Your costs are your costs. The only intangibles are time, yours and theirs. They need to feel like you have valued their time highly in order to receive the impression of value.
Most shops do this by making the courses very quick. The other way is to make the student believe that you have used their time well, and that your time is valuable. Your time is valued, by them, by how "good" you are. This is a combination of reputation, skill, ease of knowledge transfer and the "extras" you bring to the table. Their time investment is most often valued after the course, when they look back and see how much fun they had, the "before and after" of their skills/knowledge, and the comparison with others who have done the same course elsewhere.
Trace, as an example, has a sterling reputation on this Board and elsewhere. He is a former Training Director for an agency and is actively doing the diving that students want to be doing. His skills are available to see on videos and are in no doubt. That will get students in the door since his time is valuable.
From everything I have heard, he is great at knowledge transfer and the "fun factor" and his students compare very favourably with the product of other instructors. It is no surprise that he gets as many referrals as he does, since they feel their time well spent.
As an independent, you will NOT be able to compete with large shops wrt cost, you can only compete with value.
Make sure you value your student's time and work on increasing the value of your own time. In the meantime, pricing similarly to the shops may not lead to big profit but it will begin to get you referrals which will allow you to increase your price over time.
In the meanwhile, ask yourself "Which scuba instructors do I know by name?" and then ask yourself why you know them. What did they do to draw your attention? This will help guide you moving forward.
Most shops do this by making the courses very quick. The other way is to make the student believe that you have used their time well, and that your time is valuable. Your time is valued, by them, by how "good" you are. This is a combination of reputation, skill, ease of knowledge transfer and the "extras" you bring to the table. Their time investment is most often valued after the course, when they look back and see how much fun they had, the "before and after" of their skills/knowledge, and the comparison with others who have done the same course elsewhere.
Trace, as an example, has a sterling reputation on this Board and elsewhere. He is a former Training Director for an agency and is actively doing the diving that students want to be doing. His skills are available to see on videos and are in no doubt. That will get students in the door since his time is valuable.
From everything I have heard, he is great at knowledge transfer and the "fun factor" and his students compare very favourably with the product of other instructors. It is no surprise that he gets as many referrals as he does, since they feel their time well spent.
As an independent, you will NOT be able to compete with large shops wrt cost, you can only compete with value.
Make sure you value your student's time and work on increasing the value of your own time. In the meantime, pricing similarly to the shops may not lead to big profit but it will begin to get you referrals which will allow you to increase your price over time.
In the meanwhile, ask yourself "Which scuba instructors do I know by name?" and then ask yourself why you know them. What did they do to draw your attention? This will help guide you moving forward.
