Deaths at Eagles Nest - Homosassa FL

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For those that feel there is no money in teaching and only teach for the enjoyment, I believe my friend Pete Nawrocky said it best as a few of us instructor types sat around chatting, one instructor echoed those same sentiments. Pete said, 'do you know what I enjoy? Eating! I enjoy having heat in my house!'. There is plenty of money in teaching if you are doing right.

Perhaps this is one of the problems that has contributed to this accident; Dad did not see any real value in the training. Why do golf and tennis instructors make $25 and hour, a carpenter gets $40 an hour to install a window and a plumber jamming a plunger in your toilet is charging $65 and hour, yet the person with your life in their hands barely makes minimum wage?

Sadly, we (the scuba industry collectively) have done this to ourselves. We devalue ourselves and our service and do not charge what we are worth. I believe we should always conduct ourselves as professional educators, charge like professional educators, deliver like professional educators and get paid accordingly.

I dunno ... I paid $2800 for my cave training. While my instructor earned every penny of it, that ain't exactly chump change.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)
 
I dunno ... I paid $2800 for my cave training. While my instructor earned every penny of it, that ain't exactly chump change.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)
depends, was it for just the full cave course? was it for cavern, intro, apprentice and full cave? You are right, $2,800 ain't chump change, but how many hours of training was it? How much travel time did the instructor have? Did he/she provide equipment, gas fills, etc. with the class?
 
How much does your instructor pay for his insurance, yearly instructor renewal, equipment maintenance, travel, fills, fee's? And how many student's does your cave instructor certify every year? Unless you are doing it full time as your primary job, you are only covering costs. The nickel and dime costs instructors incur impact the profit.

Out of the $2800 your instructor probably profited $700. How many hours was your course? At least 40 I hope. That's $70 an hour. $17.50 an hour after costs. Not bad for one student. But to make a decent living the instructor needs to teach more students to have a "roof" and "eat". So the instructor needs to roll through multiple students to increase their profit percentage. So to make a decent living of say 50k a year an instructor that rolls through 20 students in a year at $2800 would need to keep their teaching costs below $6000 for the year. That's gonna be tough. If you think its not, then you need to become an instructor...you will make a million

How do you make a million dollars as an instructor? Start with 2 million.

Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using Tapatalk
 
How much does your instructor pay for his insurance, yearly instructor renewal, equipment maintenance, travel, fills, fee's? And how many student's does your cave instructor certify every year? Unless you are doing it full time as your primary job, you are only covering costs. The nickel and dime costs instructors incur impact the profit.

Out of the $2800 your instructor probably profited $700. How many hours was your course? At least 40 I hope. That's $70 an hour. $17.50 an hour after costs. Not bad for one student. But to make a decent living the instructor needs to teach more students to have a "roof" and "eat". So the instructor needs to roll through multiple students to increase their profit percentage. So to make a decent living of say 50k a year an instructor that rolls through 20 students in a year at $2800 would need to keep their teaching costs below $6000 for the year. That's gonna be tough. If you think its not, then you need to become an instructor...you will make a million

How do you make a million dollars as an instructor? Start with 2 million.

Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using Tapatalk

Just so you know, the person to whom you are responding, the person who said the cost of his cave instruction was not chump change, is an extremely active instructor, and his cave instructor liked the post.
 
I dunno ... I paid $2800 for my cave training. While my instructor earned every penny of it, that ain't exactly chump change.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

It's definitely not chump change. I am sure I spent quite a bit more than that when I consider all the training up to and including deep cave. I was happy to spend it. Good instructors earn their money.

To Seacobra's point. Sometimes people believe they are in competition with people they aren't and we end up with a race to the bottom for instructor pricing. Just because someone is selling a class for less than you doesn't mean you should lower your price. It doesn't even mean you will lose business if you don't lower your price. It does mean you need to be able to differentiate your training from your competitors.

I have never considered the price of training when I was selecting technical and cave instructors. I did not consider the price of training when I was looking for a shop to teach my kids open water. I have always gone with the instructors who I felt had the best qualifications and I was comfortable with.
 
One of the reasons I actually raised prices this year is because my costs have gone up. I choose an instructor based on content. Not cost.

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Just so you know, the person to whom you are responding, the person who said the cost of his cave instruction was not chump change, is an extremely active instructor, and his cave instructor liked the post.

Then they get what I'm saying. Their costs and profits may vary.

My point is, instructors make money teaching. In order to make a living it requires student volume. My example of making 50k a year takes more than 20 cave students at $2800 each. All of a sudden instructors are bad because they have a large student count and only in it for the money.


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Perhaps this is one of the problems that has contributed to this accident; Dad did not see any real value in the training.
As I commented earlier in this thread, Dad did not see any real value in the training because of the quality of training in OW. If OW training is a joke, then he probably believed all training is the same scam. I believe he was headed to a showdown with Darwin well before SCUBA and was smiled upon by all gods but Poseidon.


Why do golf and tennis instructors make $25 and hour, a carpenter gets $40 an hour to install a window and a plumber jamming a plunger in your toilet is charging $65 and hour, yet the person with your life in their hands barely makes minimum wage?
Supply and demand, with a bit of state licencing and Unions to reduce the supply on the part of the trades. As long as everyone going to OW class and AOW are sold on the dream of being a Dive Professional, and there is little but money and average skills to overcome, there will be more Dive Professionals than students to support them. Also plumbers and carpenters won't get paid, may get fined, and can loose their licence if their work does not meet a myriad of government standards. Last, but not least, a SCUBA instructor sets his own price, for the most part they are independant contractors.


Sadly, we (the scuba industry collectively) have done this to ourselves. We devalue ourselves and our service and do not charge what we are worth. I believe we should always conduct ourselves as professional educators, charge like professional educators, deliver like professional educators and get paid accordingly.

I agree that the SCUBA industry has done it to itself, but it is not about what you charge, rather it is about how low you set the bar for yourselves and your students.



Off of my usual rant and and on to my usual apology to the few who set the bar high.



Bob
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That's my point, people, by and large, are not taught that diving can be deadly, they are taught how safe it is, and they are not equipped with the skills, taught and trained to the level required to be useful in an emergency.

"the future is uncertain and the end is always near"
Jim Morrison
 

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