Posts Tagged ‘Failure’
When you're slaying giants, attitude is everything.
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Speed Kills…
Sometimes you're better off taking your bike instead of the express route... especially when it comes to growing your school. Move too fast, and the results can be disastrous.
In the past six months, out of the hundreds of site members we have, I’ve had just three site members contact me to tell me they were either closing their schools or scaling back on their operations…
Although this is an extremely low percentage of failure – especially during an extended recession – I believe that it will be instructive to examine reasons why these schools didn’t make it, in order that we can all avoid making the same mistakes.
In each case, these folks were new school owners or instructors who were in the early stages of launching a school. In two of the three cases, the instructors were teaching in part-time locations, yet they both cited a lack of cash-flow as the reason for their having to “close” their schools. (Note: In the third case, the instructor lost his lease and couldn’t find another suitable location within his budget – a reason totally beyond his control.)
What went wrong here? Upon further probing, the reason in each case was made plain. In their impatience with starting a new business, they just moved ahead too fast and it killed their schools – a very common mistake. This is something I’ve had experience with in the past myself, and which led to my developing the Small Dojo Big Profits method of starting a martial arts school.
Now, before I go on here let me state that there’s no shame in making mistakes when you’re starting a business. Believe me, every successful business owner can rattle off a least two or three major mistakes they made when they were first starting out. The only shame is in not learning from your own mistakes or from those of someone else, which is why you should read this article carefully to avoid these very common mistakes. Read the rest of this entry »
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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Skip The Middle-Man And Go Directly To Your Local Consumers
Can this little piece of paper make the difference between marketing failure and success for your school?
Direct marketing is an area of marketing that can be very successfully used by savvy martial art school owners. But just what exactly is “direct marketing”?
There are two qualifying characteristics that distinguish direct marketing from other forms of marketing:
- It is delivered directly to the consumer via mail, email, telemarketing, or other direct means -
- It is focused on “call-to-action” marketing; in other words, the marketing piece focuses on getting the consumer to take a specific action immediately -
Direct Marketing For Martial Art Schools
For our purposes, we typically focus on three forms of direct marketing:
- fliering and door hanger distribution,
- email,
- and direct mail marketing.
Fliering houses, distributing door hangers, and direct mail all are pretty much in the same category as far as direct marketing goes.
However, I believe door hangers are the superior method. Here’s why: Read the rest of this entry »
Why Do People Buy?
Author: M. Massie
Learning What Triggers Buying Decisions Can Mean The Difference Between Failure And Success
Are you a white belt in sales? Learning what makes people buy will go a long way toward getting you out of the beginner's class in sales skills.
Do you know why people buy?
It seems like such a simple question, one that most people would glibly answer, “Because they want stuff.”
True, but that really merely scratches the surface. In truth, people buy for a multitude of reasons, but what triggers a consumer to make a buying decision…
Well, that’s a whole different story. And, if you can identify and leverage buying triggers, you can greatly increase your chances of growing and running a thriving martial arts school for years to come. Read the rest of this entry »
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...
"Small Dojo Big Profits" way!
