Charge more for the 5am

One of the owners on my Tuesday call charges different prices for different class times, and she opened by saying her mentors would hate it.

Her 5am is the hot slot. Fills to fourteen. Costs the most.

Her 6:30pm is the one nobody wants. Those people pay somewhere between a hundred and a hundred fifty for two or three times a week.

When a slot starts filling up she just tells them. Hey, this one's getting full, price is going up. You want to pay it or you want to move?

I sat there doing the math on my own schedule while she talked, because I have slots that are packed and slots that are a ghost town, and I charge exactly the same for both. I never once thought of the time as part of the product.

The 6:30pm group also gets less, and she's completely upfront about it. No 24/7 access. No year-round nutrition coaching. Ask your question while you're standing there or wait till next time.

They know that, and they respect our time, and as long as you're up front, retention is crazy.

She has one class where half the room came in at an old rate and the other half pays nearly double. It's a non-issue. Nobody was ever misled about anything.

Then she named the condition, and this is the part that makes the whole thing work or blow up:

You can't provide low value and still do that. The problem starts when you offset to coaches who aren't the value you promised.

Read that twice. The lower price buys FEWER PERKS. It never buys a worse coach. The second you hand your dead slot to your least experienced coach to make the margin work, you've built a bad gym at two price points instead of a smart one.

And then she answered the objection I was already forming, which was whether cheap members ever graduate into full-price members.

Her answer was better than yes.

I don't expect the people paying less to eventually pay me more. They give me a testimony I can use later. That's happened with ten people I charge half. Their testimonies brought in people who pay full value. Some of them are their husbands.

So the discounted slot isn't a waiting room for real customers. It's a proof factory. Those people are generating the words that sell the 5am.

I don't know yet whether I'll do this at my place. I do know I've been pricing a schedule like every hour of the day is worth the same to a human being, and that's obviously not true and never has been.

Nick

Nick Habich owns Shark Bite Fitness in Cape Coral, Florida, and coaches gym owners in Pathfinder Collective. These notes go out to his email list on Tuesdays and Thursdays.