Why It's Not Always Good Idea To Try To Build A Better Mousetrap

One thing I've observed since I started offering business coaching to martial art school owners is that we have a tendency to want to do our own thing.

Take for example the numerous styles and systems that exist today. There are as many styles and systems as there are instructors who believe they have something unique to offer. As one of my students once put it, "It seems like every instructor reaches a certain level, then they want to create their own system."

In similar fashion, I've observed that martial arts instructors seem to want to create their own systems for starting and running their businesses as well…

Creating a unique expression that bears the mark of one's individual personality and preferences is fine in the context of artistic expression. But in the context of running a martial art school, this often has disastrous results.

Mastery In Martial Arts Does Not Translate Into Martial Arts Business Mastery…

Think about it… by the time an instructor decides to codify their unique expression of a martial art style or system, they typically have decades of martial arts experience, study, and training under their belt. Thus, their unique approach is based on decades of trial, error, and experimentation.

But when it comes to putting together their own business system, the process is often done piecemeal, and at a point in the school owner's career when they have little to no business experience.

So, they fail to implement even the most fundamental and basic business principles, thus sabotaging their own business by simply failing to invest as much time and effort into learning the art of business as they do in learning and perfecting their own martial art.

Implementing Ideas Piecemeal Is A Recipe For Failure

It's not that instructors don't typically look for outside assistance. On the contrary, most new school owners are smart enough to seek out knowledge on how to run their business from outside sources.

The problem is that they usually piece together systems from a variety of sources. This is a lot like taking puzzle pieces at random from several different puzzles and attempting to create a complete picture from those pieces. At best, you end up with an incomplete portion of each different puzzle, but yet with nothing even remotely similar to a complete and cohesive whole.

So, my goal in this article series is to explain the complete process of learning how to start and run a martial art school, based on the comprehensive system I have created over the past two decades.

I started my first school when I was a teenager (s0rt of a joint venture with my instructor), and I've been learning the business of martial art school management ever since. I've learned about what business models are most likely to succeed, and which are most appropriate to follow when starting a martial art school.

And, I can state with conviction that the business models that many school owners attempt to follow are very poorly suited to starting a martial art school. However, if you follow the road map I will outline over the next several months in this article series, you'll have a solid understanding of a business model that is tried and true, and that is custom fitted to launching a successful school.

Five Steps To Launching And Running A Successful Martial Art School

There are five stages to learning the business of starting and running a martial art school. However, there is also a preliminary step which we're addressing in this article series. That step is getting an overarching "big picture" view of martial arts business management.

We'll spend the remainder of this article explaining that big picture so you have a bird's eye view of martial arts business management. Then, in successive articles I'll be examining each step in greater detail.

Here are the five steps to learning the business of launching and running a successful martial arts school, following my "Small Dojo, Big Profits" approach:

Step #1 – Get Your Marketing And Lead Generation Down Pat

(Stage in school growth – should occur when going from zero to 25 students)

I can't tell you how many times I've counseled struggling school owners who gave little if any consideration to marketing when launching their school. And by the same token, I've also counseled school owners who wasted considerable time, effort, and resources on highly ineffective and grossly inefficient marketing methods.

If you want to launch and run a successful school, start with becoming an expert marketer. Learn the fundamentals of marketing and lead generation, discovering which marketing and advertising methods are best suited to small businesses, and then study how to best implement those methods for the greatest effect.

Step #2 – Become An Expert On The Phone And Get Your Sales Process Down Cold

(Stage in school growth – should occur when going from 25 to 50 students)

Accept this now – you have to be a good salesman (or "sales person") in order to run a successful school. However, this doesn't mean you have to use sneaky tactics or adopt a hard sell approach to enrollments.

On the contrary, these tactics will work against you as you grow your school. Tricking or manipulating them into signing up often creates problems down the road, especially if your programs and customer service are substandard.

Instead, learning to be a good salesman as a martial art school owner requires learning how to treat people right, and selling by demonstrating the value of your programs. Remember – telling informs, but showing convinces. And, only the truly convinced will invest both their money and their time into becoming a long-term member of your school.

Step #3 – Improve Your Retention Process Until It Becomes Seamless

(Stage in school growth – necessary for going from 50 to 150 students or more)

Imagine filling your tub to take a bath, but without bothering to plug the drain properly. While you might fill the tub eventually, it's going to take a lot more water and you have to keep the water running constantly just to finish your bath.

Running a school without plugging the holes in your retention works the same way. You may be able to fill your floor, but the effort you have to spend to keep it full is going to wear you out eventually. And even if it doesn't, it will still mean a lot of wasted effort and resources that could have been spent somewhere else.

Not only that, but if you want to grow your school at some point you are going to have to plug the holes in your retention… otherwise the law of diminishing returns will kick in prematurely, and you will soon plateau no matter how hard you work at increasing your enrollment. This is why increasing your retention and decreasing your attrition is crucial to your growth at this stage.

Step #4 – Develop Staff And Leadership Teams To Multiply Your Efforts

(Stage in school growth – must be dealt with sometime between 75 and 100 students)

You can't be "superman" forever; eventually, you will burn out trying to do everything yourself. Moreover, at a certain point in your school's growth, you will find it impossible to manage everything on your own.

Typically, this occurs somewhere around the time your enrollment hits 75 to 100 students. At this point you will need to recruit, train, and retain good staff members in order to grow your school to the next level and beyond.

Training and managing staff effectively allows you to multiply your efforts. Instead of having to do everything on your own, you can train someone to answer the phones and enroll new students. You can also train someone else to teach some of your classes and intros.

And, you can require those staff members to do additional daily menial tasks, like cleaning the school and placing fliers and business cards around town. This frees up your time, so you can focus on the most important and profitable activities in your business, which include high-level marketing and planning for your future growth.

Step #5 -  Increase Your Profit Per Student With Added Profit Centers And Membership Upgrades

(Stage in school growth – best tackled after your school hits 100 students)

You can only get so many leads, enroll so many members, and get your retention down so far. Additionally, you only have a limited amount of space on your training floor, and a limited number of hours in the day to teach. This all means that, unless you learn to increase your revenue per student, your income is going to stall at some point.

By learning and implementing ways to increase the amount of money each student is paying you, you can greatly increase your income… much more so than if you simply went out and recruited more students.

Why? Because it doesn't cost you anything more to get your existing students to pay you more money. However, recruiting new students involves acquisition costs in marketing and advertising, and maintenance costs in hiring staff to teach additional classes (or in your own time in teaching those classes).

So, learning to earn more income from the same number of students is crucial to maximizing your income at this stage of your development as a martial arts professional.

What's Next…

Future installments of this article series will deal with each of the above stages individually, in order to examine these topics in greater detail. Keep an eye out for the next article, "Becoming an Expert Marketer" which I'll be releasing in the next few weeks.

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