Pricing Strategies to Develop Profitable Personal Training Programs for Your Fitness Business 2021
Did you know if you Google search, what does the average personal trainer make per hour? You’re going to get from $35 an hour to $400 an hour? Is it any wonder with that kind of vague spectrum? Why so many trainers are worried and wondering and insecure about whether they’re charging too much or not enough, it is so subjective how to price your services in any professional service industry. But in fitness, we have it even worse, in my opinion, because we’re led to fitness with the heart to transform lives and to help people. And when you come from that bleeding heart perspective, it makes asking for money feel really uncomfortable and awkward, especially starting out. We also have a lot of imposter syndrome, with trainers entering the industry and evolving in the industry, a lot of people feeling like they’re not good enough yet. And because of our desire to serve, and our deep insecurity, that there’s always going to be a better trainer than us, we typically as an industry do not ask for what we’re worth. And then those that do are seen as super expensive. And we’re basically setting a bad precedent for the entire industry, which is something I’m very passionate about fixing.
Hi, I’m Peyton Hughes. I’m one of the owners of gym Nazo. It’s a seven figure fitness facility here in California. And for the past decade, we’ve been selling personal training, semi private training, group training, multiple move all these different services that we offer, and we have sold over $7 million worth of fitness services. So what I’m about to share with you today comes from that experience, and it’s why you should pay attention in this video, because what I’m going to share with you is not theory, it’s not subjective. It’s an objective look back on the last decade on what’s worked in our business, so that you can actually align your pricing strategy with real time examples that have generated a profitable seven figure fitness business. In this video, I’m going to share with you the three methods you can use to create your one on one pricing model. From that point, we’re going to anchor the rest of your business pricing strategy around your one on one personal training rate. So that you can branch out into group out into semi private and feel like you have a bit of a roadmap to follow. And then finally, I’m going to share with you the six most common questions and concerns around pricing, which includes things like do you ever refund? Do you decrease your pricing when you go virtual over in person? Do you ever offer family discounts and all those kind of questions at the end of this video. Okay, so today we’re going to talk about the three methods to create that original pricing strategy around your one on one training, I always start with personal training, because it’s a great way to look at what is the value for your time. And if we look at the one hour you’ll be spending training a client we want to value that time. And I think there are three different ways to do this. And I want you to pick the one that aligns with your personality. And one of these for sure is going to jump out at you. So I want you to pay attention to all three, pick the one that works best for you roll with that. And then continue watching the rest of the video for the other little nuggets of wisdom and examples I’m going to share along the journey. The first method is called the intuitive method. And it’s essentially getting into your body and being really honest, what do you want to charge for your service? i What would make you feel really good, with good energy walking in with full expectation that you’re going to deliver a powerful session, what is that dollar amount? Is there something that just feels right to you? Is there a number in your head that you just go that’s the number that I want to encourage you if you’re in tune with yourself and you really can go to that subjective place, I want you to just say that’s my number, and I want you to own it. So go in strong with that intuitive sense that you know what you’re worth for that hour. Now, I will say that to do that requires you to just believe that you’re worth it. And if you really we’re going to talk about imposter syndrome in a second but if you really don’t think you’re there yet, stay tuned for methods three because I think that could help get you to that number. But if you are really you just know instinctively what you want to charge per hour I just say roll with that. And if you’re a business owner like me, I want you to think about what would your trainers or coaches on your staff what did they feel really good about getting paid? And then you want to make sure what their cut is 40% of what you charge the customer the house should always take 60% I know it doesn’t seem fair to trainers everywhere. But if we do another video on how to break down all the overhead and expenses, you’ll realize that you’re sitting pretty in an organization, because you are spared the burdens of ownership. That’s all I’ll say, obviously, I’m biased as the business owner. But that’s what I would say. The second method is called the estimator method. Now, if you’re the kind of person that wants a logical formula to follow, and a step by step of how to go about this, then this is the method I recommend for you. First off, I want you to find between three and five, look alike businesses and or personal trainers. Now, when I say look alike, I mean, in the same geographical region, off with the same kind of education, going after the same kinds of clients having at least one similar service that you can model your pricing strategy after, and then I want you to look at what they charge for personal training. So get the hourly rate in a spreadsheet, I want you to pull an average, that’s your average. And I want you to look kind of get a macro view of the industry and say, okay, where roughly are trainers fitting in this, I want you to be in the top 25% For most expensive, but I do not want you to be the most expensive. So you can take the average, you can either do that way. Or you can take the average of those three or five look alike trainers. And I want you to increase from that average, at least 10% more, just start there. I’m a big believer that you can raise rates, add value, repackage, and ree kind of give a revamp to your services to help you take care of your business along the way, which allows you to take care of your clients and never be afraid of that. But when you when you’re starting fresh or you’re revamping, you want to come in strong, and you want to be on the more expensive but not most expensive side of wherever that lookalike market research tells you to be. So that’s the second method. The third method I call the accelerator method, and this is for somebody in the context of going, I’m starting out, or I’m really hungry. And when I say you’re really hungry, it means that you literally need dollars in the door to put food on the table. And if that’s where you’re actually at, in your life, or your business, this is a different method, because this method is about getting a foot in the door, and building on that success to create greater success. And when I say greater success in the conversation of pricing, I mean off higher ticket, more profitable pricing. But sometimes it’s just the case, and we just got out of 2020 it’s never been more realistic than now to say sometimes you just got to eat. And when you’re in that place, I always say what is it going to take to get that one person in the door great charge that next person in the door, what would it take to get them in the door. And my challenge to you, if you accept this model is to consciously raise the rates for every single brand new client that comes in the door. And it can be by $5 an hour does not need to be huge shifts. For example, if you get somebody in for 35 bucks an hour, and you’re just cringing because you know you’re worth the 90, take the 35 next person that comes in there $40 for that hour, the next person that you sell their 45. And you just start baby stepping yourself into that sweet spot. And you can choose to grandfather, everybody in who helped you in a time of need. I’ve certainly done that in our business. Many, many times. I’m a big believer in loyalty first. So I will grandfather in the people that helped me survive. But I also believe in being in a constant place of evolution in your pricing and always inching back up specially for new people. Again, this is all predicated on the fact that you’re growing as a coach, you’re evolving your skills as a coach, you have quality customer care, at least in your peripheral, if not functioning in terms of how you take care of people. So I’m assuming that you’re constantly growing and getting better. And I think that’s a fair assumption in the industry. So many trainers, I know care deeply about getting it right for their clients, and kind of live in that blissfully discontent state where they never feel they know enough. So they’re constantly reinventing their skill set and evolving. And that’s a really good place to be. And you need to have that mindset when we talk about pricing. So I talk about the accelerator method, because as much as I want to say, hey, just have a better mindset believe you’re worth it and go and sell it. Sometimes when you’re just desperate and hungry. You just need to go and make some sales and build up that confidence. And if that gets the engine going, I say start with that and build from there. So those are my three methods, the intuitive method, feel it out what feels right. If there’s a number out there, go and get that number Just believe in it, roll with it and see if you can consistently sell that. There’s the estimator method, which gets you an actual look alike audience comparison and pricing yourself into the higher end of the spectrum, but at least then you feel like you have a defensible target that you’re going after. And the third is that accelerator method, which might just be for a season, but at a minimum, get you really comfortable with taking in clients, where they can when you need them, and then inching your business up. Some might argue, the more comfortable you are with increasing prices, and or reinventing your service model, the better business you can build. That’s definitely been the case, in my case. So I believe all three of those methods can work. But I think that trainers can go wrong. When they one, they don’t pick the right strategy. And so then they never really get that alignment they need to feel confident introducing, or re introducing their services into the marketplace. And to I think there’s imposter syndrome that shows up. I actually think fitness industry has more imposter syndrome than other industries, possibly because we feel like we have to look like we could be in the front of a magazine at all times. But there’s a lot of competition and a lot of noise in the marketplace where we constantly feel like there’s a comparison game going on. The way I look at imposter syndrome is there’s two reasons you’re feeling imposter syndrome. One’s good and one’s a little kick in the pants. The first one is when you’re experiencing imposter syndrome. One of my mentors describe this to me as imposter syndrome is what happens when you are in transition and evolving to the higher level or the next level in your career or your profession. And there’s this kind of uncomfortable moment when you realize you like what you used to do isn’t going to serve you with where you’re going to go. That’s a sign of growth. Imposter syndrome. I don’t know where we learned that imposter syndrome is, is always bad, and it’s horrible. We should never experience it in our professional lives. It is absolutely part of you tear stepping into greatness. And at each different transition. There’s this bittersweet moment where you’re kind of angsty because you have to reach that new threshold. So in that sense, imposter syndrome can be timely. But the other way that imposter syndrome functions, I think in fitness that also I think serves us is it’s honestly saying to get to that next level, you don’t have the current skill set. And if that’s you, and you’re just being honest, that imposter syndrome is doing what it’s supposed to do, which is to tell you, hey, you need to be at this level, to get to that price point or you need to accelerate your knowledge, you are not the smartest best trainer in the world, congratulations, there’s room to grow. And that’s the mindset that can carry you I believe, to greatness. So to me, I see imposter syndrome getting a lot of negative vibes out there. But it’s not always negative. It’s either transitioning you into that next role, and it’s sort of this, you’re leaving an old identity behind, you’re embracing a new identity, or it’s really just giving you honest feedback that you need to level up in some tangible ways to really get to that next level. Either way it can serve you. And the final thing I see trainers doing. And let’s be honest, most personal trainers in the industry make an average of $47,000 a year, which doesn’t exactly put you into the high income earning bracket, which is why we’re all watching and making videos like this. So that being said, there’s a big danger that personal trainers sell out of their pocketbook when talking to more wealthy potential clients. This is a really, this is almost like an entire sales video, but I’m just gonna give this little nugget right now, which is that if you think $100 an hour is expensive. You cannot talk like that to your clients who are in the top 15%. of income producing earners, to them 100 bucks an hour is, is probably fine, maybe even low. But if you discuss pricing, coming from a place of going, I really feel like it should be 35 bucks because that’s all I would ever pay, then the energy you bring into that discussion around pricing is off to begin with. And people read energy, subconsciously more than they read what’s coming out of your mouth. Like if you look at what people communicate, and what’s paid attention to more nonverbals outweigh what you’re verbally expressing. So I just say that because when it comes to pricing, you don’t want to pick the wrong method that doesn’t work for you. You do not want to misunderstand what imposter syndrome is showing up for you as you really want to understand why you’re experiencing imposter syndrome and either celebrate the growth from that or level up so that you really don’t have to experience that at the next level. And you don’t want to be selling out if your pocketbook. Okay, so now I want to talk about price anchoring and what I mean by that is not The way the sales crew talks about anchoring your price, giving them the shock value. So you can offer them the real price, they feel like they’re getting a deal. That’s a different thing. That the sales thing when we talk about pricing, when I talk about creating a pricing strategy, I always anchor the pricing strategy around what you’re charging in your one on one, sessions. And so for us at Janaza, we offer three different services. The first is personal, or what we call exclusive one on one training. The second is semi private, which is where we have four different athletes to one coach, and that coach is delivering four separate programs based on what their goals are, what their movement dysfunction is, etc. And is delivering all four at once in the same hour. Okay, so that’s running over to so and so saying, you’ve got to go do these Bach jumps running over here, having this person do a mobility exercise, and you’re multitasking through that hour, and you’re splitting your attention between four clients. And then the third service we offer is small group training, the way we define small group is between 12 and 18 clients to one coach, I tell you that because I think there’s a there is a connection between the cost and how much attention you’re sharing with other participants that I think really informed the discussion around price. But I’m just going to share with you apples to apples, let’s compare drop in rates with all three services. And I’m just going to give you what they are now. So for one on one training, well, I’ll tell you this one on one training, we started at $90 an hour, we now have created so much educational value and invested over $100,000 in our team’s education that we have now escalated them into the $110 category, and $125 per session, if you’re what we call a movement specialist. That is for one on one training for semi private training, we charge a drop in rate of $50. So there’s an assessment that we do you your assessed and then we create a custom program for you that first initial session where you we program for you is $50. Now we do group one on one drop in largely informed by the market research we did in our small town in San Luis Obispo, which was $25 an hour. It’s a little cringy to us that a yoga studio with like 50 people showing up for the same instructors attendance will be priced accordingly to
the 12 people splitting are highly educated coaches time. But at the end of the day, it’s what people will pay, and $25 seems to be the going rate. So that’s the way we’ve done it. So if you look at the way that stacks, it’s $25 for group training, double that into semi private at 50. And almost double that, again, if you want to do one on one and increase it slightly if you want my most senior level coaches, that’s the way that we’ve been able to branch out in our pricing. Now, obviously, we’re going to talk about offers and ways in which to incentivize people to come in and try different offers. And obviously, there’s packages and different ways that you can do that. For me, the way I look at packages discounting and bundling services, is I need to know that I get what I want. And the client gets what they want. And so there’s the sliding scale, I want loyalty and retention, like that’s where I know my money is made, I will give on the hourly cost to create longevity with a client. Clients, they want results for sure. They also want a sense of getting value. And so all of those things do create this kind of dance between what’s fair to you and what somebody will pay for. So don’t be scared to dance that dance. I guess that’s what I could say is there’s a lot of gray area between what is the perfect way of going about pricing and ways that are exact to go about pricing. I’m trying to thread the needle here and give you some actual numbers as well as creating nuance for you because it’s at the end of the day, it’s your business, you have to justify your prices, and you want them to be defensible. You want to have a quick and easy answer for a client that goes Wow, you’re really expensive and have you go yes, I am so highly sought after and valuable that people are willing to pay for my services. And that’s what I’m I’m blessed to be able to charge. Like whatever your initial reaction is. You want to have some thoughts around that. Okay, now I want to talk about the six most common questions that I get around pricing. Do you have family discounts? Should you ever train someone for free? Do you ever offer deals? Do you offer any seasonal promotions? Do you ever refund and do you discount online training over in person training? So those are the six questions I get asked a lot and I want to dive into those each with you here in this video. First, do you offer family discounts Quick answer, hell no. Second answer. Let me explain a little bit more. I believe that when you come in expecting a family discount it red flags for me that you somehow have a different perception around value, and may not be satisfied working out with us. And here’s why. For example, I had a father come in who has five children and say, I’d like to get personal training for five of my children. What discount package can you give me?
And we kindly responded, saying, we don’t offer discounts for families. And he said, Well, why not? It’s really expensive for me to have five children, and most places give family discounts. Our response was very polite, and simply said, when we do one on one training, we offer undivided attention of a senior coach, we program specifically for that child or per client’s goals needs take into consideration any movement dysfunction that they have. And we are motivating, texting, providing additional touch points throughout their journey with us. And that has a market value, we choose not to discount programs, because we don’t choose to discount the value that you’ll be receiving from our services. If you want us to, to pull back some of that value and offer you less value, I’d be happy to discuss a lower value service with you. So in general, the stance that I take on this is if we’re not decreasing the value, then why would we decrease the price. And unfortunately, in a world that discounts all over the place, that’s a little bit hard to thread the needle, but at the end of the day, you’re worth what you’re worth, your team’s worth what they’re worth. And unless they’re doing two family members training at once, then per person, it’s going to be less expensive for the hour, because again, they’re splitting the attention of the coach, which means the dollars per hour will diminish. But when you have two people paying, let’s just say 75 bucks an hour for that coach’s session, you’re actually making $150 An hour compared to what I originally would have priced at 90. So you’re still getting paid more because of the volume of programming. So don’t be afraid to stand behind your value. and family discount is one of those sticky situations where I typically say don’t do it. Are there scenarios where I would hell? Yeah. If my kid was starving, if I was going to go out of business, if 2020 hit me so hard, that was my last chance, then yes, because what I want just changed. It’s not loyalty, it’s It’s dollars. And if that’s my motivation right now, in this place, I might discount. But I’ll do it and know that if that word gets out from that point on for the rest of my career, I will be defending my prices for here on out. And if that’s a scenario that you can live with, discount away, I typically have not found that a very successful strategy. Second question, Should you ever train someone for free? There might be two scenarios that I would say yes to one, yes, you’re learning a brand new skill that you’ve never tried on a real paying client, and you need practice to improve your technique, then basically, you’re discounting for them what you would otherwise be charging. The second thing would be if you need a Client Testimonial, and you can’t somehow arrive at that Client Testimonial for a full paying client, which is a separate issue, I might have some judgment around that. But let’s just say you’re starting out the gate, you need a couple people talking about you, then yeah, you can train them for free. But know this about training for free. When people do not pay for something, it’s really easy to forget to show up. If you have any expectation that they’re going to foam roll, stretch, or do some basic reps, or when they’re not with you, you can throw that out the window, it is very rare that that occurs in a free client. And so you may get less success with a testimonial candidate, because they just didn’t pay so they just don’t care as much. And this is never more true than with family members. Hate to say it most family members that I’ve worked with and discounted for the concept of free is completely missed and taken for granted. So the third question we get asked is do you ever offer deals, discounts reduced pricing for your established services? The answer to that is yes, we do because we have to we live in a world where shiny object syndrome is a real thing where people are constantly looking for the next best coolest idea and they’re jumping around all over the place. Now I say that those are probably not your ideal clients. But because it’s so prolific it is now an expectation of your ideal clients. So yes, I do think you should have kind of initial incentive, some kind of discount opportunity that gives that pushes them right over that edge. If they’re on that fence for your service, it gives them just that little nudge to do so.
But when you talk about offer, which I’ll dive a little bit more into here in a second, when you provide offers, you want to create a window. So there’s urgency, if they don’t buy it in the next 14 days, you’ll never see it again, you want to also cycle through different offers throughout the year. So people don’t wait for your January sale every year, trying to keep it fresh, but also trying to hone the ones that really speak to your audience. So what I will share with you are some specific initial offers, that we found the most successful for one on one training, for semi private training and for group training. Okay, so the price point that was most successful as an initial offer, for one on one training was by 10, sessions up front get the 11th for free. So if you think about that, that’s about $1,000. And they’re getting $100 off, 10% off, but they’re getting a nice package of personal training, and they’re committing to themselves that they’re going to stick with it for 11 sessions, that went really well. And we will pull this offer out whenever we want to bolster personal training sessions, which is not all the time, but it is a decent amount of our services here. The second thing we do for some private training, the way that we created a good offer around this is instead of it being $50 to drop in to our paying members, we would say hey, if you want more specialized, customized training, we’ll go ahead and for up to 10 sessions for this month alone, you can buy a reduced session rate. So instead of being charged 50 bucks to drop in, you can get it for 35. No, we did once try to reduce it to 25. And we did not make enough money on that so we nixed it. Essentially, when you’re paying someone’s paying the drop in price for group but they’re limited to four. It’s just not a good method. Like I said, we have trialed and aired our way through pricing. And I’m trying to spare you from some of those mistakes that we’ve made. And then for groups, the number one offer that we have that has generated the most excitement, and yielded the highest retention post offer is that $99 for a one month of unlimited training. Now, there’s just something psychological about under $100. I don’t know what it is. And maybe when you’re watching this video, and let’s just say it’s five years old, it might have shifted, but in the last 10 years, there is magic around $99. And we have tried 125 for this and this and this we’ve tried 50 We’ve tried all these different things at free week, a free session, we tried all these things $99 For one month, unlimited access to all training, virtual or in person or just in person, whatever we could offer at the time, that overwhelmingly did better than any other offer. Alright, the fourth question is what do you offer seasonally? Do you ever offer seasonal packages or promotions? And the answer is yes. In fact, in the last decade, I’ve noticed that there are three peak seasons in fitness, especially in our business. Again, remembering we offer one on one semi private and group. And then there is one obvious low every year that we solve for by creating a seasonal pricing model. The three peaks are between April and May when everybody wants to get fit for their summer vacation, they just booked and they’re insecure about their bikinis. And being shirtless side note, we all know that summer bodies are made in winter, but no one seems to pick up on that until the spring. But that seems to be a big surge. Then we see it again in September October, which is actually a higher stress time of the year for a lot of our executives. But we see a lot of energy around shedding weight pre holiday with the expectation to put on weight during the holiday. Again, I’m not saying I advocate or even market to any of these mindsets. I’m just telling you what clients have been telling me for years. And then of course, the third is the new year’s resolution. Let’s get health and wellness back into our priorities. And let’s buy a membership somewhere to assuage our concern that we’re not caring enough about our health and fitness. Those are the three peaks. The two offers that we found the most successful was two weeks for 50 bucks. One of the strategies I advocate for hearing janazah is to charge by the week, not by the month. And if you start getting people thinking, Oh, it’s 50 bucks for two weeks, that’s 25 bucks a week, you’re now getting them into the ballpark of $100 a month, which gets you psychologically closer to the membership value. On average, on average, our members pay 170 bucks a month. It’s getting them close while understanding they got a promo deal. And you seem to we seem to see more people buying from that. The second one and I’ve already said is the $99 for a month. But here’s something that’s important about that why I believe that’s a really cool promotion. is because if you offer it unlimited, which is the only time we ever offer unlimited ever, and I really, if you can’t tell, I really believe in that, and there is no perceived value in unlimited, you can’t really put a number to it. So you can no show, oh, it’s an unlimited membership, you can, a lot of times they no show they cancel, they start dropping in attendance when we run unlimited. So we’ve kind of found that unlimited really is a good incentive, because it gets people excited of all the potential workouts they can get for that price. And they feel like that’s a really energizing deal. But we also know that it gives us an incredible sales tool, which is that we go and say, Hey, let’s sit down and look at what you just how many sessions you went to this month, you went to seven sessions in a month. Okay,
I’m definitely not going to pitch you the five times a week membership, I’m definitely gonna say okay, this is what you were able to fit into your schedule in the last month. Let’s start with where you’ve shown to be successful. And then our entire goal is to come alongside of them, motivate inspire them, and try to accelerate them into maybe a more. Or just a package that aligns with their goals a little bit more than maybe what they come in the door with something that’s counterintuitive, and you don’t care a lot in fitness, but I swear has built a lot of trust and loyalty is that you don’t hard sell somebody into the highest most expensive package, you sell them the service that’s going to fit with what they just showed you by voting with their feet on how often they can actually make room for fitness. Something we know about fitness is the more you do it. And the longer you do it, the more you feel like you want more of it, you’re going to eat healthier, typically you’re going to want to work out more and so just keep them feeling successful. We don’t stick with things we feel we fail at. So don’t push them into a higher dollar and feel really excited about it when they’re just gonna cancel three weeks later, because they haven’t been able to come. That’s never a winning strategy. Okay, now let’s talk about that lol I mentioned so between the second week of June, basically whenever children get out of school, all and all the way until Labor Day, we see a pretty significant shift in our attendance. And so what that looks like for us is we place a lot of membership holds. But we also run a promotion to incentivize people that look for kind of summer promos to at least spend those dollars with us. And the way we do it, that’s been the most successful is to offer $99 of unlimited training for three months. So you buy 99 bucks one month, 99 bucks a second month, 99 bucks a third month. And if you come on an average of three times per week, which is what our membership averages in attendance, you can win your fourth month for free. That’s that carrot at the end of the stick incentive. It keeps people dialed in and really successful all summer that you win that really exciting free month, and then most of them transition into paid memberships, and therefore a longer client retention scenario. So that’s been the way that we have managed to not see a pretty significant dip in the summer. But think the reason that we don’t see a big dip in the summers because of promotions like this, so we try to outsmart what otherwise would happen in the market. Fifth question I get asked a lot is Do you ever offer a refund? I’m going to be super honest with you. And there’s a really good chance I have clients watching this video right now. Yes, yes, yes, yes, I will always eat it to save a client relationship, period. It’s how we built loyalty. It’s how we build a seven figure business in a super small town. It’s because at the end of the day, there is no money worth it to me to leave a bad taste in someone’s mouth, who walk around and talk about my company in a negative way. I can’t solve for every possible scenario. But when it comes to pricing and refunding I can absolutely win was saying, You know what, let’s not have an argument about pricing. We’re not gonna sit there and compare what you feel is righteous compared to what I feel is righteous. I want you to walk away feeling heard cared for and listened to. And if that means I have to refund you, I’m going to do it. And I’ve even done it when it hurts. And I’ve even done it in pandemics. And I’ve even done it in summers where we have lols I’ve done it when it was a real bummer. But every time we have seen people speak well about our organization, and a lot of times come back feeling that we treated them well. And that means they want to come back when it’s better timing for them or their budget issues have cleared up and it’s a win. It’s a long term vision but I will always give a refund. Not only that I will almost always give a hold. I will and even if somebody has been paying their credit card bill for four months and not shown up if they walk in my door and say You guys have been charging me for four months. Obviously we’re calling them we’re doing good customer service to try to get him back in because we don’t like charging people for non attendance that is a failed business model in our opinion. But we will say, okay, you know what, let’s resurrect the value that you’ve already paid for those sessions. And let’s get you back in feeling taken care of and excited, not feeling gouged and taken advantage of.
So yes, I advocate for refunding because yes, I believe customer service has to be the heart of your organization. And finally, this is the number one question we got asked in 2020, for obvious reasons, when the entire training world either had to shut their doors and hope for the best or pivot online, many of us pivoted online, and it became this whole kerfuffle, everybody was confused, do we discount it? Do we offer for free, a lot of trainers started streaming things online for free diluting the marketplace further, hoping that people would stay loyal to them. I don’t know if it worked, we didn’t try that method, we actually did not discount any of our rates, except for personal training. And I’m gonna explain why in a second. All of our rates stayed intact, and we migrated people online. That being said, we cared a lot about production quality, we cared a lot about timers, fresh programming, fresh programming with some equipment, equipment that a lot of our members either bought from us, or had, we really paid attention that and trying to figure out sound and music, those were really, really important. If you’re committed to figuring those pieces out and solving for them, I don’t see why you would need to discount your rates. If they’re getting a good workout, it’s more convenient for them. And they’re getting your eyeballs on them offering tweaks modifications in real time, the value proposition is still really, really strong. So I would not discount your services just for virtual. Now, I did say we did discount for personal training. And here’s why. A lot of our personal training or what we call exclusive training is about solving movement dysfunction. And a lot of our trainers are massage practitioners and have soft tissue experience. And at times, we’ve put hands on clients to help manipulate tissue to help regenerate different parts of the body as part of the service. We can’t do that through a screen, I will brag on our client, our coaches for a minute, we have resolved back pain and knee pain and all sorts of pain by telling people where to foam roll, where to put the massage gun in an effort to kind of extend our hands through the screen to help them facilitate their own healing and recovery. But we didn’t feel good about launching it at full price. So we dropped it actually from 125 and 110 per hour down to 95 big reduction. But at the end of the day, we it’s what we felt good about. Looking back, I probably wouldn’t have done it, mainly because I know all of our clients would have kept paying us our normal rates. But at the time in 2020, we felt like that was the right thing to do. And at the end of the day, it’s your business. It’s your services, and it’s you who has to defend your pricing strategies. So I hope this video was really helpful for you. If you like this kind of content, please give us a like and subscribe. If you want more information about how you can run a better business. Leave a comment below. We definitely keep track of all the comments that we get and use that to prioritize the content that we put out on this channel.
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