157 – From Recovery to Retention: How Mark Turned Chronic Fatigue Into a Martial Arts Leadership Advantage

How Australian Martial Arts Academy's head instructor turned chronic fatigue into a leadership edge – driving growth and retention at a top-tier school.

INVITATION: If you’d like more info about working with me in and Hakan in Partners Mentor, Just message me ‘Mentor’ on Facebook and I’ll send the details over in a doc (no sales call required) Send Message On Personal Profile >

IN THIS EPISODE:

  • The Belt-By-Belt Recovery Story That Changed Mark’s Life (And His Students')
  • Walking Away From Medicine To Pursue The Martial Path Full-Time
  • The Hidden Energy Technique That Helps You Show Up Big—Even When You’re Running On Empty
  • How Teaching On Crutches Inspired A Wave Of Black Belts To Keep Going
  • The Sales Strategy That Works As Well In A Kids Class As It Does On The Phone
  • And more

 *FREE: Swipe the exact plan I use to fill martial arts schools with 200+ students within 7 months (And make sure your students are an incredible fit > Learn More



TRANSCRIPTION

George: Hey, it's George Fourie. Welcome to another episode of the Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast. So, today I'm speaking with Mark Loughran from the Australian Martial Arts Academy.

So, episode 156—155—I’d been chatting to Hakan, Hakan Manav, and Mark’s name dropped in there quite a few times. So I thought I’d bring the man on himself to have a chat about 18 years in martial arts. 

He’s also one of the head instructors at the Australian Martial Arts Academy, and one of our featured speakers at the Partners Intensive that’s coming up in June, depending on when you listen to this.

But with that said, welcome to the call, Mark.

Mark: Thank you very much. Great to be here. 

George: Good stuff.

We've only just recently met as well. So I'm going to take this as a blank canvas and a conversation just to tap into your genius, the things that you do. So if we had to start from the beginning, who's Mark, how did you get into the industry? Let's go from there.

Mark: Yeah, that's a really interesting story, actually. My journey into the martial arts industry started as a recovery piece. Flashback to 2005, I was graduating high school.

So, that makes me feel like I’m starting to get old now, everyone I’m teaching was born after that year. Flashback to that time, I graduated high school and got presented with a couple of opportunities.

One was from my parents. They said, “If you want to go further and study at university, you can do that,” because my dad worked as a Deputy Vice Chancellor at James Cook Uni. I grew up in Townsville, in Far North Queensland.

And they said, “If you want to go to university here, go for it. Stay at home, it’s free, all good.”

And they said, but if you want to go away, pay for it yourself. And that was the deal. My brother had the same deal.

He was a couple of years older than me. And he got himself a full scholarship to Melbourne uni. And he was like, Townsville was too hot.

I did the exact same thing, except I went to UNSW. So I've got a scholarship to study medicine at UNSW and went down there, started that journey and ended up getting really sick towards the end of my first year with glandular fever. 

And there was a whole piece of trying to identify what was going on there, because I was really sick for quite a long time. I ended up with chronic fatigue syndrome, which I still have now, 19 years on.

And I still battle that every single day. My sort of path into martial arts started about a year after I got really sick with that. I ended up bed-bound for one to two years.

Part of my recovery, actually, I should backtrack a little bit. I was doing high-level athletics at a national level at that time as well. I used to play A-grade tennis and represented Queensland in different sports when I was in high school.

I was always an athletic person. And then, for someone to go from that to completely bed-bound, it was a big change and a big struggle. So part of my recovery from that was, there is no treatment.

It's just management. Try and do some exercise. What have you never done? And so I thought, Oh, I've never tried martial arts, always been interested.

And I remember picking up the phone, I was looking through, back in those times, looking through the phone book, and found Australian Martial Arts. 

I called, and it was actually Grandmaster Ridvan who answered the phone. I explained who I was, what my limitations were at the time, and how I’d been completely bed-bound. .

I couldn’t do anything.

I was 54 kilos at the time. So to put that in perspective, I was very ill. Everything was a real struggle at that point in time.

And I turned up to do my first class. I did one punch and collapsed in the middle of the mat. My first instructor was actually one of the other head instructors here, Sarah.

She was actually studying exercise science. She's an exercise scientist and dietitian. And I remember walking through the door.

I did my first lesson. And then she said to me, so what have you got? And I said, Oh, chronic fatigue. And she goes, I'm studying that.

I want to talk to you. And so I did one punch collapse in the middle of the mats. And then she just left me there.

20 minutes later, she came and picked me up. I did another punch and went home feeling the best buzz ever, because that was more than I'd done in almost two years. And the reason I left with such a buzz as she goes, you have really no energy.

So I'm going to teach you a self-defense move. And I'm thinking, yeah, what can I do? And she goes, I'm going to teach you a really cool pressure point that you can use if someone's really close to you. I was like, Oh, okay.

And she taught me pressure point defense techniques. And I was like, oh, that's actually really interesting. I got home.

My brother came over to me and he goes, “Oh, so how was it? What did you learn?” I said, “Oh, come here.” And he leaned in really close and I did it to him. And he came back with me two days later and signed up.

And he goes, “Whatever you're learning, I'm learning.” And that’s sort of a condensed version of my introduction into martial arts. 

It was a very scary first step because I thought most people would look at someone in their late teens or early twenties starting their martial arts journey and think, “What’s wrong with you? Why can't you keep up?” That thought of, “What are people on the sideline or in the class going to think of you?” 

But I walked in here and none of that existed. It was just, “You're welcome,” straight away.

No matter what the barrier was, you're here for your own journey. It doesn't matter what someone else is doing. How can we help you be successful? 

And I fell in love with that and ended up finding that while I had these really significant health limitations, I was able to, as my belt progressed in my martial arts journey, so did my health. I went from being able to do two punches on my second lesson, to four punches.

Then it became eight punches. And then I could start to do a kick or a knee or a movement. Every lesson I came to, I felt like I was moving forward and able to participate more and do more.

You reach a certain point where you go, “Wow,” going from literally being able to take less than ten steps a day to being able to complete a forty-minute class. That's game-changing. 

And so going from that level to then being able to say, “Wow, now my belt is improving, now I feel healthier, I feel stronger, I can do more,” I reached a point in my health journey where it was, “Okay, if I keep studying, it's full-time medicine. There's no part-time job in that field.”

And so it was, if I went to do that, I couldn't train. And if I didn't train, my health went downhill really quickly. So I tried that and that wasn't my path I was meant to take.

And, and so I was like, oh, wow. Okay. It seems like my health is best when I'm at martial arts.

And so I was like, all right, how do I turn this into what I can do? And Grandmaster Ridvan and Hakan and Sarah all said to me, you're pretty good at this, have you thought about ever teaching? 

And I was like, oh, okay. It was a different pathway. And so I got tapped on the shoulder and had to go at that.

George: How old are you, then?

Mark: I was 19. 

George: 19. Okay.

Mark: 19 when I started my martial arts journey. And so two and a half, three years down that track, I would have been 21, roughly when they came up and said, oh, have you thought about teaching? And I was like, oh, this is something different.

Never thought about it before. And so I started down that road and sunk my teeth into it. And by that stage, because I was training more, my health was doing better.

And I always noticed that the days where I didn't train, my energy levels were so much lower. It was very hard. Even today, all these years down the road, if I'm not teaching that day, my energy is so much lower.

For any student I have, they would have no idea that I've still got chronic fatigue, that I fight it every single day because I'll have 60, 80 people in my class and they have no idea.

George: Yeah. I'm surprised that you say that because the way you show up is with this high level of energy and you beam with energy.

Is that like you've just got moments in the day and then you've got to really back down and recuperate? Or is it like highs and lows? Or is it just knowing when you've got to show up and when you've got to like…

Mark: That's a really good question. The answer is a bit of both in terms of how to answer that.

But for me, it's really a case of I operate at this level all the time because I've found that if you give, when you give energy, whether it's even through a screen, through delivery, through presenting, however you do it, you get energy back. 

And the more you can do that, the better the response is. I find that with every class that I run.

But what that does mean is of course there is a trade-off and no one really ever sees that trade-off except for my closest family, my partner. She sees it when I go home. 

There are times at night, most nights I reach a point where I've literally hit that brick wall. I can no longer move. I can't talk. I just shut down and that's it. 

And that can sometimes be in the middle of a conversation, unfortunately, which does make that side of things a real challenge.

But in terms of what I can contribute and deliver, I'm always so grateful for what martial arts has given me in terms of having this ability to teach and to share with other people and positively impact people's lives and actually help them change their lives because I genuinely attribute martial arts to saving my life in terms of having a sense of useful daily activities that I can be part of and do now. 

And really this year's just launched for me in terms of the more that I do, the more I can participate and give to the world, which is just fantastic. 

George: Very fascinating.

It reminds me of a couple of things. Tony Robbins, if you go to one of his events, there's a whole bunch of crazy dancing, which can get a bit weird. I think there's a lot of dancing. 

Maybe it was during COVID or one of the lockdown times, but there's no denying that motion creates emotion. And the way you show up, if you're jumping up and down, creating and manufacturing energy, it's there.

The other philosophy that I like is Todd Herman has got a book called The Alter Ego Effect. He's a high performance coach for athletes. 

The Alter Ego Effect is, I guess, like putting your Batman uniform on. You know where you've got to be and so you step into that persona. And for some people it's a trigger, putting on a band or doing something that just signifies I'm now in Mark instructor mode or I'm in this mode. 

No matter how you feel, you're tired, you're this, you just train your mind that that's the arena where you’ve got to perform and now you're putting on that suit and showing up.

Mark: That's exactly it. And it's something that you try to train younger instructors to understand. Leave your problems at the door. You walk in, you're this person because of the people in front of you.

But to go from having that as something you say to something that you genuinely have to live, and I think in a way I attribute this illness to giving me that ability because it becomes wholly about the people in front of you and how you can serve them. 

Because if any part of you is selfish in that, it just drains you. Whereas if you 100 percent give yourself to the people in front of you and you literally give every part of yourself to that, there has to be an energy transfer. There has to be that reward for that.

You can literally see that wow, this person, even this kid who's five and refusing to get involved, you get them to smile at you and you're like hey, I've just done something positive for that kid today. 

They probably had the worst day at school possible, but now things are changing.

George: So I've got to then ask, how does that then for you transfer to instructing, to martial arts instructing? You probably now have a different lens of showing up and using your energy wisely. 

So how do you feel that gives you an edge instructing whether it's kids or adults, helping them with obstacles or getting in their own way? How do you feel that's helped you?

Mark: Yeah, that's a great question. I genuinely believe that short of literally somebody not having any arms or legs, there is no reason why someone can't participate. 

Genuinely people come in and say I've got this injury on my lower back, it's limiting me, I've always had an interest but I just won't be able to, or whatever the barrier or reason is, it gives you that confidence to say you know what, you absolutely can do this. 

There is a pathway forward. There is a way to make this accessible, achievable. Here's my story. I can do it. And that's where I come down to if I can do this, so can you.

And I've applied that philosophy going forward into my training aligned with the growth in AMA. It's aligned with the retention of long-term members as well because it's not just in terms of you creating people around you that go oh I like that person, I want to stay. It goes so much further than that.

Even down to a few years ago now, just at the end of 2020, I had a massive knee injury at a grading and completely ruptured my ACL, MCL, PCL, lateral meniscus, medial meniscus and fractured my tibial plateau. 

All in the one move at the end of the day and I'd been doing way harder stuff and it was with just something completely innocuous, just a simple little jumping step and my knee went. 

That mindset of what for most people that's game over, that's your career's over, your martial arts journey's probably over. The recovery from that sort of an injury, typically you only see that on the rugby pitch because it's just done. The recovery from its two years. It's just huge. And even then it's never the same.

For me, I looked at that as well, I was completely bed bound when I was this age. And you look at this now and say okay, it wasn't mentally a tough thing to deal with. It was alright cool, how do I get back? How do I get back? And if I get back, what do I change within that?

I think I did that and I had it. I came back on crutches to teach the next morning. It's all good. Still got a voice. That'll do. There's a black belt they can kick. And I came back and I just kept teaching. 

Then I had my surgery and I think I was off for about a week and a bit before I was so frustrated with sitting on the sidelines. I was like no, that's it, I'm coming back to teach.

That sort of changes things because you end up with adults who typically the lifespan of an adult training would be X number of years. A lot of our adult members now are getting into their mid fifties and they've been with us since their kids were three and these kids are graduating high school now.

 And so these parents are getting older but they have no intention of leaving.

And so it becomes that question of I've got to make sure that I'm grading and showing there's a way forward with injury, with limitation, with this, with that and whatever pathway forward there is. 

So that's why December last year I made it a priority to prove that you can still grade, you can come back and that's where I got my fifth degree black belt in Taekwondo from because I was able to find a way to be successful in that and prove that it is possible. 

And it ended up with a host of other black belts who said oh I think I'll end my journey here, I'll just train. 

They're now going wow, maybe I can achieve a fourth degree black belt. Maybe I can stick at this longer. And providing that pathway forward of inspiration.

George: So let's change gears quickly. Business wise. I'm always speaking to founders, mostly founders. You're a head instructor of a martial arts empire. 

From the last time I spoke to Hakan, about 1800 students, four full time locations. What does the head instructor mean to you? What is your day-to-day role?

Great question.

It means preempting and putting out fires. That's the short answer.

George: What are the fires? Which are the biggest fires? Let's go there.

Mark: The biggest fires are keeping the delivery consistent for everyone else. I will always back Grandmaster Ridvan, Hakan, Sarah, myself to deliver. And I know that.

But in the martial arts industry, typically a lot of the people who teach for you and work for you, and especially if you're running a big class, you've got a team on the mats, not just a team of instructors. 

It's easy to motivate a small team. Say if you're a school that's got five employees, get together, motivate, cohesion, stick together. That's easy.

But when you're a team that's got a lot of people between 18 and 26, 27, they've all got lives and it's even different from the high school life. It's the early young adult life and they bring in their life with them. 

You want to have a barrier where you don't get involved in that life and you're like your life's your life, enjoy it, but also then motivate them to bring out the best from within them because they're there to help you change the life of that person in front of you.

If you've got 60 on the mats, if you've got 80 on the mats, it doesn't matter. You could have 20 on the mats, the experience and delivery on that should be the same. 

And the real challenge, one of the real challenges, is to lift them into that headspace, into that mentality where they feel inspired to deliver. And sometimes deliver to people who are well beyond their years and very high profile in terms of their job and career. 

You talk about some of these incredibly talented martial artists, fourth degree black belts, fifth degree black belts, and they're still quite young and they're teaching a 50 year old who's a professional lawyer, the top of this, the top of that.

And they go, oh, I'm nervous about saying the wrong thing. You've got to say, recognize you're the expert and make them have fun and engage with them and get them to play on that level. That is a great problem to be solved.

And something that I find a really fun problem to solve, right through to the tricky problems to solve, which is a parent who's upset or a child who won't join in. Or from a broader scale, leads, conversions, tracking, sales skills, upskilling your team, finding and hiring the right team, right through to dealing with locations, dealing with council changes, approvals, the whole broad spectrum of things.

And so for my role in particular within the Australian Martial Arts organization, it's around teaching. And I will teach anywhere from 40 to 60 classes a week. If there's a class and I'm here, I'll go out and run it. 

That's where my strength is, in front of the group, leading it.

On the day to day it's tracking and tracing and improving systems and putting a lot of things into place. 

For example, right now I'm taking over a trial period of tracking all leads and implementing the most up to date lead tracking strategies and making sure those systems are as fully up to date as possible.

I attribute AMA's success to the fact that we never sit back and say we've made it, we've got this, it's great. I look at it like, we have discussions with Hakan and Sarah and Grandmaster Ridvan all the time as a team. 

And we're going, okay, how do we do better? What could be better? What's wrong with this system? How do you make the system better?

And if you have that question, don't ask the question. Come to us with two or three solutions. Be part of the problem solving strategy. And you turn up, and that encourages discussion, encourages planning, encourages thought process.

And me personally, that was one of my things coming into this year.

I said, I'm not happy with the lead process that we've been following. I went out, became a student again, learned everything I could in terms of the sales process. And I've trained very heavily in that for the last 12 weeks.

And now I have a system to implement, and that's where I want to put a 12 week sprint into this now and be able to track the progress of that before rolling it out to everyone else in the team, making sure that they're bringing what's best in 2025 into everything we do.

George: That's cool. I speak to a lot of martial arts school owners, helping them grow. A lot of this is marketing, a lot of this is lead generation.

I feel sometimes there's too much, there's a lack of responsibility, like you're going to do it for us. And I've always felt that whenever I bring a client like that on board, that it's all my responsibility, it's always short lived. 

Because no one's going to magically build the business for you. And if there's no investment in growing the skills, marketing, everything, right? Marketing, being on the mats, the lead flow, where they come, how they sign up.

It's all really one thing. I feel it's one thing because it's one people's skillset. It's understanding people's motivations, how they start, what makes them inquire, knowing that they're probably going to stand in their own way to get started and overcoming that.

And then they're on the mats and then, like everything in life, there's going to be the next obstacle. Maybe it's a belt, maybe it's a grading. Now they're going to quit on themselves.

So everything really comes down to this human behavior element. And I find that understanding marketing really solves a lot of that because you're trying to understand human behavior. 

And it's always refreshing to hear that, yeah, we take it in our own hands because there is no magic unicorn that's just going to click all the buttons and do everything. You got to do the hard yards, right?

Mark: Yeah, that's exactly right.

And I think one of the things I found to be most refreshing about doing all this is, one, learning so much and being able to apply it across. Getting results driven across different industries is always fun as well. 

My fiancée owns and runs her own dance school, and so on my time off, I go over there and do what I do for AMA.

And so I manage her business as well and provide her with the tools for growth. And proof's in the pudding, right? You've got to say, are the systems that we teach and what we do and how we can help a school—does it work? And with growing her school, it's literally doubled in size in the last two years because of the systems we put in place.

It's really fun when you go ahead and learn something new and go, okay, obviously this is going to work in martial arts. You've got all these years of experience to put behind it. You can talk, you can do this. But then go, okay, does it work over there? Oh yeah, it does.

Right. What else are you working on? Does that work in that industry? Yeah, it does. Oh, great.

And so to be able to play in different fields and learn how they all interconnect, work together a little bit, like you're saying—taking ownership over learning something. 

For me, especially, the more I learn, the more I'm recognizing that everything's the same thing. You learn in terms of sales, how to overcome objections, communicating with people, and getting them to do it.

But that's the exact same strategy to use. If you've got a five-year-old trying to get them to join a class or an adult who's turned up that day going, I think I'm going to need to cancel. I've hurt my shoulder.

I've got a frozen shoulder. That's something that I've encountered twice this year. I've got two of the ladies I teach who are in that sort of early fifties age bracket and they've gone, I've got a frozen shoulder.

I think my martial arts journey's over. I can't even bring my other hand up. And we're like, great.

Work with that. Let's go. Just do it on this side.

No problems. And being able to show them that it's not over, you've invested 10 years of your life in this. Why would you throw that away? Let's go.

And it's the same principles, just delivered in a different way. 

George: Hundred percent. I feel salesmanship, and it's always, I'm wary of saying it, but salesmanship is really, it's everything.

Because I say I'm wary to say this because it could bring up some limiting beliefs, and people have had a bad experience with a salesman, and then they throw around the car salesman, or there's labels, right?

Mark: Just think of it as a sleazy salesman. That's what everyone thinks of, a sleazy salesman.

George: Exactly.

But if you've gone through any legit sales training, you'll know that salesmanship is getting people to enhance their life and take them from one situation to a better alternative.

Mark: That's exactly it. It's finding a way to be not just sympathetic to what someone's going through, but how to create empathy and recognize what they're going through. 

Helping them because you have 100 percent belief in your product, in your ability to do that.

And for me, that's the difference. Let’s say, a smaller mindset to a growth mindset is the ability to say, it doesn't matter who walks through that door, I'm going to find a way to be successful and help that person because I 100 percent back and believe that this will change their life.

George: I love that. And I feel, good salesmanship will mean that you can do that and you can identify that problem and know from the bottom of your heart that it's something you can help with.

 And it also means having the discipline to know when you can't and you're not a right fit, and being able to have that level of transparency.

I attribute salesmanship to just so much because it's just that understanding of psychology. 

It is understanding when a student joins, when they start and they reach the new, because everything in martial arts is you're here, and then it's, you step out of your comfort zone, and then your new comfort zone becomes your norm. And now it's the next comfort zone.

And every step is a new step of a new mindset. It's a new evolution. And understanding salesmanship helps with being able to carry people up those levels and adjusting their mindset.

And I see it a lot in our community as well, where there's martial arts coordinators that I've worked with in the beginning, and the self-talk of, I can't do this video and I can't do that. 

And you guys have nailed that. I always use you guys as an example because of video for social media and providing value. You guys have really got that down.

But then seeing people evolve and step up into that, and all of a sudden there's this new level of confidence where you had the martial artist from 25 years and they have all the confidence, but now they've taken that confidence into a new realm, a new position. 

That's how you become the local authority, right? You step up and you’re able to present yourself with confidence. And it really shows, like, if people can present well on video and things like that.

Mark: Absolutely. And I think that's the biggest area that is changing going forward into 2025 and beyond. We're really no longer being pigeonholed into you're a martial arts instructor or you're a business owner.

It's that saying of you have to wear all the hats, and the goal being to know how to do everything. Find what your passion is.

If your passion is delivery, then allow yourself that freedom to deliver. You still need to be good enough to do the jobs you have to do and get better at doing them so that you can eventually train others to step off and not have to do those roles.

At the end of the day, that's how everyone has to scale their businesses.

The frustrating point for a lot of school owners that are sitting at that 100 to 200 students is you're going to have to be doing your social media. You're going to have to be doing your sales calls, your lead calls, your retention calls, every system or part of it.

You might have an admin who's there while classes are on and they can make some calls, but here's the thing. 

No one is ever going to do a call as well as you because if you're paying them by the hour, they don't care as much as you. Until you reach a point where you can invest in your business and hire somebody who is just outstanding at that job. 

And they can do that job better than you because of the systems they've trained in, and you can bring in your scripts and what you do, then you're on a different playing field.

But until then, you've got to be willing to learn, be willing to make mistakes, modify your scripts, and upskill yourself in all of that.

George: Love that. Cool, Mark.

So last but not least, we're hosting the Partners Intensive and we're doing it at Australian Martial Arts Academy. Over the last couple of years, we've run a really epic event. I think mostly because we always base it on our members first, and so we create content that moves them up.

We're always talking about attracting the right students, increasing signups by improving automations, and the conversions and the retention side. We're always focused on the tools that can up-level our clients. 

I'd like to say we keep the content at a really high level in the sense that, because it's for members, it's not an event to get members.

It's for the members, and everything goes into that to craft really good content that can level people up and get things done while they're there.

Being at the Australian Martial Arts Academy, obviously I wanted to take advantage of you. In my mind, the Australian Martial Arts Academy is at the pinnacle of martial arts business success.

A lot of people can't fathom that level of success. But even if that's not the goal, and it's just adding an extra hundred students or, like you say, being able to be in that position to scale so you can add that extra instructor or person that can do the calls and the sales and so forth, there's a lot to gather from how you guys operate.

And being at one of the locations, I thought what better could there be than to actually be in the environment where that happened.

You've been talking on a few topics. Can you recall what those topics are? And if you could just give us a brief, that'd be epic.

Mark: Absolutely. The first one is going to be talking about how to 5X your sales, so the sales process and conversion strategies.

At AMA, we've had huge success in that wheel, in that cycle over 40, 42 plus years. But what we want to showcase is how that system needs to update and change into 2025. And really from an operations perspective, because there's a lot of information out there in the market in terms of lead generation.

But you've got to go a whole lot further than that these days in terms of actually being able to get someone from showing even one iota of interest through to getting them to book the child and to come in. 

And really coming into talking about how that process works, and with the right system, how you can dramatically increase your sales. So that's the first topic.

The second topic is how to triple your engagement. So how to deliver on the floor teaching and create those moments of engagement that capture the audience in front of you.

And this is something I'm really passionate about. I've done a lot of work in this area in terms of pitch, tonality, and storytelling, and how to incorporate that into everything you do so that it doesn't matter if you've got five year olds in front of you. 

They're literally hanging off every word, staring at you, waiting for the next one, right through to you're talking to a room full of doctors, lawyers, any profession at that level. 

But you will 100 percent back yourself to say, I'm going to engage with every single one of these people, and not only engage with them, but have them leave with something they can implement in their life today that's going to be game changing.

Not a technique, not a kick, not a self-defense move, but actually practically changing the way we think about things, reframing. And that's, as a martial artist, what we want to do in terms of keeping ourselves safe. But how can we apply that to every other element in our life?

And if you can learn how to do that, that changes the way you can work with your class, which obviously then leads back to 5Xing your sales process because you'll create more referrals.

George: That's cool. That's awesome. I'm really looking forward to it.

Cool, Mark. Thanks so much for jumping in. Thanks for sharing your story.

It was great for me to learn as well, and I'm looking forward to hanging out in Sydney in June. I'll see you at the event.

Mark: Awesome. Thanks so much. I'm looking forward to it.

 

INVITATION: If you’d like more info about working with me in and Hakan in Partners Mentor, Just message me ‘Mentor’ on Facebook and I’ll send the details over in a doc (no sales call required) Send Message On Personal Profile >

 

 

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156 – Martial Arts Staff Development: How to Build a High-Performing Instructor Team

Following up on Episode 155, Hakan Manav shares martial arts staff development strategies to build a high-performing team – giving you the freedom to scale and grow.

INVITATION: If you’d like more info about working with me in and Hakan in Partners Mentor, Just message me ‘Mentor’ on Facebook and I’ll send the details over in a doc (no sales call required) Send Message On Personal Profile >

IN THIS EPISODE:

  • How to transition from solo instructor to building a scalable team
  • The first hire that can make or break your martial arts school's growth
  • Why letting go is essential for business expansion and instructor success
  • A proven framework for training and promoting instructors from within
  • How to turn parents and adult students into valuable team members
  • And more

 *FREE: Swipe the exact plan I use to fill martial arts schools with 200+ students within 7 months (And make sure your students are an incredible fit > Learn More



TRANSCRIPTION

George: Hey there, it's George Fourie. Welcome to another Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast. So, this week I've got Hakan back on the call. Good day Hakan.

Hakan: Hey George.

George: In the previous Episode 155 and you can check that out if you haven't, martialartsmedia.com/155. We spoke about the four obstacles that Hakan and his family overcame over the last 43 years to build their 1800 student strong academy.

And so this week we thought we would dive deeper into these obstacles. Thanks for jumping on again, Hakan.

Hakan: Pleasure to be here. Thank you

George: We spoke a little bit about the product. We spoke about staff development, personal leadership. Let's loop into staff development for this call. Let's just dive a bit deeper and look at the things to watch out for. 

Why should we even be doing it? Which direction to take when scaling your school? 

Hakan: Absolutely. Once the product is nailed and you've got a great thing people are coming back for in terms of the actual martial art that you're teaching. The next step we want to think about is how we can deliver this at scale. For a number of reasons? 

First of all, we love what we do. But there are days that we might feel ill or we might want to go on holiday, or we're going to be away for various reasons. So you need the classes to be running at the same acceptable standard.

So we've got those obvious reasons, but I want to touch on a personal experience that we went through as an academy. I'm going to say about 25 years ago now. 

This is back when—in our culture (which I'm going to touch back on in a moment)—our culture of the school was heavily predicated upon how many people we could have represented in the Australian Taekwondo team, and then having those individuals go overseas to represent our school in the country. 

One of our athletes back then made the Australian team, and we went overseas to the world championship. So this was a big kind of family success achievement for us. 

And while we were overseas, the classes were still running, and that little trip turned into a family holiday. And so the athlete went overseas, and it was a great tournament, and then when we returned back from this holiday, we had 13 students left; we had left the classes with one of our students.

When I said “we,” my father did—I was a really young boy—and we came back to almost zero school with 13 students active.

So all the students had just disappeared, and so my father had to then make a choice: Does he just focus on his secure day job at the time, or does he then focus on rebuilding? 

And it was like a fork in the road moment for him, and thankfully he kept it up and he went down that path, and he kept going. So it was a big learning curve for us at that point.

It's number one, which was about the culture of the school determining what success was—and did we want to be focusing on a small minute of people who actually want to compete in tournaments, or do we want to adapt the way we do things to be more approachable and be more inviting for people who want to attain the benefits of martial arts. 

So this was a big kind of learning experience back then. We made that mindset shift around what we wanted to do. 

Then the next realization was we needed a team in place to be able to continue running the classes at the acceptable standard that we wanted to run at.

The other big learning that we had in our 43-year history here is that, the academy name—and I'm not saying this is a bad thing—but the academy name was called Red Vans Taekwondo Academy, which was after my dad's name. 

Which also meant that any time my father was not around for whatever reason or was not on the mats, people would be asking for him, and he would be the person they'd be coming for. 

So we made changes around what it meant to run an academy, and we made changes around placing the importance away from certain individuals into the theme and product that we have today. 

hakan_manav_martial_arts_business_growth

Those were the key initial shifts that we had back then.

So why is staff development important, in addition to all these reasons is that over time, these things are going to happen. 

But what else is also going to happen is that the cost of living is going to increase, our supply costs are going to increase, and so in order to stay afloat, growth should always be something that we strive for.

And while teaching is a passion for most of us who get into the industry, maintaining that high level of energy when you're focusing on all the other facets of running a business can be a challenge.

What has to be considered is that, in order to maintain that optimal level of energy when you run classes, you're going to make sure that your energy level is sustained around everything that's involved in running a business. 

It can be challenging because, as you grow, you find that you're putting out lots of different fights, switching from one thing to the next, and going from a negative situation into a positive situation can be a challenge. 

In order to grow, in order to scale, in order to reach more people, and to share the thing that we love, we need a team of people around us who can continue and deliver at the same level—or, if not better than what we're doing at the moment.

That then brings us to our first hire. Who do we want to bring on board, apart from us as instructors (assuming that we're the ones running most of the classes)? 

Some instructors are actually wonderful salespeople—and I don't mean that in the sleazy car salesperson way; I mean that in the purest sense that they're wonderful in translating the benefits of what they do to the general population. 

However, for most instructors, their strength is delivering the content on the floor, delivering those techniques, and having those connections with the students and building that rapport on the mats. 

In my opinion, the first hire should come from a position that's going to complement what you do on the mats, and often this is a sales or admin/administration type position to handle all the leads and inquiries coming through and to help with the operational side of running everything that we do on the mats. 

George: Are you looking, when you say sales, for a person that's good with sales? And by the way, I value—I always feel true salesmanship is definitely not sleazy; it's actually taking a person from one situation to a better alternative. 

Are you looking for someone that's just a salesperson, or an instructor plus sales, or instructor plus xyz?

How do you define, how do you fill that role? 

Hakan: Yeah, absolutely—as you are growing. So if you're a one-person team at the moment, the model that's worked well for us is having that next individual focus on being a salesperson as well as potentially teaching kids' classes. 

Because that job description comes with a certain personality type. Oftentimes in our experience, instructors who are wonderful with the kids' classes also have the ability to be great with communicating with those parents and handling all the leads and sales that come through. 

Initially, it's grouping them together. It may be required. Now, if we think about the different areas of running a school—in terms of running classes, leads, running gradings, ensuring that your finances are in check, ensuring that you have a staff development system in place—all of this may be initially done by that one person.

But then, as your team grows, you want to start to be able to delegate those positions to have role-specific, focus-specific areas for each and every one of those. 

So initially, that next person you could bring on might be great to run classes as well as take care of the sales, but then as your team grows, you'll look at dividing those up so you can have highly specific sales positions. 

So, why this is important, is because all of these need specific roles and requirements. They all need their evaluations and check-ins, and they all need their key performance indicators to determine whether they're doing a great job, so you can go back and track those stats in terms of how well they're converting and so on.

So initially, start small; you're going to have multi-discipline individuals first, but then as your team grows, look at delegating individuals who are exceptional in those areas. 

George: 100%. Sales being the lifeblood of the business, you've got to be bringing people in. The one way we have mitigated that, we've got a few jiu-jitsu guys who are great on the mats, but sales is just not their thing. This is where changing the marketing really makes a difference as well. 

It's important to get those people in for a role, but if that's not possible at the time, it's good to look at your actual sales cycle: How do inquiries come in? How do they join? What is that conversation? 

We found that changing the marketing angle and maybe having a great paid trial where people come in that flows into the membership can compensate for the lack of salesmanship. 

Hakan: Absolutely. Absolutely 

George: If someone else is not in that position. 

Hakan: Yeah, absolutely. The landscape has changed over time, where a lot of you can go as far as purchasing memberships directly online—completely eradicating that sales position role. 

However, as we're in the service industry, building rapport and having that connection with your clientele is critical in terms of how long they'll stay with you. 

The other area that's beneficial as well is that, initially, if you're a small team, you might have some downtime in your class timetabling schedule to account for times when you may have to deal with enrollment. So, maybe having a 15-minute gap initially between classes might need to be put into place to make sure you have time available to handle these types of situations.

But as your team grows and you can focus on running back-to-back classes, you'll be able to fit more classes on the map and have dedicated salespeople focusing on nurturing leads and making sure all of those areas are covered.

George: Perfect! So, let's talk about letting go, right? You mentioned your academy's name was Red Vans, and there's no escaping that, right? Because you're the guy? 

Hakan: Yes. 

George: Which is obviously also part of that is essential because you being the guy is what gets you to a certain level, but then there's that point where something's got to give, and so you've got to get some people on board. How do you make that shift—from “it's all me” to “now it's us”? 

Hakan: Absolutely. There are still some fantastic brands and businesses out there that are based around their founders. They still operate successfully. 

It can be done. But what has to be considered is building the team around empowering the team and showcasing the team's strength so that your current members and the parents in your network can see the benefit of these individuals.

In our case, what happened was that as my father changed the name of the organization and as we started to onboard new instructors, a lot of these instructors—including myself—had university degrees that they were able to bring to the table along with the qualifications in martial arts.

That deepened what we could offer our members. So it's all about highlighting and showcasing what you can do for your team and to your members. 

George: We need staff, we need to let go. Where do we—what are the nuts and bolts? Let's get a bit practical. What are the things that we need to be doing to develop our staff? 

Hakan: Absolutely. The first thing we have to start with is actually building a strategy—building a strategy with where you want to be and having a strong team culture around the values you want to deliver. 

There's no point growing if your team isn't clear on where your academy is going and the type of delivery systems you want to have in place in and around the actual martial arts itself.

Having a clear direction around that is critical—your vision, your mission, and the values that you stand for—that’s the first thing to get clear, especially if you have a team of your own or you have a small team around you.

The next thing you want to do—and I feel like there's two ways to look at this—is to be mindful of the types of staff onboarding that you have available to you. 

You have the in-house staff onboarding systems and the external staff onboarding systems, and both have their place in the martial arts school.

When we're looking at the external staffing positions, this is where we put a job. It could be targeted to a member database, or it could be just out to everybody on the internet. 

And where we found this to be the most successful is that, when we have a majority of our team from within and we sprinkle upon certain staff members from outside. We feel like that's where it works best.

These people may not necessarily speak the language and the jargon that you offer within your school—like someone who's come through the ranks—but they absolutely bring a skill set that may not be necessarily available in front of you. 

So there is a place for that, whether you want to go part-time, casual, or full-time. And maybe this is the kind of sales position role that you want to make available within your organization.

The other external space to consider is, I guess, the contractor type, where you can just sprinkle upon maybe a videographer or a photographer who comes along and captures that content for you that’s required. Or you can have someone help you with your marketing, like yourself there, George. 

So, bring those external areas of people who have expertise that can help with your organization, even if they haven't necessarily come from within.

But a majority of what we've done over the years is develop staff from within, and this is where we're talking around the teaching space. And so, what we like to do here is we like to hire for attitude before talent. 

So, we want to make sure that we spot those individuals early. Those individuals who just have that knack of being infectious around others. Extremely positive and passionate around what they do, and that can be as young as 10 years old. Right? All the way through to adults. 

And so, what we have in our organization is clear structure from someone who's a volunteer all the way through to a school manager and two different levels in place there. 

And so, we start with what we call our leadership development modules. These are four categories, which we take our candidates through. 

And at the end of this module, when they get through and complete the four levels. They then receive a leadership certificate. 

And this is great because not everyone who comes through this module is going to be a wonderful instructor. You either may not have the position available or they just may not be the right fit for you. 

But at the end of the day, they're receiving something because you've helped build their confidence and given them the traits that's going to then help them in life. 

And so, what we do is we have two kinds of systems. We have a system where we charge for it, and this is where parents want to put their kids through this system and develop their confidence in becoming a leader. 

And we give them the skills and drills to be able to empower them to become a leader. 

On the flip side if we feel like there is a wonderful student. They may be relatively early in their martial arts journey. 

We tap them on the shoulder and we provide a scholarship to them in this program. We tell them the value of the course and we help them and give them all the tools available through this course to then become an instructor. 

Now, what's entailed in this course—but what we actually offer in this—is basic skills such as meet-and-greet, basic skills such as showing new members how to bow and giving studio tours, tying belts, and just showing those few techniques to help them become a buddy in those first few steps on one's martial arts journey.

So, amongst those four levels, we equip them with the skills necessary. We provide regular training to upskill them, and then what they have to do is complete a minimum set of hours at that level.

Okay, so those minimum hours for us. We've set it at 25 hours that they need to complete to go through all four levels. 

They also have minimum age requirements and they also have quarterly checkoffs that we do. And these quarterly checkoffs are great because we do them during our school holidays. 

In our school holidays in our organization. We run school holiday camps that run from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily. This is before our classes kick off in the afternoon. 

We bring these instructor development module candidates into our holiday camps and we give them skills and drills to develop them and assess them in an environment that's not necessarily a high-pressure environment like a class. 

So, they're the quarterly check-ins that we either progress our team into the next level of staffing or we give them things they need to continue to develop and work on in order to get to the next level. 

They also have mentors at that level in which a higher level instructor can help guide them through. They have a booklet that they need to complete. 

Once someone has gone through to instructor development level 4 then they're in a position to then apply for becoming a paid instructor. 

And so, when they get to a paid instructor level, we then have a look in our organization and go.

Okay, what's opened up here? What can we do? To add another class or in terms of whether our location is growing and we want to boost the on-the-floor team. We look at our pool of instructor development for Instructors and then we get them to apply for that position. 

We go through a formal onboarding process. We go through a formal kind of process where we interview these people and then we give the ideal candidate that job.

So, all of this has developed over time to be able to have enough people ready to fill in a position when it becomes available. That then takes them to becoming an instructor position. 

Once they've become an instructor, they're given an instructor shirt and then they go through the instructor progressions in the paid position roles. 

And all of these paid positions are in line with the fitness industry award that we must follow here in Australia. 

So, that's the system in a nutshell. Hopefully, it's clarified and simple enough. But it's basically a set of requirements and minimum time levels to be able to progress in terms of becoming an instructor. 

So, they're developing the skills to become an instructor, like tonality, voice, appropriate touch, breaking down techniques properly, using teaching terminologies, and strategies like ‘praise, challenge, praise,' and so on.

All this stuff is then taught and assessed to them. And so, when they do become an instructor, they're ready and equipped to go. 

And what we found is that tinkering with this model over the years has helped us bring on instructors that are far better than what we were when we came through. 

So we're doing something right here. We're proud of what we've done within our organization there. 

George: I love that! So, when are you trying to identify, you mentioned? Like from day one you're doing an assessment. It reminds me of our mutual friend Grandmaster Zulfi Ahmed.

Hakan: Yeah.

George: I visited him in Pasadena, just watching him address all the students from day one—”Future instructor! 

Hakan: Yes.

George: Bringing attention to all the other instructors and just pointing—”Got a future instructor right here!” And it's just seeding that from day one, all the time.

Hakan: That's exactly right. And you'd find that a lot of the old-school instructors like that from that generation are wonderful at doing this. Think about how empowering that is as a student, hearing that from someone like Grandmaster Zulfi Ahmed.

Right, so it's all about creating that leadership culture within the organization, and a great leader is determined by how many further leaders they can create.

It's just about keeping that front of mind, being a school owner, and then creating that culture from within—creating more leaders. And as you do this, more people around the organization will be witnessing this.

And so, what we've had is parents seeing kids on the floor, saying, “We love the confidence of that person,” or, “I want my kid to be in that position one day.”

So you're laying down the foundations for this to become a seamless process in your school. Because of the frameworks you put in place. 

Yeah, and then adults are much the same. So, you could do this for kids, and they can be relatively early in their journey. They could be just a few belts in because you're not necessarily getting them to take classes or lead portions of classes.

You're getting them to feel the ambience of the school. Do those meet-and-greets and do those high-fives. 

Just further reinforce all the values that your organization is all about and all of this early on is at that voluntary capacity. So you want people to walk into your school and go? 

Wow, this is such a positive place. Look at the vibes these instructing teams here have created. 

George: We're talking about leadership. 

Hakan: Yeah. 

George: We're talking about something that sits above any style of martial arts. But if I think of guys that might take a little longer to enforce this, would be the jiu-jitsu guys. 

Because just the journey it takes to black belt is longer. And again I think it's a lot easier for them to get stuck into being the professor that everybody's there for them. 

And getting staff to take the different classes. For you and you guys are taekwondo based but you also have a jiu-jitsu program. You train it. 

If anything, is there anything that you would do differently for that path as a jiu-jitsu Academy. 

Hakan: It would be the perfect school because the classes and the techniques are structured in a clear way. If we look at a class structure, you might have a warm-up, you might have a stretch, you might have two or three main areas of focus that you want to cover certain techniques, certain positions and you might tie that in with a bit of a match at the end or a values component. 

So when you break down your typical class structure into those categories, you then can start looking at inserting certain people to give them the ability to take those areas. And so whether it's a technique or whether it's a warm-up component or a stretching component. 

Regardless of the style that you're in, if you're providing consistent class structures, which you should be anyway. Providing those clear expectations so that when students walk in they know what structure to expect, you can definitely change the structure up. 

So change within the structure, but keep the overall structure the same. Inserting certain individuals and then providing their flair works perfectly. Especially in the jiu-jitsu space because. 

I've actually seen this work where, let's say a purple belt is a master at a certain position that they've really honed in on. I've seen black belt instructors and professors give them the opportunity, but it's all about empowerment. Yeah, right.

It's all about empowerment building that instructor up so that your students are absorbing that information because you've given them the green light as a professor or school loader. 

So, I've actually seen it work really well in that capacity, and that's the first mindset shift that has to happen. In order for me to grow and scale what I do, I need to empower people in my network to take on more of those classes so I can focus on strategy. 

George: Are there any real practical steps you take to transfer? Think of it as a transfer of authority from you to your instructors and to make sure that they represent the same language and represent the same values. 

Hakan: Yeah, absolutely. This is where regular staff training is critical.So outside of the running of the classes. 

Making sure you have the right measures in place to be able to deliver upon that is critical. So for us if you look at it on a quarterly basis. 

Every quarter we bring everybody in and we'd really dissect the quarter that was. And why that works well for us is, we operate through a grading cycle. 

So we're able to complete one grading cycle, determine the level of success in terms of the front end and the back end. And then dissect that for the next quarter. 

We have our monthly staff training. Everybody comes together. There are physical components. We share some of the statistics of each month. 

Share some of the focus on what's coming up in the future, but we also tap into certain areas of teaching that we want to hone in on in that month and that could be the meet-and-greet component.

It could be running small groups within classes. So we focus on a teaching skill that we really want to hone in on the month going forward. 

Well, we boil it down to a weekly component. This is where we have our head instructor team where we meet every week and this is where we dissect the running of each and every week. 

So, this is where we boil down to, how many new enrollments we had, were there any kinds of areas of concern, were there any issues that came up, what worked really well and what can we do better going forward. 

So, making sure that the week by week is running smoothly. Then we boil it down to each and every day. 

And this happens at all of our locations where before, we opened for our members. We get together and we discuss who we are expecting as brand new people. 

We discuss the curriculum of the day, we discuss maybe certain kids that we want to highlight or be mindful of so boiling it down to communicating with the team to ensure that the focus is clear for the day through to the quarter all the way through to the year. 

In and amongst this we have role specific meetings that happen sporadically. So there could be a Little Dragons teachers meeting. 

So, all of our Little Dragons and instructors can get together and work through an update that the coordinator has felt is necessary. 

There might be an administrative change, like the one we're going through at the moment, and they're having regular meetings, ensuring the CRMs are updated, and providing regular training around that.

We often have sales specific training so just going through our sales systems and overcoming certain objections that they face. And there's also communication channels that are live throughout each and every day amongst these groups. 

So, in a nutshell it all boils down to, putting in the time to develop your team. Give them the teaching tools required to be able to deliver on the mats.

George: Excellent! And you were talking about class structures and things like that. I guess that we could leave that for a different episode and perhaps look at all. 

Well, where do we start with the curriculum? It depends on where you're at. Maybe you already have it in place, or you're just starting to put it together and have to unpack everything you've done over the years to fit it into a specific class structure.

Hakan: Absolutely. Mr. Mark in our organization, a head instructor, is brilliant in this space. So, I know he'd be really excited to share this with your listeners. 

George: Yeah, perfect. It’d be good to have Mark on, and we can do a deep dive on that. Perfect. Before we wrap it up, is there anything else on staff development that we didn’t touch on?

Hakan: Yeah, one small area is the adult space. I feel like sometimes the adults in your ecosystem could be overlooked. Tapping into instructors young, great.

There are also some adults directly in front of us. They may be perfect for what you do and a great way to do this in your school if you haven't done this already is run a parents bonding week or a parents as teachers week. 

And what this will enable you to do is not only share the mats with the parents of the kids that you teach or vice versa, that the kids of the parents that you teach.

Which then can translate into new members in the organization. But it also demonstrates those parents who are just really keen on sharing their love for the martial arts. 

You can absolutely tell those parents who are just holding the pads correctly who are really getting into the activities. So those people are directly right in front of you. 

And by running these kinds of weeks, you're able to take a look and say, ‘This guy's got it, right? This guy could really help on the mats.' And we've had some successful hires that way. 

So it's about doing all these little things to be able to create future leaders in your school. Provide mentors to certain instructors that may be below you. 

So, give them the ability to mentor the next level of instructors and give them the tools and keys to create further leaders as well. So it's just that systems driven culture that we need to create more instructors within our organization. 

George: Great Hakan. Thanks for jumping on. Thank you for doing a deep dive. 

Hakan: No problem. 

George: “Let's catch up again. We've still got a few things to unpack regarding leadership and the actual product itself. It'd be good to also chat more about things like the meet-and-greet and other practical examples.

I think that's such a—if you think of first impressions that last—it's such a small thing. But I think that ten, five seconds of doing it right could set you up for hours of smiling faces and people feeling welcome. 

Hakan: Absolutely. Yeah, I just, a little while ago. One of our parents came to the wrong location and they were quite disappointed. They got the address wrong, so instead of going to our Sydenham school, they went to our Marrickville school.

When they went there and then they came to my class after they were so impressed with how the Marrickville team had handled that. And so, that first impression when someone walks in through your door actually goes a long way. 

And putting the necessary measures in place to be able to greet people as soon as they walk in, is fundamental to what we do given that we're in the people's business.

George: Thanks again Hakan. If any of you are curious about Partners Mentor and what we are doing. Shoot me a message that you could go to martial arts media.com forward slash one five six. That's for this episode and just look for a link below the video and reach out and we'll chat there. Awesome. See you in the next one.

Hakan: Thank you

INVITATION: If you’d like more info about working with me in and Hakan in Partners Mentor, Just message me ‘Mentor’ on Facebook and I’ll send the details over in a doc (no sales call required) Send Message On Personal Profile >

 

 

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155 – Martial Arts Business Growth: 4 Obstacles The Manav’s Overcame to Build a 1,800-Student Academy

Hakan Manav reveals how they solved 4 growth obstacles martial arts school owners face and built a thriving, full‑time operation with 4 locations, a 30 staff, and 1,800 students.

INVITATION: If you’d like more info about working with me in and Hakan in Partners Mentor, Just message me ‘Mentor’ on Facebook and I’ll send the details over in a doc (no sales call required) Send Message On Personal Profile >

IN THIS EPISODE:

  • Explore the hidden product tweak that keeps students smiling and sparks unstoppable growth
  • Uncover a fresh staff-training approach that secretly sculpts high-performing instructors
  •  Follow a surprising systems shortcut that quietly streamlines every corner of the academy
  • Experience the leadership shift that frees you from day-to-day tasks and ignites team synergy
  • A glimpse into the Manav’s families path to a 1,800-student academy by overcoming 4 key obstacles
  • And more

 *FREE: Swipe the exact plan I use to fill martial arts schools with 200+ students within 7 months (And make sure your students are an incredible fit > Learn More

 

TRANSCRIPTION

GEORGE: Hey there, it's George Fourie. Welcome to another Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast episode. Today I've got a guest with me and I was just looking through, I actually googled it, when the last time he was on the podcast and it goes back to episode 14, November the 1st, 2016.Nine years ago. Cool, welcome back Hakan.

HAKAN: Thank you George, happy to be here.

GEORGE: Awesome. So I'm trying to think when we had that podcast, I was probably, I saw you do a demonstration at Weimar and that's probably a couple of years before that. And you already had your DVDs. I think we still got your DVD box of your program. 

hakan_manav_martial_arts_training

HAKAN: We're telling our age, aren't we?

GEORGE: And I guess it's funny how like our journey together, work together. I also looked into Stripe and you've also the longest standing client that I've worked with in regards to marketing and Facebook ads.

And just the other day we got talking about helping more school owners and we decided to do a joint venture together in what we call Partners Mentor. And we'll probably talk a little bit about that, but there's a few things that we want to discuss in the industry, particularly where people are getting stuck, things that we are seeing.

There's a lot of our conversations on messenger back and forth and planning and doing some marketing and me getting feedback from what you're seeing on the mats, hands-on, me looking at what am I seeing around the industry, what's coming from different school owners around the globe, what people are facing.

And I think a good thing for us to be in this episode, one of a few, would be to, yeah, just have a bird's eye overview of looking where things are at in the industry, what are you seeing, where people are getting stuck, what's coming up and so forth. But before we get into that for those listening and they haven't met you, just give us a bit of a roundup.

HAKAN: Sure. Yeah. So my name is Hakan. I'm a lifelong martial artist in the true sense of the term. I was born into the sport with my father being an instructor and a school owner himself. 

So I've had the unique perspective of being a student and then growing up in the academy and doing everything around that in terms of training and competing and doing demonstrations and basically doing everything that was required. However, it also came with the business side of the industry.

So what that meant was after the classes were done, whether it was conversations at home with the family or in the car with my dad, we always spoke about the challenges around running an academy and instructors and leads and everything along with that.

My father, when he first established the academy, like most in the industry, it was a hobby for him. It was a passion that he did on the side and his instructor gave him the pathway and the opportunity to start teaching, which he did.

And that naturally flowed on into some schools, some locations, and it was a passion project until it wasn't. And so you fast forward about 15, 20 years into my father's journey, where he starts to see that organically, the academy has got some culture around it. It's thriving.

There's great positivity around it. This is all led by him, right? Very small staff, if any. It was a one-man show for a very long time.

And then through his connections in the industry, through his friends and through other instructors, the industry started to transform. And we're talking late 90s, early 2000s here. And what I'm saying that it's trying to transform is I'm a 13, 14 year old boy at this time.

There's a lot of information being shared amongst the industry. There's a lot of industry events that have started to slowly be on offer. And why was this a pivotal moment?

Because up until those times, there was a tendency to keep your systems and your techniques, keep your cards close to your chest, right? As in do not expose your teachings that are passed down to you.

So that was a pivotal moment. And through my father being open-minded and willing to change and willing to learn from the industry, he started attending those events.

And all of those industry events and those monthly CDs, DVDs that were being sent, those cassette tapes. He was able to adopt those learnings into the academy and start to make those necessary changes for our academy to become a passion project and transform into a full-time academy, which we have now.

I've been fortunate enough to witness those changes happen and then it became not only my father's full-time gig, mine, and in our academy, we have close to 30 staff.

So it's become an opportunity for a lot of our team to make a living through the martial arts and professionalize the service of martial arts, which has been truly wonderful.

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GEORGE: So 30 staff and that's around how many locations and how many students approximately?

HAKAN: Approximately 1800 students. And so we've got four locations and with those locations, we have two distinct models. We have the part-time model, which some people can resonate with in the sense that we operate out of a hall twice a week, but it's highly efficient. That location offers two days a week.

It seats around 220 students. And so we've got that model down to a point where we can make sure that we're highly efficient with our timetabling, with our staff, with our curriculums, and therefore getting maximum use of the space and time that we have. On the flip side, we have our full-time location in Marrickville here in Sydney.

And that's the location that's been around for 43 years now and organically become what it has. And that location offers various programs with a seven day a week timetable. And that's sitting at about 1200 students at the moment.

And then we have a five day a week location and a three days a week location. And all of these are part of the organization in the sense that we maintain full control of every single student and instructor in our network.

GEORGE: So it's interesting that you stick to those two models. So just to get around how you approach the market and how you think about it, is there any reason why you don't take the part-time locations and turn them into full-time locations seeing as there's 20 students?

HAKAN: Yeah. So there's a method to the madness in the sense that we have these markers in place where we feel like we are in a position to expand days, right? And when we reach those markers, whether it's instructors that are readily available or whether we have the required student amount, we then pull the trigger into opening.

So firstly, we look at a day and we look at how we maximize the running of the day through our efficient timetabling model.

And if you are running a model at the moment and you're an instructor, you should always look at how to maximize the space that you have to keep those costs at a minimum. So when we do that, we then feel like we can add classes. And when we add the maximum amount of classes, we feel like we can on a day.

We look at our indicators, which enable us to then determine whether we're ready to open another day. Once we have a certain number of days running at the level we want it to run, we then look at either acquiring or renting a space nearby that facility to then transform that into a full-time center.

So the goal is to do it in a sustainable manner where you're minimizing risks where possible, but also taking the necessary steps and maintaining full quality control in that scenario.

We never want to go into a full-time facility with zero students because we know that's the hardest to build. But if we have some level of student base that can help grow and also cover the cost of that full-time facility, we feel like that's the sweet spot to then go further.

GEORGE: Very cool. Now, when it comes to, you mentioned you own all the locations outright, what's your take on licensing, franchising, and is there a reason that you never went into that direction?

HAKAN: Look, there's absolutely a place for a lot of those models and there are successful examples in franchising and licensing and partnership. And in our 43 years of history, we have tapped into various models of that at some capacity. But in our personal case, we feel like the model that we use helps us maintain the quality control that we want to maintain.

It helps us grow in a sustainable manner and it helps us keep everything kind of under control. For us, we're always open to different methods, but this is the one that we feel like is appropriate for our kind of management systems. But like I said, there are many examples of those models working both here in Australia and in the States that I've seen personally work.

But all of those models have their advantages and disadvantages as well. They're also worth considering and working along with your risk appetite.

GEORGE: Gotcha. Okay. So let's just change gears a little bit here. You guys have been in the game for a very long time, 43 years. You've achieved milestones that most people dream about and some don't even dream about, they just think that it's just an impossible place to get to.

If you look from the point where you're at and what you've achieved, just looking back and I guess looking around, you attend industry events and you hear conversations, you hear what people say, their struggles, their mindset around it.

What are the big things that really stand out for you where you see people are getting stuck? I guess we could start at a certain point.

Let's just start a broad overview of the common things that you see and then we can get down to it a bit deeper, maybe at certain levels.

HAKAN: Absolutely. So the first place I would start is the actual product itself. What's actually happening on the mats, right? So if you're creating a great vibe on the mats and you're running killer classes, given that we're in the service industry and referrals and word of mouth are a big part of what we do, you should organically be experiencing some level of growth that's going to help you pay your bills, pay your instructors.

If you are finding that you're losing far too many students or you're not able to get that referral or word of mouth naturally within your school, I would start there and have a look at what it is you're teaching and this is irrespective of the style that you're teaching, but more concerned with how you're actually delivering what you're delivering so that the people in front of you, whether that's 10 in your class, 20 or you have a school of 200, have a look at what you can do to get these people your raving fans and that all starts with what's happening on the floor.

And this is directly tied with the instructor itself, which in our case, in our industry, most of the time is the school owner. So dissect the delivery of the product and how it's done. So the curriculum, the content, the class length, how you deliver those classes, how you set up those classes.

Do you have help? Do you have instructor assisting capabilities? All of those are a key factor because oftentimes we, from my experience, I find that people overlook this the most.

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It's the area they feel like they've got under control, which is partly due to the fact that's what they've been trained in for so long. So if there's one thing that I've learned, oftentimes the way we've learned a technique isn't necessarily the best way to now deliver that technique on the mats.

And we can all attest to how technology has changed and how the current generation of kids are now absorbing that information.

So we have to be able to adapt and to tap into that. So the first area would be to really dissect what's happening on the mats. And you may need to pull things apart to be able to put them back together again, to be able to ensure that ultimately you're delivering fun classes that kids want to come back to.

So we would start there. Assuming you've got that under control, another common thing is staff development. And that first element of making sure your curriculum is under control is a lot of work.

But then trying to develop staff and instructors to be able to deliver on those acceptable standards is also a different level of work because it's a numbers game. The more instructors you're able to keep for the longer term in order to enable your growth.

So the instructor development space is another area that I feel like a lot of school owners get held back with and not spending enough time to train your bench to be able to deliver on the classes that you run.

Another area that I really find is the lack of systems within the martial arts industry. The lack of having a central point within the organization that has all your systems and manuals in place to be able to make your staff development smoother and easier. And not just your development of your staff, but the running of your school.

Creating an operations manual so that everything is written out for you. And if you can have this in a place where you've got the systems in place, you then have the instructors and the team to be able to take action upon those systems, which then hopefully can remove you to then focus on higher level tasks, which could be growth or it could be opening up other locations.

The other element here, the final one, is the ability to let go, which ties in heavily with your people's management.

We have to understand that in order to grow, we need a great team. In order to have a great team, it requires you to be able to manage that team in an effective way. And as your team grows, your level of management and systems around this also has to be met with that.

So whether you have a team of five, a team of 10, a team of 15 and beyond, all of these staff have to be operating in a happy way to be able to deliver on your systems and the culture that you have within your school.

GEORGE: All right, love that. So let's talk about some fixes and things that you then do differently, right? So if we talk about products, now I can see where this could probably be a block, right? Especially if you've got someone who's a competent martial artist, 25 years experience, you feel you're super competent in obviously what you do, but then does the delivery of that really hit home?

So what do you feel are the things that you and your team do differently that works for that and that gives you that success with the actual product and programs?

HAKAN: Yeah, it's one of those things that's difficult to quantify, right? Because how do you measure the happiness of a student? You can measure it in the sense of the tenure of a student, which is something that everybody should be tracking in their lifetime. The average lifetime length that a student trains with you is something that we should all measure, because if they're happy, then they're going to train with us.

And if you're dealing with a lot of kids, one thing we know for sure is that if a kid is getting bored in classes or they're not really enjoying what they're doing, as much as the parents love all the values that martial arts training provides.

That's always going to be a losing battle for the parent in terms of dragging their kids to martial arts training. So what we do really is we have key indicators. So we want to make sure of all the keys, and this is nothing new, this is from all the learnings from the seminars from 20 years ago, the kids are smiling, the kids are sweating and the kids are having fun.

And I'd like to add one more to this. If you could engage the parents from the sideline, and how do you know if the parents are engaged? They're not looking on their phones, they're actually looking at the classes and they're smiling and they're getting involved. If you could tick all of those boxes as frequently as possible, you know you're onto something.

And so if the parents are contributing and they're clapping on the sidelines and you're getting them involved to some capacity, get the parents to be judges and run certain challenges and certain groups, that's a great way to ensure that everyone is engaged.

So engaged parents, engaged kids means they're buying into what you deliver and what you offer, which means they'll stay longer. So what we do really is we constantly review our curriculums after every class, after every week, and we go, what worked well, what didn't work, what can we do to make it better? So never assuming that what we're teaching is under control.

It's all about making sure the kids are smiling? Do we have that connection with the students and the instructors? Is there an appropriate touch happening? Things like high fives and are they having a great time? Are they sweating?

It's those simple things that we look at and place high importance on to ensure that we're delivering on that aspect of our classes. All of the drills, all of the exercises based around determining those levels of outcomes in our classes.

GEORGE: So next up, team building. Where do you see the most roadblocks and how have you worked around it and what do you guys do on a day-to-day basis to build a strong team?

HAKAN: Yeah, so the team building starts with your ability to let go. So the 10,000 foot overview answer on team building is having a clear system in place to take someone from a volunteer leader all the way through to be able to run a location.

So you'd have all the required steps in between to be able to have someone and provide them that pathway to be able to become a successful instructor.

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Now there are many models out there that provide this opportunity, but what we've found within our organization is having a look at what's out there but also tailoring it to what works for us. We tie that into those deliverables that we value.

So we have the content itself, the assessable content that's going to help the students get towards their high belt and beyond, but then we also look at the teaching systems around how to structure the classes, where to position the kids, how long each activity should go for, as well as making sure those kids are having fun, getting to know one another and tapping into those values.

So having a clear system in place to do that. At a microscopic level, the first step that an instructor has to do to be able to build the team is to be able to let go of an element on the mats.

And so if you're looking at your class structure, what are some areas you can look at within a class where you feel like someone can deliver that close enough to what you can, and whether that's maybe taking an element of a warmer, whether that's taking a stretching component of the class, maybe that's showcasing one or two techniques in the main chunk of the class.

So giving people the opportunity and empowering them to be able to be a leader in the class is where all of this begins. So giving people an opportunity to be a leader and then empowering them and telling them, hey, you have it within you to be a fantastic instructor one day.

I believe in you, can you please do this next week, I'll get you to take this component of the class. It starts with having those one-on-one conversations at the very beginning. It then leads into consistent staff training, consistent levels for staff.

A simple way to think about this is if you think about your belt systems and they progress and they have their requirements that they have to meet in order to get through, say, to their black belt, it's the same thing in the instructor development space. So they have their requirements that they need to do and it starts really simple.

Like for some of our junior leaders, it's as simple as holding pads, maybe high-fiving kids, greeting kids as they walk in, showing people where to put their shoes, tying belts, simple as that. Demonstrating techniques, we then assess them and give them the next level of tools and strategies they can do to become a better instructor. And over time, they then transform into your instructor team.

So the roadblock that we find there with instructors is not taking that first step and giving away that level of leadership from yourself to your team.

GEORGE: Now with that, I guess the fear is what happens if they screw up or they just don't deliver the class that you want? And I'm sure that's happened in that process, right?

Because you've got to let go and so you've got to let that happen. How do you go about correcting something when it hasn't gone right without breaking their confidence for the next class?

HAKAN: Absolutely. And this is where it comes down to having those individual conversations and knowing what works with the certain type of individual you're talking with, right?

Certain individuals are going to need a much softer approach, whereas other individuals completely understand the context of it. And sometimes just giving it to them and there and giving that feedback then and there is going to get them to understand where they've gone wrong and then help them progress going forward.

Of course, things are going to go wrong, right? The moment we kind of delegate responsibility, there's going to be elements where we're going to be let down either through the delivery itself or maybe instructors are showing up late or reliability issues and so on.

But absolutely, it is still the right move to make for the long term of the school. So we always have to think about where we want to be in five to 10 years time and overcoming these small obstacles and challenges with staffing is a necessary step. And so addressing those issues then and there and just being completely honest.

And the best way I've found to give feedback here is not giving the feedback about the person, but the area that they've done.

You tell them that you absolutely love them and that you care about them as an individual, but it's more about the job or the area or the minuscule thing they've done wrong about their teaching. And then you bring it back to their growth and how they can be better because of it.

GEORGE: So let's move on. You mentioned systems and documenting the system and having that operational manual. Where do you see the roadblocks there? What have you guys put in place to systemize?

HAKAN: Yeah. So you would see a common theme here, George, in the sense that oftentimes when people look at us as Martial Arts instructors, they feel like we have such few working hours, right?

You come on, you teach from four, you finish teaching at 7.30 or 8.30 and then you go home and you have all this time. But as you can see, setting up all these things, whether it's instructor development, whether it's running ad campaigns and leads, these are additional projects that constantly have to be happening to be able to lay the foundations for growth, right?

To be able to create the assets within your school, outside of the mats itself, so that the school can then be thriving as an autonomous organization, ultimately without you.

And that then segues into our systems, right? And so creating those systems, which is essentially having processes in place to be able to run the day-to-day of your school.

And the best way to look at this is if someone was to walk into your organization, do you have a central point that they can look at to be able to then teach a class if needed, or run the administration side if needed, or maybe do some sales calls if needed.

So in terms of creating systems, anything that has to be done more than twice, two or three times, should have a written process for it. And then there are many tools around this, whether it's screen grabs and doing videos around how all of this should be done, but it's just taking the time for it to be done.

And then following those systems and making sure there's some accountability around those systems is what also has to be done going forward. So it's critical. And this is like creating the recipes.

If you had a restaurant-type business, what's the recipe for success in terms of the food that you create? It's the same thing in our martial arts business, if not more so, because we don't have that actual physical product.

So we have the intangible service that we provide. How can we systemize that, bottle it, and then recreate that magic across multiple days and locations? And it all boils down to the systems that you've created within your school.

GEORGE: What are your favorite tools for storing stuff online?

HAKAN: What we've found over time, and not just with systems, but with everything that we've done within our organization, especially as our organization has grown and we've got people that are amongst different generations in our organization, simplicity is key. So never look at something that's going to require too many steps to wrap your head around. So we keep it simple.

We have a lot of WhatsApp groups because we feel like a lot of our team are on their phones and it's easily accessible. So in terms of communication, we kind of stick with that. But then all of our stuff is literally through Google Docs and Google Drives.

And those kids who are coming through school nowadays or in university are all familiar with the way these systems work because their teachers and their school teachers are also using those systems.

So I know there are many tools out there that you can use, but what works for us is simplicity and something that we can all just pick up our phones, tap in, have a look in a folder, have a look in the app. And that works for someone like my father, who's in his early sixties all the way through to our teenagers that are 16, 17, 18 years old.

So keep it simple.

GEORGE: Yeah, I love that. If I think of the years that I've worked online and the amount of tools that I've gone through, it always goes back to the Google Doc, just keeping it simple.

And it's a bit of double work, but that's always been the storage mechanism.

HAKAN: It's great because you've got your Excel capabilities for your calculations and your graphing and your modeling in terms of student numbers or whatever it is you're trying to track. You've got your Google Docs, you've got your checklist that you could tick through automatically.

GEORGE: It's all there. Okay. So last one, and then we can just change gears here, if you mentioned staffing and management of staff.

HAKAN: Absolutely. So a good manager is one that could tap into every individual of their team, figure out their strengths, figure out their weaknesses, what excites them, what their fears are. So it boils down to an individual approach with this.

And this is critical because as your team grows, you never want your team to feel like they're forgotten or they're not valued. 

Individual management of your team boils down to taking the effort required to figure out a little bit more beyond the martial arts. And we feel like, yeah, we love martial arts, they love martial arts, and that's all they have going on in their life.

One thing I've come to realize, I'm talking about generational differences here, is that the generations that are coming through at the moment, yes, they place importance on their work, but they also want their interests beyond martial arts known. 

And if you can recognize that, you're creating a relationship beyond the mats, beyond the martial arts, which will then deepen your connection with them and hopefully strengthen that bond in keeping your instructors for longer. 

So the managerial approach boils down to your ability to get to know your team beyond the martial arts, and then taking the time to reward them maybe around that, which is something that we look at doing in our organization.

We give away free tickets to games, to certain people, we give away zoo passes to certain individuals. It's amazing to see what your team is interested in beyond the academy, and how much of an impact that has on their commitment to what you do. 

GEORGE: I love this, Hakan. Thanks for breaking it down from front to back. Now, I guess we should highlight, where are you seeing them, at what level in business is this happening? And if your first focus is getting the product right, without that, you've got nothing. But where are you seeing these different obstacles come up? 

HAKAN: It all depends on the stage of the business I find.

So if you're relatively early in your organization, I guess it's all about survival. All right. So making enough to pay the bills and ensuring that you've got enough of a student base in front of you, you've got some leads coming in.

So your challenge is there, literally keeping the doors open. Once you've got your head above water, then it's about developing systems, developing curriculum, and starting to develop a team.

And so oftentimes I find that the biggest roadblock I see in instructors is not taking the necessary time to be able to do the work in those spaces.

Because they always feel like instructors feel like I can do it. I'm capable. I know what it takes to build skills.

I've acquired this level of mastery in my martial art, which means that will get me through in my academy. So having that mindset and having that mindset shift around developing a team is what I feel like holds a lot of instructors back. Once they get to say, at a full-time school, you're hovering between say 250 to 300.

Hopefully by that point, you're starting to really figure out ways to train staff and bring on staff. 

And I know we've touched on staff before, but one other really critical element of staff is the administration or the sales side of the business, which can be often overlooked because we focus and concentrate a lot on what's happening on the mats. As your student numbers get to about 50 to 300, there are issues that tend to happen.

And these could be payment issues. These could be conflicting issues with kids on the floor. These could be issues amongst parents and you as the instructor may not necessarily be the right person.

In fact, you should not be the person putting out these types of fires. And so having the ability to bring on staff in front of the house, front of desk is an area that also must be taken into consideration. Oftentimes, I also find that instructors know what they have to do.

They know where they're sitting, but don't necessarily want to take the next steps in terms of growing the school. And this could be to another mindset that's common in the industry in that there is that fear of selling out, right? 

There's still that notion that being a successful martial artist and making money from your business is inherently a bad thing because maybe your instructor was just getting by or maybe your instructor was really struggling financially. 

But why can't we do both? So really breaking that mindset around growing your school is one area that I find as well.

And this can happen when instructors are doing enough to get by or even doing enough to make as much as they were making in their previous job. So they feel if I can cover my salary in what I did earlier, I've made it and I'm content. 

So it's just recognizing what has to be done and either trying away from the work, not taking the necessary action, because all of this requires some level of discomfort.

Growing a team, it requires a level of, there are tough conversations that have to be made around growing a team, right? Like you said earlier, if a person delivers in a class that isn't necessarily up to standard, you have to have that tough conversation there on a day-to-day basis. 

And so all of these areas do require a level of discomfort. And sometimes I feel like that can hold people back in terms of growth.

I also understand instructors because there is a plethora of work that has to be done as a school owner. It's just, as we all know, with any business, there are constantly things that have to be done. And knowing where to start is also a big challenge that I feel with instructors.

So they can often revert to doing what they've always been doing. And then before we know it, the years go by and we're stuck where we were before. So maybe a suggestion that I would have is to have an honest look or have an unbiased look, or maybe have someone else have an unbiased look at the way your businesses are done.

Take an approach and feedback around what the strengths are and the areas that could be improved. And then set a quarterly challenge on working towards that area. 

So a quarterly challenge could be pulling apart your curriculum and rejigging it and then bringing it back in and then giving it enough time to give it some feedback and seeing what works.

Or this quarter, focusing on getting some level of instructor development system in place. This is what we've done over the 43 years, along with the running of the classes, we've always got projects going on in the background that's going to help create assets to be able to develop the business. 

So to answer your question, what are the kinds of areas that instructors are not doing to improve their school and are not going deep enough on certain areas to create the foundations to build off for growth.

And as I mentioned earlier, they're the main ones, the mindset around letting go, the curriculum, the systems, as well as the instructor development. So the biggest tip I would then give to instructors is pick one and focus on that one behind the scenes for a quarter and see how you go and then maybe touch back on that or focus on another project. 

And initially, this is going to be yourself if you have a small team, but then as you grow your team, you can start delegating these projects to different staff members, which then accelerates all of this.

GEORGE: I love that. I think mindset doesn't get spoken about enough because, and I think it was Alex Charfen who said, you'll never grow into pain. If there's something that you feel pain or you can't identify yourself as that successful person, because you see that successful person as one that all your peers despise, then you step into that, it's very hard to do.

So just changing the mindset around money, success. And I find it strange that there's always this, you either have the money or you have great martial arts, but all the successful schools that I know of, they have great martial arts because they have the resources to invest and to train more and they train their staff better. 

HAKAN: Absolutely. And then you can hire staff at a higher cost to be able to deliver on those key areas if it's critical to you. And here's the other thing, George, in martial arts, it provides so much for a school owner. 

So determining what success means to you as an instructor is the starting point for yourself.

What area of the martial arts is successful for you? Is it creating champions or is it providing pathways to the UFC? Determining what success is for you, the starting point, and then working back from there is what has to be done.

Another area I feel like that doesn't get spoken enough from my experience in growing up in the industry is the impact being an instructor has on the family. And so placing high importance around the value of family because the martial arts world and being a school owner is one that can just suck your time away on so many fronts.

And it's easy to go down so many different rabbit holes, but then having the ability to stop and be able to determine where your time ends, whether it's for a task or for your family is another area that I feel like it doesn't get spoken enough because as a negative byproduct of being a school owner, it's difficult to then spend that time with your family because our evenings and weekends are consumed either teaching or training or going to competitions.

And so that's another area that I feel like has to be managed well because it can have an impact on those that you love. And so tying that back to having success in your business will help enable you to buy back your time to be able to spend more time with your family.

So that's a huge benefit that I often see that could be the aha moment for instructors to then go down the path of focusing on creating those assets within their organization. 

GEORGE: Yeah, I love that. Take me back to the school scale plan, the model we put together in Partners that build a business that fulfills your purpose, which has three components of income, impact and lifestyle.

HAKAN: Absolutely.

GEORGE: You need the income. Yep. You want to make an impact for your students, but you've got to have the balance of lifestyle and family in between that as well. 

HAKAN: And one thing I will say this as well is that growing up with my father being a school owner and seeing other kids in my situation and bringing back the family, I find that sometimes there is that level of resentment kids have towards their parents.

I know there's a lot of fathers and mothers who run schools . There is a lot of resentment that kids can have towards their parents because the business is the thing that has taken them away from spending time with the kids. So managing that effectively is something that's critical for us as instructors. And it can go both ways.

People who love what the martial arts offers and take the business and the academy further, or you see them go completely the opposite way and want nothing to do with the martial arts space because of all, I don't want to say trauma, but I guess because of all the background work that families and kids have to endure with parents being involved as instructors. 

GEORGE: 100%. I think that's almost a whole other podcast right there. Cool. I guess I want to, there's a few things I just want to highlight, and I think we should definitely have a round two and a round three, and we can elaborate on a lot of these topics. 

If you're listening and you are watching this and you enjoyed this episode and you'd like us to dive deeper into one of the topics that we discussed, please do that.

I do want to make an invitation because if you hear what Hakan was saying and these obstacles that they faced and have overcome, and it's taken them to a place, multiple locations, 1,800 students, the only fast track we get in life is just getting the answer of someone that's been in that situation that you are facing. You face a situation and someone, oh, hang on, I've done that. Try this or try that.

And so we've put together a program, it's called Partners Mentor. It's not a program where you've got a ton of stuff to watch and do, although there is that if you need, but the core of the program is access to get answers of what you're facing, what are the things that you need to do to go to the next step in your business.

Private group, very small group, but the overarching goal is if your goal is something bigger, seven figure school, or you're already there and you're stretching beyond that and you find value in any of these things, then reach out.

The easiest place is probably, you could look up, just message me on Facebook, or if you go martialartsmedia.com forward slash 155, that'll take you to the recording of this episode. And you can just shoot us a message from there as well. Yeah.

Sorry. Anything to add on that, Hakan? 

HAKAN: No, I think we've touched on quite a bit there. We can always dive deeper into many aspects of that.

I guess one thing that we've done over those 43 years is we've made a lot of mistakes and those mistakes have cost us time and they've cost us money. And so if there's anything we can do to alleviate that in one's martial arts journey, we're always happy to help.

hakan-manav-family-run-taekwondo-school

And we're always happy to make sure that people don't make those mistakes because one thing we can't buy back is time.

So if there's anything we can do to be able to give you that quick answer that you can take action on, we're here for your support to make that happen. 

GEORGE: Yeah, I love that. Awesome.

Perfect Hakan. Thanks for jumping on and I'll see you in the next one. 

HAKAN: Thank you.

INVITATION: If you’d like more info about working with me in and Hakan in Partners Mentor, Just message me ‘Mentor’ on Facebook and I’ll send the details over in a doc (no sales call required) Send Message On Personal Profile >

 

 

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145 – How Kyl Reber’s Martial Arts School Serves 370+ Members – All Through Referrals

Kyl Reber shares his secrets to 27 years of successful growth in his martial arts school, driven by the power of organic marketing through word-of-mouth referrals.


IN THIS EPISODE:

  • How Kyl grew his martial arts business through organic marketing, primarily via word-of-mouth referrals
  • The link between Imposter Syndrome and martial arts studio’s pricing strategies
  • Why martial arts school owners often undersell themselves and encounter growth challenges
  • Key areas to prioritize in your martial arts school beyond the curriculum
  • The history behind their martial arts school's empowering slogan, ‘Back Yourself’
  • And more

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

TRANSCRIPTION

Hey, it's George Fourie. Welcome to another Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast. Today I am interviewing one of our great clients, one of our members of our Partners community, Kyl Reber. Kyl is from Brisbane. Chikara Martial Arts. You can look them up. 

And this interview is a bit of an extension from the Partners Intensive, which is an event that we hosted here on the Sunshine at the beginning of June. And Kyl was one of the featured speakers talking about the things that they are doing in the community. 

And what is mind-blowing for many other school owners is Kyl and his team, they're just pushing past the 370-member mark. And at this point, they've only focused on organic marketing strategies. 

It's all about community. It's all about giving back. It's all about the things that they do in their school and the impact that they make within their community. 

And so I wanted to get Kyl on and dig a bit deeper, talk a bit more about the strategies, what they do. 

And the great thing is I've been working with Kyl for a little more than six months, and I haven't really tapped into that backstory about how he got started on this journey when they opened their school, what got him into martial arts and so this was a great opportunity for that. 

So jump into the episode. All the show notes and resources are on our website, martialrtsmedia.com/145. 

That's the numbers one, four, five. Head over there and download the transcript and resources. That's it. Let's get started. Jump in. 

GEORGE: Mr. Kyl Reber, welcome to the Martial Arts Media™ Business podcast.

Martial arts school marketing Kyl Reber

KYL: Thanks, George. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure and an honor to be here.

GEORGE: Awesome. Long time coming.

KYL: Long time coming. Third time lucky.

GEORGE: Third time lucky. Hey, so thanks for jumping on. I'm really excited about this conversation and what I'm excited about is I've known you for a little while, we've been working together for a little while and I haven't really tapped into the back story of you and how everything came about.

So I'm really excited to chat about that and just witness a lot of the things that you're doing in your school and how you approach things differently. But first up, I always like to kick off this being … We always talk about marketing and attract, increase, and retain strategies.

If you have to share, what is the one thing, your go-to strategy that's helped you grow the school the most, generated the most students, strategy that you always lean on, that you always go back to and repeat over time?

KYL: I guess our biggest strategy or our biggest way of generating business is it always has been referral. But I guess if you were to put that into a strategy, a strategy is our image and our standing in the community.

Because if we have a good image standing in the community and members come to join, they're very quick to refer to other people that they know about what we do. You and I have had conversations in the past about Facebook marketing and all that sort of stuff.

Without sounding arrogant, that's still quite foreign to us. And I guess we've been very lucky that we're able to build the club to where it has gotten purely by just referral, word of mouth. We'll have whole families train. We have people very willingly wanting to involve themselves more in what we do externally.

So I think, referral has been always something that's been very good for us to lean on, and it's something that's very important to us. Our culture and community are the real backbone of what we do.

It's something that we've really strived to, I guess you'd say protect. As every club has, we've had people come in the past over the years that haven't been fit for that culture and community and we've had to have conversations about maybe this isn't the place for you because it's such a strong thing that works so well for us and it's continuing to work.

Essentially from an advertising point of view, it's only in the last 12 months that we are really starting to look at Facebook ads and formal advertising. Prior to that, it was just community.

GEORGE: I love that. I think it would help just for listeners, the context of where you're at in the business because for most guys to get to the level of growth that where you're at, it's taken some substantial advertising, investing in Facebook marketing, etc. So where are you currently at with student numbers?

KYL: Student numbers we're hovering around probably … I think we're probably, as of this week, we're sitting around that 360, 370 mark. We've had some really great growth this year.

But I think the thing for that is we've also had years where we've grown quite slowly. But our numbers are very good. We're really focusing this year on our community and our culture and it works for us.

But yeah. Look, the club itself has been open for … This is our 28th … No, this is our 27th year. So it very certainly has not happened overnight, but I think we're finally getting a rhythm.

GEORGE: The 27-year overnight success.

KYL: Something like that. And look, for 11 of those years I was working full-time in another field that was incredibly demanding and it was full-time/seven days a week. Our lowest point ever of members was six. We had six members. So I think it's that when you're trying to grow …

I say to my instructors when they're complaining it's a quiet night or whatever, or we've only got 20 something in this class, and I say to them, “Guys, that used to be our whole club.” So it's trying to just chip away. I said at a weekend at a seminar, just hurry up and be patient.

GEORGE: I want to loop back into this, but I think it's good to then just go back to your beginnings. Because 27 years … Now, you're doing well. And I want to come back to what is this momentum.

What is driving this? But how did it all start for you? And you mentioned you were working a full-time job. There were six students.

KYL: Yeah. I started martial arts when I was 15. I turn 48 next week so add that up. I grew up in a country town in country Queensland. The martial art I started was purely based on what was closest to our house. I could walk there.

I was never a team sports person. I raced BMX semi-professionally when I was young as well. So I liked relying on me, me, and me. So I got into martial arts there. I moved to Brisbane when I was about 18, 19. Picked up Zen Do Kai. Ironically, my instructor grew up in my hometown and raced speedway with my dad.

Both our moms knew each other so it was kind of this aligning. And he moved back to Brisbane … Back to Maryborough, sorry, to work in 1996. At the time that club … So it was Zen Do Kai that we were doing predominantly then. There was a little bit of the BJC Muay Thai that we'd started doing as well.

There wasn't push as such. It was just an obligation. I have to move back. There were probably about 15 people at the club, just two nights a week in a scout hall in Western Brisbane. And it was just are you all right to take it over. And I can't even remember the conversation. I was just, yep, okay. And it just went from there.

I was working full in security, which started as a weekend gig, but I ended up being the operations manager of that company and I was with them for nearly 20 years. So our niche and our stuff was a lot of concerts and festivals.

So it was good because I was getting to practice everything on the weekend and then come back to the club during the week and go, so this works, this doesn't work, this works, this doesn't work. Don't do that because that happens. I would always call it, I was fast-tracking my students. And that job was great. I saw a lot. I did a lot.

But it meant that from a time point of view … And again, this is in the late '90s, early 2000s. I think you could have counted on one hand how many full-time schools were in Brisbane. I always think we can be sometimes 10-plus years behind the likes of Melbourne and Sydney.

So I was doing that job. My wife and I had not long had our second child. I was working more than I was sleeping. And it just got to a point where I was like, well, maybe if I create a new job. So I had this weird concept about going full-time. It was the dream and my wife and I talked about it extensively.

We just randomly found a shed for rent when we were coming home from Bunnings one Sunday morning and went in. It was a month-to-month lease and we ended up being there for eight and a half years in that place. And for the first 12 months I was working my full-time job still and trying to get CMA or Chikara Martial Arts as it was called back then, I was trying to get that off the ground.

So I was essentially working two jobs. And the idea was if we got to 50 and then if we maybe got to 100 or if we could manage … When we started the shed, we thought, okay, we've got a little bit in the bank, we can do six months rent and if doesn't work in six months, that's it. We're out.

And we were covering rent plus more in six weeks. So it just exploded. Our first Open Day … And we've spoken about Open Days before. It was probably the most archaic/embarrassing Open Day advertising you would've ever seen. And we signed up nearly 40 members in one day.

And for me back then I'm like, oh my God, what have I created? So I had stars in my eyes at the start and then I made the big decision. Because I started with that company that I was working with as a teenager and now I'm in my mid-30s. I had the same boss the whole time so we were a bit like a family.

So leaving that was hard. So for the first 12 months of leaving, I was working in the shed and then I was just working in a bottle shop, just making up the gap. So the growth has been very progressive.

After that 12 months, I managed to go full-time, or as a lot of people were calling it at the time I was retiring. But I think it's just been the hardest … I'm working the hardest I think I ever have. But I think now we moved into a second center …

Well, we moved in there in 2019 and we were in there for I think four months before Covid hit and we had to shut down. But that progressive move I think has been what has kept us around for 27 years. It's not without its dramas, but there are just so many good movements.

I guess as far as advice, I see so many martial arts instructors wanting to go full-time and they just want to go completely in right from the start. The full-time place right away, the best mats, the best gear, everything, and they start essentially … And then this is just the way I see it. They start on the back foot straight away.

So they're already having to get business loans, they're already however many thousands of dollars on the back foot from the start. It certainly wasn't intentional, but we've been lucky enough to never really have a …

We've never had a business loan. We've just progressively chipped away, built and built and built. Because I think I see a trend now in the industry. From where we are, within a 5K radius of us I think there are eight full-time martial arts schools.

So they're just everywhere now. I think you have to be very methodical and make sure you are just chipping away and doing something every day to grow.

GEORGE: Very cool. So what beliefs did you have to overcome? If I look at martial arts school owners that I talk to, there's so much in the mind that you've got to conquer first. Belief about your martial arts, belief about your value, belief about yourself. And then I think the big question is, how badly do you really want this?

It's okay to not want it, but I think you've got to be honest with yourself. It's nice to think, hey, I can have this full-time school and I can have this, but there's a big gap there between, well, I'm here and maybe …

We've got a lot of people in our group that have got high paying jobs, high careers, and the martial arts is just a side gig and it would be really hard to make that full-time switch.

And then there are others that that's the big aspiration. So if you were to go back to where you were, what are the things that you had to conquer just internally to get you to take those steps?

BJJ marketing Kyl Reber

KYL: One major thing I had to conquer was that as much as you're … And I'm still trying to conquer it to be totally honest. As much as you're plugging this community side of things … And it's important to you. Plugging it makes it sound like it's not important. It's probably the most important thing.

There are these guys at the club who have … My oldest daughter's 16, and my youngest one's nearly 13. They held them as babies and now they're teaching them as teenagers. Probably the biggest thing for me was switching from that. I always call ourselves a club, but at the end of the day, it is a business and your time is precious and your time is worth something.

I think for a lot of us, martial arts instructors, Imposter Syndrome is real. And I think if you're not dealing with that a little bit at some point, that could be something to do with maybe checking yourself in and having a look at your humility.

We are very good at what we do and if you put … I always say to some other smaller club owners that I mentor, if you were to write a resume of how much time and years that you've put into where you are, and then you equate that into another job, think about what you'd be getting paid.

So I had a conversation once a little while ago with an instructor in a suburban club, but very good. And I was sitting with one of my students who is a police officer. We were talking about time and money and how much your time is worth. And this guy had worked out that he'd been basically training and perfecting his craft for about 17 years.

So I said to the student of mine who was sitting there who was a police officer, I said, “So if we transferred that over to the police, what would that equate to financially and rank-wise?”

And she said, “Well, you'd be at least a senior constable and you'd probably be on the better part of 100 grand a year.” Yet this guy was having real trepidation with going from teaching 10 bucks a class to $15 a class.

So the big thing, I think, is underselling ourselves. And putting up our prices is just something that's still, for me … I know how much we're worth, but it's something that I still struggle with. I'm struggling with it less. But I think that, and you would see too, the amount of martial arts clubs and instructors that are just underselling themselves is ridiculous. That's probably a big one.

GEORGE: Why do you think that is?

KYL: I think because we doubt ourselves. And again, don't get me wrong, there are people out there that have this … And I envy them. I guess they're in touch with themselves more than they go, nope, I am worth this. This is good.

But I think we still have this … I don't know whether you'd call it a suburban mentality as opposed to, no, this is a business. I don't know. I think the community sometimes forgets that we are a business too.

In Australia especially. There have been full-time clubs in the States since the '50s and '60s, but in Australia, I think there is still that martial arts that you're just in that scout hall or community hall a couple of times a week. You just pay as you go. We've got bills to pay as well. I think we're breaking out of that.

In Queensland, we seem to be anyway. But I think the way I think makes it easier for us … And this is something that I'm always working on, and I'll admit I don't always get it right.

The more professional you are, the more when it comes to people paying for your services, they have less of an issue handing that over because I guess they're seeing what they get in return.

Like the suburban nights where the kids would show up for class and the instructor's not shown up or they're late from work or they're this and that.

So professionalism is a thing that's huge for me. I'm constantly trying to work on it because you have one slip up and you're like … But yeah. I think that's a big one for me. As I said, there are other instructors that I mentor, and that's the first thing that I'll say to them.

And it's flowing downhill from the conversations I've had with you about you could easily add X amount to this and no one would bat an eyelid. Because if people are training with you just for the price, then without sounding horrible, how much time are you spending on them for that amount price?

GEORGE: Yeah. 100%. I think for me because that's one of the first conversations I always have to have when we take on people into our Partners group, is charging. I always started with it's just the easy thing. Look, you've just got to up your prices.

But it's unpacking the beliefs that come with that. Sometimes it's just so ingrained in the culture. You've been told money doesn't grow on trees and then people flick around Mcdojo words that nobody even knows what it actually means. It's just a word that people can flick around.

Sometimes it's the Tall Poppy Syndrome, the crab in the bucket, other people are just dragging them down and it's like, you can charge more, just not more than me. I sometimes feel it's a comparison of what it is versus what it does.

If your pricing strategy is looking at what everybody else is pricing and what they do, then you're just one of everyone else. And so now you're comparing, well, I'm in a school hall and they're in a full-time center so I've got to charge less. But hang on, what if your value exceeds the club in the full-time location?

KYL: 100%.

GEORGE: What if the outcome that your martial arts deliver is more? This means if you can articulate that, you can charge more.

KYL: This is why I very rarely … I won't say I don't because sometimes I do. But I very rarely look at what other clubs are charging, look at what other clubs … Like their classes or that sort of thing. It's not to be arrogant. I'm not selling their product, I'm selling my own. So if I'm confident in what I'm doing and I'm confident in my instructors …

And I put a bit of pressure on them. I think if you focus on yourself and your growth and you focus on your professionalism, I know for a fact without getting into money too much, I know for a fact we are probably one of the higher-end fee schools in our area, and I don't lose any sleep over that. I think our product is strong. I think our community is strong. Our center is so clean I think it sometimes looks like a museum more than anything else.

It's air-conditioned. It's in a nice place. We have all these other things. Sure, there are things we always work on, but the number of people that walk into our place and go, “I didn't expect this place to be so clean, neat, tidy.” It's air-conditioned. We have a polite team at the desk. We have all this sort of stuff. That sells everything.

The parents that come in particular … Again, not to downplay them, but they're not there to check your -and check what you're teaching. You're doing this form at this rank. Why aren't you doing it at this rank? Are the instructors nice? Is the place clean and tidy? Do they come here and does their child feel safe? Tick, tick, tick. Okay, sign me up.

And I think that's one area that we miss. You see a lot of fight gyms or suburban clubs, for example … And God bless them. We were there once too. They focus so much on the training. The training is hard. Train this, train hard, hard, hard, hard.

But that's one reason maybe why your club's got only 10 students and you're training in someone's garage. It's not the fact that you're having to soften what you're doing in order to grow. You've just got to think more of the masses.

We do a lot of work … Well, I kind of fell into it. Do a lot of work with kids with autism, kids who have been bullied a lot at school, and mental health issues. And half the time, a lot of our stuff is we just chat with them. I do PTs with kids where I take them for a walk and they leave for the walk all angry, and then they come back and they're all rejuvenated and the parents go, “I'd pay three times what you charge for that.”

That's the sort of thing where you go, okay, we're doing something right across the board. You can have great martial arts and be awesome at what you do, but the backend stuff. And this is what I'm working on the most now in the business more than ever before.

The front end, I'm confident in. It's the backend stuff. That's a massive transition for people I think when they start going full-time that they have to actually get off the mat and sit in front of a computer more than they're willing to do.

GEORGE: 100%. So I want to loop back to the beginning of our conversation because you were talking about organic growth and where you got to without the advertising.

And I think a good transition for this, was when we hosted our Partners Intensive event, which we had for our mastermind group, and we had a few guests come along, we hosted it, Sunshine Coast. Grand Master Zulfi flew in from Houston, Texas.

It was amazing. And I had the whole lineup planned and ready to go. I recall you sending me a message and saying, “George, I love everything that you're doing. And I look at all the speakers and everything is driven for revenue and money and growth, which is fantastic.

But I think I can just add a different flavor to this because we've done all this growth without focusing on that stuff and just focusing on the things that we do.” And that led to you also having a great talk at the Partners Intensive and inspiring everybody with the things that you've done. So let's look back to that conversation.

Jiu jitsu marketing Kyl Reber

KYL: Firstly, thank you again for that opportunity because I deliberated over sending that message for well over a day. I didn't want to be that guy like this timetable's great, but where's my slot? I didn't want to think of it like that. I said to you, “Maybe if I just had 10 minutes just to explain this is what we do.”

And then you come back and go, “Oh no. What we'll do is we'll give you the 90-minute slot, you got to go this.” And I've just gone to my wife, “This escalated quickly.” I guess the thing that I noticed was … And as much as we've just spoken about, you've got to treat it like a business, you've got to make sure the money is right and everything there.

Because I know if you were to get in touch with my accountant, I think I'm in his top three. Top three people that he just literally sees my name pop up and doesn't want to deal with me. He goes, “God, you're lucky you can fight because this is not your forte.” And he's right. Because I focus on the other side of things.

But I think to answer your question, the thing I saw was how to do this and make a lot of money. How to do this and make a lot of money. How to do this and make a lot of money. The thing I thought was if you … Not that you're not wanting … It's hard to explain.

But not if you're not wanting to make a lot of money, but if you're focusing completely on something else that will make you a truckload of money. If that's the way you want to look at it. And I use this saying all the time. Let your passion pay the bills.

Because the last thing you want to be … If we think back to why we started martial arts, I think 1% of us started martial arts because we want to run a full-time school and be a millionaire. And if that's what you're doing, great, but I'm nowhere near that.

But the one thing I don't want to lose is I don't want to lose my passion for martial arts. And the more you get into the business, the more it goes up and down. Because yeah, I love doing martial arts and I want to train, but I got to have this meeting with the accountant. I got to do this. I got to do this. I got to do this.

So if you let your passion pay the bills, if you look at everything you're doing on the backend, people are literally … And it won't happen every single time, but for us, it happens a lot. People walk in, they see the way we treat each other. They see the way we treat them. They see the way we treat our staff. They see the way we treat everybody else. And they literally walk back after their trial lesson or whatever and go, “Sign me up. I want to be a part of this.”

We will rarely say to people join with us and we'll make you a world champion or this and that. Join us and we'll just make you a better person. So I think getting back to that community thing again, it was never a business strategy.

And to be honest, if you really want to go to the roots of it, the previous style I did, which was fine and great, you'd turn up on a Tuesday night and you'd train and I'd be, okay, see you Thursday. You turn up on a Thursday night, and you train. Okay, see you next Tuesday. And that was it.

As soon as I started Zen Do Kai, you weren't just training with these people. You were part of their lives. You'd become family, you'd become their friends. And it was this community that I really went to, I really like this. I want to be a part of this. And it was the major, major thing.

And going back to when I raced BMX. I raced BMX. I rode skateboards. I think the last time I played a team sport was under 11 soccer and that was it. I'm done. Because I hated the fact that if I let somebody down that the team suffered.

But I say to people now all the time, martial arts is a team sport and we have this community. It's so interesting to watch a kid come and do a trial and the parent walks in and then they realize there's another parent there that they know and they come over and they start chatting like, “I didn't know you came here.” “Yeah, I do. We love it. This is great.”

They just walk over. Or a random parent will come over and just start saying to this parent, “Oh yeah, this place is really good. We love it here.” They're selling it for us.

Those community pages where people go looking for recommendations for martial arts, they're advertising for us. Yeah, it always blows me away. And it's very humbling. As I said, like everything, there are times we stray away a bit and we drink the Kool-Aid, so to speak.

And the bigger we get, the bigger referral base we get. So yeah. We have whole school groups. Like a school, we go there, oh, these kids all train there. It's just interesting. And in a way, it's quite humbling. It wasn't ever the expectation.

GEORGE: I love that. And no amount of advertising can fix or inspire that.

KYL: And I think that's the thing for us. We put a digital flyer for example up on our socials. We might get … I don't know. Half a dozen likes or whatever. We put up a picture, this is such and such, they came to us, they were so timid, they wouldn't speak blah, blah, blah. Now they're one of our assistant instructors.

That gains so much more traction. And I think getting back to one of the reasons why you think sometimes school owners have issues growing. I think one reason is we have to find a line between being proud of what we do. I would say probably a little bit arrogant. You're not the best. There is no definition of the best.

But also you have all these momentous achievements. I just saw the other day, a kid I trained as a six-year-old, friends with him on Facebook. He just turned 30. And you just go, oh my God. But I ran into that same kid about two or three months ago just at a shopping center.

And he brought up, “I remember when I was a kid, you did this and this and this and you made me do these pushups. And I always look back on that.” And you laugh. Oh, yeah. I have no idea what you're talking about.

But just that one interaction you had with him, they remember that for the rest of their lives. And I think that's the thing that we need to celebrate and we also need to be proud of.

But again … And I talked about it before, that Imposter Syndrome. Oh, if I put that up, am I going to seem like I'm really up myself? Am I going to seem like I really rate myself? You're not. And that's the thing. We get it very confused with being proud of what we've done and basically broadcasting.

If you've got a student who when they came to you were that nervous and had that much anxiety that they didn't want to stand on the mat and now they're standing out in front of the class taking a warmup of adults, celebrate that. Because a parent will read that.

GEORGE: That's huge.

KYL: Yeah. A parent will read that. They will talk to their partner and they will go, “That's where we send our kid.” And do you know what? Not every kid that comes in … There are kids that have come in and for whatever reason it just doesn't click. There's a lot to do. So I think that's something you need to make sure you're celebrating as well.

GEORGE: So with this, right … And you're very articulated with your words, and I'll bring something up here in a minute. But I notice your slogan is Back yourself. How did that originate and how does this blend in with this community aspect?

KYL: Now I feel like I need to lay out on a leather couch. I'm feeling in that sort of position. All right. Look, to be totally honest and vulnerable, probably about six and a half years ago, probably about six years ago, the club and myself personally went through quite a rough time.

And there was a lot of doubt in me and what I had achieved and what I had done. And again, as I said, I keep coming back to that imposter syndrome because I think any humble instructor has it. And a long story short, we had a lot of instances where I was just going, I don't think this is working. I don't know if we can actually keep doing this. Where is the end?

A mentor of mine who I value deeply, just basically said to me in a conversation, she said, “I think the problem is you just need to back yourself. You just need to go, I can do this. This is me. This is what we do and you need to back yourself.”

I didn't click into marketing mode straight away. I told a couple of people about the conversation. And then we were redesigning our T-shirts because prior to that we'd had a couple of other slogans, which was great. And they were awesome.

And I just said to someone, “I think I'm going to use this saying, back yourself.” And they just went, “That's brilliant.” And I said, “I think it covers everything.” And this is, again, it's not about … 

Another piece of advice for martial arts school owners. It sounds so contradictory, but if you really want to market yourself and your club, make sure that you market, that you're not just teaching martial arts, you're teaching kids how to be better at life and adults. But also market that you're not infallible, that you every day will stuff something up.

And I see that so much in higher-ranked martial artists and I think that's one thing we need to make sure we're doing. We need to back ourselves. I'm going to give this a go. It may not work, but we'll see what happens.

So yeah, the back yourself slogan. We did a new run. We rebranded a little bit about, I think nearly two years ago now. And I tossed up getting rid of the back yourself. And I even had all the proofs and everything done up for the new T-shirts and whatever. And then I just at the last minute went, “Nah, I'm going to keep it.”

So yeah, we've kept it. It's humbling now because we've probably got about half a dozen people that have got the CMA tattoos or the kanji and they've got that kanji logo and I don't. One of them has #BackYourself tattooed on him. And I just go, I guess it's a reminder. So yeah. It was just a conversation that just really struck home. I can't see us changing it anytime soon.

GEORGE: It's such two powerful words. And I never knew the depth of it. It's the kind of two words that are so simple, but then you've got to repeat it to yourself and ponder over it. Okay, back yourself. Well, there are so many layers to that.

Martial arts marketing Kyl Reber

KYL: There is. And I think that's the problem as coaches. If you really want to be a good coach, you need to show whoever it is you are coaching that you are not perfect either and you make mistakes. My students say from a jujitsu point of view, there are kids that are doing jujitsu with me, say 19-year-old, 20-year-old blue and purple belts.

So when they were born, I'd already been doing Jujitsu for two or three years. I've got a black belt in their early 40s, the same sort of thing. They're handfuls. So I could just stand in the background and just not roll with them. Or with my body …

And we've all got our share of issues when we get to this age. I still move around with them. They'll tap me out. My body will just go on a spot. But I'm showing them that I'm still willing to jump in and do what I can and still move.

Because one day those guys will be at an age where they're having to look at that and the vulnerability to be that sort of person that is training and moving no matter what.

Again, you've just got to back yourself. And you find your students will respect you more the more honest you are, not just with them, but the more honest you are with yourself. If your students can see that there are days where you don't want to go to training, there are days where the alarm goes off and you go, I don't want to do this.

I think that makes them respect you more because I think maybe sometimes we feel a need as coaches to put ourselves one or two rungs higher than our students. I feel the more that they can see that you're going through your own stuff and you're more upfront with it, I think that gives you a lot more respect.

GEORGE: Love that. 100%. So Kyl, last couple of things. Your social media.

KYL: Yes.

GEORGE: Anyone listening, if Kyl accepts your friend, of course, I highly recommend looking Kyl up. Kyl Reber on Facebook. Kyl's got this thing that he writes and he's really prolific about it. I'll give you a glimpse of it.

So every week Kyl does this thing, it's called things I've been reminded of this week. And so I'll give you a quick glimpse. This was two days ago here on the Sunshine Coast. And thanks again for inviting me over to your gathering.

KYL: My pleasure.

GEORGE: It was great to visit and be able to add a little bit of value on a Saturday night.

KYL: Yeah. It was great. Thank you.

GEORGE: Back to this. So this was two days ago. Things I've been reminded of this week. It was a massive week.

Number one, keep your faith larger than your fears. Two, the greats never get bored with the basics. Three, facta non verba, deeds, not words. Four, review your definition of discipline. It's not what you may think it is. Five, if you're everywhere you are nowhere. Very cool.

Six, a character is fate. Seven, there's always room for more dessert. Eight, just train. Nine, there's magic in a sunrise. 10, friendship over everything else. 11, a coffee and a comfy seat can always solve all the problems in the world. 12, how you do one thing is how you do everything. 13, always be in search of the truth. And then there's a really cool photo. That's at Alex Beach, right?

KYL: Yeah. There's that grass area just next to the surf club there. Yeah, that was at sunrise.

GEORGE: That's such a magical little area because every night everybody just sits on that lawn and it just … There's something pretty special about that.

KYL: It is.

GEORGE: But I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk about these posts. Personally, I feel it needs to be a book.

KYL: That's on the list.

GEORGE: Because I know you've got the time. But where do these come from? During the week are you just keeping notes of things? Are you just jotting things down? Because you're prolific about it. Every week you do this and it's always so well-articulated and impactful.

KYL: It's funny. I was the guy in high school that if there was a book report due, I'd try and watch the movie of the same book or I'd literally pay off a couple of schoolmates to plagiarize their stuff. Sorry, Mrs. Claridge, my year 12 English teacher.

But I do love writing and these days I read. I read every day as much as I can. Sometimes it's 10 minutes, sometimes it's an hour. About that time of the back yourself thing … Incident. I don't know what you call it. Philosophy was something that I just fell into.

In particular stoicism. I love reading about these ancient people 2000 years ago, like Marcus Aurelius. How stuff that they went through and 2000 years ago they were going through the same stuff we were going through. They were going through all the same problems. And the words that they're writing 2000 years ago are still important now.

And there'll just be also just little interactions. So the facta non verba, I've heard that before. And I was at a school that we will be starting martial arts classes with, and I was looking up on the wall in reception and I saw their school motto, facta non verba. And I went deeds, not words. So important.

And there'll be just interactions and conversations. I'm a big person these days that as much as sometimes it's easier said than done, you have to sit back and reflect and think. We live in a society now where we move at four million miles an hour. We have something in our hand or in front of us literally every minute we're awake. We don't just sit and think and chill out.

I started that things I've been reminded of this week, I started that probably the better part of two years ago. I just wrote it for just something to do on a Sunday. I didn't intend for it to be an end-of-the-week thing. And it has just stuck.

And it is now, it's a weekly thing to the point where a friend of mine who runs a community radio station in Victoria, reads them every Monday morning on his breakfast slot. I have people messaging me if I haven't put them up by 7:00 at night going, “Where are they? Have you forgotten?”

So yeah. I think sometimes it's not that we overthink or we assess ourselves too much, but getting back to that vulnerability thing, I think if we really want to grow as people, as coaches, as martial artists, as business people, if you're not checking yourself in and learning something more about yourself or what's around you every day, what's the saying?

You can't teach an old dog new tricks. Maybe you can. You have a chat with someone who says … Someone will say, “That person is so set in their ways.” They're referring to older people, not younger people. So I think it's good to sit back and reflect. And I've had a lot of good feedback about it to the point where I wouldn't say I feel obligated, but I go, this is a thing.

And yeah, another mentor of mine is getting very pushy with me saying, “You need to put these into a book.” So I am mucking around with a format of that. But yeah, it's cool. It's just something that I just enjoy doing.

GEORGE: Love it. When is the release date?

KYL: Oh God. 2037 or something. On my 60th birthday. I don't know. Sooner rather than later I hope.

GEORGE: Hey Kyl, it's been awesome. Thanks so much. Always a pleasure talking to you. Always insightful. I know you also have a podcast. Do you mind sharing? If it's launched and up and running, where can people find it and where can people learn more about you if they want to connect with you?

KYL: Yeah, sure. So the podcast will be out probably a couple of weeks soon. And it'll just be the Kyl Reber Podcast. On the business side of things, if you want to follow us on Facebook, it's just CMA, Chikara Martial Arts. Our Instagram tag would you believe is @JustBackYourself. Weird. And mine is @KylReber. K-Y-L, no E, R-E-B-E-R.

GEORGE: Love it. Awesome.

KYL: Awesome.

GEORGE: Thanks so much, Kyl.

KYL: Yeah, George, thank you very much. Thank you very much for the opportunity.

GEORGE: You're welcome.

KYL: See you mate.

GEORGE: Epic. How was that? Did you enjoy the episode? Did you get some good value out of it? Most importantly, is there one thing, one thing from this interview that you can take and implement in your business and go make an impact within your community?

Now, please do me a favor. If you got something great from this interview, please share it. Share it with another instructor, another martial arts school owner, or somebody that you know within the martial arts community who would get great value from this. And be so kind as to tag me wherever you do it on social and I'll be forever thankful for you doing it.

Now, if you do need some help growing your martial arts school or you're just looking for some ideas to fast-track your success, we have a great group of school owners that we work with called Partners.

It's a community of martial arts school owners here in Australia, the United States, Canada, the UK, Ireland, and New Zealand. So from all over the world we get together on a weekly basis, mastermind. We run events. A couple of cool things.

Now, if it sounds remotely intriguing and there are a few things that you need help with, reach out. Go to martialartsmedia.com/scale. There's a little form. Fill it out. Just tell me a little bit about your business, and what's going on. The few things that you need help with.

And I'll reach out and have a chat and see if there's something that we can help you with. Anyway, thanks a lot for listening. Thanks for tuning in and I'll see you in the next episode. Cheers.


*Need help growing your martial arts school? Start Here.

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109 – Tripling Your Student Base In 2 Years With 100% Karate

Last time we spoke with Cheyne McMahon, he had just gone full time with 110 students when his dojo got flooded. Today, he has 340 students and is thriving as a Karate-only school.

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IN THIS EPISODE:

  • How action takers work and think differently
  • The pay off of investing in your instructors
  • 100% Karate! Cheyne’s growth from 110 students to 340 students
  • Do this to motivate your white belts
  • And more

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

 

TRANSCRIPTION

As soon as I see the value in it, I'll do it straightaway, whether that's good or bad sometimes, but at the moment, everything I do is working out pretty well.

GEORGE: Hey, George Fourie here. Welcome to another Martial Arts Media business podcast episode. We're on episode 109 and chatting today to a good friend and a repeat guest, Cheyne McMahon. Good day, Cheyne.

CHEYNE: Hey, how are you? 

GEORGE: Good, good, good. So, been a while. Well, I'd say it's been a while since we spoke on the podcast, I was actually checking back and we spoke on episode number 74. Actually back in March 2019, so, depending when you're listening to this, close to the two year mark on doing this again. 

So, I wanted to chat again, really to document his journey, because it's been a long journey. We'll go a bit more into the details, but you can check out podcast number 74 for a bit more of the background – the first time we met, how we got started working together, and your dojo was flooded, wasn't it?

CHEYNE: Yeah, still remember that one like it was yesterday? Yeah.

GEORGE: Flooded dojo, we started working together, did a couple of cool things, and worked out well, you jumped up to 185 students. That was in December. Well, in February, so that was a couple of months later, shot to 200. I'll be prompting you to get that 300, you hit 300 students at the time of recording this. Well, last week, he said you were 325. This week you're at?

CHEYNE: Yeah, that's 348 students.

GEORGE: Just from the sidelines, and I'm going to hand it all over to Cheyne, but you know, one thing I admire about Cheyne is just relentless work ethic. You know, whenever we chat on a Zoom call or something, we chat about something, Cheyne goes quiet, and then he's like, “yep, it's done, it's sent”. 

And so, he's just a religious action taker, we can almost stop the podcast there if you want to get the value out of something and Cheyne's journey on how he progresses so fast, is just taking action all the time. It's probably a good place to start, right? Because what got you to that? What is it that prompts you to take action quickly? Is that something that came from, you know, from childhood? Or is it the discipline of karate? What's got you to that?

CHEYNE: Yeah, I think that that's just sort of my personality. I just want to, I just want to see the value in it, and I’ll just do it straightaway. Just like setting up Calendly. Last week, we were talking about it, as soon as I see the value in it, I'll do it straightaway. Whether that's good or bad sometimes, but at the moment, everything I do is working out pretty well. Some things don't work. But so far it's been it's been pretty good.

GEORGE: Yeah, I can't recall who shared this exactly. I think Elon Musk shared something similar, that the person who makes the most business decisions wins and in context, and I'm probably butchering this, but the overall story is, if you make 100 decisions a week or day, and 50 of them fail, then you still made 50 decisions in the right direction. The problem is when you overanalyze and you sit back, and you make 10 decisions, and still, 50% ratio, five of them fail. 

So, now you've made five steps in the right direction, versus 50. So either, you know, when we, when we think we are doing the wrong things, doing just many things all the time and making decisions rapidly, actually goes a bit further at the end of the day.

CHEYNE: You know, it's not like I'm making rash decisions on the spot that's going to impact my cash flow or my life in a massive way. But just little things that I see that are much better, I'll just change like that. But changing a timetable or a schedule, something like that? You need to sit down and figure that one out. There can't be just, you know, off the top.

GEORGE: Cool. So, look. So, I guess building on our conversation last time, yeah, you know, we chat every week, we get on our Partners group, we jump on calls and so forth. You know, your journey has been, it's gone from one thing to the other and improved, and then we had COVID, obviously, and that threw a curveball for everyone. But I mean, you've bounced right back, and things are moving. What's been working well for you? Let's just start with that.

CHEYNE: Yeah. Well, so, yeah, COVID hit. Like everybody we had to shut down and teach online classes. But, from that, we've actually incorporated a couple of things from the Zoom platform that we use. So, every class now is, is streamed live on our Zoom channel, or a Zoom link. So, that's been really great, because we've got people in, we've got another dojo. 

So, I'm in Brisbane, we have another dojo in Sydney, and so the instructors there can actually watch what we're doing. I've been recording some segments or sections of the class, and uploading them onto our YouTube channel, where the instructors can actually watch some of the drills that we've been doing, and then make sure, you know, we're all in sync on how we teach a particular technique, or kata, or whatever we're doing. So, that's been really good. When Zoom hit, we could, sorry, not Zoom. When COVID hit.

So, we could only have a certain amount of parents or people in the dojo when we could resume classes. So, we only let the juniors in, no parents. And since then, the behavior of the kids has been fantastic. So, there's no background noise, there's no distractions. It was purely instructors and kids. So, since then, we've taken away the waiting area and don't allow parents inside while the class is on. 

So, before and after, yep, but during the class, no. But if the parents want to watch, they can watch it on our Zoom link, which is always on, with the Zoom, we change the password every month, just for security. So, if we have someone who stops training, then they won't be able to watch the training from home. So, there are just a couple of things that have made us better since COVID.

GEORGE: Great, so now, you just don't let parents in, and parents, just become accustomed to, really took advantage of the fact that they can't sit around, and it's turned out for the better.

CHEYNE: Well, yeah, it's turned out better for the coffee shop next door to us too.

GEORGE: Right?

CHEYNE: Yeah, look. So, the parents know that they're not allowed, it's not that they're not allowed inside, just not during the class. So, they come in, drop their, especially when their kids are new. They bring their kids in, the kids sign themselves in and then the parents, either sit in their car or go for a walk. Some, if there's a partner, some will just go for a picnic. There's a pub across the road too, so, I'm sure a couple of sneaky people go there for a few quiet ones.

GEORGE: Cool. So, on that, I mean, we're talking about changes. So, you made that adjustment. That's been really good. What else do you do, I guess, do that's different? And maybe what things that you don't do, that normal schools might not be doing well?

CHEYNE: Something different that we do since I last spoke to you in the podcast. So, we've got a junior leader team and we also have an instructor's team, so, constantly developing instructors to assist in the class, as well as take their own class. Not so much the junior leaders, juniors are there to assist in the class – bow the kids in, show the kids what to do, where to go when they first start, and also set up any equipment. 

But as far as karate goes, what we do differently, I suppose is black belt is only just the beginning for us. We've got lots of second, third, fourth, fifth dans that train with us. There's something after black – you don't need to be an instructor. So, we've got, yeah, we also teach kobudo, which is weapons, to black belts and above. And karate, I suppose what we teach is Koshinkan Karate, which means old and new Karate, the school of the old and new. So we teach old style karate from Kinjo Hiroshi and Kazuya Mitani in Japan.

We also teach modern sports-style karate, for WKF style. So, we have different silvers for kids to adults. So with the kids, we teach modern sports, safe karate. For the adults, and why we have so many adults and why we keep so many adults, is we teach practical karate, practical self-defense, which has joint locks, throws, vital point strikes, weapons, grappling, all of those fun things that you can't teach the kids. 

That's what can make us different to most other karate buffs is that ability to be able to teach both. So, the same principles that we use in our sports karate, apply in our traditional, original karate. That's one of the things that make us a little bit different. And we're all about karate. So karate, karate, karate – we don't have to teach any kickboxing classes, any fitness kickboxing or fitness-cardio karate. 

We don't do birthday parties, we do social events, but it has nothing to do with karate, that's building a community. But yes, we don't have to supplement our classes in having another martial art here. We don't teach Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, or kickboxing or Muay Thai in our space. It's only karate.

GEORGE: And why is that important to you? Because I know you really love karate. I know that, and obviously, you know, we all love our styles and know our styles can be a bit biased. But I know you've got such an in-depth history of it coming through the family, we could probably talk about that – your dad, Bob, had started out the business what, a good 30, 35 years ago?

CHEYNE: 31 years ago, yeah, the Australian Karate Academy, but he started teaching in 1972. So, he was one of the first to teach kids in Australia. This is before the craze of The Karate Kid. But that's a whole other story. Yeah, I just love karate. There are so many more things that we are starting to learn more about the history of karate, things like the Japanese influence into Okinawan martial arts, and the Chinese influence into Okinawan martial arts. 

Cheyne McMahon Karate Business

Those things are being discovered now through guys that live in Japan and live in Okinawa, or live in Germany or live in America. So yeah, there's still more and more and more things that we're learning about the development of karate, how it came about. So that keeps me, you know, really interested. There's a competition side, which, which I like as well, and I did compete for a long time. 

But now my focus is more on developing some of my athletes, and also developing our understanding of karate, getting back to the older style of karate, less kids karate, and more, you know, genuine, old style, real original, dento karate. I started when I was four and every job, everything I've ever done in my life, almost everything is key around karate. My holidays based on karate, where I go, the countries I visited have all been basically built around karate. 

GEORGE: I love that. Even though you're building a business, you're not deviating from your passion at all, you really just want to stay on the path. And so I want to play the opposite of that – is, do you see it, like, do you see it beneficial to have a different style for you? Or will it completely just sidetrack you from your passion and your focus of karate?

CHEYNE: Well, one of the things that we do is a two-week trial. So everybody, it doesn't matter if you've done karate before, everybody completes a two-week trial. If Little Johnny is a bad seed, then someone within the two weeks will ask him not to come back or if he's disrupting the class, if he's there to have fun and not learn karate, then we won't accept him into our club. 

Sometimes we stop enrollments, if the class is too full, we'll stop enrollments, and then we'll take enrollments for when there is space available in the class. So, that's one of the things that I do to ensure that what we're teaching is what I want to teach. You know, there are some karate or martial art schools that want as many as they can. 

Look, I want many too, you know, I want to teach quality karate to many people, but I'm not going to take people who aren't there to learn karate. Learning my karate, our style of karate, that's first and foremost, not 1500 students or a million dollars. It's karate first, business second. How can I say, but a business is a very close second sometimes.

GEORGE: Yeah, of course. I mean, it's the business that allows you to have the passion, and well, to live your passion, right? Because without that income supplying for it, then you don't want to be a struggling instructor as well, that, you know, you've got to go to work the day job and then put money in here, and then your life becomes complicated.

CHEYNE: Well, yeah, done that. So, now all my focus is karate, whereas before, maybe 30% karate, 70% work. So now, you know, I understand that some only want karate for the second or third or fourth part of their life, but for me, it is 100% part of my life. So, I can teach as many people as I can, the karate that I've, you know, spent 35 years developing and, yeah, the more the merrier in as long as their drive is also karate and not, you know, being silly.

And I think, you know, we've had to ask some people not to come back, you know, whether they're white belt or brown belt or black belt.

GEORGE: How do you approach that? And what are sort of your, what are your benchmark values that you stick by? And if somebody crosses that line, they're out the door? What is that line? How does that line look?

CHEYNE: Well, for kids, it's quite easy. You can, I can see, mostly the parents pull them out, because they can see, you know, little Johnny is there for the games, not, not the karate. So while we have fun in karate, karate is not itself fun. It's hard work. It's repetitive, it's tiring, it's not games. So, with the kids, the majority of the class, 80% of the class is karate, bang-bang-bang-punch-punch-punch-move-move-move. 20% is fun for the kids, because you still have, they're still kids, you still have to give the kids high fives and positive reinforcement. 

You're not just teaching karate, you're also impacting the person's life, on how they deal with individual sport. They're learning values there on hard work and reward, whereas team sport's different. So, the individual activity or school sport, you still need to give positive reinforcement, positive views, to especially kids, especially kids' high fives, man, we give so many high fives. So, what was the question?

GEORGE: I don't know. But I have another one. And the question is, how do you know you cross? Sorry, the question was, how do you know if you cross the line? My follow-up question was on that, if you don't classify karate as a sport, what do you classify it as that? 

But back to the first question on the values. So, what is sort of your values, a benchmark of the line? And you mentioned, if they cross the line on, you know, they're just there for fun and games, that's easy. What else? What else is sort of really important for like, go-to rules or values that have got to be abided by?

CHEYNE: If they're not a positive influence into the dojo, you know, if they're constantly talking or draining other people as well, distracting other people from their own learning, being a bad partner. That is a big one. Especially in our adult classes, 90% of an adult class is partner work. It's not up and down drills, it's partner work. 

Also, karate is practice at home by yourself, practice at the dojo with Partners. I think modern karate has it reversed – it's 90% of solo practice at the dojo, which should really be 90% partner work, but anyway. So, you need to be a good partner, a partner that your partner wants to train with. If they don't want to train with you, then I will have a word with you. Especially with the adults and the kids as well. If you are, you know, an annoying kid whose elbows go out, then you know, you will get a warning. There are things that we look for – genuinely nice people, people that you want to hang out with.

GEORGE: Yeah. So if you can invite them over to your home, that's a good sign. And if you cringe at that idea, it is probably a bad idea.

CHEYNE: Yeah, nobody comes to my house, though.

GEORGE: No, of course not. So, on clarifying karate, you mentioned that you don't clarify karate as a sport. What do you clarify karate as?

CHEYNE: Well, I think there's sporting elements in karate, for sure. Especially modern karate, anything from 1936 onwards, I would probably classify that as a sports karate, where the intention are the activities to build strength and muscle and speed in a competitive environment. 

So, I would consider karate to be a self-defense program, whether that's weapons, or empty hands for lack of a better word. I consider karate to be first a combat system, self-defense, for sure, rather than a sport. I don't like the idea of karate as a sport because it takes away the like, how lethal some of the techniques are, and the intention of the techniques, you know, piercing somebody's eyes, for example, groin ups. You can't do that in any sport, but you can do that in karate. So, in that light, karate is considered as a sport, I think it waters down the original intention of karate.

GEORGE: Gotcha. So, okay to be used as a sport, but when the sport becomes the focus, then everything starts to deteriorate.

CHEYNE: Yeah, yeah, I mean, there is sports karate, and that's fine. That's just not, not what I like, you know, I don't like I didn't like the emphasis just on the sporting events. Yeah, I mean, everybody's got their own tastes, and how they compete as well for a long time. And we have competitors, but 90% of the people that join my dojo or join a dojo is to learn self-defense, not to compete for Australia at the Olympics. I think a lot of dojo do a disservice by not teaching proper self-defense. 

You know, they teach modern Japanese karate where they move up and down the floors, doing 50 punches and upper walls and roundhouse kicks – they are absolutely of no use to do any, for any self-defense. So, if you're advertising for sports karate, then yeah, go for it, but they all advertise self-defense karate, and I think I think they're lying. 

GEORGE: Gotcha. Okay. Want to talk a bit more about that – that's cool. I'm having to go there. Like, I mean, if there's things that are completely against your point of view, and this is a podcast, right, we have open discussion. I've never put two martial artists together that actually agree on the same point. It's rare, of course, but hey, but that's what makes it beautiful, right?

There's diversity in opinion and its styles and everything else. But I like exploring what really pisses you off about it? You know? Maybe I've never asked that question what really pisses you off about, you know, in the industry or about different marketing or programs. It's time to let it out, Shane, it's your time to let it out right here.

CHEYNE: What annoys me is when I see people, yeah, advertising for self-defense, and all they are doing is what we call 3K karate. So, Katoki E-Kumite. It's karate that was developed for schoolchildren 100 years ago they're teaching as self-defense. That karate is originally for school kids – attacks to the eyes became punches to the body. Joint locks were taken out because they weren't safe for kids, of course, throws gone, all of the wrap on the close-in self-defense, or the self-preservation, the really dirty karate, the dirty side of, of combat was taken out to teach to children. 

And I appreciate that, and that's what we teach to kids. But people teaching that to adults, and calling it self-defense, or calling it traditional karate? It's not – it is modern, watered down children's karate, and that annoys me. What makes my dad different is in the 80s, he kept asking questions.

Why? Why are we punting to the body? What is it? What is the original ideal? Why? Why, why, why? So, he started researching and talking to people outside of Queensland, outside of Australia, started getting answers. Whereas people are still doing the same thing as their instructor did years ago, without questioning why.

You are just teaching ‘that's how my instructor taught us'. Well, your instructor learnt sports, modern sports, and children’s karate. And they're trying to adapt it to self-defense, and you can't, you can't unless you peel back the layers and understand the original intention of the technique. The original intention of why, why a block to the body became, should have really been a block to the face. You know, fingers to the eyes became punches to the body. Head butts, all of the really cool things that all of the Krav-Maga, self-defense experts are taught. 

But really, people aren't teaching that in karate. Not everybody – there are some, definitely. There's a deep growing list of people who are doing it. But we've been doing it for 30 years, and then people come here. Yeah. That grinds my gears.

GEORGE: That's great. Anything else that you need to do you need to share?

CHEYNE: Nah, I'm okay for now. 

GEORGE: Cool. All right, great. Perfect. Let's change gears just a little bit. Right? And get back to, get back to your business.

CHEYNE: So positive.

GEORGE: All right, yeah. We either gained a lot of listeners there, or lost a few. But that's, that's great, either way. So, just back on your business, right? So I mean, lots of change, two years. I mean, if you look at two years, right, two years, and going from 110 students to 340. 

So that's tripling your business in three years. I think it's important to always sometimes look at that, right? Because, you know, everybody wants, maybe some people want a bigger school, some people don't, some people want a good, thriving business, but want to stick to their core values of karate, or whatever your style might be. So, tripling your business in two years, man, well done. 

CHEYNE: Thank you!

GEORGE: Well done. What do you do differently now, than you did back when you were around 100 students?

Cheyne McMahon Karate Business

CHEYNE: How I schedule the classes are different, the layout of the classes. I want everybody at the end of the class to be sweating and smiling. Actually, I heard that of somebody, I can't remember if it was a couple, maybe a year and a half ago, and when it just clicked with me, sweating and smiling at the end, whether you're a four year-old, or an 84 year-old, you know that should be the emphasis when they're leaving the class. So, how we structure the classes are a little bit different. 

So, we do like, at the end, it's got to be not a hard workout, but something physical – back, punch, punching for the kids. Running, running, running, punching, punching, punching. In the middle of the class is the core basis of the lesson. Whether we're doing Kata or Qian for kids or e-Kumite or break falls or whatever that we're doing in the class, that's the cool part, the end of the class has got to be fun and fitness. So, that's one aspect. 

Another aspect that we do differently is how we schedule appointments with people. So, when somebody inquires, we book an appointment through an app, they come in, I run them through exactly how the classes run, the fees, how much the fees are, what's expected of them as members, how the gradings work, any extra money that they might have to pay for at some stage, the belt system, everything that they will need to know for the next 10 years of learning. There's different instructors, you know, more instructors, more instructors, you just cannot have enough instructors. 

If you think you have enough instructors, you need more, you need to be developing instructors. So, we've got a group of four or five middle grade adults that are just learning how to teach karate, not to, they're not out there teaching classes, but they're taking little five minute segments of a couple of people learning how to teach karate, so I identify them as future instructors. Everything organized like, man, I've never been so organized in my life. 

We have a 12-month calendar (that you helped me with) set up, so all the gradings are set. They know when the color gradings are, when the black belt gradings are on, you know, a competition tournament for them to be on, they know when we're running marketing, massively marketing, a budget and marketing windows at two weeks before school holidays, and then a week after school holidays. Everything is all set out. It's all ready to go. We've got a calendar that I'm constantly looking at and being organized. That's one of my buzzwords, organized. 

Yeah, so all of those things, we just have systems in place where I don't have to be at the dojo every day, or instructors that can take the classes, you know, come in and just do a couple of admin stuff. You know, just setting everything up. It took a while, but the dojo is running really smooth, really smooth at the moment. That's a big difference. Everything is organized. A Christmas party we had last year, I think by booking in August, so we already had everything organized. The Christmas party, all we had to do was just turn up, was all paid for, organized, food. We had a 180-something turnout for the Christmas party. And yeah, just those things – gradings, everybody logs on for the grading. 

So, we use an app where people pay for the grading as well. So, the two days before the grading, it stops. You can't book after the grading because I've got to organize belts. But people pay for the grading and they book themselves in for the grading. So, then I just have a look to see who's in the grading. So, having that just makes it a lot easier. Rather than constantly emailing Johnny – ‘Hey, Johnny, are you coming to the grading?' If Johnny's not registered, Johnny's not grading.

GEORGE: Great, yeah, I think, you know, one thing that I think could help anyone because it's sometimes when you go into growth mode, you're very ad-hoc, and you're very reactive, and you're doing whatever you can to just get to a point. But then when you start refining, one thing that's really helped me, is having that sort of marketing that you mentioned that we helped you with, is that marketing calendar. Thinking is hard, and it is, that's why most people just don't think, right? Because it's a hard thing to do. 

But if you know, you're going to have to plan this year, and you just you do the thinking once  and you map out what needs to be done, then now you're just getting on the train tracks and you're kind of, you know, on the treadmill, just running, just doing what you worked out what was the best plan. 

Obviously, things are going to come up and you're going to have to shuffle a few days here and there, but at least you got your core plan 80% done. And, you know, you know what needs to happen next. And that's how you get ahead of the game and you're not running, you know, two days before Mother's Day trying to figure out, ‘All right, well, what can I be doing? What? What's happening? What promotion's going out?'

CHEYNE: That's right. Yeah. And having a budget for those things as well, for the marketing plan, rather than having to scramble for a couple of 1000 bucks or ‘I can only spend 200 bucks', having that everything all mapped out Mother's Day, Father's Day, Valentine's Day, a show day or whatever you want to call it, Christmas, all those things all mapped out very easy. What worked well last year, and what didn't work well?

GEORGE: Cool. So, two last things I want to ask, you know, with your growth, you know, yep, marketing and so forth, but there's obviously a lot of retention, that's working. And so first up, quick chat just about what, what's keeping your students coming back?

CHEYNE: Well, one thing we brought in – is the after chat and the white belt grading. So, this has been really good. So, white belts after a certain amount of time, will get an email, maybe four weeks, or once they've done the trial, and it became a full member, and they'll get an email to come to a white belt only grading. So, it's a grading only for white belts. 

So, we did one on the weekend, we had five kids and three adults. So, it's only 20 minutes, half an hour. And I plan it on a Saturday after the normal classes, I'm already there. And it's just a little intro into how the gradings work. So, they go from white belt up to the first grade. Still, it's almost a half grade, semi-grade, to keep them motivated to come to the next grade. And that way, they're not going to be overawed when they come to the next grade and they already know what the process is. 

So, we talk a little bit about what to expect in the grading. So, that retention has been fantastic. So, bringing that in, for our adults, for the class, the first hour is all grades, and then the next half hour is 7th Kyu and above, which is about nine months of training. So, after about nine months to a year of training, you can come into the advanced class as well. So, those beginners can see the progression to artists, what I want to do, I want to start aspiring, I want to start learning with weapons. I want to start doing more Kata. 

So yeah, those retention tools have been really good for us. And also instructors, instructors, instructors, instructors. Just can't have enough, honestly, like, you can't do it all yourself. And that is why I failed at my you know, my last, not last day job, but so when I was like, 10 years ago, when I was teaching full time as well. I tried to do it all myself, you know, I was doing 30 classes, and it's killing yourself. So, you need other instructors, you need to train them and train them well. So, they're fantastic retention tools, because they are there talking to people. And they're another face of the dojo.

GEORGE: Yeah, and I guess I want to highlight this, because I recall a conversation where this was a big obstacle, because as we're talking about your passion for karate, that comes with a whole new expectation. And I recall, there was a time where it was really hard for you to let go of that, because it's very hard to match your standard, and pretty hard to match your standard means that instructors have a big role to fill, big shoes to go step into. And so, if anybody is struggling with that, what was sort of the point where you decided, well, I've got to let go?

CHEYNE: Well, it's the only way to grow the club, realistically. I took a step back and realized, ‘oh, I want to teach the instructors, I want to teach the teachers'. So, I would love dojo all around Australia, where I just teach the instructors. That would be my goal. So then, the more instructors you can teach, the more students they can teach and the more my karate style lineage, whatever you want to call it, is being learned. But yeah, you know, a big wake up was when I didn't want to go to teach. I realized I need other people to teach me. 

So all of our instructors are adult instructors, or instructors who are adults, not those who just teach adults, but we've got three instructors for our kids program. And I don't have to be there. I don't have to go to the dojo, I don't have to teach them, because they already know what to do. They're all black belts, all Queensland champions, or they've represented Queensland in sports karate.

And they're all uni students, the adult instructors, some family members, which is fantastic, but apart from them, we've got two nidan, two second dan, one fifth dan, third dan, and a couple of shodan, first of all black belts, who are assistant instructors. This Friday night we're doing instructors course, yeah. You just can't do it all yourself.

So, I didn't let go. I just made sure that what they're teaching is what I would teach. So, everything is structured, and there is some individuality into what you teach, because everybody is different. I'm different from my dad, same jokes, but, you know, my karate might be a little bit newer than my dad's karate. But that's just because of, you know, I'm around a different sort of group than my dad was.

So, there is individuality in the class and what and how they teach it, but the technique, the kind of, the principles, how we move, how we kick, every punch, you know, how we throw, how we put a joint lock on, they're all the same. They're all the same. Just how you deliver it might be a little bit different. Their jokes might not be as good as mine.

GEORGE: Of course not. How could they?

CHEYNE: The punchline, the timing. 

GEORGE: Exactly. So, on that, you touched on goals. And so, what is the big vision for Australian Karate Academy?

CHEYNE: Well, during the 90s, my dad had 30, that's 30 clubs around Australia. I would like to have 31.

GEORGE: Just because competitiveness, is that right?

CHEYNE: So, you know, a lot of people were drawn to my dad, because he started teaching different aspects of karate, throws, and cooler weapons. All of these things were unknown in the 80s, early 90s, and my dad had already started doing it and teaching. So, we had a lot of people join us from different clubs, they might have a little club, and they joined, they needed some direction on, one, how to teach karate. 

You know, what to pick in karate, how to get back to what you wanted to teach people. There were a lot of clubs that didn't really know what to do, they were just teaching what they did when they learnt. So, I'd like to do, to build, and to help build more clubs. Using this, using our karate and the same marketing approach, the same idea that helped us grow. But still teaching quality karate. You know, that is my number one, teaching quality karate. And so yeah, 31 clubs, 2000 members.

GEORGE: Love it. So, if anybody wants to jump on that journey with you, how would they reach out to you?

CHEYNE: Yeah, Facebook, there's only one Shane McMahon with the c, h, e, y, n, e, so you don't have to look anywhere else. Just type in Cheyne McMahon and on Facebook, or you can jump to our Facebook page, which is Australian Karate Academy. And yeah, or shoot me an email, australiankarateacademy@gmail.com, very easy to find.

GEORGE: Love it. Well, we won't link your email address on the podcast, just because I don't think you want to purchase more Gis and more things from foreign countries. So, we'll skip that, but right, so, easy to find, Cheyne McMahon on Facebook. Cheyne, always great chatting to you, love watching your journey from the sideline and I think we need to chat a little sooner than two years, again? 

CHEYNE: Yeah! 

GEORGE: I'd say, what's the next benchmark for you? You said at the beginning of the year, 400? But I think you wanted students, but I think you're almost going to be there real soon. What's the big benchmark?

CHEYNE: Second dojo, in Brisbane next year. I think we're going to get to a point in our current dojo where we can teach or where I want to teach, you know, I don't want 800 in a 101 class teaching shit karate. Or karate, you know, I don't want that. So I think at this, my current location, 400, 450 would be a good amount, a manageable amount. 

So whether I set up the timetable, we still have, we still have extra room for more classes, more classes. And we've actually expanded since I last spoke to you too – we've taken another 50 square meters and we're hopefully taking another 35 square meters, just to open up the verge a bit more. Yeah, so that's the second dojo in Brisbane, where I can actually, that rule, we need to open two extras. Then we have three dojo. Right? You're talking about, what, that rule, George?

GEORGE: Yes. That was Robert DePalma that said that.

CHEYNE: Yeah, so you need, so no, extra two dojo in Brisbane. So, we have a dojo in Sydney, we just opened a second dojo in Sydney as well.

GEORGE: Perfect. So depending on when you're listening to this, we'll chat in 10 months from now. And we'll have a look at how that's going. No pressure. Well, pressure has been good for you. So, pressure.

CHEYNE: I'll just do it.

GEORGE: Just do it. There we go.

Cool. Cheyne, thanks so much for showing up. I'll catch you on the next one.

 

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

1. Join the Martial Arts Media™ community.

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

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

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

3. Work with me and my team privately.

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

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

***NEW*** Now available on Spotify!

Podcast Sponsored by Martial Arts Media™ Partners

108 – 4 Steps To Moving Your Martial Arts Business Into Momentum

As entrepreneurs we can be our own enemy and sometimes sabotage our own progress. Here’s how to get out of your own way and make progress in your martial arts business.

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IN THIS EPISODE:

  • How to get a clear game plan for your martial arts business
  • Hitting your marketing goals faster
  • Pushing through comfort zones
  • And more

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

 

TRANSCRIPTION

If it's uncomfortable, there's got to be something behind that, right? And how do we go about fixing that? Does that mean it's something that I've got to fix internally? Or do I need to get advice or help from someone that knows how to navigate through that?

Hey, George here, hope you're well. So, do you often get in your own way trying to get to where you want to go? Let me get some context. First up, whenever we want to go into a new direction or we set some big goals, maybe you hire a coach, or you try and get help. 

So you set this big goal and you want to achieve this thing. More often, we are the ones that sort of get into our own way and resist to go into the new direction. 

So, what got me thinking of this, we've got what we call a Game Plan session. Every time we start working with new school owners, we do a Game Plan session, and it’s all about how do we set the big vision, not just the, “yep, I want those extra students, you know, that's going to get me to X”. 

But, what is the big vision that you actually had when you thought of starting this business? So, big vision, 12 month goals, and then projects and what you got to get done next week. So, it's a great session, and almost everyone that we work with, refer to this session as sort of a pivotal point – as it gives them clarity and knowing the path that they need to go to get to where they want to go. 

But, that's all good – now the session is done. And that's where the problems come up, because you've done the session, but now you actually got to do the things that are going to get you to where you want to go. 

And that means that you're going into a new territory – and new territory brings up anxiety. If you look at four stages of getting to where you want to go – first up, is acknowledging that there's a problem that needs fixing, that's the easy part. 

Well, it can and can't be – you got to obviously reflect and look at what is the actual problem. And sometimes, you know, and sometimes you don't, you know, you might just have a problem, well, “hey, we need to get more students”, you know, that's the big overall problem. 

But deeper inside, there could be other things going on – your belief system about selling, or how you feel about selling, or maybe you're getting tons of leads, but you're just struggling on the conversion part. So, there's always going to be layers to where the problem lies, and that's where coaching can really help. 

First up, there's a problem, you acknowledge that you got a problem. Now, the second part, and the third, and the fourth is not so much spoken about? Well, the second part mostly, and that is the anxiety that comes up of having to do a new thing. 

The anxiety of, “alright, well, I've acknowledged I've got a problem, but now I'm going to actually do something about it”. And so that means you got to break habits, and you got to look at things differently. And, number three, you've got to accept a new solution, a new way of doing things. And that's where a lot of discomfort comes, because, as human creatures, we want to stay in our comfort zone, we don't really as a race want to venture into the discomfort – you know, naturally we're looking for comfort. 

So, moving from anxiety to new solutions – that pushes us out of our comfort zone. And this is where I see a lot of obstacles come up, right, because you fight like hell to stay in your comfort zone. 

And now, you've got the plan, you've got the solution, but it's bringing so much anxiety that you're not showing up to the calls or you're avoiding the contact or not replying to messages, because you're busy, but you're busy on stuff that's not helping your business grow forward. You're kind of just spinning your wheels. 

And then number four is the most important. Well, you know, once you've actually accepted this new way of doing things that's going to get you to where you want to go. Now, you got to actually make it a habit, and you got to actually enforce the habit to get it going. 

So, what can you get out from that? Well, I guess we can all reflect – where are we uncomfortable? Where are we uncomfortable in our business, and what are we doing about it? 

For me, I really try and well, if it's uncomfortable, there's got to be something behind that, right? And how do we go about fixing that? Does that mean it's something that I've got to fix internally? Or do I need to get advice or help from someone that knows how to navigate through that? 

Anyway, hope that's helpful. I'll see you in the next video. Cheers.

 

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

1. Join the Martial Arts Media™ community.

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

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

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

3. Work with me and my team privately.

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

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

***NEW*** Now available on Spotify!

Podcast Sponsored by Martial Arts Media™ Partners

34 – Need More Martial Arts Students? These 2 Free Resources Might Help

Get access to a free martial arts business case study and a online workshop to attract the right students.

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

 

TRANSCRIPTION 

Hi, this is George Fourie from martiaartsmedia.com. This week, I have an awesome announcement for you, and it comes with two awesome gifts that are going to help you grow your martial arts business, especially on the internet.

Gift number 1: gift number 1 is an eleven-page case study that I did about a campaign that we ran in December with Paul Veldman, which generated 96 paid trial sign ups, within the two weeks. Now, I said it with caution, because I'm not giving this case study to you with the expectation that you're going to generate that, but there are core components and strategies recorded in this case study that is going to reveal how you can apply these same strategies to campaigns that you are doing and possibly, if you get 20 or 30 or 40 extra sign ups through the process, it will definitely be worth it and it's gold.

Martial Arts Paid Trial - Paul VeldmanIt's free, you can download it right now at martialartsmedia.com/casestudy and this breaks down just different components, different triggers that you can use and how you can structure your campaigns to get good results with your paid trial campaigns. This type of campaign is maybe not something you can run consistently, like an evergreen what we call, an evergreen campaign, meaning it's continuous, so this is really for generating that rush of sign ups.

So there's a lot of good things in there, the great psychology of just the buying process and I put a lot of time into this. It’s not just about Paul's results and experience, I've really explored the topic with a whole bunch of people and a whole bunch of martial arts experts through our martial arts media business podcast. And through that, I was able to gather other insights that you can take and contribute to this. So, that's gift number one: martialartsmedia.com/casestudy, you can download that now. That will take you to gift number two, all right?

Gift number two is a live online workshop that we're going to be hosting and this is really to give you that 30,000-foot bird's’ eye view of how the online platforms work and how you can set yourself up for the long run. This is going to teach you how to become the go-to martial arts school, how to position yourself as the authority within the martial arts business space, or I’d rather say not martial arts business space, but martial arts business within your community. And there are certain things that you can apply that is going to help you do that with putting on valuable content and I'm not just talking about running ads, this is way, way behind running ads, OK?

If you're just going to be running ads, you're always just going to be running ads. But if you take on a different approach and you know that you're going to be in business for the long turn, which of course you are, that's why you've taken on this journey, then there are things you can do with content marketing and different strategies that are going to pay off for you right now, but even more in the long run. And this is information I want to give to you, this is my life's work, I've dedicated the past… I wouldn't say life, but the past ten years to learning this type of online stuff and we've helped a lot of martial arts business owners transform their businesses through these methods.

But the one thing I do find, and I see across the internet is, when you're trying to go down this online route, you pick things where you can. You’re in this Facebook group and you grab someone's information – that's cool, I’ll grab on that idea. And you grab something here and you want to go with that. And a lot of times, you've got to be careful with that, because you can hit a win, but you can also go down the wrong track, because sometimes the idea you’re getting is not vetted and the person doesn't really have that much experience, but they are free to give advice and everybody's advice looks equal in a Facebook group.

martial arts business

So it’s that and then, does the actual concept apply to your business and your audience? Yes, it might apply to your martial arts business, but does it apply to your actual audience and how they respond and their buying behaviours on the internet and their perception of martial arts in general in your area. So there's a lot of components that you need to consider.

So this web class is about you discovering what that is, really being able to dig down into your target market, understand how you're going to engage with them, and not just by putting ads in front of them, but by putting strategic content in front of them that's going to attract them now and in the long run and be that go-to martial arts business. If you think of a soda drink you think Coca-Cola – that's how it must be for people, they must be able to have that clear association. If they think martial arts, your brand name is what's going to come clear to mind.

So this is what we’re going to talk about. This is going to be live; it’s going to be interactive. I’m going to answer all your questions, I'm going to help you make a few core transformational decisions on where you should take your business through the internet, not through your training and so forth. Obviously, you've got to have that in place, you've got to be running awesome classes to facilitate that. If you position yourself as the authority, then you've got to be the authority with your classes.

So this is not about the big smoke screen and putting out information that's not true and that doesn't resonate: you've got to have all the ducks in a row. So if you've got those ducks in a row and you are headed that way and all you need is that clarity of a strategy, something that you can take and apply and grow your school through a sophisticated solid online presence, then this workshop is for you.

So, how are you going to get to the workshop? Again, just go down under case study martialartsmedia.com/casestudy and once you've downloaded the case study, it will take you to the online class registration page. You'll get registered and you'll receive a few emails from us to remind you when the date is coming up and we’ll be good to go.

So I hope you enjoy the case study: please leave a comment wherever you downloaded this, whether it’s on Facebook or on our website, let us know what you think about it, how you liked it and I look forward to seeing you on the web class and helping you with your martial arts business.

Thanks, speak to you soon.

martialartsmedia.com/casestudy

 

*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.

32 – 30 Tips For Martial Arts Business Owners From Industry Experts (Part 2)

A continuation of the 31st episode, here’s the second batch of tips from martial arts experts that are equally valuable as the first.

martial arts business tips

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

  • How traveling can help widen your knowledge in running a martial arts club
  • The benefits of hiring top-level instructors to teach at your martial arts school
  • The importance of marketing and matching it to the right prospect at the right time
  • The advantages of having your school accredited by the government
  • Why it pays to invest on your martial arts premise and facilities
  • How to overcome tall poppy syndrome
  • And more

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

 

TRANSCRIPTION

Commit to your passion: if you want to succeed with your martial arts business, just go all in focus on that.

Hi, this is George Fourie and welcome to another MAM Business Podcast, episode number 32. And we are continuing from last week. Last week’s episode, which was 25 tips, 25 tips for martial arts business owners from industry experts, part 1. And this week, we're going over to part 2. So we are working our way through episodes number 15 to number 30 and we’re going to be covering tips from those. So, as always, you can find the show notes on martialartsmedia.com/32, the number 32. And that’s it. I’m going to jump straight into part 2.

26 – Get out of your comfort zone, travel, and train with people that are at a much better level than you.

Starting out with number 26, Justin Sidelle, who is one of the head coaches at Bali MMA. And if you want to go take an awesome tropical holiday combined with awesome training with top-level martial artists, Bali MMA should be on the top of your list. For me, it’s again, here in Perth, where I’m based, it’s a really quick holiday, it’s a bit of a common holiday to go to Bali, because everybody just does it and it’s cheaper to get on a plane and go to Bali for a weekend, then to drive down south a few hours. So it’s a very common holiday, but it’s a very diverse place. And you can have multiple experiences: if you’re into surfing, awesome beaches, awesome surfing, there’s great shopping, there’s great entertainment, and of course, Bali MMA.

So if you want a very diverse holiday on a tropical island, put this on the top of your list. You’ve got Justin Sidelle, who’s one of the head coaches – I believe it was started by two brothers, Anthony and Andrew Leone and you also have Tiffany Van Soest, who is an undefeated glory world kickboxing champion, Muay Thai champion and the tip of that would be, something that Justin Sidelle mentioned in the interview was, when Tiffany walks onto the floor, everybody shuts up and listens and takes note. And training with her just lifts the game and lifts the level of everybody on the mats.

So that would be the tip: go train with people that are at a much higher level than you, get out of your comfort zone, travel, and train with people that are at a much better level than you and obviously learn from that. And I know that’s something most martial artists do, but hey: go do it on a nice tropical island, why not?

27 – Give back to the community.

Number 27, something that’s a big part for Justin and their team, is to give back to the community. And they work with a couple of orphanages and do a lot of donations and do a lot of community work as well. They’re living in the tropics and they are giving back to their community.

28 – Hire top level instructors to teach at your martial arts school.

Alright, moving on to 28 was from episode 17 with Con Lazos, and the topic was recruiting externally. You know, most martial arts school owners rely on grooming students to become their instructors, to become their first black belt, but if you don’t have time for that, Con’s suggestion is, get people that already have a following, or an established top level instructors and recruit them to start teaching at your school. And one of those people that do teach at Con Lazos’ school is Richard Norton, who has featured in multiple and multiple movies and then his home ground when he is based in Australia. That was tip number 28.

29 – Groom students to be the best versions of themselves.

Number 29, groom students to be the best versions of themselves. So invest into your students to become the best person they can and that is through education, through teaching them how to be a better instructor and all the rest.

30 – When things get tough, believe in the technique.

Alright, number 30 from episode 18: Paul Schreiner. And Paul Schreiner is a head coach for Marcelo Garcia Academy in New York. The tip was, when things get tough, believe in the technique. If the technique is going to work, it’s going to work against anyone. It’s not going to fall apart, even if your opponent is bigger and stronger than you. And Paul was put onto me by Jess Fraser, who trained at Marcelo Garcia Academy and Jess obviously travels all over the world and trains with a lot of people and the one thing that stood out for her, was Paul, his coaching ability and his ability to communicate martial arts in a systematic way that’s easy to understand and grasp and learn from. And his take on jiu-jitsu, the idea that you’re working towards is perfection, this excellence perfection that isn’t attainable, but the excellence, the near perfection is something that we can experience and just try to sharpen ourselves. I really liked that, that was awesome.

31 – “Jiu-jitsu is the marriage or the union of two things: the technique and the will to win.”

All right, 31 on coaching: as a governing principle, I’m always trying to strip down, rather than elaborate whatever I’m doing. A lot of times, in the past, I was given credit I didn’t deserve as a good coach. When I’m looking back, I don’t think I was, because I was a good explainer of moves. And I think that’s almost one of the least important things about coaching now: being the teacher, being the explainer of moves. It’s more about getting your student to be able to do it and understanding how the moves connect and the art of redirecting your opponent's attack against them. And a cool quote from BJ Penn: jiu-jitsu is the marriage or the union of basically two things: the technique and the will to win. Alright, awesome.

32 – Invest in your own premises and property.

Number 32: episode number 19, with Fari Salievski. This was the second episode with Fari: use your martial arts business as an avenue to invest in other things, such as your own premises and property.

33 – If you’re not doing recurring billing, get onto that.

Number 33, the start of the recurring billing in Australia and how essential it is to your business.

Number 33, if you’re not doing recurring billing, get onto that. This episode was a lot about the start of how recurring billing started within Australia and how Fari spearheaded that movement.

34 – Keep your marketing simple, don’t hype.

Number 34: keep it simple, don’t hype. Try and minimize your debt, minimize unnecessary expense.

35 – Don’t let the tall poppy syndrome get you down.

All right, number 35, episode 20 with Kevin Blundell: big topic, hard to combat tall poppy syndrome. And I’m lining up an interview with, this is going to be a big topic because it’s funny how the world works: when you’re successful, everybody wants to drag you down and wants to insult you and criticize your technique and criticize your business and you’ve gone McDojo. Everybody would rather almost see you fail or be mediocre in a way. And a big topic was getting over that whole tall poppy syndrome. Don’t let the tall poppy syndrome get you down and move at your own pace, do what’s right for you, your students and your family.

Kumiai Ryu Martial Arts System

36 – Undersell your membership but over-deliver.

Number 36: undersell your membership but over-deliver.

37 – Have your school government accredited.

Number 37: government accreditation creates credibility and a point of differentiation. That’s a strong one, especially if you’re surrounded by schools that are kind of backyard schools, and look, hey, this is not a negative if you’re starting in a back yard. It depends obviously on your goals and what you want, and maybe it’s a stepping stone for you. But if you want a point of differentiation and that’s what this podcast is about, about giving you that edge, then why don’t you go for something like that. Why don’t you get a government accreditation and have something to show that you are qualified to work with kids and manage kids within your facilities.

38 – Remove trial intros completely and replace it with paid trials.

Number 38, remove trial intros completely to simplify the onboarding process and replace it with paid trials. One thing that Kevin and his team at Kumiai Ryu do not do is free intros. They do not a free intro at all, they offer a paid trial system, normally $49 for two weeks and that is their trial. The trial is, pay and train and work on the conversion from that point.

39 –  Match your marketing message to seasons celebrations.

Number 39 was by myself and I spoke a bit about, match your marketing message to seasons celebrations, and this is something that Paul Veldman already actually covered. I want to extend on that and the tip would be, one marketing channel is not enough. And Dan Kennedy is a top copywriter that always used to say, one is the most dangerous number in business because remove one and you have nothing. Have two, and you still have something. I would say, don’t put all your eggs in one basket, because if that basket goes, what have you got left? What have you got to fall on? Have multiple channels of marketing happening that you can rely on.

Yes, it’s good to focus, obviously put your focus on what’s hot, Facebook marketing. Which is hot right now, but make sure you have backups. Because they’re not always going to be running smoothly as well. You might be running a great campaign this month and it dies off a bit, so when you have multiple avenues of marketing happening, then you’re always covered for the downtime in whatever channel it is that you’re working with.

40 – Keep your marketing message clear and concise.

Number 40, keep your marketing message clear and concise. Use strict deadlines with your offers, time and date. If you say something ends tomorrow, make it 5 pm tomorrow. Be strict on your deadlines.

41 – Bigger profits equals better facilities, better equipment, and a better service.

Number 41 from episode 23, Fari Salievski: bigger profits equals better facilities, better equipment, and a better service. And I’ll recap back to episode 20, where Kevin Blundell mentioned, if you are earning one dollar, you are in business. The backend of the conversation was, a lot of people charge $5 a class, or $10 a class, or they don’t charge a premium. But at the end of the day, when you’re charging a dollar versus a $100, you are in business.

Fari Salievski

And when you are in business and you’re providing a service, now you have an obligation to deliver, because somebody is paying for this service. So why not charge a decent premium and deliver a better service with better facilities, whatever it is that you do, upgrade your equipment, provide more staff on the mats, be able to do more with the bigger profits that you are making and provide a better service, which leads to better retention.

42 – Check your statistics.

Number 42, check your numbers. Are you paying up to $1500 per phone call to retrieve lost funds through your billing company? So keep a good eye on your numbers.

43 – Own your digital assets, your own website.

Number 43, from me on episode 24: own your digital assets, your own website. If knowledge is slowing you down, grab a page builder to speed things up, so don’t let it be the stick in the wheel. If you’re struggling to get going with your marketing, just do something, get something going. But at the end of the day, you want to be building assets and as you build assets in your business with equipment and facilities and location, you want to be doing the same with your online properties.

And the best way to do that is to focus on putting content, premium content on your website. Yes, they should go on Facebook and all these social channels, but your website is yours and it’s the one things that are going to be constant. Social media channels might come and go, their popularity might come and go, but your website, as long as your business is there, you’re going to have your domain name and that’s where you should be putting primary content.

44 – Ensure your marketing message is matched to the right prospect at the right time.

Number 44, episode 25: make sure your marketing message is matched to the right prospect at the right time. Are they ready for your offer, or are they not sold on martial arts yet? So we do a lot of this in our coaching, where we talk about the different levels of the buying cycle, where a person is at. And sometimes, a person is not ready for your offer. It’s great to go directly for the offer, but depending on your market and how people feel about martial arts, or if they’re not familiar with your brand, your marketing is going to have to stretch a bit further than just that offer. You’re probably going to have to put a lot more content out, to get, to sway people on the benefits of martial arts and to point out the problem that they have that martial arts can solve.

45 – Why not run a martial arts open day for an hour only?

Number 45, number 26, Darryl Thornton: run a martial arts open day for an hour only. And this focuses on the power of having an event based marketing them. Think about you running an open day and it’s 5,6 7, 8 hours long. Your staff start off on a high energy and then their energy drops and all of a sudden, you have people rock up when their energy is low, so there no structure into how things are happening, because people are arriving at different times, and unless you have a super sequenced structure for a solid 8 hours, people are just going to arrive at the wrong time for the wrong thing. So having an event based, where it starts at a certain time, everybody gets there at the same time, it follows a structure, and then at the end, you are able to present an offer. And that is how Darryl received more than 70 sign up son the day of his open hour.

martial arts open day

46 – Travel and widen your martial arts knowledge and skills.

Number 46, travel and grow your martial arts knowledge by experience in a different country with a different culture and widen your knowledge.

47 – Incentivise your prospects or students to the next level.

Number 47, Paul Veldman for the second time on the martial arts media business podcast: incentivise your prospects or students to the next level. If they take a paid trial, what is their reward for signing up now to create urgency? In their case, what they were doing, what they do is, remove their joining fee and if they do that within a certain amount of time, within their trial period, then they will waive the joining fee and that way creates a bit of urgency.

George Fourie Paul Veldman

48 – Reward your existing students with lock in prices.

Number 48, reward your existing students with lock in prices. This is something that was taught to Paul Veldman by Ridvan, Master Ridvan Manav from Australian Martial Arts Academy in Sydney. The concept is rewarding your existing students by locking in their membership fees. So whatever that fee was that they joined at, lock it in at that price and make it known that they are being rewarded for being a member by keeping the price the same. And that way, when people want to think about maybe quitting, sometimes they’re going to stick it out over that hurdle because they’re thinking, well, I might want to come back, but if I come back, it’s going to be more, and it just keeps people a bit more committed to their martial arts journey.

49 – Value reputation over money.

Number 49: reputation first, dollars second.

50 – Make sure that your branding resonates with your target market.

Number 50, episode 28, Matt Ball: make sure that your branding resonates with your target market. And the conversation started where the branding was all focused on a fighter type image, with skulls and everything and then they had a look back and after working with Dave Kovar and his team, they had a look back and realised that it’s not really something that’s going to gel with the mums and to bring in kids and so forth. So they changed all their branding and made sure that it resonates with a family environment. So for you, depending on what type of gym and school you run, make sure that your branding resonates with the image that you are trying to project out to the public.

Martial Arts Business

51 – Don’t turn your Dojo into a McDojo.

Number 51, if you associate success with a sleazeball salesman, you will never push yourself and potentially sabotage your success when it gets in reach.  That’s a deep topic because I hear a lot of people talk about that and say, you know, we’re just starting out and we want to be successful, but I don’t want to turn into a McDojo, I don’t want to be ripping people off. And it’s this kind of attitude, that it is noble to not be successful, it’s noble to not charge for the service that you provide. And at the end of the day, martial arts changes lives. It should be a lot more expensive, if people know the benefits, it’s life changing.  

I don’t think anybody should be ashamed about charging a premium, whatever that is within reason. I mean, look, there’s probably people that do rip people off, but I think people are too quick to jump to the McDojo conclusion and at the end of the day, I think it would rob you from yourself of being successful, because now you think, well, the minute I start making money, I’m going to be a McDojo. And everybody thinks I’m going to be McDojo.

By having that association, you end up sabotaging your success. And I’ve read something interesting in a book the other day, that we do everything for status. And the first part of it was, hang on: I don’t think so, I don’t do things for status. And because you think people do things for status, as in a way to have a fancy car or look good, but the reverse side of it is, people do things for status because they also don’t want to look bad. You don’t want to look like you being the loser as well, so status goes both ways. And a lot of people do things for status, so it’s a deep topic and I’m actually going to do an interview with someone next week, hopefully, but if it’s not next week, the week after. But we’ll go deep into this topic, about the association with success.

52 – Commit to your passion.

Number 52, episode 29, Stuart Grant: commit to your passion. If you want to succeed with your martial arts business, just go all in focus on that and make that work. And importantly, make sure that you’ve got your family on board with you, your partner, your wife, your loved ones. Make sure that they know that this is what you’re going to be doing, that they know there’s going to be a few obstacles to come through to go through, but this is the journey that you’re going to take and commit to it, go all in and work towards that success, which Stuart Grant does. Just go have a look at episode 29 and go look at the video tour of Westside MMA, it will blow your mind, it’s fascinating.

martial arts success

53 – Study marketing.

Alright, 53: study marketing. Stuart actually learned the skills of Google AdWords and Facebook marketing himself and this is something that not a lot of people take on and I take my hat off to him, especially the Google AdWords side, because I think you’ve got to be quite technical minded and you’ve got to really commit to learning these skills. Study marketing and look: if you need help with that kind of stuff, whether it’s hard to do it, you need some advice about it, or you’d like it done for you, then hit us up. Go to martialartsmedia.com and get in touch with us and see if we can help you with what you want to achieve. Moving on to the last episode and the last two tips.

54 – Travel and get yourself educated.

Number 54, Matt Wickham: if you’re not getting the martial arts coaching in your town, get in a car, drive. Get on a plane, and if you have to, it doesn’t matter where you have to travel, get yourself educated. If you’re not getting the education you need where you are, it’s time to broaden your horizons, start traveling.  Go visit Bali MMA, go visit matt in Echuca. Go travel to an event and get educated.

matt wickham

55 – Travel changes your perspective.

Alright, and the last one, 55: travel changes your perspective. It probably goes hand in hand with 54 and why not invite top martial artists to your school, so that your students get the same education. So if you’re not going to travel, make a plan. See what’s already happening. If a top name is traveling close by to your area, see what deal you can do. Maybe you can save some money and get top training at your location. And as the saying goes, a rising tide lifts all boats.

There we go. I hope you enjoyed the top 55 tips from martial arts business owners and experts. For show notes, go to martialartsmedia.com/32 and I look forward to being back next week, I’ve got a great interview, a few great interviews lined up, so I look forward to that. I’ll be back with you soon, have a great week, chat soon – cheers.

 

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

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31 – 25 Tips For Martial Arts Business Owners From Industry Experts (Part 1)

We’re down to our 31st episode but this isn’t your typical podcast interview. This is a recap of the first 14 episodes, with tips from martial arts experts.

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

  • The first step you need to take to go full time in your martial arts business
  • Change this one thing on your website and your conversions will skyrocket
  • What it takes to manage a thriving martial arts business
  • Beginning with the end vision in mind
  • Knowing your market and matching your message to them
  • And more

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


TRANSCRIPTION

Hi, this is George Fourie, and welcome to another episode of the Martial Arts Media Business Podcast Episode 31. We are going to do something different today, which is a bit of a recap. And I'm going to split this into two parts. So we are up to number 14. So up to episode number 14, we're doing the recap. And I going to give you the top 25 learnings, findings, gold nuggets, whatever you want to call them from the first 14 episodes. So there are a lot of cool things in this episode.

I actually wanted to do this in one shot but I realized that there's a lot to talk about so

I'm breaking it up into two parts. In the next episode, we’ll probably have about 30 tips. So for now, there's the top 25 tips from the first 14 episodes and a lot of the message you'll see, a lot of things start to overlap, a lot of the message is in sync with some of the previous episodes.

And that's a good thing because when you hear people saying the same things, and these are successful business owners, then you know that this is gospel.

This are things that are working across the board. So pay attention to those things. So as always, the transcripts are available on https://martialartsmedia.com/31, the number 31. And I'm going to jump right into this and start off with number one. Here we go again.

So number one and episodes number 1, 2, and 3 were Phil Britten and Graham McDonnell from the WA Institute of Martial Arts.

1 – At some point you have to burn the bridges.

And what I was referring to, of course, is when you're running a full-time job and you try to build the gym on the side. At some point in time, something is going to have to give go.

Something is going to have to let go and you're going to have to burn the bridges at some point in time.

It's most likely not going to be a smooth transition. Most people take a lot of risks to go from a part-time business owner to a full-time business owner. So there's going to be some risks involved by taking that step but at some point, you're just going to have to cut the ties and just go flat out and say, “Alright! This is it I'm going all in. And when you doing that, you might be struggling for cash. You don't have support. And if you are struggling for cash, why don't you focus on private sessions, part-time sessions, do part-time session training during the day or whenever you have time and filling those gaps to boost the cash flow while you are transitioning to a full-time successful business owner.

2 – If you want to grow your school, stop doing everything yourself.

So invest in the systems and try and start putting the focus on your students and your instructors. That you can get out of the limelight out of your business. So this of course, depends on your model and how you want to structure things. All right, so number three and this sort of goes in with two but…

3 – Before opening your second school, why don't you take a holiday or travel away for a few weeks and see how your systems hold up.

And I know Tim Ferriss talks about becoming redundant and the way he does it is, if he wants to test systems and his business, you'll go away for a couple of months in a place where there's no internet and no nothing. And then he cannot take charge of everything himself. Obviously, you don't have to go something that's that extreme. But when you do an exercise like that you are forced to cut all ties.

So you have to let go. And that really forces you to look into your systems and how your business is set up so that you can take that next step. So valuable exercise to do; take more holidays and see if everything's in one piece when you get back and if it is not, you know where your systems are failing.

All right, point number 4. And this was the black belt story from Phil Britten. The story goes something like that and I'll get to the message right at the end of this but this is about…

4 – The Black Belt Story

“…a mum that spoke about the fee increase for the next level and the instructor said to her, “Look how about I do this for you. What have you invested in the last four years?” And let's just pick a figure say that was ten grand. So you invested $10,000 in the last four years with your child to do martial arts. And now they are a black belt. Now if I was to give you that $10,000 in cash that you would have to take away all the skills and all abilities and all the life lessons that your child has gained over this time, would you take the $10,000? And then the mum thinks and says, Not at all.

He said well let's double it. I'll give you $20,000. But if I give you twenty thousand dollars, you've got to take away all the life skills, the abilities and all the lessons that your child has learned while he has been learning martial arts and of course, she turns it down.”

So the moral of the story, of course, is put the focus on the value that martial arts delivers and not the cost.

All right, so where are we at. We are at point number 5. Point number 5 was from me and that was,

5 – You should not have prices listed on your martial arts website.

Never a good idea. I'm going to jump back a little bit.

Now, generally speaking if you're a martial arts school and you go in for entry level type, you're focusing on kids and people that are not familiar with martial arts, you should definitely not have your prices on your website because people don't know martial arts. And if people don't know about martial arts and what it's about. Then when you put the price, the only comparison they can make and derive from is the price and not the experience. So now they become price shoppers because that's the comparison point. Whereas when people have experienced the benefits of what it's going to do for them or their child then they might have a different story.

So it's never a good idea to have prices on your website. But, there's a but, let's say you have a different type of job and let's say Justin Sidelle, for example, who has Bali MMA in Bali and they run different type of system because people want to take their holiday In Bali and they still want to come a train for a week or two weeks or so forth. So they have their prices listed on the website. So if you have that type of school where you're providing a service for people that are maybe travelling or you have a high level type of club, which is known among fighters or jiu jitsu practitioners or something that people that are already established in martial arts come and train at, then that could work for you to have the prices up for certain packages and memberships and so forth.

At the end of the day, I would rather say, no don't do it because when you put it there, you gotta know how to place the value on what your training provides (in the wording – copy). And most people don't do that and most people just put the price on strike.

Number 6, Rod Darling.

martial arts school marketing

6 – Talk about the results that people want. Your product is the obstacle.

And what was discussed, we're talking about the benefits especially if you're doing Facebook ads we were talking about Facebook ads, Facebook marketing in this episode. Talk about the results that people are after, the benefits that they're going to get from martial arts and not talk about the training itself. The training is the obstacle. People don’t want to talk about the training but they do want to focus on the results. It's the result that they want. So when you focus on the result, that's something that people are striving for and that's something that they can relate to. So talk about the benefits.

7 – Be specific with your targeting and keep it simple.

With your Facebook ads, be specific. You only need to talk to one person; you can't talk to everyone. If you know that's the common thing at newspapers and flyers, you put a message out there for everyone. You can filter it with your copy and say woman only and so forth. People to talk about the customer Avatar, who's that one person that you're having a conversation with.

And if you can visualize that one person, who they are, it's a mum, she's in her late 30's and her kids are five and eight years old. This is the type of lady that you are talking to. You can structure and customize your marketing message and tailor it to that person. All right, be specific with your targeting and keep it simple.

Number 8. And this is something we preach about website copy.

8 – Don't talk about I and we. Talk about YOU because the person wants to hear about themselves, their wants, their needs, their aspirations.

They don't care about your rank and the gold medal that you won and the tournament that you won. They care about themselves and can you provide value for them or for their kids. Can I lose weight through this? Can I learn self-defense? Can my kid become confident? That's what they want to learn. And Rod said it best, don't be wee’ing all over yourself, meaning don't put the wee’s on your website.

Over to number 9, Michelle Hext. There was a lot of deep value in this. A few things I'm going to draw from here…

Michelle Hext

9 – Have a vision then plan your steps backwards.

Okay, have a clear vision of what you want. There are a lot of great nuggets in there about niche’ing down as well.

And I want to go to Number 10.

10 – Have self-awareness to assess when something is pulling on your self belief.

So, when you have obstacles in your business. Some things don't feel right. Seth Godin talks about being the intruder (Imposter).

Everybody feels like they have that internal dialogue happening like, can I really do this? Can I really be doing this? Is this really me? I think he talks about Barack Obama, being the president does probably the same sort of intruder type of perspective sometimes. He has an internal dialogue, asks himself: “Me? Am I really the president?” Well, not the president anymore.

That conversation of doubt and everybody has that doubt and if you're having that doubt, have self-awareness to assess where something is pulling on yourself. Believe and try and work yourself through that. All right. So that would be on episode six.

And we're moving over to number 11 with Paul Veldman. So first up…

11 – Know your demographic without being everything to everyone.

And on 12…

12 – Grow your students confidence through leadership programs.

So that's confidence within your students, have leadership programs that boost their confidence and take them to the next level.

13 – Market for a season or a reason.

And that is being in sync with what is happening in your community, being the season or a reason. Is there a reason something is happening in your community or is there a season happening. Is it Easter, is it Christmas, is it Valentine's Day. How can you follow, how can you piggyback on that trend that is already happening in your marketplace and attach your marketing message to that.

14 – Spot the quitting signals from your students.

And Paul mentioned:  “We run a rule of three that every student and every class has to be encouraged and acknowledged at least three times. So the first one is, ‘Good day, how are you doing?’ And have a look at the card and they see the training pattern and they can see that at the start of the year, the students are training a lot.

Mid-year, they kind of dropped off. And in the last two months, you can barely see them and address things accordingly. So if you spot the quitting signals then have a talk and have a chat and see where they are at and what is holding them back from their training.”

All right number 15 with Sean Allen. Sean Allen was all about…

15 – Structuring your martial arts business to suit your lifestyle.

So how can your business suit your lifestyle and for him, he's moved down to Margaret River, he surfs every day, some of the best surf, and he runs a small niche school, which he is very passionate about, because number 16…

importance of martial arts in physical education

16 – Use your martial arts school as a vehicle to get the message out about education you value most.

Education about climate change, education and helping empowering kids through his program. And he is always full. He has a waiting list for his small school and is not into growth for growth. He is into living his values and living a good life and teaching his message through martial arts.

Number 17, Brannon Beliso. Brannon is all about service orientation.

17 – Focus on providing a valuable service to your martial arts students. No contracts or upsells, service and care, which leads to retention.

Brannon believes in no contracts, no constant upsells but rather placing value in the service that they offer and treating their students with gold. And by focusing the way that they focus, they try to keep the retention through the value of their service and not being constantly on the sales process of constantly having to upgrade for this and this black belt program and so forth.

martial arts merit badges

So that's the constant message that Brannon Beliso spoke about and also about the way kids and their values and how they are used to just getting things, instant gratification and how martial arts can teach kids discipline through not getting rewarded… or getting their awards but not getting rewarded as if getting a black belt tomorrow when they started today.

All right, number 18. Should you use a Facebook page or profile to promote your business?

18 – Use a Facebook Page to promote your business, not a Facebook Profile.

I'd like to think we've kind of evolved from that conversation and it just shows you, this is early last year and this is the big thing and I still see a lot of people use their of their personal profile to promote their business. But the better way to do it is you've got to have that page because if you don't have a Facebook page, you can't advertise your business.

Advertising on Facebook is a core part of your marketing. It's one of the top places to advertise right now. So if you have a page, why don't you post your content on your page first and then share it to your personal profile because your personal profile in the beginning especially will get a lot more reach because Facebook values their audience and they would rather have pictures of birth of a cousin or something in your news feed than your business.

Well, debatable if your ads are relevant to your audience, but no so much free content. There is a thing called Edgerank where Facebook likes to filter out business-type posts. So you've got to be strategic with that kind of thing. But for the purpose of this point, post things on your Facebook page and share them onto your profile.

That was number 18, over to number 19.

19 – Message to market match. Say the right message to the right person at the right time for them.

So where are they in your buying cycle? That was from me. Where are they in your buying cycle? What have they seen? Have they been exposed to your brand and what message are you going to be putting in front of that person at that point in time.

Number 20 was from episode 13 with Jess Fraser.

20 – If you have ladies training Jiu Jitsu at your gym, get them involved in a ladies community (like the Australian Girls In Gi) to get training support from other ladies and build relationships.

And Jess Fraser has the Australian Girls in GI community and she was talking about how having that type of overlapping community. And it is in overlapping community it seems that ladies are training at multiple gyms and they have this one community as glue if you want to call it that because ladies have different experiences with jiu jitsu and they express different problems and having this community involved that ladies can share their experiences with jiu jitsu keeps it all together.

And I was talking to Martin Gonzalez from Vanguard BJJ and I had a training session with them one night and they were very hospitable. I went for a burger and a couple of beers with them afterwards and he was telling me that Jess has done amazing things for jiu jitsu for ladies that most people are just not aware of. And he was her instructor right at the beginning and he says he remembers when it was pretty much heard, she was the only lady and she's the 12th female to earn her black belt in Australia.

But at that time, the Australian Girls in GI community was pretty much nothing. It was just her and she was just pushing to get it going. And now, with all the time, and the investment and the commitment, there's a there's a big community of ladies doing jiu jitsu and she is very responsible for that in Australia. So for the ladies, check out Australian Girls in GI.

21, Hakan Manav from Australian Martial Arts Academy. All right, on number 21, firstly, Hakan Manav is an extreme athlete. He is a super smart guy and if you go search for any of his training, videos tutorials on Facebook or YouTube, you'll find tricks and techniques that are just mind-blowing. And he's had big shoes to fill with his dad, Master Ridvan Manav, he's been been in the industry for 35 years. The Australian Martial Arts Academy also recently celebrated their 35th year anniversary. And I got a lot of good things to share.

21 – The skills, discipline and coordination taught in martial arts will help you in all other team sports.

Hakan got first-hand experience and proof that the skills and coordination taught in martial arts benefit other sports. He experienced that when he was taking up soccer.

22 – Invest in your education. A business degree will help you develop the frameworks and systems for business success.

So Hakan got the best degree he could in the top university in Sydney and a lot of the frameworks and systems come from his education and just applying everything he learned into the martial arts school.

23 – Develop a leadership culture where everyone is looked after and make sure that everybody is consistently improving.

So they had the leadership culture and everybody is investing into their education and everybody's always raising the bar. And that's how the Australian Martial Arts Academy run 120 classes, seven days per week!

Number 24, the core difference to know between Google Adwords marketing and Facebook marketing.

24 – The difference between Google Adwords and Facebook Marketing. Google searchers have intent, they are looking. With Facebook, you are generally interrupting the browser. Consider your approach accordingly.

The big difference is Google starts with intent. So you have a person who is already searching for something martial arts-related, something martial arts in their area, something martial arts or different types martial arts and doing comparison. So this is the person that's already on the lookout. With Facebook, you have a very direct targeting. But the person might not have intent. So it's more of an interruption based on how you capture this person's person's attention and work from there.

25 – For both Facebook marketing and Google Adwords. Remarketing / Retargeting can bring your biggest conversions.

Remarketing or retargeting as it's called is a method of attracting people that actually see your ads and have ads show up to them at a later stage. You might see that when you go to a website, to Amazon, eBay or somewhere. And then the next minute, you're seeing an eBay ad on Facebook and that is retargeting. So you can get very strategic with this and all about being relevant with your conversations to people.

And that's it for this episode. We will continue either next week or the week after, depending on the scheduling of a very cool interview that I've got lined up. So depending on that when we will release the other half of this episode. So, still a lot to talk about. Lots of cool tips that we're going to be sharing.

And again, show notes on www.martialartsmedia.com/31, www.martialartsmedia.com/31, the number 31. Thanks! Chat you soon. Cheers.

 

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28 – How To Double Your Martial Arts Business In 2 Years Without Selling Your Soul

Want a successful martial arts business, but don't want to be ‘that guy'? Matt Ball talks about changing your mindset and breaking through barriers.Matt Ball from SMAC with George Fourie
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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

  • Creating a warm environment where people feel welcome
  • How a student tragedy motivated a change of logo and design
  • The power of a 5-week introductory program
  • Why you need how you view success in order to succeed
  • How managing Matt's martial arts school from an iPad in a hospital bed was a blessing in disguise
  • Lessons from traveling to martial arts tournaments
  • And more

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

 

TRANSCRIPTION

It made me change my whole concept, my whole thought concept on it. You can be successful and be a good guy, what I'm doing is I'm basing my ideas of success on the wrong preset.

Hi, this is George Fourie and welcome to another episode of the Martial Arts Media Business podcast, episode number 28. I have another awesome guest with me today, who is Matthew Ball from SMAC and SMAC stand for Somerville Martial Arts Center, which is where Matthew is from of course. And we talk about the word SMAC and the possible negative connotation it has to it, but I guess more importantly, the whole change that they went through in branding, from being a hardcore fighter type image, with skulls and skulls on the car and everything and transitioning that to a friendlier, family environment, and how they had to go by changing their branding, their public image. And it’s something that caused them to double their business, in a short span of only two years.

So we talk about that, it was a really fun conversation, especially before and after, but we kept in all the good bits for you. And we also talk about Matthew's first management episode, where he was actually forced to manage, because he was in the hospital on his back, and that was the first time he actually had the whole bird's' eye view about his business and was able to manage it better from that perspective. And we also had some deep discussions about association with success, internal blocks that you might have that don't allow you to succeed, that you almost self-sabotage yourself every time you get to this point of success, because you don't want to be associated with being that guy, that successful guy that everybody hates, and how Matthew had to fight that, work through that to change his association of what it means to be successful and helping others.

Now, I want to jump into a theme that's been happening and I've been talking about it in the last few episodes and it’s all tying together and it’s something I keep on talking about, because it’s something that works, and this is event based marketing. And the more I talk about it, the more I explore it, the more I discover. And the more answers I get and the more I'm doing campaigns for martial arts schools, the more I'm learning about the psychology of why things work and why they may not work and we adjust.

Look: marketing is definitely a journey. We as an agency, we have some great wins right off the bat, and we help clients and they get a flood of new students, and then sometimes we don't. Sometimes we're doing the exact same campaign on just two different pages or two different locations, but the results are vastly different and it just proves a point: that there's no one size fits all with marketing. Your audience could be different, your interaction with your audience could be different, your relationship could be different, the competition you have is different, the type of people could be different – so different messages resonate with different people and how do you get past that? Well, you've got to commit to the journey and the journey means testing.

Testing your marketing strategies, keeping track of what works and what doesn't, because if you can eliminate what's not working, you're getting one step ahead of what is working. And that's where the whole Pareto principle, the 80-20 concept just speaks volumes in direct response type marketing because 20% of your efforts will generate 80% of your results. It’s finding out what that 20% is and that's the journey, that's where the real work is. Look: everybody can put up advertising and do that kind of stuff, but when it’s not working, you've got to know where to find the problem and where to diagnose and how to solve that problem.

So, that's gone a bit off topic on what I wanted to say, but it’s a very important thing that I've been experiencing over the last few weeks. And going a bit further and something that we really spoke about with Matthew is the event based type marketing. I’m not going to give a spoiler, he'll explain the whole process and concept. And after the episode, I will give a few insights, on how I'm seeing the objections and things that come up when we do campaigns and how this psychology really applies to it, so look out for that.

I’m going to jump right into that now. As always: you can find the transcripts and links and everything about this episode on martialartsmedia.com/28, the number 28 and that's it from me for now, I want to get straight into this interview, so please welcome to the show Matthew Ball.

GEORGE: Good day everyone, today I have with me Matt, or Matthew Ball, one of the two.

MATT: Matt Ball is fine.

GEORGE: Matt Ball from SMAC, which stands for…?

MATT: The Somerville Martial Arts Centre.

GEORGE: The Somerville Martial Arts Centre, all right. We're just going to be chatting about a few things, travel within the martial arts industry, a few recent successes and so forth. So – welcome to the show!

MATT: Thank you very much, thanks for coming down and speaking to me.

GEORGE: Awesome. So I guess we're going to start from the beginning – so. Who is Matt Ball?

MATT: I started in the Bob Jones martial arts group, in zen do kai when I was about 13 and I'm now 44. I've continued within the Bob Jones martial arts school throughout that time. In 1996, I decided to go full time and entered into a couple of business writing competitions for the two previous years, Shell corporation and the Rotary club used to do business comps. And it was a really great way to be mentored, it was my first experience with mentors outside of martial arts, that helped me develop my business plans to the point where I thought that I could possibly be successful stepping away from my job, which was in a bank at that stage.

So in 1996, I moved out and my main aim was to teach at high schools during the day and then at night time to run my classes, so from 4:00 till 8:30 at night each day. I had a lot of promises from schools in that first year that they would employ me for the following year, and it looked really great on my business plan. And then when I started calling them up, they informed me that I had to have been booked in a year previously for some of them and it was all requirements and that first year was a little bit rougher than I first anticipated.

But once we got through that, that business really took off and in the end, before I sold that part of my business, we were teaching it around about 40 high schools each year, there was 5 or 6 people working for me to assist in that, mainly teaching self-defence, but also some Muay Thai and some boxing for fitness type classes and things as well. So it was good and then, and now we're in 2017 – around about 2003, I moved into a full-time premise. We were at the time operating out of three different halls, within the same area, all within the 5K radius of each other.Somerville Martial Arts Centre - Matt BallSo I decided to take the big leap and try and bring it all into the one place and I felt that I had enough members at that point to do that. So I've been teaching children and obviously adults for a long time, but I decided I want to focus more on the adult and team market at that stage and we dropped right into competition, room fighting for boxing and Muay Thai predominantly. So we went into trying to develop that sort of market, so the imagery that I chose and the logos I chose were turned directly towards that market and we probably left the child market a little bit behind.

And at first I was happy to do that, that was my goal, but after some time, I realized I'd probably swung too far the other way. And we had Dave Kovar from America at our club and I was talking about our member base. And at the time, it wasn't massive, but it was close to 200, around 170 members and 80% was over the age of 15. And he said, Matt, that's great, most people would love to have adult numbers like that, but you do realize that you can still have a lot of kids and still keep those adult members as well? And I went, yeah, I'm an idiot.

So at that time, we sort of changed our logos, we changed around our gym a little bit. People, when they used to walk in, the first thing they would see would be a boxing ring, and then another boxing ring. Often people would be fighting and sparring and the kids have to walk through it. On our wall, we had the Krav Maga gear, so it all looked military, knives and guns and things. And it was amazing when Dave said it to me, I walked outside, I walked back in, and I went, who would bring their kid here?

And then I walked in further and I went, if I was a guy walking in here, I wouldn't feel comfortable training. It was intimidating. I was more surprised that we managed to have as many members as we did in that sort of environment. So even though we really worked hard at being a really encompassing gym and friendly and everything, the facade didn't show that, so that was my first big lesson.

GEORGE: So, backtrack a bit: there was a few question in there. So, you were teaching at multiple schools at the time?

MATT: Yeah, that's right.

GEORGE: Was it a challenge, did you lose members, moving them all to one location?

MATT: I think because we were in such a small area anyways, it ran about a 5K radius, we didn't really lose any members. We probably lost some members, because the fees had to change, the fee structure had to change slightly. So even though we offered them more classes, that isn't what everyone wanted and because our overheads have gone up a little bit, we had to increase it. But the members, by and large, were amazing. The first couple of months of being here, it was half building site – half Dojo, or training gym.

We had the wooden floor finished on the first weekend and that was done by 10-12 members turning up and helping me construct. And then we had to sort of section bits off, and over the months, we could slowly get more of the gym operating and cleaner. And rather than losing members, I think that it actually made us really strong at that period, because everyone had some ownership over the place. Even if they weren't working on it, they were a part of that journey of, let’s do something special together. And it really put a really good community feel, that probably lasted for 5-6 years before the next group sort of came through and didn't know anything about that part.

GEORGE: Well, you did a great job on the environment and I’ll put little pictures with the podcast here, but it’s really got this Melbourne feel. Anybody that's been to Melbourne, there's always graffiti and posters stuck up. And just that in the contrast with the wooden floor, it almost looks like you're in an antique coffee shop almost. Something else is happening here other than the gym, obviously because it’s empty as well, there are no people.

MATT: Yeah, we find that most people when they come in here who have trained at other places will remark on the feel. They'll actually come back out now, whereas, before it was a bit intimidating, they'll come back out to me and actually grab me and say, man, it just feels so comfortable here! I don't know quite how we've done it; I can't say that it was all purposeful. Some of it was, but some of it was being just by osmosis. But yeah, when you hear people who train come up to you and say how they just feel comfortable in your space and how they love it, it’s a really special feeling, it’s great.

GEORGE: Definitely. Now, let’s go back to the transition, because if you were this hardcore fight gym. And Somerville Martial Arts Centre also shortens to the acronym of SMAC, so I can imagine initially when you had the branding, you mentioned earlier the skulls and things, it was really for the hardcore fighting market as such. And then, with the acronym of SMAC, it really goes with that. But now you've changed the branding and you've changed the image that you can accommodate for the appearance, but you've still got SMAC on the T-shirts and so forth?

MATT: A part of it is age as well. When we moved here, 13 years ago, I was just in my early thirties.  Maybe just 30, and I was training with fighters intensely, so all that is inside you and you want to express that part of you and what better way to express it than on a really big building and all over your car and that's the thing: I probably got caught up in the moment and in my age again. And without any professional help from marketers or anything, because there wasn't a lot of money and I think as a martial artist, we tend to think we can do everything on our own – I quickly learned that's not the best way to do it, but that's a whole other story.Somerville Martial Arts Centre - Matthew BallSo that whole feel that we came into was pretty hardcore and like I said, that was actually a purposeful thing. I wanted to aim for that market. Part of the reason I wanted a full-time center because I wanted a ring that we could use all the time. I wanted hanging bags that we could use. Just trying to train people in a hall for a competition – it can be done for sure, but it’s not easy. You can't have people coming outside of work times to get extra training in, and not getting that experience of being in a ring and they’re just not getting the hours of punishment on the bags that you sort of need for that internal discipline that they develop from it.

Not only power and strength, but more that discipline of keeping them going, when they really don't want to be doing it anymore. Yeah, we set that up and my first car that I had when I moved in was a Mazda 6 or something, so it didn't look too bad. Then I got an Alpha Romeo, a little sports type car and I had stickers like several skulls and fading in the background it almost looked like a biking emblem, not an Alpha Romeo. And what I realized pretty quickly, I gave it two years, was that I just alienated the whole new family market. The families that were with us loved us still because the teaching hadn't changed, but we weren't attracting any new families.

When the realization came to me, what am I doing, and this isn't who I am. I’m not that aggressive, nasty guy. I don't look like a bikey or anything, so it was a confusing image I was giving to people, the juxtapositions were too far apart. So yeah, changing the logo – we actually changed the logo using a tragedy that we had. We had one of our young guys commit suicide, who was working full time at the center and was also competing at quite a good level in fights and he met a girl overseas and the relationship had gone south and he, unfortunately, committed suicide. And one of his friends created an image using a boxing image that everyone put on their cars and stickers and things like that from his friend at work and stuff.

So about two or three years after that tragedy was when I was looking for the new logo. And I was trying to be careful, I didn't want to idolize what he'd done, I didn't want other people to feel that that's a good way to get recognized, but also in my heart, I wanted to remember him and I felt that the logo captured what we were going for. So we changed it to a circle with the image of a boxer, someone in a victory stance in the center of it. We came up with a motto of “Commit to excellence” and put a name on it and I feel it’s a much friendlier, much more encompassing. It encompasses not only boxing and Muay Thai, but it also encompasses our martial arts and that striving for excellence.

So I think that the image is more about that. The trouble with running a gym where you teach multiple martial arts is trying to find an image that encompasses them all, and that's been one of my hardest things. So now when I advertise, we advertise each martial art we do separately, even from kinder kids to kids’ karate, we advertise separately and on separate websites and on separate social media advertising, so we can really target the groups. But the umbrella brand is still SMAC and that's still the name at the front of the gym. But the first contact people have with the marketing will be very much just that style that they're looking at like I said, kids' karate or adults' karate, or the Muay Thai kickboxing, will really associate to that. And that's worked really well and I'm hoping that that way of structuring the branding can continue to work as effectively as it has.

GEORGE: I'm kind of just thinking about it because it’s something that I've noticed a lot and I think it’s a difficult thing to do because you've got all these different target markets. You've got this fighting group, and then you've got the mom for the kid, and then maybe that adult that just wants to release stress after work. So you've got to have these different conversations. Like I always saw it, what is in the focus: is the focus actually just one level up and then the value of “Commit to excellence” and that your motto is really, all your emphasis goes back to the value, instead of the actual art that's being used to achieve the same result?

MATT: I think that there's definitely a part of it. The “Commit to excellence,” not only can I use for that idea of, it’s not going to matter what you come into, we’re going to help you achieve: it also helps me every day. So when I get a little bit lazy or my discipline lacks: for instance, we iron on patches onto our kids’ GIs and a couple of parents were saying, oh, they're peeling off. And I said, we usually just iron it on and then you can stitch it on later on. But then I thought: I've got a sewing machine here – why am I not just sewing them on? It’s not that time consuming for me to do and if I'm committed to excellence, I'm committed to excellence.

So the motto is not only for the students, but it’s also for me. But going back to what you're saying about attracting people is, yeah, I found the most successful clubs that appear as financially successful clubs just focus on one style. And I can understand the desire to do that and if I was saying to someone who wanted to set up a gym, what should I do, that is the line that I would say they should do – but it’s not what I like to do. So what I understand is the best thing to do isn't what I want to do. So this is where this breaking it down really came into its own and it’s really helped, it’s one of the measures that's taken us from about 10 years of staying at 170 members to right at the moment of 540 active members.

And it’s happened over two years and when I said, OK, I'm going to have a separate website for everyone – and they're really just landing pages, basic information about what we do, how to join and just the information on that class and what sort of person it suits. Now when someone rings, most people that ring have an idea of something that they want to do, but probably about 30% don't – they're just, I want to do something. So then we talk about the general benefits of martial arts, but then we try and find out what sort of person they are: are they someone that likes to spend time trying to perfect something before they move on, or are they the sort of person that just likes to keep doing it and as they make mistakes, they'll just try to correct them as they go.

So if they're the sort of person, I just like to get going, man, I don't want to spend time planning stuff out – if I'm talking about an adult, I’ll say that Muay Thai will probably be the best one for you to start in, because we keep it pretty quick, the techniques require skill at a higher level, but they're fast to learn for you to feel like you're getting somewhere. If they're the sort of person that says, I like to plan things out, I like to try and perfect a skill or a technique, Ill practice it over and over until I get it right, I'm a bit of a perfectionist, well then, zen do kai would be the direction I would take those people in.

With the boxing, it’s more often someone will ask about boxing, but they'll say, I don't like kicking, or I haven't got a good stretch, I don't want to move my legs around much, I just want to get into it – what we often find is, once we get people in here, they see the other classes going on, and we’ll probably get 15% who will change around, because the thing we did put them in wasn't the right one, so they'll move on. We've found the best way of doing that is, we've actually been running 5-week beginner programs.

So we find that the 5 weeks gives us a really good time for them to commit, so we know they're serious. So no free classes, they join the 5-week program, they get the uniform or the gloves, so they're set up from the start, and by the end of those 5 weeks, they have a really good understanding of what's going on. They're only stuck with other beginners, so the class is just set up just for them, they're not involved in the whole class, they're not trying to catch up, they're not trying to learn as things are racing too far ahead, the instructor’s not having to divide his time between them and the higher level people.

So we found that that gives them a really good grounding. Then they come into our classes after 5 weeks, like someone used to be after 13 weeks, because they've just been out of getting that basic work is done, so they feel better about it, we feel better about it and they've had a real good chance to see if martial arts is for them, without having to invest a massive amount, but enough to know if they are serious, not just, I'm going to come in and try a class because I'm bored this week.

GEORGE: That's interesting. We do a lot of the whole paid trial type system, and there's a lot of approaches to it: a couple of weeks training, maybe only a few classes, for the purpose obviously, because you obviously want the conversion at the end. It’s interesting that you go that whole dynamic of 5 weeks because you can get a real true assessment. Do you find at the end of 5 weeks that some people they are suited, so they're going to continue this one style, or that you determined that they need to be in a different style, or that you shift them around?MATT: I would say it would only be about 15-20% that at the end of it, we would direct them to another style. So for instance, we’d have someone – and it mainly happens in our boxing group, because our training’s all amateur boxing for competition training. So even though we know that only a small percentage of the group will ever compete, we train everyone as though they're getting ready for competition. A lot of people, because boxing is the in word, come in to do a fitness boxing group and even though we explain that that's not what it is and we actually have a fitness boxing class, most people still cannot understand, until someone is punching back at them, so even though in that 5 weeks they won’t spar, but they'll still do drills, we call them stick and move drills, so where they'll get jabbed at and parried off and move around, so they're getting used to it.

So what we tend to find is that at the end of 5 weeks, we’ll have a few of those people going, I liked it all except, I don't like the sparing, I'm not into that – is there something else I can do? So then fitness boxing might be the thing. Or even we’re finding, often the older guys that feel that way, they think they want to do it, but then they go: I'm 45 or 50 – do I really want to get hit by a 20-year-old? It’s a really good question to ask because I don't think it’s a good thing either. We've found those guys are going into the Krav Maga and same with some of the ladies and it’s been a great release for them, because they're still getting to work hard with someone, they're still getting to push each other around, they're throwing strikes with real force, but it’s in a much safer environment, it’s not in that sparing environment where it’s quite random, it’s more set.

And they'll actually probably end up training harder in the Krav, but it’s a much better fit for them. So that's probably the main one we find that switch and change. With the kids, it’s a little bit between kickboxing and karate, we find that mom felt that their child was this sort of child, but he's actually probably more this sort of child, and he's bored within 2 seconds when we’re talking about breath and balance and stance. But man, you get him hitting a bag, he’ll do it 400 times without wanting to stop. We’re probably a bit more shuffling in that class.

But overall, we find that what they start is probably what they continue to stay in. We have very few that don't finish the 5 weeks, but we don't capture everyone at the end of the 5 weeks. So at the end of the 5 weeks, we have probably about 30% who will say to us, I absolutely loved doing the 5 weeks, but I'm not ready to commit for a longer period of time. So I'm not sure if that's in our sales pitch that we’re getting that wrong, if we’re getting it wrong in our follow up, or if people are just buying it as a 5-week package: man, I’d love to do Krav Maga for 5 weeks and get some basic self-defence: I wouldn't mind doing 5 weeks of boxing, I've never tried it before – and that doesn't matter to us, because we're still making money out of them.

It’s still not a wasted lead for us, they're leaving saying that they loved it, so they're going to tell someone else about is and it hasn't cost us anything. We’re charging $90 for the 5 weeks and they get a set of gloves, which we can get wholesale on a good price, or they get a uniform, again, which we can get at a pretty good price. So by the time I take advertising fees, our instructor fees and the gift that they get, we’re still making a little bit, not much, $10 a student, it averages out at $9-$10, so it’s not much out of the 5 weeks. But then if I can capture 70% of those people to continue on their training, that's when we obviously start to make a bit of the return.

GEORGE: Going back to, because you mentioned that over the last two years your business has doubled and how the changing in branding played a big role in that: what else contributed to that big growth?

MATT: We had a number of things: working with Dave Kovar, release some stuff within me that have been holding me back I think. I found that most of the mentors I worked with up until that point when it came to trying to be financially successful, or successful in a business, it came down to finance. And it came down to, no one ever really said about trying to rip people off, but it always sort of had that feel in the end: lock them in on this, once they're here, never let them leave. It had that feel like, it didn't matter what they're getting out of it, you've got to keep them. And it didn't sit right with me, I don't like that. I don't like being involved in that when it’s happening to me, and I don't like doing it to other people.

So I always felt like there was something stopping me from being successful, because I'm thinking, well, to be successful, I've got to be like them, and I'm not going to be that. So I'm just going to coast along where I'm at. And then, doing the work with Dave and meeting him and seeing the sort of person he was and then going over to America and meeting his team, because I went, this is all really good, but does it really work this way? You know when you're learning off someone and you go, yeah I can get up and say how it should be, but how is it really?

GEORGE: Do you practice what you preach?

MATT: Yeah, do you practice what you preach. And are your guys following the steps that you've put in the process for them, or are they doing something else, and you're out here talking, but they're working something else. So I went over there and watched his club a couple of nights and got to meet him properly, have a relaxed talk and meet all his staff at all the different levels, from the person that does the intros, to the girls and guys at the desk, to the people instructing classes – man, it was impressive. The skills of his students were still good, it wasn't like Mickey Mouse nothing, it was good students.

The instructors were incredible instructors, I don't just mean physically, but they knew what they were doing, and they were young, but he trained them so well. The office staff, everyone, and they all worked as a team, there was no, oh, don't talk to her, or, he doesn't really know what he's doing, you should come and speak to me. They were talking each other up, everything just felt good about it, so it made me change my whole thought concept on it: you can be successful and be a good guy. What I'm doing is, I'm basing my ideas of success on the wrong preset. So that was probably the biggest hurdle. Once I got over that, I was happy to then go back to graphing my student numbers and charting everything. So when I first started…

GEORGE: Can I just stop you there on that? So, the big obstacle you had was your association with success?

MATT: Yes, for sure. And I still find it in other things too. I have done some work, I'm trying to get rid of it, I was seeing a psychologist for a couple of years to help work on that as well and I found that my time with the psychologist was amazing. It was like a business coach at the entry level because it was what I needed at the time. I didn't need work on my finances, and putting my plans into place – what I needed was, one of the hurdles, you've been doing this for a long time now: why are you still bumping up against these same hurdles? And with a psychologist, you get no answers, but it allows you to question yourself on different levels and things and I found that to be fantastic.

My Systema instructor, Alex Kostic, I've been training with him for around 10 years and he's from Serbia and he's studied psychology and he's always talking about how people should go and see a psych. We want to get fitter, so we go see a PT, or we do a martial art. We want to think better, but we don't speak to the professionals on how to do it, we want to deal with our situations in a better way. And it took me about 7 years of him constantly talking to me about it, but when I finally went to see the psychologist, I could go in there thinking, I'm not going here because I've got a problem that needs to be solved, or a mental problem that I'm dealing with: I just wonder how it can be better.

And that was another big breakthrough for me. Maybe turning 40, got me a few breakthroughs. So those couple of things helped me get over those big hurdles, put me back in the mindset of growth and development and then I could put that same mindset back into the business and I could put it back into my martial arts training and how I want to continue to grow. So those things, and then the other things that really helped us grow, a few of our instructors sort of came of age, they got to the point where they were doing really good work and you could really trust them with classes, so then we were able to grow the classes and develop more times and spaces.

Again, that came to me actually giving them feedback and again, it came from a slight tragedy: I had a bad thing with my back, I blew out a few discs and had some badly pinched nerves and was stuck on the ground for about four months before I could get surgery. And it meant that I was managing the gym with my iPad, so watching the classes through the security camera and sending messages on, can we do this, can you do that, when you teach the class tonight, the guy at the front is a little bit messy, clean that up.

And for the first time ever, I was actually managing the staff and managing the instructors and giving them really clear guidelines. So what would normally happen was, I’d turn up, they'd come in to help me with the class and I’d say, take the blue belts. What? No, no, just take them. Or such and such has got a fight coming up, go and work with him, and no real clear instruction, no good feedback. But being stuck on the ground for three months…

GEORGE: Blessing in disguise.

MATT: It was the best thing. It sounds horrible, but it was the best thing ever. Made up Facebook groups working communicators, groups for instructors, smaller groups, and then when I got back, we would talk before class on what they were going to do, I’d give them some other ideas to help with the ideas they had, at the end of the class, we’d give feedback on how the class went and we try to keep that going. So it’s now 2.5 years later, so all these things, they've all accumulated, but that learning to manage properly was a God sent, you know? Being stuck on the ground.

GEORGE: That's some really deep stuff there, I mean, you say just those few things, but just that – yes, you're removed from the gym, but now you actually had the bird's eye view, you can actually see what's going on because you're not in it, so you've removed yourself. And then the mind stuff, I mean, this is something I work on all the time, and I've got my own philosophies about it, but my belief this stuff comes from the way you grow up, the way your parents talk to you about money, that’s expensive, this is this, you can't have this, the whole tall poppy syndrome thing that’s alive and well in Australia – as soon as there's success, let’s pull him down, that whole crab in a bucket thing.

And I think all those things – you talking about, and I’ll re-listen to this, but it was kind of in the sense of, I was doing everything the same, and then I changed my mindset and my thinking and my obstacles, and then everything else changed. And it’s almost like it’s just that internal change, your beliefs. I guess your relationship with money and how you link success because you had this vision, these guys, they're a bit dodgy, they're trying to be sneaky and a bit on the scum side to kind of lock people in and keep their money. And your values just don't agree with that and that’s your only model of success and then, you're kind of like, I'm definitely not going to be that, I don't want to be that guy.

MATT: That's right, and if you haven't got those role models to look up to, it’s hard to create your own role model. But you know, with you talking, well how much difference can one person make? It took a lot of people for it to happen to me, but I was the only person in the end that needed to change for all the other things to change, and then it’s changed for everyone in the gym too, for the better as well. Now there are more people involved in martial arts, so they're getting the benefits of that as well. I had an interesting discussion with one of my higher ranks and we were talking about direction and things. And I was talking about the need for growth and he was dead set against the need for growth, he was telling me that that was a narrow way to be looking at some of the things or at martial arts development.

And I found that it was a little bit of a shock and a little bit hurtful too because the growth is about getting other people to experience what I think is absolutely an amazing journey and has been so helpful for me, that I want other people to be a part of it. His mindset is still in, he's thinking success is what I was thinking success was as a martial artist. And he's thinking that when I'm talking about growth, I'm talking about salesmen and ripping people off or something. It’s like, he needs that paradigm shift to say, that's not what I'm meaning: what I'm meaning is, getting people to love it, getting people involved in it. Giving them what we've had and what we've enjoyed for 30-40 years.

GEORGE: I’m on a completely different level than you are. I started martial arts in my mid-thirties and I can tell you, it changed my life, I know that. Why didn't somebody sell me, 10, 20, 15 years ago, why didn't someone put their foot down and tell me, you need this! This will put you on the right path, you know what I mean?

MATT: A 100%.

GEORGE: There's so much value in martial arts. And you don't want to go down the route of being slimy and locking people in and doing all this funny stuff…

MATT: But you need to get the word out there!

GEORGE: But at the end of the day, you've got to experience it. And if it’s going to change your life, I think martial arts school owners need to do whatever they can to install that message and get people over that obstacle, over those fears that are holding them back of actually just getting started and just get them started.MATT: The third biggest thing that helped change our whole number system around is part of that 5-week program, it was that we then had a date to advertise to. So rather than just advertising for new members all the time, which ended up never happening. So I'll get some flyers out, or I'll put something in the paper, or I'll put something on Facebook – well, there's no date to have to do it by, you know? But when I know that I'm starting my next course on March the 6th and I haven't got anyone in there yet, I know that I've got to be advertising to March the 6th. And there no use me advertising kickboxing if that course is zen do kai.

So I'm only going to advertise zen do kai for that group to get in on March the 6th. So it’s made me invest money in my advertising, it’s made me look at how the advertising campaigns work, it’s made me look at the results of the advertising campaign because they're very obvious. I don't just go at the end of the year; how many people did we have this year? It’s more like, well, how many people did I get to join u that month? Six. OK, so next time we do it, we got 8, what did we do differently? Or next time we do it, it was three – yeah, but it was the middle of winter and most people… so we can start to really look at things for having that date I have to have it done by, and that was another…

GEORGE: I'm so glad you mentioned that because I've spoken about it a few times and I spoke earlier to Darryl Thornton from Shukokai Karate and we were talking about events and deadlines and he just had a huge open day where he signed up 70 people and it was an hour! And there were so many people in the hour, and then 19 came back on Monday. And we were talking about this whole psychology: it’s not 5 hours, where people can come and go when they please. It’s one hour, where they get to spend their one hour of energy. They can only be there 12 to 1, that's the hour and they do something very simple, they run their event, everybody gets to take part, it’s the pride of the school, it’s what all the students are looking up to, they just want to do this one thing…

MATT: It’s coming again!

GEORGE: Yes, we want to do the open day! And they do one offer at the end and it’s not high pressure or anything, but this is the offer for the day and the whole psychology goes back to exactly what we were just talking about, this whole event for your marketing, that it’s not, people can just walk in when they please and join. You can only join in this window; this is when the offer is.

MATT: And we find that people actually appreciate it. Sure, we’ll get a percentage that won’t appreciate it, but the most, when we explain it to them, the reason why we have everyone start on this date is because we find in the past people just needed time to tag along, it’s not a great learning experience. But if we can really sell to them: in this beginners’ program, we go step by step, you're only with other beginners, the instructor can concentrate on you guys and really give you a good platform base –man, I want to do it!

When I'm telling other people about it, I’m going, I wish I started like that. My first class, I got winded five times. I started in stretch jeans and had to do squats with someone on my shoulders. Why did I keep coming back? I have no idea, but I don't need to give that same experience to someone else, I can give them a much better experience than what my first experience was.

GEORGE: That's awesome. I've got one more question for you, because I know you do a lot of traveling and so you've got a lot of people on board, within the fight arena and the fight scene –  what's been your biggest learning curves, from traveling abroad with martial arts and the fight shows and so forth?

MATT: I think the biggest learning curve, there's probably been two. The first one is probably just a funny one, but a lot of guys don't do much for themselves and you learn that when you go away with them, and they ask how they're going to get their underpants cleaned, every little thing – oh my God, this guy has gone from mom to his wife, and there's been nothing in between. The girls are much better, the girls tend to be self-sufficient, but the guys can be pretty hopeless, so you end up being a bit of an everything to them on those trips. But the main thing I've found is that martial artists are martial artists.

When I first started traveling, I was really quite nervous going into another gym, or a studio, or a seminar, because you didn't know what quite was to be expected, and you were representative of everyone from your system – you're not, but you felt that. You sort of go, if I'm the only guy these guys will ever meet from our system and I'm an idiot, if I don't do well, then it’s not going to look good on my whole system. What I've found is, if you just get in there and have a go and laugh with them a bit and enjoy the session, everyone takes you under their wing and then because you've got something in common, they want to show you around, they want to take you out for dinner. They will help you get to places that you would never get to when you travel.

So most of my trips, a vast majority of my trips are around martial arts. So it’s either learning or further competitions stuff. With the competition stuff, the main thing that I've found is that Australia is way up there on our levels of professionalism in the way that we were in or shows and competitions, but also on our levels of competitors. And I've also found that, particularly in the Muay Thai, that everyone's there to help each other, so we’re in the change rooms – there's no animosity generally in the change rooms. It’s generally very, very friendly. If I've traveled away and I haven't been able to bring a bucket because there was no room, someone in the change room is going to give me a bucket.

The last fights, we were at world title fights, on a line fight, we were stuck in a place called Connecticut, we were in the Indian reserve in the middle of nowhere – apparently, it’s the biggest casino in America under one roof, but that didn't mean much. There was no way to buy anything, the next town was 40 minutes away, we had no cars. Guys helped us out with pretty much everything, even down to adrenaline for stopping cuts, which we needed. So yeah, I find that martial artists in general, through my vast experience with them, the vast majority are decent, good people. Sure, there's going to be that guy that wants to test you a little bit more, that's had a bad day, but that's everywhere. That's in the supermarket, or in my own club from time to time, but man, I just love traveling and meeting martial artists, it’s just the best thing ever.

GEORGE: Awesome. Matthew, that was awesome.

MATT: Thank you very much.

GEORGE: Glad to have you on this show and maybe we’re going to have you do around two for the fight stuff and chat a bit more about that.

MATT: Thanks very much for letting me talk and I've been loving all the podcasts. I've learned so much off all the different people you've had on. In fact, some of the ideas that helped turn me around are from different martial arts podcasts and things that I've listened to.

GEORGE: That's excellent. And before we go, if people want to find out more about you, where should they go?

MATT: They could have a look at www.smac.net.au.

GEORGE: smac.net.au.

MATT: Yep.

GEORGE: All right, awesome. Cool, thanks, Matthew, cheers!

And there you have it – thank you, Matthew, for a great interview, it was good fun. Learned a lot, like always and touching back on what I mentioned about event based marketing: if you look at the whole psychology of that, just putting a dead end to the purchase, the big thing with martial arts is the long term commitment and people fear long-term commitment, it’s just something that you've got to process. And as I spoke with Paul Veldman about the different stages of the conversion: somebody comes in for the paid trial, that's that. Now there's a whole new conversation because there's a whole new state of mind and there’s a whole new person really, because they've experienced what martial arts can do for them, or not.

That conversation is going to be completely different and you've got to think of it as these little baby steps that are climbing up this ladder to get to the ultimate conversion at the end of the day. And the psychology of putting that whole deadline in place, there's a lot of things here: there's the psychology of the deadline again – I know I repeat myself often, but the deadline of, it’s a 5-week program, so people know that that's what they're committing to, 5 weeks, and it’s actually nice for a student knowing that, hey I can actually sign up to this, and in 5 weeks, I've accomplished something.

In my mind, I can feel that I've done something worthwhile, and this comes back to an objection that I see coming up with the whole paid trial system, is a lot of people say that, even though the paid trial is so good, they don't want to disappoint their child, because they don't want to put the child through this whole process of enjoying the martial arts journey and now the parent has got to say, sorry, we just can’t do it, we can't afford it, it’s not going to work. And having that deadline, having that package deal with someone – maybe you don't even have to do anything different: what Matthew does is put something in a 5-week program and if you can package it as in something that really delivers a result that people aren't scared to commit, because they know for the 5 weeks, they're going to walk away with something and certain skills, that is a great way to frame things.

And look, obviously your intention is to keep them as a long term member, but removing that fear, that risk, that risk of commitment, risk reversal – we talk about it a lot in our copywriting stuff, risk reversal: how can you remove the risk completely and take on the risk, the risk is all on you as the school owner. So how can you do that, how can you take all the risk, eliminate it all from the person that's contemplating whether martial arts is going to work for them or not? So remove all barriers, make it easy for people, get them on the floor, get them trying things out and then into the next step of the conversion.

Alright, that's it from me, just a few insights, a few things that I've come up with. For next week, we've got another awesome interview for you and that's it. Show notes and all links and everything are on martialartsmedia.com/28 and I will speak to you next week. Have a good week, chat soon – cheers!

 

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We may in the future need to restrict access to parts (or all) of our website and reserve full rights to do so. If, at any point, we provide you with a username and password for you to access restricted areas of our website, you must ensure that both your username and password are kept confidential.

Use of Testimonials

In accordance to with the FTC guidelines concerning the use of endorsements and testimonials in advertising, please be aware of the following:

Testimonials that appear on this site are actually received via text, audio or video submission. They are individual experiences, reflecting real life experiences of those who have used our products and/or services in some way. They are individual results and results do vary. We do not claim that they are typical results. The testimonials are not necessarily representative of all of those who will use our products and/or services.

The testimonials displayed in any form on this site (text, audio, video or other) are reproduced verbatim, except for correction of grammatical or typing errors. Some may have been shortened. In other words, not the whole message received by the testimonial writer is displayed when it seems too lengthy or not the whole statement seems relevant for the general public.

is not responsible for any of the opinions or comments posted on https://martialartsmedia.com. is not a forum for testimonials, however provides testimonials as a means for customers to share their experiences with one another. To protect against abuse, all testimonials appear after they have been reviewed by management of . doe not share the opinions, views or commentary of any testimonials on https://martialartsmedia.com – the opinions are strictly the views of the testimonial source.

The testimonials are never intended to make claims that our products and/or services can be used to diagnose, treat, cure, mitigate or prevent any disease. Any such claims, implicit or explicit, in any shape or form, have not been clinically tested or evaluated.

How Do We Protect Your Information and Secure Information Transmissions?

Email is not recognized as a secure medium of communication. For this reason, we request that you do not send private information to us by email. However, doing so is allowed, but at your own risk. Some of the information you may enter on our website may be transmitted securely via a secure medium known as Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL. Credit Card information and other sensitive information is never transmitted via email.

may use software programs to create summary statistics, which are used for such purposes as assessing the number of visitors to the different sections of our site, what information is of most and least interest, determining technical design specifications, and identifying system performance or problem areas.

For site security purposes and to ensure that this service remains available to all users, uses software programs to monitor network traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change information, or otherwise cause damage.

Disclaimer and Limitation of Liability

makes no representations, warranties, or assurances as to the accuracy, currency or completeness of the content contain on this website or any sites linked to this site.

All the materials on this site are provided “as is” without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of merchantability, noninfringement of intellectual property or fitness for any particular purpose. In no event shall or its agents or associates be liable for any damages whatsoever (including, without limitation, damages for loss of profits, business interruption, loss of information, injury or death) arising out of the use of or inability to use the materials, even if has been advised of the possibility of such loss or damages.

Policy Changes

We reserve the right to amend this privacy policy at any time with or without notice. However, please be assured that if the privacy policy changes in the future, we will not use the personal information you have submitted to us under this privacy policy in a manner that is materially inconsistent with this privacy policy, without your prior consent.

We are committed to conducting our business in accordance with these principles in order to ensure that the confidentiality of personal information is protected and maintained.

Contact

If you have any questions regarding this policy, or your dealings with our website, please contact us here:

Martial Arts Media™
Suite 218
5/115 Grand Boulevard
Joondalup WA
6027
Australia

Email: team (at) martialartsmedia dot com

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