Posts Tagged ‘Martial Art School’
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 »
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When You Start a Martial Art School There Are Things You Should Know…
If you could teach in a gymnasium 40 hours a week, your space and time issues would be mostly solved...
Most instructors start a martial arts school knowing they are going to need 100 students or more to support themselves at a living wage while paying the overhead on their facility. However, there are some other things you should know when you start a school that no one likes to talk about…
For example, your two greatest enemies – space and time.
Now, I’m not talking about space and time in the sense that say, a quantum physicist might refer to them… and not in the Rod Serling sense either (if you don’t know who he is, it’s before your time). No, I’m talking about it in the “square footage and hours in the day” sense. 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 »
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 »
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 »
“Are You Nuts? You Want Me To Give Away Free Classes?”
It's easy to get focused on your current students and forget you need to attract new ones. Using guest referral passes is the second most effective marketing method among martial art school owners.
In the recent survey I posted on my blog and in the member forums, guest passes (sometimes called VIP passes) came in at number two as the most effective form of advertisement and marketing for martial art school owners. This doesn’t surprise me a bit, as I’ve been using guest passes as an effective form of marketing since I was first introduced to them in the late 90′s.
Of course, my first reaction to using them was probably similar to that of most instructors. “What? You want me to give away free classes? Are you nuts?” The thing is, I was networking with some very successful instructors at the time, and I was able to verify the effectiveness of guest pass programs firsthand by observing their results. And, soon after I learned how to effectively implement them in my own school, we found they were in fact a great way to get new students.
Basic Concepts For Using Guest Passes Effectively
A few key points about using guest passes that will greatly enhance their effectiveness as a marketing method for your school… 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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Want to know how to make sure your martial art school fails miserably?
Want to know how to tank your martial art school? Here's how, in just ten easy steps...
If you ever wanted to know how to tank a martial arts school, here’s a list of the top ten ways to fail in your martial arts business…
The Top Ten Ways To Tank Your Martial Arts School
- Start Your School By The Seat Of Your Pants – Business plans? Business mentors? Business education? Who needs ‘em? Just wing it and you’ll be sure to end your career as a professional martial arts instructor before it even begins.
- Put Pride And Ego Before Profits - If you want to fail big and fail fast, let your ego make all your business decisions instead of your common sense. This will lead you to rent a facility before you have any students, and you’ll also be likely to rent a lot more space than you really need. Sure, you’ll have the biggest nicest facility in town, but you’ll likely only have bragging rights until the first month’s rent is due…
How Big Is Too Big?
Author: M. Massie
Is Bigger Better When It Comes To Martial Arts Schools?
Do you need a huge school and 500 students to be successful financially? Not by a long shot!
When it comes to running a martial arts school, size is an important consideration. Of course, everyone wants to have a lot of students and nice, spacious facilities. But how big is too big when it comes to running a martial art school?
To answer this question, first we have to determine exactly what our end goal is or starting our school. Then, once we can “begin with the end in mind”, we can determine how large we can get without hindering our progress toward our goal.
What Kind Of Lifestyle Do You Want?
This is perhaps the most important question to ask ourselves when we first set out to open a martial arts studio. You see, your lifestyle as an instructor will be largely determined by the size of your facility.
Now, this speaks not only to the amount of money you can potentially make, but also to the number of hours you will need to work to manage your school and staff. Obviously, the more students you enroll, the more gross income your school will generate.
However, at some point the law of diminishing returns will kick in; this is an economic principle that basically states that, when work output increases beyond a certain point, the relative return will begin to decrease. In other words, after a certain point in growth your profit margins will get more and more narrow.
That’s why size deserves careful consideration when you’re doing your initial business planning before opening your school. Let’s look at this topic in a bit more detail to see how size impacts profit margins in martial arts business. Read the rest of this entry »
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Life As A New Martial Art School Owner
"What the heck is that on the floor? Seriously, I thought I cleaned and mopped before I left last night!"
Being a new business owner is scary, mysterious, and exciting all at once. On the one hand, starting your new business represents an exciting new adventure, as well as the potential for financial freedom and getting to do what you love for a living.
On the other hand, not knowing what to expect can work on your nerves and make your first few months that much more difficult. Starting a martial art school is stressful enough; the last thing you need is additional stress based on uncertainty.
In addition, you may have unrealistic expectations that can later work against you when life as a school owner doesn’t turn out to be the smooth trip you thought it would be.
So, I thought I’d quickly share the following with you… Read the rest of this entry »
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“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 »
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...
Welcome to the Member’s Only startup video content page. Select a video from among the topics below, and click the link to begin viewing.
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Startup Videos
Martial Art School Startup Interview with Jim Mahan This is the final part of the martial art school startup interview I did with Jim Mahan. Pay attention to how he’s followed the Small Dojo Big Profits business system and the lessons taught on this site to the “T” and then look at what it’s done for him, despite not having the best location or facilities. (Haven’t seen Parts I, II, or the first half of Part III? Click here for Part I of this interview. Click here for Part II of this interview. Click here for Part IIIa of this interview.) Sound quality is not the best – it was shot in Jim’s warehouse – so make sure Read the rest of this entry »
"Small Dojo Big Profits" way!
