Alan La from Invincible HQ™, grew to 127K Instagram followers using his 5A Content System, without fancy equipment or viral stunts. In this episode, he breaks down how martial arts school owners can escape the “instructor trap” and create content that actually converts.
- Why the martial arts industry is falling behind in marketing
- Why “fly on the wall” content beats produced videos
- The $20 tool that makes the biggest difference
- How to turn existing classes into weeks of content
- The 5A Content System (Authority, Access, Applause, Ascension, Action)
- Making martial arts less intimidating through behind-the-scenes content
- And more
*Bring 50 Enrollments Into Your Martial Arts School Every 90 Days Need help growing your martial arts school? Watch Training + Take The Assessment
TRANSCRIPTION
ALAN: So I literally started on the streets and, you know, really just trying to find enough students to keep the dream alive. And I’ll be honest, like back then, I didn’t have a massive marketing budget. I didn’t have money, pretty much, but I was fortunate enough to be starting my school right when social media was beginning. And I took that as an option. I saw social media was this thing where it gave me the ultimate kind of equaliser with other massive schools that have been established for like decades.
GEORGE: Hey, it’s George. Welcome to another Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast. Today I’m joined with Alan La from Invincible HQ. How are you doing, Alan?
ALAN: I’m good. Thank you, George. Just want to say again, thank you for having me on and look forward to see how I can help school owners and coaches.
GEORGE: Amazing. So a little bit of context that led to this interview. So I met Alan at one of our Partners Intensive events in Sydney, and we just had a brief little chat, spoke marketing, spoke ads. It was in between sessions. And then I had a look at Alan’s socials and I was watching some of his Instagram stuff that he was doing. Firstly, if you want to be inspired as a martial artist, Alan’s skill and kicks are just bar none. But then together with that, just watching how he packaged everything and then just seeing the amount of mass following that Alan has, I think it was 127,000 followers on Instagram. So to learn here from Alan as what he does as a martial artist, but also from the publishing standpoint and growing a mass audience, which are three skills that you very rarely see together in the martial arts space. So thanks so much for jumping on, Alan.
ALAN: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I’m grateful to be here.
GEORGE: Awesome. So let’s just, I always like to just start from the beginning. What’s a bit of your background? What got you started in martial arts? And we can go from there.
ALAN: Okay. Well, first of all, I’m Alan La and I’m the founder of Invincible Worldwide. And most people see me as the guy with a hundred K followers and 20 million views. And they assume that I’ve got some secret marketing degree or whatever. What a lot of people don’t know is that I started out as the furthest thing from what you call the influencer thing. I was a shy kid, just started teaching martial arts in the back of my parents’ house when I finished high school and eventually that grew and then I had to move out to local PCYCs and stuff like that. But then sometimes we’d get kicked out. So I had to teach in local car parks. And so I literally started on the streets and, you know, really just trying to find enough students to keep the dream alive. And I’ll be honest, back then I didn’t have a massive marketing budget. I didn’t have money. Yeah, pretty much. But I was fortunate enough to be starting my school right when social media was beginning.
ALAN: And I took that as an option. I saw social media was this thing where it gave me the ultimate kind of equaliser with other massive schools that have been established for like decades. So I decided I’m going to go all in on trying to figure out this social media thing. And I thought that was my way to kind of be heard and get my name out there. I remember then this was like early stages, once a couple of our YouTube videos took off and went viral. I thought, oh, this is amazing, seeing the results. And then I thought, all right, cool. I’ve got this kind of formula and I’ll start playing around with this, experiment with it.
ALAN: And then as you know, social media evolved and changes. So I’ve seen it from the early days of YouTube to now Instagram Reels, Instagram carousels and Stories and it’s constantly changing. But what I’ve noticed is that yes, these things change and it’s not about luck, right? I’ve actually realised it’s actually systems and principles. And so I’ve used the same principles to go viral on Instagram as well. And it’s just systems.
ALAN: So what I’ve realised is it’s not luck and don’t chase luck or trends. So I’ve used the same principles to now run a seven figure school in Sydney and also be able to help school owners to install the same proven systems to build and also build their team. So they can stop trading hours for dollars and finally build a business that kind of supports their life and do what they want to do.
ALAN: Because when I look at a lot of school owners, I feel like particularly in martial arts, we tend to get stuck in our old ways and we like to just stick to tradition. As much as we try to keep up with the pace of where the modern world is going, I feel like as an industry, we’re not enough. You know, there are a lot of industries out there where things have moved so fast, but in martial arts, I don’t know, we’re a bit slow. So I’m passionate about really helping school owners and coaches to push forward and yeah, that’s why I’m grateful to be here with you, George and share whatever I can.
GEORGE: It’s interesting you mentioned the level playing field because that now again is actually just levelled again. And I’d love to dive into your systems and principles because that’s sort of the language that I resonate with and then everybody can adapt and add their own unique ability to it. But if you think of you saw social media as this opportunity, I can kind of recall when I started this podcast, I also saw it as an opportunity to just, well, nobody’s really doing these kinds of things and it’s good to just use it as a platform.
GEORGE: But the old model of you needed all these followers was like, that was the method. And for anyone paying attention to social media now, there’s been this shift of social to interest-based where the algorithms go by interest. And so I guess if you think of what makes this chat with you today relevant is you’ve got all this experience and you’ve got this mass following, but for anybody that’s maybe not there and starting out, adapting principles and being able to produce good content can actually get you the same virality now without the mass following. And so that’s where the algorithms have evolved to.
GEORGE: So I would like, and if you could share whatever you feel comfortable sharing, but you mentioned the systems and the principles. How do you go about that? How do you look at content in a way, in a system that gets you the visibility that you’re after?
ALAN: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. It’s always changed. For example, Instagram, when it first started, I remember hitting over just 500 followers. I was like, oh man, I got so excited. And then you get to a thousand, you get really excited. And back then it was about the followers. The more followers you had and the more likes, you felt good. And you’re absolutely right, just probably a couple of months ago, Instagram now is all about the views. No one cares about the likes or the followers anymore. And they’ve kind of levelled out the playing field where someone who has fewer followers might actually get more reach than someone who’s got hundreds of thousands of followers. So it’s actually levelled the playing ground really, really well.
ALAN: So what that means now even more is that the content that you’re creating has to be even more interesting. Whereas in the past, you just kind of create your own content and if people like it, people will follow. But now you’ve really got to have the ability to capture people’s attention really, really fast, within three seconds. So I think that’s a big thing.
ALAN: Going back to principles, I always believe in principles, same thing growing my martial arts school. I don’t believe in following trends. I think you have to be different. Being different is what captures people’s attention. If they scroll and you look the same as every other martial arts school, it’s whatever. They won’t care. Or they might watch your video that’s gone viral because you followed some funny, silly thing that’s trending.
ALAN: I think two principles I’ll always follow is, how can you be different, but also how can you play long term? And part of long-term is how do you build a brand? And part of building brand is how do you make it quality? I always try to stick to that. I see the biggest problem, I call it growth blockers, that a lot of school owners do, or even people in social media, is they’ve got this delusion of chasing trends and trying to wait to be viral. It’s like, I just need one viral video to go viral and my school is going to be full.
ALAN: But the reality is going viral is just one cool trick. And most times it often brings the wrong audience. You get people from different countries. And so I think what Instagram has done really well now, it’s a perfect time because it serves particularly our type of businesses, the local brick and mortar schools, because it’s more catered to you being able to reach the right people. So if you’re putting out content that resonates with your local community, you don’t need followers. You don’t need to reach many, many people. But if you reach the right people in your 10 kilometre radius, that’s where it’s building the brand for you.
ALAN: And also in my experience, not only is it building your brand for your local community, but also it’s getting you opportunities with people, like partnerships and opportunities for people around the world. But it’s just kind of this nice thing that grows your business. But like I said, I don’t think it’s about chasing the trends and the silly TikTok stuff that I see a lot of people do. I just try to stick to what’s valuable and what’s different and then how do I make it quality.
GEORGE: I’m so glad you bring that up because I guess this is a good time to maybe just give a reframe because yep, I’m super inspired by all the things that you do. And you’ve got this massive audience, but you’ve also got an international brand that you are catering for. There is probably the danger, like you mentioned here, because vanity metrics is a thing. Yep, I’ve got all these likes and I’m getting all these views. And then one of our clients mentioned this the other day, he was talking about all these likes that they had and views that they were getting on Instagram and I asked him, well, how many leads did you get? No, nothing. So we’ve got to work on that. It’s not just about so many people saw it, but if we’re not turning that into actual leads, then we’ve got a problem.
GEORGE: Chasing the trends. I think I see the danger where a lot of people are, I think it’s a bit of a blind leading the blind. People see maybe this international brand of someone’s funny and they’re a comedian and everybody wants to be the comedian, but is that bringing you business?
GEORGE: So where do you see the balance? Because the things that we can lean into is, you talked about the three second hook, differentiating, being different. Would you say that’s different in style or being like a contrarian type of view on something? Or how do you sit on that?
ALAN: Just going back on what you just said, I feel like social media, those who get really popular are the ones who are doing silly things or really funny. And if that’s your personality, cool, go with it. But the problem I see is a lot of people try to copy that and try to do that. And just on a bigger scale for me, I’m not a funny guy.
GEORGE: But you can kick.
ALAN: But I’m actually really passionate about sending the right message to our future generations. Because we teach adults and we teach kids, but I sometimes step back and I look at where the world’s going. And I feel like our future generations, the kids, they’re growing up in a society where it’s full of memes and full of jokes and pranks and silly things. So they’ve really become desensitised. And that also fuels the instant gratification mindset that they’ve got. So I feel like our world’s kind of gone this path of they’re losing this sense of quality in themselves and they’re losing that patience, they’re losing even ethics and morals.
ALAN: So I feel like social media has kind of fuelled that and everyone’s just trying to chase that and to be silly. And so I try to go the other way. I feel like true martial arts is quality and true martial arts is discipline. And it’s being a quality human being, being a good person. It’s not trying to prank people and all that stuff. So I try to stay away from those trends, not only from a business perspective, but more so as a, I don’t know, you’ve got a heart, it’s something I feel passionate about. I think I want to send the right message to not only our students because they watch my stuff, but also to the global community. And sometimes that does sacrifice views. And I do see other people do silly things and then it goes viral. But for me, I feel like, again, long-term brand message is more important.
GEORGE: Okay. So you’ve definitely got a higher, so break it down in a framework for me. Because there’s a core message. There’s a vision and there’s a purpose behind what you want to do because you want to convey a different message. You want to make an impact through your martial arts and your message. How do you then go about, let’s, if we had to make it practical, how do you go about constructing videos in a way that you’re balancing martial arts and attracting people that would resonate with the style or potentially becoming students, and then also conveying the message and the values that you want?
ALAN: Good question. A good tip that’s practical is when you are creating content for your Instagram of your school. I personally like to do it like, fly on the wall kind of thing. Something that’s natural rather than trying to create the video. All I do is I literally just film what I do in my school. So if I’m teaching a technique while I’m doing it, I talk to my students, I just get a camera and I film it. Because I’m thinking if I’m teaching something that I find is important to my students in front of 30 students, what about all the other hundreds of students that are not in the room. So my mindset is kind of like, how do I get this magic that I’ve got with my students right now and share that with a broader audience.
ALAN: So it’s almost like literally sharing what I currently do within my gym, as opposed to trying to create a video to get more people to come in. And to make a practical takeaway for listeners, first step is buy a mic. Because these days people can forgive average videos that aren’t polished, but they won’t forgive bad audio. Buy like a $20 mic from Amazon. Plug into your phone, plug into yourself and there you go. So I think step one, buy a mic.
ALAN: Whenever you’re teaching class, step two, give your phone to a student or a team member and just say, whenever you see me teach, when you see me talk, just film. And step three is when you put together those videos. What I see a lot of people do is they just put the video up as is. It’s getting more common now, a lot of people do the right thing. Now it’s caption culture, right? Just put it into the edits app on Instagram, put captions under it. Because most people, when they’re watching your videos, they could be sitting on a train or somewhere public. They can’t hear you. So they want to read what you’re doing. Literally it just takes like a minute to put a caption in and post it.
ALAN: And I’d say step four is make yourself a goal, especially if you’re just starting out, set a goal to post one video a week, that’s it. Film you teaching a technique or saying something to your students every week and just post it once a week.
ALAN: But if you want to go even further, I have this thing called the 5A Content Wheel or Content Flywheel. So I give my team five pillars that they should follow when they’re making content. Because these days I have my team that helps me make content now. And so there are five A’s that I recommend for people to follow. These are the different types of content that you want to be posting just to build the brand for your school.
ALAN: First A is Authority. So you want to be creating content of value, showing your knowledge, essentially proving that you are the expert. So someone who’s scrolling and they go, oh, well, this coach, this master, this Sifu, he knows what he’s doing. He knows what he’s talking about. They understand you. They understand your passion. They understand your value. So that’s the first one. And as I said, easiest way to do that is just literally teach in your own class and film that. Or if you don’t teach, when your team’s teaching, film them teaching. Essentially Authority, show your value.
ALAN: Second A is what I call Access. Access is give people a behind the scenes look of who you are and your team and what you do. Because martial arts, it’s intimidating. A lot of people who look at a school, if they don’t get to know you, it usually feels quite intimidating. We sent out a survey to a lot of our members and asked them, what was their thought process before they joined us? One of the biggest things is always, I didn’t feel I was good enough or I was intimidated. And I think the goal with this content pillar is to humanise your brand and get them to know you. So we sometimes show our team laughing in our team meetings, or you show a day of your life, or even show you clean the mats, whatever it is, just give them access to behind the scenes.
ALAN: And number three is what I call Applause. Applause is social proof, testimonials. So it’s not about you saying you’re good. It’s about what do other people say that you’re good at? And that’s easy, grab your Google reviews and just put it into like an Instagram picture and then just have the quotes on there. So that’s Applause.
ALAN: And then number four is the Ascension Journey. So that’s where you film your students or your members, the case study. You want to film the before and after. Or if you don’t have that, just kind of having them say, oh, I’ve been here like five years and before I was this and now I’m this. So that shows your school gets results.
ALAN: And then the last pillar is Action. Action means your call to action, CTA. Essentially, you want to have something once a week, don’t overdo it. You don’t want to be blasting join my school every single week. Just once a week, if you’ve done the other four, you have permission to say, if you’re interested in joining our school, comment yes, whatever it is. And we’ll send you some details.
ALAN: That’s something that I like to share with school owners. If you follow that process, you can even follow our school and what I do on my personal Instagram, it’s literally what we do.
GEORGE: That’s gold. So I want to just make sure I’ve got this. So we’ve got Authority.
ALAN: Authority. Yeah.
GEORGE: We’ve got Access, the behind the scenes, giving insight.
ALAN: Yeah.
GEORGE: Applause. And Applause was the testimonials. That’s like the written testimonials.
ALAN: Yeah. So like the Google reviews and screenshots. Actually in our software, MAM.Pro, we’ve got an auto thing that captures that and can post that on. It’s not your prime content, but it’s definitely the gaps in between.
GEORGE: Fourth A was the Ascension. So the case study. They transform in your school. And I love those. Those are gold. I’ll share a story on that. And then your Action, call to action. What do they actually need to do to further the conversation? For Instagram and the platforms you use, is that typically like a send us a DM or comment below type of action?
ALAN: I’ve actually been testing a new thing lately. Carousels have been working really well and they’re very easy to make. Just have a picture and then just put words on every carousel. Aim for about 10 and at the end, the last one, you put a call to action, say comment yes, and then we’ll reach out to you kind of thing. So I think that’s been working really well at the moment.
GEORGE: So what I find really interesting is, just this last year, we focus a lot on Facebook ads and this last year in particular there’s this update Andromeda, which is really about the shift you’re talking to. It’s really about the shift of how the platform has changed because where everything was interest-based, now creative is the actual targeting.
GEORGE: And so if we think of how, when we spoke about what social is and what interest-based is, well, you only have to sit on Instagram and pay attention for three seconds to one Reel and two Reels down, the algorithm has caught on and it’s serving you that, and before you know it, you’re down this rabbit hole and you don’t get off the phone.
ALAN: It tracks your eyes, where your eyes go as well.
GEORGE: Yeah, right.
ALAN: Yeah, there was something about that, that they can actually read how your pupils dilate. On your Instagram Explore page, you know how you see a lot of different things, whatever your eyes look at, when you scroll up, it’s going to follow. So I tested covering the front camera and then you couldn’t do it. I read somewhere that every few seconds it actually shoots off, like it films your eyes when you’re on the app. So I tested covering it and I did see a difference. I only tested once so it wasn’t a big test, but I saw a difference. So I don’t know what they’re doing with our phones.
GEORGE: Yeah. Look, you can listen to this and be freaked out about it. But the impossible conversation was that Messenger was listening to your conversations and we’ve proved it time and time again by having a conversation and seeing the content being served. And I see it all the time. I’ll have a conversation with my wife and next minute I’m being served this content. And I did read about the camera being able to actually read emotions by how your pupils dilate and how you’re responding to stuff. It’s the world we live in, right? If you don’t want to play the game, put the phone down.
GEORGE: So I think for school owners, if you really want to take the 80/20 as we’re seeing it right now between social and running ads, that strategy is really starting to merge. Where guys used to always go, oh, I want an agency to run my ads and then I’ll do social this way. Well, you’re kind of just doing a scattergun approach. And funny enough, the trends that we’ve been going through now is just mid last year, putting up Canva style images were great. But the issue is everybody and their brother can put a Canva image up and make it look half great, but it just lacks authenticity.
GEORGE: And so the things that we are seeing working super well is, we’ve got the attract side. So how do we gather the audience? These case study videos, you call it the Ascension. These Ascension style videos, they’re working super well with ads. And what you reference as the Access videos? Well, if we look at a framework of top of funnel, middle of funnel and bottom of funnel where top of funnel is you trying to attract the new people, middle of funnel is they’re getting to know and like you and then bottom of funnel is the call to action. That middle of funnel is great for that Access style content because now they’re getting to see behind the scenes.
GEORGE: We got one of our clients, Amanda and Wayne, they simply do a live video every day and they are getting so many leads just from that live video. Because the ads work, but it puts them on the radar. People aren’t going to interact with them on the first go anyway. So people see the ad and then they start following the page, or not even, the algorithm just keeps serving them content from the page and now they see the live video. And so now they’ve gone from, okay, I like this brand, and the live video just can’t lie. It gives this authentic approach where people can see, this is what happens here. This feels okay. This doesn’t feel threatening. I can see myself here.
GEORGE: And so taking that into the concept, what you do with the Access is just showing people the real, the raw, the rough. And there’s no Canva image that’s ever going to do that for you.
ALAN: Yeah, I absolutely agree. Especially in our industry. Martial arts is intimidating for a lot of people. It depends on what school you have. If you have a fight gym, then it’s different. But my school is general population. Most people come in, they’re not looking to get into a ring and fight or get a championship. They just want to get fitter. They want to get more flexible. They want to feel better about themselves and then learn some cool stuff. So I think it is important to show that authenticity and not be intimidating, especially when you want to bring in kids as well. Families want to feel like the environment’s safe for their kids and it’s friendly. So best way to do that, it’s not through a Canva photo, as you said, but through literally showing who you are.
GEORGE: So question for you, Alan, because you’re at such a high level with your martial arts and your technique is so on point. Do you ever fear that you might intimidate someone that might be looking at martial arts and they see like, whoa, I’m never going to be there. Do you ever consider that? And if so, how do you work around that?
ALAN: Yeah, that’s a really interesting question. Because when I first started, all my content was purely the flash and the kicks and the spin kicks and all of that stuff. But funnily enough, my Instagram took off when during COVID I started to create tutorials. So I took those moves and I broke it down into step by step movements. Because I thought that was probably the best way to teach my students while we were all in lockdown. Things you can actually do at home and just do it step by step.
ALAN: And five years later, I feel like almost everyone’s doing that now. There’s so many tutorials that break down a move to step one, step two, step three, everyone’s doing it. Even for myself, those videos are not working as well anymore. So I think it’s not about the movements anymore. It’s about making sure that you convey who you are. But at the same time, our members do say, oh yeah, we come because we see your flexibility or your clean techniques. So I guess it’s a balance. You do got to show what you can do, but if you only show what you can do, yes, it will intimidate people. So it’s just a balance. That’s why I created the five A’s so that you have that balance.
GEORGE: A hundred percent. Back to the five A’s. Awesome Alan. So just a couple of other things. You’ve got the martial arts school, but what is the international brand about?
ALAN: Yeah. So many years ago, we were actually bigger overseas than locally. YouTube blew us up and we’ve got about 13 million hits on YouTube, about 80K subscribers. And that drew, this was before I had my full-time centre. So this was when I was teaching in a car park and local PCYCs, but our brand was growing. So at that time, people were buying our shirts. We were selling shirts around the world. And then I created online programmes and we started selling a whole bunch of that.
ALAN: But then when we opened our full-time centre, that became my focus. We just did our 10 year anniversary last year for the full-time centre. And we’ve also grown out to seven figures, so it’s awesome what the team has done. And so now we’re getting a lot of enquiries for people wanting to replicate our systems overseas. So I’m helping people do that at the moment, sharing our plug and play systems. From social media to sales, to everything. And what I find is people struggle with building a team. So we’re helping them with that too. Just sharing things that have worked for me and helping other people do the same.
GEORGE: I love it. Alan, thanks so much for jumping on. Been great to chat to you and I’m sure we’re going to connect again, whether it’s online or in person at an event. For anyone wanting to reach out to you, whether that’s for help with the systems or just want to check you out on Instagram, where can they do that?
ALAN: Yeah, you can message me on Instagram. So Alan, A-L-A-N, La, L-A, Worldwide. Alan La Worldwide. Send me a message, maybe a comment or DM, mention Martial Arts Media or even George. And then what I can do for your audience, I can send them a free Instagram checklist. I send this to my team every time they post something on Instagram, they have to follow a certain checklist just so that your brand is consistent. And on that checklist, it also gives them the five A’s and ideas on what to do for each of the five A’s. So it’s very easy, your audience can literally give that to their team and have it done.
GEORGE: Cool. So reach out to Alan, and if you want the transcript and all the other resources for this episode, you can just go to martialartsmedia.com/168. Alan, thanks so much for being on.
ALAN: Thank you. And I’ll chat to you soon.
GEORGE: Thank you so much.
————————–
*FREE: Bring 50 Enrollments Into Your Martial Arts School Every 90 Days Need help growing your martial arts school? Watch Training + Take The Assessment
Enjoyed the show? Get more martial arts business tips when you subscribe on Apple Podcasts, listen on Spotify, or watch and subscribe on Youtube.