Posts Tagged ‘Attitude’

After 8 years of coaching people on how to start and run martial arts schools (12 if you count the time I spent doing it for free for my friends) I’ve heard just about every excuse for failure imaginable. The other day, I was telling a client that I was starting another studio. He asked me if I’d been out of it long, and I explained that I sold a studio in ’09, and that I am re-entering the market because I believe now is a great time to be a school owner. Read the rest of this entry »

Decide Now What Type of School You Want, Or You’ll Be The Proud Owner of Someone Else’s Ideal School

Seriously, have you ever really asked yourself that question? It’s an important one, because without knowing the answer and planning for it, you might very well end up with the kind of school you never wanted. This topic is really all about having a vision for your business – an overarching concept of what you desire your business ultimately to look like. Your “perfect” school, if you will. It’s not enough to just have your doors open and be enrolling students, because you ultimately are the person who shapes and molds your school into Read the rest of this entry »

Never, Ever, Ever Waste An Opportunity To Market Your Programs

Do you have separate business cards and guest passes? If so, you’re wasting a perfectly good opportunity to more effectively market your business, every time you pass out your business card.

You see, your business card should be your VIP guest pass… and it should be designed so that the recipient immediately sees the value of what they’ve just been handed.

There are multiple strategies you can use to make sure that…

• Your students are actually proud to hand your guest pass out to their friends and relatives,
• Your VIP passes don’t get thrown in the trash,
• And that the person who receives your guest pass actually contacts your school to redeem it.

Let’s go over these strategies in detail, so you can get the most from your VIP guest pass marketing efforts.

Read the rest of this entry »

A Built In Retention Program

While some schools are resistant to the idea of having an elite membership in their studio, the fact remains that many of your students will jump at the chance to belong to such a program.

The reason is that you already have students who are extremely dedicated and motivated to train… so why not offer them a program that recognizes and rewards them for their commitment?

Black belt club is a perfect way to do this. And, before you get worked up into a tizzy, let me clarify by saying that the way I set up my BBC has nothing to do with selling belts. Instead, it’s all about keeping the program quality high and rewarding good students.

Here’s how I do it: Read the rest of this entry »

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Welcome to the Member’s ad section. As a paying member, you may download these ads for your own personal use in your own school. Just remember that by downloading these ads you agree to our terms of use:

1. Ads are for use by active, paying members of the Martial Art School Alliance International website only. If you cancel your subscription, you no longer have the right to use these ads.
2. All ads are copyrighted. You are authorized to insert your own contact information in the ad, but further modification of the ads or extracting text or images is prohibited. Ads must remain intact and with the copyright notice visible.
3. You may only use these ads for your advertising your own programs and business. Sharing these ads is prohibited.
4. Fliers may be photocopied and ads may be reprinted, so long as you insert your school’s contact information before reproducing the ad or flier. All reproductions must be for your own personal use.
5. Ads may be reduced or increased in size to suit your needs. Feel free to blow them up to poster size to use for display in your school.

To download an ad, simply right-click the link and choose “save as” to save it to your hard drive. Note: All download links expire after a few minutes. If you get an error downloading a file, reload Read the rest of this entry »

The Key to Easy Upgrading – Stop Selling and Start Recruiting

It’s important to have the right mindset when you start offering upgraded student memberships. It has to be a privilege, something that a student earns the right to be a part of, instead of just a way to make more money. Remember that you are choosing students for elite membership upgrades on their merits, and they should be honored that you have given them the opportunity to join.

Once you adopt this attitude, upgrading students becomes much simpler. In fact, more often than not you’ll have students approaching you about joining, versus your having to approach them instead.

The Upgrade Process – Make Them Work For It

Here is the process we used to get students to upgrade their memberships: Read the rest of this entry »