The $75,000 birthday invite I hated

Sep 16, 2026 7:01 am

Hey there!

So...

Back in 2021...

I started flirting with the idea of increasing my fees for one on one work.

I figured $50,000 a year felt about right.

Now understand something.

For me, that was a considerable jump.

Up until then, I had maxed out at around $15,000-$20,000 for private work.

But I wasn't particularly worried.

I had spent years building relationships with some very successful people.

I had the track record.

I had the access.

I had the confidence.

So I thought:

This should be an easy sale.

So...

Off I went to one of my billionaire clients.

And I made my pitch.

It was simple:

"If you have a seemingly impossible goal, I can help you achieve it."

Powerful, right?

At least I thought so.

But...

He very kindly said:

No.

#sigh

Then something happened about a week later that confused the hell out of me.

The same man spent approximately $75,000 to fly me out to attend his birthday.

Seventy five thousand dollars.

To come to a birthday.

And I'm thinking:

Boss…

I'd have come to your birthday for free if you'd just paid me the freaking $50,000 for the whole year. 😂

For a long time, that experience bothered me.

Because it didn't make sense.

This clearly wasn't a man who couldn't afford me.

It wasn't even a man who didn't value me.

He had just demonstrated that my presence in his world was worth serious money to him.

So why would he happily spend $75,000 to have me at a birthday…

but refuse to spend $50,000 to have me work with him for an entire year?

It took me a while to understand what had actually happened.

And when I finally understood it, it changed the way I sold high value work.

Here it is:

He understood the value of being associated with me. But he did not understand the value of what I was offering him.

Those are not the same thing.

And that brings me to the second distinction I have been thinking about from the Dangote Refinery IPO:

CAPABILITY BECOMES MORE VALUABLE WHEN IT BECOMES LEGIBLE.

I was capable.

That wasn't the problem.

My offer was illegible.

Think about what I had actually said:

"If you have a seemingly impossible goal, I can help you achieve it."

What exactly does that mean?

Goal setting?

Motivation?

Accountability?

Coaching?

Mindset?

There are books about that.

YouTube videos.

Courses.

Free articles everywhere.

I knew what I meant.

He didn't.

In my head, I was saying:

"Give me a sufficiently valuable outcome that you're struggling to produce and let me bring decades of thinking, pattern recognition, strategy, behaviour change and problem-solving to bear on the constraint."

But that isn't what I communicated.

What he probably heard was:

"Victor wants me to pay him $50,000 to help me achieve my goals."

And suddenly $50,000 sounds expensive.

That was the problem.

Not value.

Legibility.

Years later, I still work around the idea of seemingly impossible goals.

But I communicate it differently.

Today I might say:

"If you have a goal worth ₦6 billion a year to you and you're having difficulty reaching it, let's talk."

Same basic capability.

Very different communication.

Because now you can see the economics.

If the outcome is worth ₦6 billion a year…

and something is preventing you from reaching it…

then paying somebody $50,000 to help identify and remove the constraint is no longer being compared to the price of a coaching programme.

It's being compared to the value of the outcome.

That's a totally different game.

Today I have a full private practice.

Eight clients paying approximately $50,000 a year.

One at $100,000.

And a waiting list of five.

Not too shabby for an ex-buther with a 3rd class degree in Management.

My capability didn't suddenly become 10 times better overnight.

I simply became much better at making the value of that capability visible and understandable.

That's the lesson.

People don't buy the value you know you create. They buy the value they can clearly see and understand.

And this is where a lot of very good experts leave enormous amounts of money on the table.

They say:

"I do strategy."

"I help leaders transform."

"I help people reach their potential."

"I help companies grow."

"I coach entrepreneurs."

Maybe all of that is true.

But what does it actually mean economically?

What valuable problem disappears?

What valuable outcome becomes possible?

What happens if the problem remains unsolved?

What is the result worth?

Until those things become clear, the buyer often compares your price to the activity you're performing.

Coaching.

Consulting.

Training.

Speaking.

Instead of comparing your price to the economic consequence of the outcome.

That's a completely different comparison.

And it reminds me of what happens when a company like Dangote Refinery goes public.

The refinery doesn't suddenly become productive on IPO day.

The productive capability already exists.

But now investors get numbers.

Capacity.

Revenue.

Margins.

Assets.

Growth plans.

Economics.

The value becomes easier to see.

And once something becomes easier to understand…

it becomes easier to value.

That's the principle.

Visibility says:

"People know I exist."

Legibility says:

"People understand why what I do matters."

Those are very different things.

You can be famous and still commercially illegible.

And you can have a relatively small audience who understand your value so clearly that they happily pay you extraordinary amounts of money.

So here's a useful test.

Can your ideal client answer these questions after hearing you speak for 30 seconds?

What result do you produce?

For whom?

What expensive problem does it solve?

What is the outcome potentially worth?

Why are you useful in producing it?

If they can't…

you may not have a pricing problem.

You may not have a lead-generation problem.

You may not even have a credibility problem.

You may have a legibility problem.

And before you decide you need more followers…