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73 – Is This Why Your Martial Arts School’s Growth Is Stuck?

March 11, 2019 by George Fourie

Sometimes in martial arts business, it's not what we do but what we DON’T do.

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

How to set your focus on things that matter in your martials arts business
Why you should commit to your own game plan and not someone else's
How to steer away from distractions and reach your business goal
And more

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

TRANSCRIPTION

So what are those key activities? Because if you're just jumping from this to that, then you are committing to someone else's game plan and not your own.

Hey, this is George. I'm super-fired up about getting this message and video out to you but everything seems to be going wrong. I tried to film it last week. It came up in conversation again yesterday, and I thought, “I've got to get this message out.” I went outside; the wind was blowing, I thought, “mic might not sound good.” And then a bird craps on me. So I thought, “Come on. Should I be sharing this or should I not?”

Well, I think it's super important, and if you're stuck in your martial arts business or any business for that matter, I think we all deal with this. I could be preaching to the choir, but my gut says no.

Right, so I speak to a lot of martial arts school owners, and I'll give this a bit of context. Last week I spoke to my friend Cat Zohar in the States, and we were talking about the same topic. Yesterday it came up in a conversation, one of our first clients, Dave Richardson in Brisbane, we spoke about this as well. The topic was focus.

When speaking to a lot of school owners, there are some people that just go out and make it happen and run with things, and then others that keep on getting stuck. And then when we look at the ones that are getting stuck, is they're dabbling in low-level tasks and work, never sinking their teeth into the activities and tasks that really matter.

Here's the thing. Facebook groups, I'm sure there's a lot of value in Facebook groups. And the Facebook group is just a thing, you know what I mean? It's just the term for the community, but I mean, there are groups that there's truly a lot of value and we use it in our community, obviously, for our coaching groups, but there's also a lot of distraction in free groups, because there are marketers that are trying to pull you into whatever it is that they are selling.

A wise mentor always used to tell me, “Don't always look at what people are selling. Look at what they are doing.” Side note, when it's different, your radar should be going up and thinking, “Right. Is this really legit or is this really where I should be paying my attention to?”

So here's the thing that happens, is there's all this activity in Facebook groups and there's the latest hack of this and the latest hack of that, and things kind of go viral in a way. Everybody just jumps on, shares the email addresses and wants to be a part of this new hack thing. Now I want to ask you, and if you have ever jumped on anything that was being promoted, how many of those things have really, really planned out and has been a really great success? Or did it actually just take you away from the plan?

Because here's the thing with online marketing. There's always distraction, there's always something that's better, easier, and what really pisses me off about it is it taps into the psyche of, “This is going to be easy.” It's, “Here's the quick hack. You don't really have to work hard. Here's the quick hack to get it done.”

That kind of thinking is not good for you, because here's what happens, if you dabble in this, you dabble in that, you dabble in this, you dabble in that, and you're doing all these majoring in minor things all the time, but then the things that really, really matter, you don't get your teeth stuck into.

So what are those key activities? Because if you're just jumping from this to that, then you are committing to someone else's game plan and not your own.

One thing we do in our Partners program, the first thing we do is we have a game plan session because we want to know … We've got a lot of content and a lot of training programs that we can share, but it’s not applicable all to you at that point in time, so we got to know what it is your goals are and where you want to go and what are the key things that are going to move you to where you need to be?

If you don't have a game plan, then you're just jumping onto someone else's game plan for them to sell their products.

I'm not saying all products are bad or all products are distraction, but if you're not following your own course in a direction of getting you to the goal that you are trying to get to, with student numbers and revenue, etc., then everything is just going to pull you away, and once the going gets tough, the little hack is just going to look so much easier and you're going to jump ship and go for that.

Time can go by pretty quickly, months, years, and you can still be at the same place and you've done all this stuff and why? I've done all these courses, I've bought this, I've bought that, I've tried this, I've tried that. The problem is you are following 20 or 30 plans, except for the one plan that's going to move you forward.

So look. I hope that helps. If you don't have a plan, then reach out to us. I'm not saying that what we've got is going to work for you, but, I mean, we work with a lot of school owners and really helped them move the needle and move forward.

So if you need help with a game plan that's going to work for you, then send me a message. Let's have a chat. You can see if what he has is a fit for you and if not, just make sure you follow someone's plan but don't follow 20 plans. Follow one plan to help get you forward. If you need help with it, reach out. Otherwise, good luck focusing and I'll speak to you soon. Cheers.

Thanks for listening. If you want to connect with other 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.

It's a private Facebook group and in there I share a lot of extra videos and downloads and worksheets. 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 Community and an easy way to access it is if you just go to the domain name martialartsmedia.group. So martialartsmedia.group. G-r-o-u-p. There's not dot or anything. Martialartsmedia.group. Then we'll 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 4 ways we can help scale your school right now.

1. *NEW** – Premium Martial Arts Websites with Easy Pay Plans.

If your website is not delivering new leads consistently, doesn't represent your true value or you simply need to make a change. Click here for details and a demo.

2. 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.

3. 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 work with me to help you grow your martial arts school, message me with the word ‘Case Study'.

4. 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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72 – Greg Probyn: Applying Military Principles To Martial Arts Business

February 28, 2019 by George Fourie

Military man Greg Probyn's big moves in a small town with his martial arts business.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

Greg Probyn’s mindset in running a martial arts business in a small town with 38,000 population
Why Greg doesn’t treat his martial arts business as a hobby
How Greg’s extensive military background helped him build his bjj school
How Greg was able to start his business with little business experience
How to overcome ‘tall poppy syndrome’ backlash
And more

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

TRANSCRIPTION

When we talk about the business, again that's … I don't treat this like a hobby. Again, too many people out there think it's only a hobby. It won't last. If you treat something like a hobby, well guess what? People will respect it like a hobby.

George: Good day this is George Fourie and welcome to another Martial Arts Media Business podcast. So today I'm joined with a special guest, Greg Probyn. So Greg is someone that I'm fortunate enough to work with on a frequent basis in our Partners program. To give you a bit of a background on Greg and then I'm going to let him run the show.

So Greg is a military man, has served in both the Royal Australian Navy and Australian Regular Army, traveled extensively around the world and has deployed operationally to Iraq, Afghanistan and Fiji. Greg started his bjj journey in 2008 and due to being in the military training, gained experience from many different clubs throughout Australia.

So Greg also enjoys competing and coaching, more importantly enjoys coaching kids, helping them develop confidence so that if they are placed in an intimidating situation or being bullied, they can say stop. So Greg welcome to the podcast.

Greg: Thanks for having me George. I appreciate it.

George: Awesome. So, it's worth mentioning or not worth mentioning. This our round 2 of recording this. So we've had a good practice run so you're in for an awesome show. And I won't go into the details why but this is round 2. So this is going to be good. So Greg, I've given a bit of an intro just about you. Do you mind sharing just a bit more, just a bit of your background and how you got into this jiu jitsu journey?

Greg: Yeah, sure George. This is kind of ironic as well for me, because of all the times I've listened to your podcasts and I always hear that question so who are you? I always sit there and go, I wonder if I'll ever have that question asked of me? So yeah. Father, husband, yeah. I'm a veteran now. I have been doing Brazilian jiu jitsu since 2008. I spent, three months shy of a full 25 years of a military history or career, it's given me so many different things.

I'm very much in doctrined in terms of the way people think, not necessarily outside of a box, but when things are black and white, I'm the go to man there. By that I mean if it's our policy it doesn't happen. I think Brazilian jiu jitsu has given me a fantastic way to show people that well not everything is black and white. I'm fighting some of my own demons now that I'm out of the military.

George: So, spending all that time in the military, how does that compliment your jiu jitsu training? And I guess … sorry and I guess just to give context, military … I think very sort of precision thinking and very strategic, clear cut plans, preparation, etc.

Greg: Yeah, you're right on there mate. So, I started my career in the military in the navy and I finished up doing a job, that of a fitness trainer or physical training instructor or a PTI they call them for short. Started … you can't just join the military directly into that role. You have to spend several years in another job. So I was what they call a bosun's mate in the navy – did that for about eight years. Then saw these guys that worked in gymnasiums over that time and just managed to work on their fitness and take a lot of people for their fitness. I thought why not give that a crack.

So I spent though the remainder of my years, eight years in the navy, doing that, and then I transferred across to the army and did the same job, finishing up there. It was really easy to transfer the skills that I had received as a physical training instructor, across to being a coach in the sporting sector.

I also pursued different levels of coaching within the civilian sector, doing like certificates and diplomas and it was really … it was fantastic in that when I did my strength and conditioning coaches courses, I was stuck in a classroom with maybe some university students or people that had done a little bit of work in the civilian sector in terms of the fitness industry.

You sit there going wow, I've got it easy because I've got people that have to be there, in terms of doing their own health and fitness stuff. I don't have to worry too much in terms of what people can't do. I mean they are all fit and healthy and then the ability to transfer what I'd learn into training for the defense.

That was again easy because you're able to back what you're doing up with current studies or current technique as opposed to maybe having you know do the tricky thing and get waivers for people. They accept what you're giving them is going to be good for them, and well it is. The proof is in the pudding.

I mean the Australian Defense Force has been a fear fighting nation or a fear fighting force since the Boer War. So maybe you've got relatives back there George who might have come across a couple Aussie's back in the day.

George: Possibly. Yeah. So then was training in the military, right, I mean jiu jitsu is quite a physical thing. One thing that's always fun when sparring jiu jitsu is even if you go 100%, you've got the saving grace of just tapping out and you can just take the foot off the pedal, and you know you always set the pace. Normally the pace starts as a light roll and it never ends in a light roll, right?

Greg: You're correct.

George: But the training in the military, you're training at a whole new level and a whole new purpose and I guess the stakes are real, right? Because it's life and death that you're dealing with. So how do you actually train at that intensity and without burning people out?

Greg: Yeah, good question. Good question. I guess to answer that, what I'm going to do is I'm going to rewind the clock to about well it will till about 2008. Now I've been involved in martial arts since about 1999. Started doing various forms of karate and then I went to muay thai and then I found muay thai as a very practical martial art or sport. Fought nationally and internationally and then I had a hiatus of roughly eight to ten years, and then thought bugger this. Got back into the training for muay thai and recommitted my fighting.

t the time I was working at the Australian Defense Force Physical Training School which is on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria. You've got, you could say the best of the best physical training instructors lecturing all aspects of health and fitness to people that are aspiring to do that job that I do or did. So you'll either work on what's passionate to you or if you're not … if you want to work on something new or improve your knowledge, you'll research a specific topic. So some of the topics that selected from was strength and conditioning, factors affecting human performance, and they are quite big modules in their own right.

And at that time, there was a … the military self program which was headed by the army and at this stage I was still in the navy and I had to do the course because the role of the physical training instructor was required to undertake this because in the navy at the time, there was a lot of boarding operations going on. Now, what the army had noticed, well the field of operation for them heavy in Afghanistan at the time and Iraq, they'd had these close quarter combat course and then but it was only the special forces that were really getting involved in it.

The infantry units were doing forms of self defense. But, the army they initiated this military self defense program. Now, it was heavily based on self defense and there were components of Brazilian jiu jitsu in it. And, when I did it, the military and armed combat cell, they came down to HMA service where I was at the time. I got involved in the course and I hit it off with some of the instructors because they knew that I was fighting muay thai as well at the time as well.

One of the instructors, he's like, come with me. I'll show you this thing called Brazilian jiu jitsu. Now, I'd see the UFC and I'd had a couple little books of Brazilian jiu jitsu but because of my limited knowledge, it didn't float my boat. I went and did this one lesson and I was just totally dominated and I couldn't believe the control. I couldn't believe how an individual could move or escape from somebody that could be heavier than them, bigger than them. How to control a bigger, strong opponent. And I don't think at the time in the military self defense course, we'd done the groundwork components.

Then the next day or the day after, we're doing basic guard escape or man escape or controlling your opponent while still on the ground. And I was like yup, hook, line and sinker. It's got me. And, yeah this military self defense course, when I transferred from the navy to the army, it became even more apparent how important it was. I mean the navy was using it but it's very, very difficult to do it on a very small boat. And at the time, this was when Australia's policy on the control of illegal immigrants or the boat people, were coming across them.

We'd seen through the news how people were throwing kids overboard and this and that. I mean as much as the media sensationalized it, there was a threat and the threat was only the young single males that had nothing to lose, but when you're on a fishing vessel or a boat that's not even 20 meters long and there's close to 100, 150 people on it, this military self defense program, it was very difficult to utilize because you can't keep your distance on a small vessel like that.

If you need to do a high double A takedown, you're not just going to take them down under the deck. You're going to take them down under about four or five other people. So it was difficult for the navy to use. They were able to use aspects of it. When you go across to the army, their field of play is totally different. As we move along in the level of intelligence that was being gathered in the army and across the navy and the air force, there are also personnel on the ground from the other two services. But more from the infantry people.

When they'd go to a compound and they'd notice that there was little to no women and children, well they knew they were going in for a battle. It would be the fighting age males, the adult males and they were always the threat. If there was every any hand to hand sort of combat, well the soldiers were able to utilize this military self defense stuff.

But what they noticed was it was too defensive and it's progressed now into an integrated combat, sorry, the integrated infantry combat course I think it's called now. All about control. Very little defense. You're in someone's face with the full military garb. You're wearing helmets, the body armor, you've got your rifle. You are not working with one other person but you're working in the section with eight to 10 people. Whereas the military self defense course in some respects, as good as it was, the entire time you're only working with a second person through the program, not utilizing the rest of a team.

So unfortunately I never got to do the infantry combat course. But it was really, really interesting. Now how do we link that into the Brazilian jiu jitsu? Well after being totally dominated and seeing how that worked in the military self defense course, it was a no brainer for me. I was getting older. My opponents in muay thai were getting younger. It was taking longer for me to recover and I found that again just like you said, with the Brazilian jiu jitsu, you're able to stop when you're either being uncomfortable or you're having your arm ripped off your body.

And now in the military, we've got these integrated combat clubs. And it's a way now for army, navy and air force people to get back to grassroots in terms of martial arts or some form of competitive sport and the transferability now, irrespective of whether they participated in the military self defense course or the infantry combat course, is so easy. So now the soldiers, sailors, and air men, they've got the ability to be put under pressure in stressful positions or altercations and deal with it as they see.

Then if they end up in that field of operation, especially on the ground, and not on the ground as Brazilian jiu jitsu on the ground, but in the area of operation whichever that is. They are able to best handle situations and know tactically what they can do and how their body is going to respond.

George: Interesting. It just reminds me and I don't know how legit this is and depending on when you are listening to this interview, I've trained with a few people from the police force and they use jiu jitsu all the time. For my international and American friends, in Australia, the police don't carry guns. If I'm correct. We don't. I think some do.

Greg: Some states do. Yeah Victoria does. New South Wales does.

George: Yeah. I know in WA, it's more a thing of … it's always hand controlled and these guys use jiu jitsu a lot. And I haven't checked the, how valid this resource is but I saw an article floating around that it's going to be compulsory now for police, I know police in WA, that's Western Australia where we are, that police will be doing jiu jitsu as a compulsory activity as such.

Greg: Oh send me over.

George: Cool. So I want to change gears here quickly. So, Greg's school de Been 100% Jiu Jitsu is in a little town called Wodonga. I believe 38,000 population?

Greg: Yeah correct George. Yeah that's right. We're a small town, right on the Hume Highway heading up to Canberra City. And we're right on the border. The Mary River obviously separates us from New South Wales as well as the Hugh Molly. Directly on the other side of the border, on the other side of the Hume Highway is Aubrey. So there's roughly 60,000 people in that town. So with the two towns combined, we're looking in an excess of yeah 100,000 people. Nice sleepy little town.

George: Awesome. So now for a lot of people when they hear you're in a town of 38,000, there's two mindsets of that right? I'd love to hear your mindset but a mindset I hear often is … it's a very lack mentality. We don't have enough people. We've got too much competition. There's too many schools in too close a range. What's your take and how do you view your business within a small town with small reach?

Greg: Yeah I like that question. All right, so coming to the decision of having a business that is oriented towards the combat sports, some people said no you're crazy. I've got family members, workmates or ex workmates now, that indicated that it wouldn't work in an area such as this one. I don't believe that it wouldn't work. It had to work. The reason why I say that is because if I can get 1% of just Wodonga, well that's only 380 people. There are some … and listening to the podcasts that you've punched out there George, you've got some pretty successful people that you've interviewed.

And I look at it like this, why can't I get 1%? When you look at it like that, it's pretty inspiring I think. 1%. 1. Yeah, 1%. Why couldn't that occur? And then if you looked at the entire, well if you put the two towns together, well 1%, that's 1000 people. And I've heard you've interviewed people there who have got multiple schools. So when I first came to this idea, I was training at another facility and I shared this dream of mine. Well it's actually not mine. It's my wife's. So I'm very lucky in that respect. I shared this dream with him and he didn't really take kindly to it.

We left, not on the best terms but I remember him saying you'll never go full time here. The place is too small and that's what exactly what I said to him. Well 1%. If I can't 1%, there is something wrong. So I'm a third of that not, and we've been open not yet two years. Which is … I'm happy with. That 1% keeps driving me, you know? 380 people. But we've got people who are traveling as far as 40, 50 minutes to come and train with us. In terms of my competition and I was asked this last night, this same question. I said to this gentleman last night, I said my competition is Aussie rules. Swimming. Hockey. Water polo. Believe it or not. It's huge here in this reason. Net ball. And a little bit of rugby and of course soccer.

And he said well what about other Brazilian jiu jitsu? And I said, they are not competition. We've got to try to raise the profile. Raise the profile of the sport. There are people out in this region that don't really know much about it. They will see it on the UFC. Think it's more of a thugs game. I will laugh when I have MMA people come in, I just tell them MMA is a thug sport. Come and do something with a bit of finesse.

George: Sorry to all the MMA fans listening.

Greg: Yeah, so he was really shocked. There is an older guy, I'm not sure what sort of martial art he does and I'm not sure how he drives his business model, but I don't look at him when I see him in his van and go that's competition. I look at him and I go, let's ban together and try to raise the profile of he's karate. People say to me, well Brazilian jiu jitsu, martial art and I say well you can look at it like that, I'll look at it how it's a sport. I'm big on looking at it as a sport. I treat it like it's a sport.

When I have people talk to me about the self defense applications, I'm like well come down. You're still going to get the same benefits out of it. I might talk about points in the class. I might talk about holding position for a certain amount of seconds to get your points. But at the end of the day, you're still able to, I took at class last night. We were doing transitions.

I shared with this woman, it was her first class. The knee on the belly. And I made a reference about it being points. I said if you want to look at it as a self defense application, what better way to control a human. You've got your knee on their chest. One hand might be controlling clothing or an arm, while the hand is pulling at the mobile phone. You're calling 000. Help, I need some help.

So, she walked away out of the class thinking oh wow. I never thought of it in these different aspects. But yeah. That 1%. Always refer back to that 1%. That's what I want.

George: That's awesome. You brought something up that's … I really want to highlight this for any entrepreneur and I guess any, yeah anybody in business. I mean the worst advice you can get is asking people in the workforce an opinion of you starting a business. Because none of them are going to support it. I don't think they mean bad intentionally, it's more a sense of they are dealing with their own internal dialogue of, it's not possible for them. And they don't want you to get hurt or whatever the case. So it's easier to just shut you down and not support the idea or the dream.

And I saw somebody post a quote yesterday. It was something about, it said, ‘what will they say?’ And below it was ‘these words have destroyed more dreams than any other words’. Because the focus is … you are influenced by what people say. When you've got this idea and you want to create this business and you think I'm going to do this thing and you've got this vision, but you've got this vision and now you've got to tell a family member or somebody you care about, and it's just … I mean that's the first people you want to tell right because it's the people you care about. And you're hoping for that support, but for most people, you just don't get it, because it's just a completely different way of thinking and completely different mindset, right?

Greg: You're absolutely right. Now I can't … I'm not going to talk too out of turn here, because I end up in deep water, but we've got some very close family who when we talk about the business, again I don't treat like this like a hobby. And again, too many people out there think it's only a hobby. It won't last. If you treat something like a hobby, guess what, people will respect it like a hobby. So when I talk to these couple of individuals about the business, one of them is very aggressive towards it. And the other one is very defeatist about it. Like, over Christmas, it was like oh I didn't think you'd be … you'd still be open this far down the track. I'm just like how can you be like that. Just support what's happening.

George: It's the typical tall poppy syndrome as well. I've mentioned it before but for anybody in the states, tall poppy syndrome is the visual aspect of a crab in a bucket. Pulling down anything, anybody that succeeds behind your level. The term exists of trying to pull them back down. It's almost like people want to see you succeed but they don't want to succeed, they don't want to see you succeed more than them.

Greg: That's it. That's it.

George: They want you to succeed but once you go beyond me, I've got to pull you back. I've got to pull you back into my level of thinking and comfort zone.

Greg: Yeah, you're dead right. And look, you asked me that question in terms of like the military mindset and I said I think too much black and white. When this idea of having a business centered towards Brazilian jiu jitsu popped up, well I had to think straight away, well what do I need to do in order to get this happening, you know? I'm not just going to open a place up and people start coming in, we're training, and it's like oh crikey I've got to pay the electricity bill. Well I need money for that. Do I have it there? Or we've run out of toilet paper. How do I go there?

Even having stock on hand to get people thinking with the green side of their brain in terms of the buying power and the military doesn't really give you the opportunity to do business style type courses, so I had to go and research my own thing. I found a company out there oriented towards the personal training industry and I thought, because you know working in the fitness industry? No brainer. But, how do I run a business?

Okay, so I did a little bit of research and I found this one company and they are called the Max International College for Fitness Professionals. I got in contact with them and I said look, I'm just after your business side of things and they had this program. You do your certificate three four in fitness. You do your diploma in business and advanced diploma in business. I said well you know I'm not interested in the fitness components because I've got a diploma up there and I've done this course and that course. They are like well it's a whole complete package. It all sort of intertwines and works with each other.

And I thought all right. I remember seeing somewhere or heard somewhere or something about if you failed to plan, you planned to fail. And, I thought well you know, what do I got to lose? Do everything because it's still going to give me that, the business components that I needed. This admittedly being in the military, you're not walking around with people who are all happy and bubbly all the time. And you know, because you've got this … like a sergeant major and there are all these grumpy people and you're like do this and do that. Just like you see in the movies, people getting their faces ripped off because they might have looked sideways wrong or poor timing.

These people were all happy and bubbly and I remember saying to one of the directors, I'm like is everybody like this all the time when I'm communicating with them? And he goes yeah that's right. Is that a problem? I said that's not reality. And he goes, in my world it's a reality. In your world you've got sharp edges. And you've got nasty corners. So there's that black and white mentality. These people, and they are not walking around with rose colored glasses. I'm like okay. I have to drop a few barriers, get on their boat, start paddling with them because we're all going in the same direction.

This Max International College of Fitness Professionals paved the way in order for me to then get the business up and running and be successful. That comes back down to what I said earlier. If you have your club or whatever martial art that you're doing and you treat it like a hobby. Well everybody else is going to treat it like a hobby as well. We've got people who have participated in other martial arts. I remember when they first started training with us, oh Greg do you want to help us clean the mats? I'm like no dude, you're paying my fees. That's part of the service I provide. I clean the mats. I clean them regularly because that's where we are lying on the mat face down sometimes if you're unfortunate.

But these people are like oh yeah but our last sensei made us do this or the last coach used to make us do … I'm like that's fine but I hope you weren't paying the same amount of fees that you're paying now. And you can see them, they start thinking and it's like oh okay. Then there's a bit more of a respect that comes through as well. So I think people appreciate it more too, when you have that professional outlook and if you pave it professionally, make it professionally. People don't see it. Like the family.

These other members within the family that I've got that are the negative ones. They haven't come in and seen what I do and how it looks, but we're not in a shed. We're not in a factory. I'm actually in an air conditioned and heated facility. It looks pretty neat I think. Well anybody who walks in and walks out, I always get the compliment, wow I never would have thought it would be like this.

George: Awesome. So on that thinking of that planning and that black and white I want to just, before we wrap it up, I quickly want to bring up something, your vision statement. Just to give it a bit of context. Greg works with us in our Partners program and part of our Partners program, we also bought websites to make sure all our members got the right tools. So, before creating the website we always have an interview with a school owner and just ask a couple of questions so that we can formulate a good sales proposition on the website, so it's all customized.

So a question we always ask and it's a question I never really get a straight answer, but I did with Greg. Right? And the question is, what's your mission statement? And it's important for us to know, because then we can sort of get a good perspective on how the club owner sees it. So you nailed it and you just … I was almost shocked that you had it sort of down to a T. Do you mind sharing your school's mission statement?

Greg: Sure. We rolled out vision and mission statement in together and we've added our core values as well. So we foster a family ethos where each and every member feels part of the team environment but more importantly at home we have like minded people. We'll provide the opportunity for you to improve your health and fitness and well being through education and confidence building. Our core values, I like the acronym of TRIC, is teamwork, respect, integrity and confidence.

And it does it and it paves the way. You asked me earlier George about why? Why this mission statement? It gives me direction. It gives people that come in direction. We don't have any … every club or academy or affiliate or what not, they have their cliques. We try to break those barriers down. Everybody is part of the family. You know I've got white belts that will say to colored belt that's visiting, you know where is your shoes if they are walking around bare foot off the mat. And people get shocked. It's like okay fair enough. We're in somebody else's house. And then if we've got somebody that's being negative, within the group, it's not me the head coach that's trying to pull them back into line. It's other people. They are saying to them, you know, well here we do it like this. It would be good if you're like that.

I'm really proud of the ethos that we've got on the mat and that's … I put that back down to the mission statement. It's all about being part of the family.

George: Good note for us to just wrap it up. Greg, thanks so much for being on the call. Thanks and I'm glad that we nailed it this time. We'll get into that story later. But if people want to know more about you, where can they find more about you Greg?

Greg: Oh fantastic George. Well we're all the www.debeenjiujitsuwodonga.com. You could also go to the de Been Jiu Jitsu Headquarters website as well and we'll be there, linked into them. We're on Facebook. Again de Been 100% Jiu Jitsu Wodonga. And we're also on Instagram. Just the hashtag. Just make sure you put Wodonga in there, otherwise you'll probably see someone from maybe Ipswich. There's a de Been in Ipswich. So that one. That's how you'll find us.

George: That's good. We'll put links to all those in the show notes of the interview.

Greg: Fantastic. Thank you very much George.

George: Thanks Greg. It's been great speaking. Speak to you soon.

Greg: Take care mate.

George: Awesome. Thanks for listening. If you want to connect with other 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. It's a private Facebook group and in there I share a lot of extra videos and downloads and worksheets. 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.

Thanks. I'll speak to you on the next episode. Cheers.

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71 – Matt Milchard: Building Martial Arts Schools At The Back Of Children Centres

January 28, 2019 by George Fourie

Matt Milchard's core business of children centres and nurseries gives him a unique approach to running their 9 martial arts schools.

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

The importance of establishing a connection with the parents and letting them see the real value of martial arts
The marketing tools every martial arts school owner should invest in
How to build your email lists through children’s events, corporate events, festivals and outdoor events
How being connected with the education sector contributed to Matt’s success
And more

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

TRANSCRIPTION

It's not about the price of your lessons and your offering, it's about the value to their children. If you can prove to a parent that your lessons and your teachings are of great value to their children, they'll pay whatever you ask.

GEORGE: And welcome to another Martial Arts Media business podcast episode. Today I'm joined with Matt Milchard, all the way from Pyramid Martial Arts. How are you doing today Matt?

MATT: Very good, thank you. Good to meet you. Pleasure to be here. So what would you like to talk about?

GEORGE: Just getting into it. So Matt is a serial entrepreneur, has multiple projects on the go and his passion honestly is martial arts which brings us here today. So let’s just start at the beginning Matt: give us a bit of a background, how did you get into martial arts – who is Matt Milchard?

Matt: Ok. Martial arts, I grew up part of my life in Jakarta in Indonesia. Your neck of the woods or closer to you than it is to me. And when I was about 10 years old, I got introduced to the local arts there and learned it. Studied it for maybe two years from when I was 10 years old. And then when my family were brought back to the UK, I was desperate to carry on learning martial arts.

So I tried lots of traditional styles, all sorts of traditional practice that I could find in the UK until one actually stuck. I found one and I stuck with it for many years. That was just freestyle sport karate, so it was kind of a blend of many different martial arts. And then when I went to university, I moved away from the club I was at and I decided that I could not find a club that I was satisfied to carry on my training, so I opened my own one. And it kind of spun out from there. That was many years ago and I'm still doing it now.

GEORGE: You recall much about growing up in Jakarta?

MATT: Yeah I learned Indonesian. It was like a second language, I went to an American international school which was fun. Very diverse in cultures and experiences and stuff like that, especially at that young age. Yeah it was great, living there was certainly a lot better than it is here in London, definitely remember that.

GEORGE: So you open up your own school, so how did this start? And I guess I'll just backtrack because you did mention you have 15 different companies, about 15 different businesses that you run.

MATT: Yeah.

GEORGE: So what came first? Did the martial arts business come first or was that…?

MATT: No, no, that was later on. My first stab at running my own martial arts centre just when I was at the university, I decided that I would run the club for the university, for the students. And that was fine and throughout the study of my degree which was actually in the building, nothing to do with martial arts or sports or leisure. And I ran the university kickboxing club for about three years.

And then went off into the big wide world and found myself a career. And then years later, I decided to open another one as a just a sort of commercial interest, rather than the university one was just to train myself and to help my friends train. So yeah, a commercial interest of the martial arts started about ten years ago.

Quite a funny story to that to be honest. I was out with some friends and my girlfriend at the time and there was my girlfriend’s best friend and my girlfriend at the time having an argument. And I stepped in to try and calm them down and the other lady’s boyfriend stepped in to calm it all down and it ended up me and him arguing because it was all a big mess.

And we both went our separate ways, but we found out later we were both experienced in martial arts and luckily, it didn't come to blows because still to this day, we joke about who would have won. But it kind of formed a bond, we shook hands afterwards and apologised and then over beer got talking about our interests and found out we were both accomplished martial artists and looking for an opportunity to open a martial arts club.

So we ended up opening one together. So what could have started off as a mischievous brawl, ended up forming a lifelong business partnership with a good friend of mine. So, yeah that's how it all started, that's how Pyramid started.

GEORGE: The reason that it actually didn't escalate was because you both were experienced in martial arts.

MATT: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, you know, yeah. That's exactly it. Both of us knew our ability and both of us don't go out looking for trouble, because that's kind of what's embedded to you for a lifetime of martial arts, as I’m sure you'll appreciate.

So, yeah, that's exactly it. We both realized that it's going to get out of control and walked away. It’s quite a fun story, we do enjoy our sort of annual awards ceremony and stuff like that, with new members, sharing that story. Because it's a funny way to start a business to be fair.

GEORGE: That's fascinating. Meant to be, obviously.

MATT: It was, it was meant to be. And still to this day, obviously, the founder and co-founder are still very close friends. He lives miles away because he runs one of the gyms in a place called Birmingham, which is about 4-hour drive from where I live, so we don't see each other that much. However, he's running the place up there and I'm running the place down here. So it works well.

GEORGE: A bit of context about Pyramid Martial Arts. How many locations do you have, etc?

MATT: Ok, so we currently have nine locations, throughout the UK and growing. The nine that are run by us, we have a couple of franchise pilots that we’re operating right now as well, there's two of them. So yeah, there are nine so far and then two franchises. The franchise model is what we’re very much expanding upon in 2019 next year. But we just wanted to make sure the pilot model was correct.

As far as our main head office centre, it's our biggest one, our first one. We run I think 12 different disciplines from there, so we’re not a kickboxing school, or a taekwondo school, or a karate school – we are a multi-discipline school. And, I know schools like us appear around the world, but certainly, in the UK, we’re one of a kind. I still haven't come across any schools in the UK that service as many disciplines as we do.

So our unlimited membership means a young child, boy or girl, could literally come every day and learn different styles and master different styles every day, whether it's jiu-jitsu, whether it's boxing, whether it's kickboxing, whether it's taekwondo, whether it's kung fu – we do all of them here. So it's quite a diverse timetable. And I guess the reason we did that is, when I was a young lad, learning martial arts, I always wanted to try lots of different ones, but there's wasn't one place where I could go to try them all at the same time.

So in my head, even then I thought, wouldn't it be wonderful to have a school where you could try everything. And so that's kind of what formulated our plan really. And that’s what we’re doing.

GEORGE: So that's really popular amongst the students? Is that sort of embedded in the culture, to really crossover and run the multiple styles, or do most of your students really just get fixated in the one?

MATT: There are some students that do everything, especially the fighters. We've got some pro and semi-pro fighters and obviously, it's very good for them to learn a bit of everything, so they have a bigger vocabulary, experience when they’re actually in the ring, or in the cage or whatever. However, we also pride ourselves on being a lifestyle gym, so it's not just about the fighters.

It’s about the family and experience and people who come and meet friends, it's not just about kicking and punching to us. So there are quite a few of our students that do many different styles, just because it means they meet different people. Whether they’re rolling down on the mats one evening doing jiu-jitsu, or standing up in the boxing ring, you know, having a couple of boxing bouts.

So I’m thinking a lot of them use it as a social hub as well. In fact, I know that they are. Not saying… it's the way we've done it, you know. I'm sure some people say you should stick with one style when they come in, but we chose not to, and for us, it works.

GEORGE: And I see what you're saying, but really it's a social hub, so students are really, it's more a bonding thing, from what I can picture. You know, crossing the different styles and stuff like that? Maybe for some, you know, that I’ve just got to be fixated on a style, but it's because it's like, hey, we’ve got to try this and this. Has that sort of created a non-competitive type of environment in a way? You know, that people aren't heaving to be one up the type of thing?

MATT: Yeah, no, absolutely. We've got as I'm sure many clubs, there's sort of inter-student WhatsApp groups and I sort of monitor all these groups. And all the time my friends pinging, one of the students saying, “Hey, we’re doing BJJ tonight,” “Oh, I can't make it tonight, but I'll see you at boxing tomorrow, or, “Is kung fu still on Friday night,” and these things, you know.

They tend to spend more time at my gyms than they do out with their friends it seems, certainly some of them. So it's good and we very much value the social element of it. We have lots of social events, we've put on lots of parties and award ceremonies and social outgoings and I think that’s good because we've got some very strong fighters in our camp and lots of other gyms who've tried to poach them and they may be better coaches, it's not for me to say, but for all of us, students stay with us because we've become a bit of family.

And I think a lot of that is the social inclusion or whatever the correct wording is. You know, because they want to stay with us and be with us. There are other gyms, which are very, very successful and produce very good fighters and they've tried to poach some of our fighters, but for whatever reason, the fighters are staying with us. So I think there's a lot to be said for the full inclusion and the family in the martial arts setting, definitely.

GEORGE: There's an old saying on my marketing wall that's, you know, when people sign on for the online community, they come for the content, but they'll stay for the community.

MATT: Yeah, yeah.

GEORGE: And it sounds like exactly what you're saying, people are obviously attracted for that emotional reason, or whatever they need or what they want to get out of martial arts, whether it’s fitness, or confidence for the kid, or whatever, that’s the draw card. But then, when martial arts become part of the routine, what keeps them growing is presence and family. And that's the real pain to disconnect, why would you train at the gym down the road when you've got your whole family right here.

MATT: Yeah, and that's part of our business model. And because we’re so diverse, I mean, our students start at 3 years old, which not many martial arts gyms, certainly in the UK, they won’t touch 3 years olds, they won’t. Most gyms start about 5. But we developed a program for ages 3+ and it's been very successful, because what it means is that the whole family.

We've got something for the whole family, and we've got something for 3-year-olds, we've got something for 7-year-olds, we've got something for mom, we've got something for dad, we've got something for the cousin, you know. We do family packages to encourage whole families to join, not just individuals.

So I think on a marketing point of view, you just highlight it as a thing of value, certainly of great value to us. We sell more family packages, far more family packages than we do individual packages.

GEORGE: I've asked you a few things on marketing, can you clarify just your two models? Because you mentioned you've got the franchise model that you really want to focus on in 2019 and beyond, and then you mentioned you also had a pilot model, correct?

MATT: No, it's the pilot of the franchise. So, we run 9 gyms ourselves, they're self-managed by us, from our head office. And the franchise model, we've got two pilots, so we’re just playing with it, making sure it's right before we roll out the franchise as an official line. Ideally, we would like to have gyms in all the main towns in the UK, 100% definitely.

But on a logistics point of view, it would be very difficult to self manage, too many more. We’re quite stretched at 9 as it is. So we're looking perhaps one more to make it a magical 10, self-run, and then the rest would be franchises. And that's the plan and I think that's the way it seems to be going.

GEORGE: So your day to day life, you've got… going for 10 martial arts schools, you've got franchises that you really want to get going with. And then you've also

got all these other businesses that you run. So how… what is your day to day role, within the martial arts business?

MATT: Ok, well I have teams that run the individual clubs, you know. Chief instructors, receptionists, PTs, cleaners, you know, there is a whole team of gym managers. So myself and my partner tend to float in for weekly meetings, sit down with the whole team and discuss what we're doing right, what we’re doing wrong.

Look at promotions, look at pricing, look at the competition, look at social events and together work as a team to try and keep an eye on each one of them. As you pointed out, I run multiple businesses, so I can't be on the ground with all of them at the same time, of course not. But I do make a real effort to try and meet all the students, even the ones that I don't directly teach.

I mean, my background is freestyle sport karate and kung fu, so if I teach, I teach those lessons, maybe a bit of krav maga. But I go out of my way to get to know my BJJ students, or my taekwondo students, although I don't directly teach them, I think it's good that they always know and can approach myself and my partner as the gym owners, rather than just being a strange person that wanders in and out every once in a while. So we do make a conscious effort to do that.

As far as my day to day routine goes, I still try and teach, especially the black belts. I teach in about three of the clubs every week, I probably do about 10 hours a week at least. Ranging from the children up to the adults. I would like to do more, but physically and mentally, I can’t. Because my other day time commitments are with the other businesses, so…

GEORGE: The cool ones that I picked up there was, obviously the meetings, the weekly meetings. Really focused on making sure that you get that personal connection with students.

MATT: Students, yeah.

GEORGE: How difficult is that for you to do, have you got a process that you… is it just sort of showing up and trying to make as many connections as possible, or have you got that down to a system where you can really introduce yourself to as many students as possible?

MATT: We've got a system. I guess myself and my partner try to be at all the gradings, so they will see us at the table doing the gradings, and obviously we’re very vocal and it's seeing who we are and what we do and trying our best to, not to be that scary grandmaster that everyone has to bow down to, to more be proactive and calm them down, so look, we’re just testing you to show us how good you are and show us how much you're learning.

So I think we’re trying to befriend everyone, rather than be this distant school owner that just takes everyone's money. So that's the idea and you know, going to class, obviously, I don't want to interrupt lessons the other instructors are doing, but I'll be around and sit and watch and comment and, you know.

And all of the teams are on the regular newsletters that are always signed off by me, there are pictures of all our instructors and all our gyms. There's pictures of a lot of our students and all of our instructors on the website. So although there are many locations, we try and bring the locations together for the award ceremonies, or for the gradings to make sure all the different clubs know each other and the other instructors. I rotate my instructors as well, so one instructor might be teaching one venue one week, and then another one another week.

So it's always fresh, the experience is always fresh. It’s the same syllabus and the same teaching styles, but the lessons are always fresh because I think you can very much get stuck in a rut if you're teaching the same lessons to the same people, week after week. So I feel mixing up the instructors, it gives a fresh approach to the warm-up or to the teaching techniques etc. So I think I went off on a bit of a tangent there, so…

GEORGE: Perfect, that's what these podcast conversations are about. It’s about tangents, it's about exploring and…

MATT: Yeah, yeah.

GEORGE: Just the things that you do and you know what provides value to everyone who listens. So Matt, and before we got started, something that we touched on was your vast experience in other companies and marketing with kid centers etc. So how does this crossover into your martial arts business and how does that benefit?

MATT: OK. One of my core businesses is, as you currently said, children centers and nurseries, day nurseries for babies up to… 3,4,5-year-olds. So for instance, my biggest children centre has a 150 full-time place for children on a daily basis. So from that, obviously, I have a real insight into the marketing and what the parents are thinking and how they wish to develop their children, just because of the educational side.

So another USP for us is that in our children centres, we offer martial arts lessons. So that's the USP for the nurseries. It also works the other way, because a lot of our nursery parents will drop their young children in the nursery, but then to get to the nursery, they have to walk through the martial arts corridor, where they can see there's offers for the siblings, for the slightly older children, or themselves.

So then the mom can put her child in the nursery and then go and have a self defence lesson, while the child is in a nursery in the same location. So we've purposely made that connection, with both companies, because one absolutely facilitates and compliments the other.

So now, whenever I open a new children centre, very soon after it comes Pyramid Martial Arts in the same location, the gym would be in the same building. And again, with that, because we've built up a very big name, a reputation within the schooling community, it's very easy for us to go into local schools and do talks about martial arts, because I can ride on the fact that I'm connected with the educational syllabuses, the community, the teacher associations, because of the other business. So it certainly opens a lot of doors within the martial arts if you've got your foot in the education sector as well, absolutely.

GEORGE: I can just see it, it's like a perfect merge of…

MATT: Yeah.

GEORGE: …of obviously having the foot on the ground. I think it’s almost the most important, being able to tune into conversations and understanding what's going on, you know, for starters. And let me ask you this Matt: knowing what you discover within the children centres and conversations you have with parents – what do you pick up that you really try and implement on the martial arts side?

MATT: That’s fairly simple to answer. So with parents of young children – and I have two young children myself, so I can certainly identify with everything they're saying, it's not about the price of your lessons and your offering; it's about the value to their children. If you can prove to a parent that your lessons and your teachings are of great value to their children, they'll pay whatever you ask. That's the whole thing, getting across the value of what you're teaching.

What I mean by that is what benefits the child and what is vital that the child learns these key skills from a very early age, whether it be discipline, or respect and fitness and all these things. The sooner you can help the child learn these things, from a very early age, the more they'll develop into a more grounded and rounded individual as they go through their life challenges. And I think if we can get that message across to the parents of how we’re going about that, they'll pay whatever you want.

GEORGE: Is it possible to articulate that? Like, how do you go about demonstrating or like really communicating that value to a parent?

MATT: I think it's getting them within the conversation to buy into it and understand it. For instance, no parent that I know of would want their child to be bullied, of course, they wouldn't. No parent would want their child to grow up to be obese. Or to be disrespectful, or to get themselves into trouble, or connected with the wrong group. So you’re offering an opportunity to help them avoid that from a young age while instilling discipline and key life skills.

So to articulate it, you kind of … you have to almost get into their heads and show them the path they don't want their children to take and then show them how you can help them put their children on the path, with their help from the start. All of our lessons and teachings and syllabus includes homework, which really makes the parent interact with the child's martial arts career, but more importantly, they can see the progress on a daily basis.

For instance, our very young classes, we make our children take home a tick sheet and on that tick sheet, the parents tick and sign that they've done 15 minutes of night practicing, that they've been respectful, that they've actively held doors open, or they're making their bed or they're helping with the washing up, or all these things that the parents are actually ticking and handing in to prove that the teachings go beyond the dojo; they go home and help the children develop at home.

Because I think the parents can see that, they understand it and they support it more, because if a child, and all the young children, they might say, “I don't want to go tonight because such-and-such is on television,” or “I want to play on my Xbox,” or “It's cold outside.” Many parents that don't understand the value would say, “OK, don't worry, we’ll miss it tonight, go and watch telly.”

But most of our parents will say “Nope, you're not missing it, this is important.” Regardless – obviously, they’re paying for it, but more they see the value and they want the children to go regardless. And I think if you can get the buy-in from the parents, your student retention from my point of view will be a lot better.

GEORGE: I was… on an episode, I’ve been with a young entrepreneur, Adam Myers and he was discussing this topic of really… I mean he's only been going for 12 months and he's pushing up for 250 students. I mean, he's really on a sprint, and he was talking about his whole thing of kindness and really just placing the energy on the people that are actually paying, rather than… it’s one thing for the kid to know that they’re having an awesome class, but the parent doesn’t know that. So really make the parent see the…

MATT: The value.

GEORGE: And I really like what you said and I can guarantee you that a lot of the podcast listeners are going to implement just that whole check sheet system. I feel we’re sort of scratching the surface. There are so many questions I can ask you and so many directions we can go. Is there anything else from your experience with your other businesses that overlap into the martial arts industry?

MATT: Again, in recruitment, we do a lot of… I have children’s event companies as well and then we put a lot of parties and corporate events and festivals and this sort of thing, outdoor events. And that also gives me an opportunity to engage with parents and families, because they're all at my events. So not only can I build my email lists up, obviously; it gives me a chance to advertise on all the flyers and all the marketing material because I'm in control of it, I can put my logo wherever I want.

But again, with the parties, we usually have, we offer martial arts children's parties, for instance, where the instructors go through a training program as a children’s entertainer as well and what that does, the interesting thing that does; if we hold the children party with a martial arts flavour to it, for 25-30 children at a time, potentially you've got 25-30 new clients with you for social events, trying out your product for free, because someone else has paid for the party. And it gives you a real opportunity to show the kids what fun they can have at a martial arts lesson.

Also, the parents, sit and watch at the party how evolved the children are. So there are so many different ways you can market your product, away from the normal, standing on the street, handing out flyers. There are multiple ways you can get in the head of potential students. And again, that's how I use another one of our businesses to do that, parties and events.

Sometimes we put on sort of carnivals and street festivals, so I always offer for free a martial arts stand, or floats, where the kids are demonstrating throw stars, or nunchucks, or their routines. And other kids can see them doing it to music, so it's all fun and upbeat. Other kids can see it and think, “Ooh I want to be a part of that, that looks fun.” So yeah, I guess that's another way we can use the other businesses to promote the martial arts side.

GEORGE: Question: you mentioned something that I don't a hear a martial arts business owner say often, was, the emphasis on you building your email list.

MATT: Yeah.

GEORGE: Now, it's something I'm a big proponent of in all our, like in our partner’s program, we focus on the automation side, but then also the actual activity of using that as a broadcast and relationship building tool. And a lot of marketers obviously spread out the idea that email is a dead horse etc. What's your take? What's your take on that and how do you use email within your businesses?

MATT: Ok. Yeah, email is not as strong as it used to be, I'll admit that. I think it should be part of your armour, not all of it. We use a mixture of live chat on our websites, we use clickfunnels to guide potential clients into our email lists. We use messenger bots, so they can have live updates, or live communication, whatever time of day or night through our messenger bots.

So I think it's important to use all the technologies, sort of at your disposal. I think it's too early to write off emails completely. They're not as responsive, people they're going to dump files and some people ignore them absolutely, but I think there's still a value, especially in conjunction with clickfunnels, from my experience.

A clickfunnels I'm sure yourself have come across the funnel, but for anyone who hasn't, it's a way of channelling all your media into one place and then with that data, then you can contact potential clients. That's my understanding, I'm not techy at all, but it's my understanding of it. And it certainly works in that fashion for us.

GEORGE: So yeah, that's something we… we are a big proponent of using different funnels and, whether it's clickfunnels or tools that…

MATT: Oh, there's various, I know Clickfunnels is a brand, but yeah, I know there are various ways of doing funnelling, yeah, absolutely.

GEORGE: I like what you said, so the multiple channels, it's definitely the be-all, end-all, you should pay attention obviously to what's relevant right now, I mean, chatbots, I’d say for the most part are an uptrend. Definitely chat on websites, we use something like Intercom, where we try to funnel everything into the one location.

MATT: Oh, OK.

GEORGE: A source, where we can pick up if there's a Facebook message coming in, or if there's a track from the website, or… yeah.

MATT: Certainly when I was starting out, there would be post-it notes with someone's number on and an email and a text message and trying to collate it all… when you're starting out, it's fine, but as soon as you start growing, there's no way you can keep on top of it. And the same from our point of view for the billing. I speak to some martial artists, some of the schools come to me for some advice sometimes and I give it happily and some of them say, “So how did you keep on top with your payers?

You know, I've got all these lists of people that have paid this month and haven't paid this month,” and you drive yourself mad. There's no way! If you've got 100, 200, 500, a 1000 students, there's no way you can keep up with who's paying and who isn't, and who's missed their bill and who's forgot to pay – there's no way, it's uncontrollable. So you need technologies, as I'm sure you'll agree, you help you keep control of that as well.

So I think it moves on far from just learning to teach people to kick and punch. If you're a successful martial arts school owner, you need to embrace the technology and you need to learn it or get someone to show you how to do it. Because there's no way you can build a big, successful school without it, I don't think. Certainly not from my point of view.

GEORGE: Having you on and I'd really like to take this conversation further at some point in time, it would be fantastic. So for now, thanks again for jumping on. If people want to learn more about you and what you do, where can they find you?

MATT: The main website is www.pyramidmartialarts.com. Pyramid-like the Egyptian pyramids, so it's just pyramidmartialarts.com. Contact me directly on that, there's a way of contacting me directly. But then, there's also online, there are videos of what we do and there's access to all the different clubs, we've got an instructor’s forum. I mean, you have to get a password to get into the instructor’s forum, but all our instructors communicate and share lesson plans, which I actively encourage. Yeah, so, visit us and drop me a message, I'd be happy to talk to anyone, of course.

GEORGE: Thanks for being on and I hope to connect to you soon.

MATT: Nope, my pleasure, thank you. It's been a pleasure.

GEORGE: 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.

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!

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70 – How To Scale Your Martial Arts Business Through The Mathematics Of Kindness

December 15, 2018 by George Fourie

Adam Meyers from Story Martial Arts shares his sprint from 0-250 students in 12 months.

.IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

How checking the population and demographics has helped Adam grow his school.
Building a connection with parents for improving customer retention.
Being humble enough to admit that you're not always the best person to do every single job in your martial arts business.
The importance of having a business mentor and attending business seminars.
And more

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

TRANSCRIPTION

I mean, any big school owner and what we get into now being a big school is that they realize that even if you're teaching good classes, the parents might not see that they’re good classes, because there are 30 kids running around. Even though you're a good instructor, it might not look like you're a good instructor to them and at the end of the day, they're paying the bills.

GEORGE: Hi, this is George Fourie. Welcome to the Martial Arts Media business podcast. I have another fantastic guest with me today and someone I actually met… I believe it was in Sydney, we met at The Main Event, maybe about a year or so ago?

ADAM: Yeah, a year ago, yeah.

GEORGE: Yeah. All right, so Adam Meyers, welcome to the call. I’ll give you a quick introduction. Adam has a diverse martial arts experience. Began training in kickboxing, age of 15, eventually moving on to taekwondo, where he quickly found success on the domestic competition circuit.

He's an 18-time State Champion in sparring, he's also the 2015 and 2017 Australian National Champion, member of Australian taekwondo team and a number one ranked heavyweight in the country. Besides the martial arts achievements, Adam's also a really successful school owner and within a short time span of 12 months, he managed to hit 250 students, I believe Adam?

ADAM: Yeah, in just over 12 months, yeah.

GEORGE: Fantastic. So a lot of knowledge, and especially for anyone that's starting out, and even if you're not starting out, if you've been going for a long time and trying to hit those big numbers. This is going to be a valuable interview, just to hear how Adam went on that journey. Welcome to the call Adam.

ADAM: Thanks so much George, really appreciate you having me on the show. I'm an avid listener and a big fan.

GEORGE: Perfect. So you better listen to this one then.

ADAM: Hahaha! I’ll download it straight away.

GEORGE: All right, perfect. So I gave a bit of an intro, but just expand a little – who is Adam?

ADAM: Yeah, so, I've been training martial arts a little bit over 10 years. Taekwondo for 10 in this coming February, it will be 10 years in February. I've trained at a lot of different martial arts schools, a lot of different taekwondo schools especially, throughout my sparring career. I've been on the national team since 2014, kind of going overseas and fighting in opens and at the Oceana championship, so I went to the world university games, where I came 9th.

Came 5th in the Asian Games last year. I just have kind of a wide array of international experience with taekwondo and I guess what a lot of people didn't know, as I was fighting and travelling all over the world for taekwondo is, I've actually been coaching since 2011. So I know that doesn't seem, maybe it doesn't seem long to some of the older guys that are listening to the podcast, but as I was training full time, I was also pretty much teaching full time, 25 hours +, helping run a couple of seminars, a couple of really big taekwondo schools here in Melbourne.

So yeah, my taekwondo experience has been really wide ranging, I guess with different mentors and different coaches that I've had. I guess that's probably the key to the success I've had in my business, is that I've kind of seen what works over here and seen what works over there and kind of pooled all that together into my business, Story Martial Arts.

GEORGE: All right, so if you can elaborate on that: so you were training for how long before you started the coaching side?

ADAM: So I was training… I think I had my black belt for about 6 or 7 months when I started coaching kids’ classes, beginners, intermediate, that kind of stuff. So I was training for about 3 years, I think before I started coaching. Yeah and by training I mean I was doing 6-7 classes a week of training and preparing for competitions. We would have state team training at Box Hill, here at Melbourne as well also. We kind of had the club training and then state team training on the weekends. So yeah, I was doing a lot of hours, a lot of hours in the car too.

GEORGE: Hahaha! All right, cool. So there's an old saying about, the quicker you start teaching what you know, the quicker you learn, because the quicker you sort of articulate everything that's been taught to you. Do you feel that helped you a lot, being able to coach from an earlier age?

ADAM: Yeah, definitely. It definitely helped with my martial arts skills, because I wasn't the most naturally technical person. I was never the most athletic in high school, I didn't really play a lot of… I played a lot of sports, but I wasn't really kind of the super star, I wasn't like, “Let’s have Adam on our team,” that kind of thing. I was always in the middle of the pack. I just realized that, I guess due to my parents, I'm just the hardest worker in the room, in most rooms that I'm in and that's probably what I attribute to my success in coaching and in competing as well.

GEORGE: OK, so what was the big drive that just, starting with the martial arts side: what was the big drive that really got you in the whole wanting to compete and really getting that taste for, all right, I've been your 18-time champion – what was that drive to take you to that point?

ADAM: In 2009 when I started competing, so I was like a yellow belt right at the bottom, beginner level, in the juniors, under 17 division. I watched a little of UFC, I watched the Ultimate Fighter, the reality show they have. And I saw a lot of these guys were black belts in a couple of different martial arts. They’d have black belts is Brazilian jiu-jitsu, or a black belt in judo, big division national wrestler, black belts in taekwondo, karate etc. The list goes on. So I was, I really admired the athlete Edson Silva, who was the UFC middleweight champion at the time. He is a black belt in taekwondo, in judo and Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

So that was initially my plan, was to just get the three black belts. I thought, if I got three black belts like him, I'm going to be the champ of the world, that's how it works, right? I was 16, it's as simple as that to become a champion. So what I did was, it was just a complete fluke. I was already doing kickboxing a little bit, training 2-3 times a week, just fitness and enjoying myself and kind of watching rocky movies and stuff like that, which wasn't really serious. It was just kind of training for training’s sake.

A complete fluke in a shopping centre one day, there was a taekwondo booth, signing people up to a trial offer. I think it was like $25 for two weeks, or whatever it was at the time 10 years ago. And I was like, you know what, hey, taekwondo, that was one of his black belts. That's the way to go, we’ll start here. And again, 10 years ago, there wasn't a lot of MMA schools, or Brazilian jiu-jitsu schools around. So when I was kind of coming into my desire to be a martial artist and to be a competitor, there wasn't really a lot of taekwondo and karate around.

So I would have to travel to the city, or pretty far away. I didn't have my license, I mean, I was in high school. So it wasn't really feasible to ask my dad, who works 6AM until 4 to drive me all over the city to go to jiu-jitsu classes, when there's only two clubs really around. You know, St Kilda and things like that. It was just a bit too difficult. Hall’s taekwondo opened up a centre in Sunshine, where I'm originally from, in the western suburbs of Melbourne. And it was just a perfect match.

I went in, I've been doing kickboxing like a said for a little bit, so I just got right to it and started training a couple of times a week. Within I think 5 weeks, I got my yellow belt, it was kind of halfway though the term. Three weeks later, we had the Victorian Championships, I just had the one match and I won by knockout. I knocked my opponent out in my first ever match and I probably, maybe thought a bit silly, but I was just like, you know what? Let’s go to the Olympics, let's do it.

I'm obviously the best in the country already! I’m a yellow belt, it's time to do it. So I just realized, I'm starting late, I'm 17 years old. A lot of these guys had black belts and were on the national team by the time, they’ve been training since they've been 5, they’ve been black belts for 10 years already and I was just a yellow belt. So how am I going to beat these guys in Olympic trials or London or Rio, or anything like that. Kind of looking ahead and I just thought, well you know what? If they're training 5 times a week, I will train 7! And if they train 8 times a week, I will train 9.

And eventually over time, that bridge is going to gap, I'm going to bridge that gap. So that was kind of my initial plan, it was just keep fighting, keep training as hard as I possibly could, like I said earlier: just being the hardest worker in the room, you have a lot of guys in my club who were at a higher belt rank than me, there weren’t a lot of black belts, because it was a fairly new centre, so there weren't heaps of black belts to train with. So what I did was just make sure I turn up every day, did 2-3 hours of classes and got after it.

GEORGE: Great. So, simple plan, right? You just get your 10,000 hours first.

ADAM: Yeah. Yeah, I'm just going to get my 10,000 hours fast and they can get theirs. That was my initial plan really.

GEORGE: Ok, great Adam. So let's jump into your school, Story Martial Arts. A questions I actually wanted to ask you the first time: why the name, Story Martial Arts?

ADAM: Oh, that's a good question and not the first time that I've heard that question either George, it's not an easy name to kind of assign to a martial arts school. There's two reasons: the first is that my university degree is actually in writing, so I did literature and composition at Uni. I've written two novels and two collections of poetry, which most people don't know about either. Because I've been so busy posting all about kicking people in the face for the last 10 years. The second one is that my Brazilian jiu-jitsu coach and very good friend Ninos from the Australia Elite team always tells us to get our first page.

So that was kind of like his coaching method, if you start the match the way that you want to start it, you write your first page, it's likely that you'll be able to write the rest of the story of the match too. And I just thought, first page martial arts is a bit of a mouthful, so let's go with story, because it was kind of the end of the coaching line and I've been writing stories for a long time as well. So that's how I decided on the name.

GEORGE: That's pretty cool. So your coach, was he referring to story sort of really having a clear game plan with just that first couple of minutes type of thing?

ADAM: Yeah, so if you for example, if you want to pull guard, get in there and pull guard. If you want to get a takedown, get in there and get that takedown. If you want to get a certain grip, or play a certain game, you have to take control of the match. I think that really applies to jiu-jitsu, but I think it really applies to all areas of martial arts, especially in taekwondo. You know, if I want to establish a certain distance, or a certain style of play or a certain pace, I think every competitive martial artist will agree that if you start the match right and the way that you want to play, then the rest of the match is a lot easier to control.

GEORGE: Definitely. All right, fantastic. All right, so we have Story Martial Arts and let's break this down, right? Because, I mean 12 months is a real sprint to 250 students for a lot of people. I mean, I've spoken to people that have been going for years and they're at 70-80 students. To be fair though, a lot of those school owners, that's their sweet spot, right? It's their hobby business, they're happy with that.

But then, I've been speaking to a lot of people that I mean, if they were really honest with themselves, this is what, I mean, who doesn't want that lifestyle, right? They want that successful school, they want their life to be martial arts. And you've done this in a very short sprint. So let's go back to the beginning, it's only 12 months ago – how did you get started with it all?

ADAM: So, I started with my business partner, who was my business partner at the time, Lee, we opened up a center just kind of near our houses. We knew there were a lot of kids around, there were a lot of primary schools and kindergartens, so we kind of already lived in an area where there was a bigger population density. We looked at the census, which I think a lot of people maybe don't do so well. We looked at census and see how many people live in the area, within 8km of the centre.

How many children under 14, so what percentage of those people are children under 14, which – this is all free information on the census website, you can search every suburb. And one of those, what's the populations density in the surrounding suburbs, you know, people who will travel 10-15 minutes to get to class, that kind of thing. So we settled on that location, we were kind of looking at 3-4 locations, but we kind of settled on that due to convenience, so it was near our houses and it was pretty easy to get to for us, after work, because I had a day job at the time as well, just like everyone else. What we did straight away was establish a policy that I think is really, really, important.

It's a question I ask myself when I decide anything in my business, is, will this work at 500? So, will this policy work at 500 students? For example, we have a grading checklist, so sign up on the checklist. If I have two pages of checklist, imagine going through 40 pages of checklist, trying to make sure everyone's paid for grading. So that's not going to work on 500. If I have one instructor and I don't have a leadership team, it's not going to work on 500.

If I have a certain amount of mat space and I don't want to open on Tuesdays, because I like having dinner with my wife, or my girlfriend, whatever it is, it's not going to work on 500. So that policy at the start really laid the foundation, in building that size. Because from the start, we were behaving and acting as if we already had 500 students.

GEORGE: All right. I love that! Firstly, just for American listeners and anyone not based in Australia: the census website is basically a data website. Is that the best way to explain it? It's the…

ADAM: Yeah, it's a website that has the profile of each area. So you'll have for example a suburb, this is how many people live here, this is how many people are male and female, how many kids arrive, etc. The average weekly income, which is also…

GEORGE: The population, yeah.

ADAM: Yeah.

GEORGE: All right.

ADAM: So, yeah.

GEORGE: All right, perfect. So yeah, just wanted to clarify that. So really just the population and data of a local area. So what I really like about this is it's really a very clear beginning with the end in mind. We run a program called the Partners program and one of the first things we do is we try and map out a game plan and with that, one of the questions we always ask is, what's your goal at that student number? And then, what's going to break?

Like, when you've got that, how does life really look? I mean, it's always good to say, yes a I want that amount of students, I want this, but then you really got to peel things back, because what does life look like, what's going to break, who are you going to need, can things operate the way they do. And the first thing that normally breaks is the school owner, right?

ADAM: The first camel to break is the school owner, because like a lot of people in the martial arts business, they think they can do everything. Their black belt in karate or a black belt in taekwondo, or whatever you're an expert in, is not a black belt in marketing. You know, it's not a black belt in sales, it's not a black belt in web design, it's not black belt in any of these things.

I think that's the greatest thing to overcome is, you spend so many years of your life earning this ranking, and earning this respect from your community and from your students and from the parents, that you kind of… I feel like a lot of martial arts business owners don't want to give that respect up, or give that responsibility to someone else, you know? Take control of your lifestyle.

Now, for me personally, I've spent a lot of money learning how to do Facebook ads, not just from the obvious sources, but I was in Benson Mastermind for 6 months and spent nearly $20,000 learning how to do Facebook ads, because that's something that I'm really good at. But if I did it for 6 months and wasn't getting any results, you'd better believe I would have hired someone else to do it, because you need to be humble enough to admit that you're not always the best person to do every single job.

GEORGE: Yeah, it's such a valuable skill and the way I find it is, you know, I personally think everybody should understand and know their own marketing. You know, we come from a done-for-you background, where we used to do everything for school owners, but I really feel that for and it's an old top marketer, Dan Kennedy, top copywriter. You know, he always had this philosophy of, there's two things in your business that you don't hand over: one is the checkbook – the old term, we don't have those anymore. Some youngsters will be asking what is that.

So the checkbook and the marketing. And I'm not saying that you should do everything, but if you have the strategy, finding the hands is a lot easier. But you know, the reverse side a lot of school owners are trying to do is find the cheapest resource to do it all for them and if that cheap resource had the strategy, they would not be cheap. Right? So it's good to always have, get the top knowledge from the top person and then finding the hands within your own organisation is much easier.

ADAM: Yeah, I agree. I think another place that a lot of martial arts business owners go wrong is that they might say, well, it's easy for you to say hire a marketing agency, you've got 250 students. But really, I didn't have it at the start. I put $500 on a Facebook ad when I didn't have $500 in my bank account, in the business account. That's just the truth.

Because in my experience, I knew with my knowledge that I will be able to get the paid trials, that it would create the income that would cover that ad spent. I think a lot of martial arts business owners don't charge enough for their services, that's for sure. Someone told me once they were charging like $50 a term, or unlimited classes, but I could have 500 students. Well, on that price, I probably only need like 90.

GEORGE: Yeah. You know, we – and I'm storming you on this topic, because this is probably the most important part of it all. I did a video yesterday about the toughest martial arts stretch in business. It's that discomfort of actually doing the discomfort, you just mentioned something that really, it's something that I had to go through, you know? You're saying that you spent $500 on ads and you knew there wasn't $500 in the account.

I remember 10 years ago when I started doing Google ads and I was on my last cents and I was like, this is it. I'm actually just going to leave this, until I made a sale. $37 was the best sale I ever made, someone in America bought an ebook. That was… the fact that somebody bought an offer that converted – and that's the hardest part, right? Having your offer, a valuable offer that people respond to and they actually buy, that's one of the hardest things. But then, to get to that point, you're going to have to take an uncomfortable step, there's no doubt about it, right?

ADAM: Yeah. I think the uncomfortable step George is especially when people have day jobs. They say that's an easy way. It's an easy excuse, I have a day job, I work till 3 o'clock, I go straight to the club, teach classes till 7-8 o'clock, whenever it is. To be honest, if you didn't want to have a day job and teach classes, maybe this isn't the business for you. Maybe that's my youth speaking, I’m not sure, but I went into it fully knowing that I was going to work 14 hours for as long as it took, until I could get a full time centre, until I could train my staff. Until I could have a little bit more freedom, like I do now. For example. I have time to talk to you today, because I don't have a day job.

GEORGE: There you go. And I guess just to be clear right? I mean, if that's the life you want – perfect. But it's really easy to believe our own bs, right? To really believe our own excuses and justify a reason. Because that's always the first thing I pick up in a conversation: I don't have this, because of this. But it's really a choice, because I mean, it's the story that – sorry, excuse the pun.

ADAM: Hahaha!

GEORGE: But the story you tell yourself to justify the reason why you're not there. But that's where you've got to really challenge yourself and really challenge yourself to say, all right, well, is that really true? I mean if this is thing that I really want, then hey – do the uncomfortable thing. Whether that's spending money on the ads, or quitting your job, or whatever that is, but do that thing that's holding you back.

ADAM: Yeah, I’ll add contrast to my athletic career. In competition, I was gearing up for the 2016 Rio Olympic games. I got onto what's called Olympic shadow team. So it was essentially, it's the team that you kind of get put into and then they select the Olympis athletes out of that team. Now, I didn't end up going to the Olympics, I was just on the shadow, that was the end of the journey for me, in terms of Rio.

On the way up though, it was, I saw it after the games – my mistake: after the games, it was you know, it's not like oh, they didn't pick my weight class. Or I didn't get to go to as many competitions, or it was based on your ranking points and I didn't have the money at the time to go to all the events. Well, I also went to holiday with my girlfriend at the time. I also went out with my friends on weekends, spent $30-$40.

On a cheap night out as well. So it was… you kind of have to be OK with saying, you know, it's my fault. I didn't go to the Olympics and I 100% take the responsibility for that. If I go and start blaming Australian taekwondo, or start blaming the Olympic committee, soon it will be my whole life hating people when really I caused the situation. I think the martial arts business is the same, because I could've stayed on 50 students and only worked the classes, gone home, had dinner, gone to sleep.

But I went home, I wrote more messages, created more flyers, created more social media content, entered all the direct debits in – I was doing everything, until 10:30-11:00 o'clock at night, for at least the first 9 months, because I had a day job at a special ed school, where I was at from 8 till 3:30. And before any of that would start, I was at the gym training for competitions. So I think, if anything went wrong, even though I was working 12-15 hour days, I still said you know what? That parent didn't know about the grading, or this person didn't get the email, because we entered their email address wrong in the system – that's my fault.

Because I didn't train the receptionist to double check, right? I didn't train my instructor to remind every single parent every class, instead of every second class. No matter what happens in your business, eventually it all leads back to you, the owner. The CEO essentially, it’s all on you. So I think that's an easy escape when you have a day job, I definitely don't think excuses good enough.

GEORGE: Yeah. That's awesome. Ok, cool, so we start with the end in mind, right? So you're building up your systems, 500 students, does this work with 500 students. So what's the next step? You get to, you've gone from 0, you've gone to the easiest few to track,right? The first 50, or the first 100 students?

ADAM: Yeah, the first 3 months we got 60 sign ups, the first 3 months. We were at a community centre, so the rent is like a $100 a week, so 60 is plenty. We started looking at a full time centre. We found a full time centre quite quickly, permits take a little while as they do, but we get in there for. So we spent one term in a part time location, wasn't going to work with 60 students three nights a week. Open up a full time, 5 nights a week. Fitted it out, etc.

Now, you go from that local point, I think 50-60, past our next breaking point, which was 100, that's an obvious goal, to get to a 100 students. The thing was, finding people who knew more than me. So I'm a big proponent and anyone can ask me at anytime any questions they like on Facebook: if you are not in MABS, you are losing your mind. Paul Veldman and Rod have such an excellent program. I did the work, but I base a lot of my success on coaching from people like Paul and Rod.

I also spent the money and went to The Main Event two months after opening my business. It wasn’t, oh, that will be good to do next year when we have more cash – how are we going to get the cash? I'm going to The Main Event to learn from all these guys. To learn from guys like you. I've been in the business a grand total of 8 weeks, so yeah, I actually presented at that main event on coaching. Not on business, but on coaching.

GEORGE: I actually didn't realize that when I met you, that was your, that you had just actually started your martial arts school.

ADAM: Yeah, it was hard in the round table I think, because it's kind of hard to listen to someone who's had a total of two months on business, but I had more students than most of these guys I think.

GEORGE: Well there you go. Again, the discomfort. The discomfort of, you know, you're in a situation and, I mean, you're being true to what you know, it's not like you're deceiving anyone, but you're pushing yourself that extra step. And that's just so important, in everything that we… it seems to be the topic we sort of hammer on every year.

ADAM: What I was going to say was, after The Main Event I actually, I remember something that Paul was saying, Paul Veldman was saying about taking action. So I didn't want to be one of those school owners who fills their notepad full of notes, or fills their computer full of notes, goes home and says, geez, it was fun catching up with everyone. Business as usual. That's ridiculous, right? What a waste of time and money! I just went right to it. Every single note in my main event notebook has been actioned. Every single one. I did the 7-word email that you talked about when I had only 20 people to send it to. And I still got three of them back.

So every single thing that happened at The Main Event, I implemented straight away. Every coaching call that I had with Paul, everything that someone would ask in the group at the time, every question that someone asked, I wrote a note and implemented it in my business, that day. And not, oh, I’m going to do this next week when I have more time, or, geez, on Sunday I'm going out with the family, I’ll do it another time. You got to get stuff done.

GEORGE: So going from the part time school, you made sure that you had some cash in the bank, so you made sure there was some directive that's coming in and that was the first step to get you to the full time location. And then pushing through that 100 students and past, how did things look from there?

ADAM: So yeah, when we were at the full time centre, we had I think 55, there was a couple of kids… even if you move 3-4 blocks down the road, a couple of kids don't really want to drive the extra distance, that's OK. So we came in at 50-55. We knew we needed 70 to pay the bills.

So we actually moved into the full time centre, without enough students to pay the bills for the full time centre. So as soon as we moved in, we were about a month away from closing down the business entirely and stuck with a three year lease. So what I did was, we ran a big media open day, talked to all the business coaches, all my other friends who have martial arts business, all my former coaches. What do you do at an open day… I mean, I used to work at these open days when I was a trainer at schools as well, so ran the open day, got 25 on the day. Hit 75, bills are covered – beauty. Then we immediately went into term 1, so we went through referral, we did a bring a friend week, nerf gun nights, all that kind of stuff.

And this is stuff that everyone who listens to the podcast have heard before, but I think they probably should do it more frequently. So we were doing nerf gun nights once a term, open day, we would do family day in term 4, which was kind of an open day on a smaller scale, you know? You would get 10-15 sign ups for a very small advertising budget in term 4 and we hit a 100 just after September. So it took us a little bit less than 9 months to get a 100 students.

GEORGE: Ok, cool. Were just breaking up a little bit there. Ok, so 9 months, you were at 100 students, right?

ADAM: Yeah.

GEORGE: Ok, cool. So lots of events, open days, nerf gun wars and really involving the community within the school at that time.

ADAM: Yeah, and I think a really important point to make on the rapid growth after that point was, we really started realizing we were on to something special and that was probably my first mistake in the business, was, we got to a 100 so quickly, 200 was going to be so easy. But we just got to a 100 in less than 9 months, 200 is going to be a cinch. We hadn't even ever had a term one back to school special, because we opened later.

So we never even got that big kind of initial boost most martial arts business owners hope and pray for the entire year. So we were kind of looking forward to term one and $6000-$7000 ready to spend on Facebook ads, we had only $1000-$2000 in the bank at the time, we were still only just scraping by, we had to hire another instructor. Because of the rapid growth of the club, so we had another instructor on the mats and we were really looking forward to that term one boost.

We get to term one, come back 91 students on the books in January, I know it was specifically 91. I was like, you know what? This is going to be the last time that I ever have less than a 100 students. It's going to be the last time ever that I have less than a 100. So we put a big amount, I think we spent $14,000 in 2 months, and we got 135 paid trials in one location. So we had a huge amount of kids, we ran the open day again, so a campaign ride up to 200 straight away.

So the biggest mistake we made was not adhering to our own rule, which is, does this work at 500. And the systems that we had been in place at the time were working and we thought they were going to work at 500, but all of a sudden 130 brand new white belts in the door in the first kind of six weeks of the term wasn't a very good idea. So we probably should have been less aggressive with our marketing, even though it's kind of hard to give up money and students and enrolments. We should have set a limit, where 60-70 trials – we stop selling trials, because we ended up losing I think like 60-70 of those kids anyway.

So out of a 135, I think we only kept like 50. So we ended up under 140 students, whereas if we had better systems and maybe more things in place for retention of new white belts, not just retention of the whole club, but white belt retention specifically, we would have done a better job at keeping a larger number of those 135 trials that we got in that month.

GEORGE: Ok, and so that's a good point there, you know, it's always good to say, if only I got an extra 100 students or something, but again, how does the system fall apart on that? How does it impact your existing students and of course your new students. So if you had to, let's say, depending on when you're listening to this, but let's say the new year, you run another campaign and you get another influx of 135 students – how will you structure this differently? What would you have in place to make sure to have a smooth onboarding?

ADAM: To be honest, I’m going to try and stop it before it got to that point, because in the business now, there's a lot of color belts obviously, there's kids going through the advanced levels now that we’ve been open for a little bit and I really think that I would stop at 70-80 trials and then just stop the ads right there. And you know, those kids are going to join eventually, those extra 50-60 kids that I haven't sold the trials to, but if I could get 80 and keep 65-70 of them, it's a lot better and also, I haven't spent a lot of money on ads for kids that are going to have a negative experience in my centre, just because it's so jam packed with white belts.

Everyone knows, you have to give those white belts extra special attention, it's very hard to give extra special attention to 22 white belts in a new class. It's just impossible, in a 30-40 minute class. It's not possible. I mean, any big school owner and what we get into now, being a big school is that they realize that even if you're teaching good classes, the parents might not see that they’re classes, because there's 30 kids running around. Even though you're a good instructor, it might not look like you're a good instructor to them and at the end of the day, they're paying the bills.

So I think that's what we’re really trying to curb, is making sure that the parents know that I’m teaching good classes. I'm obviously teaching good classes, we have this many students, we’re taping a lot of them. My recent boost for this, we had 97% sign up from trials, no word of a lie. So anyone who's listening I can send a screenshot. So all those kids that are staying in, obviously we’re running a good program. But the challenge now becoming a bigger school is, can you run a good program at 500?

So back to that initial rule again – is this going to work, even though it's worked up until now, is it going to work with 500? And the way that I'm teaching the classes now, I'm making the mat chats a bit more vocal. I'm making the kids laugh and go and give their parents a high five and that kind of thing. Come back into the class, go tell your mom that you just had a good time, that kind of stuff. So we’re really working now on making the parents part of the experience.

I've listened to a really good podcast about Airbnb launching their experiences platform, where instead of renting a house, you can rent an experience. So you can go horseback riding in Utah, or do a samurai show in Tokyo and those kinds of things, so I think the challenge for us now is what's the Story Martial Arts experience look like? For a student, everyone knows what it looks, they're learning martial arts, they're building their character, they’re building up their skills.

But what does the Story Martial Arts experience feel like for a parent watching a class? For a parent who's at the end of the day deciding what happens to the child, the child might be getting better at taekwondo or getting better at karate, that's the truth. They might be getting better at their martial art. They might be having a lot of fun. But does the parent think they’re getting better? Does the parent think that they’re having fun? Does the parent see the value in paying whatever it is you charge a week, because if you believe it and the kid believes it, it doesn't matter. Because the most important missing link in that chain is the parent who decides.

GEORGE: That is… that was pure gold, that was awesome. Adam, before we wrap it up, I do want to ask you just, how do things look now and what's going to be your prime focus from 250 through to that 500 student mark that you've been, that's been on the goal?

ADAM: Like I said earlier, the prime focus is working at a big business scale now where we’re at. It's moving from a medium size martial arts school to a very large martial arts school. And what I’m doing is listening to a lot of podcasts and reading a lot of books about people who own gym franchises, so Anytime Fitness has 500,000 members nationwide, so imagine the retention they have to put on a gym. Obviously, there's no martial arts school anywhere near that, so what my sign up experience was, I've been kind of going around the gyms and trying to sign up, I would literally spend an hours of my day going to gyms, asking about membership plans and seeing how they treat me as a potential client.

And I've been taking the best parts and leaving out the worst, preparing for that big influx in January. Like we said at the top of the show, I think I’m opening a pilates business as well, so not really the topic of this podcast, but pilates and martial arts running together under the Story group company, how will we give that experience to the customer? How are we going to improve their life through this signup process? Not through what were teaching on the mats, because that's obvious, everyone knows that. It doesn't need to be repeated a 1000 times: good classes, make sure you’re good at martial arts, invest in the staff training – everyone knows that.

But how pleasurable is that signup process? How do they go away thinking, geez, I can't believe I got away with that value. How can we even offer more and more value, not on the mat when they come in, because everyone is already working on that. But what we’re not working on in an industry I believe is giving out those gift bags and offering free sausages to the community, going around, giving out things like at shopping centre's and things like that. Things that big gyms do, because they work. Martial arts businesses, I think, miss out on the signup experience a lot. So I guess that's my focus, is making sure the parents and the students enjoy the classes, obviously they have to enjoy the classes to stay, but also enjoy the process of purchasing a trial, how easy is it to buy it. Come into the class, how welcoming is my staff, that kind of thing.

GEORGE: Fantastic, I love it. Adam, we should have done this sooner, thanks for being on the show, it was really great.

ADAM: No worries.

GEORGE: And I think a lot of people are going to get a lot of value out of this, just, I mean, the beginning of the story and it's all value, but I think really focus on what you said in these last few minutes of the experience – that's true gold and it's something I haven't really heard a lot of people talk about, yet, I’d really take that on board. If anybody wants to get a hold of you, you mentioned as well, you’re bringing out an ebook, can you just tell me something about that?

ADAM: Yeah, so the ebook is called ”Offering value – how to scale your business through the mathematics of kindness.” So it's really about the journey from 0 to 250, the last 12-18 months now and how are we planning on offering even more value, not taking more monetary value, but offering even more value to our customers and really building an experience inside of our martial arts business.

We’re also going to go over a lot things about irresistible offers, so how have we been able to attract all the leads and more importantly, how we have been able to sign up a staggering rate of those trials that have come up. I don't think we’ve ever had below 80% except for that one time where there was a big rush. So yeah, the book is called offering value. It's going to come out at the end of January, just in time for the back to school marketing. It's going to be on Amazon, there's no courses at the end no paid groups, it's just me, offering value to the martial arts business industry.

GEORGE: Fantastic. And I will link to that in the show notes, depending on when you're listening to this, that will be available. And Adam, thanks again.

Awesome. Thanks for listening. If you want to connect with other 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. It’s a private Facebook group and in there, I share a lot of extra videos and downloads and worksheets – thing 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 community and an easy way to access it is, if you just go to the domain named martialartsmedia.group, so martialartsmedia.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 4 ways we can help scale your school right now.

1. *NEW** – Premium Martial Arts Websites with Easy Pay Plans.

If your website is not delivering new leads consistently, doesn't represent your true value or you simply need to make a change. Click here for details and a demo.

2. 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.

3. 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 work with me to help you grow your martial arts school, message me with the word ‘Case Study'.

4. 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!

69 – The Most Uncomfortable ‘Stretch’ In Martial Arts (Business)

December 10, 2018 by George Fourie

Just like that uncomfortable hamstring stretch, there's a stretch in your martial arts business that's potentially holding you back.

.IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

The uncomfortable step that's potentially holding you back
A Partner members success story
Playing a bigger game
The one thing to do before hiring a martial arts business coach
And more

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

TRANSCRIPTION

I've questioned myself on doing it, but I’ll tell you what: it was the best thing I've done for my business, just automatically playing at a high field and associating myself with people of a higher calibre.

Hi, George here, I hope you're well. I want to talk about the most uncomfortable stretch in martial arts business. So I'm going to make this quick: I stepped out from the side of the lake, there are frogs going in the background, I could feel a few mosquitoes going at me, so I'm going to make this quick. And hey – it’s Australia, so who knows what's in the bush, right?

So the most uncomfortable stretch in the martial arts business. So a couple of days ago, I was on a call with one of our Partners members. And he said to me openly: when he decided to go ahead with our program, he was in regret and he felt really uncomfortable, and he thought, oh, I've just wasted a lot of money. And then he felt better when he saw the calibre of the people that were in the program, he felt a bit better.

But then I got the best message a couple of days ago. And he just did a sale for 72 hours, which is a module that was a part of our program and then got some help from within the community. And he managed to generate just over $20,000. And that's the program paid for, you know, way beyond. And you look at that as in a stretch.

Now, why the analogy of the martial arts business stretch? Well, when you stretch in martial arts, it’s not comfortable, right? I mean, you're stretching for the purpose of having to hopefully do a technique or do something in a more comfortable way, which is why the stretch, but the stretch is always very uncomfortable. And the same within martial arts, right?

Within business, I see so many school owners that are splashing around in the shallow water, trying to create tidal waves, right? It doesnt really happen. And what I mean by that is not willing to really go ahead and invest in their business. Really frowning upon, oh well, I can't spend a couple of hundred bucks there, or this there. But then always staying at the same plateau.

And you know, a lot of the school owners that I speak to five years ago are still doing that same thing, right? So there's a bit of a mindset shift that's got to happen for you to go to the next level. There's going to be discomfort, right?

I know for me, just in my business this year, I took a big step and I've been investing in coaching for quite a while to improve myself and my skills and my business. But this investment for me was a big one. It was $20,000, which for me was a significant amount of money on coaching. For you, it might be nothing, for other people it might be a large sum as well. And that caused a lot of discomfort. It was like, can I do this? Why am I doing this?

I mean, I can't afford to spend this amount of money on coaching. And I've really questioned myself on doing it. But I’ll tell you what, it was the best thing I've done for my business. Just automatically playing at a high field and associating myself with people of a higher calibre, immediately pushed myself to raise the bar.

Now, I'm not saying you've got to go and spend $20,000 on coaching. If you do, please make sure that you actually met the people, their expertise. But what I'm saying is, if you want to go that extra mile and you want to take your business to that higher level that you actually want, then there's going to be some discomfort.

And you're going to have to make peace with that. And by doing that, that's where the real growth comes, right? So just like in martial arts, I mean it’s probably common knowledge for you anyway, right? Make that stretch, do that thing that's uncomfortable, like you would do in martial arts and do it in your business.

Hope that helps, I'm going to get away from the frogs and the mozzies (mosquito’s) – I’ll speak to you soon. Cheers!

Awesome. Thanks for listening. If you want to connect with other 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. It’s a private Facebook group and in there, I share a lot of extra videos and downloads and worksheets – 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 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 in the next episode – cheers.

Here are 4 ways we can help scale your school right now.

1. *NEW** – Premium Martial Arts Websites with Easy Pay Plans.

If your website is not delivering new leads consistently, doesn't represent your true value or you simply need to make a change. Click here for details and a demo.

2. 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.

3. 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 work with me to help you grow your martial arts school, message me with the word ‘Case Study'.

4. 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!

68 – Create Better Martial Arts Videos (Without The Editing, Gear And Gadgets)

November 28, 2018 by George Fourie

Ask yourself this one question to get better results with your next martial arts video.

.IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

The difference between martial arts videos for friends vs prospects.
How to get on target and be relevant.
Why it’s not about the tech and gadgets.

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

TRANSCRIPTION

If you're creating video content, then who are you actually creating it for? Because is it for your martial arts friends or is it for your prospects?

Hey, this is George. Hope you're doing well, I've got a little princess visiting me for this video, going for a quick morning walk. She's been up early.

So hey, I was on a phone call with one of our new Partners members yesterday. And we were talking about social media content. And we were basically talking about creating different videos and things like that. And we came to a bit of a realization. So, and it's a very simple realization, but it’s one that's easily neglected, right?

So as martial artists, if we start doing videos, the first thing that's always the easiest to do is to start looking at moves and thing like that. You know, what type of different techniques, kicking, punching, etc.

But here's the question I want you to ask yourself: if you're creating video content, then who are you actually creating it for, right? Because, is it for your martial arts friends or is it for your prospects? OK?

So, I mean, the way we like to go about it: every month, we cover a different topic in our Partners program. So we’re either talking about attracting the students, how do we increase sign-ups or how to retain your members.

So there's definitely a place, obviously for doing those martial arts techniques and so forth and it looks awesome, right? But I guess what I want you to think about is, is it really connecting with the type of person you are trying to attract in your school? Is that the person that's really going to want to train? Is that what's going to get them over the edge is seeing a fancy technique, or submission or whatever it is, is that what's going to push them over the edge? Is that what’s going to remove their fear and actually make them take action?

So think about that the next time you create a form of video. This is something we are doing next month in our Partners program, we're looking at simplifying social media – I've just got to remove the fly. Perth and flies, I’ll tell you what. Yeah – so next month, we’re covering the topic of simplifying social media and in that, we’re mapping out the next 12 months of social media content and we’re using different formulas for videos, for content and how you should be positioning it.

So a good place to start, if you want to get one good takeaway from this video, then think about talking about the problems. You can start with problems, what type of problems are you trying to solve. And you can always change the context of what it is that you're doing – oh, here comes the sun! So if you are creating a video with moves, then at least frame it to the right person. And explain to them how and why that is being used.

Cool, I hope that's helpful, we can head back. Hopefully not get attacked by the magpies. Cool, have an awesome day, speak soon – cheers.

It’s a private Facebook group and in there, I share a lot of extra videos and download and worksheets – the thing 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 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 in the next episode – cheers.

Here are 4 ways we can help scale your school right now.

1. *NEW** – Premium Martial Arts Websites with Easy Pay Plans.

If your website is not delivering new leads consistently, doesn't represent your true value or you simply need to make a change. Click here for details and a demo.

2. 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.

3. 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 work with me to help you grow your martial arts school, message me with the word ‘Case Study'.

4. 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!

67 – And Still… The No.1 Martial Arts Marketing Mistake

October 19, 2018 by George Fourie

How to avoid the biggest marketing mistake that martial arts school owners make when advertising online.

.IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

Matching your message for the right platform.
If this one thing doesn’t work, your ads won’t work.
The ‘kitchen sink’.
The real reason why you need to simplify your sales funnel.
And more

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

TRANSCRIPTION

The first thing that you really, really need to get down to is, how do you structure the offer, how do you get an offer to convert? Because if the offer converts, everything else is going to work.

Hey, this is George. And I quickly want to talk about how to avoid the one biggest marketing mistake that comes up quite often when I speak to martial arts school owners.

So just a bit of context: I'm in New Zealand right now, just on a bit of a family vacation. And we've got this awesome view and the weather’s been up and down, but today it's just such a perfect day on the lake here in Hamilton, so I just wanted to get that on video.

So here's what happens, right? So we've got a program in the Martial Arts Media Academy, where we help school owners with all areas of marketing. When it comes to emailing, Facebook, Google, etc. And where the problem came, was trying to mix too many of the same strategies.

So, here's what happened: one of our members had been trying to get their Facebook ad to really work. And we've got an email structure that sends out… basically, we structure emails that go out to your prospects. They're structured over about two weeks and it basically helps build a relationship with your prospects while you're not there.

And so when doing email, you follow certain…there's certain things you can do, right? There's a certain way you can speak, there's a certain way that you can format your message. And the first message that goes out, we call it “the kitchen sink,” because it's everything in the kitchen sink, right? It's telling the prospect everything they need to know about you.

And so where the confusion came in, was trying to actually use this strategy, because our member got such good results with this one email, he decided it would be a good idea to put that on a Facebook ad. But the problem was that the email, it sends people to… it's in a whole different position, right?

The person is already a lead, they're already a prospect, the relationship has already started, and now they get this email that sends them to YouTube, that sends them to everything that they can learn and know about them and then martial arts school, right?

So when you use this on a Facebook ad, of course, that's kind of suicidal, because you're sending people to all these different locations. And by sending them to all these different locations, you’ve got no way to ever know if it works, or not. And my exact answer was, let’s say this ad works – awesome. You get a good result. That would be great, but let’s say you run it again and it doesn't work?

Then there's no way for you to know why, because there were just too many variables, right? People went to YouTube, people went here, people went here, people went here… so that creates a lot of confusion and…not a confusion so much, but there's no way for you to actually scale and improve that type of ad.

So here's what the biggest mistake is: the biggest mistake is trying to do too many things too soon and sending people to too many directions too soon. So when you create an ad and- it's a very common thing, but just have people do the one, simplest thing that's going to start the conversation with them. How can you make it easy for them to raise their hand and do something?

And sometimes that's just a comment, sometimes that's sending a message. Because here's the thing, right: if you’ve never run a Facebook ad and you’ve never gotten anybody to respond, so you never got a conversion on your Facebook ad, then nothing else is going to work, right?

So the first thing that you really, really need to get down to is, how do you structure the offer, how do you get an offer to convert? Because if the offer converts, everything else is going to work. So if the person is going to respond to your offer, then you can start looking at, OK: how do I make this landing page better? How do I make this message better? But on the frontend, you’ve got to get the offer to convert.

I hope that helps. If it helps in some way, then leave me a comment below, or yeah – I’ll see you in the next video. Cheers!

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

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

66 – The Hard Way Vs The Easy(re) Way

October 12, 2018 by George Fourie

Every martial arts business has its challenges. If there was one ‘shortcut' to success, this would be it.

.IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

The real ‘shortcut’ to martial arts business success
The easy and hard ways of marketing your martial arts school
Why you should invest in these marketing strategies
And more

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

TRANSCRIPTION

If you're struggling with something and need help, then why don't you just get help from someone who has done it before, made all the mistakes and shortcut all that learning? All the mistakes that they made, you can bypass that and get the result faster.

Hey, George here. Just walking back from a trip, we were just at Mount Ruapehu, if I've said that right. You can probably see it, it's sort of in the background there. Yeah, the snowy mountains, pretty awesome scenery here in New Zealand. Pretty cold, when you're used to the hot weather in Perth.

I was reminded today, there's the easy way to do things and a hard way. So today was the first day I took up snowboarding and because I’ve surfed before, I always thought, oh, this is going to be so easy. So I thought, you know what, why not give it a shot? Why not I go and try snowboarding, without lessons and just go do it, right? And the outcome was pretty… interesting.

So, yeah, I ate a lot of snow, falling down and, yeah, it was an interesting affair. And it reminded me that there's always the easy way to do things or the hard way. Just like before I started helping martial arts school owners with digital marketing stuff. I took the hard way, I tried to learn everything myself, without any help.

So just going by mistake, mistake, mistake, mistake, spending a lot of money, wasting a lot of money and it's just a long process, which can be really frustrating, right?

If you're trying to learn something and you don’t have any help, then you try everything, you do everything. It doesn't make sense and you think you’re going to save money by not spending money on a course or trying to get advice or coaching. So you go the long road, the long route.

And you try and fumble through things by yourself. And it can be really frustrating and it can take a long time and I guess that’s why a lot of people also stop doing what it is they were trying to achieve because it's just too hard.

So, yeah, when you go that route, it's always, it just takes a lot longer and it's a lot more frustrating. And I guess that’s just with everything, right? Like, with your marketing, marketing your business with your martial arts, you can try to fumble through things, try and take shortcuts, or just get help.

Get help from someone who’s done it before, who’s tried things, who has invested in some knowledge and gotten good results, obviously. You can’t just follow someone that invested in good marketing, or good coaching or something, because if they didn't get results yet themselves, then how can they teach you to get a result?

So I guess I just thought I’d shoot this video, the real message I want to get across is: if you're struggling with something and need help, then why don't you just get help from someone who has done it before, made all the mistakes and shortcut all that learning. All the mistakes that they made, you can bypass that and get the result faster.

Hope that helps in some way. I’m going to go into that spot over there, which is nice and warm and get myself a nice drink. Cheers!

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

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

64 – Google Search Vs. Social Media For Martial Arts Schools (And Goldfish Have Surpassed Us!)

July 31, 2018 by George Fourie

The subtle difference you need to know when creating content for Google search vs social media for martial arts schools.

.IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

The difference between search engine marketing and social media marketing for martial arts schools
How goldfish have surpassed us
Leveraging your content creation
And more

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

TRANSCRIPTION

Hey, this is George. Just here in Perth City and I was at an event from Google, Google Garage. And pretty basic information but some interesting stats, which was a good refresher on just how things work in the digital world, so I thought I’d share with you something that you could use when you create content for your martial arts school.

Before I get to that, one of the most interesting stats that I thought was interesting was that goldfish have officially surpassed us, meaning attention span. So where goldfish used to have a shorter attention span than human beings, according to their stats, Google stats, we are now… human beings attention span is 8 seconds and goldfish have 9 seconds. So they have the one up.

So here's something that I found interesting, was the difference between your strategy with Google search and social media. So it's one of those things that… When you kind of know it and we’ve been really trying to be deliberate about it, but when you really realize the big difference, it's kind of an aha moment about how you go about it.

So, when you look at social media, social media… a big thing about social media, which is a pet peeve is, the longevity of your content, right?

Because you can create social media posts today and you’ve got about 24-48 hours before they have completely lost their reach, ok? So unless you're doing something else with it, like using it for an ad or something like that, that's going to be the lifespan of the content for you.

So when you look at Google, so again, social media – very positive and generally positive, right? I mean, obviously, when you create content, you want to create positive content. Some people just create complaining posts, right? I mean if that's your thing – awesome, but I wouldn’t recommend it for your martial arts school, right? So that's the one side. You’ve got the social media content that you create.

Now, Google on the flipside, is not so much of a… dare I say it, like a fake facade, right? It's not all “Everybody’s happy” moments; it's people going to Google and really typing in real life problems, ok? Real things that are going on in their life, that they're trying to solve in a martial art school’s case, self-defense, or its activities for the kids and that can also just be the super, the first level of the problem, right? Because it could be a few layers deep.

So that is the real difference, the difference being, one is being created for more of a positive and friendly and happy vibe and at Google, people are typing in real-world problems. And then obviously, finding results for that and that's how you find articles, videos and so forth. So I guess the key thing is always, how do you bridge the gap, right? How can you create content that leverages both platforms?

Because if you're only investing in social media, then it's ongoing and you’ve always got to do it. But if you create the content with the purpose of how can it be leveraged and how can people find it later on your website, then you're playing a whole new different game.

A little tool we use in the Martial Arts Media Academy, which I’m revamping now for our new modules, is a content multiplier. Content duplicator like a cloning type tool. So you create one piece of content and then you model it and clone it for different platforms.

So that's one side of it, but then the really cool thing about it is, how to take one piece of content and then making sure that it's relevant on all platforms. So I won’t go into all the details and that but I want you to really think about it; when you're creating content, how can you create your content so that it could be used, obviously on social media, how can it be used so that it can be found afterwards, so if people are doing a Google search and they can find it on your website. And then even better, how can you use it on social media for an ad and how can you use that to really broaden your audience.

And if you want a few more details on that, I’m happy to shoot another video, perhaps even share the tool that we use for this, but I'll leave that for now.

Speak soon – until the next video. Cheers!

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

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63 – Chris Casamassa – Martial Arts & Mortal Kombat Movie Star Shares His Entrepreneurial Insights

April 10, 2018 by George Fourie

Chris Casamassa from Red Dragon Karate and a.k.a. Scorpion from the action film Mortal Kombat speaks about his passion for business.

.IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

Chris Casamassa's life as an author, actor, business consultant, entrepreneur and martial arts school owner
The biggest lesson that martial arts has taught Chris
The importance of establishing a strong team of instructors and staffs
Why you need to invest in leadership programs
How to turn satisfied customers into happy customers
And more

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

TRANSCRIPTION

Well, there's a couple of things. The biggest thing and my favorite saying is, everybody wants the results; nobody wants the process. Right? Everybody wants to be a black belt, but not everybody is willing to put in the work to become a black belt. Everybody says they want to be an instructor, a manager, an owner; but maybe they're not willing to put in the work, right? When they watch me do what I do, they see the glamour moment. They see me standing out there, running the class, rocking it – everything's firing on all cylinders. They don't understand sometimes how much work, effort and dedication I put into my craft to be able to do what it is that I do.

GEORGE: Hey, this is George Fourie and welcome to another Martial Arts Media Business podcast. Today, I'm joined with… so this is going to be a long list of credentials, so I'm going to have to cut this down. So I'm with Chris Casamassa, so author, actor, business consultant, school owner – what am I leaving out there Chris?

CHRIS: Serial entrepreneur.

GEORGE: Serial entrepreneur.

CHRIS: Yeah.

GEORGE: Alright, awesome. Well, welcome to the show. So I'm going to be speaking with Chris at The Main Event in San Diego, depending on when you're watching and listening to this, that'll be the 26th to 28th of April. And today we’re just going to have a chat. Chris has obviously got a wealth of knowledge, so this conversation might be part 1 and 2. We’ll see how we go. All right Chris, welcome I guess, for people that might not have heard of you, who is Chris Casamassa?

CHRIS: Chris Casamassa is, I am the son of the Grandmaster of Red Dragon Karate. We have 12 locations in Southern California, we've been in the business since 1965, so this is our 53rd year in business. I guess that when my father started the company, we were classified as a mixed martial arts style because my dad didn't like one martial arts style; he loved them all. He actually holds black belts in ten different styles of martial arts, so in the 1960s, he did something that really was unheard of and he combined styles of martial arts. So he's one of the originators of the mixed martial arts, who everybody who has a mixed martial arts school – you're welcome!

He did that a long, long time ago and he is an awesome, awesome, amazing guy. A ton of great stories about how people used to come and challenge him because you weren't allowed to do those things back in the day, but he was doing it before it was cool. So that's kind of where I grew up. I started martial arts training when I was 4 years old and I've been in it my entire life. And really just fell in love with it at a very young age.

GEORGE: Alright, so growing up in martial arts the way you did, what do you feel – and I spoke about this with Zulfi Ahmed, the conscious competence and unconscious incompetence and so forth. And obviously, he's got a world of knowledge, as well as yourself, of experience that's become such a part of you, that it might be hard to sort of define into one thing. But what do you feel has been the biggest learning for you? Growing up with your dad and within the martial arts industry the way you have?

CHRIS: The biggest learning for me? Do you mean what's the biggest benefit I've personally gotten out of it?

GEORGE: Yes.

CHRIS: Ok. That would be two things: one, the ability to believe in yourself, that you can and to never give up on your dreams and hopes and goals. Probably those are the two biggest things that my father instilled in me that the arts have taught me. Really, that nothing is impossible as long as you are focused and you take the steps of progression that you need to get there, you just give it a 100% effort and never give up.

GEORGE: Alright, so you started martial arts at a very young age. At what point did you start with the instructor role and stepping into the operations of the school?

CHRIS: Really, when I was young, probably when I was around 15. I started teaching a little bit here and there and pretty much, since I was 16-17 years old, it’s been something I've done full time, literally, I would walk home from school – I wouldn't even go home, I’d go from school to the studio where my dad was at. And I taught there, did my homework there and went home at 8-9 o'clock every night. It kind of just blended into a lifestyle for me.

GEORGE: All right. Now, lots have happened since then.

CHRIS: Oh yeah.

GEORGE: Give us a bit of a breakdown: how did you step into the whole movie role and “Mortal Combat” and taking on that whole actor career, between?

CHRIS: Yeah, that actually is a great question and it goes back to what I talked about, about focusing, goal setting and believing in yourself, right? When I was in my early teens, of course like many people around that time, Bruce Lee, of course, was my big action hero. “Enter the Dragon” and all those movies that he did really inspire me to say, hey, I want to try and do this on screen and the movies. And when we were younger, me and my brothers used to make little homemade fight videos of ninja stuff and we played all kinds of… I've got some great old video tapes for anybody who’s watching and knows what a video was. But it’s something I always wanted to do, right?

So I also started competing when I was 17-18 years old, on the circuit. There's a pro tour in the United States, called The North American Sports Karate Association. So I went out on that tour and decided that I wanted to get better as a competitor, because ultimately, honing my skills would just make me look better and sharper, as far as doing martial arts, period. But then if I ever wanted to be on camera, if I wanted to be a Chuck Norris, or if I wanted to be a Bruce Lee, I had to try and look as good, as fast, as powerful as those guys did. So I knew I could through the competition very much hone my skills, and I spent almost a decade out on the pro tour and when I retired, I was the four-time number 1 open forms champion, four years in a row I was the best forms competitor in the world.

So that right there helped open another door for me, because when I won a tournament in Atlanta Georgia, called The Battle of Atlanta, which at the time was one of the biggest events in the country, there were some producers from the TV show in the audience that came up to me and a few other guys and asked us if we’d be interested in doing a TV show. So one door kind of helped to open another door, like, I didn't start with “Mortal Combat,” that was my third or fourth, or maybe fifth film that I did. But I started small, with small shows, small TV shows and just kind of worked my way up.

And then in the movie business, there's an old saying that it's not who you know, it's who knows you. And that really is true, because once you get your foot in the door and you establish yourself and you have a good relationship and you're not a jerk to work with, then people want to continue to work with you. You do good work, you don't complain, you make it look good, you make the stars look good and then you take those stepping stones and move up. So that's how I was able to kind of take martial arts, turn it into the competition and turn it into a movie/TV career.

GEORGE: Alright, fantastic. So, looking at that – and just relating to, perhaps for the average martial arts school owner, someone perhaps starting out, or going from one school to the next school, you feel it instilled a lot of confidence into you growing up the way you did. How do you work with people that experience the obstacles? You do the goal setting, and that's sort of where you want to go. But I guess you reach this point of, the whole “Can I,” a bit of self-doubt. How do I break out from this next barrier to the next?

CHRIS: Well, if you're talking about martial arts business owners or martial arts school owners, nowadays it is so much easier and so much simpler to become successful in the martial arts because there are guys like you. There are guys like me that are out there that weren't out there! Right? If you've been around for a while, you go back to the 80s or the 90s, everyone was closed off. “I don't want to share my knowledge with you,” everybody was very close-minded, where the martial arts in the business, at least in the United States that I've seen so far, it's become more of an open mind, where we’re trying to raise the level of our industry, right?

Our industry has had such a bad rep on the business side for so long and so few people have had the secret and the keys to success. Now more and more people are getting because there are guys like you, there are guys like me that are out there, sharing our knowledge, sharing our understanding of how this business can work and how it can be successful to raise the standard of the industry. So if there's anybody out there who's struggling: there's a wealth of free knowledge. They can follow you, they can follow me on social media: all these things that didn't exist just a decade ago, there are so many tools available, I can almost say that if you're failing in your martial arts business now, you're just dumb.

You're not paying any attention to what's out there. And I don't mean that insultingly, but there's a wealth of information out there that was never available before, just the free stuff. And of course, there's coaching, consulting, business guys and you've got to weed out some of the bad guys from the good guys, which is also hard to do and I've got a few tips on that. But in the business today, I wish I was starting out today, because the transition from good to great is much smoother and easier now, for the people that really want to go get it.

GEORGE: Definitely so. Well, let's explore that: weeding out the good from the bad. Because that's something that comes up a lot and I guess form the time in the last 5 years that I've started helping martial arts school owners, it's probably the place where I've seen the most consultants and experts that deliver information. And I guess a lot of it is based on a little success? You know, not people like yourself that has grown along the years and have seen the ups and downs and seen the different transitions. So what advice would you give to someone that's really looking for good advice, but just not sure who to trust?

CHRIS: Two tings: one, references and testimonials. Say, if somebody says, well, I've gotten these many people this many results – find out who those people are and talk to them. Send them a message on Facebook or send them an email, how has this person helped you, what has been great about this experience, right? So if somebody doesn't have social proof, then there's a big flag right there. So, if you got a sales page that says, “I helped hundreds of people get thousands of students,” but there are no actual testimonials on that page? I’d be running away from that.

Second of all, if they have a fully functional business, get a chance to take a look at it, right? We've got 12 locations, we've been around for 53 years, my main school has almost 400 active members in it, so I'm not telling you what to do because I'm guessing; I'm telling you what to do because this is exactly how I do what I do and why it works. So there's a method behind my madness, or to say, my systems have systems. So something default – there's a system to fall back on. So those are the kinds of things that you've got to look at.

GEORGE: Alright, fantastic. So Chris, a day in the life of Chris! You mentioned 13 locations?

CHRIS: 12.

GEORGE: 12 locations, OK. So what does that look like? Obviously, you can't have your hands on everything: what does that look like in a day for you to manage and operate?

CHRIS: Listen, I couldn't do this by myself. I've got a great team in place that helps us keep things running smooth, right? It's kind of like a duck: on the surface, it looks smooth, but underneath, there are these feet paddling really, really fast to keep it going in there. But yeah, you're right, there's no way I could do this by myself. I have a fantastic team in place, my dad’s core people are still involved with our company today. So they understand all the nuts and bolts of how our business is run.

So you've got to surround yourself with a good support team. So my job really, the main thing is, I train the trainers, right? My job is to make sure that the people that are going out of the schools that are managing or owning their own, individual locations are doing and saying and teaching things the right way to continue to help the business itself grow and make the students improve. So I've got a pretty cool spot right now, I'm a trainers trainer.

GEORGE: Trainers trainer. Alright, so let's break that down. So it really comes down to your leadership and the team's leadership. So where do you really start that journey of developing leaders?

CHRIS: At white belt. So right when they start, regardless of their age. Ultimately, we train and grow all of our instructors and trainers and future managers and owners in house. And they come up through our system, they come up through our ranks because again, they're the product of what we’re selling, right? So it's challenging and it we’re experimenting with bringing people in from outside of our company because I do want to open it up and expand it more, but our easiest and best growth and best managers and owners always come from the inside, we’re growing them. We call it bench strength, right? So the goal is to develop the bench strength on our team so that every person on the team is replaceable and no matter who's here and who's not here, the wheel just keeps turning and keeps moving.

GEORGE: So you start at white belt, but at what point… what would be the first steps you would take to push someone towards the leadership role?

CHRIS: It's very easy: we have a leadership program built into our program. So as they escalate and they get about halfway to the path of black belt, they're interested in that, they receive an invitation into our leadership training and then again, we’re very fortunate in the fact that we built this. We have instructor colleges, so four times a year, anybody that's interested in having a job inside of a Red Dragon School has to attend our instructor colleges. After they attend 4-6 instructor colleges, we give them a written exam, then a physical exam. And if they pass all of that, then they're certified as what we call a level 1 instructor.

So technically, any one of our Red Dragon Schools could hire them as an assistant. They work inside the school, there’s platform building all the way through. You start as an assistant instructor, then you go to a floor instructor, then a floor manager, then a head instructor and then a manager of a school. And then if you want to take that step, there are ownership possibilities for you. So it's all platform based and just like going from white belt to black belt, there are clearly defined outlined steps. The same thing on the internal, on the business side of what we do, those same steps are in place.

GEORGE: All right, great. So what obstacles do you experience with this? Because I mean, you already have 12 locations, I'm sure one to 12, there were a lot of bumps in the road. What are the general obstacles you’ve overcome – well, that you experience on a day to day basis and within yours, if not so much current? What do you experience within that whole growth phase?

CHRIS: Well, there's a couple of things. The biggest thing and my favorite saying are, everybody wants the results; nobody wants the process. Right? Everybody wants to be a black belt, but not everybody is willing to put in the work to become a black belt. Everybody says they want to be an instructor, a manager, an owner; but maybe they're not willing to put in the work, right? When they watch me do what I do, they see the glamour moment. They see me standing out there, running the class, rocking it – everything's firing on all cylinders. They don't understand sometimes how much work, effort and dedication I put into my craft to be able to do what it is that I do.

Now, there are those that are going through the path and are in process and are going through it. But that's overall my biggest challenge, to answer your question is – everybody wants results, nobody wants the process. And a lot of younger people today don't have the patience to get there, to take that next step. They think that, oh, I'm a black belt, I should start making $30-$40 an hour and be paid $100,000 a year to do this. They don't have the patience to do the work, to get better, to get the rewards.

GEORGE: Definitely so, and I guess Chris that's the way of the world today. I mean, you come from, you walked a long path to achieve your success and as easy as it’s become with access to social media and accessing information, the problem with accessing information is, it’s so much easier to see the end result that someone has achieved and you don't always recognize the journey that it’s taken and the obstacles.

CHRIS: Right.

GEORGE: And I guess that brings into this whole, instant gratification with the younger generation.

CHRIS: Right.

GEORGE: That's what they're doing, they haven't committed their 10,000 hours or whatever it is, they just want that result.

CHRIS: Right. Yeah, listen, it's the same thing. I mean, I don't know in Australia, but on YouTube, there are two brothers, Logan Paul and Jake Paul, who are just monsters on social media and social interaction, right? And they're young guys, but what you don't see is, they put in years of work to build up to their million, or two million followers, to get those 20-30 million views of these crazy, goofy videos that they do, but people are responding to it, right? So if you're doing something good that people respond to, you're going to move up. If you're doing something that's not good and people aren't responding to it, then maybe you're in the wrong line of work. Maybe you're in the wrong business. Not everyone is cut out for this type of business.

You've got to follow your passion, right? I'm doing this because I love it; you're doing what you do probably because you love it, right? You love sharing your knowledge and people respond to that passion. They feel it, they know it and they understand it and they're like, yeah, that's the guy I want to have helped me. That's the guy I want to have trained me, or train my kids because it comes from here, it comes from my heart. And you probably can't see me because this is a podcast, but I'm touching my heart. But it comes from there first and if it comes from there and it’s pure, then everything else is going to be so much easier in the end.

GEORGE: Fantastic. So, where do you start? If you're helping a school owner scale, with their operations or their marketing, what is the benchmark where you start and evolve from?

CHRIS: Well, it's called the snowflake principle. Every school owner that I coach or consult outside of my company starts somewhere different. Because everyone is different. With me, it starts with an interview process. I'll spend 30 minutes or an hour with them on the phone, talking to them about all the systems that they have or don't have in place, finding out what their biggest needs are first, whether it’s new members or keeping old members, whether it’s what you do, marketing systems, Facebook, social media interactions.

So I've got to really interview and dig down and understand the person to make sure of two things: one, I understand completely what they need and two, I believe that I can help them. Because ultimately, if I talk to somebody, I'm going, to be honest with them. Look: I can help you if we implement x,y and z, or they might be in a spot, listen, I'm not the guy for you, but I might know someone who is. Right? That's kind of where I start and my approach to it is, I need to get to know the person that I'm coaching so that I can help them reach their goals.

GEORGE: All right, great. So Chris, I feel… we’re probably sort of scratching the surface of your wealth of knowledge, and I want to talk a bit about The Main Event, what you do on the speaking platform. And this is sort of the cliche question, right? Is there a question I should be asking you and steering you towards that we’re not covering as yet?

CHRIS: No, actually what I’m gonna be covering at The Main Event that we’re coming up, that's in San Diego, is pretty much that. But what I'm going to do is, I'm going to give the school owners and the managers there actionable things that they can implement in their business to help grow their business faster with new members. So there are so many things that many school owners aren't doing, in what I call the onboarding process or their first 100 days.

A way to turn a satisfied customer into a happy customer, because here's the difference: satisfied customers don't refer members to your school; happy customers refer everyone. So it's ultimately taking a customer from a satisfied state to a happy state. The processes that we use to do it and the processes that we actually used to help over 100,000 people become happy customers inside of our business.

GEORGE: Alright, fantastic. I'm a big fan of the first 100 days, it's something I've spoken about in our Martial Arts Media Academy program as well and something we try and really practice. You know, how you can really, the first 100 days, what sort of impact you can make. If you were to break it down, just a little deeper, to what extent do you go within the first 100 days? How would you handle a student coming onboard with your program?

CHRIS: That's a great question and that's probably a whole other 30-minute conversation and really is perfect, because that's exactly what I'm going to be talking about in San Diego on April 26th to the 28th. So if there's anybody listening that wants to get there, I will go through those exact processes. I'm going to show you how to get someone to give you an awesome review instead of a crappy review. I'm going to show you how to onboard them and surprise them with things that they won't get in any other martial arts school, let alone any other business. So it's little tips and secrets like that that make all the difference between a satisfied customer and a happy customer. We’ll cover part 2 after the event – other than that, you've got to come to San Diego April 26-28th.

GEORGE: Alright, awesome. That sounds great. Because I might take you on for a second interview when I meet you in person, depending of course on the time, it's a big event and so forth. But it would be great to see you on stage and really gather some information and then perhaps we can do a part 2 and really discuss a few more topics in depth.

CHRIS: Yeah, man, I'm happy to do it. Happy to do it, always happy to help, listen if there's just one person listening to the podcast is affected in a positive way listening to this, then that's great. Obviously, I want to help hundreds and hundreds of school owners, but hey, it starts with one, right?

GEORGE: Fantastic! Before we go, Chris what's next for you in your martial arts journey?

CHRIS: Next is my real – not my real, but my new mission, my passion, my purpose is… and again, I don't know how it is in Australia, but in the USA, there's a really big problem with bullying. I just wrote a book, which became a number 1 bestseller called “Bullyproof Fitness”. It’s available on Amazon worldwide I believe. But my… what I'm trying to do is, I'm trying to get a million kids bullyproof and fit by the year 2025. Right now, I'm at 50,000, so I've taught 50,000 kids so far. I go around to local martial arts schools all over the world and I do these live bully events, seminars to help these kids understand what a bully is, what it’s not and what they can do if it happens to them, because so many people don't have the tools they don't know what it is, even kids that are in martial arts don't understand.

So by doing these live events around the world, it’s allowed me to impact a lot of people, but obviously my goal is to do a million through the book and through my live tours and then, we have a license program called Bullyproof Fitness, that will be launching probably in June of this year, where schools can get this and have it and bring it in there. But the live events are great, because when I go to these martial arts schools, not only is it a win for them in the community, but I'm able to get them anywhere from 10 to 25 brand new members at that location before I walk out the door. So it’s kind of cool because the parents get a copy of my book, or they get autographed picture from the “Mortal Combat” movie, but they'll also be able to get new members into their school, which if you're in business, that's what you need to survive, these new members constantly coming in.

GEORGE: Definitely so. Fantastic Chris, I’ll link to, I'll definitely link to the book.

CHRIS: Thank you.

GEORGE: Bullyproof Fitness you mentioned?

CHRIS: Yep and the website is bullyprooffitness.com.

GEORGE: All right, great, excellent. Anything else, if anybody wants more details about you and your mission, where could they visit?

CHRIS: There's two great… first of all, I’m on all the social media platforms, so they can follow me on Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube, Facebook – everywhere. What I’ll do George is, I'll shoot you an email with all my links, if you want to pop those in there. There are two websites, they can find me at. Of course my name, chriscasamassa.com and if they're interested in helping me coach, consult or advise them on how to grow their business, they can go to my coaching site, which is the thedojodoctors.com.

GEORGE: Excellent. Chris – been great speaking to you and look forward to meeting you in San Diego.

CHRIS: Awesome George, thank you so much for having me on this show. I really appreciate it.

There you have it – thank you, Chris. And thank you for listening to this show. If you are getting good value out of this show, we would love to hear from you! Best way to do that would be to give us an awesome thumbs up. Five-star review, you can do that through the iTunes store, if you have an iPhone you can go through the little purple app and access the show from there and give us an awesome review, we would love to hear from you. Or wherever else you're actually listening to this show, do leave us a review and tell us what you'd like to know, who you'd like us to interview. It would be awesome to hear from you and follow up on your requests.

Cool! If you need any help with your school, if you need any help filling your classes, marketing, digital marketing, help with your website – that's the kind of thing that we thrive on, is the marketing and helping school owners with online lead generation, in a very leveraged way. And we do that predominantly through our martial arts media academy, where we are a community of martial artists who work together on cutting-edge technology and help you grow and scale your martial arts school through the power of the internet. Isn't that cool?

All right, cool – if you need any help, martialartsmedia.com, get in touch with us, send us a message. You can also check out martialartsmedia.academy and we’ll be happy to help you take your school to the next level.

Awesome – I have a few great interviews lined up and we’ll be in touch when they get released. Have a great week – speak soon!

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

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