Any suggestions on how much I should charge per class for my boot camp?
There are a lot of “it depends” answers and that is very true. It depends on your area, demographics, competition, number of people, length of boot camp and time per class, and so on. However, a simple formula to consider:
Personal Training Rate X 1.5 / Goal Number of Participants X Number of Total Classes = Bootcamp Rate
Example:
PT Rate $50 X 1.5 / 8 Goal Number of Participants X 12 Total Classes (such as 2x/week for 6 weeks) = $112.50 per person for the 6 week boot camp.
If you reach your goal number of Participants you will earn 1.5 times more than your personal training rate. If you only reach 75% of your goal number of participants you will earn 10% more than your personal training rate.
If you are not reaching 75% of your goal number of participants you should look at one of four things:
1. Cost & Competition. The cost may be too high for the demographics – but if you’re getting enough personal training clients then using the above formula should work well. If you have a lot of competition in your area, you may not necessarily need to modify your cost structure; first consider the next three items.
2. Marketing. You could be marketing to the wrong demographics, not doing enough marketing, or not doing the right kind of marketing. Look into alternatives in any case.
3. The Boot Camp itself. For example if you’re holding “military” style, brutal boot camps but the demographics of your area or health club are looking for something less difficult, or if you’re sticking with bodyweight and dumbbells (which are awesome tools, but doesn’t everyone do that?) you may want to change the format the class.
4. YOU. Just thought I’d add that in! I’m always in the process of becoming a better trainer and instructor. You can always have an objectively biased associate evaluate your class, get feedback from participants (private survey’s work great), and keep educating yourself to be better at what you do.
If you’re exceeding your goal number of participants you can do 1 of 4 things:
– Keep the same price structure; you simply have more hourly earning potential!
– Lower the cost. This can make it more affordable for participants over the long term and/or give you more exposure as you’d likely have an increase in participation.
– Increase the cost and still earn the same (or more) amount of revenue. The more money participants pay the more likely they are to be committed, and you can keep your class size manageable and personal to allow more time for building relationships. In my opinion it’s also easier to train fewer people especially when you’re holding multiple boot camps on top of your other classes and personal sessions.
– Add another Boot camp class. If you have enough participants you can consider adding another session; and from there the possibilities are endless: different format, more advanced class, more X per week, different times, etc.
Jonathan
www.integratedfit.org