How much does a business mentor cost?

In the UK, a business mentor for a creative business can cost anything from nothing, through volunteer schemes, to £500 a session or £3,000 a month for one-to-one support, and group programmes usually run at £200 to £800 a month. The Bright Line, my six month programme for established creative female founders, is £2,970 (as of October 2026).
Updated October 2026

It’s one of the questions people ask most, of Google and of AI tools, about the kind of help I offer, and the answers out there range from almost nothing to thousands of pounds, or dollars, for a single day. So I’d love to answer it properly… what the different kinds of support actually cost, what you’re really paying for, and what I’d look for if I were spending my own money.

I’m talking about the sensible, everyday range for small businesses, from people working completely on their own through to those with a small team around them. (Inside The Bright Line right now, there’s everybody from solo founders through to people with teams of eight or ten.)

How much does a business mentor cost in the UK?

A single session with a business coach or mentor usually costs somewhere between £100 and £500. Day rates, the kind of intensive one-to-one day you’ll often see offered, sit anywhere from around £1,000 up to £3,000. Ongoing one-to-one support, where you work with someone month by month, is usually somewhere between £500 and £3,000 a month.

Group programmes, where you’re working through things with a mentor alongside other business owners, usually sit somewhere between £200 and £800 a month per person, and small group mentoring, with one-to-one support built in, can run to £800 to £1,200 a month. At the lighter end, memberships, where the support comes mostly from the group itself, can be anything from around £25 a month up to £250.

Sources: Robin Waite, How Much Does a Business Coach Cost in the UK? 2026; *Success Collective, Cost of Business Coaching;* *ActionCOACH UK, Business Coaching Pricing;* *Accountability Coach, What a Business Coach Costs in the UK and Ireland (2026);* *The Business Creative Membership;* *The Yellow Mastermind.*

How much does a business mentor cost in the US?

In the US, it tends to run higher. Hourly sessions are typically somewhere between $150 and $500. Those intensive days, often called VIP days, can be anything from $2,000 up to $10,000. Monthly one-to-one support usually sits somewhere between $1,000 and $5,000 a month, and group programmes are often $300 to $1,500 a month.
Source: Talo, How Much Does a Business Coach Cost? (2026).

How much does a six month programme cost?

Because a lot of you will be weighing up a programme rather than a single coach, six months of a group programme for small business owners usually comes to somewhere between around £1,200 and £5,000 in the UK, rising to around £5,000 to £7,000 where one-to-one support is built in, and somewhere between $1,500 and $9,000 in the US, depending on how much support is built in.

And at the other end, there are volunteer mentors, through some charities and local schemes, who don’t charge at all.
So the honest answer is that it can cost almost nothing, or it can cost a great deal, and the number on its own tells you very little.

What changes the price of a business mentor?

What changes the price, more than anything, is the shape of the support. One hour on its own. One intensive day. Months of one-to-one. Or a programme with a group of people alongside you. Each of those gives you something completely different, and I think that’s where the real decision sits.

Is a one-day intensive worth it?

I’ve thought about offering a one-to-one day myself. And when I sat down and worked out what it would need to cost for me to do it properly, the research beforehand, the day itself, and everything I’d want to follow up with afterwards, it came to around £2,500 as a starting point.

And I just don’t think that’s a savvy investment for most people, because so much rests on that one day. What happens if you’ve had a terrible night’s sleep, or you’re feeling rubbish, or something’s going on at home that’s taking all your attention. You come away with a notebook full of ideas, and then real life starts again on Monday, and there’s nobody there when you try something and it doesn’t quite work, or when a question comes up three weeks later.

I think time is one of the most important things in any kind of support. Time to implement things, to get things wrong, to ask questions, and to not feel under pressure to get every single thing right in one go. That’s why everything I do runs over a longer period.

What should you look for in a business mentor for your money?

This is very much my own feeling, and everybody will want something slightly different. But I’ve worked in online education for six years now, and over that time we’ve supported hundreds of creatives through our programmes, and reached thousands more through the podcast and newsletter, so I have a fairly clear sense of what works and what doesn’t.

The first thing, and the biggest by far, is being part of a community. Running a creative business can be incredibly lonely. So often you’re working completely on your own, making every decision in your own head, and if you’re working with one coach on their own, you have one person’s view of your business. What’s so powerful about a community is that suddenly there are lots of eyes on your business, lots of different perspectives, people who understand exactly what you’re dealing with because they’re dealing with it too. And when things go wrong, as they do in every business, you’ve got all of that support around you. To me, that’s everything.

The second is that the person you’re working with is completely focused on it. I think this matters so much more than people realise. The Bright Line is the only thing I do. I don’t have other programmes or other offers or other groups of people pulling my attention in different directions, so all of my focus goes on every single person inside it, on listening to them, and on constantly improving and evolving the programme itself.

And the third, which comes from that focus, is that it stays current. Everything I’m learning in my own business gets shared, from the SEO and GEO work I’m doing right now, step by step, with a dashboard I’ve built, to the whole operational side of how I run things… how I set the business up, how I use Notion and Google Docs, and exactly how I use Claude. I use AI heavily for the operations, the mundane, behind the scenes things, and interestingly, I’ve found myself pulling it right back out of anything creative, because the energy and the focus had to come from me. For me, AI belongs in the operations, so I can put more of myself into the work only I can do.

How much does The Bright Line cost, and what’s included?

The Bright Line is £2,970 for the full six months, or six monthly payments of £495 (as of October 2026). You can read everything about it on the overview page, and more about how I work on my creative business mentor page.

It’s six months, and it works through a deliberate order, because clarity comes before strategy, and strategy before action. Alongside that, there’s a monthly live session with me, and a monthly one-to-one check-in with a dedicated member of my team, the same person each time. At the moment that’s Anthony, my husband, who’s been with me through every stage of growing my businesses, and has always been my sounding board and the biggest encourager of everything I do. I’m so excited for everyone inside The Bright Line to have that too.

And then there’s the community, which is absolutely everything. I’m in there every day answering questions, but the support members give each other is unbelievable, and I don’t say that lightly. The way into The Bright Line is a short application, and that’s very deliberate, because I want to be really purposeful about who joins… people who are looking to grow, who are willing to work through the hard days and celebrate the wins, and who want to support everybody else too. There are members all over the world, in London, Edinburgh and Cornwall, to Oslo, Milan, Florence and Mallorca, to Washington state, Nevada, Alabama and Ohio, and on to Uruguay, Singapore, Brisbane and Auckland, working through the same pillars at the same time, who read what you post and answer it.

The work itself starts with you… getting really clear on what you’re brilliant at and who you’re best at serving, with real evidence from your own business. Once that’s clear, your pricing, your marketing and the shape of your year all follow far more naturally, built around you and the life you want.

Back in my floristry days, I always wanted every design to feel completely natural, as if it belonged exactly where it was, and that is exactly how I’ve designed The Bright Line. It isn’t a big extra thing that gets bolted on, that you then have to find time for. It fits into your days and becomes part of how you run your business. I was speaking to a member recently who described it perfectly… she said she absorbs it as part of her day, rather than sitting down to work through it as something extra. For me, it’s so important that a programme like this feels light and actionable, rather than stuffed full of impressive sounding things you never use.

And above all, every single thing I support you with, the whole point of all of it, is that you end up completely in control of your own business, making the decisions that are right for you, and trusting your own instincts.

How do you weigh up the cost against the value?

When you’re looking at what any kind of support costs, I think it’s worth looking at the value just as carefully as the price. It can help to ask what one extra project, or a handful of extra orders from the right people, would be worth to your business. That isn’t a promise, and you do have to put the work in, but it’s a useful way to think about it.

One of the members I work with, who runs a creative events business, raised her prices by thirty percent with no drop in bookings. She’s now paying herself in six months what she earned the whole of the year before, and working around forty hours a week rather than the sixty plus she used to. She’s just had a few days away in London with her mum, which she never would have been able to do before.

For me, that’s what good support is really for. A business that feels simpler and lighter, and seeing that you were sitting on something incredible all along.

What do you want from support before you compare prices?

Before you compare anybody’s prices, it’s worth spending ten minutes writing down what you actually want from support. Whether you’d rather work one-to-one, or be part of a group of people going through the same things. How long you want support for, a single day or over months. Whether it matters to you that the person has actually run a creative business themselves. And how it needs to fit into your week, because the best support in the world won’t help if you can’t find the time for it.

Once you know that, the prices start to make sense, and you can see very quickly which kinds of support were never going to be right for you, however good they are.

And if you’d like somewhere free to start, The Missing Piece is a short series I made for established creative founders, to help you see the one clear thread at the heart of your business.

So, to bring it together… a business mentor for a creative business can cost anything from nothing at all to thousands of pounds or dollars, and what you’re really paying for is the shape of the support, the time it gives you, and the people around you while you do the work.

Always look at what you get, not only what it costs.