This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
How can you price your services without undervaluing your expertise? Hey friends, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. It's your host, Chris Guillebeau here. In today's episode, we're going to help a fitness trainer navigate the balance of pricing her postpartum workout plans.
So she wants to offer options for different budgets. She also wants to build a sustainable business. So what do you do in this situation where you want to make money, you also want to remain true to your mission, you want to be helpful. So many of our listeners and side hustlers around the world, they are motivated by helpfulness and service. And they get into business because they want to make other people's lives better.
They come from this perspective of service and hospitality, which I think is so valuable and is not something to be stifled, but it's also the case where you want to make money. And I don't want you to forget that either. So there is a way to navigate this balance. Let's talk about it. Her name's Maria.
We're going to hear the detailed question from Maria along with my answer. Hopefully a couple of tips that will help a lot of people out there right after this quick shout out to our sponsor. [Music]
Hey, Chris. My name is Maria and I'm a fitness trainer living in Las Vegas. I design workout plans tailored to new moms focusing on safe postpartum recovery.
I'm finding it difficult to price my plans in a way that reflects my value and expertise while still staying affordable to my target audience. I want to offer this service, especially because I'm so passionate about it. But I also need it to be sustainable. How would you balance this moral dilemma and find the right pricing strategy that both appeals to new moms and values my expertise? All right, first let me say this is absolutely the right intention to begin solving this moral dilemma as Maria calls it.
The intention is how do I price my plans in a way that reflects my value while staying affordable to my target audience? Because she has this perspective of service, of hospitality, of wanting to be helpful, but she also needs it to be sustainable. So I think the first thing you do is you start with your costs. What does it cost you to provide this service? And I don't just mean like hard costs, but also your time.
Because your time is valuable and can be used in lots of different ways. So you have to consider how long does it take to design a workout plan, communicate with clients, provide any follow-up support, add a little bit of buffer because sometimes things happen. And that just kind of helps you understand your minimum viable pricing. What you need to charge just to break even. So if you spend five hours per client, if you value your time at $50 an hour, your pricing should reflect at least $250 per plan, not including any additional costs.
The next thing you can do is research the market, but don't undervalue yourself. Like see whatever other people are charging. And if there's not a trainer or somebody else who's providing this specific type of service, just look for something comparable or look for something in another city perhaps. And then from there that gives you a benchmark, but don't race to the bottom by pricing too low. Like your expertise and the results you deliver are worth more than generic advice.
Hopefully you're creating positive outcomes, even transformation. So you really don't want to undervalue yourself. One tip is to highlight your specialty in your marketing. Like clients are often willing to pay a premium for tailored services that address their specific needs. Now let's talk about affordability.
A great thing to do is offer tiered pricing or packages that allows people to engage at the level that they are comfortable with. So you could have a basic plan, a standard plan, and a premium plan. This is a really common model, basically three choices. And by doing this, you actually kind of nudge people towards the standard plan. Like you provide the relatively low budget plan, but most people will probably choose the middle option.
And a few people will choose premium because that's what they like or that's what they're able to do. Tiered pricing gives clients flexibility while ensuring that you are fairly compensated for higher value services. I think that's probably the number one thing you can do after you've done that initial work of researching and considering your costs, offer tiered options. And then last but not least, leave room for compassionate exceptions. Like I don't want to tell you, especially in a market like postpartum fitness and postpartum recovery, I don't want to say you should never provide a plan for free or help someone at a really low cost.
Of course you want to do that, but just don't forget the second part of what you're trying to do here, which is also build a sustainable business. Ultimately, I think we can do good by doing well. We can make other people's lives better and we can benefit at the same time. It's what we've been trying to encourage people to do in lots of different ways for nearly 3000 days here on the podcast and through my books and other resources as well. The podcast by the way is completely free.
Completely free seven days a week, 365 a year. And I hope you'll continue to listen. You can subscribe or follow wherever you get your shows. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
