Tom Lowe grew Horizon Taekwondo from 40 to 250 students after a year-long plateau at 200. In this episode we discuss how he broke founder-dependency, and rebuilt the school with stronger systems and support.

• The long plateau around 200 students and what helped shift momentum again
• The identity change required to stop doing everything alone
• How building an instructor team opened space for growth and balance
• How conversations with other school owners fast-tracked decision-making and confidence
• The value of shared insight from a community of school owners facing similar growth milestones

 *FREE: Bring 50 Enrollments Into Your Martial Arts School Every 90 Days Need help growing your martial arts school? Watch Training + Take The Assessment

TRANSCRIPTION

George: Hey, it's George Fourie.

Welcome to another Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast.

So today I've got a guest with me that we've probably got a long overdue catch up.

We have been working together for around four years, I think I looked earlier, since about August 2021.

So Tom's come a long way with Horizon Taekwondo.

And yeah, we just want to go back on the journey.

How it all started, who Tom is, and where he's at right now in his martial arts journey.

So welcome to the call, Tom.

Tom: Thanks George, nice to be here.

George: Good stuff.

So we've got to start at the beginning.

Who is Tom Lowe?

Tom: I'm Tom from Adelaide in South Australia.

I've got a wife and two kids; one's 10, one's 3.

And I've been running my own martial arts club for about four and a half years now.

George: Four and a half years, cool.

So we didn't actually then start working; we started working together pretty soon after you opened up, right?

Tom: Yes, correct.

George: Cool.

Okay.

So let's, before we jump into the business and the nuts and bolts, give us some context.

Like how did the martial arts journey happen?

What made you decide on going ahead with the school?

Tom: So starting from the beginning, at the age of 10, I started Taekwondo with my dad and my brother.

We had a school down the end of our street and some of my school friends were going there.

So we joined, I think my brother and I started first.

My dad was taking us to training and thought this looked pretty cool, so he joined as well.

I wasn't probably the best student for a long time.

I think my dad pulled his hair out trying to get me to commit.

But I eventually sort of knuckled down when I got interested in competing around the age of 16.

I got my black belt, then competed at national and state level and a tiny bit at international level.

I decided when I was in my mid-twenties that I needed a career that wasn't Taekwondo.

So I went back to Uni and got a degree in management.

I worked for my dad's business in physiotherapy for a while.

Then I went back and did a master's in accounting.

During that time, I was teaching a little bit on the side.

I worked as an accountant for a little bit, then started gradually teaching more and more, and then turned it into a full-time job.

That was about 2015.

And then in 2021, I went out on my own and started my own business.

George: Own business being Horizon Taekwondo, or was there something before that?

Tom: Horizon Taekwondo was the first business I owned.

George: Gotcha.

Now, unlike many martial arts school owners, it sounds like you had a bit of a business journey there.

Well, you've got business and accounting, which is kind of cool.

I love accountants, but sometimes accountants have an accounting vision.

So when you get advice from the accountant, sometimes that benefits the books, but not the vision.

My opinion, please, results obviously vary, and it's just my viewing of my limited perspective.

But that's quite a unique background to come with, right?

So you had some business experience working with your dad and the accounting business, and then going into the martial arts space.

So how do you feel that benefited you, having that background before you opened up?

Tom: I think quite a lot.

I've also been lucky that my family's owned businesses pretty much for countless generations.

So I've always been brought up in a house that had a business, been run out of it pretty much.

And working for my dad's business especially, it wasn't sort of the easiest.

That would go through a bit of a difficult period.

And the job was to get it ready for sale so he could retire or semi-retire and work for someone else pretty much.

So that was the big goal we did there.

We had to really beef up the marketing, beef up the team.

A big part of my job was training the reception staff to be better at sales.

So that's helped me a lot with especially running a school.

And just having that background of understanding a bit more theory behind why things work and how we do things.

One of the biggest things I did learn is marketing; even though I understand the theory of it, it doesn't matter till the rubber meets the road.

And if you can get a result, the rest of the business doesn't work, which is why I sought out the Partners Program basically as soon as I got started.

George: Awesome.

And we'll tell you a bit about that.

So just more on the exit.

So did you manage to exit the business?

Tom: Yes.

I think I finished my Master's in Accounting at the end of 2014.

The business got sold that December and then I worked for an accounting firm after that.

So it was a good, very sort of neat job we put on it.

George: Very cool.

Okay.

So, and you say there's been businesses in the family as you grew up.

Was that the physio, the sole business, or were there other business ventures as well?

Tom: Yes, for my dad, that was his business, but he was also a director and on the board of a lot of our family's companies as well.

Which were in diverse things like electronics making, not winemaking, machinery for winemaking, staffing firms, and transportation firms as well.

George: All right, cool.

So good background in business there, you competed, and then you had the urge to open up the school.

How did that journey evolve?

Where did that happen?

So you were training, what was the switch?

Tom: I think sooner or later you kind of realize you're not good enough to go any further.

Like with competing, I was getting medals at national level.

I'd competed at the world Uni games about a year prior.

And I think the next step would have been to be a consistent competitor sort of at international level, but I just wasn't good enough to get there.

I had a lot of consistency issues.

Like I was really good one day, not good the next day.

And I figured that was my limiting factor.

And I was really at a crossroads.

Like I could do this another four years, really push, and then I could have nothing and be close to 30.

Or do I really need to think about the future now?

I probably delayed growing up long enough and time to focus on a career that actually pays money as opposed to an amateur fighting career.

George: Got it.

Okay, cool.

So this takes us to 2021, right?

Tom: So 2021 is when the business started.

George: All right.

So let's explore that.

So what were those first couple of weeks like, those first couple of months, you just getting off the ground?

What were sort of the first steps you took to get things rolling?

Tom: Yeah, well, I think during COVID I was just more and more thinking I wanted to do this on my own a bit.

I was getting to a stage where I was getting less control over what my future was going to look like.

And I felt like at the age I was at, I needed to get more control.

And then I just decided in 2021 that it was time for me to step out on my own.

So I think that the business background really helped me set up the business.

I knew what areas I needed to look at, what I needed to focus on.

And I was quite confident of everything in the business up until the sales level.

Like when you had to run a, effectively a branch of a martial arts club and you had to do sales in person, how to structure it, how to grow it.

So I was feeling pretty confident.

The hardest thing initially was to get the initial people through the door.

That was probably the biggest problem straight away.

George: Okay.

And was that sort of where we crossed paths?

Tom: Yeah, I think I was lucky enough that I found an email from my CRM, Clubworx, in my junk; it had gone straight there.

It was about this guy called George Fourie, who's doing a sales call on how to use Facebook for marketing.

I thought, I'll have a look at that.

And then I sort of watched that.

I think Amanda, who's part of the program, was on that call as well.

And from there, I think I watched it, gave you a call about a week later.

And since then I've been part of Partners.

George: Yes.

And so that was, I just looked earlier, August 2021.

Now take us back to then.

Because we've always had this thing in Partners that we typically take people on like a hundred students and up.

And it's not because no one's got potential or anything.

It's more a thing that the things that we focus on with the marketing, it just works better when there is that base.

But you were, I don't recall, maybe like 40, 45 students?

Tom: 40 students.

George: Yeah.

You were keen, and I guess sometimes you look at, you know, filters are just numbers, but you were just motivated.

You mentioned all the business background.

And I thought, hang on, you know, you're on a mission here.

I think we can definitely help.

So walk us through those sort of early days getting started.

What were the big problems you were facing and how did Partners help in that?

Tom: Okay.

Yeah.

So from the start, I think I was really lucky to have a partner, my wife, whose job was able to support us for at least the first year of the club.

So I think people at that stage are usually working full time plus they're doing the business on the side, which makes it hard to focus.

Where I could just focus a hundred percent on growing the business.

I think my initial plan was to use word of mouth, a lot of Google advertising to try to get it up and running.

That wasn't going particularly well.

I think I was lucky that I had a daycare program where I used to go to daycare centers and teach, which is where I got most of my members.

So the first probably four months was just trying to get people through the door.

Like I'd have classes with one or two people.

One of them was my son, some of his school friends as well.

And then I think it exploded about November 2021.

I went from about 30 to 70 in the space of two months between November and the end of the year.

George: Very cool.

Yeah.

So you grew fast in that sense.

Oh, okay.

So that's like doubling the club in not many months.

Take us through that step.

So you double the club.

Where are you at?

What's sort of working well and what's really creating bottlenecks at that point?

Tom: So the biggest thing that worked well for us was using Facebook as a marketing platform.

So that really helped us get the people through the door.

Once we got them through the door, we were really good at converting them to trial and members.

And the biggest bottleneck that came up next was the amount of classes we had.

So we started at two days a week and we had to go up to four days about halfway through 2022.

And then up to five days.

And then six days by the start of 2023.

George: I do want to stop there.

And I just want to say hats off to wives who make it happen and help guys like us build a business and move forward.

And Louise, you need to be on the next call by the way.

Yeah.

And I say that for myself too.

I was doing this business for a long time and it took the same process of my wife having a full-time stable job, being able to take us through the few dips before it became a full-time gig and what it is today.

So hats off.

Tom: I was really glad that with 18 months in the business, I was able to support both of us while Louise took time off work when we had our second child.

So it was kind of good that it was able to flip like that and I was able to return the favor.

George: That's cool.

That's cool.

And so if you had to look now, I don't want to sort of rush to the end, but how are things different now?

Like, I mean, if you just give us a quick snapshot of that.

Tom: Yeah.

Between now and then, probably the biggest thing is I've got a bit of a team now that I'm building.

And back then it was all on my own, which was hard.

So everything you have to do, there's no time off, no days off, no breaks, no holidays.

And I was really careful to conserve my energy.

So I didn't burn out before I got to a stage where I could step back even a little bit.

So that was probably the biggest difference now. Now I've got an awesome team of instructors I can call upon that enables me to take a few days off here and there.

Some of them really stepped up so that I can almost say, just, you can run it for a day or two and I don't even have to be in the building.

The next stages are where I can take a week or two off during the year and have the business function how I'd like it to.

George: Is that on the cards?

Is that coming?

Tom: Um, I haven't got a plan yet, but I had a good chat with my main instructor last week, who's looking forward to taking on even more responsibility than she's been taking on so far.

And she's looking forward to the challenge.

George: Book that holiday, Tom.

So if we talk about Partners, we mentioned the Facebook ads.

What are the top three things or so that you feel has made the biggest impact in your business?

Tom: Probably the biggest thing is the community.

We have weekly calls with people that have been there, done that in the martial arts space for decades.

And just being able to call on them, ask their advice.

And I think you've got a good saying that none of us are smarter than all of us.

So it really helps having people you can bounce ideas off, people that look at things slightly differently to you.

And you can come out of those meetings sometimes thinking you had a good idea at the start, then go, “I need to change my business” by the end of it.

And then you can really get that next step forward.

I think after that is the intensives I've been to.

I think I've got value every time I've sort of gone to see you up in Queensland or in Sydney, wherever it's been.

Or we spend time either in small groups or bigger groups.

I think every time I go to one of them, I have a bit of a leap forward in the business.

George: That's awesome.

Okay.

So community.

And it's interesting that you bring this up because most people come into the group because it's helpful marketing, getting students.

But it's sort of the entry point of value.

And then everything else is, I mean, I'd love to take credit for it all, but I just can't.

Community, everybody in the community and then the events, just having a different flavor of speakers and people bringing value at different times.

I guess just looking at how fast business is moving, you've got AI that's doing things that are disrupting a lot just in business altogether.

And so it's good to just stay on the cutting edge.

And that means having a community vibe because good knowledge comes from different sources.

Tom: Yeah.

I think the last intensive we had in Sydney at Australian Martial Arts Academy was awesome.

I think we took about three or four massive things that have already been implemented or are implemented at our club.

Like we set up our leadership programe based on the model they were showing us.

We developed an instructor training programe as well for not just our junior leaders, but our current instructors.

Changed the sales process, changed about three major parts of our business based on that one intensive.

Enabled us to jump from about 210 members to 250 in a space of a few months.

George: Very cool.

So Tom, specifically you hit about 200 students, 210, hit a few roadblocks.

What is the rethinking that you took on to set yourself up for your next milestone?

Tom: Yeah.

So I think we were lucky to hit 200 members pretty quickly into our journey.

But we kind of bounced around that 200 member mark for about 12, 13 months.

And one thing that I sort of found is if we're trying to do the same thing over and over again and probably just put more effort in, like just work harder and do the same things, but just harder.

And we found that that was probably creating the roadblock.

That was when we took a bit of time to step back from business a bit and sort of rethink about what the structure needed to look like to be a club of 300, 400 members.

That was able to really push through that milestone.

Like, do we change the timetable?

Do we change how we structure classes?

Do we change our enrollment process?

Like just what needed to happen to really get to that ceiling that seemed to be, we're butting up against often time and time again.

George: Okay.

And so were those the things that you made the changes with, the timetable?

Tom: And probably the biggest roadblock was the fact that I was doing everything.

So we really looked at building the team, building the resources around us.

And since then it's sort of happened.

It's almost felt easy since we've implemented the new changes.

George: Right.

So talk us through that because I think there's this big identity shift that every school owner and business owner faces.

You're the face of the business.

People come to the business kind of because of you, because you're the head guy, you're the head instructor.

And it's the quickest path to build a business on the personal brand, but then it's also the handcuffs, right?

Because now everybody wants you.

So how did you rethink that?

What are the steps that you took to put the emphasis on the team instead of yourself?

Tom: Yeah.

So I've always wanted to have a business that wasn't sort of personality focused on myself, that was always a goal.

But I think it's hard as someone who's running the business, who cares about it probably after your family is probably the next most important thing too, is relinquishing a bit of control and trusting others a bit more.

And I think the big thing for me is thinking about if you do everything in the business, you might have a good product, but if you're the only thing in the business, you don't have a good business because it's not sustainable.

So the goal has been to shift the thinking away from having just a good product, but also having a good sustainable business that can last long term.

George: Love it.

Tom: So for things like that, it was training the instructors so they were capable and ready to step in.

Empowering other people around us so I can step back a little bit and let them do their own thing.

And it's been funny. I had a chat with my lead instructor the other day and she was saying that, because she's taking on leading the mats on certain days, like she's the boss.

And she said it's hard for her to sometimes relinquish control as well.

So it's kind of good to see that go full circle a little bit.

George: That's cool.

So your leaders are also looking at how they can take a step back and also pass on the tools.

Tom: Creating space for other people to step up.

George: That's cool.

I think that's probably what you said is the most important because sometimes I think we can create a space that is hard for people to step into.

Or there's a certain, they feel all the expectation is on themselves.

They can't fill the shoes.

And so making it easy for them to step into that and be okay to not do it right.

And knowing that everything is going to be okay if they do make mistakes, definitely helps.

Tom: Yeah.

Same as being a parent, how you want to sort of preempt your kids' mistakes for them and try to warn them about them.

And then you've got to step back and realize they've got to make them for themselves.

George: Yeah.

A hundred percent.

Cool.

So for Tom, if you think Partners, what results have you achieved and what's been the biggest impact for the business and for you and Louise personally?

Tom: So since joining Partners, I think we've grown from about 40 students up to 250.

The biggest thing that has helped us really know what some of the biggest schools look like and how they function and they structure their business.

So it's really good having, not necessarily a roadmap, sort of, I probably consider everyone in that group to have been a mentor.

I've learned stuff from Lindsay, from Michael, from Hakan, probably forgetting a lot of names, Cheyne, a lot of people that have sort of been there to help the journey.

And also people that started at the same level as I did, like Amanda, who I think has been really good to sort of follow her success and her journey.

And I think the one thing I do love about it is everybody in that group wants everyone else to succeed as much as possible.

There's no “I need to make sure I'm better than someone else.”

“If they win, I win” is a good sort of policy of the group.

If you can give someone an idea they take and run with, you feel pretty proud of that.

And I think everyone in the group has that.

George: Yeah.

I think I've noticed over the years running the groups, we've got a lot of people that have had great success like you and some of the names that you mentioned.

And I feel the people that get the most value also give the most value.

Sometimes people want to come into the group and it's like, “How do you get me to where I want to go?”

And I think maybe there's a wrong perception put out in the market space where there's so many agencies, there's so many people making a promise.

We'll get you here.

We'll get you there.

And I think the emphasis is wrong because it's outsourcing your business success, that it's someone else's responsibility.

And I've seen over the years, the people that come into the group that contribute and learn, those are the ones that are succeeding the most.

Yeah.

It's definitely a two-way street is the way I see it.

Tom: Yeah.

I think it's also, I'm sorry, it's giving a fish as opposed to teaching how to fish.

So yeah, I think I've never wanted to have a lot of my business functions controlled by someone else.

So that's why I like Partners so much.

Because they don't do it for you.

You sort of get shown the way and how to do it.

You do get help when you need it.

But a lot of it's like, go figure it out.

This is what we do.

And then see how it goes with that.

Like one thing I'm really proud of is some of the stuff we do well at our club that other clubs have taken on board.

Like the Bring A Friend, Break A Board, the parent's coach's week, they're probably the two biggest events we run every year.

And I think others have taken on board and done well with it as well.

George: Yeah.

Love it.

Shout out to Grandmaster Zulfi Ahmed for sharing that at the intensive.

Tom: Yeah.

I think also Lindsay's Bring A Friend, Break A Board.

I think that was the way I got the inspiration for that one.

George: Very cool.

All right.

So a couple of round up questions.

If you had to finish a sentence, you almost didn't join Partners because…

Tom: It was a bit of a risk at the start.

I was in a business earning negative money per month and it was a bit of a buy-in to go into it.

I had to basically commit to it and I had to have a bit of a think about it.

But I decided that what I was doing wasn't working.

And I'm better to find out quickly if I'm not going to be able to run a business rather than try to slowly fade away.

So I thought, why not give it a try?

And I think it was probably one of the top business decisions we made by joining Partners when we did.

George: Very cool.

And who would you recommend Partners to?

Tom: I think anyone who's looking to grow their own club to people that they know what they're doing a bit, but they need a bit of help.

They need to bounce ideas off people.

It can be a bit isolating being a business owner.

Sometimes you think you've got to have all the answers and you need to create everything yourself.

Whereas Partners, you can go there, you can ask people questions.

You can bring what you think works and you can get it field tested a little bit.

You can use the group knowledge to help you grow as a person and as a business owner.

George: Very cool.

So what's next for Tom?

What's the next big milestone and what are you excited about?

We're now obviously recording this 2025, going to 2026.

What's the vision?

Tom: Yep.

So in terms of not just the business, but life as well, I've been able to take more time away from the business, which is a big goal for next year.

Growing to 350, maybe this is our goal for, as our next milestone.

And then really, I think the biggest thing for me also personally is we had to get a bigger house cause it's getting a bit small for our two growing boys right now.

So that's really the focus of where we're heading to.

And also just always improve what we do as a martial arts club, whether it be how we run a business or what we can offer the members as well.

George: Cool.

So keeping it simple, the foundations, keeping the same, but better, right?

Tom: Yes.

Yeah.

So we always want to, I never want a club that just sits still and doesn't get better.

George: So 350, what is the goal for the timeframe for that?

Tom: Timeframe.

I want to hit at least 330 by the end of next year.

Well, I think we're going to be running out of space in our current building by that stage.

So I think the next step is going to be a bigger venue after the 330 mark.

So 330 by the end of next year, by the end of 2026, this is the goal.

George: Love it.

Well, we'll have you back on for 330.

How's that?

Tom: Sounds good.

George: Cool, Tom.

Anything else?

Or should I get Louise on for the next round?

Tom: Yeah, I think Louise might have a different insight about what it's been like.

I think without her, nothing works.

I think everybody's got a supportive partner or wife who just knows how important that is to do what you do.

Like you can't, you need that stable base as a launch pad.

Otherwise you can't do much.

George: And I wouldn't say it's like you can't do it without it, but I think it would be a lot harder to do without it, 100%.

Tom: I think back to my grandma who, when she was quite old, she was like, “I didn't really do anything for my life.”

And then all these people did all these amazing things because you were so awesome at everything else that you managed the house, you ran everything.

You know, with my grandfather really having four different businesses on the go at once.

So without people like that, you can't, it's a lot harder.

Like you're saying.

George: Yeah.

A hundred percent.

Well, cool, Tom.

Thanks so much for jumping on, long overdue.

It's been so great four years chatting in.

And look forward to catching up again.

I'll see you during the week on the calls.

I look forward to just documenting the journey a bit further.

And yeah, we'll catch up soon.

Tom: All good.

Hey, thanks for this George.

It's been really good to come and have a bit of a chat with you.

George: Thanks Tom.

Cheers.

Tom: All right.

See you later.

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 *FREE: Bring 50 Enrollments Into Your Martial Arts School Every 90 Days Need help growing your martial arts school? Watch Training + Take The Assessment

TRANSCRIPTION

The world of martial arts marketing, marketing your martial arts school.

So let's say you're running ads at the moment; it could be through Facebook, through Google.

They typically take a different pathway or a different strategy.

So maybe we'll lean into Facebook for now.

But regarding leads in general, let's say you are running a campaign and you've got lead enquiries coming in and they just ghost you.

So you're all excited, you get a lead notification, see the phone number, and perhaps you pick up the phone and call them.

No answer.

You try to message them.

No answer.

So what's the deal?

Are all these leads just notoriously bad?

Is it just a distraction?

Is it too hard to get hold of people?

I'm recording this close to December right now.

Are people just more distracted than ever, and it's hard to get hold of them?

Or are they just all the leads, martial arts leads, just tyre kickers?

There are a few things that we can consider here.

And if you are in the scenario where you're getting leads and they are ghosting you, there are a few things that could be wrong.

Number one, I think I want to address the mindset around leads.

And a lot of times I hear school owners talk about how leads are tyre kickers, and it's not typically their fault.

Because let's say you're running a campaign and you've got one lead notification, two, three, four, and you can't get hold of anybody.

And four leads in, all of a sudden your entire mindset is shifted.

You feel here's another time waster.

And so where your follow-up sequence might have been multiple times, multiple touch points, calls, messages, emails, you kind of lose motivation.

And the danger is we collectively call our leads tyre kickers.

Like all these leads came together, 10, 20, 30, however many, came together and collectively decided that they are just tyre kickers.

Probably not true, right?

So I think the first thing we have to guard is just our own mindset.

Because if we're running a campaign and a few leads are not great, it's going to happen.

It's marketing.

They aren't just all standing there waving their credit cards saying, please sign me up.

So we have got to consider that, right?

There are going to be some bad leads, but it doesn't make all of them bad.

I come from a sales industry where there was no such thing as a bad lead ever.

It's your job to sell the lead, especially if they put their hand up, right?

If they put their hand up, it's not like we're door knocking and interrupting people.

I mean, other than the odd Facebook lead that comes in and they said they clicked the form by accident.

I might talk about that a bit later.

They click the form by accident and don't know how they became a lead.

Yep, we do get those and I've done it before.

I always thought it was impossible, but I actually have done it before as well.

So that can happen.

I'm not talking about that.

I am talking about the people that actually put their hand up, saw your ad, had some interest and thought, well, I'm interested in this.

And they opted in and they handed over their name, their number, and their email.

They are probably interested, fair to say, right?

But then there are a few things that could be playing against the whole situation; is, are they ready now or are they not ready now?

If we were to break it up, the majority of your prospects will opt in and they might think they're ready, but then they also aren't ready now.

Or they are ready at the moment of seeing your ad and they give you the details.

And then something happens in life.

Like the child says, well, I don't want to do martial arts anymore.

I want to do football.

I want to do soccer or something else, basketball.

So the timing is off.

But three months from now, maybe one quarter on where something has changed and they decide, oh, hang on.

Actually, I might give this a go.

Again, they could be ready then.

So that goes back into your follow-up sequence, right?

Because if a lead opts in, they are interested at a certain point in time.

It's important that we have offers to scoop up that low-hanging fruit as people have entered into your lead generation system.

So that is one thing to consider right there.

Now, that doesn't answer it for all, right?

Because if we're getting like five, ten leads in a row and we can't get hold of them, then what is up?

Well, targeting.

Could it be targeting?

Well, here's the whole thing with targeting right now.

At the time of recording this, just before December 2025, Facebook has made this whole algorithm change to Andromeda.

And Andromeda basically, in short, means, I've got an episode on this, I'll probably do more as we go along.

Andromeda basically means that targeting as we know it is going out the window and now our creativity becomes the targeting.

And so the way we frame our creative together with a hook and an angle, that's going to determine who our ads get shown to.

That's a very short explanation.

It's a whole other minefield.

But targeting as we know it is kind of disappearing, which isn't that, I think, such a big deal for martial arts schools for the most part, because you are only targeting a three, five, or ten-mile radius for most.

And within that, if you put your ad in front of all those people, a good offer, good targeting with a good offer in front of the right people with the right media is going to filter out.

And it's going to get people to obviously resonate with your ad and then opt in.

If you are in the scenario where all your leads are just, you're not getting a hold of them.

Then the first thing we can do is add some friction, add some friction so that they can express their intent.

So if we, for example, if we're running a lead form and somebody can just click and all the details are pre-filled and they can just opt in and now they become a lead.

Perhaps we need a bit of friction.

We like to schedule a position and intent question.

We got a couple.

A basic intent question could just be: are you interested in training after the trial if it's a good fit?

Yes, I'm interested in a programme.

This is our multi-select option.

Yes, I'm interested in a programme.

Maybe, depending on me, my child likes it.

No, just want the trial.

So that gives us a level of intent and it also gets the prospect to think, right?

They opt in, maybe it's a free class.

This is what I'm referring to at this moment.

And they see it and now they get to self-reflect on their own intent of what they are doing and they can click and they can become a lead.

So that's step one, friction.

Now, here's the real thing that I want to be talking about: once a lead becomes a lead, lead becomes a prospect interested in booking a trial, we need communication automations to trigger like in the first 60 seconds, right?

Best would probably be a phone call, but most of you are probably not going to be that quick on it unless you got somebody that does that for you permanently and sits and watches the phone.

I know that you can probably hire a team to do that.

Honestly, I feel if you've got a team doing that, you could be overcompensating just for not a great strategy in automation.

What we do right now with our Automated Student Conversion System is a lead will come in.

They'll get an email immediately.

They'll get a text message immediately.

They'll also get a voicemail drop.

So a voicemail will get dropped into their phone; like a voicemail, the phone won't ring, but they'll get a voicemail.

That'll be a message from you, the school owner.

And then we've got our text message that triggers a conversation where our AI bot starts to have a conversation to book them in.

But within the first 10 minutes, there are three, call them normal static messages that go out, but then also the automations trigger right there and then.

And we've got a bot that says it's a bot.

It's not saying, you know, it's not pretending to be you or pretending to be human.

It tells people it's a bot.

We actually find that that takes away a lot of the objections because they know what's the point in arguing with the bot, right?

But that takes away a lot of the objections.

And then the bot is programmed to have a conversation.

That is just some intent.

How serious are they in martial arts?

Why did they choose martial arts?

And the bot actually books them into the calendar automatically.

This sequence all happens in 10 minutes.

Obviously, this is still not the perfect world, right?

They could get the email, the SMS, the voicemail drop, chat to the bot and still ignore it.

So we've got the sequence carrying on for another good two weeks and warms them up, engaging.

It's touch points in multiple mediums.

So we're talking between voicemail drops, video messages, SMSs, and emails.

And so it doesn't feel like they are just being bombarded or spammed.

You know, I don't know how you feel, but if you opt into something and you get like four emails at the same time or four text messages, it just feels chill.

But if you strategically position them across multiple channels and it's behaviour-based, meaning based on what they do when they receive those messages will dictate what the next messages are.

Now, that is smart automation.

And there are not a lot of systems that do that effectively.

We do that with our system called MAM.Pro, M-A-M-P-R-O.

So we build out all those automations.

Going into 2026, or could be 2026 when you're listening to this, you need automation that triggers the minute somebody becomes a lead and follows up on multiple levels because you just can't afford not to have that.

The more people are using social media.

I saw a clip today about brain rot.

If you think of people sitting on Facebook reels or Instagram reels and attention spans are just getting shorter and shorter and shorter because we're just watching shorter and shorter and shorter information.

And because of that, somebody might opt into your ad now and completely forget about it like two minutes later because they just got their brain taken into a new direction.

So the quicker you have automation, the quicker you catch people in the moment, speed to lead.

It is the thing.

It is essential.

Now, again, you can have an entire team do this, but why?

If you can have great automation that triggers and does it for you and does it for you intelligently.

So by the time you do pick up the phone, it's a completely different story, right?

Because they kind of already know who you are.

The know, like, and trust factor happened automatically.

And so the phone is just a little bonus.

Like we got one of our members, Dave, who's just a school owner and they only use the messenger bot.

They use via messenger to book in all their appointments.

So every time they run an ad, the bot picks up the conversation, books them into the calendar, and then his wife just gives them a courtesy call once they booked into the calendar, once they have already booked the trial.

So really, really smooths out a lot of the kinks with leads, the quality, the filtering and all that.

And it's hands-free.

I hope that's helpful in a sense.

If you don't have that type of system in play, reach out to us.

If you need help with that, we can definitely help you install that type of system.

The next is looking at how you are approaching ads.

Now, I've been all over this Facebook Andromeda thing for the last six months, and I'm always after the 80-20.

What is the 20% that we're going to do that's going to deliver 80% of the results and let you, the school owner, do the least?

Now, there are paths that you can log into our system and launch an ad in literally three to six clicks.

There we've got AI images generated.

It works, right?

It works.

The thing that I would question, though, is if lead quality is not as great, then how do we get a better quality lead?

So let's go down the narrative of the lead is not great.

We are getting poor quality leads.

So they were so mesmerised by the ad and they clicked, but they know nothing about it.

So how do we get a better quality lead?

Well, for that, we need an effective content strategy that's both a social media strategy and both an ad strategy.

And for that, we use The Martial Arts Social To Ads Creative System.

It's a way that you could take basic photos, have them angled at specific motivational drivers.

And on top of that, a strategy of how to film videos, credibility videos, a founder story video, and a way to record many little case studies that we can place inside ads.

So we've nailed down a strategy that does this.

And so the last couple of weeks, we tested this with one of our clients, Amanda, and the first week of ads, it was a very slow campaign.

But here's what we saw yesterday.

We logged in and we saw that there's only been 11 leads, but seven of them have already signed up.

So seven have signed up for the premium programme.

And they all resonated towards the ad because of a certain case study in a certain video that we did.

And this was quite revealing because this is not just a person that they just opted in because it was a fancy little AI image.

They paid attention to a video, a person that they could relate to, understand, and felt a connection that, oh, well, this is the club for me because I can relate to these people.

I want to be like this.

I want to be part of this.

And when we calculated the cost, I think in Australian dollars, it was $83 a sign-up, which in my books, anything below $100 for a sign-up for a student, that's going to be worth, in her case, $2,700 if they stay for the year.

It's a pretty good return.

So there are a few things for you to think about.

Are you thinking, should we just be more persistent?

Do we have some good automations in play, good follow-up sequences?

And should we uplift the level of our content and our media?

And that will create, generate better leads and have better quality.

And sad to say, there's no agency that can do this for you.

It's got to come from the ground up.

It's got to, you got to capture the moments during the day and it doesn't take much.

It takes like five minutes, 10 minutes a day.

If you've got the strategy and you do that, and when you do that, nobody can compete with you being you, your graphics, your media winning formula.

Anyway, hope that helps.

If you need any help with this, there should be a message wherever you watch this video.

I'll catch you in the next one.

Cheers.

*FREE: Bring 50 Enrollments Into Your Martial Arts School Every 90 Days Need help growing your martial arts school? Watch Training + Take The Assessment

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Why Facebook’s latest update is changing how martial arts ads really work, and what school owners can do to stay ahead without relying on agencies.

• How Facebook’s Andromeda update reshapes martial arts ad targeting and what you should do first.
  
• Why your content strategy has become your new targeting system.
  
• The unseen cost of having no control over your Facebook ads.
• How building martial arts ad campaigns “from the mats up” can lift your results fast.
  
• Adapt your martial arts marketing as AI starts guiding ad targeting.
• And more.

 *FREE: Bring 50 Enrollments Into Your Martial Arts School Every 90 Days Need help growing your martial arts school? Watch Training + Take The Assessment

TRANSCRIPTION

If your martial arts Facebook ads are tanking right now, then listen up.

This is for you.

Welcome to the new Facebook algorithm update.

Now, you might have been seeing fluctuating ads all your life.

This is a little different though.

This is very different, and I urge you to pay attention to this Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast episode because I'm going to be going through what's changed, what's different, and how you should be approaching this from the ground up, all the way from your organic social media strategy all the way through to your ad campaigns.

So it's definitely time to not bury our heads in the sand anymore and depend on other people to just press all the buttons for us.

It's got to start from the ground up.

So this episode, I'm going to be covering what's different, what's changed, and how we are going about it with our martial arts school and our clients and helping them elevate their ad campaigns from the ground up.

Let's get stuck in.

So first up, a little bit of context.

I saw this update release back in December, and initially it was just for e-commerce brands, and so I didn't really pay much attention to it.

Actually, we've been avoiding it like a plague, to be fair, and it started to roll out more, and slowly we've started adapting our strategy.

Now, there's two schools of thought here.

We've got clients that are, their ads are humming and thriving like it always has.

And so nothing has really changed or got impacted by this update.

Then on the flip side, we have some new accounts that are really struggling to get traction.

And then there's a few in the middle where the changes are starting to roll through, and it's really made us zoom out and look at, all right, how are we going to be approaching this difference?

So what is this Facebook update?

And I don't know how to pronounce it properly, but apparently it's called Andromeda or Andromeda, that's how you spell it.

That is the update.

Let's call it Andromeda.

It sounds like a drama.

Anyway, so that's the update.

So what is this really?

In short, traditional targeting as we know it, targeting interest-based or you want to target parents or certain, maybe they're interested in martial arts or health and fitness or whatever the interest base is.

That's slowly starting to peel back.

So Facebook launched this thing called Advantage Plus where they want you to hand over, let them decide who is a potential student.

That's really what they want.

And I love AI, but I'm not a fan of ad platforms taking away controls because every time they take away controls, it means they try to dumb it down.

And by doing that, they just push the ad costs up.

And that's what we're seeing with this Andromeda update.

We've been avoiding it for so long, for so many months and, well, since December really.

And just recently I've started to see some of the updates roll out, and we started to experiment and kind of split test between not doing it and turning on the Advantage Plus settings and slowly started to see some differentiation and some instances where it is working better.

I kind of, like I say to my Partners clients on the weekly calls, feel like we're going to the dark side, but if this is what the Facebook platform is pushing, it's important for us to really look at everything that we do.

So in essence, it's probably going to get a little easier to run ad campaigns, but in that, there's going to be this little learning curve that we're going to have to go through, changing our strategy with media from the ground up.

I'm talking from organic social media posts all the way through to how we run ads.

And so this is what's brought us here.

So I want to urge you to do this.

I know for most martial arts school owners, you don't want anything to do with Facebook ads.

You just want to have somebody else press the buttons for you.

But this thinking about it is really what is holding so many martial arts school owners back.

Because by not knowing and just avoiding how marketing works, you are expecting somebody else, the expert, to know how marketing works.

And the reality is most of those experts are just outsourcing it to someone that doesn't know how it works.

And they're working off a Google doc and being told how to press the button.

So it's your business, your livelihood.

Marketing is the thing that propels it forward.

It helps to have just a little bit of understanding of how this works because it's going to impact you down the line.

And you can save a chunk of money just by understanding how to approach the strategy properly without being that dependent on everybody pressing the buttons.

That probably takes as long as all the meetings and feedback and communication that you've got to have with this company and all these meetings and so forth.

Doing a lot of the legwork yourself saves you so much time and brings in so much more cash flow for you with signing up more students.

Anyway, that's my little rant of taking ownership.

So what are we doing?

What's different?

So first up, the creative side is what is being pushed.

So, and I was going there and I might have not ended up there, but really with the targeting going away, the actual parent targeting or the martial arts interest base and all these different things, where the algorithm is now leaning in is creative becomes the actual targeting.

The way I think about this is if you think how algorithms have changed with Facebook Reels and people just mindlessly scrolling, of course I've never done it, but maybe once or twice, but if you think of the amount of information that gets shared with content and with Reels.

And the minute you pay attention to something a little bit longer, you're just paying attention, you've got your eyeballs on it, scroll one or two, three Reels down and you'll see the same type of content, the similar type of Reel.

Maybe it's like news generated content, or maybe it's something that's got a comedy edge to it.

Maybe it was a long video and now you're starting to see longer videos.

So you pay attention to different segments inside Instagram, inside Facebook, that is becoming the targeting and the algorithm can pinpoint you like this type of video and this type of media, and they keep serving you that type of content.

So there's content as in, is it carousels?

Is it images?

Is it a video?

Is it a certain type of video?

Is it a trending type video?

And so you've got all these things that are happening, then your interest base could be changing on what you are paying attention to.

So maybe you have a parent that is paying attention to the problem of screen time, too much screen time, and now you start getting served these things about screen time.

And the next ad you might start seeing martial arts, gets kids off the couch and gets them on the mats and gets the activity up.

And so now you've evolved and you're paying attention to that.

And then the next thing you're seeing an offer from a martial arts school.

And so what Facebook is trying to do with Andromeda is they're trying to actually dictate this entire system through the ad platform.

So in the past, where we used to think of, we have the top of the funnel, we got the middle of the funnel, we got the bottom of the funnel.

And if you're not familiar with those terms, top of funnel being your cold prospects, like people that don't know you, middle of funnel, people that have started paying attention to you and they are now paying attention to you as a brand.

And then you've got the bottom of the funnel, those that are probably by now know and trust you, and they're just ready to see an offer.

Actually, if you want to go see something funny, go to martialartsmedia.com/41.

If you're watching this on YouTube, I'm just clicking over to it right now.

It's called The Five Stages Of The Martial Arts Student Signup Cycle.

I did this eight years ago, 2017.

I covered the Eugene Schwartz model, the five stages of awareness, where prospects go from problem aware, solution aware, et cetera.

And so I covered that in this podcast episode.

And so this will give you a great idea of beardless George explaining how people go through these different levels of unaware, problem aware, solution aware, service aware, and most aware.

And so that will give you, zooming out, something to think about when you now do your Facebook ads, because what Facebook is attempting to do here is actually serve content to the potential prospect for the stage they are in.

And so there's things that's going to happen here with how we used to optimize ads that are now completely different because of this, because Facebook is trying to serve the right content with the right media at the right time for where people are in the buying cycle.

So as a marketer, it's pretty exciting stuff.

So here's what we're doing differently with our Martial Arts Media™ Partner clients: we've created a system called the martial arts Creative Motivator Map.

And it's basically looking at different motivators, like you have confidence, focus, discipline.

We got a list of about 15 and looked at what is the emotional driver?

What is the message theme?

And then creating an angle that you can approach with your organic social media, instead of having two different strategies of you've got a social media strategy, and you've got an ad strategy.

Ad strategy now starts for us with social media.

This is based on the research that we have, the tests that we have done.

This is where we're at.

It's still early days with this whole changeover.

So what I'm saying today, the strategy might change tomorrow based on new data.

But that is how we stay on top of it in our partners group, because we are always creating, always evolving, always testing.

And so if you want some help with that, reach out, find me on Instagram, send me a message and let's have a chat.

Otherwise, what I'll include in this episode is what we call the Martial Arts Creative Motivator Map.

So that'll give you a bit of a start.

It will show you what we are doing, what we are using, and how you can start creating different content elements to start serving your social media feed.

And that can become the strategy for how you start testing different ad campaigns within your Facebook ads.

So I'll leave it there.

I'll be doing some more updates on this.

It is a pretty exciting time to be a marketer.

I believe it's a great opportunity for martial arts school owners to really simplify and zoom out.

That's why if you've got somebody running your ads and somebody doing social and somebody at reception doing the email follow-ups, I urge you to look at how you can bring all that together, because it's both going to simplify how you go about things, going to amplify your results down the line and keep your brand authentic to the way you operate.

So if you want to grab a copy of the Martial Arts Creative Motivator Map, then head over to martialartsmedia.com/161.

That's the number of this episode.

I'll leave a link there for you to download a copy.

Anyway, that's it for me for now.

I will see you in the next episode.

Cheers.

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