Posts Tagged ‘Successful Schools’

A Good Graduation Ceremony Both Attracts And Keeps Students

Making your martial arts promotion ceremonies meaningful and memorable is an effective way to both keep and attract students.

Graduation night is a concept I picked up from observing successful school owners from around the country. When I started my first school, I tried to network with and visit as many successful school owners as I could, both to exchange ideas and to observe their “best practices” in action.

One thing I observed was that, in many of the most successful schools, they used belt promotions as a means of both increasing their retention and to promote their programs. For retention purposes, nothing beats getting the family members of your students involved and giving them an opportunity to see their loved one in action.

In addition, this is also a powerful incentive for your students to perform well and stay committed to their training, because they want to be able to “show” their family how they are progressing in their martial arts training.

Likewise when it comes to attracting new students, there are few things more powerful than third-party endorsements. And, the best third-party endorsements are those people can witness with their own eyes. As they say, “Seeing is believing”. Well, when friends of your students see them getting recognition for their hard work, and enjoying doing their martial art, it is a powerful recruiting tool for your school.

Holding regular scheduled graduation celebration events where students are ENCOURAGED to invite their friends is a great way to achieve both of the above objectives. Here’s how… Read the rest of this entry »

“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 »

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 »

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 »