This blog is dedicated to my clients who are in private practice, lead workshops, and speak publicly who need to determine how much to charge.

Arriving at the right pricing for your services requires you to know your marketplace, and name your own value. Ultimately, you want to arrive at a price that is motivates you to get up every day and bring your best self forward.

Also important are the non-financial benefits of each presenting opportunity- foe example, the benefit of introducing yourself to a new audience, of broadening your services, and of testing new content.

I recommend using a range of pricing methods that help you determine appropriate upper, midrange and lower prices. Then you can decide what price feels best to you.

Here is a process you can start with:

1- Hourly rate multiplied with time to prep and lead the event.
One of my clients was a therapist who charged $200 per hour. She was considering offering private day-long retreats. She asked, “how much would I charge?” Here is one approach:

Using $200 as the hourly rate, we sketch out the amount of time that we anticipate the project will require. We add to this the hard costs of the event (travel, room, meals, etc), and then apply a profit margin.

10 hours of retreat leading X $200 an hour = $2000
10 hours of prep X $100 an hour = $1000**
10 hours of travel time X $100 an hour = $1000 (** prep and travel time is sometimes charged at a fraction of the hourly professional rate - some people charge 1/2 of their hourly, others charge more)

Total: $4000

Plus room, board, and travel cost:

Food $100
Gas $100
Room $500

So she would need to earn $4600 to cover her costs of planning and time away from her office. In addition, she would add a profit margin of 20- 50-100% depending on her field. So she would charge between $5000 and $8000.

Say an organization approaches her to present a day long retreat for them. Now she has a financial marker for what she stands to lose and gain if she leaves her office. Depending on the industry, she may decide to charge between $5000 to $8000 for a retreat.

If you are hosting your own retreat, and you expect 20 people to register, you would charge a tuition of between $250 and $400 to earn your desired amount.

2- Having a day rate and charging based on how many days you work

Like Melissa Blacker, who posts on her website:
"Retreats may be organized for any number of participants, and for any number of days. The payment to Melissa (including her co-teacher) is $1200 per day, plus travel, meals and lodging expenses"

For one of my clients, we figured that their day rate is $1200, so a three day engagement would cost $3600.

3- Simply asking “what amount would I be happy coming home with?”

Recently, a nonprofit requested that I facilitate their Board of Director’s retreat in NYC. The job was in 8 days, so there was no time for preparation- added stress! I’d have to show up and lead the retreat without having the usual background information I usually get.

I priced this by asking myself “what would motivate me to get on a train to NYC and spend a day doing this work.” The number was $3000, and then I added travel and materials at another $200. I was willing to walk away from this gig if they couldn’t pay $3200.

When I offered this price, they didn’t bat an eyelash. It actually cost me $400 in materials and travel, and I got stuck in NYC overnight. So my net take-home was $2800. I could live with that.

4- Determining market value for your services.

How much do other facilitators with your experience cost ? It does vary, but I’d say that most presenters, earlier on in their career, would be satisfied to earn $2000 to lead a weekend workshop.

How much is your client willing to pay for comparable experience?
Corporate clients pay workshop leaders $10K a day, or $5K for half-day workshops.

The general public can afford much less; most people attending an Omega or Kripalu weekend retreat would have to pay about $275 for tuition costs alone. This is an important number- most weekend retreats cost about this price for tuition, even outside of a major retreat center.

So this is a first layer or thinking required for pricing. There are other nuances and considerations, but this blog gives us a good start. Happy pricing!!!