's the opportunity cost?

If you spend another year building strategies you don't implement, what does that cost?

This kind of mentoring costs more upfront. But it costs less overall because you get to the answer faster.

If you're still reading

If you've tried the cheaper options and they didn't work.

If you've got strategies you're not using and don't know why.

If you keep making the same decisions and can't see the pattern.

If you know something's wrong but can't figure out what.

That's when you need someone who spots patterns, not someone who builds plans.

Here's how we could work together:

One-off mentoring session (£325): 90 minutes where I spot the pattern you're caught in. Usually it's obvious within the first twenty minutes. Good for specific problems you can't see clearly. Book a session

Ongoing mentorship: Monthly containers for founders who need consistent pattern-spotting across time. Because some patterns only show up over months, and you need someone tracking what you can't see. From £3,000 for three months. Learn more about mentorship

The question isn't whether business mentoring is worth the investment.

It's whether you're the person who needs someone to see what you can't.