Posts Tagged ‘Profits’
Author: Knowing and Doing the Basics is the Key to Martial Arts Business Success
Do you have your basics down? Not your martial arts basics, but your business basics. Find out by reading this article.
Do you have your martial arts business basics down?
You know – those top priority concepts, skills, and tasks that are essential to running a successful martial art school?
Maybe you haven’t given much thought to what those are… but if you’ve read Small Dojo Big Profits, you know about the 80/20 rule (Pareto’s Principle).
Pareto believed that eighty percent of your results come from just twenty percent of your efforts, and I’ve found this to be true in my own businesses.
That’s why it’s so important to know what those “20% activities” are. Once you do, you can focus in on those activities, and cut out most of the extraneous stuff. By doing so, not only will you become more productive, but you’ll also have more time away from your school.
So, let’s examine the “basic foundation” of running a successful martial arts school, and then we can look at which daily tasks and goals we need to focus on to leverage our workday and maximize our effectiveness.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in 
Martial Arts Business Marketing Challenge
All right – I’m throwing down the gauntlet… all in the name of good fun and seeing some school owners achieve massive martial arts success during the final quarter of this year.
So, I’m having a contest for MASAI members during the month of October 2010. Click here to join MASAI The goal? Simple… get participants to challenge themselves to enroll 30 students in 30 days or as close to it as possible (well, really in 31 days… but “30 students in 31 days” just doesn’t have the same ring to it). The reward? This is the fun part – I’ll be rewarding any school owner who can document their progress toward enrolling 30 students in 30 days with the following prizes:
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 »
How to Increase Your Business Dramatically Without Increasing Your Overhead
In Jay Abraham’s excellent book, Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got, Mr. Abraham claims that there are only three ways you can increase your business:
- By increasing your number of clients -
- By increasing the average size of the sale per client -
- By increasing the number of times clients return and buy again.
So, let’s take a look at Mr. Abraham’s observation above, and see how exactly we can apply that to the business of teaching martial arts. Read the rest of this entry »
Join the forum discussion on this post
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.
You will need to have the Adobe Flash Player plugin installed in your browser to view some of these videos. Click here to visit the Adobe site to get the browser plugin.
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 »
Martial Art School Startup Interview with Jim Mahan This is the interview that proves you can either do a lot with a little, or a little with a lot! Thankfully, Jim chose the former and man has he done a lot… 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? Click here for Part I of this interview. Click here for Part II of this interview.) Sound quality is not the best – it was shot in Read the rest of this entry »
system
Good Martial Art School Management Systems Lead To Success
When you’re first starting a school, implementing a systems-based process for everything you do will likely be the last thing on your mind. However, if you start off from the beginning documenting every process in your school, writing each one down in a step-by-step manner in the simplest words possible, you’ll be well on your way to having a systems-driven school. Why is this so important? Because systems are what will make your school run smoothly, efficiently, and with as little effort as possible. Standardized and documented systems are what will allow you to train good staff, and use them to replace you when you want to take time away from work. Also, having systems in place will allow you to hone in on areas where your school is under-performing. You can then revise and improve your systems to fine-tune your processes until you have them down to the simplest and most-effective steps… the ones that are necessary for achieving the intended goal. Now, if you’ve purchased my materials (Small Dojo Big Profits, the Phone-to-Enrollment sales system, etc.) you’ll already be well on your way to having systems to follow in your school. However, it’s extremely important that you write your own systems down yourself. Read the rest of this entry »
Join the forum discussion on this post
You know the type… they are never satisfied with “good enough”, and no matter how hard you work, they always want you to do more. The typical slave driver boss. Man, I’d hate working for a guy like that. But the thing is, I am sort of already working for a slave driver boss… me. Yep, I’m a slave driver when it comes to getting things done. Now, the good news is that I’m my own boss, but that doesn’t mean I get to slack off… heck no! Actually, I work harder for myself than I ever Read the rest of this entry »
In the business world, secrets are funny things. Many times, successful business owners will spend a great deal of time, money, and effort guarding information that is seemingly insignificant… to the uninformed. And this strikes at the heart of what this tip is about today. For those who don’t know any better, the way a successful school owner operates their school may seem virtually identical to the way someone operates who is just getting by. However, it’s the often the little things that make all the difference in whether someone fails or succeeds in business. That’s because Read the rest of this entry »
"Small Dojo Big Profits" way!
