Posts Tagged ‘Martial Arts Schools’

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 »

Current Month’s Marketing Plan

A Few General Notes on Effective Online and Offline Marketing For Martial Arts Schools

For those of you who weren’t members last month, read the article on Becoming an Expert Marketer so you understand the concepts behind this marketing plan. Pay particular attention to the “Marketing Base” concept, and keep it in mind as you implement this marketing plan.

As a standard goal for your monthly marketing activities, you should be generating at least 25-30 leads a month. If not, you need to first EXPAND your marketing by implementing the marketing plans provided to you on this site each month. And, not just some of it… do all of it. That’s the first step in achieving effective marketing for your school.

Expected Results And Trouble-Shooting Your Marketing… Read the rest of this entry »

Is Bigger Better When It Comes To Martial Arts Schools?

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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Easy Ways To Implement An Added-Value Membership Program

If you haven’t figured it out yet, upgrade programs fill a vital need in the program offerings in most successful martial arts schools.

For students, they provide increased training opportunities they would not normally get in regular classes. And, for school owners they represent an opportunity for increased income and improved customer service.

Whether you call your membership upgrade a “black belt club”, an “elite membership”, a “gold level membership”, or some other nomenclature, the fact remains that having one available is a benefit for your students and your school as well.

If you’ve struggled with the concept of creating an added-value membership, I’m here to tell you that implementing one is as simple as offering “more” and charging a bit more for it.

So, here are 10 super-simple ideas for how to start a black belt club in your school: Read the rest of this entry »

Marketing Summer Programs

Although it’s a commonly accepted fact in the martial arts industry that schools often experience a slump in business during the summer months, let me make one point clear to you:

Slumps are for school owners who don’t plan ahead.

This is something I wised up to early on in my career of starting and running martial arts schools. Whether we’re talking summer slumps, holiday dry spells, or spring break blues… if you plan ahead you’ll often find hidden opportunities that you never knew existed. Read the rest of this entry »

Save Money Doing Your Own Electronic Billing -  It’s A Cinch With New Technologies

It used be that here in the States, most martial arts schools would use a martial arts billing company to collect payments for them.

The student made their first payment at the school, and the billing company took over after that, collecting payments by mail, credit card, or electronic funds transfer (EFT/ACH).

This seemed like a great deal… Except for the fact that martial arts billing companies charged martial arts school owners 5 or 10 times more in our industry than businesses were paying for billing services in other comparable industries.

New Technology Creates A Power Shift In The Martial Arts Billing Industry

Once school owners started wising up, they began looking for alternatives to expensive martial arts billing companies. Some of us started using the same companies that businesses in other industries (fitness, for example) used.

I did this for a while, then I figured out that with advances in credit card and checking account billing technology, I could easily do the same thing myself using a merchant credit card acceptance account and an online payment gateway. Read the rest of this entry »

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Welcome to the Member’s Only marketing video content page. Select a video from among the topics below, and click the link to begin viewing.

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Marketing Videos

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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 »

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license – “a grant by the holder of a copyright or patent to another of any of the rights embodied in the copyright or patent short of an assignment of all rights”

franchise – “a right or license that is granted to an individual or group to market a company’s goods or services in a particular territory under the company’s trademark, trade name, or service mark and that often involves the use of rules and procedures designed by the company and services (as advertising) and facilities provided by the company in return for fees, royalties, or other compensation”

Over the last year or so, we’ve seen several martial arts franchises pop up in the industry. In fact, I even had one company approach me to write their operations manual for their school owners (And no, I didn’t write it).

John Graden told me he’s been approached for the exact same reason several times over the last couple of years by companies that were launching martial arts franchises.

Of course, we’ve been seeing the “cookie cutter” approach to martial arts schools for years. Many martial arts organizations have already been in the business of licensing their name, logo, business systems, etc. to their member schools and instructors. However, there is a huge difference between holding a license agreement to represent a style or system and entering into a franchise agreement with a franchisor.

For better or for worse (mostly worse, in my opinion) martial arts school franchises are here to stay. And while other martial arts business writers might disagree with me, I believe martial arts school franchises are a really bad idea for the the individual school owners that buy into them.

Here’s why: Read the rest of this entry »

Traditionally, summer has been one of the most difficult times of year for most martial arts schools. Thankfully, however, savvy studio owners have developed new ways to actually generate more income over the summer months than they do during the other months of the year.

Testimonial: “This is awsome. I can’t put it down. I have read many articles and books on MA school ops and they mostly say the same thing, “BIGGER IS BETTER”. But you have opened my eyes to new ideas. Great book!” Pete DeCarlo Pennsylvania, USA

How, you ask? For those of you who don’t mind teaching kids, the answer is “Summer Camps.” Now, I’ve heard from a lot of instructors before that they don’t want to teach kids. All I can say to that is, before you opened your school Read the rest of this entry »

Last night, I had a guy walk into my school to inquire about our programs. After I found out where this guy lived, my curiosity was immediately peaked. Why? Well, the guy lives in a posh, upscale neighborhood about 7 miles from our studio. Typically, most martial arts schools only draw students from a three-to-five-mile radius, which made me wonder why he drove so far to check us out. Furthermore, there are at least four martial arts studios within a three-mile radius of this guy’s neighborhood. So, I asked this gentleman straight-up why he Read the rest of this entry »

The other day, I was clicking around on some martial arts websites and came across an interesting article on the Bullshido website, the topic of which was “The difference between a commercial martial arts school and a McDojo.”

Now, normally I’d expect to hear the standard diatribe – including a lot of senseless yammering about how “real” martial arts schools don’t teach kids. As you might imagine, I was shocked when I read the following:

“Lets take a walk into a school shall we?

… there’s a large kids class going on right now. The kids are taking turns throwing front kicks and round kicks on kick pads and practicing how to roll someone off them on the ground. The parents are sitting watching their children drinking Starbucks and yapping about whatever it is they yap about while they watch their kids jump around in karate suits.

McDojo right?

Lets not judge so quickly here…

If the above description was a McDojo then EVERY professionally run martial arts academy would be considered a “McDojo”. The Gracie Jiu Jitsu academy, Gokor’s, Renzo’s, the Beverly Hills Jiu Jitsu Club, the ADCC training center….ALL of them. Meanwhile, we all know that every school I mentioned has produced people that would kick your a$$ six ways from Sunday.”

Seriously, I have to hand it to the author of the post (and I think he’s a moderator on one of the forum topics) – he really hit the nail on the head about the fact that teaching martial arts to children doesn’t necessarily equal selling-out.

Which of course brings me to the topic of this article; namely, how to avoid the stigma that goes with teaching children’s programs in your school… Read the rest of this entry »