Posts Tagged ‘martial arts school’

Choosing a Location for a Martial Arts Studio, Demystified

I’ll tell you right up front that there aren’t any hard and fast rules for locating a martial arts school… just the guidelines people have come up with through past experience and common sense.

However, in my experience (and from what I’ve gleaned from other experienced school owners), there are several qualities to consider when choosing a location that will greatly increase the chances of a martial art school’s success.

Ignoring these “location factors” could spell disaster for your school, while finding a location that meets each quality on the following list could easily make the difference between failure and success for your new school.

So, what are the factors you should consider when choosing a location?

The ideal location for a martial art school should include the following: Read the rest of this entry »

Simplify, Simplify, Simplify

In the 14th century, a Franciscan friar and logician by the name of William of Ockham came up with one of the most famous rules of logical deduction… a rule that is still being applied today in a variety of fields and vocations.

The rule is popularly referred to as “Ockham’s Razor”, and it is often expressed like so:

“Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.”

In other words, the simplest solution is generally best. This principle, when applied to business systems, will help keep you sane while reducing your workload immensely.

One of the most common mistakes well-intentioned school owners make is to create complex, complicated systems to manage and run their schools. If you’re doing this, here’s how to fix it… Read the rest of this entry »

One idea that I picked up from my accountant many years ago was to do an end-of-year review of all my expenditures to see where I was bleeding money. I’ve heard other school owners talk about how they do this every year sometime over the holidays so they keep their costs down and profits up. I must agree that it’s a worthwhile use of a few days time in order to cut costs by one percent to as much as ten percent or more.

Assessing Where Your Budget “Leaks” Are, And Filling The Holes

Let’s look at a few areas where you can potentially Read the rest of this entry »

How To Become A Top School By Focusing On The “Big Five” Principles of Martial Arts School Management

Just like learning martial arts, launching and growing a school simply requires focusing on the correct "technique"

Running a martial arts school successfully is really pretty simple – it’s getting your school off the ground that is the hard part. Even so, the same principles that allow you to manage a school effectively are the very same principles needed to get you through your launch period.

Think it’s complicated? It’s really not… launching and growing your school is really just a matter of staying focused on the “Big Five” areas of martial arts school management.

No matter where you are in the business life-cycle, I recommend that every month you should review your current operations as they relate to each of the “Big Five” management principles, then pick one crucial thing to implement/improve upon in each area, and then repeat this process every month thereafter.

By the way, the “Big Five” areas are: Read the rest of this entry »

The biggest challenge new and established school owners face is getting new students. The thing most martial arts instructors fail to realize is that, once they open their doors, they are no longer just in the business of teaching martial arts. Now that they’ve decided to open a studio, they have an added responsibility to keep their doors open by attracting new business.

Although many instructors fail miserably in their marketing efforts, it’s often more due to a lack of planning than a pure lack of marketing know-how. Instead of going over the basics of marketing (you can read that by picking up any good marketing book), instead I am going to tell you how to plan your efforts so you get the most from your hard work and money. Here’s how: Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

When small business owners think about low-cost martial arts marketing ideas, they usually picture themselves running around a Wal-Mart parking lot placing fliers on cars (actually, sticky notes work better and are faster, but that’s for another article…), or perhaps walking up and down the side of the road in a gorilla suit with a sandwich sign over their shoulders (I actually saw a local martial arts school that did this – and yes, the gorilla was wearing a uniform).

However, as a martial arts instructor, your best low-cost form of advertisement is word-of-mouth. The thing is, sometimes you need to encourage your students to talk about your school. Guest pass programs are one way to do this; another method that has worked quite well for me in the past is to host Bring-A-Buddy nights a couple of times a year – during back-to-school time, in January, and right before school lets out for summer.

Basically, here’s how it works: Read the rest of this entry »

Although most of the martial arts school owners and instructors I have coached don’t want to have a huge mega-studio, many of us would like to earn a comfortable living teaching between 150 and 200 students. While for some that may seem like an easy goal, for many others reaching 150 students seems near impossible.

The biggest hurdle to most school owners in hitting their enrollment goals is that they tend to look at different aspects of their business in isolated terms. Over here we have “curriculum”, here we have “advertising”, here we have “retention”, here is “billing”, then there’s “scheduling”, “pricing”, etc.

The problem with this is that it leads to a skewed sort of thinking – that is to say, you start to think that one part of your operations won’t affect the whole. And that can be hazardous to achieving your goal of having a small, profitable studio.

Let me explain… Read the rest of this entry »

For many martial arts instructors, teaching children is just not something that they care to do. For whatever reason, they would prefer to spend their time teaching adults, and would rather avoid opening their classes to kids.

Well, despite what you may have been told, making a living running an “all-adult” martial arts school is very do-able; in fact, I know of one martial arts studio in a small town near me that has over 300 adult students.

Another long-time school owner I know decided that he enjoyed teaching adults more than kids, even though his main market had been children for 15 years. So, he developed a marketing approach that was geared specifically for adults, and went from less than ten adults to nearly 40 adult students in a few months time.

His style? Traditional tae kwon do. I think that proves you don’t have to teach MMA or military hand-to-hand to attract adults; you just have to know how to find the adults that want what you teach.

But how are you going to attract that type of adult into your classes? By offering them what they want!

Generally speaking, adults enter martial arts classes for two main reasons:

1. To lose weight and get in shape
2. And to learn realistic self-defense skills

The key is in attracting adults who have disposable income and the time to devote to martial arts training. The schools I mentioned have been very successful in this because their ads focus on giving adults what they want.

As you might guess, in order to attract the adult market you have to get the word out that your classes can provide those benefits.

Here’s a “mini-course” in marketing that explains exactly how to attract adult students to your classes: Read the rest of this entry »

Oftentimes, prospective martial arts business owner start their schools without ever taking the time to write out a specific game plan for their success. I know that I was guilty of this mistake when I made my first few attempts at opening my martial arts business. Oh, I did all the “business owner” things; I secured a location, had business cards printed (they made me feel like I was officially in business), put an ad in the paper, and told everyone I knew about my programs. Yet, my first few attempts at opening a martial arts business were Read the rest of this entry »

After operating various martial arts schools and programs for over fifteen years, one thing that I have learned is that my students are my best advertisement.

What I mean to say by that is, I get more people that call or stop by to join classes who say they heard about us from “a friend” than I generally get from paid advertisements.

That tells me that my students say positive things about the school (which really makes me happy). And, if you are offering a quality program and treating your students right, you’ll likely get quite a bit of new students from referrals as well.

In fact, referrals can end up being your number one source of new students. And once you start getting them, you don’t want them to stop!

So, in order to encourage referrals, it’s a very good idea to offer a referral incentive program in your studio. We’ve used one for years that has worked very well for us.

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

Back when I used to get “canned” ads from various consultation companies and industry associations, before I would ever run an ad I would always modify it to maximize my response rates. After a while I decided “enough was enough” and just started creating my own ads.

By creating my own ads, I was able to focus my ad on my local market, and personalize it so that after a while people immediately knew my ads on sight. (Incidentally, it sucks when you accidentally run the same ad as your competitor – that’s why I prefer to create my own ads.)

Here are some tips to either modify your ready-made ads or to create your own ads from scratch: Read the rest of this entry »

Lead boxes are a good means of getting new students – if you work them right. Here are the pros and cons of using lead boxes, and some suggestions on how to use them effectively:

Cons – Read the rest of this entry »

”Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.”
- Mark Twain (1835 – 1910)

Marketing is the Lifeblood of Your Studio

How important is marketing for your success? Without any reservations, I can tell you that it’s the lifeblood of your business. As I emphasize in the manual, no matter how good your product or service is it doesn’t matter one bit unless people know about it.

When current and aspiring martial arts school owners contact me for help increasing their enrollment, one of the first things I inquire about is their marketing. How and where are they advertising, how do they track their advertising results, how much is their advertising budget, and so on. 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 »