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93 – Strategies From a High Performance Salon Coach To Pivot Your Martial Arts Business

March 30, 2020 by George Fourie Leave a Comment

Jason Everett, a high-performance salon coach, shares 3 main pillars to take advantage of with your martial arts business during uncertain times.

.IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

The 3 key strategies to implement before you pivot your martial arts business
Why you should double down on coaching
The hidden opportunity all martial arts school owners have right now
How to use your Facebook community to strengthen relationships with your students and instructors
And more

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.

TRANSCRIPTION

Now the question is, if you're being tested right now, how do you show up to be tested? Are you going to double down? Are you going to get more coaching education, understand more about your business and get lit up and on fire for what you're doing? Or are you going to be like, “Well, I guess we'll just shut this thing down and I'm going to go on vacation for a few weeks and come back.”

GEORGE: Hey, this is George Fourie and welcome to the Martial Arts Media Business Podcast. The first live Martial Arts Media Business Podcast, and…

JASON: Wow man, that's exciting. First live.

GEORGE: First live, and I've got a really awesome guest here today. Now, Jason Everett is not a martial artist, but-

JASON: I'm not. I'm not afraid of some martial arts though, let's be clear. I think it's amazing. I'm just not very good at any of them.

GEORGE: Here's why I'm bringing Jason on. So, first up he brings good energy. Good energy, a wealth of knowledge and he's in a completely opposite industry, but facing challenges way more than any martial arts school owner is right now.

JASON: Probably true, probably true.

GEORGE: And so let me just hand it over to Jason. If you could just give us a quick couple of minutes, who you are, what you do and we'll go from there.

JASON: Yeah. Well first of all man, thanks for doing this and what you do for martial arts studio owners is extraordinary. I mean I know you do some incredible work for them and I would just say to you guys as a community, now more than ever you need what George is doing. And I say that because I just have seen inside our own group and because I run a group of salon owners.

So basically what I do is I work inside the salon, spa, beauty industry, barber shops all over the world to help them to increase the amount of take home income that they have, to grow their staff, to grow in locations and to really start creating wealth in their lives for salons. And the reason why I do that is that only 7% of salons actually make a profit, 20% of them are breaking even and the rest of them actually go backwards to go to work every single day.

So if you run a martial arts studio or a dojo or whatever you would call your place that you operate, is that if you could imagine trying to run your business and knowing that only 7% make money, that's pretty crazy, right? So salon owners very often, like for you guys in the martial arts industry, they love what they do but they're not always the best business owners. Right?

And I know that's very true and the reason why I say that… so I work with these salon owners all over the world. I've worked a lot in the corporate space with the salon and spa industry and I've done tons of work there, but I want you to know my background is actually… I come from being a dance instructor.

I was a ballroom dance instructor over 20 plus years ago and I've worked in outside sales, I've worked in advertising and marketing and all these different arenas. And the reason why I say that is because martial arts, dance instructors, even a hairdresser, all those things, those are very hands-on professions, right?

So if you think about the massage industry, you physically touch people. You guys might… I was going to say I'm going to make a karate joke about chopping them, but you know what I'm saying? The idea is that you guys are a hands-on industry. Gyms, dojos, all these places are very hands on and so when they say, “Hey, social distancing. Please do me a favor and don't ever touch anybody again,” or at least for 30, 60, 90 days or into the future, this whole idea of ‘don't touch your people’ becomes a very big challenge, especially for our clients.

We have salon owners all over the world, and by the way if you can relate to any of this, do me a favor and comment in the comment section below and say relate, because I want to know if you guys are connecting with this and it's helping you. But this idea is as soon as in the US and probably 90% of our clients have now completely shut down, they can't run any sort of business.

And like George and I were talking before, you guys, if you really want to, you could run martial arts classes online right now and it's really hard for a salon owner to say, “Okay, take out that really crappy pair of scissors in your drawer and take your hair, hold it up and let's go to town.” That's not going to happen, but you guys have a unique opportunity right now to pivot and to change some of your business model, even though it's going to be probably like a baby deer trying to walk on ice for the very first time, you at least have the opportunity to still maintain your income.

I was just on the phone and hope it's okay for me to tell you this. I was just on the phone, literally about five minutes before this with a friend of mine who still owns a dance studio. The guy, one of my good friends, he's been my best friend for over 25 years, he owns a dance studio and I was watching him in his living room teach classes.

He had his phone up and he had his iPhone and he had the lights up and his wife is walking around showing me he's teaching lessons on Zoom and I was like, “You go man, that's awesome.” He's still teaching private lessons in his house and walking around and dancing and showing people what to do.

So I guess background, but the other thing I would just say is would you guys please do me a favor and not get discouraged? Because when we look at what's happening right now, I just believe it's a test for you to decide, do you have really the chops that you need to have as a business owner to make it in a really tough time, or are you going to be one of those people who throws in the towel quits and says, “Forget it, I'm out of here. I guess I better go get a job doing what I've always loved, being a garbage man.”

Which is probably not any of you, but I'm just saying that's the choice you get to make here and the universe hands you this choice and it's asking you to step up and I love George, you're doing so much to serve these people and really help them and grow the community because the community needs to be tighter than it's ever been before.

GEORGE: Jason, so you're talking about having chops. I'd love to know what are you doing to inspire your clients because there is not really plan B. So what do you actually-

JASON: There's not really a plan B. There's one little plan B. The only little plan B that's going on right now is a lot of our clients very quickly pivoted and they're doing what's called root rescue, which they're giving… They're doing hair dye, because a lot of people come in and get the hair dyed or blow dried and all the other services, so they're actually still selling retail products because people still are on video calls.

You've got to make your hair look good. People still have their roots growing out, they have all these other services, so we do have some clients who are able to go in and do some very basic Amazon style. Sell some products and half come out of their business. But we're talking to people about literally laying off their entire workforce except for some key employees and making it through.

So, here's what we're doing from a strategy standpoint. There are three main pillars that we're talking about with all of our salon owners. Number one, you need to be able to stabilize what the heck is going on. You need to be able to stabilize your team, stabilize your business, decide what can I stop paying for? What can't I stop paying for?

And we were really clear is that we said, “Look, you've got to stop paying for things that you don't need right now and double down on the things that you do need.” In fact, I have doubled all of my coaching sessions with every single one of my coaches in the group that we're in.

I just upgraded them now going to the board room group, which costs me twice as much money to do what I'm doing. And I'm doubling down on the amount of mental health and strategy that I'm getting as a professional. I'm asking my clients to do the same thing, but I'm telling my clients, because they're not closing, I'm like, “Look, I'm going to go…” We normally provide inside any given month for our clients, we do two webinars a week and we do a destination training once every four months.

I was like, ah that ain't going to cut it, so I literally started doing every morning at 6:00 AM, we're doing mindset calls. So Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday I do a mindset call at 6:00 AM. I have called in every personal favor that I have with every one of the highest profile, coolest friends that I have, to come in and jump on that call. And we've actually been doing that for over two weeks now. We're in our second week of doing that and it's actually second week plus.

So we're doubling down and I'm like, “Look, we're running a call every day, plus we're running our Monday call and we're running our Wednesday call.” And our group is on fire because they're talking every day and people are sharing, here's what I'm doing, here's what I'm doing, here's what I'm doing.

And so if you're not engaged in the Facebook community that I'm sure George has, make sure that you're sharing what the best ever practices are because that thing that you might not think a big idea, what's happening in our group right now, is people are sharing an idea and then it's snowballing.

So one gal said, “Hey I'm doing this root rescue thing,” and this other gal said, “I'm using baby food containers to fill up hair color,” and then this other gal said, “I got on TV,” and this other guy… So they're one upping each other on all these cool things that they're doing and the whole group is elevating in spirits and in ideals and all those things.

And in addition to doing all of that, I'm literally doing daily lives. Anybody who calls to ask, I'm doing a live with them. I'm also bringing them on my shows and doing everything I can to make sure that every single day people are encouraged, because in a world where everyone is discouraged, there needs to be more encouragement. I'm just on that path, trying to be as encouraging as possible because hell yeah, it's hard, but this is where business owners are made or broken.

I don't know about you guys, but you guys are martial arts guys, right? You know you got to break people down sometimes to build them back up. This is just the world breaking you down. It's just saying, do you have what it takes? Are you that business owner that's going to rise to the occasion and do something extraordinary, or are you going to remain an ordinary business owner?

Because ordinary business owners, ordinary martial artists… you know, I'm like a loser martial artist. I've had a couple of sessions. My dad used to be big into Tai Chi and we used to do all kinds of stuff and I've done some karate, but I'm just like a baby junior cub scout, right?

I've had some exposure. I can't imagine that every single one of the owners that is in your program is not an absolute consummate professional, expert, award-winning champion tournament winning expert.

So now the question is, if you're being tested right now, how do you show up to be tested? Are you going to double down? Are you going to get more coaching and education and understand more about your business and get lit up and on fire for what you're doing? Or are you going to be like, “Well I guess we'll just shut this thing down and I'm going to go on vacation for a few weeks and come back.”

So, I was in my list and then I just started ranting, sorry. So I went into… The first thing we're doing is we're teaching how to stabilize, stabilize is number one, right? Stabilize what's happening in your business. Number two, you've got to get organized. You've got to organize what are you going to do between now and when you can open?

And by the way, that might be 30, 60 or 90 days. I'm hoping it's more towards the 30 or less, but let's assume it's 90. Even if it's 90 freaking days, you can survive 90 days. You got this. I'm not even worried about you.

So we talk about how you get bridge financing? How do you borrow what you can from the bank? And hopefully you'll get some given by the government, we'll see. But borrow what you can, survive on what you can. Go down to your bare minimal staff.

And then third, I just want to say this, because this is the part that I'm the most excited about and it changes my mindset every time I think about it. The other side of this is going to be the greatest transfer of wealth in our entire lives.

I don't think people get this, is that right now all of the crappy martial arts owners are going to go back and get jobs as garbage men, we already talked about that. But the martial arts studio owners that pivot to online quickly, they call up every one of their students and say, “Look, we have trained you for battle every single day of your entire life, it's time to battle with us. Here's what we're going to do.

And even though the battle's not a physical battle, it's a mental battle. Here's what we're doing to keep you sharp until you can come back into class with us.” That's just totally a different positioning, right?

You've got your kids at home? You need to be more prepared. You've got your wife on you every single minute of every single day? Even more prepared. It is more time for you to get that discipline dialed into your brain. So get up early, stay up late, do whatever we've got to do and your job is to be that bright spot, the keeper of the light for every single one of your clients. And if you become that keeper of the light for them, every single one of them will remember what you did for them when they were struggling.

You won't keep everybody, but you will keep a lot. And the ones that you keep focused will stay addicted to you, and that is where you've got to capitalize. I said the third thing, right? Stabilize, organize, capitalize. That is where they will become addicted to you and they will be able to grow. They will be able to flourish and you will come back even stronger and even better. You'll just have better looking muscles when you come out of this thing. So anyway, I know I'm just going off here, but I hope it's helpful George. You've got to let me know if I'm on the right track.

GEORGE: Yeah man, it's totally awesome and what you're saying is just being collective in a group where you've got this energy. I've been talking to our Partners group the last couple of days and every time we map out this plan, it's just evolving because there's no script for it.

JASON: There's no script for any of us, bro. That's the good news. Nobody's got the damn script. There's nobody who has the advantage right now, and I think I've said this the other day on another show. Super, super important. What I know is that if you and I were going to go into a martial art show showdown, because you have a martial arts background, right?

GEORGE: Yeah.

JASON: Yeah. I don't have a salon owner background, just so you know. But you have a martial arts background. If you and I were going to step into an arena and we were going to have a physical battle, I know you would kick my ass. I have no doubts in my mind. You know enough to hurt me very badly, I have no doubt, right?

But here's the thing, the cool thing is you're going through something you've never been through before. I'm going through something I've never been through before. Everybody else out there is going through something else they've never been through before. And here's why I'm not scared for a second. Okay? Is that when everything is equal, I know I will outwork everyone.

GEORGE: Nice.

JASON: That's it. I just know I will outwork you. I will outperform you. I will out-knowledge you. I will outperform everything because I've been practicing for the most random crap ever in life. I've been smacked in the face. I've been fired before. I've been in all these other scenarios that I've had no money in my bank account. I know how to build back from zero.

And I've said before, if somebody took away my entire business, could I build it back? My answer was hell yes. So it's not some one taking it away, it's some random thing that may or may not take away.

But if I had to rebuild it all again… let's say my whole life got reset in 90 days, I'll just rebuild it again and I'd rebuild it a hell of a lot faster than the first time I built it. You know what I mean? If I've got to move in with my parents, then I move in with my parents. It's never going to happen, but I'm just saying if I had to, I'll do whatever it takes, man. My job is to provide for my family, provide for the people who rely on me, and I'll do whatever it takes to make sure I make it out right on the other side.

GEORGE: I just want to repeat what you just said, because if any school owner, if you're thinking you had competition, you don't have it right now. The playing field has just gone level and nobody is… Yeah, someone might have a few more resources than you, but the playing field is equal and if you can rise up and step it up, you're going to come out of this a lot better than you were a couple of months ago.

JASON: Yeah. And by the way you guys, do me a favor if you're on this live or if you're watching later, type in what is the thing you're connecting with the most right now. What's the piece that's firing you up? Because my assumption is that when I get on the phone and I talk to anybody, I'm going to fire some people up and I always want to be in that spot, right?

I want to get something inside your core to get pissed off so that you do something. Is it like, “Damn, why is this guy more fired up than I am?” Or like, “Why is he saying that I'm going to be the loser who gets wiped out on the other side of this?” Because what would you say in a martial arts environment? Step into a ring, an arena, an octagon, what are we talking about here? What would you say? Step into a what?

GEORGE: Step on the mat. Step on the ring. Step in the octagon.

JASON: Step on the mat, step in the ring.

GEORGE: Yup.

JASON: Here's what I would say. If you step on the mat or step in the ring, you know that your mindset either takes you out or lifts you up before you step on that mat. The problem is everybody's standing on the mat with the wrong damn mindset right now.

Oh no, this unknown thing that we have no control over is going to take us out, and it's like, just because it's an unknown and it's like this is an opponent I've never faced before. No shit, so is everybody else. Everybody else hasn't dealt with it either.

And I don't know about you man, but I just have always felt in my entire life, every day I… and it sounds cheesy, but every day is a gift. You've heard that before, right? But I really do believe this, is that I really thought that every single day I could walk out the door and get hit by a bus, take me out.

I just believed that that could happen at any point in time, so here's what I know, is if my gift is to be able to breathe life into other people by helping them understand that they are way more capable than anything they've ever thought possible, right? Everybody's had that taste of like, “Oh, I could be better at this.” Everybody's had that taste, and every time you do something, you get better and you get better and you get better.

So we all have this gift to be able to improve and get better. Since we were little children, we've all improved, gotten better, and gotten better and gotten better, and we've done this acceleration. So there's room for every single person to get better. And what I know is that my gift is helping people realize that they're capable of way more than they are right now.

And if I didn't get hit by a bus this morning and I'm still freaking here, I got more to do. So if I have one conversation in my life, right? If I have a conversation with you and it prevents you from… I'm talking to you one day, we're casually walking down the street and you go to step out in front of a bus and I grab your shoulder and pull you back and I saved your life.

Whether it's literally mentally or physically or whatever, and I'm on my purpose for what I should be done to do, and I get taken up that day in whatever capacity I get taken up in, then dude I lived the best life I could possibly live, but every day that I get to wake up and breathe, it's another opportunity for me to help one more person.

Maybe there's only one person that watches this whole show and they're like, “Holy crap, that changed everything for me.” Dude, that's why I did it. I'm 100%.

But I'm hoping it's going to be more like 20 or 40 or 100 or 5,000 or whoever the hell wants to listen because you deserve to know that you're capable of way more and every single one of you is, I'm sure more of a bad ass physically, mentally and emotionally than I am. I'm sure.

I have no doubt in my mind because of how disciplined you are. Discipline for me is one of the hardest things, but don't let your discipline down right now in this moment. This is when you should be… This is when your discipline is getting tested. This is the ultimate test for your discipline that you guys apply every single day.

GEORGE: Love your energy. Anything else? I want to be respectful of your time as well. I know you're a busy guy.

JASON: Yeah, we've got a lot going on. But dude, yeah… I mean, what do you think would be the most helpful thing that I could share? Or in your mind, what question do you think…? If you had to pretend that you knew every single mind of every single one of your school owners and businesses that you work with, what do you think they really need to know right now? What do you think their question is?

GEORGE: I would say reconfirmation of where the opportunity lies here. I've been begging martial arts school owners to do videos for years, and all of a sudden everyone's doing it.

JASON: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

GEORGE: So that's perfect. Where do you think this shift is going? And if you had to focus on one thing right now, where would you place all your energy?

JASON: I said this to my salon owners. I said there's a really good book out there called Who Moved My Cheese, okay? And if you haven't read that book, it's a good book that you should read and just be aware of.

And basically what it talks about is you put these mice in this maze and there's a piece of cheese at the end of this maze that they go find. And they let the mice go for however long they go, a couple of weeks and they get really conditioned to that's where the cheese is.

And then the experimenters or the scientists grab the cheese, move it to another place in the maze and the responses of some of those mice is that some of the mice go right back to the cheese over and over, or right back to where they think the cheese will be, over and over and over again.

And at some point those mice… I don't know if mice pout, but the mice just sit there and they go, “I'm waiting for the cheese. It's supposed to be here. There's no more cheese.” And they either run back to the beginning or back to there and they just go, “Well there's no more cheese anymore.” And they give up.

Then there's the mice that just forget all together and could care less. They just say, “You know what? I'm not going to run the maze anymore because there's no more cheese. It's totally been removed from my world and I'm done.” And then there's the mice that go, “Well, there's got to be cheese somewhere else in this maze.” And they start searching for new paths. Your job right now is to search for the new path to get the cheese.

I want you to hear this. People have more money than they've ever had before. I eat out almost every single day and I've eaten out twice in the last week. So do you think I have more money or less money right now? More.

I usually fly three times a month to different cities. Well guess what I didn't do? I didn't fly. So guess how much more money I have? I have more money now than I've ever had before because all my expenses have been reduced to basically zero. Don't get me wrong, I have a bit of an online shopping habit that's now getting a little bigger, but my point is that most people believe it or not, even though you're thinking, but Jason, my clients have been laid off. Some of them, yes, but not all of them. Not all of them.

I've heard unemployment in the US might go up to 30%. That's the crazy number they think it may go to. That means 70% of people are still employed, so don't let that idea that ‘all of my clients are gone’ is going to do it.

What I'm saying about this cheese analogy and all this other stuff that I just want you to get, is that, yeah, you know what? Maybe temporarily you're going to need to go to an online dojo, but I just want to let you know it's going to change.

We're not going to stay locked in our houses from now until the end of time. I mean, it's not going to happen. I can't foresee that happening. We're going to go through it. We're going to get through whatever that is.

And again, put a 30, 60, 90-day plan in place, weather that storm and hopefully your business is strong enough to weather that storm. If not, schedule an emergency session with George and the team and go how the hell do I plan this out because I don't know how I'm going to do it?

And by the way, that's why you need a frigging coach on your side to help you, so you're not trying to put together your own crazy ass plan, right? Get some real advice on this. This is probably a test for you to say, “Look, how good are you at technology?” Do you suck at it?

Because what I've told people is what used to be a nicety, like, “Oh it'd be nice if we had online classes. It'd be nice if I had a website that people could buy classes on. It'd be nice if I could do it online. It'd be nice if we do all these things.” Well look, all those niceties have become necessities. Okay?

And so all of these things like for me, I've got high-end camera gear and audio gear and all this other stuff because I do classes like this and there's a lot of things that I've had to do over the years to kind of adapt and overcome because of how I wanted to run my business and I just shared a video. I shared… Three years ago, I ran a company called The Video Rock Star Academy teaching people, and the whole video was how do you future proof your business?

And it made sure no matter what happens, you can stay on top of the curve. And I said you better know about video marketing. Three years ago I said that. Guess what the number one thing is I'm teaching right now George?

GEORGE: Video marketing.

JASON: Video freaking marketing. How to do video? How do you show up on camera? What do you need to do? Because people are going, “I don't even know. How do I turn my phone on and make it work? And Facebook and like…” I'm not meaning to insult anybody, but you're five years behind the rest of the learning curve so get with it, get on track, pivot and understand that pivot's not forever. Maybe you're independently wealthy enough that you can just survive for 90 days without worrying about it.

But you know what? This is a perfect opportunity for you to teach everyone on your staff how to use video, how to use technology, and how to do it. And it's your job as the leader of your school, of your dojo, of whatever it is that you have. It's your job to step up and be that leader because your staff needs you more than they ever have.

And all those things that you teach them, you've got to exude. It's got to seep out of your pores man, because you guys talk about leadership and discipline and all that other stuff. It's your turn to be the leaders and to be disciplined and do all those things.

Anyway man, I hope this has been helpful. I hope it was powerful, man.

GEORGE: Totally. Jason, ever so grateful. Thank you so much for jumping on.

JASON: Yeah, man.

GEORGE: We'll give virtual fist pumps.

JASON: I've got digital knuckles brother, that's how that works for me. Digital knuckles, that's how this happens.

GEORGE: That's cool. Hey Jason.

JASON: Thanks so much for having me on man.

GEORGE: Thanks so much. Is there anything we can do for you just to say thanks? Give you a thumbs up somewhere?

JASON: Dude. Here's what I would say, if any of you guys want to stock any of the stuff that I do, you can find me online. Just go onto Facebook. You can find me at facebook.com/… If you want to find me personally, because my salon owner stuff may not apply to you, but just go online. You can find it at, it's Mr. Jason Everett. Very fancy, Mr. Jason Everett, or just search Jason Everett.

I'm connected with George on here, but what I would just say is, here's the one thing any of you guys could do for me. If you go on my page and you track down anything and you see it, here's my request. If you see something and it ever speaks to you, share it for me.

The best thing you can ever give me as a gift is not your money. It's your ability to reach one more person. If you help me reach one more person with what I do, even if it's a salon owner piece of content and you're like, “You know what, but it was really inspiring,” just share it on your page because you know what? I know every single one of you, most of you, have hair on your head and you probably go to the salon or a barber shop or something like that and I would love to be introduced to more people.

So if you could help me fulfill my mission to meet more people and to help serve more, that would be what I would ask man, come track me down and you can find me at jasoneverett.com on any of the socials. Just track me down, connect, share some of my stuff. I would be eternally grateful.

GEORGE: Awesome. Jason, thanks so much for taking your time to share your message with us. Super helpful, love your energy.

JASON: My pleasure man.

GEORGE: I'll speak to you soon.

JASON: George, keep doing what you do, brother. Keep up the good fight and keep disciplined. All right dude, talk to you soon.

GEORGE: Thank you. Cheers.

JASON: Bye.

Awesome. Thanks for listening. If you want to connect with other top and smart martial arts school owners, and have a chat about marketing, lead generation, what's working now, or just have a gentle rant about things that are happening in the industry, then I want to invite you to join our Facebook group.

It's a private Facebook group and in there, I share a lot of extra videos and downloads and worksheets – the things that are working for us when we help school owners grow and share a couple of video interviews and a bunch of cool extra resources.

So it's called the Martial Arts Media Business Community and an easy way to access it is, if you just go to the domain named martialartsmedia.group, so martialaartsmedia.group, g-r-o-u-p, there's no .Com or anything, martialartsmedia.group. That will take you straight there. Request to join and I will accept your invitation.

Thanks – I'll speak to you on the next episode – cheers!

Here are 3 ways we can help scale your school right now.

1. Join the Martial Arts Media community.

It's our new Facebook community where martial arts school owners get to ask questions about online marketing and get access to training videos that we don't share elsewhere – Click Here.

2. Join the Martial Arts Media Academy and become a Case Study.

I'm working closely with a group of martial arts school owners this month. If you'd like to work with me to help you grow your martial arts school, message me with the word ‘Case Study'.

3. Work with me and my team privately.

If you would like to work with me and my team to scale your school to the next level, then message me with the word ‘private'… tell me a little about your business and what you would like to work on together and I'll get you all the details.

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92 – How To Stop Students From Canceling

March 23, 2020 by George Fourie 1 Comment

In uncertain times, cancelations can escalate quickly. Here's a strategy you can implement right now to retain more members.

.IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

How to adjust your martial arts business plans in uncertain times
Tips on how to run engaging online classes
Sympathize vs. empathize
And more

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.

TRANSCRIPTION

If students want to cancel, what is the plan? What is the plan that we need to implement, and how do we really install certainty? Let's look at this. Why do people want to cancel right now? Well, they're uncertain and there's some fear of the unknown.

Hey George, I hope you're well. I want to talk about how to stop students canceling their memberships right now. Right now we are in a bit of a challenging time in the martial arts industry. People are fearful, they aren't making rational decisions and they want to cancel their memberships. I want to give you a plan to navigate through that and stop your students from canceling and do what's the best thing for them right now. Let's explore the situation.

First up, and I was just discussing this with one of our Partners members, Peter, in a game plan session. We were looking at, all right, well if students want to cancel, what is the plan? What is the plan that we need to implement and how do we really install certainty?

Because, let's look at this. Why do people want to cancel right now? Well, they're uncertain and there's some fear of the unknown. There's some fear of the unknown, and because there's fear, people would rather cancel things, horde, sit back, try and protect. So conversation has changed from aspirational to survival, okay?

That's the first situation that we're facing, is the whole frame of people's mindsets have completely changed in the matter of a week as of the time of recording this. People want to cancel because they are uncertain. Now, how do we remove uncertainty? Well, we give a plan. This is why it's so important to be on top of the situation about what's happening in the world right now, because you want to be that source of inspiration.

You've been training for this your entire life. As your martial arts school owner, you have been teaching confidence, resilience, all this that you've been through is what's going to count for you right now, because this is your opportunity to lead.

Let's be realistic. These people are fearful. If you can be that source of confidence, and help people see a plan for the future, then people are going to bond with you more than they ever did before. Right now is your time to lead, and step up, and show the path to how we are going to navigate through this.

First up, what are you going to need? You're going to need a plan. You're going to need a plan, and I'll share with you how you can get a plan for free from us right now. You're going to need a plan. Now let's look at how we handle this conversation.

In our Partners program, we've got a program called Sales 101. Sales 101 Strategy. It's all about really establishing the value, more so pointing out the real value, focusing on the real reason why people want to train martial arts.

I'll give a quick example. I'm sure you get the objection. How much is this? Our strategy for that is to steer the conversation away from price and to the real reason, because let's face it, it's never about the price, it's about they just don't know what to ask, right?

So, it's easier to ask for the pricing. Yep. It might be for the price sometimes, but really people don't know what to ask, and they don't know what martial arts is going to provide for them.

It's important to always take conversations back to, well, what is it that you actually want out of this? So, if somebody does ask you for the price, it's good to say, “Cool, I'm happy to talk about the price, but is it okay if I just ask you a few questions just to make sure if our martial arts programs are right for you or not?” Okay, cool. Now you've shifted a logical price conversation to an emotional drive conversation, okay?

Let me show you how we use this strategy right now to stop cancellations. Well, somebody wants to cancel. Now we can approach this with two mindsets. One, sympathize. Sympathizing is not the right way to go, obviously. Now, why would you sympathize? Because, potentially if you've been soaking up everything that's going on in the media, and you're feeling fearful, and you're scared of what's coming, your head might be in the sand right now.

If your head's in the sand, and not looking forward, and somebody else is saying they want to cancel, you might just sympathize because you actually feel the same way, and you think that there's no other alternative. You might just say “It's okay. We totally understand.”

Okay, so sympathizing is one way. We don't want to go there. What would we want to do is empathize, empathize, and then we want to lead, okay? How that might play out is somebody says, “I want to cancel.”

We don't disagree with them and say, “Yes, look, totally cool. I get that you want to cancel, and I know that things are a little uncertain right now.” But then we transitioned to leadership. “But is it okay if we just stall this cancel conversation just for a little bit, because what I really want to talk about more importantly is about you.”

Maybe you can even pause there, right, let's talk about you. What's going on in your life right now? How are things going? This is an opportunity for you to bond with your students, lead and bond. Now you can get someone talking about their situation and what's going on. This is where you really just need to listen. The more you can listen, the more you're going to connect, and the more you're going to establish a relationship here.

Now you can start shifting the conversation back, as we did with a price objection, and we can look at it and say, “Okay, just curious. Can you recall why you started training martial arts with us?”, and get them talking about that? “What was the real thing that you needed to get out of your martial arts training?” It was X, Y, and Z.

Okay. Now, person, let me ask you a serious question yet here. With all this happening in the world right now, do you think it's going to be a wise move to start neglecting your health, and not exercising, and not training anymore? No, of course not because it's not, right?

What is the most important thing right now? It's health, it's safety, it's security, it's looking after ourselves. If we don't look after ourselves, then we can't be our best for everyone else around us. If there's one thing that's more important right now it's martial arts, and now the conversation has shifted.

This is where you have an opportunity to present your plan. Say, “Look, I understand things are like this right down. But if your health is important to you as you say it is,” Or maybe not frame it in a way that sounds, just come from a good place of intent, because you care, and that's why you are having this conversation, and this is why I'm having this conversation with you, because I really care about you staying afloat and you making your business navigating through this, right?

Now you can shift and really discuss your plan. Say, “Look, as you say, your health is important to you, and this is important to you. So, here is what we are going to do.” Affirm it. “This is what we are going to do. Right now, we've reduced our classes, we've done this, we're going online.” Now you've got to present the plan.

But here's why it's important that you've got the plan. Because if you don't have a plan, you can't deliver an alternative, and right now you want to be ahead of the plan. So if anything else happens, you know governments, things, start to do things and shut things down or whatever they do, you want to be ahead of this.

You need a plan. Now, if you don't have a plan yet, I spent the last weekend when things started to unfold and I spent 48 hours. Told my family I'm staying at the office, and I recorded in total about 15 videos to show you exactly how you can make a pivot. It's called the Martial Arts Pivot Plan, and it's about how to take your classes online.

Now, a lot of people are talking about this. I've been doing this for about 10 years. I've been living in this digital world for 10 years, and that's why I really wanted to get this out.

Because, if there's something that I know that I could really help with, it's a world I already live in, and for me it's just backtracking, taking a few steps back, and showing you how you can go about this the right way.

Because, a lot of guys are talking about doing it and I see a lot of guys showing off fancy TVs and equipment, and to me that creates obstacles because it's not about that. There's other elements that are way more important than fancy equipment. It's about getting it right and getting it going fast and being able to leverage what you do on the back-end.

So, look, I've put this training together for you. It's 100% free, as in 100% free. It's there, it's uploaded into our member’s area. If you go to martialartsmedia.com/online-class, so martialartsmedia.com/online-class, that will take you there. Just log in, we'll email you a username and password, get stuck in, but please, if you're watching this, do that right now. Do not delay. Do that. Go through the videos.

If you get value out of it, just share it. Please share it with someone else. Please share it with another school owner that could benefit from this right now. If you've got any questions, reach out to me wherever you watch this video, and ask me a question or you can join our free Facebook group, martialartsmedia.group, so martialartsmedia.group, not.com, .group and just click to join there. I will approve that and let you in and all of this.

Good luck. There are options, right? This is not doomsday. This is a little dip, and we're going to move through this, but it's important just to do the right things right now, and capitalize on the opportunity. Because, if you have time now to add value to your existing programs, add value to your existing membership, and really an opportunity to provide more value to your existing student base, which is really what this is about, they make use of the time and do it.

Look, I hope that it's useful. Grab that course, get it going and let me know how you go. All the best. I'm rooting for you. You've got this. Speak soon. Cheers.

Thanks – I'll speak to you on the next episode – cheers!

Here are 3 ways we can help scale your school right now.

1. Join the Martial Arts Media community.

It's our new Facebook community where martial arts school owners get to ask questions about online marketing and get access to training videos that we don't share elsewhere – Click Here.

2. Join the Martial Arts Media Academy and become a Case Study.

I'm working closely with a group of martial arts school owners this month. If you'd like to work with me to help you grow your martial arts school, message me with the word ‘Case Study'.

3. Work with me and my team privately.

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91 – How To Train And Teach Martial Arts With A Disability

January 24, 2020 by George Fourie Leave a Comment

Sam Broughton proves that anything is possible and shares how to overcome the challenges of training martial arts with cerebral palsy.

.IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

How Sam copes with his limitations and overcomes challenges in training martial arts
The common barriers that people with disabilities face when trying out martial arts
How martial arts can benefit people who are disabled or have cerebral palsy
Sam’s mindset in running a martial arts school in a small town with small population
And more

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.

TRANSCRIPTION

I think a lot of people or almost everyone that walks into a martial arts school has a really good idea of where they would like to be. They also generally know quite well what their limitations are and what things are stopping them to get there. The thing that a lot of people really struggle with is those smaller steps in between. So they know the start point and they know the endpoint, but they're not sure on the thing they should focus on first.

GEORGE: Cool. Hey, this is George and welcome to another Martial Arts Media Business Podcast. Today, I'm chatting with a good friend of mine, Sam Broughton. Now, fortunately enough, I speak with Sam pretty frequently. He’s part of our Partners program where I work with school owners and help them with their lead generation and marketing and so forth.

So we chat on a frequent basis, but I really wanted to bring Sam on because he's a wealth of knowledge, lives in a very small town in Port Lincoln, which people say they live in a small town and they can't reach a market. Sam is about to squash that whole idea, as well. And, yeah. We've got some interesting things to chat about. So, hey. Welcome to the call, Sam.

SAM: Thanks very much, George.

GEORGE: Cool. So just to kick things off, if you could give us just a bit of a background. Who is Sam? How did you get into martial arts and how did your whole journey evolve?

SAM: Okay, cool. So as you said, I run a martial arts school here in Port Lincoln. I teach standup self-defence, Muay Thai, and some Brazilian jiu-jitsu. I started martial arts around 20 years ago now, when I was 14 years old, training in stand-up, I was training in Zen Do Kai. I always wanted to do some martial arts, but it was something that I wasn't sure whether I'd be able to do.

Actually, I have a physical disability called cerebral palsy that affects my legs, balance, coordination, that kind of thing. So I was always inspired by martial arts movies, Bruce Lee, the same kind of stuff most people are getting into martial arts for initially, but I just needed to find the right open-minded instructor that was willing to take me on. And from there, I never looked back.

GEORGE: Awesome. Cool. And we'll chat a bit more about that, but I guess just to touch on the business side of things and just for everyone listening, it's Spektrum Martial Arts. Spektrum with a K. I want to backtrack more into your journey, but how do you find running a school in a smaller town? Are there certain challenges that you're aware of or is it just, hey, this is just the way it is and we just do what we do, either way?

SAM: The obvious challenge, I guess, would be the population density. We've got about 16,000 people in Port Lincoln, itself, and some smaller outlying communities. There's definitely that, as a challenge. But I guess the other thing, too, is less competition we are the only full-time school here.

Initially, I always thought of the population thing as a challenge, but then when I actually looked at the amount of students that I needed and that I envisioned for my business and the actual percent of the population that that was, that made it seem like a more manageable task.

GEORGE: Okay. So you started martial arts when you were 14.

SAM: Yep, that's right.

GEORGE: Okay. Having the disability, cerebral palsy, how did you overcome that to actually take a step? Were there sporting things that you did before you got into martial arts? Or how did you go about that?

SAM: There were some sports I tried, some team sports in different things, and some of those experiences were good, some not so good. But I think the thing that really kind of pushed me in my childhood to try things was the way I was raised.

I've got a twin brother that I grew up with and an older sister but, especially having a twin brother, he has fully able-bodied so, while he wanted to ride bush bikes and climb trees and do all those normal things, I just kind of followed along behind and just found my own way to do it.

And my mum, especially, she never really wrapped me up in cotton wool, although she probably wanted to. She never told me I couldn't do anything. She always just encouraged me just to give it a go, modify things where I needed to, and I got pretty good at finding a different way to get the same result.

GEORGE: All right. So in your experience, what type of challenges did you face just up until before the whole martial arts thing even started? What type of challenges do you face, just on a day to day, just getting through things? And especially from the childhood stage.

SAM: Yeah. I had a bunch of surgeries, corrective surgeries, as a kid. So there was definitely that. Lots of rehabs, learning to walk again, those kinds of things. In and out of the hospital. I had to be very focused and very disciplined working through all my rehabilitation. So that was tough.

Because of those things, I kind of stood out at school because, quite often, I was in a wheelchair. I had plaster or walking stick and those kinds of things. So that was a little bit tricky, always explaining to people what was going on, getting looks from people in the street and all that kind of thing I grew up with.

And everyone's always asking the question, especially kids who don't necessarily understand, “Oh, what's happening with your legs? How come you walk like that?” All those sorts of things. Most people were just genuinely curious, so I got pretty good at handling that.

And then, obviously, I had a little bit of the more so discrimination, derogatory type things. That was mostly a minimum. I think, too, because I had a pretty tight circle of friends around me, they kept a lot of that out of the way, as well.

GEORGE: I would just think that would be probably the toughest thing to handle, as a kid. Bullying, as in a big sense, people getting bullied about just simple things. And for you, you actually have a real challenge. It's not like someone's laughing at you, hey, because you've got a booger wiped on your shirt.

It's not just something happening, an embarrassing moment. You've got a real thing that you've got to deal with every day and you've kind of got to make peace with that it's not really going away. I guess you feel fortunate. You were saying that you had a family that really supported you and so forth. How do you find that people, in general, with your situation, actually deal with that? How do you really overcome all those tougher challenges?

SAM: Well, for me, I was born like this. It might've been different if I was fully able-bodied and then there was some kind of accident to cause me to be this way, but I was always like this. It was my everyday life, from day one.

So I was used to finding different ways to do things and overcome challenges and things like that. I struggled quite a bit when I was younger, sometimes understanding why people would treat me differently because this was normal for me. It was everything that I'd ever had.

And when people talked about, “Oh, you've got a disability,” or, “You're not the same as everyone else,” that kind of thing, I didn't really understand that as a kid because I was kind of like, “Well, I'm just like you. This is the way that I've always been.”

But then, as I said, on the other side of that, I had a lot of people encouraging me, helping me along, willing to work with me, sometimes modify group activities so I could be included and things like that. So it was definitely a challenge, especially as a kid, but one that I worked hard to overcome.

GEORGE: Yeah. Amazing. So let's walk into the martial arts space. So you built up the courage to start martial arts. How did that then evolve and get going?

SAM: I was fortunate enough to have a really good instructor from day dot, that was just happy to basically have me along to class and see what I could do. He was really open to just sort of assess me on my own merits and not really rule me out of doing any kind of activity. He was just happy for me to give everything a shot. I've progressed through belt grades and things like that by showing my knowledge in the syllabus and the requirements and demonstrating what I could.

And I also have become a little bit more advanced, a little bit more experienced and got into helping out with a little bit of teaching of the techniques that I couldn't do, the high kicks and things like that that I couldn't physically demonstrate, he started getting me to teach those to lower-level students to help show that, maybe I couldn't demonstrate the technique physically, but I certainly had the understanding.

But as long as through a combination of being able to physically demonstrate techniques as most people would, but also teach them and show that I had the understanding of the things that I couldn't do, he was always happy to grade me and help me progress in that way.

GEORGE: Got it. And sorry, what was his name again?

SAM: Andrew Adriaens was his name.

GEORGE: Andrew Adriaens. And which school? Just so we give him some credit.

SAM: He runs a Zen Do Kai school in Port Augusta in South Australia, which is about three and a half hours from where I am now.

GEORGE: Okay, cool. So you started off in Zen Do Kai and now … What's your main focus in martial arts at this point? Still Zen Do Kai or … I know you also do jiu-jitsu.

SAM: Yeah. I still teach a lot of stand-up classes. Also do some Muay Thai kickboxing within that, as well. And probably for the last 10 years or so, quite a bit of Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

GEORGE: All right. So now, we talk about the challenges, but where do you feel you have an advantage? Because I'm sure that there are challenges, but you have to approach things on a whole different level. How do you go about that?

SAM: Definitely advantage is definitely the area that I've kind of been focused on most of my life. Being born the way I am, I never really had anything kind of taken away. So I didn't really understand what I was missing, but as I got older and definitely got into martial arts, I started to understand how I could use what I had.

I had quite a lot of upper-body strength from having to push myself around in wheelchairs and pull myself along and use my arms where I couldn't use my legs. So that was definitely an advantage. And anyone that knows me well will also tell you how stubborn I am. I don't give up easily and I think that's really good and productive, having a lot of challenges thrown at you early in life.

And probably the other thing that I alluded to a little bit earlier is I couldn't just demonstrate techniques and maybe kind of bluff my way through showing understanding like that. I really had to be able to verbalize the technique and be able to explain it in fine details for a student that had no idea what I was talking about or that I couldn't even give a physical demonstration of the technique.

I had to explain those techniques in words, try to get that result of that technique into the student without maybe having to rely on a physical demonstration. So I had to really learn how to break things down and verbalize techniques really, really well.

GEORGE: I like that. I mean, how do you really go about that? Is it just a really super intense focus of, look, I've got to look at something and I've got to break it down? Do you have a process that you go about?

SAM: Obviously, I start by looking at the end result of the technique. That's obviously the thing that I need to make happen. And then I sort of try to backtrack and look at what are the working parts of that technique that made that thing happen?

How can I use my arms and sometimes my legs, to some extent, to try to get that same result? So I needed to really understand how a technique actually works to get me from the point I am to the point that I'd like to go to.

GEORGE: All right. That's with your own training and then with the teaching. Okay. Let's just start with other instructors. If you had to speak to other instructors that had to teach people that are in the same situation as you are, how would you go about actually educating them on how to do that properly?

SAM: Yeah. I would say, first of all, just be open and take the student as they come. Let them tell you what they think they maybe can and can't do. They've lived with their particular challenge their whole life, so they're very aware of what capabilities they have and also ways that they can modify techniques.

It's really a collaborative effort because, as an instructor, to have a student with a disability, they can't necessarily follow that same path, that same lesson, that same even syllabus, to some degree.

They're used to using all of their other students. It's really a collaborative effort of, “Okay, usually I would use this technique. Let's see how that would work for you.” You can't quite make that happen but, as an instructor, kind of try to work out where those students strengths are, what they can and can't do, and then use their martial arts knowledge to try to get that student to the same point.

Like I said before, I think one of the things that everyone focuses on the disability because it's obvious, because you can see it, but it's not until they get to know the person that they start to realize, “Oh, no. Hang on. They've got all these other kinds of extra attributes because they've been through that early in their lives.”

GEORGE: Do you have anybody that you teach that's in the same situation?

SAM: Yeah. I've got two students at the moment that have cerebral palsy, a little bit different to my own. I've got one student that has what's called hemiplegia, which is a little bit different to me. My cerebral palsy just affects my legs. His cerebral palsy is down one side, so it's one arm and one leg. He does a lot of jiu-jitsu and some stand-up, as well, so his rips are a lot different.

His ability to make a fist and fine motor skills with lapels and things like that with jiu-jitsu are a little bit more challenged than most. And his ability in striking is a little bit modified, kicks and things like that. So that's an interesting problem for me as a coach. I've also got a student who actually had sepsis and doesn't have a hand and actually has no feet, as well. So that's a really interesting challenge for me.

GEORGE: For you, you've had support. Even having the support, it's a tough road to work. Right? Now, let's say you have somebody that inquires about martial arts. Maybe you've got a parent listening to this and the parent doesn't have faith in the child. It's coming from the top, almost, that they just … maybe they feel challenged by the situation, themselves.

They've got a child and they don't know if the child can do this and it's actually fearful for themselves that they're going to create hardship for their child because they're going to put their child in a situation.

Perhaps, they're not going to cope with it or they're going to have those obstacles. How do you have that mental conversation? How would you have that mental conversation with someone? And let's say, if not that direct, but if someone had to actually walk into the school and they were toying with the idea of martial arts.

SAM: It's a really interesting conversation because, as I said, every student, every child is different, anyway. And then you're putting disability on top of that. Then you just add that difficulty, add that complexity, but I think it's got to start with an openness from the parent just to allow their child to have a go and just see what they can do because they can get the same things out of martial arts that anyone else can, but obviously their path is going to be a little bit different.

And I think it's definitely a big mindset challenge on the student's part to understand that there's going to be challenges, there's going to be obstacles. There's no sort of cookie-cutter path that they can follow that's going to lead to sort of X result. If they're willing to put the time in, put the work in, and kind of do that collaborative journey with their instructor, then they can definitely reach the same result and milestone.

GEORGE: Perfect. And if you had to say that to someone directly in your shoes, what would you say to them if they're having the challenges and thinking, “Oh, could I? Should I? Shouldn't I?” And having those doubts and that resistance? And it's so funny. We have this conversation and I think it's something I could ask almost anyone, right?

Because a lot of people, before they start martial arts, they've got this … and now it almost feels like this imaginary obstacle. Right? They've got this obstacle that they don't want to start because of XY reason, which is factually so small, in comparison. How would you have that conversation with someone directly, in similar shoes to you?

SAM: Yeah. Well, we talk a lot about future pacing when we're talking about signups and intros and things like that. And I think a lot of people or almost everyone that walks into a martial arts school has a really good idea of where they would like to be. They also generally know quite well what their limitations are and what the things are that are stopping them to get there.

The thing that a lot of people really struggle with is those smaller steps in between. So they know the start point and they know the endpoint, but they're not sure on the thing they should focus on first.

And some of the problems, too, or limitations that they might have might seem quite big and they don't know how to tackle them. They don't know what small steps that they need to focus on. So I think that's really important. Creating a start point and an endpoint, but a lot of small steps, as many as that student needs, in order to be able to sort of make that journey.

GEORGE: Because again, it's not a cookie-cutter approach, but if you had to think of one or two situations where you could install confidence quickly … somebody starts and you've painted this future pace and you've painted this journey that this will be where you want to go, this is how we want to go, is there something that you can do that's the quickest confidence-builder in that situation to install some confidence to move forward?

SAM: Yeah. Most definitely. I would say, definitely focus on what you can do and not what you can't do. And often when you do that, some of those things that you can't do, I've found those problems kind of solve themselves or you find ways around them quite easily. And I think jiu-jitsu, for me, has been a massive example of that. There are tons of tons and techniques when I started as a white belt that seemed like I'd never been able to do them or lack of motor skills or flexibility, things like that.

And of course, a lot of people have that in jiu-jitsu because, a lot of the movements, they're quite foreign and they're not relatable to things that we do as humans in everyday life. It was a little extra for me and it was a lot of techniques that I just kind of ruled out from day one, like, “I won't know how to do that, I won't know how to do that.”

Now, with 10 years’ experience and a purple belt, finding other ways to do those techniques is something that I actually really enjoy and something that I'm bringing a lot of stuff into my game now that I never thought that I'd be able to do when I stepped on the mat as a white belt on day one. So if you give it a little bit of time and you build up that little bit of experience and knowledge, then you become almost like your own coach, to some degree, because you know your own body and you also know a little bit about the martial art, you know a little bit about the system. You can start to develop those techniques and then run them back through your instructor as a little bit of a filter.

GEORGE: Got you. Now, you still Zen Do Kai and jiu-jitsu, right? So I know you're teaching both. And you're still actively training both?

SAM: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

GEORGE: Okay. So it's on the jiu-jitsu side, who's helping you with that journey, at the moment?

SAM: My jiu-jitsu instructor is John Will. I don't think I could've chosen a better jiu-jitsu coach for myself, personally, because he's been 100% invested, 100% willing to do this journey side by side with me. He enjoys actually kind of solving the problem that me and my disability kind of present.

As a coach, he's really into that. He's really into finding ways to get those same results for me as he would for any other student. That's definitely something that he's taught me, as well, to have that kind of mental, analytical-type approach, really look at breaking a technique down into its working parts and really try to understand what's happening and re-engineer or reverse engineer the technique to fit me.

GEORGE: Awesome. And I know, because the other day just before we jumped on a call, you were actually chatting to John by Skype. So with you being in a different location, I take it you travel a lot, but is there also a lot of things that you really, in your case, break down just on Skype chats and things like that?

SAM: Yeah. Luckily for me, John Will, he's made himself super accessible for me. I travel over to Geelong to train with him, face to face, quite often to train with the students at his school. They're always great. They really look after me when I go over there.

But we also do a Skype lesson every fortnight, which is ultra-cool. He'll be on the other side of the camera explaining techniques, breaking them down and coaching me through them. I'll be on the mat with a training partner and working through those techniques.

Sometimes, he'll have a partner on his end and I'll be watching a physical demonstration and following the verbal instructions, as well. And other times, he'll quite literally just be basically on his couch in his lounge room talking me through the techniques, step, by step, by step. And it's just that he knows me well enough as a student to know what I'm able to physically do and he knows his techniques inside out. He can talk me through exactly what I need to do to make those techniques happen.

And even sometimes, I'll say to him, “Oh, I've got an idea about this technique. Can I show you?” And we'll break the technique down and look at the pros and cons of what I've kind of thought of or come across to do in a given situation. And he'll do the same. Sometimes he'll say, “Oh, I've got this technique that might be really good for you. Let's try it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't quite work, but we always end up with something we can take away from it.

GEORGE: Fascinating stuff. Okay, awesome. Sam, it's so great to really speak to you on this level and getting to know your real story, how you've evolved and got into the whole martial arts journey. Before we wrap things up, you're running a really successful school, Spektrum Martial Arts. You're doing really great things. What's known as a, as you said, there are 16,000 people in the town. Any advice you would give to someone in that same situation that's running a small school in a small town or a smaller market?

SAM: There are definitely advantages with word of mouth, with being known in the community on a face-to-face kind of basis. It's probably much easier in a small community to build up a little bit more of a public kind of a profile than maybe it would be in a larger community. And I think, focus on your strengths and focus on how you can maybe diversify what you offer a little bit.

Obviously, as I said, we have three different martial arts styles, so that was part of the reason that I decided to branch out from just doing stand-up to start doing some jiu-jitsu, as well, just to cater for that market. It made it a little bit easier for me to open a school and kind of cater for a more varied kind of a population than if I maybe just did just the one martial arts style.

Be realistic about the kind of numbers that you're going to get, but also understand that … and this is one thing that we did early on that was really good for me with you, George. I worked out that, to have my goal number of students at my school, that was only 2.3% of the population of all of Port Lincoln.

So 16,000 seems like a really small ball to work with in terms of marketing and the student base and things like that, your total number that you'd be happy with, with your school pumping and you work out that it's only 2.3% of the population, it makes it seem much more doable.

GEORGE: Yeah. Love it. Awesome. Hey, Sam, thanks for much for being on. If anybody wants to reach out, have a chat either about your school does this, getting started, if someone's listening in Port Lincoln or somebody that has a disability and got this mental challenge of do I start, how do I go about it? If somebody wants to reach out to you, what's the best way to do that?

SAM: I'm more than happy to help anyone wherever I can. They can either look me up on Facebook, Sam Broughton on Facebook or feel free to message me on my school's page, Spektrum Martial Arts.

GEORGE: Sam, thanks so much for being on. I'll speak to you soon.

SAM: Thank you, George.

Here are 3 ways we can help scale your school right now.

1. Join the Martial Arts Media community.

It's our new Facebook community where martial arts school owners get to ask questions about online marketing and get access to training videos that we don't share elsewhere – Click Here.

2. Join the Martial Arts Media Academy and become a Case Study.

I'm working closely with a group of martial arts school owners this month. If you'd like to work with me to help you grow your martial arts school, message me with the word ‘Case Study'.

3. Work with me and my team privately.

Enjoyed the show? Get more martial arts business tips when you subscribe on iTunes for iPhone or Stitcher Radio for Android devices.

***NEW*** Now available on Spotify!

Podcast Sponsored by Martial Arts Media Partners

90 – Do You Groom ‘A Player’ Martial Arts Instructors, Or Hire the ‘A Players’?

December 13, 2019 by George Fourie Leave a Comment

How do you know which path to take when hiring new staff or martial arts instructors?

.IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

How to groom high-potential martial arts instructors
When to let go of an instructor who isn’t a ‘good fit’ for your school
Why you can't afford to ignore your employee’s bad behavior
And more

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.

TRANSCRIPTION

Quick question for you. Do you groom your staff to become A players or do you just make sure that you actually choose the A players?

Hey George here, so a bit of a windy morning in Perth. Hope it doesn't cloud our sound completely. Quick question for you. Do you groom your staff to become A players or do you just make sure that you actually choose the A players?

Two quick stories that I want to share with you. I was talking to one of our Partners members a couple of days ago and he’s really frustrated with his staff member and things not going to plan.

This actual staff member did something quite horrific. It's the things that could land him in jail and he’s doing it under the business name. If things like this had to actually hit the news, it could potentially shut his business down.

How much do you actually tolerate? At what point do you say that's enough? Do you just stick it out? I guess the problem is they are such a valuable asset to the business because they are great instructors, they are teaching, the kids like them and they've formed this bond.

But now you're in this situation where potentially it's gone to the person's head, or they just don't feel like they want to abide by the rules, or they're a great instructor but when it comes to sticking to rules and some common sense with things that you can or can't do. So what do you do? At what point do you have to pull the plug?

For me, just in a similar situation where I had a staff member that I probably should have let go of a long time ago, but because they are just such a nice person, shows up on time, and does a lot of things right, it was just really hard to actually make the call. But at the end of the day the question came to, are they an A player or are they not an A player?

Here's the thing, you can try and fix things, you can try and motivate, you can try and enforce some rules, you can try and set up some consequences, but sometimes you just got to reach the point where you actually just got to make the call and pull the plug, not just for you and protecting your business, but also protecting the culture in your business.

Because if you let things slide that your other staff members can see that this is okay. It's okay to behave like this. It's okay to break rules. It's okay to do stupid things that could land you up in jail or shut the business down. Then what example are you setting for everybody else in the business? If that becomes acceptable behaviour and it's an acceptable practice, not going into details of it, but what are the consequences for your business, but also for your culture and all your other staff members?

At the end of the day, you'd just create this culture of it's okay to suck. It's okay to be average. It's okay to do things your own way and not think of the bigger picture, which is your business.

I'd love to know from you, at what point do you pull the plug and what do you do to actually keep your stuff in line and keep them in check, making sure that everybody's on the same mission, following the same values, and on the same mission to serve your students at the end of the day? Would love to hear from you. Leave me a comment below this video, wherever you're watching it.

I'm going to head back to the office. Have a great week. Speak soon. Cheers.

Thanks for listening. If you want to connect with other top and smart martial arts school owners, and have a chat about marketing, lead generation, what's working now, or just have a gentle rant about things that are happening in the industry, then I want to invite you to join our Facebook group.

Thanks – I'll speak to you on the next episode – cheers!

Here are 3 ways we can help scale your school right now.

1. Join the Martial Arts Media community.

It's our new Facebook community where martial arts school owners get to ask questions about online marketing and get access to training videos that we don't share elsewhere – Click Here.

2. Join the Martial Arts Media Academy and become a Case Study.

I'm working closely with a group of martial arts school owners this month. If you'd like to work with me to help you grow your martial arts school, message me with the word ‘Case Study'.

3. Work with me and my team privately.

Enjoyed the show? Get more martial arts business tips when you subscribe on iTunes for iPhone or Stitcher Radio for Android devices.

***NEW*** Now available on Spotify!

Podcast Sponsored by Martial Arts Media Partners

89 – The 8 Key Factors Needed For High Performing Martial Arts Websites

November 19, 2019 by George Fourie Leave a Comment

Get your martial arts website attracting new students organically with these 8 key performance factors.

.IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

Why George shifted from building martial arts websites
The 8 key performance areas that you need for a high converting martial arts website
Changes to mobile usability that you can’t ignore
What Google assesses on your martial arts website for a quality score
The one topic rarely considered with martial arts websites and ownership
And more

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.

TRANSCRIPTION

The key thing is that with all that marketing that you're talking about, all that lead generation, you spending money on ads. You don't want that to be going to a website where you're losing money because people are turned off by something on your website or they didn't get the message that needs to be there to get them to buy.

GEORGE: Hey, this is George and welcome to another episode of the Martial Arts Media business podcast. Today I have a different guest on board. I'm going to say why, but we're going to be talking about websites. Websites, optimization of websites, conversions and the importance of it. So just a quick introduction, Justin Meadows from TunedWp.

JUSTIN: Thank you for having me on the podcast.

GEORGE: Awesome, you're welcome. Just before we get into what we're going to talk about today. Just a bit of content, depending on how long you've followed my podcast or martialartsmedia.com. You know that a big component of what we've always provided for the industry is websites. Websites, and how to convert your websites. Justin and I have actually been in the same coaching group for only like a good last five, six.

JUSTIN: Yes, at least.

GEORGE: I'll give a good mention to James Schramko who is from superfastbusiness.com, which is a coaching community we've been a part of. And the reason I mentioned that is because we come from the same understanding of websites – the value of owning your own assets and owning your own online properties. The component when I started providing websites for the martial arts space was, at that part in time I couldn't find somebody to do it properly. We were running Google ads and our main focus was lead generation.

The hard part was really getting the mix right of wanting web developers that understand the importance of conversions and the sales copy side and really what goes into actually making a website work – understanding the technicalities of it and throwing a website up that actually works. That got me into the business and started providing websites for the industry.

I reached the point in providing that, but I just thought that it was not a business that I was going to scale moving forward. It took me from the focus of just lead generation and lead generation to doing the websites and juggling. I had an old sales boss that always used to say to me, you can't steer two light bulbs at different sides of the room at the same time.

That your focus is going to go out. It's brought me to a point where I've stopped providing websites but I didn't just want to stop providing websites because the things that we're going to talk about here today I find simply important and it's a big missing component for the most part in the martial arts industry. And I want to make sure that if I'm not going to be providing websites anymore for the industry that I can refer anyone to someone that I trust as a provider.

Somebody that knows exactly what goes into building websites the right way. There are only a handful of people that really understand doing it the right way. What goes into the conversions and so forth. And that person is Justin and his team, again welcome to the call.

JUSTIN: Cheers.

GEORGE: A bit of a background, just if you can give us a quick summary of who is Justin Meadows.

JUSTIN: Sure, yeah. So I started building the business that I've got now about 10 years ago. I live in a small country town in Victoria, near a ski resort. It's a lovely village up here. I talk to a lot of business clients and that sort of thing. So I built my business in a certain way.

I've built it online and I started out building it in a wholesale set up so that we would provide services to marketing agencies. So we were the backend website development team for design agencies and that sort of thing. And that's how I've grown and now I've got up to a point now where we've released a new brand and we now work directly with business owners.

And I've got quite a large team behind me. We've run a 24/7 support desk and that sort of thing so we've grown over the 10 years to quite a decent-sized business. Over that time we've really had quite a broad range of experiences working with a lot of different business owners, lots of different industries, and working with a lot of different marketing agencies and that sort of thing.

So we really do have quite a broad range of experience in building websites. And so I've really seen what works and what doesn't work. We've done a lot of testing with different types of websites, sort of options and things that people can have on their end.

Yeah, we've really refined out processes. We've distilled down eight key areas that you really need to get right on a website in order to get a good performing website that produces results for your business and helps you grow and that sort of thing.

The key thing is that with all that marketing that you're talking about, all that lead generation, you're spending money on ads, you don't want that to be going to a website where you're losing money because people are turned off by something on your website. Or they didn't get the message that needs to be there to get them to buy. And so that's really been the core of my services because we've focused just on doing that development side of things.

Actually, when I very first started, we did a lot of SEO consulting and helping people with their SEO but then we needed to make sure the website was structured correctly and set up right so that when they did the SEO work, they were getting results on the actual website itself. So that's been the focus of our website, of our services.

GEORGE: Cool, most of the martial art industry I know, when somebody provides services that are not particularly practising in martial arts with the service, the question always comes up. So how can you help the industry if you're not actually part of the industry? What would you answer to that?

JUSTIN: Yeah, so that's a good one. But the main thing is that we have a very general understanding of what works across the range of different industries. So we know if the different types of businesses, different things are going to work, if you're a locally-based business then something is more important that are very different to if you're a software business or if you're serving information to an international audience or something like that.

So we really know what works for different types of industries and the main thing is that we're also going to work in tandem with you providing the guidance and instructions on what's the best practice for a martial arts business and that sort of thing. But our focus and our focus and our specialty is on the performance of a WordPress website. We don't work with other platforms anymore. We focus on WordPress and providing support and optimizing WordPress to be the best that it can be, to make sure that you're getting results out of your spend.

That's really what we are specialists in and I see my understanding that's exactly why you come and have a chat to me and saying if we could work together because martial arts is your area of expertise but there really is a lot. The more you dig into what works in WordPress and how you improve the performance and speeding up your website, there are rabbit holes that go on forever. You can't have it all basis so our specialty is just in the performance of the WordPress websites and yeah we know how to customize that to suit a martial arts business.

GEORGE: Perfect. I know that was a question just to throw the curveball at Justin but behind the scenes for the last three months or so we had been working one on one on just our clients. We've moved over some support over to Justin and making sure that the core essentials of what's important for martial school owners are taken care of.

That's always from the work that we've done and through our web, well I guess through our learning pages that we still provide in our Partners program. We process close to, the last count was 4,535 paid trials in the system so that's paid trials, not leads.

So with that we've done a lot of assessment of what works, how to shape web pages that it converts. And then obviously the ongoing maintenance its always been really basic. There's always just been change of authors, change of timetables, and different things and so forth. But I want to jump on to you talking about the eight factors, was that correct?

JUSTIN: Yeah, yeah. We've coded our performance blueprint and its eight key areas of your website that you need to get right to make that performance really come through. And so the first one is making sure that you can be easily found. So that is looking at your SEO, how your website appears when it's shared in social media and making sure that Google understands that your website is a valuable resource for people that are searching for martial arts in your area.

So that's one of the key things, so firstly just that you're found. You're not making most technical mistakes that are very common. I see them a lot on some websites and yeah, that can really hold back your results so that even searching for your own name you might struggle to come up in Google.

What we want especially for martial arts businesses is that your relevant to the suburb that your dojo is in or that your centre is in, wherever you're physically located. You want to make sure that Google is well aware that you are relevant to those surrounding suburbs and where those people are coming to you so that when they search, you're the first one that comes up.

GEORGE: Can you give us an example of how do you spot the mistake and how somebody would go about optimizing?

JUSTIN: With the mistakes, there's a podcast episode in itself. There are a lot of different things that you could be doing wrong, there is a lot to cover. I can't say there is one easy way to do that but there are a lot of ways that you can get your website assessed of the SEO value. Google will give you a rough guide if you go to web dot dev, they give you a very broad overview.

However, it's more on the technical side of things. It doesn't give you guidance as to what your website is optimized for. So it'll just pick up if perhaps you're not using SSL, you're not secure or you're making some other mistakes like not using page title or stuff like that.

So yeah, there is a lot to cover there and it does get quite technical. In terms of what does work for a local business, having pages specifically for the location. So the talking not just about the types of martial art that you provide but also a bit about the suburbs and the area that you're in so that then Google knows that you're relevant to that.

Couple that with optimizing local business listing through my business page and things like that reference your address and make sure that your name, address and phone number are exactly the same all over the internet and connecting you to social media. Doing that is definitely the most important thing for a local business.

GEORGE: Perfect, I'll ask a question on top of that. We were just in our Partners program we run a session called the Local SEO Advantage and the big focus was Google My Business. And it was interesting, one of our members pulled up his stats of more 7000 views of an actual page.

But we were talking about page titles when it comes to location and you've been talking about different locations so you have several martial art locations at a different address. How important is that in the title section of that page. Is that what you really trying to optimize for with different pages, there are different locations etc.?

JUSTIN: Yeah. If you have several locations, you should have a page for each location. It doesn't necessarily need to have the address especially if that's a bit longer. You want to make sure that you're talking about the types of martial arts words that people will be searching for.

And so, especially when you get a bit into the less common martial art styles and that sort of thing. You might want to make it a bit more general, that page title so that it is the thing that people are going to be searching for, you don't want to get too specific. But you want to make sure that you have at least the suburb name in that page title I would say for each location.

GEORGE: Yeah, perfect. And for any followers listening, I mean the easiest way to do that is just go type martial arts in your area. And then a good trick with Google is always just to scroll to the bottom and you'll see Google bringing up all its related searches. And that will give you a good starting point. But at least jump back on key point number two.

JUSTIN: Yeah, yeah. So number two is loading fast. So after people have found you, you want to make sure that your website appears quickly, and this does actually work back into the ranking factor. Making sure that your website loads fast is becoming more and more important to Google but also to users.

People expect your website to load fast if it is loading slow then people get impatient and they'll hit back especially on mobile devices and that sort of thing. People expect things faster and faster these days.

Yeah you want to make sure that it loads fast. If you have a fast loading website, Google will prefer you over other websites in your search results. It will also decrease the cost that you're spending on Google ads so in your Google ads, Google gives you a quality score. And if your website loads fast, you get a higher quality score and that means that you need to pay less per click for that ad so that it's well worth optimizing your website for speed.

If you find that and I imagine the martial arts you would have a fairly high. I would expect roughly about 60% of your traffic to your website would be from mobile devices. In that case, you want to make sure that your website loads really fast on mobile and a good thing that's very recent. It's only really become prominent this year, is I am paying. It's a mobile version of your website, which is designed specifically to load super-fast.

It’s hosted in Google's caching system. So Google will make sure that it loads fast. Google will give you a higher score again for your only score, and SEO, and your mobile speed score, which is connected to all that. Yeah, so it's a very limited code structure and the means creating it, essentially a copy of your homepage just for mobile but it is worth doing if you have a lot of mobile traffic because it serves at a very fast and gives a good mobile experience.

GEORGE: All right, excellent. Cool, the third factor.

JUSTIN: Number three. Number three is being mobile-friendly. So apart from just loading fast on mobile, you want to make sure that it is easy to use. You quite often the navigation menu might be a bit hard to navigate on mobile, you want to make sure that everything rearranges into a nice easy to read format, you can scroll through it and see everything nicely. Again this feeds into Google's quality score for ads and SEO. They want to serve up ads that are mobile-friendly, easy to use.

For example on your timetable, it should be easy to click through your timetable and see what sessions you have that sort of thing. It's because sometimes table formats can be really ugly when they're squished down in mobile hard to read, so you want to make sure that converts really well on mobile. And your form to get started, you should be able to click through that with your finger.

So there are a few considerations that can make a big difference to how many people are going to sign up, if they're viewing your site from mobile. If it’s too hard to use and they get frustrated they'll give up.

Although they might not even do it intentionally, they might just go, “too hard” and put it down for a second and then they forget about it. So you want to make it as easy as possible, definitely.

GEORGE: 100%. Even if you're not doing Google ads, or SEO, which if you miss the term SEO search engine optimization, which is a free side of Google so you're not paying for ads but just appearing in the organic results. Even if you're running Facebook ads and I don't actually have this as a verified thing but I remember this coming up with Facebook was also doing something with a quality score. Which is a big reason why Facebook really prefers to keep you on Facebook and with all their tools.

But if you are sending people from Facebook, it's also about user experience because they can track how quickly you click and how quickly you get back. And that also qualifies as a bounce rate right, because you're clicking and it's not loading and you're out there. That signals to Facebook that either your content is not relevant or your site is slow, which is more than likely what happens.

JUSTIN: Right, then now the people using Facebook, if they're they're clicking on ads, and they go to pages that don't load, then that's a bad user experience for the Facebook user and they don't want to be doing that so they penalize you by making that ad click more expensive.

GEORGE: Yeah, if I may. Cool, where are we at? Number?

JUSTIN: Five. No, four.

GEORGE: Four, better write that down.

JUSTIN: Four is the first impression. So you've clicked, you've loaded and on top of my bar, you want to make sure that you convey a message very quickly that says who you are and what you have to provide and who that is for. Sometimes, I see a lot of websites that are very airy-fairy and they look pretty in that but you're like, what do these guys actually do.

It's not clear, the thorough process for people going to a website, goes like this. “Who are these guys?” “Is this right for me?” “And then how do I get started?” And you want to make sure that you're messaging and your design on your website clearly answers those three questions very quickly.

You want to show what is that you provide. What type of person that is for, and then how they get started in a very quick impression. Once again people on websites do have a shorter attention span, they'll get frustrated easily if it's not clear and so making it easy and spelling it out and making sure it's very clear and simple just lifts your conversion rate. So you will get more sales if you're doing that right.

GEORGE: What could be your preference, I see and am not a fan of it but I shouldn't say my opinion before I actually ask the question. But Let's say what would be the preference, would it be let's say if you looked at the desktop and there's just one of the videos that play in the background or like there is video. Or a structured headline with a call to action.

JUSTIN: Yeah, I think videos can be distracting. They'll also slow down your load speed, so that's another reason why having a background video isn't a great idea. It does look nice but functionally it doesn't actually help you get the sale. And same thing with sliders, it's very common on websites to have imagine sliders.

But it's been a thing for a while but in the website development space we've known that it’s a bad idea for a long time. Because once again you're slowing down the loading, it takes more time to load up all these big images, the slide across and the animation script and that sort of thing.

So it's a lot better to just have one very good image that conveys the message of who you are and what you provide and the benefits that people can get, so happy people that are looking fit and training and that sort of thing. That's the impression you want to get.

So you want to have a really good image of that and then a clear text message that's static, that gets that message across in button to get started, that sort of thing. That's really the best practice, having those image sliders, apart from slowing things down they also are a bit of a distraction and it's common to have several different messages on them but in reality, most people like probably 8% of people are only going to see the first message.

They'll look at that and they'll scroll down. They're not going to see the other things you've got in there. So it can dilute your message, so you really want to decide on what is your core message and make that stand out front and centre.

GEORGE: All right, perfect. Sounds good, number five.

JUSTIN: Yeah. So now we are onto building trust. And this is a very important thing on the internet, selling things from websites is that trust barrier. Everyone has an initial apprehension when they're handing over money on a website. So you really want to reassure people who are visiting your website that you are legit.

That there are people who have got results from before, you've built some social proof and they are really good ways to do that are with testimonials. They work really effectively. Having some good testimonials with a photo of the person who made the testimonial adds more legitimacy to it and a good way to do that is, it might be a bit tricky and sometimes in the martial arts especially.

If someone does give you a testimonial, have a look if they've got a Linkedin profile or a public Facebook photo that you can just copy that photo and send it to them and say is it okay if I use this photo rather than asking them to go and take a photo of themselves that they're happy with because that might take weeks or never happen. You want to make it easy for them to provide a photo so you go and see if they have a public photo on the internet that you can use.

A video is fantastic, if someone has really loved the results they've got from your coaching and your training then get your phone out and just 30 seconds video of them saying I started out and I was like this and then through this training, I've now got this result.

A sure click like that can speak volumes and it really does build trust and build rapport with the new visitors to your website. The other things that build trust, logos of associations and that thing that you're part of. If you're a part of any maybe school-related programs or health programs or those things, having logos of that on your website just builds that legitimacy and publishing helpful content.

Publishing videos that help educate people or articles that sort of things. Trying to be as helpful as possible with the content that you're providing on your website helps to reassure people and let them get a feel for who you are and your style and they then know that you're a helpful person. You're not just trying to take their money and give them a bad experience. Those sorts of things help to build trust with website business.

GEORGE: Yeah, totally. It's always been a big focus of mine. I know it's the hardest thing for martial arts school owners to do but there is so much focus on Facebook and getting content out. And this is probably a topic for a whole another episode but the content that you typically put on Facebook is for the most part gone in 24 to 48 hours unless you have a strategy. Like we structured in our Video Ad Authority Builder, we make sure that you create a video that you can actually put some money behind and leverage and build authority online.

But a good thing to really think about and we won't go too much into detail but now is we are creating content. How can you put that on your website and really dig into the keyword research and understanding, what are the questions that people ask because I know for most martial art schools owners their biggest problem is not the conversion. Once people walk through the doors, its cool.

It's how do we get the walking through the doors and think about that as in content. What can actually put in your website that's going to educate people to create the trust as Justin referring to that's going to give them the confidence to take the first step or even just put their hand up or get that inquiry button and get in touch.

JUSTIN: Yeah, absolutely. FAQs are great for that. Answering those questions, because especially for people who've not tried or been a part of any martial arts training in the past, they really don't know what to expect so if you can just map it out clearly how it's going to go, or what the process is going to be when they sign up and they come in and answering any questions that commonly come up when people do sign up. Making those very clear start on your website really does help with getting people to take the first step, yeah.

GEORGE: All right, awesome. So we're at number six?

JUSTIN: Six, yeah. Generating style. So this is where the rubber hits the road. So turning that interested person who's looking at your website into a paying customer. And I know that you've got a really good process there with the trials, having a paid trial, yeah.

GEORGE: Yeah, I guess there are two things. Well I mean this is more than we optimized for but if you look at the sale on the website, for the most part is going to be selling a paid trial – that's the top lead we go for. And the next sale is how do we get somebody to actually inquire and then of course picking up the phone, which is the alternative. Don't know in the big optimization if we're taking sales, sending an email and somebody getting in touch is not a big sale, that's an inquiry. So those are the two things in context that we got going.

JUSTIN: Yeah, and I think that is a good process for martial arts business and making sure that opportunity to opt-in for an inquiry and just say, yes I'm interested. How do I get started, that sort of thing. Making that as easy as possible is very important so having that on top of the home page where they can just fill in the form and get in touch with you.

It is also important that you don't have too many things that are distracting from these primary goals. You want those call to action that try to join the page trial or to inquire about a booking or about classes or whatever that is. Having those things really standing out from everything else on your website, using contrasting buttons and very strong wording like get started now or that sort of thing is very important.

And then as well as having that in your design, having those call to action very easy to use and standing out very clearly. You then also want to make sure that you're tracking who's using your website so having the Google analytics in place you can add Google ads, re-tagging and Facebook pixels so that if people are coming to your website, you have the opportunity to remind them about you.

If they don't become a paying customer, you can show ads to them in Facebook but it's a lot more valuable to show them to people who've already visited your website than to show them to other people who've never heard of you before. It's a lot easier to get people who already know about you to come back and check you out again.

As well as doing that you want to as much as possible when they are filling out that email thing, you want to be building an email database with people who have inquired and separating out whose paid and then you can target some very good email messaging to the people who have inquired but not paid or signed up. And yeah, really help to form a relationship with them, provide more value, and then turn them into a paying customer.

GEORGE: Yeah and so Justin, we're talking about a lot of things about all the website and optimization and things. And I guess it's important to mention, for a lot of people and this has been said to me so often, it's just a website. The value of a website, just like well, I mean so and so could do it for me for 500 bucks, so and so could do it for me for 1000 bucks. Well the reality is and I've done this mess at so many presentations, if you're a lifetime student value is an average. I think the last call I had was $2200 a year. That's $2200 per student.

If your conversion is 2%, which means two out of every 10 people inquire. Let's say two out of every 10 people that come to you, well that's actually a big. Sorry its two of 100. Two out of 100 people come to your website and actually sign up, that's $4400 in that case, if you're a lifetime student value was $4400. Well if your website sucks, which most people do and it's slow, it doesn't build trust, it's not loading properly and people don't know how to contact you.

They don't know how to do this; your conversion rate is going to be awful. Now what if you paid more website but the experience of building this not just in martial arts but in thousands of other industries, and you use this collective knowledge and you're able to buy a website for triple the price. And I’m not saying that's irrelevant but I just want to make sure in context that the value is accurate.

That now you're going to website that converts at 4% and that sounds ridiculous right? Its small, 2% to 4%. Well that's double your value, which means now every 100 people that goes to your website is worth $8800 and not $4400.

In your first 100 visits, you've got money back in your pocket and then some. So it's so important to look at this as your virtual salesman and your asset because that's the first experience. I can tell you how many Facebook ad campaigns we've run and remember the Facebook ad campaigns?

And all of a sudden we just the conversion cost drop on Google, all the time. Which is saying to me that your first interaction is, Facebook I saw the ad, people on their mobile phones in three minutes, which means I saw the ad and I was like, Oh yeah saw some George's martial arts, cool. Could happen to work, what was it George's martial arts, go onto Google, find you and make the purchase.

It's important to look at the whole thing of context and the value of knowing all this stuff. And this doesn't happen just from the school kid, all is factored in that are signing out and are able to drag and drop the website together for you. You're not going to get that value.

You get that value from seeing people's accounts, Google analytics, knowing the stats and knowing hang on this is actually what drives sales. And a bit of rank but I just want to make sure that distinction because it comes up so much in conversations well I could just buy this 500 bucks.

Well you're robbing yourself off five grand, fifty grand down the line very, very quickly.

JUSTIN: Exactly, yeah. And this actually leads very smoothly into my next to the number seven argument, which is building assets. So it's important to look at your website not as an expense but as an asset for your business, and if further down the line, eventually you're going to get to a point where you're going to pass on your school to someone else. You might sell that or whatever happens.

The website that you're building and the assets that you build with your website are saleable assets. So it's not just something that you're spending money on and it's a cost that goes away. You're actually building something, which increases in value. When you sell that website, that's as important as the other parts of your business, your customer database and that sort of thing that you're selling.

So it is an important consideration. You need to look at it from that point of view and it is something that is bringing more money to you. Like you're saying, you can save a lot of money on your ads and by having a website set up really well, that you get a great return on investment.

So the other thing is that your website should be doing is building assets. Apart from the website itself, so on the website itself, it's right to be publishing that helpful content which overtime helps with your good rankings and this in itself an asset that just attracts new students to you. But then also having that email database that you're building from that lead form and having those remarketing tags.

So you have audiences on Facebook and on Google. If you're having a quieter period you can go out and spend more ads on marketing to those people or emailing to those people. That is a very valuable asset for you to have and to build up. And it takes time, it’s a long-term play. It's not something that gets you a short term result necessarily but, yeah. It is definitely worth investing in the long-term of your business.

GEORGE: Yes, I'm going to probably open a can of worms here. When you referred to that, you got the physical asset; you got your domain name. I mean your domain name you always own but then the actual website, what we refer to as content assets, every time you create content that's valuable to somebody taking the first step as we spoke about earlier.

Then if that is done right, something that we cover in our Academy and Partners program. Like how do you create content that you can actually leverage. It's evergreen and it's an asset because it brings in people find that article or video online and then they access your website through that.

Now the can of worms is, and I'm saying this because out of the best intent and it’s not a dig at anyone in the industry as such. I know there are really good providers in our industry that provide martial arts websites under the SAS software model. So I've got all praise for these companies, I know I can see why they do it, it's great, it's easy you pay them a couple of 100 bucks a month.

They take care of your website and you've got this martial arts website in it and it brings you leads and that's awesome. It is awesome until it's not awesome. And when it's not awesome, is when you realize that it's not an asset.

And if you realize that you're paying five grand a year, give or take, maybe more on something that you don't own. And if you stop paying, that means that all those assets that you've built up on this infrastructure are now gone and that is a really, really distinction. As I mentioned I see the value in doing that as a business and I know it's super easy for martial art school owners to have that but if I had to have a true gut check within myself and say, would I do that for my business? Never ever in my life would I do that because I know the value of the asset. And that's the only reason why I've never gone down their track and just don't provide that as a service.

JUSTIN: Absolutely.

GEORGE: And sorry to cut you off but it’s probably if you look at everything online, it's the one asset you've got because Facebook, Instagram, they can all be gone in a heartbeat.

JUSTIN: Yeah, absolutely. The social media platforms come and go and also they change their rules so you might have some really good ad campaigns going on Facebook and then all of a sudden they will change their rules and your ads stop working or they don't do those ads like that anymore and they're banned and you've got to work out something else. And all of a sudden if you're relying on that as the only way you get students, then you're stuck. So it is important to have an asset that you do own and control.

Absolutely, and then you use these other methods of finding leads and bring them into your asset, where you have control and then you can build that email database of those users and talk to them directly. And yeah, having full ownership and control over your website is one of the most important philosophies in the way that I've structured my business as well. That's why we focus on WordPress because WordPress is the most popular website platform out there on the internet. It is very easy. If you're not happy with our service like we build your website and that sort of thing.

It's very easy for you to then take that and move to a different provider and you're not locked in with us. You still own your own website. You can hire someone else to look after it but you still own it. It's still your website, and I think that's very important for all business owners to make sure that you do have that and then you can sell that website and you can hand it over to the new owners and they will take it and it will provide value to them because it's already getting people coming to it and new students being produced from it.

GEORGE: Awesome, yeah. Totally. Number eight I think.

JUSTIN: Number eight, yeah. This one is not so much about attracting new students but staying secure is very important for your website and for your online presence. It can be a bit of a brand disaster and can cause you a lot of strife if you do get into trouble by being unsecured. So if your websites' not secure, and you get hacked and there is malicious malware going out to people who visit your website. There are all sorts of things, unlike people who no longer trust your business.

If they go to your website and says that it got the unsecured thing up in the top of the website browser and Google has a big warning on there saying, warning this website is unsafe, that sort of thing people aren't going to trust you. So that immediately kills that trust barrier sort of thing. You can often have some really unsavoury things. There's malware that gets into your website and then puts on these random messages from unsavoury groups on your website and that sort of stuff that gives a really bad impression to your customers and to your students.

And it makes you look like you're not a very well organized and professional operator. And the other thing is that it causes a lot of cost and expense for years so if you have something like that come in then you've got to spend money to get someone to clean up that software from your website. Clean up the malware and get that infection sorted. And it usually also involves a lot of stress, and you spending a day just trying to fix this problem that's happened and so you've got to also think about the cost of that as well.

So it is very important to look after the security of your website for these reasons, and the other things are, apart from them, if your website is unsecured or does have malicious malware on there, Google will stop running ads to you. It can hold your SEO rankings, and it can have a lot of flaws and effect that will damage your profitability. So with WordPress, once again because it is the most popular platform, it is a target to this malware that will be built to access WordPress because then they can access heaps of websites.

So it's important to keep your website software up to date and that just means that when this malware finds a loophole that they can get into the WordPress software, very quickly the WordPress developers will create an update to the software that blocks that and patches up that loophole. So it's important to make sure that those patches, those software updates are installed on your website.

Sometimes installing those software updates can cause issues with the way that your design works or that sort of thing if it's not structured correctly. So it's important to get a developer to do that. To make sure that if it does cause any design issues they can roll back to back up they've just taken and fix the problem and that sort of thing.

So yeah. It is worth getting someone to look after your website who knows what they're doing and that way you don't have to worry about yourself and you don't have to go through all that stress and the ordeal of having your website hacked. The other things are things like just having that SSL, so HTTPs in your address means that your website data is encrypted. That means it's safe. Google likes that and it shows that your website is secure and the website browser and that sort of thing.

Yeah, and making sure that you have regular backups is also very important. So that if something does happen, worst-case scenario may be the hosting dies and you can't get back on to your website or something like that. You have a backup that you can then restore on some other hosting providers’ website or like their service. So for controlling assets that's important as well.

GEORGE: Perfect so Justin, first thank you for jumping on. I mean if somebody needs with that, somebody needs help with their website, let's say they've got an existing website. Maybe it's one WordPress base hopefully and they need help with all these support stuff, the security, speeding things up, making sure it's secure, all that stuff and then the other component obviously is if somebody wants a new website, a new website that can provide all this. A website that you would own as its upright it would be yours, how can people reach out to you? How can people get in touch?

JUSTIN: For sure. So, my website TunedWp, that's Tuned with a d Wp dot com. And the best way to get in touch is via support at TunedWp dot com. We've got a 24-hour support desk and we'll get back to you within one hour so we have very rapid response time.

So if anything is urgent, just shoot through an email to us and we can do that. We have a number of different levels of service that we can provide so we can just provide that hosting and security element or we can also provide another service where we will optimize the performance of your existing website and do ongoing changes for you.

So you never have to log in to the website yourself as a business owner, it's really not what you should be doing. You should be focusing on your students and growing your business and leaving all the website technical stuff to experts like us. So we provide that service for you and we can also rebuild a new website if you want a new design or if you don't have a website that's set up correctly, we can certainly build that for you. So yeah, feel free to get in touch with the support at TunedWp dot com.

GEORGE: Awesome. And thanks really for jumping in and you've taken great care of all our existing website customers and we're definitely recommending people to you. We've known each other for many years being in the same community and a lot of the things we spoke about today really come from that understanding of really, really knowing how this online world works and worked before Facebook came along.

How do build the online assets, how to structure business that you are safe against things that fluctuate within the business, whether that's in Google or Facebook. That you've got some leverage and ways to get sign up students from multiple avenues and the biggest component of that is having a simpler, secure, awesome website that is the face of your brand. Thanks for that Justin.

JUSTIN: No worries at all. Thanks for having me on the podcast.

GEORGE: Cool. Awesome. Thanks for listening. If you want to connect with other top and smart martial arts school owners, and have a chat about marketing, lead generation, what's working now, or just have a gentle rant about things that are happening in the industry, then I want to invite you to join our Facebook group.

Thanks – I'll speak to you on the next episode – cheers!

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88 – Darren Reece – The Art Of Crafting Muay Thai Champions

November 12, 2019 by George Fourie Leave a Comment

Darren Reece is the coach behind many Muay Thai champions. He shares what it takes and a snapshot of his 30-year Muay Thai career.

.IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

How Darren Reece evolved from being a Muay Thai professional fighter to a martial arts gym owner
The one skill that’s helped many school owners open their first gym
The ‘iron sharpens iron’ strategy Darren uses to craft world-class Muay Thai Champions
How Darren keeps their fighters motivated and focused on their goals
And more

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.

TRANSCRIPTION

We don't have any processes. I don't train my guys like, “You've got to say this. You've got to say that.” We are just who we are. We love being here. The guys that have jobs as trainers, Dan Skinner and Barrie Oliver work full time for me. Caley loves being in the gym. Chris “Tiger” White, who used to work for me when he finished his fight career, before he shifted away, just loved doing what we're doing. So that carries over because you're happy.

GEORGE: Hey, this is George Fourie and welcome to another Martial Arts Media business podcast. So today I'm local, and I'm live, so something new, not on the virtual face-to-face. So I'm joined today by Darren Reece.

DARREN: Hey George.

GEORGE: Hi.

DARREN: How are you?

GEORGE: How are you doing? Good good good. Darren Reece, well, long history in Muay Thai, I'm going to let him share all the stories. Depending on where you're watching this, here in Perth, there's a big Muay Thai movement. And many, I could almost say all, but most of the paths lead to Riddlers and Darren Reece. And we're sitting here in a room of… How would you describe it? Memorabilia? Like, newspaper articles, trophies, which I've added here as a separate little video. So, we're just going to have a chat, as we do. So thanks for jumping on.

DARREN: No worries George. Thanks for having me.

GEORGE: Cool. So why don't you just give us a quick round up. Who is Darren Reece?

DARREN: Oh, well. My fight nickname was The Riddler, that was given to me by Michael Schiavello who used to commentate all the fights on Fox Sports on Foxtel. Well he's obviously gone on to very big things around the world commentating, chief commentator at commentating fights. He gave me my fight name. Back then all the fighters used to call one another by their names, to the point that sometimes you didn't even know the person's first name, it was just, “Hey, Riddler.” “Hey, Nugget.” “Hey, Pitbull.” Stuff like that, so.

Been in Muay Thai since 1989, I started training. In a combination of Muay Thai and Zen Do Kai. Got into it and loved it straight away. Knew it was what I wanted to do. Was actually at uni, and decided to leave uni because I wanted to be a fighter. Which didn't go down well with the parents, but eventually, especially my mom, came around and supported what I was doing, so.

GEORGE: How do you describe that sort of career path to your professors and lecturers?

DARREN: Well, university of Muay Thai, I guess I've been to, for 30 years, so it's a pretty big degree. But, yeah, it was definitely the right choice and very happy in my life and what has been created and what's going on, so I think it was a good choice.

GEORGE: Yeah totally. So we're sitting here at Riddlers Gym but before we get into just what it is about anything else that's going on, walk us through, how'd you get started? You were talking about, we had a chat earlier about you living and training in Thailand as well. Give us a bit of a background of your career.

DARREN: Well, as I mentioned, I started in Muay Thai and Zen Do Kai. Which was really a martial art that kind of blended everything, or the best of everything in progression, is what Zen Do Kai stands for. Most people in W.A., Perth, in the early days started with the BJC, Bob Jones Corporation. I chose, after training for a while, having my first two fights that I really wanted to pursue the path of fighting. My trainer back then, Sean Allen, that wasn't the path that he wanted to go, so he advised me to move on and go to someone that specializes in Muay Thai.

And from there I started to discover Thailand. Obviously it's so close to Australia, and Muay Thai was starting to become known, more and more exposure to it over here. A Thai person, Phon Martdee, famous pioneer in W.A. especially, was putting on shows and bringing over well-known world champion Thai's, just really got my interest, that lead me to Thailand training trips.

I think the first time was for one month, and the second time was overstaying my three month visa by a month, and staying there for four months, and then another three months trip like that every year, I was making sure I was doing it. And then I lived there from '97 to early 2000, so just did that, yeah for about three and a half years straight. So went there for the Kick's Cup World Championships, which I won and stayed. Yeah, loved it, loved it.

GEORGE: So how difficult is it for someone from Australia, or from, I guess from Western society, to fit in with the Thai culture, and the whole Muay Thai scene, and actually make something of it?

DARREN: Back when I was going there, there weren't the camps down in Phuket and Koh Samui. There was WMC Lamai Gym in Koh Samui, which is still around and going strong now, but back then that was pretty much one of the few Western places that you could go. In Pattaya in Thailand there was Sibutong, which was a world famous and that's where all the Westerners were going early on, that's where I went, my second trip, spent my four months.

In comparison to now, where the Thai's have realized that it can be a tourist thing, just increasing the exposure of it. It's great for the Thai economy and Thai culture and obviously the spread of Muay Thai. Now it truly is a world sport, and people from all over the world go to these training camps now in Thailand. And it's not a matter of being accepted or anything like that, it's just you go there and you train.

So very early on, as I said, those kinds of places weren't around. And the camp that I spent my three and a bit years, Sangmorakot Gym in Bangkok, a large part of that time, I was the only white person there, training with professional Thai's, it was a professional camp in Bangkok, so it was just the ultimate experience. It was obviously very challenging, there was very little English back then. I had to learn Thai, which I wanted to do anyway, living in the country. And, yeah, it was a great exposure.

GEORGE: Fast-forwarding a bit, how did Riddlers come about?

DARREN: Riddlers came about in that, in the latter part of my career, where I was full-time, I obviously started to think about the future. Actually, I knew very early on that I wanted to teach Muay Thai, that it was going to be my career after competing, after fighting. So I did make plans for a very long time. I've got lots of books, still got notebooks with notes and ideas. Gym names, and systems and things that I wanted to have in place. So it was a long term plan. And then when I got to that stage of my fight career, I knew that I needed to start thinking of the future, or putting it into action, so to speak.

So I started doing a few PT's, a couple of small classes, and then the PT's started to build up. And then that lead to, okay, it's time to start the gym. So I, funny story, one of my friends that I used to go to his house to train him, I was training him in his garage underneath his house, which is in Leederville, not far from where we are now, and we'd finished the session, we were like, “Man, this is a good size for a gym.” So it was about 80 or 90 square meters, it was about a triple size carport, and he was looking to shift, so he shifted out of the house, I shifted into the house in Leederville, and that's where Riddlers started. So I was lucky enough, it was kind of a blessing that I only had one lot of overheads. I think rent and stuff like that is the biggest killer of new businesses. So all I had to do was be paying my rent and I had the gym there.

So Riddlers operated from there for about three, three and a half years, until I started to get too busy and my neighbor complained about parking and noise and that kind of thing. I was getting up to 20 people turning up for evening classes. I was training with fighters, Eugene Ekkelboom, Chris “Tiger” White, a couple of my novice, newer guys that I was bringing up, in the mornings, so that I was free to do PT's and teach classes in the evening time. But I had problems with the council because of the complaint, and then that pushed me again to take that next step, and find premises, which happened to be nearby.

Ran into a friend of mine, told him that I needed to find somewhere because I was having council problems. He was in the butcher's shop and a coffee shop, and he's like, “Man, come and check out this place behind me. It's not being used. We go and do some training there after work, and we've got a bag hanging up, and hit the bag and stuff like that.” So I went in there and it was 200 square meters, so more than double what I had. And it was just perfect. So that was where I started.

GEORGE: You're not the first school owner I speak to who has transitioned from really focusing on the private sector. We actually email, in our Partners program that we work on, I'm working with a gentleman on Thursday nights, and we're going to get a program called Profit With Privates. Not that that was his way of getting started, but they needed to renovate the gym. So they put all their energy in how they can use private classes to stack up the cash. A good way to transition.

So now you guys are here on the main road, huge gym, what I really want to know from you is, you've got all these champions, and all these people that come through Riddlers Gym and reach such a high level. What do you think is the edge? What do you do different that you create so many people at such a high level?

DARREN: Two things. I think obviously it's my experience from fighting that has sort of experienced all situations. And in fights, seen what's going on. And being able to read it from my experience, being able to communicate that to my fighters where, very importantly, having the respect of my fighters to the point that they listen and use that instruction for their gain. So then it's like they're fighting with my experience, my time, no matter what level they're at. So that's one thing.

And the other thing is having strong fighters. I have a saying, “Iron sharpens iron.” So the more strong people that you have working together, the more and the better everyone grows. So if you're in a small gym, that's like one champion fighter and you've only got other novices and stuff to work with, you're not getting that sparring, clinching, and stuff like that, that you need. Or perhaps guidance from the trainer, because you've outgrown the trainer. Whereas when you've got lots of those people around you, then you all help one another to grow. So yeah, I love that saying, “Iron sharpens iron.” And it's very, very true.

So from those early days, when I had the Eugene Ekkelboom, Chad Walker, Kim Olsen, all those guys. And for the smaller guys, I had Caley working with Chris “Tiger” White, with “Pitbull” Aram, stuff like that. So those guys really had that common to work hard together, spar hard, clinch hard. So, yeah.

GEORGE: Right. So you've got, I mean first and foremost, you've got the right people, and the champions attract more champions. Obviously people see the success that everyone that trains here has had here, and that sends more people around. Is there anything else that you really focus on?

DARREN: Lots of technique. We're big on technique. Big on skill. But also big on strong basics. I personally don't use lots of fancy techniques and things like that. I stick with strong basics and will work those, hammer those basics, we hammer them over and over again. Everyone is, all my guys, are extremely fit, well-conditioned. And we're kind of known for that.

GEORGE: Gotcha. So tell me more about Riddlers, and you've got all the fight shows, and things like that going on?

DARREN: Well I've promoted for shows actually before I even started the gym. I started promoting with a fellow group, splitting the load between us. That was when I was still fighting. So I was fighting on shows, but we were a big group promoting together. That lead to just a partnership in promoting.

I've always felt the need to promote because of the level of guys that I have as fighters. I've felt like when guys gain experience, there's obviously a lot less fights locally, and even interstate. So if you sit there waiting for the fights to come, or there's no fights, more so there's no fights, fighters lose motivation, and they're not in the gym training. These things can happen. So by having a regular schedule of fights, they have those goals. It keeps the fighters motivated if they know that they're guaranteed three or five fights per year, they're more likely to stay motivated and in the gym.

And then if anything else comes up, and this happens a lot these days because there's a lot more promotions around, a lot more going on. A lot of interstate opportunities come and you can take fights on fairly short notice. Like I get lots of calls from interstate promoters, we get lots of trips away. I mean, because with having a big fight team, the promoters also know that they're not just going to get one fighter. If they need three or four, strong chances are that we're going to be able to fit that. So they end up with three or four big fights on their card, with one trainer, so it saves a lot of money to get a lot of fights that way.

GEORGE: What's the big drive? I mean, you've built this machine. I mean obviously you've got the love for the Muay Thai and the passion for the sport. But what keeps you going? What's the big drive for you?

DARREN: I guess helping people on the path that I got to follow. Leading your guys, passing on your experience, seeing them use it to grow in their experience, and just get to live their dreams, to fight and compete. Maybe it’s achieving titles, but for a lot it's just actually competing and doing it, I live supporting and helping that. Trying to help them achieve those dreams.

GEORGE: Got you. So I'm trying to think of some things that we haven't asked, and I'm looking at something here that says, “10 things you don't know about Darren Reece.” And I don't know how old these are, but…

DARREN: Yeah, these are pretty old, so back then…

GEORGE: What's changed?

DARREN: Yeah, quite a few. There's one here, “I do not have an iPhone. Don't have an iPod. Don't use Facebook. Don't use Twitter, download music or burn CDs.” I still don't do a lot of those things. But I do definitely have an iPhone, and I use Facebook, it's a fantastic business tool and just connecting with people. Good for promoting things. It's really changed the way that we advertise our businesses, as you well know. And even for fight shows, we used to get thousands and thousands of fliers and posters done up for shows now, and have to do flier drops and pay for postal distribution and things like that to try and get it out, but it was very… it didn't have a high success rate because it wasn't really a target market.

And now with Facebook, where you're promoting it through people that are in the industry, or friends of those people, or getting those fighters to share things about their fights, it just hits the target market so much more. So it really has changed how we have to do things, and we have to evolve, so I've kind of evolved too.

But having said that, I'm still not overly technical. I'm not huge on the computer. I use Facebook, a little bit of Instagram, but I'm by no means an expert on it. And the things I do right are what I feel. The same as the things with Riddlers Gym, with the business, how we treat people. Everyone always comments on how friendly the gym is, and the great vibes that we have here, in the community, and things like that. And it's nothing that we've ever tried to enforce or push or anything like that, I just got the right trainers and the right personalities, and it's just how everyone is, you know?

GEORGE: Yeah.

DARREN: You say, “Hi.” To everyone. The conversations with them and just, I guess, people can't really believe it, but it's what we love doing.

GEORGE: For sure. But you might be selling yourself short there as well, right? Because that's got to come from the top. So if that's the type of person you are, you've set the tone for that culture.

DARREN: Yeah.

GEORGE: Then that's what's going to take.

DARREN: Yeah, yep.

GEORGE: That's what's going to catch on.

DARREN: Yeah and it's been a big part of the community here. Despite all the champions that we've had, and have, here at the gym, no one's really put up on a pedestal, and so there's no egos. No one's put up on that pedestal. We promote all the fighters equally. All the members, no one's really any more important than anyone else. And it doesn't create that monster.

GEORGE: Yeah.

DARREN: That monster thing that can affect an environment or a community, so.

GEORGE: Just from having that strong culture, a lot of your marketing is actually good fun, because that's enforcing the culture, and people talk, then that's the message that comes across, how much effort. We spoke a bit about culture earlier. Is there certain things that you focus on, that really shapes the culture? Or do you really just stick to who you are, and that sort of resonates through that…?

DARREN: Just really stick to who we are. We don't have any processes. I don't train my guys like, “You've got to say this. You've got to say that.” We are just who we are. We love being here. The guys that have jobs as trainers, Dan Skinner and Barrie Oliver work full time for me. Caley loves being in the gym. Chris “Tiger” White, who used to work for me when he finished his fight career, before he shifted away, just loved doing what we're doing. So that carries over because you're happy, and you're motivating people, and when you're teaching and pushing people and seeing them give it a crack and just loving it, plus you're getting to pass on what you're passionate about and seeing other people enjoy it, just makes you feel good inside.

GEORGE: So what's next for you? Where are things headed for Darren Reece and Riddlers Gym?

DARREN: Oh, look, I… to be honest, my focus has changed… Or, not changed but my focus has broadened in that I'm not interested in expanding the business. I don't want to work more hours. Caley and I have had two boys, so I've got two sons, which we've had in the last three years. Maddox turns three at the end of the month, Leo's nine months, and to be honest, I just want to spend as much time with them as I can.

GEORGE: Right.

DARREN: I don't want to, in a few years, go, “Oh damn. I was busy. I wish I'd spent more time with the boys.”

GEORGE: Totally.

DARREN: Because they're only young for a period of time. In a couple of years they're going to be in school, and then they're going to be teenagers and not want to hang out with me anymore because I'm not the cool guy. So I want to make the absolute most of that. So to be honest, I'm happy with keeping Riddlers the way it is. I've got no interest in expanding, opening another premises, getting bigger. I just love where I'm at. So that I'm enjoying life. I don't feel like I have to work harder. And I'm still working hard, but I'm also working smarter. And I've got great trainers, great team around us, which keeps things the way that they are.

GEORGE: Yeah.

DARREN: And keeps me happy. And my fighters still get lots of attention and lots of focus, and I don't feel that I'm doing any less a job. Everyone's getting some really big fights and still stepping up and growing, through the state level, national level and international level.

GEORGE: Yeah. I love that, because sometimes the focus can be growth for the sake of growth. When is enough? You've reached that point in your life, and family comes first, and that's where you want to spend time. And I think the gym is awesome, you're producing great fighters, it's providing for you and your family, and you get to do what you love every day. Why change? Why complicate? What's in it?

DARREN: Yeah. I want to train every day. I want to have an hour for myself and train, whether it is hitting pads, or doing some strength and conditioning, doing some cross fist stuff. I love it and want to do that. That keeps me happy, keeps me sane. And especially with the boys, where it's go, go, go, and it's all about them, you need that sort of switch off time, and just be able to get in your own zone, and just go out and go for it, do it.

GEORGE: Yeah. I've just reached that, coolness of dad has dropped. I was cool, but 13, my son is 13 now. Yeah, I can see my coolness on the decline, very quickly, off.

DARREN: That would be hard to accept.

GEORGE: Yeah. Hey, cool, Darren. Thanks so much for hanging out and chatting. So, just quickly, if people want to know more about you, and we run for at least the sort of time of your next fight show coming up, but tell us about your fight show because you have got a couple in circulation. And if people want to reach out to you, where can they find you?

DARREN: Yeah, well you can if you're interested, you come down and try Riddlers Gym. We've obviously got a fairly active Facebook page, we've got a website, riddlersgym.com.au, you can check us out. It's got all about the trainers, our full schedule, pricing, and everything’s on there. And our fight shows, keep an eye out for EPIC Fight Promotions, I think we're up to number 21, which focuses on our professionals and our main experienced fighters.

And then my wife Caley Reece loves to promote her show, it's called Evolve, it's coming up this Sunday. That's focused on grass roots Muay Thai and she'll have a couple of main card fights, including the MTA State Title, which she's got on this one. And she works very hard to bring that for the fighters. It's something that she feels like she wants to do on her own, and give back to the sport that did so much for her.

GEORGE: Yeah, perfect. Hey, awesome. Darren, thanks so much for hanging out.

DARREN: Thanks very much, George. Thanks everyone.

GEORGE: Speak soon. Cheers.

DARREN: Cheers. Thank you.

Thanks – I'll speak to you on the next episode – cheers!

Here are 3 ways we can help scale your school right now.

1. Join the Martial Arts Media community.

It's our new Facebook community where martial arts school owners get to ask questions about online marketing and get access to training videos that we don't share elsewhere – Click Here.

2. Join the Martial Arts Media Academy and become a Case Study.

I'm working closely with a group of martial arts school owners this month. If you'd like to work with me to help you grow your martial arts school, message me with the word ‘Case Study'.

3. Work with me and my team privately.

Enjoyed the show? Get more martial arts business tips when you subscribe on iTunes for iPhone or Stitcher Radio for Android devices.

***NEW*** Now available on Spotify!

Podcast Sponsored by Martial Arts Media Partners

87 – Getting Your Fight Shows Featured On UFC Fight Pass

November 5, 2019 by George Fourie Leave a Comment

An Australian first, Ben Vickers from Eternal MMA now gets their fight shows featured on UFC Fight Pass. We discuss the details.

.IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

How Ben Vickers’ Eternal MMA started their collaboration with the UFC
What it means to be the first Australian fight promoter to get featured on UFC Fight pass
The martial arts metaphor for life
The number of interactions needed before an individual takes action to buy a product or service
And more

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.

TRANSCRIPTION

To be a leader. You have to demonstrate you're prepared to go. You're not just prepared to scream and shout. You're prepared to put yourself in those uncomfortable positions also.

GEORGE: At what point did you start looking at opening a school and how did you end up in Perth?

BEN: I started coaching about 2007. I really enjoyed coaching. I kind of realized that I was never going to be a world champion and… But I do firmly believe I could train a world champion. So that was sort of my focus sort of switched from being a fighter to training fighters, and I made the hard decision to quit competing myself in MMA anyway. Sorry I've got a fly harassing me at the moment.

GEORGE: It’s Perth.

BEN: I could Mr. Miyagi it with some chopsticks, but… So I made the call that I was going to cease my fighting career. I couldn't do both. If I wanted to focus on coaching, I had to fully focus on coaching. So I started to coach full time. I was actually in the fire service at the time and decided to leave the fire service to pursue MMA as a full-time career. So that happened in 2010 so I was coaching full-time and working as a firefight full-time.

It's the beauty of the shift system there that I could make that work. And then I put the firefighting away to pursue a career in what I love doing, which was teaching martial arts, MMA in particular. So see I was just coaching and then the opportunity to come to Perth came up at the right time in my life. I was just ready to make the move and there were a few circumstances at home that made it a good, good time for me to jet off to the other side of the world. So I did that.

We opened an MMA Clinic here and I was just working as the head coach. And then some things changed and I ended up running the gym. And then eight years later, the gym’s rebranded and I'm sort of sitting there as my own boss with my own school and yeah, pretty happy with that.

GEORGE: Sounds good. I do want to ask you a question to back track. You said it was a hard choice to move from being the fighter to being the coach. What was sort of the hardest part about it? Was it… I mean you mentioned that juggling the two things at once, being the coach and the fighter. Was that the hardest part or was it sort of more of giving up on a dream that that's the path that you want to take?

BEN: No, when I made the call, I realized that the dream is, is to be a world champion as a fighter, I think. And it's a hard sport. MMA is brutal. And I realized that wasn't necessarily a possibility, so that wasn't the hard part. The hard part is I love competing. I love training. I love not having a responsibility when I go to the gym, you know, it's nice just to be able to go and get your hands dirty and get out. So then I had to make that call that now I was going to become the…

As a coach, you become more than just teaching people technique. You become a life coach sort of thing for your students they become family. It's such a strange sport in that you beat the living daylights out of each other so the ego can go straight away because you know the pecking order. You know who can win and who can’t.

So you don't need to worry about that stuff anymore. And your sort of leave all your, all your, yeah, your ego just, it doesn't need to exist anymore. The role is well defined within the gym. Everyone knows how everything stands. And in coaching, you take respect in a different way. You know, I'm 40 years old, my students are half my age. I have to understand that I can't necessarily compete with them anymore, but I have to then guide them in the right direction.

So it's a hard choice when I'm a very competitive person. So I missed… I had to make the decision to step away from competition and prepare others for competition. And to fill that hole I do stupid things like ultra-marathons and just to test myself mentally because fighting for me is all about the mental. Overcoming mental barriers and finding comfort in discomfort.

So, yeah, I did a two years or three years ago I did an eight weeks training and did 65 kilometer run and that put me in that place, which was what I just wanted to test myself to see if I still had the mental that when the going got tough, the tough get going or would the, would I, would I crack on and make it to the end or would I quit? You know? That's why I wanted to find out. And I constantly look for different ways to test myself in that regard.

So I found a home for my competitiveness elsewhere. I took up rugby so I could turn up on a weekend and be a part of the team but not have to lead it and just get my hands dirty and get stuck in. And so I found ways in that way to manage that competitive spirit and focus all my energy during the week on my guys and making them the best they can be.

GEORGE: Got it. It's such a metaphor for life, right? And that's where martial arts just is a, it's a real test of life because, you know, putting yourself in those uncomfortable positions while there's no… I don't think there's, you know, a much harder place to do it then get in the cage or to be in martial arts or have that contact where it can kind of feels like a life or death.

BEN: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And you know, we're only ever a split second away from absolute disaster, you know, I mean things we do, you know, punching each other, twisting each other into uncomfortable positions and stuff like that. So it takes a great amount of trust and faith in your training partners, which is what bonds are so close together, I think is, you know…

When someone has you in a choke, in a real-life situation, if they don't let go, you run out of oxygen and you die. If someone has you in an armbar, your arm's going to snap if they don't stop when you ask them to stop. That mutual respect and that mutual feeling of trust build really strong bonds with your students. And I'm very much, I lead from the front, so I do everything the guys do pretty much. I'm sure stepping into the cage, I still spar, I still do the fitness sessions with them. I still do everything that I can prove that I'm not just screaming and shouting. I'm actually putting my money where my mouth is sometimes.

I think that's important too, is to be a leader. You have to demonstrate you're prepared to go. You're not just prepared to scream and shout. You're prepared to put yourself in those uncomfortable positions also.

GEORGE: Yeah, totally. Let's just shift gears towards the business. I tell you, you're running a successful school. Just for context, so what styles, so you've got MMA, what else do you guys do?

BEN: We do all the disciplines individually, so we have presenting jiu-jitsu, our freestyle wrestling, boxing, Muay Thai, striking, which is more like kickboxing style, and then the MMA stuff as well. Plus strength and conditioning on top of that. So we run, we run the full, all the disciplines that you'd need to compete in MMA. And then my job is to put them all together. That's where MMA fighters are made, is not in the individual arts themselves, but in transitioning those arts together.

GEORGE: Awesome. So… and I'm curious, what is your process for doing that?

BEN: You have to make the best out of each art for mixed martial arts. Like for instance, in jiu-jitsu, you might be a guard player. You might lay on your back with the other person on top of you, while there are no strikes coming down, guard is a pretty safe position. When someone can punch or elbow you in the face, it becomes a completely different story.

So it's working out, taking the good from all the different arts and then putting them together in a program that works best for mixed martial arts in itself. But the key is transitioning them. So how do you get from boxing to get someone on the ground? How do you work those transitions? So it's fusing the transitions in. So my mentor is a guy called Mark Fury. He was Matt Hughes coach, Robbie Lawler's coach. He's cornered a 137 UFC fights or something like that.

And he uses the hand as the metaphor for coaching MMA. So if your hand, if these are the arts, that's easy to work. This is BJJ, this is wrestling, this is boxing, this is Muay Thai or striking, whatever. It's these parts, the parts that join the hands together. That's what we need to get people good at. So you might have good BJJ and good wrestling, but how do we create the transition to that. You might have good striking and good jiu-jitsu, but if you can't wrestle, you're not going to dictate where the fight goes. So it's working on the joining factors. So for me, that's the key.

GEORGE: Yeah, perfect. The loop that makes it flow. Probably not the best analogy but-

BEN: Yeah, exactly. It's like what makes everything flow together as one as opposed to being four different martial arts that you're good at. They all need to work in synergy with each other.

GEORGE: So that's now the gym and then so you've got the fighters and now you've got fighters competing and you've created Eternal MMA. So quick just how did we actually transition into that and then we can talk a bit more about what's going on with the fight promotions.

BEN: Yeah. I actually can't take the credit for creating Eternal MMA. I have a business partner in the Gold Coast, Cam O'Neill. He formed Eternal in 2012 and I actually used to just put fighters on it. So he flew some of my guys over to the Gold Coast. He's from the UK as well. So we sort of knew a few people, same people come up with the same sort of time in the same sea. So we got on really well straight away and he started using my fighters on all of his shows.

In 2015, we decided to bring a show to Perth and that's where I sort of came on board as a co-promoter and a co-owner of the business. And that's when we started expanding from the Gold Coast into Perth. I helped sort of develop the promotion on this side of the country and then a couple of years ago we decided we'd move into other States. So we did Adelaide. My thing was on three shows in Adelaide and we just did our debut in Melbourne last weekend before the UFC 243 card in conjunction with the UFC. So we worked together closely with them on that.

So yeah, that's how it sort of came about. I was a reluctant promoter. I didn't really want to do it. I had enough stuff going on, but Cam's very convincing and here we are.

GEORGE: Now, that's quite the… the UFC, how did the UFC come about?

BEN: We sort of asked them questions and we knew they were looking for a partner in Australia and I guess we stated our case. There were a few other promotions looking for the same deal. But I think what makes Eternal… We went into quite some depth in our, in our pitch more than just being on UFC Fight Pass and providing them a broadcast.

We want to help develop the regions. So you know, we want to work in conjunction with them to develop fighters to give them. So to become a pathway to the UFC so we can blood all the fighters, get them their experience, test them out, and then when the UFC is ready to pick the ones that they want, then they can come to the promotion and they'll have a good idea of who they're looking at. Also, if they have fighters they are looking at, we can find them fights for them and stuff like that. So…

GEORGE: I guess just an important step back is how did you actually make the connection? How did it before you actually got to give your pitch?

BEN: You just hear it, you hear things in the industry and we heard they were looking for partners, a partner in Australia, and it's quite easy to get a hold of someone's email address these days and there you go. You just, we just fired off emails and they started talking, started a more in-depth conversation. I know a few of these people from dealing with them with other things as well. So yeah, it's just a case of being diligent, sort of being in the right place at the right time, having a good product and delivering on what you say you're going to deliver on.

I think that's the key to business in general. It's having a good product and doing what you say you're going to do. Which I find is the biggest problem in business these days. I don't think many people follow through on their promises, but I live by that. If I say I'm going to do something, I will do it and do it well. Right.

GEORGE: Yeah. Tell me, I've got a question on that. So you get to do your pitch and what I can hear is you, well obviously you want to deliver on the promise, but it sounds like you really framed it in a way of, you know, it's not just what are we going to get out of the, you know, being promoted for UFC Fight Pass, but really what are they going to get out of it? You know? How could you help develop them? Can you elaborate a bit more on the pitch and how you went about all that?

BEN: Yeah, so we put a pitch together. Obviously, we provide a lot of content. UFC Fight Pass for those that don't know what it is, is the UFC's streaming platform. So it's a digital streaming web-based channel that has 500,000 subscribers in 200 countries across the world. And obviously to service those guys, they need content. So not only can we offer quality content 10 times a year, we can also offer our knowledge of the region.

They need the talent to come through to grow in each region so we can offer them fighters with the skills and qualities that they require to suit their brand. Being the brand leader, they need the best talent and I believe we have the best talent, most of the best talent in the country fighting for us.

That's what we can offer to them as well as sort of being able to give them inside information on the scene in the country as a whole. It's a very mutual relationship. Obviously, we give them all our content and in return we get exposure. That's the nuts and bolts of it. But behind the scenes there's a lot more to it than that.

GEORGE: That's great. So what does that mean for the fighters? Like how does the exposure work? Is it just that it's being promoted on the platform or is it more to it? Not that that's not enough, but-

BEN: Yeah, there's definitely more to it. So for example, we debuted on fight pass in Melbourne just before UFC 243, so we did the Friday night and then 243 one on a Sunday morning. But, obviously, a lot of the UFC top brass were in attendance. So the matchmaker from the UFC was in the crowd that day. So there's no better audition than for you to go out and apply your trade-in front of the guy that you want to impress live.

GEORGE: Totally.

BEN: So things like that, we aim to work with the UFC on dates. If they have a show in Australia, we aim to sort of create… We created a mini fight last week. So our show, we had weigh-ins Thursday, the show Friday. They had on Saturday and the show on Sunday. So Thursday through Sunday there's MMA every day and in Melbourne. Whereas in UFC Fight Week in Vegas, you know, obviously they have these big expos and stuff like that.

So it was like a really big weekend for Australian MMA and we can do stuff like that every time they come to the region. That's one benefit. Being able to display your skills in front of the people that you're trying to impress rather than sending them an email with a highlight reel, doesn't have quite the same effect. They're also readily available on that platform. So if we send a matchmaker a fighter's name, all he has to do is go on Fight Pass and look at that fighter direct through their own TV channel.

But then also inside information. So if they have any questions or anything like that or they want some guidance on as to who, how this guy is stacking up or whatever, then we can provide that too. But also we're providing regular, if an event does three shows a year and you fight on that event, you might not get on all three shows. So you might only get two fights a year. We're providing an opportunity to fight on 10 different shows a year. Most fighters want to fight three or four times a year, so we can definitely do that for pretty much all our fighters on the frequency that we put shows for it.

GEORGE: Perfect. Awesome opportunity for any fighter, obviously, as you say, you know, direct, but then just being featured on the show. Even if you know you don't have the promoters there, what better thing to put on your portfolio? Just check my fights with them. UFC Fight Pass. Yeah.

BEN: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And it provides a bit of a pathway. It's like I can fight on this show. I know that it's on the UFC, so there's more chance of us then being selected. If we're the best in the country. What we're aiming to do is if you're the best in the country and you owned an Eternal championship, then you should be sort of next in the pecking order to be moved on into the UFC. That's what we're looking at.

Obviously its early days and we're yet to sort of prove that method to anyone, but hopefully next year we signed a multi-fight deal for 2020. They'll take 10 shows from us, whereas this year was a bit unorthodox. They wouldn't normally sign a promotion last quarter, but we managed to get it over the line and they're taking two of our three remaining events this year because of scheduling. They couldn't take the last one, but in 2020 all our events will be live on UFC Fight Pass. So that would give the fighters in the platform on every show to really push and make a run for the big show.

GEORGE: Now, you had mentioned to me earlier, Ben, that you guys have done this all from self-funded 100% you're still running with no sponsors. Is that correct?

BEN: That is correct. Yeah. I sort of spoke to you briefly before, but I've transitioned from being a fighter to being a coach to being a gym owner that none of it was pre-orchestrated or planned. I've never claimed before the last few years to be a businessman. You know, like I just was a guy that had a passion for the sport and wanting to grow it and it's just organically sort of turned out the way it's turned out. So now we're at the point in and it's that corporate sort of driving sponsorship and stuff like that.

It's an area where I don't have the expertise and I've always been a guy that I stay in my lane. If I know about it, I'll do it and if I don't know about it, I'll try and get someone else to do it for me and obviously, you know, pay some… I'd much rather pay someone to do something properly than make a botched job of it myself. Trying to save a few dollars. We have some minor sponsors, you know, a couple of us, you know, they buy tables at the show and stuff like that. But yeah, nothing on a major level that, you know, perhaps some of our competitors might have.

GEORGE: Totally so if we were having that conversation, like let's say I have a product that could be mutually beneficial to what you guys are doing and obviously knowing that, yeah, the exposure is the next level for what you're getting, you know, to be UFC Fight Pass and so forth. Who do you think would be an ideal sponsor and how could they benefit potentially from?

BEN: I think you'd be surprised as to who could be a sponsor for a mixed martial arts event with big viewership. Because you think about the demographic that is one, into the sport and two, attending and watching the sport. It's mostly a male, sort of 17 to 45 disposable income demographic. So you know, it's a good demographic for most companies. You know, clothing, nutrition, tattoos, betting, all that kind of stuff all fit into the sort of the demographic that we service.

So they're the kind of people that we're looking to link up. We did some stuff with Winter Warrior, which is a show that puts on like 20-week programs in gyms around the world. So we're working with them next year, so we're going to be partnering up with them. So that's really exciting for 2020. Any company that wants to have a chance to put themselves in front of that demographic would be a good fit for us.

And also we have assets, you know, we have these champion people, you know, we have great athletes who are very humble and you know, we can come to companies and train their staff. You know, we can do talks, we can… so we can set up very bespoke packages. You know, there's plenty we have to offer with the assets that we have within the company, not just inside of viewership and advertising. Sort of team building, personal development.

You know, you could learn a lot from a young MMA fighter who's disciplined and sacrificed a lot to get to where they've gotten to. And also from people within the company, like myself and Cam, we were kind of self-made business people that have reached quite high with limited funds and experience, you know. So there's plenty of areas to explore.

It's just a case of like anything, it's just, it's a skill that we need to learn and get better at. I probably need to take some coaching or something like that. I mean obviously if you want to get better at something, you find someone who's good at it and you learn from them. So that's probably what we need to do. It's just, we're very time-poor. I run two businesses and I'm just about to open a third. I have a young family that I don't see very much obviously.

So yeah, the time to go and do a course or learn from someone is not really there at the moment. But if sacrifices need to be made then they'll have to be made at some stage. So yeah, I guess it's all part of the learning experience.

GEORGE: For sure. So, and what about if like if I'm a martial arts school owner and I've got fighters and so forth, how would that benefit getting on board with you guys with Eternal MMA?

BEN: Well we can advertise your school at our events and your customers are sitting in our audience, you know, and are watching our show on TV so that you're putting your case. So we have had people in the past put adverts on the big screen in the venue of their gym and now we can put flyers or… What it is if you have a brand, I thought, I don't know the exact numbers, but it needs to be seen X amount of times before it sets in someone's head. And then when they're looking for that service, your name will be the one that they…

So it's like subliminal advertising, really. Putting yourself in front of someone enough times for them to, when they do eventually require your service, you'll be the name they type into Google. You know, so that is really where we can assist gyms and also we can obviously help getting their fighters fights if that's… Because I have a huge fight team to service them, having the promotion is great because I can get them more fights. Whereas if you don't have necessarily the connections or know the people to talk to, then you might struggle to match your guys up regularly, which might lead them to getting disgruntled and going somewhere else where they might get better opportunities.

GEORGE: Yeah, totally. On the marketing side, like in our group, our Partners group where we work with school owners on the marketing side, basically classify it as a touchpoint. I mean there's various tests, six to eight interactions. It could be typical before somebody reaches out.

BEN: Yeah.

GEORGE: I mean there are some other tests that stretch up to 43 days and you know, all the fancy stuff. But I mean for any school owner you can think of six to eight interactions with your brand before somebody says hi, let's have this conversation. But that is a perfect thing for a good touchpoint. Sometimes the touchpoint, especially if it's, you know, massive exposure like you know you're doing something on UFC Fight Pass. It could be promoting the actual promotion sometimes has value.

What I mean by that is, you know, nowadays when people have an article in the newspaper, it's kind of pointless. This big newspaper, cause nobody hears about it, but somehow it's got some credibility. So you're marketing referencing that you were featured in this thing is sometimes more valuable. Just like I see when school owners we've worked with that get featured on Sunrise or you know, morning shows.

BEN: Yeah.

GEORGE: … nobody sees the morning show, but they see the YouTube clip of them featured.

BEN: It gives you that sort of recognition that you're a legit brand. Right, because-

GEORGE: Critical work, yeah.

BEN: Yeah. Credibility. Exactly. So say Nike sponsored you for something, you automatically get that, that’s the biggest company in the world, one of the biggest sportswear companies in the world, you're sponsored by them. All of a sudden people go, “Oh yeah, these guys are legit.” That sort of thing.

GEORGE: 100%. Thanks for your time. I'll bump into you on the daycare trip.

BEN: Yeah.

GEORGE: … again soon. But if anybody wants, let's say, number one, you know like you want to get on board with us. I mean obviously there are big things in store for Ben with the Eternal MMA and the UFC Fight Pass, the exposure. So I mean if, if you're a potential sponsor or a school owner, you've got fighters that you want on board, how can people get a hold of you and have a chat to see if it's mutually beneficial?

BEN: Best bet is probably just an email. So my email would be Ben, B-E-N, at eternal MMA dot com. Yeah, hit me up on an email. Even if it's just like I love to support and advise as well. So if anyone's got any questions, you want it to start a fight promotion or gym-related stuff. I'm more than happy to sort of… I believe that sharing is what makes… Helps everyone achieve and I am very much in lifting people up. So yeah, I'm happy to offer any assistance that I can and yeah if anyone's interested in jumping on board or talking about some options and then, yeah, I'm definitely all ears.

GEORGE: Yeah. Perfect. And if you've listened to the show and you've enjoyed it and you've got some value, especially out of the fight promotions and things like that, just yeah, just shoot Ben an email and just love the podcasts and give some feedback.

BEN: Yeah, definitely a hundred per cent.

GEORGE: Awesome, Ben. Well, thanks for being on the show and I'll probably see you in a couple of days down the road.

BEN: Yeah. Maybe tonight when we pick the kids up.

GEORGE: Yeah, true.

BEN: All right mate, you take it easy. Thanks for your time.

GEORGE: Cool. Thanks Ben. Cheers.

Thanks – I'll speak to you on the next episode – cheers!

Here are 3 ways we can help scale your school right now.

1. Join the Martial Arts Media community.

It's our new Facebook community where martial arts school owners get to ask questions about online marketing and get access to training videos that we don't share elsewhere – Click Here.

2. Join the Martial Arts Media Academy and become a Case Study.

I'm working closely with a group of martial arts school owners this month. If you'd like to work with me to help you grow your martial arts school, message me with the word ‘Case Study'.

3. Work with me and my team privately.

Enjoyed the show? Get more martial arts business tips when you subscribe on iTunes for iPhone or Stitcher Radio for Android devices.

***NEW*** Now available on Spotify!

Podcast Sponsored by Martial Arts Media Partners

86 – Using Facebook Messenger Bots For Martial Arts Schools

October 18, 2019 by George Fourie Leave a Comment

How martial arts school Messenger bots can help educate your future students when you're not present.

.IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

How martial arts school messenger bots help with relationships
The power of speed replies
Getting conversations started without you
And more

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.

TRANSCRIPTION

The quicker you reply, the better response you get at the end of the day. So what a bot actually does for you is it gives you the opportunity to reply instantly and start building a bit of relationship, or sharing information, or maybe even directing people to a paid trial.

Hey George here. I hope you're well. I'm on my usual walk with the girl. So exciting stuff, in about 90 minutes from now I am meeting with our messenger bot developer. So we're busy mapping out a messenger bot for our Partner members. And so, quick couple of things about bots. I don't know if that's something that you're familiar with or not, but it's basically if you think of email automation in a way, where you have a sequence of follow up messages, well a messenger bot does the same thing. It just does it a bit more instant and looks real in a way, but obviously is an automated way of following people up.

So there are pluses and minuses to it. I always feel that to have an optimal sales process nothing's ever going to beat face-to-face or person-to-person live contact, provided of course you've got some cool selling skills and so forth, and you know how to present your offers in the right way. But then a big benefit about having a bot is the instant reply feature. When you look at email marketing, email can sit for a day or even longer, and it's okay to take a bit longer to reply. But with messaging people expect a bit more of an urgent reply. The quicker you reply, the better response you get at the end of the day.

So what a bot actually does for you is gives you the opportunity to reply instantly, and start building a bit of relationship, or sharing information, or maybe even directing people to a paid trial while you're busy and while you're on the mats and before you actually get to them and be able to speak to them one-on-one through the chat, or get on the phone, or however you want to do it.

So there are two ways to do it. One is to start the conversation, which is my favourite. I prefer to use it as a conversation starter and not to be the actual conversation. And I think a lot, especially of the bot developers, get really crazy about it. They get all technical and create these long sequences and so forth. But at the end of the day, for me, the way I look at it is I just want to be able to speak to someone, start a conversation, and provide them with useful information before I could have the real conversation, and the one-to-one chat.

That's pretty much what it's all about, for us at least. You can get really fancy with it and have all these long fancy sequences, but for me and for our members, we've got different ways of following up with chat on a one-to-one basis. So the bots really going to facilitate in helping start that conversation, and just give a bit of breathing space, or a bit of time for someone to actually soak up some videos, read up some information, and ultimately if they're ready, sign up for the paid trial.

So anyway, that's me. I've got to jump to the meeting fairly soon. Just wrapping up the last couple of questions and things that we're going to work on and how are we're going to format the whole bot. So, exciting stuff. We'll let you know more about it once we have it up.

If that's something that does interest you and you'd like to have a messenger bot built out for you and for your school that you can plug and play, and just swap out a couple of words and be good to go, then yeah, just hit me up with a message wherever you're watching this. Just reach out to my profile, send me a message and we'll have a chat, and see if we could help. Cool. Have an awesome day. I'm going to head back, speak soon. Cheers.

Thanks – I'll speak to you on the next episode – cheers!

Here are 3 ways we can help scale your school right now.

1. Join the Martial Arts Media community.

It's our new Facebook community where martial arts school owners get to ask questions about online marketing and get access to training videos that we don't share elsewhere – Click Here.

2. Join the Martial Arts Media Academy and become a Case Study.

I'm working closely with a group of martial arts school owners this month. If you'd like to work with me to help you grow your martial arts school, message me with the word ‘Case Study'.

3. Work with me and my team privately.

Enjoyed the show? Get more martial arts business tips when you subscribe on iTunes for iPhone or Stitcher Radio for Android devices.

***NEW*** Now available on Spotify!

Podcast Sponsored by Martial Arts Media Partners

85 – Martial Arts Marketing BS!

October 12, 2019 by George Fourie Leave a Comment

When martial arts marketing agencies make promises too good to be true, it probably is.

.IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

Why you should avoid those ‘too good to be true’ marketing strategies
Why a ‘quick fix’ does more harm than good
How a wrong offer damages the culture in your martial arts school
How to hire the right martial arts business coach
And more

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.

TRANSCRIPTION

Be a bit cautious. Before you just throw money at a company that gives all these unrealistic promises. Having a bit of a gut check and think is that realistic? Because if it's too good to be true, it probably is.

GEORGE: Hey George here, hope you're well. So when is too good to be true, too good to be true? So chatting to someone in Rhode Island yesterday, great martial artist and talking about getting burnt with marketing companies, and I like to keep this podcast positive, but there are some things that just piss me off, and this is one of them because whenever somebody makes promises, it's always a red flag for me.

If somebody makes a promise and say they'll get you so many martial arts students sign-ups in X amount of time, guaranteed. I think, all right, that's interesting. Maybe that's true, but at what cost and at what expense?

There's one thing to sell a trick and one thing to actually know a strategy and unfortunately what happens is, and all respect to everybody starting out of business and trying to try to get things ahead, but when you start making money at the expense of others, that just doesn't sit well with me. It just doesn't.

The one thing that attracted me to the martial arts industry was when you look at the things that you see on the wall of an average martial arts school and you probably have it as well. Discipline, respect, confidence, focus, depending on what type of school you have. But it's those values that resonate with me. And that kind of got me going in the industry. Because it was like, “Okay, it's the practical personal development.” But then if I see people working in the industry or maybe they're from the outside or… That doesn't gel with those values that… I'm just not a fan of that.

So here's the thing, it's really easy to sell a tactic. And what I mean by that is you get started, you figure some little trick and tactic out and it works. One part of it works. Only one part of it works and now you go shout it from the rooftops and you go post in all the martial arts groups and you tell everybody about this cool thing that you've got going. And people fall for it because it taps into the secret desire of having a quick fix.

The secret desire of I can push this button or give this company money and they just going to do everything for me. And I've never once seen that work. I haven't. For a little bit there, I was trying to be that company, but it's not ethically and humanly possible because you can only ever serve one component.

And unless you are doing everything from the minute people engage with you to being the instructor on the mat and furthering that… Have that congruent flow of what you're doing. It's just not possible. So here's what fired me up about this is this company made all these promises and they put this ridiculous offer on the front end for people to buy. And on the front end it looks, wow, it's irresistible. So of course people take it, but what type of people are taking it? Well, the people that you probably don't want in your school because they were just bargain hunters.

They just saw something that was so good, so irresistible, so great that they went and bought it. So for the lead company, well paid, they delivered on their promise. Because they got you the signups, not the sign-ups that you wanted, but they got you some sign-ups. But for you as a school owner, you sit with the crap. And I remember speaking to Kevin Blundell a couple of years back now and on… Perhaps it's podcast number 20. If you go to martialartsmedia.com/20, it might be this podcast. But he was talking about having the wrong offer, having the wrong front end offer and the damage that that did.

It took them more than a year to actually clean out the bad students that they attracted. So be a bit cautious before you just throw money at a company that gives all these unrealistic promises. Have a bit of a gut check and think is that realistic? Because if it's too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true. And it might work on the front end, but at what cost for you, your culture, your existing students and everyone in the backend? Anyway, that's all I wanted to share. I might share some other stuff that really pissed me off on another episode.

But hey, if you need help with this kind of stuff, and I'm not talking about a quick fix, but talking to real help, real help to scale your business, to grow your business with a real marketing strategy from the front end to the backend, something that's got to work with your offer on the front end, when people connect with you to something that's got to be congruent with your sales process. And super clear about that.

Your process, not someone else's but yours. Because someone else's process might not work for you. Then send me a message. No hard pressure, no weirdness. We'll have a chat and if I feel we can help, we'll go take the conversation further. Awesome. I'm going to run off. Get some other work done. I will speak to you soon. Cheers.

Thanks – I'll speak to you on the next episode – cheers!

Here are 3 ways we can help scale your school right now.

1. Join the Martial Arts Media community.

It's our new Facebook community where martial arts school owners get to ask questions about online marketing and get access to training videos that we don't share elsewhere – Click Here.

2. Join the Martial Arts Media Academy and become a Case Study.

I'm working closely with a group of martial arts school owners this month. If you'd like to work with me to help you grow your martial arts school, message me with the word ‘Case Study'.

3. Work with me and my team privately.

Enjoyed the show? Get more martial arts business tips when you subscribe on iTunes for iPhone or Stitcher Radio for Android devices.

***NEW*** Now available on Spotify!

Podcast Sponsored by Martial Arts Media Partners

84 – How To Improve Your Martial Arts Facebook Ads Through Split Testing

October 2, 2019 by George Fourie Leave a Comment

Do this to build a library of successful lead generating martial arts Facebook ads.

.IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

What is a Facebook ad split testing really
How to stop ‘flying blind’
Why you should always ‘beat the control’
Moving big rocks, stones and pebbles
And more

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.

TRANSCRIPTION

If you're not testing and optimizing and trying to improve your ads, then what happens is, every month you're just flying blind, right? So every month, you've got to come up with a new campaign, a new idea. And if you don't have a proven track record of things that have worked previously and you know exactly why they worked, then you're always playing this guessing game.

GEORGE: Hey George here. So I want to give you a quick couple of ideas and tips on how you can improve your ads, your Facebook Ads or Google Ads. Mostly going to focus on Facebook at this point in time, but how you can improve your ads through testing, through running different split tests, et cetera.

So just finishing up the last touches for a session I'm running for our Partners tomorrow, it's called the Ad Conversion Optimizer. Just finished up mapping everything out and just about to finish up on the actual worksheet that goes with it.

It's going to be a great session, but I want to give you a quick couple of ideas on how you can improve your ads. And I guess first and foremost, why you should be doing it in the first place. If you're not testing and optimizing and trying to improve your ads, then what happens is, every month you're just flying blind, right?

So every month you've got to come up with a new campaign, a new idea. And if you don't have a proven track record of things that have worked previously and you know exactly why they worked, then you're always playing this guessing game and you're always trying to come up with new things and you're flying blind every single month.

Whereas if you keep track of what you're doing and you measure your different results and you test all these different elements that we're going to talk about now, then you build up this library of winning campaigns. And now when you go and run a new campaign, you know, well, that offer converts, that headline works, that element works, and you can mash them all together and the chance of a successful campaign is so much higher.

And look, there's no golden goose of… Everyone's always looking for that big idea. Well, sometimes that big idea is actually just working with what you've got and making those incremental changes until you build up this golden goose that's forever producing the golden eggs. Right? Okay. So we don't look at eggs, we like to look at rocks. I like to refer to it as balancing rocks, which is kind of why I added this slide over here.

So here's what that means. You've got big rocks, you've got little stones, and then you've got pebbles. Okay. So first let's start with the big rocks. Big rocks are testing big ideas, big ideas as in big, different concepts. So that could be targeting a different emotion, for example, or restructuring a whole different ad format. Maybe that could be like running a video ad versus a text-based ad, or a long copy versus a shorter copy type ad.

Then you've got the little stones. Now working with the little stones, with the little stones is you've got your winning concept and now you start tweaking little elements. So you might start changing the different headlines, changing the descriptions, and now you start testing different elements within that ad to see which is performing better.

So there's a term called ‘beat the control’. Perry Marshall started, I think he started this concept. Perry Marshall was the… He wrote a book called ‘The Definitive Guide to AdWords’ way back in the day, many, many moons ago. And he always spoke about this concept of beat the control and that means that you are always trying to beat your winning ad basically. These are running ads kind of side by side. Now you're looking at the little stones, for example, and you're testing headline to headline, description to description.

And then you go down to the pebbles. And the pebbled are these tiny little tweaks. It's shuffling these little pebbles to see what type of results you get. And that is basically to maybe swap out a different word, move little elements around, small little increments. It could be different punctuation marks, really little increments to see what gets better results. And I'll tell you what, you'll be surprised what happens when you do that. If you're testing accurately and you know how to track and what to do against each other, you'll be surprised what you can actually achieve.

So hope that helps. That's just to give you a bit of a run around on how to go about it. If it's something that you need help with, really how to structure it, what those big ideas should be, how you should go about that, all those concepts, what exactly you should be tracking and testing and how you can really become a master at advertising. Because that's what it's about.

It doesn't happen in a day. It happens by committing to the right process. There are so many things that you do anyway. You're going to do it anyway and you're going to spend the time, you might as well do the time right. And work towards building up a library of winning campaigns, winning formulas and not be in a situation where you little elements have to sign up new students every month because you've got to make the rent, the bank, whatever you want to call it?

Cool. So yeah, look, if you need help with that, shoot me a message. I'm going to run off, hopefully, get some training in and finish off the last of my worksheet. Catch you soon. Cheers.

Awesome. Thanks for listening. If you want to connect with another top, smart martial arts school owners, and have a chat about marketing, lead generation, what's working now, or just have a gentle rant about things that are happening in the industry, then I want to invite you to join our Facebook group.

Thanks – I'll speak to you on the next episode – cheers!

Here are 3 ways we can help scale your school right now.

1. Join the Martial Arts Media community.

It's our new Facebook community where martial arts school owners get to ask questions about online marketing and get access to training videos that we don't share elsewhere – Click Here.

2. Join the Martial Arts Media Academy and become a Case Study.

I'm working closely with a group of martial arts school owners this month. If you'd like to work with me to help you grow your martial arts school, message me with the word ‘Case Study'.

3. Work with me and my team privately.

Enjoyed the show? Get more martial arts business tips when you subscribe on iTunes for iPhone or Stitcher Radio for Android devices.

***NEW*** Now available on Spotify!

Podcast Sponsored by Martial Arts Media Partners

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