[00:00:00] Kenn Okazaki: Most coaches don't need another $27 course. They need a coaching offer that people will actually pay $12,000 to $30,000 for. The thing is, I've been taking on coaching clients at that price without spending money on ads or putting people through a complex funnel. And in this episode , I'm gonna show you one simple shift that makes your coaching stand out.
[00:00:19] But the key to this whole thing was not found inside of a marketing textbook. It was actually hidden in a tiny 10-seat sushi bar in Tokyo. And it's run by an 85-year-old man, and his name is Ono Jiro. At first glance, you might look at Jiro, a man with three Michelin stars, and he's dedicated his entire life to the craft of sushi, and the first thing you might think of is, yes, the lesson here is obvious: Be the best in the world at what you do.
[00:00:42] And you're absolutely right. Mastery is the foundation. But if mastery was the only thing that mattered, then any chef who could make sushi that is, let's say, 99% as good as Jiro's would be able to charge 99% of the price that he charges. But they can't, not even close, because people aren't paying for the sushi.
[00:01:01] What they're paying for is the container.
[00:01:03] What I mean by container Quick note before we keep going. A lot of what I talk about on this podcast is actually visual. I'm often breaking down diagrams, models, frameworks, funnels, and little boxes with arrows that make me feel smarter than I probably am. So if you're listening and you want the full visual experience, head over to YouTube.
[00:01:20] Search Ken Okazaki, or find me at @markkenokazaki. You'll be able to watch the full video version there the container. What I mean by container is the scarcity of those 10 seats, the proximity of being served directly by the master himself. And here's the thing. I saw this exact same principle with Ono Jiro play out in a world much closer to us coaches, right? So at the time, I was running a business, and we were doing large-scale seminars.
[00:01:47] I'd rent a hall and bring in, like, some famous speakers from overseas, and they'd do it all in English. Everybody in the audience in Japanese, they got these headsets on. It was a big operation, but it was fun. Now, the obvious assumption is that people buy the ticket for the expertise. The person on the stage is sharing important information, and people are paying for that information being shared from the stage.
[00:02:06] But I had a business partner, and he had a bit more experience than me, and he suggested instead of just the regular $700 tickets for, for the people in general admission, we add a new tier called VIP. We actually called it VVIP, and it was $7,000. And I thought they were crazy because I had never paid that much for, you know, just being a few rows ahead.
[00:02:24] And the question I had in my mind is: Who's gonna pay 10 times the price for a front row seat plus a dinner? I did not think it would work, but I tried it anyway, and then people started buying it. And that's when it started to click for me. I realized that people aren't paying 10 times more just for more information.
[00:02:39] What they're paying for is exclusivity and access. The information is the exact same thing on the paperback book being spoken from the stage and in the exclusive access area. Now, let me tell you how this gets even deeper because I haven't just been the seller in the equation. I've been the customer.
[00:02:54] The first time I ever went to a personal development event was Tony Robbins' UPW. I think it was 2009 in Orlando, Florida. My dad paid for my ticket and my flight because I didn't see the value. I had... I didn't understand what personal development was. I went to get the information, and I also went because I wanted to get my dad off my back.
[00:03:11] He was like a major Tony Robbins fan at the time. And yes, the information that Tony shared from the stage, it was powerful. It changed me. It changed my life. So after the first one, I bought a ticket to the next event, and the next, and my journey didn't stop there. I eventually joined something called his Platinum Partnership Program, which at the time, I now think it's more expensive now, but it was a $100,000 fee at the time.
[00:03:33] The UPW was $1,000, but did I learn 100 times more? Did I get 100 times more information with the Platinum Partnership Program compared to UPW? Absolutely not. The core philosophy, the core training, the core teaching was the same. I was paying for more access. Access to Tony, access to his team, and access to the other people in that room who had that same level of commitment and the same level of desire to learn.
[00:03:57] I had personally lived the journey from wanting information to paying for access. And right now, in 2026, you're seeing this exact same pattern play out online with the coaching space. If you look at Alex Hormozi, for example, he's got his books. They're selling for, like, 27 bucks, right? And the same information that's in his books are what is in his free online course on his website, and it's also the same information in his live workshops where there's 100 or so people at a time.
[00:04:22] And it's also the same information that you get with the one-on-one coaching with his coaching team. And it's also the same information that you get if you hire him one-on-one. But at each stage, the price pretty much goes up by 10 times, an order of magnitude. Alex's real business isn't selling books. It's selling access to his team for implementation.
[00:04:42] He commoditized his information so he could sell his access at a premium, and I mean a really high premium. And it brings us to the most important lesson of this entire episode The reason so many coaches are stuck at $27 is that they believe that their secret, their tactics, that is their value. It's not.
[00:04:59] And this leads us to the ultimate conclusion. Your intellectual property is worthless. It's worthless as a product, but priceless as your marketing. This is the fundamental shift. Stop selling information, start selling implementation. So let's look at this as a continuum. This side we have low ticket, the $27 type of offers, and on this side is where you could charge a whole lot more.
[00:05:24] I'm kind of making it look like a dinner menu here. Now, on this continuum, we have two things going on. We've got information and we have access. And what I'm seeing happening with the professional coaching space and with the people who are making millions of dollars per year, is that as you go from cheap to expensive, the amount of information actually goes down, and the amount of access is what's going up.
[00:05:46] So let's put some examples out there. At the low end, where you have information, a glut information but no access, is gonna be like a PDF that is gonna be 1,000 viral hooks, right? Or maybe it's gonna be an e-book, or it's gonna be something like, you know, a 30-minute training. What is involved in that? A lot of information, very little access.
[00:06:09] You don't get to have a call with the person. You don't have one-on-one. You just get to watch the stuff. Now, way over here is where you have things like one-on-ones. You're gonna get consulting. You're gonna have, you know, chat/DM access, and this is what people are willing to pay for. So think of it this way.
[00:06:28] If I were to pay $100,000 or so for a one-on-one consulting session with someone like Alex Hormozi or let's say Mark Cuban or someone like that, then I would not want a whole bunch of information on that call. I probably have 30 minutes, maybe an hour if I pay a whole bunch. So I'm gonna spend a lot of time thinking about what's the highest value I could get out of this one hour since I'm paying so much, and I might ask a very specific question, and all I need from them is a yes or a no or something else, and that would be enough.
[00:06:57] So a lot of access, little information. Over here we have a lot of information and very little access. So let's talk about how all this maps up. Over here we have free things like YouTube, like the episode you're listening right now. i'm giving you a lot of information, but you don't have direct access to me.
[00:07:12] You could listen to this as many times as you want, right? And then way over here again is we have the one-on-one type of stuff. Now, above YouTube, off the back of YouTube, a lot of people are gonna be selling $27 courses, and this is where people get stuck, but let's just call this a course. Now people get a bit more information, and maybe as a part of the course there's some chat support and things like that, but usually not one-on-one, not conversations, not Zoom meetings.
[00:07:35] And then a bit higher we have group, okay? And this is where people are gonna be willing to pay that price I was talking about, 12K to 30K per year for your coaching services. How do I know this? Because I sell this and people are currently paying me at these rates for coaching. Now the beauty of this model is, if you think about it, the baseline, all of this is the exact same philosophy.
[00:08:00] The exact same techniques, the exact same training, the exact same information, just different levels of access. You don't need to reinvent the wheel. You just need to build the right container based on what people are willing to pay. So here's my challenge for you. I want you to think about what's the most valuable framework?
[00:08:16] What's the thing that you do with your clients that gets them the results the fastest, the most effectively, and the most consistently? Think about that for a second. Now stop and ask yourself, what do you think is gonna happen when you give it away? So the fear that a lot of people experience before they actually do this is that no one's gonna hire you because they've already got the information for free.
[00:08:34] Why would they pay to get the same information again? But the reality, as we've proven today, and as I'm seeing in my own business and in my clients' businesses, is that demonstrating your mastery so generously, when you do that, you're gonna attract the clients who don't just want your information. They want your access, and then you stop being a vendor of knowledge, and you start being a destination for results.
[00:08:58] And if you wanna build that kind of offer, I've made a video training showing you how we do that and how you can turn your best frameworks into a $30,000 coaching offer without ads or complex funnels. The link's down below. I want you to watch that video next
[00:09:13] Thanks for listening, and if you haven't subscribed yet, go ahead and do that right now. The Content Capitalist is coming out every Monday, and you can listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, and all the major podcast platforms. Subscribe now so you don't have to rely on your memory, because memory is basically a browser tab with way too many tabs open
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