Posts Tagged ‘Part Time’
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 »
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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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Wanna’ Crush Your Competition?
Many times, the best way to crush your competition is to be as different as possible.
Crushing your competition right out of the gate is a hard thing to do…
Especially if you’re opening your school in a tough market with lots of competitors.
Even so, there is only one nearly surefire way I know of to crush your competitors…
And that’s to compete on a totally different playing field than the ones they are running their businesses on…
Here’s how you can do exactly that, and secure your school’s financial future by carving out a niche in your market that is uniquely yours and yours alone. Read the rest of this entry »
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The Importance of Retention Strategies, and “Treading Water” in the Martial Arts Industry (Part 1)
Author: M. Massie
By Michael Massie
When you are first starting your school, building your revenues through marketing and recruitment is your first and foremost priority.
Due to the fact that your overall enrollment numbers are relatively low, retention is not an issue at this early stage in the game.
Why Retention Becomes So Important After Your First Year
However, as time goes on your enrollment numbers will increase, thereby making retention an increasing concern for your school’s growth after your second year in business. Here’s why… Read the rest of this entry »
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Every week or so I get an email from someone who is starting a school and wants the low-down on how to do it right.
It’s a pretty tall order to sum it all up in an email, which is why I wrote a book about it. However, there are a few things I’d like to share on the topic – kind of a quick and dirty list of tips and suggestions for prospective school owners:
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"Small Dojo Big Profits" way!
