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Rich Litvin is one of the world's most highly paid life coaches. However, you've probably never heard of him – because he only has eight key clients!

Rich' clients pay upwards of $80,000 per year. They often pay their annual fees in advance and frequently renew with him for several years in a row. If you contact Rich Litvin and ask to become a client, he will ask you a few questions and based on how you answer he will either recommend you to another coach or he will offer you an initial interview session. If the interview goes well, you'll probably be able to start working with him in 6 to 12 months.

Rich Litvin works exclusively with high‐flyers with a track record of success, whose decisions have far‐reaching consequences. His past clients include billion‐dollar business owners, politicians, fund managers and Olympic athletes. He doesn't need everyone to be a client; he needs eight people who want a dedicated level of service that most coaches are too busy to deliver.

Rich has crafted his coaching style for a very exclusive clientele. He goes deep with people who are often isolated in their decision‐making. High‐powered people have big decisions to make and often can't fully express themselves to their spouses, their boards or their employees. These people get enormous value from having a coaching session with someone who understands the pressure they are under, gets them to talk through their options and align their actions to their most important values and goals in life. To a small number of high‐achievers Rich is their secret weapon for getting the most out of life.

Of course, he didn't begin his career this way. Rich was originally a school teacher in London who discovered coaching as part of his training as a leader in the field of education. Seeing the impact coaching skills had on his team, he rapidly developed a passion for life coaching, but when he considered changing career he discovered there wasn't much money in it.

Even in the US, where life coaching is more established as a profession, the average life coach earns $32.50 per hour (according to PayScale.com) and with 5–10 years of experience life coaches can expect to earn just $50,000 per year.

Unwilling to settle for the market rate, Rich moved to LA, began mixing in the right circles and started making high‐value proposals to a select group of people. His personal philosophy and belief in coaching skills gave him the conviction that the more senior the coaching client, the more value they would receive from coaching.

To his surprise, the top end of the market was not anywhere near as crowded as the bottom end. People who earn millions per year don't want to pay $32.50 to a coach, no matter how experienced they are. High‐achievers want a dedicated level of service and a person charging a low rate can't possibly deliver it.

Rich discovered that it was far easier to devote himself to finding eight perfect clients, willing to pay upwards of $80,000 per year, than to find eight hundred clients willing to pay $800. The overheads and hassles of caring for eight clients is nothing compared to serving hundreds.

Rich differentiated himself by writing a book and building up a small tribe of dedicated followers of his coaching methods. He gave away a lot of content in his videos and he spoke at large gatherings of leaders. The key to his success was in saying no to most people who wanted to work with him. When people asked him how much his fees were, he was brave enough to quote a price far above most others and to add that he only worked with a maximum of eight select clients at any given time.

This approach turned many people off. They were shocked his fees were so high and they would never spend that sort of money on a life coach. Some people scoffed, some people hoped that one day they could afford it and some people politely nodded but secretly knew it wasn't an amount they were comfortable to spend. None of that mattered because Rich was oversubscribed – more than eight people a year were excited by the prospect of having a coach who could dedicate time to understand their complex world.

When I first started coaching Rich on his business strategy he had a waiting list for his high‐value coaching but he wanted to expand his business and serve more people. Carefully we crafted a group coaching program and began campaigning for soft signals of interest. The people who signaled their interest started receiving more specialised content from Rich. He shared with them his stories, unique insights, philosophies and methods. Over the course of 60 days, we shared so much value that a group of about 1,000 people went from mildly curious to intensely interested in what Rich had to say.

Rich then launched the new group product we developed called 4PC (which stands for the 4% difference between a high achiever and his or her next level of success). He announced that the group would be capped at 60 members. With more than 1,000 people engaged in the build‐up campaign, the launch was a huge hit and generated over $1 million of sales. 4PC could generate far more than that each year but exclusivity is what makes the group so desirable in the first place. It's members include vice presidents of Fortune 500 companies, a former Navy Seal, experienced post‐exit entrepreneurs, leaders of nonprofits, several PhDs and the former CMO of Harley Davidson.

The marketplace says life coaches should earn $32.50 an hour, not $640,000 a year. The marketplace says if more than 100 people want to pay to join an exclusive group you'd be silly to limit it to 60. The marketplace is wrong; the market's job is to eradicate profit not maximise it.

You will suffer if you try to cater to what the market thinks. The market will force your prices down and demand more and more from you until you snap. Rather than catering to the market, let's get better at finding your market. And your market is made up of the people who really care about what you do. They place a high value on the results you can bring them. They get it, and importantly, they can also afford it. You know these people better than they know themselves when it comes to being able to surprise and delight them. You understand their unmet needs and wants; you have insights for them that will blow them away. You care about these people almost to a fault.

These are the people into whom you put your energy. Over time you'll separate your market from everyone else and they will be immune to some cheap offer or cheesy ploy offered by a competitor; if it's not from you, they won't respond. You don't need everyone in order to become oversubscribed, you only need more people than you can handle.