The Cost of LearningRx

As stated in a previous post, if you call asking for a range of prices, LearningRx will avoid answering the question. This is true when you call, but it is also true on the Internet. On its own website, LearningRx evades the question of costs when it answers the question of costs. Why?

Getting to a Price

We can make this very simple. If in a brief phone conversation, you tell me your child is behind in reading, we are talking $7000 to $10,000. If you tell me that you are also very concerned about her math skills, then you can increase that upper range to $15,000. If you only have concerns about math, then we are back to $7000 to $10,000. Why can't the person tell you this when you call instead of trying to press you into getting an assessment? Because she is told to avoid the cost question. Why?

Because they want you to be get all caught up in the emotions during the sales process before you are told the prices. By going through the assessment, you start to get curious and you watch the marketing video. You want to see what the assessment finds. During the consultation, by talking about your son or daughter, you'll have emotions rise to the surface.  I'll say it again, "When mom begins to cry, she is ready to buy."

Telling you the cost when you are on the phone, objectively comparing different alternatives of where you might find help will not cause you to have a huge internal drive to shell out the money and commit to driving to the center every day or every other day for 24 weeks.

Pricing Table

Here are the costs in a simple format:

12-week program: $3500 (partner) or $5000 (pro)
24-week program: $7000 (partner) or $10,000 (pro)
36-week program: $10,500 (partner) or $15,000 (pro)

Some centers use the digital product (BrainSkills) as the home training option. Others supplement the above with another $1000 cost to add the digital product to your program. Also, if you give signs that price is no cost, you'll get a bigger program.

In the center, the center director wasn't confident she could get results in a 12-week program so she would only sell that to motivated adult students. If it was a child, it would almost always be 16-weeks or more.

Know that the above prices vary depending on the center, because franchisees set their own pricing for their own market. In every market it is this simple.

[I'll explain the programs in another post: pro, partner, ThinkRx, ReadRx, MathRx, etc.... It won't all fit here.]

Reconciling to the Ad You Saw

And in the ad that said that programs start at $1500 (to lure you in), that is talking about using BrainSkills only. I heard rumblings that some centers were setting up computer labs to do this training in the center or in schools, but it could also be done in the comfort of your own home.

Inside the center, the Center Director would always say that BrainSkills was inferior to one-on-one brain training that the results weren't nearly as good. Yet, she would sell BrainSkills when she didn't think parents would be able to afford the in-center training.

Drive up in a Lexus, drive away with LearningRx will be your nexus.... for the next 24 to 36 weeks.

What is LearningRx (Learning RX)

LearningRx is a franchise system based in Colorado Springs, Colorado. It is run by the Gibson family headed by Ken Gibson who is the founder, his son-in law Dean Tenpas, his daughters Tanya Mitchell and Kim Hanson, Ken's brothers, as well as others.

Dr. Gibson is an eye doctor, not a neuroscientist or a medical doctor. He was an eye doctor who expanded into vision therapy and then expanded into brain training and reading training and so forth.

Franchisees pay about $50K to lease the rights to a LearningRx in their local market for 10 years. These fees have been going up over the years, so the costs may have gone up. The total cost of opening a center is upwards of $100K and could be as high as $200K depending on the location of the center and the frugality (or lack thereof) of the franchisee. The initial marketing campaign of each franchisee can be as much as $40,000 or $50,000 to get initial clients.

The local businesses that franchisees establish are most commonly referred to as "brain training centers" or "reading centers" or just "centers".

After the franchisee opens his/her doors, he/she pays 10% of cash revenues to the home office as a franchise fee and about 2.5% of cash revenues to the home office for marketing and infrastructure fees. These fees can change and really are best found out through the Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD).

Over the past five years, the number of centers has fluctuated as franchisees have opened and closed. It may seem like things are pretty stable, but quite a few centers have closed while others have opened. At the moment, there seem to be between about 70 to 80 centers open across the country per the map on the company website, but it is hard to know exactly because things are often in flux.

The product of the company is an intangible service called brain training. The local centers sell one-on-one brain training services to clients in 12-week, 24-week, and 36-week programs.

Like all franchises, the home office trains its franchisees in how to run their business to be as much like the other franchises as possible. This includes training in all of the following:

* Sales
* Marketing (advertising, networking, developing professional referrals)
* Operations
* Assessments (Woodcock-Johnson III)
* Training (ThinkRx, ReadRx, MathRx, LiftOff, ComprehendRx, etc...)

Interestingly, the home office training includes very little (almost nothing) about brain anatomy or about reading pedagogy or anything technical.

In the process of opening each center, the franchisee establishes prices with guidelines from the home office. Training costs vary from market to market but a good rule of thumb is that training costs $5,000 for each 12 weeks of training. As you'd expect, a 24-week program would be roughly $10,000 and a 36-week program would be roughly $15,000.

The home office also sells a product called PACE. I never fully understood this program, but it is said to be a limited product, it is sold in smaller markets not big enough for a LearningRx center.