It’s no secret that coaching is a tough way to make a living. And discussing pricing is often a difficult task for fitness professionals, especially because most of us aren’t in it for the money. I always tell people that if I could pay my mortgage with their happiness and PR’s, I wouldn’t charge a dime for my coaching.
Sadly, we live in a world that requires us to pay actual bills with actual money. So we need to charge actual money for our services.
So, how do you decide what to charge for your coaching and programming?
First, I’ll tell you what not to do:
- See what other people charge and pick something in the middle, or
- See what other people charge and undercut them
Spoiler Alert: neither of these is a good option, and both can derail your coaching business before it even gets off the ground. (Trust me on this one. I learned it the very hard way when I opened my gym back in 2015, and it took a long time to course correct. I hope to help you skip right over that “screwing up” part and get to the “making money” part.)
Instead of basing things on feelings and looking at competitor websites, you should set your pricing based on facts and data. The first step of the process is to have a solid handle on 2 things:
- How much money per week do you want to make?
- How many hours per week do you want to work?
Start by determining how much money you need to make each week to survive. This should include things like: food, rent/mortgage, car payment, insurance, loans, and things you can’t live without.
Then add in how much money you need to make each week to live the lifestyle you want. This should include things like: going out to eat, subscription services, shopping, vacation, savings, and things you like to have or do.
Let’s say that total weekly amount is $1,000.
Now you need to determine how many hours/week you can spend on the following:
- Coaching clients live/in-person
- Programming (for remote & in-person clients)
- Business backend tasks (admin work, billing, taxes, etc)
- Lead generation (marketing, consults, social media, etc)
Remember that some of your hours will be spent actively coaching, some will be spent working for your clients when you aren’t physically with them, and some (most) will be spent doing things you don’t get paid for directly – like marketing, accounting, taxes, website maintenance, writing, and following up with leads.
Let’s assume you can spend 20 hours/week coaching live, 3 hours/week programming, 5 hours/week on business tasks, and 2 hours/week on lead generation. That’s 30 total hours (6 hours/day, 5 days/week) if you go directly from task to task with no breaks.
Let’s say you charge $75/hour for live coaching and $50/week for programming. If you fill all 20 hours and have 10 programming clients, your income based on the above hours will be $2,000/week.
Then you need to subtract your fees, like:
- Credit card transaction fees (estimate 3% per transaction)
- Taxes (estimate 20-30%)
- Software for program delivery (estimate $10-40/week)
Now you’ve got $470-700/week in fees, not including rent (which we’re not including here because it varies wildly depending on your personal situation). So after accounting for the above fees, you’ll be around $1,300-1,530/week.
If you’re working 30 hours/week, that makes your “effective hourly rate” (i.e. the actual amount of money you make per hour you work) about $43-51/hour. I’m not here to tell you if that’s “good” or “bad” or “enough.” That’s up to you.
Adjusting Your Income
If you want your income to go up, you can:
- Cut costs (this is really hard when you’re running a bare bones operation to begin with)
- Increase prices
- Work more hours and/or take more clients
How you approach that is completely up to you!
If you can’t work more than 30 hours per week, but need to make more money, you need to charge more for your services or find a way to make more money per hour (like switching to semi-private training or streamlining your programming process).
If you are hesitant to raise prices, you can add hours, or you can do the math on hiring someone to help you. If you pay someone to do non-coaching tasks (like admin work or social media), you can reallocate your own time to serving more clients. It will cost you money to hire someone, but you can ultimately make more money per hour if you charge more for your coaching than you pay someone to do the non-coaching tasks you’ve delegated. (Eg. If you make $75/hour coaching and pay someone $20/hour for social media, your net income in that hour is $55, which is more than you’d make if you did the social media yourself.)
Remember that all the numbers in this article are for example purposes (and easy math). When you figure this out for yourself and your own business, you can use the process above, but make sure you account for all your own income needs, expenses, etc. If you have employees and rent a gym space, factor that in as well. We love a good spreadsheet for this purpose.
Making the Best Choice for You and Your Business
Ultimately, the amount you charge is very personal, and there are lots of factors involved. You have to account for regional differences, the type of clients you serve, and your own capacity to deliver your services.
The biggest takeaway here is to be thoughtful and intentional about your choices. Factor in your personal financial needs, and don’t forget to think about expenses.
Need help?
We offer free 15-min coaching calls as well as in-depth business coaching and consulting. We also have pre-made templates for figuring out your expenses and income, which can be super helpful in this process. Just shoot us an email (strongmandottraining@gmail.com) or DM to get started.
The more good coaches we have in the world who are making enough money to live – and not just scrape by and burn out – the better off our sport will be.
