August 2026 Substack: “What do you charge for a session?”

Exploring a more participatory approach to exchange.

28 August 2026

For some time, this question has been opening up a much larger inquiry for me about value exchange, the practice of coaching, and how both might find their place within a rapidly changing world.

We are living through a period of converging crises and rapid change. More information, uncertainty and complexity are entering our everyday lives than we can easily digest, leaving little space to pause and make sense of what is happening. The result can be a peculiar kind of overwhelm, like living in a fog or underwater.

This makes the work of coaching feel particularly relevant to me: as a space to slow down, notice what is happening, think together, reconnect with ourselves and others, and consider how we want to participate in the world we are creating.

If coaching is to meet this moment, I think we also need to ask what kind of practice we are creating, who has access to it, and how we exchange value within it.

“What do you charge for a session?”

I have decided to expand my coaching tariff towards a more participatory approach to exchange.

This is not because I have found a better pricing formula. In fact, I am still figuring it out.

It comes from a deeper question: what might coaching become if the way we exchange value was part of the practice itself?

Over the past few years, my own coaching practice has become increasingly rooted in the relational and participatory work of hosting a shared space of reflection and digestion of how we experience life within a particular context.

I wonder if exchange could embody this practice too.

Defining a coaching tariff has always felt complex to me. As a physiotherapist, the larger systems I worked within provided a framework, with medical aid tariffs offering a reference point. Coaching is different. There is no obvious number, and working across countries and currencies makes the question even more fluid.

What is fair in Switzerland, Germany, Poland or South Africa? How much might someone be able to contribute? And when does the price itself become a barrier to someone who could benefit from having a space to pause, reflect and think?

There is also a more personal dimension to my exploration of money and value exchange in my coaching practice. I have noticed in my own relationship with money a historical, cultural and collective thread, something I am exploring more consciously through a year-long programme on collective trauma around money in Switzerland.

What is surfacing for me is the complexity of fearing not having enough money, feeling shame about having money, and carrying a strong impulse to serve others.

I am not trying to solve this. I am curious about what might emerge when I stay with these tensions in a world that is itself changing so rapidly.

Like many coaches, I began experimenting by offering a range between two tariffs, allowing the client to choose the contribution that felt aligned with their circumstances.

But I found myself wondering whether the exchange could become more expansive still.

What if money were one possible form of contribution, alongside a service, a deed, or something that could move onwards to another person?

A while ago, I encountered GG Alcock’s work on KasiNomics. What stayed with me was a glimpse of another way of thinking about economic life: formal and informal economies, communal relationships, networks and multiple forms of exchange coexisting in visible and less visible ways. Alcock describes the informal economy as an “invisible matrix” of channels, relationships, communities, business interactions and social networks.

I was touched by the possibility of value moving through relationships and networks, creating a participatory field. It made me think about what I experience in everyday coaching with my clients: when we pause, soften our attention and become present enough to notice what is emerging—a different perspective, a new possibility, a deeper recognition, perhaps a moment of coherence from which something else can be created.

The exchange can be part of that same movement. The way we arrive at our exchange is part of the relationship we are beginning to create.

With curiosity, I started playing with a participatory approach with three new clients.

During the first session, I told them that I did not have a fixed rate and that we could explore together what a fitting exchange might look like.

One client was deeply grateful for the possibility of finding an exchange that respected both her financial circumstances and the value she placed on our work. At my original tariff, she probably would not have been able to have more than one session.

Another was adamant that he wanted to pay the amount I would normally charge. The certainty of a conventional fee felt right for him.

And then there was another client who was already extremely overwhelmed when we first met. When I invited her to consider what contribution felt appropriate, having to make yet another decision was simply too much. She needed a clear number.

From these three experiences I learnt that a participatory approach needs a container just as a conventional transaction does. Participation requires enough clarity and structure for people to be able to participate meaningfully.

We can participate in shaping what is agreed, and once we arrive at an agreement, it needs to be named, documented and honoured.

I have discovered that others have also been curious about what happens when people have greater agency in determining the value of an exchange. Some research on participative pricing and pay-what-you-want models has found that, under particular conditions, this can lead to increased sales or revenue. Pay What You Want: A New Participative Pricing Mechanism — Kim, Natter & Spann

I find this reassuring, and am curious whether a more fluid circulation of contribution can sustain the practice and the people who participate in it, including me.

For me, the exchange can move in several directions.

It might move directly between client and coach. It might move onwards to another person in a pay-it-forward approach. It might take the form of money, a service, a deed, or something else that carries value within the relationship.

Someone might contribute less because that is what is possible for them; someone else might contribute more and, in doing so, extend access for another.

What matters to me is that there is an agreed exchange, that both people retain dignity, and that the practice remains sustainable.

In a relationship there is always a rhythm, a pulse: giving and receiving, attention and response, speaking and listening, holding and letting go.

The rhythm varies, but I can pay attention to the pattern.

And this is perhaps where ownership moves towards stewardship.

We enter life already surrounded by what we did not create ourselves: education, opportunities, relationships, knowledge, culture, care and resources. We receive, we transform, we contribute and we participate in systems that were already moving before us and will continue after us.

What might happen when that awareness enters the exchange between coach and client, allowing money to remain fully present while becoming one thread within a much larger relational field?

I don’t yet know how my own experience of the exchange will change as I work with more people, or what I will discover about receiving, offering, asking, setting boundaries and remaining open-hearted within the flow.

The only way to find out is to keep experimenting.

And perhaps this brings me back to where I began.

If the world is changing, and the practice of coaching is evolving with it, what might this ask of the way we exchange value?

For now, I am choosing to find out through practice rather than theory.

As part of this shift, I will also be changing how I offer my group programmes. Rather than scheduling courses in advance and hoping the timing works for enough people, I will invite people to register their interest first. When there is enough interest in a programme, we will find a time and run it together.

This feels more consistent with the participatory approach I am exploring: starting with relationship and interest, then building the container around the people who actually want to participate.

I would love to hear from others who have been exploring this in their own work.

Have you encountered forms of exchange in coaching that move beyond a fixed tariff? What have you learned about what makes these arrangements nourishing, sustainable or difficult?

As the experiment unfolds I will return with a follow-up post, sharing what surprises me, what works, what doesn’t, and what emerges about participation, reciprocity and the conditions that allow a practice to remain alive.

What becomes possible when we give the exchange itself a little more room to breathe?