How Australian Martial Arts Academy's head instructor turned chronic fatigue into a leadership edge – driving growth and retention at a top-tier school.
IN THIS EPISODE:
- The Belt-By-Belt Recovery Story That Changed Mark’s Life (And His Students')
- Walking Away From Medicine To Pursue The Martial Path Full-Time
- The Hidden Energy Technique That Helps You Show Up Big—Even When You’re Running On Empty
- How Teaching On Crutches Inspired A Wave Of Black Belts To Keep Going
- The Sales Strategy That Works As Well In A Kids Class As It Does On The Phone
- And more
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Apply Here.
TRANSCRIPTION
George: Hey, it's George Fourie. Welcome to another episode of the Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast. So, today I'm speaking with Mark Loughran from the Australian Martial Arts Academy.
So, episode 156—155—I’d been chatting to Hakan, Hakan Manav, and Mark’s name dropped in there quite a few times. So I thought I’d bring the man on himself to have a chat about 18 years in martial arts.
He’s also one of the head instructors at the Australian Martial Arts Academy, and one of our featured speakers at the Partners Intensive that’s coming up in June, depending on when you listen to this.
But with that said, welcome to the call, Mark.
Mark: Thank you very much. Great to be here.
George: Good stuff.
We've only just recently met as well. So I'm going to take this as a blank canvas and a conversation just to tap into your genius, the things that you do. So if we had to start from the beginning, who's Mark, how did you get into the industry? Let's go from there.
Mark: Yeah, that's a really interesting story, actually. My journey into the martial arts industry started as a recovery piece. Flashback to 2005, I was graduating high school.
So, that makes me feel like I’m starting to get old now, everyone I’m teaching was born after that year. Flashback to that time, I graduated high school and got presented with a couple of opportunities.
One was from my parents. They said, “If you want to go further and study at university, you can do that,” because my dad worked as a Deputy Vice Chancellor at James Cook Uni. I grew up in Townsville, in Far North Queensland.
And they said, “If you want to go to university here, go for it. Stay at home, it’s free, all good.”
And they said, but if you want to go away, pay for it yourself. And that was the deal. My brother had the same deal.
He was a couple of years older than me. And he got himself a full scholarship to Melbourne uni. And he was like, Townsville was too hot.
I did the exact same thing, except I went to UNSW. So I've got a scholarship to study medicine at UNSW and went down there, started that journey and ended up getting really sick towards the end of my first year with glandular fever.
And there was a whole piece of trying to identify what was going on there, because I was really sick for quite a long time. I ended up with chronic fatigue syndrome, which I still have now, 19 years on.
And I still battle that every single day. My sort of path into martial arts started about a year after I got really sick with that. I ended up bed-bound for one to two years.
Part of my recovery, actually, I should backtrack a little bit. I was doing high-level athletics at a national level at that time as well. I used to play A-grade tennis and represented Queensland in different sports when I was in high school.
I was always an athletic person. And then, for someone to go from that to completely bed-bound, it was a big change and a big struggle. So part of my recovery from that was, there is no treatment.
It's just management. Try and do some exercise. What have you never done? And so I thought, Oh, I've never tried martial arts, always been interested.