Posts Tagged ‘Business Success’
How to Train and Hire Staff for Your Martial Arts Studio
Hiring and training staff for your martial art studio is a vital component of my overall martial arts business success system.
For one, you need to have people on your staff who can take over to help you get more done.
Also, as your school grows it becomes essential to have staff in place to help you handle that growth.
But, where do you find these people, and how do you train them? Also, what positions should they fill in your martial art school?
In this article I’m going to answer those questions for you, and help you understand why and how you hire and train staff. Read the rest of this entry »
Being On Your Game And How It Determines Your Martial Arts Business Success
Game is something a lot of people talk about in many different arenas:
- Professional athletes talk about being “on their game” -
- Guys and ladies who are in the dating scene refer to pickup lines and techniques as “running game” -
- Sales people might say they were “off their game” if they failed to close an important deal -
- Coaches will tell players to “keep their head in the game” to remind them about staying focused -
- And, motivational speakers have even written entire books about how to “master the inner game” -
But really, what does it mean to “be on your game”, and how does that relate to the art and craft of running a successful martial art school?
In my experience, discovering the inner game of business success was a major revelation. For starters, realizing that there even WAS a game made a huge difference in how I approached my business.
And, realizing that I had to keep my head in it and be on my game at all times was (if you’ll pardon the extension of the metaphor), a game changer for me.
Let’s get into this a little deeper so you can understand exactly what I’m referring to and how this affects every aspect of your business.
Knowing and Doing the Basics is the Key to Martial Arts Business Success
Do you have your basics down? Not your martial arts basics, but your business basics. Find out by reading this article.
Do you have your martial arts business basics down?
You know – those top priority concepts, skills, and tasks that are essential to running a successful martial art school?
Maybe you haven’t given much thought to what those are… but if you’ve read Small Dojo Big Profits, you know about the 80/20 rule (Pareto’s Principle).
Pareto believed that eighty percent of your results come from just twenty percent of your efforts, and I’ve found this to be true in my own businesses.
That’s why it’s so important to know what those “20% activities” are. Once you do, you can focus in on those activities, and cut out most of the extraneous stuff. By doing so, not only will you become more productive, but you’ll also have more time away from your school.
So, let’s examine the “basic foundation” of running a successful martial arts school, and then we can look at which daily tasks and goals we need to focus on to leverage our workday and maximize our effectiveness.
Read the rest of this entry »
Once You Fill Your School, You Have to Work to Keep It Full
There are easier ways to keep students in your school than joint-locking them in the parking lot.
As I’ve said many times, when you’re starting a new martial art school (or any business) your first priority is building revenue. Cash flow is what runs a business and what keeps it running. Without cash flow your business simply will not grow.
Now, building cash flow is a function of marketing and sales. We market to attract new prospective clients, and then use effective sales tactics to enroll them in our programs. Simple, right?
However, one thing many school owners overlook is retention systems. Retention systems allow you to keep the cash flow that you have, so you aren’t spinning your wheels by taking one step forward and two steps back in growing your school.
I’ve seen this happen many times with new school owners as well as with experienced but under-performing school owners who begin implementing my recommended marketing practices in their business. If they don’t have quality-control and retention systems in place to handle the sudden influx of students, they’ll have a very hard time keeping those students they worked so very hard to get, and that’s a crying shame. Read the rest of this entry »
After Marketing Comes Selling – Where The Real Fun Begins…
While the phone may seem initimidating to you at first, the sooner you start seeing it as your friend, the faster you will be able to grow your school.
Many would-be school owners and aspiring full-time instructors have convinced themselves that they don’t need to know how to sell to be successful. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Accept this now – you have to be a good salesman (or “sales person” if you prefer) 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 potential students 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.
Treat ‘Em Right, And They’ll Stay – But First, You Have to Get Them To Try It Out
The thing is, demonstrating value requires that you actually get the prospective student (hereafter referred to as a “prospect”) to try your school out. The introductory course is where the real convincing occurs (this is sometimes called a “trial course” – language you should avoid, since it suggest a lack of commitment on the student’s part). But in most cases, a bit of selling is required to convince a complete stranger to try your school.
So, how do you do it? It’s simple really, if you follow a few basic principles. And while I can’t really go over the complete sales process in a short article, I will go over the basic principles here to get you started. Read the rest of this entry »
Becoming An Expert Marketer
Author: M. Massie
Martial Arts Business Success Step #1 – Get Your Marketing And Lead Generation Down Pat
Follow my steps to martial arts business success and you'll soon become a martial arts business "master".
Until a student walks in the door and you collect a check, you aren’t in business.
You can get business cards printed up, tell everyone you’re starting a martial art school, and even sign a lease on a building, but not one of those things really mark the transition from “wannabe” to bona fide school owner.
The only thing that does is getting paid – that’s it. And, you cannot and will not get paid without marketing your school and services effectively. Period.
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. This article will teach you the fundamentals of marketing and lead generation, which marketing and advertising methods are best suited to small businesses, and how to best implement those methods for the greatest effect. Read the rest of this entry »
Why It’s Not Always Good Idea To Try To Build A Better Mousetrap
Learning the business of martial arts is a lot like working your way up through the ranks. You take things in sequence, learning new skills that build on those you learned in previous stages.
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. Read the rest of this entry »
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Success Or Failure Is Often Determined By Internal And Not External Factors
If it were easy, everyone would conquer it.
Why is it that some school owners can open a school under the worst of conditions, yet meet with great success…
While others may open their business under the best of conditions and fail miserably?
I think it’s apparent that success or failure is more often determined by internal rather than external factors.
And I would have to say that, in most cases, it has to do with three qualities: confidence, commitment, and the willingness to experience failure. Read the rest of this entry »
“Building It” Fast Is Simply A Matter Of Following What Works In The Majority Of Successful Martial Art Schools…
Want to grow your school? Follow a proven plan.
Starting a martial art school is tough – and growing a martial art school is even tougher.
That’s why I spent a lot of time in my first school analyzing my operations and comparing them to what successful school owners did. I traveled and spent time with them, observing first-hand what they were doing to grow their schools.
From those observations, I compared what successful instructors were doing, and settled on the activities that were most common among the schools I observed…
It’s not like I kept a bunch of data tables and graphs; it was nothing so complicated as all that. Basically, if I saw a lot of successful instructors doing something, I figured it was important and made note of it.
Then, I made sure I was doing those exact same tasks and activities in my own school on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.
Now after 15 years of doing this, I’m able to boil down the key elements to martial arts business success into a very simple formula and very thorough checklists, ensuring that I’m hitting on all eight cylinders in my martial art school operations.
This month, I’ve decided to share that formula and most of those checklist items with you in the remainder of this article. Want to hit 100 martial arts students fast, and then continue that growth? Read the rest of this entry »
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Chances Are It’s What You’re Not Doing That’s Hurting Your Business…
What does this have to do with martial arts business success? Read on to find out...
As a martial arts school owner, you need to recognize the relationship between price and value. I feel that it’s important to share this with you because when you raise your rates, you can rest assured that there will be some people who will say that you are “too high” or “too expensive” or whatever… However, the fact remains that: 1. You get what you pay for. 2. Value is always related to perception – therefore, the perceived value of a product determines what a person will be willing to pay. Read the rest of this entry »
As a martial arts school owner, you have a million things on your mind. Student recruitment, testing, curriculum, overhead – the list goes on and on. The last thing you’re probably worried about is your website. However, more and more consumers are going online every day to research products and services before they buy. And, many of these consumers are doing their buying research after hours, when you aren’t open. For such consumers the internet is the primary way they research their buying decisions. Consider the fact that over 200 million searches are done Read the rest of this entry »
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This morning, I read an article about a struggling martial arts school owner. This article appeared in a daily business newsletter I subscribe to, and was written by a man who I hold in great esteem, both for his accomplishments in the world of business, and for his generosity in sharing his experience and wisdom with others.
Here’s the gist of the article: A top-tier martial artist starts a school and meets with a high level of initial success. But, for some reason he hits a slump, his numbers dwindle, and the poor guy is just breaking even, and taking on odd gigs to pay his bills.
Now, he’s looking at closing his school, skipping out on his lease, and screwing up his credit. But never fear… the school owner has devised a plan (one that passed the author’s scrutiny) to make his school profitable again.
And that’s when I got upset…
Read the rest of this entry »
"Small Dojo Big Profits" way!
