57 – Zulfi Ahmed – The Real Secret To Success With Your Martial Arts Business

After 45 years, Grandmaster Zulfi Ahmed from Bushi Ban International has discovered the real secret to martial arts business success, and it's not what you might think.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

  • The ‘real secret’ behind Master Zulfi’s success and longevity in the martial arts industry
  • The ‘ONE’ thing that he would have done differently at the start of his career in the USA
  • What keeps his passion in martial arts thriving
  • The importance of attending martial arts events to meet like-minded people
  • More details about Bushi Ban International, a comprehensive martial arts system that Master Zulfi founded
  • And more

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


TRANSCRIPTION

GEORGE: Hey this is George Fourie and welcome to another Martial Arts Media Business podcast. I have a fantastic guest with me today, all the way on the other side of the world in Texas, Master Zulfi Ahmed. How are you today Zulfi?

ZULFI: Wonderful George, thank you. Appreciate you contacting me and pleasure to be on your show.

GEORGE: Alright, awesome. So we've got, just to give this conversation a bit of context: Zulfi is the Grandmaster from Bushi Ban International, 10th degree black belt, 45 years’ experience in martial arts. There's a lot that we can obviously gain from this call. So I guess we've got to start just from the beginning, to give a bit of context: how would you, if someone has to ask you who is Zulfi Ahmed, what would be your answer?

ZULFI: Well, Zulfi Ahmed is a short little man, who was born and raised in Pakistan, a third world country and I migrated to the USA in 1985 and I've been studying martial arts since I was 9 years old, so 45-46 years in the martial arts. And I studied all over the world, I've competed, fought, trained in almost every part of the world, except Australia.

So that's where I need to be heading soon! And I have my organization, which is an international organization called Bushi Ban International. Our headquarters is in Houston Texas, Pasadena Texas to be precise. We have 9 locations in the Pasadena Greater Houston area and we have 2 more in Connecticut and few affiliates in the US and several schools, affiliates in Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, in that part of the world.

The system which I teach is called Bushi Ban, it’s my system of development. I've studied many styles throughout my years and I'm still a student of the martial arts, I consider myself an ever-going, ongoing student, everlasting student of the martial arts. In the beginning, I studied the system called Bando. Burmese Bando, it’s a system from Myanmar and it has different branches, it’s called Lethwei, which is the bare knuckle kickboxing, Banshay, which is the self-defense and weapons art, Thaing which is the animal style and classical art, Naban which is the grappling art of Burmese martial arts and then I studied wrestling, Pakistani Indian wrestling when I was young, I studied Muay Thai, Shotokan karate… many, many styles.

And after studying for about 20+ years, I developed my own system and it’s an ever evolving system and that's the brief background. I've competed all over the United States in many different circuits from point type tournaments to full contact to MMA, to grappling, to Jiu Jitsu, to kickboxing, boxing, you know. So I've had a very well rounded learning experience. I've had people from all different disciplines took turns beating me up, so I've learned a lot.

GEORGE: Alright, fantastic. So Zulfi, did all this start… because I mean, you've got your own system and you've got nine locations in the United States: how did that all start? Because you came from Pakistan: was that the goal of the immigration, or were you already that far in your career when you were based in Pakistan?

ZULFI: Great question. I've already had many thousands of students in Pakistan. I came to the USA for higher education, so I was enrolled in college and university here. I was enrolled in Bernard M. Baruch College of Business in New York City, Lexington Avenue. I had a little, mini international scholarship.

Plus, I had an immigrant status. My sister, she's a pediatric on colleges, a specialist for children and my brother in law were citizens of the United States. They sponsored me for a green card. When I came to the USA, I was already a green card holder as an immigrant, but I came here to go to school and I really didn't have much intention on staying for any longer than I needed to and going back.

But I fell in love with the country, with the people and the opportunity presented itself, because I still had thousands of students in Pakistan and the opportunity presented itself for me because martial arts is my love – it’s my passion, it’s my fire, it’s my fuel. So, of course, I wanted to be in the USA to compete with the top of the line martial artists at the time in the whole wide world. So I jumped on the competition circuit. At that time, we had sports karate more prevalent, about 34 years ago. Very few other disciplines, but very scattered.

So whatever I could find, I jumped into that arena and then I opened my own little club teaching in daycares, with little children. And then, one thing led to another and I started with a small school, went to a bigger school, bigger school, bigger school and finally, built and bought my own building of 24,000 square feet, which is the headquarters now. And as time went by, we had more schools.

At one time, we had up to 17 schools and some of those schools are still active, but we don’t license them anymore. So they chose their own path. And to make a long story short, I came with the intent of finishing education and then see where my destiny leads me and my destiny kept me here and never looked back. Don't regret it for a single day. Love it, love the people, and love the country. I love my students and I love the martial arts. I’m a blessed, blessed human being.

GEORGE: Fantastic. I always love hearing an expat success story, as I'm from South Africa and I'm living in Perth. It’s always good to hear people who succeed. I call it the expat advantage because expats normally go and go with a different mission, because they've just got to make it work.

ZULFI: We have to make it work.

GEORGE: Yeah. So I want to learn from you: how did you go from… we always talk on the show about schools, and then marketing and so forth: but I think the topic we don’t explore that much is, how do you take that next jump? You've created this school and you've got a business: how do you scale to the next level that you can open the next locations and I guess in a way start removing, taking a step back and letting other people lead?

ZULFI: So, you know, if a person has a deep belief, deep conviction, deep faith, deep passion, deep fire, you know, of what you do, you love, and then you keep doing that, things happen organically and things happen with planning. So you must let your destiny lead you and don't question it. You must be led by your passion to a point where you are willing and ready to sacrifice and I'm a big believer in fate and destiny and karma and you know, recreate your own luck.

So what happens if one is passionate about and they believe strong enough and they're resilient and they don't give up and they are not greedy in the process. Then automatically, the universe opens doors. Sometimes, people come into your life because you attracted them and sometimes you go into people’s lives who you attracted. And they attract you.

And as long as you are aware of where your endpoint needs to be, things will manifest themselves as long as you are true, honest, hardworking and you are committed to your goals and dreams – you've got to have a dream. Then, things will happen. Don't doubt, things will happen.

When I came here, I was passionate about my martial arts. Schooling was my parents’ directive to me more than my own, even though schooling is very important and I did schooling and I recommend everybody does get their schooling and degree, because that's your plan A.

But fortunately, my plan B became my plan A, because I'm born to be a martial artist, my calling in life is martial arts. And I've known that since I was an orange belt since I was 9 years old. That this was what I wanted to do throughout the rest of my life. And that comes through my mentors, my teachers who inspired me to live a lifestyle of martial arts.

And then, being at the right time, right place with the right people, with the right mission, right purpose, opens doors. So I wish I could give you a more strategic, tactical answer: do this, do this, do this, do this, but to me, the best answer is just to follow your dreams and don't give up and don't quit and keep believing. And the right things will happen if you have the right intent. If your intent is good, if your intent is sincere, the doors will open yourself, just don't give up. That’s the answer.

GEORGE: Yeah, that's the better answer, because it’s always, you know, there's tactical change and it could be different for everyone and I think everyone has different strengths in what tactical things they need to do and not do. So yes, that's the better answer, thanks, Zulfi. So, at which point – I’ll get to this question in a minute, but when you feel martial arts school owners are going wrong in their path?

I mean, we've spoken about following their dreams and setting that intention and goals, but with the martial arts industry just being at a big booming stage. Where do you feel the school owners are missing the boat on their journey, with their schools?

ZULFI: I can't answer for the martial arts individual industry, I speak a lot in many different forums with the Martial Arts Industry Association, Educational Funding Company, MA1st. BTW, I’ll be speaking to our mutual friends, Fred DePalma’s event in April. I think it’s 26th-27th-28th if I'm not mistaken.

GEORGE: That's correct.

ZULFI: Fred is a great friend of mine and you know, I have the utmost respect for him and I’ll be speaking at his event. I’ll be speaking at many other events, EFC event in England also in April, the week before that I’ll be in the UK, speaking at the EFC, European Convention. So, basically, what I want to say, the answer is, you know the phases of learning and maturity is… the four phases of learning are unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence and unconscious competence.

So, you don't know what you don't know and that's where a lot of martial arts school owners, there’s so much out there, they just don't know what they don't know, you know? I still don't know what a lot of things are about. Then there are martial artists who know that they don't know, which is a great stage to be at. And then there are martial artists who know that they don't know and they want to pursue that, which is wonderful, and that comes to a point where you know what you know, and then you don't know what you know because it becomes second nature.

So I believe our industry is going through that second and third phase. We have a lot of martial artists, they don’t know that there's information, knowledge of business development, personal development, martial arts entrepreneurship exists, you know? I’ll give you an example: tomorrow I have a mastermind here in Texas, I've got Ken Pankiewicz, and he’s travelled all the way from the UK. He's got five schools there, I've got people coming from all over and I've got local martial arts schools owners coming in, who have never been to a martial arts business development event.

They just didn't know that something like this existed. So I think once you figure out that there is information there that could prove us and we take steps to go out and learn and implementation is the key. Everybody learns it, everybody knows it, everybody sits and takes notes, but can you go and implement?

So I think one thing which martial artists in this time and age, there's one school, one group, they don't know that we even exist, martial arts business educators. The second group is that they re information junkies: they love information, but they don't do anything with that. The third group is, they go and they take what fits in the model and they implement it right away, like my friend Ken, Ken is sitting here. He is soaking up and implementing. Then there are guys who already have implemented, they just need reassurance. They need to know they're doing it right; you know?

I go to these events to learn and I go to these events, let me give you a very honest answer: I go to these events to be humbled. When I see people who are doing much better than I am, it brings me back down to earth, because we are all kings in our own little kingdom, but when we go outside and we see, wow! These guys are kicking butts and taking names and they are way beyond my aptitude and it humbles me. And that humbleness makes me come back and say, hey, I thought I was this, you know, bad ass – excuse my French. But I've got a lot of work to do.

So to me, it humbles me, because you know, I believe most of us, me included, we are driven by ego. Martial artists have big egos. So once we let go of egos, we will come back to earth and we will do what we need to do to prove ourselves. So I don't know if that answers your question, but that's my feeling for it.

GEORGE: I love it, I love it, that’s fantastic. So, Zulfi, there’s a lot of unconscious competence that I think I can't tap into and it’s hard for me to actually get those questions, because I think you’ve got so much knowledge over 45 years, that things are common knowledge to you, it might be hard to extract all that information from you. So let’s put it this way: if you had to start this journey from the beginning, what do you think you would do different, or which paths would you go on? What would you change?

ZULFI: Great question. I would get myself a mentor ASAP. A mentor, or a group of mentors, or I would, these times and days are not times and days of lone rangers. Those days are gone. You have to be part of a bigger mission, bigger vision, bigger purpose, bigger group, bigger entity than yourself. Because the student is more aware of what the martial art is and it represents and represents and can benefit now than 30 years ago.

30 years ago, as a lone ranger, I could have hundreds of students, but now as a lone ranger, I can not compete with a stronger group of people who are united and they have more strength than you. So I would utilize, see, a lot of this, where I’m at today, I did a lot on my own trial and error and failures, more failures than victories. And then, when I found some mentors, one of my great mentors is the great grandmaster Dr. Maung Gyi. He is 87 years old and he is the father of American Bando Association. He mentored me, guided me and that was a blessing to me. Plus, other mentors in other fields.

So you've got to get yourself somebody who you respect and you feel can share with you through experience. Anybody can read a book and say what's in the book, but the years of knowledge, the experience, cannot be replaced by what you read in a book, or what you buy in a $2.99 program. It has to be lived and they have to live through trial and error, through victory and failure and that's the mentor I would get immediately if I could find one. If I could have someone who… that's the first thing I would do.

Because when I came to America, my teacher was 10000 miles away. I learned through trial and error and I learned to get beaten up. I would go to these tournaments, which I had totally different, I came from a different background and I went to do Texas style point karate with groin kicks who I love and I got beaten up every weekend.

But I didn't give up, I kept going back and going back and going back, so I learned through real failure and then, you know, if I would have had a coach, mentor, teacher in the business, I would have been maybe ten steps ahead. You know? So that's what I would recommend everybody: to get yourself a group of great people, a mentor. Build a little sphere of influence, build your own inner circle of friends and mentors, of like-minded pursuit, or get somebody who you believe can guide you. That's what I would do.

GEORGE: Fantastic. Zulfi, I'm just looking at the time and we’re running close, I know you've got another appointment to get to. One question just behind this: at what point did you decide to start your own style and to start your own program?

ZULFI: The decision to start my style was when I was living in Pakistan and I saw a rich cultural heritage of martial arts in Pakistan, which comes from India, Pakistan and that region. And I was training in a foreign style Burmese style. And I trained in Japanese style, I trained in Korean style, I trained in Thai style. And as a young person, I loved it.

I still love training in every style, Brazilian, Thai, and Mongolian – every style. But I saw that there was really nothing which was representing the rich cultural martial arts of the region where I came from, on an international level. Plus, I saw a gap of modern approach in those martial arts.

So you know, some people are creative by nature, some people are practical by nature, so I feel that my personal creative invocation, creative longing made me realize that I needed something. Number one, to fulfil my needs in what I was getting through that system was great, still great, I still train with it.

But there was something I wanted to improve and enhance. And when I saw the other system, it was like pieces of a puzzle. So I was making my own puzzle with different pieces and putting my puzzle together. And one of the key reasons for putting the puzzle together was at that time, the national pride that I wanted, a system which could be internationally recognized, which hails from that region of the world.

And then, I wanted to give back to that part of the world a more modern approach to what was going on in the other parts of the world where I was traveling, to Hong Kong, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Nepal, India, when I was living in Pakistan and I was accumulating this information and putting my pieces together and that was done on a selfish basis and it grew into a wonderful system called Bushi Ban. And my students loved it and it became a, we call it a supra, multi-dimensional system.

It was not a linear system, like Taekwondo might be linear, just kicks, but Bushi ban, in those days, before MMA, we were – and I'm not taking any credit, but we were incorporating wrestling with Muay Thai. We were incorporating karate with point karate, with kickboxing and we were incorporating Pakistani wrestling with point karate, takedowns. We were incorporating Naban, Burmese Naban with Taekwondo.

So it was evolving into what is MMA now, it was kind of evolving in that manner and it was becoming a multidimensional system and what I used to call it, I used to say, this is the tradition of the future. Traditional martial arts are the future, one day, people will adapt this martial art because it has the past and the future combined together in a multidimensional way and we used to say, you know, modern practices, traditional wisdom, and ancient wisdom, compiled together.

Of course, inspired by the late great Bruce Lee's thinking, as a child, as a young person I was reading that, and my own personal longing. So Bushi Ban became born, was born. And it keeps evolving because I'm still evolving. I’m the founder, I'm the creator and I’m still evolving and my goal is to keep bringing that evolution and innovation and creation into my students’ lives, wherever they are.

GEORGE: I love that, awesome. Master Zulfi, it’s been awesome speaking to you and I'm looking forward to meeting you in San Diego this year, so depending on when you're watching this video. So that's 26th to 28th I believe in San Diego at The Main Event. And Master Zulfi, where else can people find out more about you and your networking and everything that you have going on?

ZULFI: I would love to connect with people, I love people and I'm honoured when somebody calls me, I like to share. So if anybody who's hearing this, give me a shout out. You can email me at masterzulfi@gmail.com, or bushiban-hq@juno.com.

And if you don't mind, if I can plug in, put a plugin for an event we’re doing in Thailand, I've been hosting what we call the World Martial Arts Summit for the past two years and it’s in conjunction with the Thai martial arts games and Thai festival, which starts on the 12th of March this year and goes to the 18th of March. So in the World Martial Arts Summit, which I run that aspect, we have a sports karate tournament, we have a grappling tournament, No Gi grappling tournament.

We have a mastermind, where people like Fred DePalma, you know, Ken Pankiewicz, Hakan Manav, myself, Master Kazi Qais, Master Jeff Barley… many, many prominent martial artists from all over the world, from the USA, from India, from Australia, from the UK, from Thailand, from Malaysia, from Pakistan, from Bangladesh – many, many countries, they'll be there and we’ll be brainstorming and different martial arts business development, that's a mastermind.

We also have the Asia-Pacific Martial Arts Hall of Fame. It’s an organization to which we want to recognize top performers from Asia-Pacific region. So I would love to hear from anybody who would like to go to the event and you can log onto www.worldmartialartssummit.com and I’ll be in Bangkok Thailand on the 7th of March, till the 19th of March.

Then, there's another event I will be teaching, I'm the keynote speaker at the EFC, UK EFC event, which is, I think 20th and the 21st of April, that's in UK England. And then I’ll be at the MA1st Kyoshi Fred DePalma’s event in San Diego right after that. So, love to shake hands with all of you, love to see you there and looking forward to sharing our information with you all.

GEORGE: Fantastic. Master Zulfi, I’ll have all those links in the transcript of this interview as well. It’s been great to connect with you, all the way to the other side of the world and looking forward to meeting you in person.

ZULFI: Yes sir, my pleasure. Thank you, George, pleasure meeting you and I look forward to meeting you in person as well.

GEORGE: Thank you, speak soon.

ZULFI: Bye.

GEORGE: Cheers.

 

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55 – Bogdan Rosu – Personal Development Through Martial Arts

When you combine personal development through martial arts, the goals achieved become tangible. Bogdan Rosu's vehicle for this is Wing Chun.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

  • What led Bogdan Rosu to use martial arts in reaching out people.
  • The potential of martial arts for personal development combined with hand-to-hand combat.
  • Using concepts of Wing Chun to improve your life.
  • Being selective about the students you can and cannot help.  
  • BONUS PDF DOWNLOAD: 11 Goal Setting Questions to ask your students to reveal their real emotional reasons for starting martial arts.

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


TRANSCRIPTION

The problem with just doing personal development, for example, is that you just don’t get keeping it in your head. Imagine just reading books, or doing courses or attending seminars – that's great, that information eventually trickles down into your body. However, if you do a concept with your body and you're not just repeating it over and over again. You do it and you integrate it into every cell of your body, that’s totally different.

GEORGE: This podcast episode is the audio version of a video interview that took place on martialartsmedia.com. For the full video interview and to access the questions that we discussed: we discussed questions with Bogdan Rosu, we discussed questions that you can ask your prospect in regards to personal development, but what this does for you? It really helps you get a clear idea of what your prospects’ goals are. And if you know what their goals are, you can tailor make your presentation about your martial arts program based on what their needs are and not just about what your program delivers – big distinction. It will make more sense in the interview.

So to download those questions and the transcript, please go to martilartsmedia.com/55. Here's the interview – enjoy!

GEORGE: Good day, this is George Fourie and welcome to another Martial Arts Media business podcast. Today, I have with me – and I’m 100% confident I’m going to say this 100% right: Bogdan Rosu.

BOGDAN: That was actually pretty good.

GEORGE: Bogdan Rosu – did I get the “R” right?

BOGDAN: Yeah, yeah, actually the -su was like, it’s a bit unusual. Hi everyone, thanks for the invite.

GEORGE: Awesome. So quick introduction – and while I’m going to let Bogdan do most of the introduction, but Bogdan invited me to his podcast a couple of weeks back, Personal Development Through Martial Arts. And you can find that on addicted2wingchun.com. And it’s addicted with the number 2. So we’re going to touch a bit of that, on the personal development side within martial arts, within martial arts training as well, and just going to really have a chat, have some fun and learn more about Bogdan and what happens in the wonderful world of Romania? So officially – welcome!

BOGDAN: Thanks for the invite and like I mentioned earlier, it’s very nice to see you again. I’m excited to sit down and talk martial arts, personal development and marketing. Yeah.

GEORGE: Sounds good, all right. So first and foremost – who is Bogdan Rosu?

BOGDAN: I’m just a guy, you know, I’ve been doing martial arts since I was like 13 and the primary reason was because I just wanted to be a bit more self-confident and learn a bit more about people, I was horrible with people. Because for example, in the 5th grade, I was voted as being the most annoying, obnoxious kid in class and that was a bit weird for me because I love people so much and I just didn't understand why this stuff was happening.

But somehow I felt that it was because of me feeling really insecure. So I started my martial arts journey when I was 13 and in my 2nd year of college, I discovered personal development and I noticed that there was a really interesting connection between the two, in the sense that, what one was missing, the other can provide. So that's how this thing got started.

GEORGE: So – on personal development, right? So what actually led you to personal development? I mean, you're saying that you were feeling labelled most annoying kid in the class, although you're thinking you were probably just trying to reach out and connect. And then you said you discovered personal development, so, is that what sort of was the path to get you to say, well, there are some things I need to improve myself.

BOGDAN: Somehow, I mean, when I discover personal development, I had been doing martial arts for seven years. I started with this acrobatic style of martial arts and it was funny because the flyer said, “Learn karate, ninjutsu, judo, aikido…” and three or four other styles of martial arts and they were all taught by the same guy. And you can imagine the level of expertise. But he was good, he was a really good fighter. We ended up doing a lot of ground fighting, which was fun and a lot of flex, you know, a lot of acrobatic stuff. But I still don't know how to defend myself and I was so scared of the idea of confrontation, of physical confrontation, especially in the street.

And three years later, I switched to Shotokan karate and that's where I learned the values of working really, really hard. And reaching that point where you say, OK, I can’t do it anymore, I just need to go beyond that. And after three years of doing that, I felt a lot stronger. My posture changed, but I still felt very insecure. I still felt that my self-worth was close to nothing, I was still comparing myself to other people. And personal development came in the form of network marketing. A friend said, dude, you need to do this, you need to start doing this and I did it more for just having a side income, just to make a bit more money. Which did not happen of course. But I really got passionate about personal development when I started reading these books and these concepts, these ideas, really shaped me in the following years.

GEORGE: Interesting that you say that because network marketing was my stepping stone into the online business world.

BOGDAN: Really?

GEORGE: Yeah, that's what got me started. I know there are many perceptions about it: it’s a scam and it’s this and this, and there’s definitely a lot of that, and especially now that the bitcoin phase is happening and cryptocurrency, it really sticks out and it’s annoying. But I was part of the network marketing industry for a long time and what I find is – and this is what happens with a lot of people that get into that is, it is their first stepping stone into business. They normally try it, achieve a little success, or nothing, but it opens the mind to, Hang on – I can provide for myself, I can create this business. So it does leave a good groundwork for business skills, the start of business, being in business.

BOGDAN: Absolutely.

GEORGE: And then, of course, the personal development that goes with it.

BOGDAN: Absolutely, absolutely. And this whole idea of sitting down with someone and making an offer is hugely intimidating for a lot of people and yeah, you know, the problem was back then that I wasn't really aware of the fact that when you're making an offer, you shouldn't really be pushy. I was super pushy with people. But now we know better.

GEORGE: Cool, so let’s define, OK? I get to the personal development with martial arts. But let’s fill that gap in between that first. So you got into personal development – what exactly did you start doing that had the biggest impact on your life?

BOGDAN: From personal development or from martial arts?

GEORGE: Personal development, yeah. Because you were already in martial arts, right? So martial arts was there and your next thing was to start developing yourself, so how did that sort of transition I guess and then what did you actually do?

BOGDAN: To be honest, it actually started making more sense years later, because you're getting all these books, you're getting the information, but until you have also the experiences to use that information and consolidate them, it’s really not worth much. So I didn't see any kind of change in terms of my self-confidence, until I started teaching it, to be honest. And that's… it may sound weird to a lot of people, why do you teach stuff that you don't 100% own? Well, that was exactly the reason why, because I wanted to learn these concepts and own them, so I felt that by teaching them, it would really help me do that and it did. And that's when all of these concepts made sense. I’m still teaching stuff that I want to learn and master, or at least get better at it.

GEORGE: Yeah, for sure. Because that's the progression of life, right? I think it’s always important to pay credit where credit is due, there's nothing more frustrating or me when intellectual property just gets passed around like… you learn something and then you pass it on as your own, but I think for the most, people can see through that. But I mean, content creation like what we’re doing here with podcasts, a lot of that is actually educating yourself on the go. Sometimes it’s from experience, but as you say, the other part of it is, it’s something you want to be better at. So the minute you start articulating it into words, you actually start getting the better understanding of what it is that you do.

BOGDAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I absolutely agree. And a huge turning point in my life was actually learning… I started teaching, I started teaching Wing Chun. That was actually my third martial arts style, I discovered Wing Chun when I moved to Greece to study. And I got my instructor certificate and started teaching. And you probably know, like, working with your clients, the challenges of opening a school when you know nothing about marketing and you're handing out flyers and you're just dealing with all this frustration.

And I sat down with the person who would become my marketing mentor and he asked me about what I was doing. And I told him, look, we do teach martial arts, but we focus a lot on the mindset and on the tools that you can use to better your relationships, to actually have a better relationship with yourself. And he's like, yeah, but you're not just teaching martial arts, are you? You're also teaching personal development. And that was like, that actually makes so much sense. So he was like, why don't you just be open with that in your marketing efforts? And yeah, that made a huge difference. I just put myself out there the way I was and the way that I wanted to help people out.

GEORGE: So can you give an example? I mean, if you're doing a personal development within your martial arts teaching, how do you go about that?

BOGDAN: Mhm. Well, usually we have 5-10 minute discussions every training session. And what I've learned to do now is to allow everyone to speak and I speak at the end. I offer my opinion at the end. And then I ask them, what concepts did you use, or did you find in the Wing Chun training today? What idea is it that you feel you can apply in your life directly? Wing Chun is interesting, because it’s not a technique based on martial art, in the sense of, OK, you do step one, you do step two and you do step three. It’s based on ideas; it’s based on concepts.

So in Wing Chun, we say that you can do an idea with your hand, you can do the same idea with a stick, you can do it with your car, you can apply it in your life, in terms of your relationships, in terms of your work, in terms of business development. One example would be, we use the straight punch, right? When we do the first film, we do a straight punch. For us, it’s not just a straight punch, it’s a way of thinking. Instead of going around, right, to get to my target, I choose the fastest way, all right?

Sometimes the straight line is not always the best solution, sometimes you do need to go around, right? But if you can go straight to the point, just do that, right? So you're learning to be a bit more direct, you're learning to be more assertive with your way of thinking and with who you are as a person. So we normally do that, I get my students thinking of how they can apply these ideas, these concepts to better, not just their lives, but also to share them with other people.

So that's how we basically include the whole personal development. And then in the end, I share some of the stuff that I've learned, some of the books that I've read, the videos that I post on my YouTube channel, there's, the Wing Chun, the specific way we focused on the martial arts and there is the mindset and personal development aspect of the channel.

GEORGE: So if you say you're sharing the same stuff on your social media channels and so forth, is that sort of your leading theme as everything… you tie it in with your marketing, you tie it in with the whole concept of how you deliver everything. Would you promote yourself as a martial arts school or a martial arts school focused on personal development, or vice versa?

BOGDAN: Personal Development Through Martial Arts school.

GEORGE: Right, of course – as you wrote it. So now, bringing it back to… in the class, you say you get people really involved: do you find that it creates some discomfort, or that it presents some confidence issues, I've really got to step this up, that type of thing?

BOGDAN: Are you asking for the students or for the instructors?

GEORGE: The student.

BOGDAN: For the student? Mhm, mhm, that's a great question. Well, they kind of expect it in the sense when they walk in because it’s a whole new concept. So they would expect something a bit different from a traditional martial arts training program, so the people that usually come to the school, actually, they do feel a bit uncomfortable at the beginning, sharing their experiences and talking with the group. But slowly, slowly… the school is very welcoming to new people. So slowly but surely, they get out of a state of a, What should I say, or What if I say something silly. And we just start having a conversation. Usually everyone in the group contributes, says something.

GEORGE: Cool, something silly like swapping martial arts for personal development, instead of personal development for martial arts.

BOGDAN: Yeah, yeah, that's it.

GEORGE: Alright, awesome. Ok, cool, so anything else that you can add with the personal development side and how it’s sort of working for you and I guess results that the students are getting that they might have not expected. You know, the whole thing of, sell them what they want and give them what they need.

BOGDAN: Indeed, mhm.

GEORGE: There we go.

BOGDAN: Well, I personally think that all martial arts schools should include a personal development curriculum in their teachings, in their training. And if you love martial arts and you don't know where to start, a great aspect would be just to have a personal development specialist come once in a while in your school and holds an event, holds a workshop. Maybe somebody who specializes in communication skills, somebody who specializes in performance and productivity. Somebody who specializes in psychology, or something like that right? Or motivation.

I feel that martial arts are like when you're doing martial arts, you're really building a very, very powerful engine, upgrading your engine from, I don't know, an old car with a very powerful Ferrari. And I'm referring to your willpower, you’re really tapping into that, you know, I'm actually stronger than I thought and I can actually take on more than I thought. You're learning hard work.

However, you're not really learning what to do with that engine once you've got it. So by learning about personal development and what are the actual techniques, or how to communicate a lot better or more efficiently with people, you're getting the best of both. The problem with just doing personal development, for example, is that you're just doing it, or you're keeping it in your head. Imagine just reading books or doing courses or attending seminars – that's great, that information eventually trickles down into your body. However, if you do a concept with your body and you're not just repeating it over and over again; you do it and you integrate it into every cell of your body, that's totally different.

For example, confidence: you might learn about confidence, you might hear a very inspirational YouTube video about believing in yourself, but unless you do something with your body and change the way you use it, change the way you use your hands, change the way you use your spine, and the way you use your face, right? He's not really going to understand it.

So, in my crazy opinion, I think all personal development programs should include a physical aspect, more of a physical aspect, be it martial arts, be it fitness, be it, Tai Chi, be it, you know I'm saying that as if Tai Chi were not a martial art – sorry all the Tai Chi instructors listening in. Yeah, so, at the same time, all martial arts programs I think would benefit very much from including a personal development program. And yeah.

GEORGE: I think you hit it there in a huge way because that's really what it is, right? And I mean, you've got your different learning styles, you've got someone might be visual, someone might be auditory and then kinesthetic. So the movements, when you tie it into martial arts, then you're tapping into all the senses. So by turning your, and it could be really subtle, but I guess you've got to have, as an instructor, you've got to have that personal development goal in mind, or a syllabus or something that you follow with that in mind. And then you can apply it in a way that it sinks in and it really becomes part of your body. Body really, as in, yeah.

BOGDAN: Yes, yes.

GEORGE: And I think that's probably, that's the biggest failure in most personal development things, because as you talk about, I think it’s Tony Robbins that actually drew out the statistic, that if – and this is why they've got it, I mean, he's really the guru of gurus when it comes to personal development and they've also got the process down to knowing, obviously when people fall off in their behaviors and when they don't follow through. There's a statistic, and don't quote me on this because I might get it wrong, but I think it’s 21 days, if someone doesn't take action, enforce the habit in 21 days, it’s pretty much gone. And then I think it takes 21 days to actually enforce a habit of day to day before it’s an actual habit. But that's the biggest danger, if it’s not physically applied, then the habit is just easy to let go.

BOGDAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's actually the biggest job of any personal development seminar, workshop or whatever you say. You do it once – if you just do it once, you're never going to integrate all the lessons that you got, right? You might have a notebook full of facts and ideas, but if you just put it somewhere and forget about it in your drawer, it’s not going to work. And I'm saying that to remind myself as well because I attend UBW two years ago, I still have the notebook. But if you don't have the environment, if you don't have a group of people who are all together striving for the same goal, or reinforcing those specific habits, it’s going to be very difficult for you to do so.

GEORGE: So for me when I started martial arts – and this was really like, if I dig down to the deeper things of why I started, this was a big thing, because I've always been striving for that self-improvement thing, doing personal development and then, for me it was really backwards. When I started martial arts training, I immediately made the link, which is what hooked me, because I've been studying, doing all this personal development stuff and now I'm applying things in a physical manner, and now it’s like aaa! This is great, this is coming together for me.

BOGDAN: Yes, yes.

GEORGE: But what happens when the mind is not ready? Because a lot of people aren't open to personal development. Do you just not hammer it in, but you just subtly actually apply it in the way you go about your teaching?

BOGDAN: You know, usually, the people who say that they don't need personal development are the people who need it the most. So I tend not to work with people who don't see the value of personal development. I did that in the past and it just felt weird for me, because I felt I couldn't give my all in the interactions with my students and I actually chose to say, you know, maybe this is not a good fit and let’s find a different solution.

So yeah, not everybody will need or want what you have and that's great, but the people who do see the value, you tend to see like a very, very interesting evolution. Not just in terms of their self-confidence, you see it in your lives, yeah. Yeah, some people became… Since they started training with us, they became their team leaders, they got promoted at their jobs, people are making more money. People who were not in relationships actually, they're happily married now. People who were in miserable relationships have cleaned that out of their lives, so these are some of the results that people are getting through the program.

GEORGE: So would you, you were mentioning that you don’t work with people that aren't on that mindset, that don't want to go down that route, which is obviously a good thing, saves you a lot of time down the line – how do you go about filtering people out before they get started?

BOGDAN: So people usually fill in a form. It’s a pretty long form, it’s like a 12 question form. And they're very personal, very deep questions, like, what do you need and why do you need that? What's holding you back? What would your life look like if you keep doing the same things that you’re doing and that's a filtering process in itself? And people go through this form and then we call them up for a phone interview. If we feel that they're a good fit and we do and we can help them out, we schedule them for a trial period for a week, where they can see the whole training sessions, we can get to meet them. And then, at the end of the trial period, we decide if we want to take that person on and work together.

GEORGE: So I'm going to put you on the spot.

BOGDAN: Mhm?

GEORGE: Which means I might have to end this podcast. If you're still listening, then… Bogdan said yes.  So are we able to take your questions and actually include them in this podcast? As part of a download, with the transcription?

BOGDAN: You could, but I would have to translate them into English. It’s not a secret or anything, you can find this process anywhere. You can use this process for selling very high tech procedures as well or programs as well, it’s the same thing. Yeah, yeah, sure, you can include it as a PDF.

GEORGE: Awesome. And if you are listening to this and you are not focused on personal development, the reason I want you to have something like this is because, whether personal development or not, if you tap into your persons’ real – let’s take the martial arts out of it, we've talked about this. Martial arts is the vehicle to get them where they want.

BOGDAN: Yes.

GEORGE: You're not selling the martial arts training; you're selling the result that martial arts deliver.

BOGDAN: Yes.

GEORGE: So if your questions are provoking their thoughts of understanding what people really want, even if personal development is not your focus at all, but understanding what the real motives are for what this person wants to achieve, could be something that you could use in your own school and really benefit from the way you go about customizing your presentation, or your introduction. Because if you talk about a person's’ needs, then they're going to be more likely to respond than the logistics of, “We have a class Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday – 20 pushups, 30 push ups, fitness…

BOGDAN: Yeah. Most people go about this the wrong way, in the sense, they start talking about themselves. Oh boy, you know, our school is the only one that teaches breaking bricks and my teacher was the world champion in China – nobody cares. If you start focusing on your potential clients, or just the people who are interested in what you're doing and you're talking about what they need and really being honest whether you can help them or not in that sense. And if you cannot help them, to recommend something else, or someone else.

For example, I remember someone filling in the form and saying, I need help with my money, with my financials, because I can't find a job. I got on the phone with that person and recommended someone who teaches personal finance. I recommended finding a mentor because I can’t help them. It wasn't the right time, and this is also important: if somebody can't really afford your program, don't give it to them. All right? Give them the tools that they need to be better off, but don't push to sell if it’s not the right time.

GEORGE: For sure. But I guess there's a flipside to that as well, right? Because sometimes – and obviously, what I'm about to say depends on the context of when this happens, if you’ve gone out of your way and you presented something to them and they can't afford it – by all means, at that level, yeah. Don't push the sale.

BOGDAN: Mhm, mhm.

GEORGE: But I think it’s important to not confuse that with the smokescreen of, “I can't afford this.”

BOGDAN: Ah, yes.

GEORGE: Because it’s very surprising what people could afford when you tell them that this is going to deliver the result that they want.

BOGDAN: Yes.

GEORGE: People make changes. People cancel stuff, they'll cancel their satellite networks or whatever they need, and if something is going to give them the result and the confidence and change everything about them, they will afford it.

BOGDAN: They'll find a way.

GEORGE: They find a way, yes.

BOGDAN: Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. I feel that people tend to say that, “I can't afford it,” when you're talking too much about your school and about Wing Chun and you're like, you're being pushy again. But if they fill in the form and they're looking for you and you're taking them through this filtering process, just like you would for a job interview, they're already qualified, right? So they kind of expect to invest in themselves in that way.

GEORGE: Good point. And it takes me back to olden days’ sales training. I can see now how hard it might be for a martial arts school if you started a martial arts school and you haven't been in that type of training of sales training. When people say, when people tell you they can't afford stuff, it’s easy to just accept that as true. But what we’re always taught in sales is that it’s more than likely just a smokescreen.

BOGDAN: Yeah.

GEORGE: I mean, if they're engaging, if they're actually in your school, talking about martial arts and they tell you they can't afford it, then what were they doing there in the first place? I mean, they knew it was going to cost them money, they knew it was not going to be free. So I think it’s the hardest part of communication is, I guess looking in the mirror, and I know I'm going a bit off topic, but I think it adds context to what we're talking about.

If you're having that conversation – and that's something that everybody tells you, then maybe, unfortunately, you've got to be able to look in the mirror. And it’s the hardest thing to do, you've got to look at, what is it that you're saying that is causing that? Because you're missing a point here maybe, like what you were saying, you're talking too much about yourself and you're not focused on what their actual needs are.

BOGDAN: Yes, yes, absolutely agree on that. I think we’re very conflicted as martial arts teachers in this aspect of charging what we’re worth and what most people teaching martial arts don't realize are that the same person that says, ‘I can't afford you, pays a therapist more than they will ever pay you for therapy. But you need to realize that you're not just teaching martial arts; you're giving people a chance to live healthier and happier. Why should somebody who is helping them cure the problem be paid more than you who are helping them prevent the problem, right?

So I'm not saying, OK, raise your glasses so that nobody will come to your school anymore, but just be aware of the value that you're really giving. You're not teaching people to punch other people in the face, like less than 1% of the people that you teach will get into an actual fight. You're teaching people to know themselves. By knowing themselves, they learn to say yes to more of what makes them happy and say no to what doesn’t make them happy and doesn't bring more of that satisfaction in their lives. So you're cancelling their medical bills, you're cancelling their psychotherapy pills and you know, you're just helping them thrive.

GEORGE: Definitely so. Hey Bogdan, this has been a very insightful conversation. I want to ask you, if you're new to this personal development thing, I mean, I probably have a few preferences myself, but for you as a martial arts instructor and you run a school and you do this: if I want to get into personal development, what do you think is the best place to start?

BOGDAN: Well the internet! The internet, it’s full of personal development quotes…

GEORGE: Facebook?

BOGDAN: Videos… Facebook, yeah, as well. The problem that internet, the advantage of the internet is the huge quantity of information. The disadvantage is the huge quantity of information. So whatever we recommend, if you're teaching martial arts and you want to tap into personal development, it’s actually to start listening to the Personal Development Through Martial Arts podcast. There you go. There's a plug for you.

GEORGE: Yeah!

BOGDAN: And absolutely, go ahead and check the interview with George. We talked a lot about marketing and growing your school, that was a lot of fun. Yeah, yeah, I basically recommend the podcast, because we’re having very, very powerful inspiration from people who are experts in this field of fitness, personal development, communication. I’m interviewing Florin who is a personal finance expert who teaches that. And also, of course, martial arts masters that you can learn and get insights from. Yeah.

GEORGE: Fantastic. And so, your podcast is for direct access, that's addicted2wingchun.com.

BOGDAN: I think the best would be just to Google Personal Development through Martial Arts podcast. You can find it on iTunes for now, Google play is not available in Romania yet, but I'm still looking into that and making it available on Google play as well. But yeah, the fastest way would be just to Google the title.

GEORGE: Sounds good. Bogdan – it’s been great speaking to you, and I'm going to round this up with one last question.

BOGDAN: Sure.

GEORGE: And that is, what is the one biggest reason that I would want to come and visit Romania?

BOGDAN: Uh, well, to come to our school. That would be the number one! Romania is awesome. You know, we’re very welcoming people. I think that if you came to Romania you would immediately feel like you're at home. And the people, the people, 100%. And you know, you can check out the mountains as well, the sea, there's a lot of stuff to do and a lot of fun, but 100% the people.

GEORGE: And your school, of course.

BOGDAN: And my school.

GEORGE: That's a given!

BOGDAN: Awesome.

GEORGE: Awesome. Bogdan, thanks, thanks again. Great chatting with you and it was great being featured on your Personal Development podcast as well. Personal Development for Martial Arts and I look forward to catching up again soon.

BOGDAN: Awesome, thank you so much for the invitation guys, thanks so much for listening in.

GEORGE: Awesome – cheers!

 

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54 – Damien Martin – Risk Management Planning in Martial Arts

George Fourie speaks with Damien Martin about Risk Management planning in martial arts, training in Japan and instructing children with special needs.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

  • How risk management applies to martial arts marketing.
  • The risk factors in martial arts schools that some school owners overlook.
  • The necessary steps in identifying, assessing and controlling threats in your school.
  • How Damien changes a prospect’s perception about his school.
  • Working with students with special needs and autism.
  • And more

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


TRANSCRIPTION

Well, I learnt very early on that you don't have one advertising method that tries to bring you 20 students a month. You have 20 that try and bring you one. That way if one fails or one changes, you've still got the other 19 acting as a redundancy. Again, it comes back to risk management.

GEORGE: This podcast is the audio version of a video interview that was done on martialartsmedia.com. For the full interview with video and to download the transcript, please go to martialartsmedia.com/54. That's the number five, four.

Good day. George Fourie from martialartsmedia.com, and welcome to the Martial Arts Media business podcast. I have an awesome guest with me today. Damien Martin, all the way from Brisbane. How are you doing, Damien?

DAMIEN: Gold Coast, actually. But…

GEORGE: All right. Well, got that. It's close.

DAMIEN: Yeah, yeah. It's close enough.

GEORGE: It's close enough. All right. Well, that's a good way to start the podcast interview. So let's adjust from here on. Awesome. So we've got Damien on today and Damien is a wealth of knowledge in the industry. We're going to touch on perhaps some sensitive topics in regards to risk management and a few things.

And I met Damien quite a while back, officially face-to-face, at The Main Event in Sydney. That was last year. And we'd just finished building his website as well, which looks pretty cool, southerncrossmartialarts.com. So you can check that out.

So we're going to get started. So welcome to the call, Damien.

DAMIEN: Thank you and thanks for having me.

GEORGE: Cool. So to start right at the beginning, who is Damien Martin?

DAMIEN: Well, that depends on who you ask. But I've been training since 1982 when I started judo as a 12-year-old. Have been continuously training ever since. Been running teaching since 1987 and currently running the Southern Cross Martial Arts Association on the Gold Coast with my wife, Hannah. So we're a full-time center in Helensvale.

Primary focus these days is Okinawan Goju-Ryu and Okinawan Kobudo. So weaponry. As well as just the practical self-defense applications and things that spring from that and the other training that I've done over the years.

GEORGE: And when did you get started with Southern Cross Martial Arts?

DAMIEN: We started that in 2008. In 2008 I left the organization I'd been with since 1984, which was Zen Do Kai. We left there after some disagreements on future direction and not wishing to take advice on how to run a full-time school from people that don't run a full-time school.

At that point we were also running an RTO, delivering training to a bunch of government departments on risk management, self-defense and those sorts of things.

GEORGE: Alright, cool. So risk management, that's a topic that we've discussed in brief. What do you see, how do you see risk management and what do you see the effects of, I guess, the dangers of running a martial arts school?

DAMIEN: Well, just to back up where I'm coming from, I'm an OH&S consultant and have an advanced diploma in security and risk management. I worked in that particular space for well over 20 years. So most people tend to look at risk management from a physical point of view and think of risk as, you know, someone falls over and you get sued or one student beats another student up and you get sued.

And that's certainly an element of that but other risk factors that people don't tend to take into account in our industry is a risk to reputation. And I'm not just talking about social media and how many reviews you get and all those sorts of things. But, for example, if there's an accusation made of inappropriate behavior within your school that goes to the media, your school is destroyed.

Whether that allegation is baseless or based in fact. There are several instances in the recent past where similar things have happened to people in the entertainment industry who were later exonerated but they've lost their job, they've lost their marriage, they've lost their reputation. Now can't work in the industry based on, you know, false accusations.

And to be sure, there have been instances in the past where the accusations have not been baseless. And schools have been found and reported to be lacking in the recent Royal Commission into Child Abuse in Institutions where abuse happened within organizations and yet there was no child protection policy, there was no policy of checking when working with children or any of those sorts of things.

So those are some of the other issues. Then you've got your risks related to untruthful advertising and prosecution from the ACCC or Fair Trading in individual states. Like, for example, I've seen schools claim that they can cure autism. That's a pretty big claim and that is one that is likely to result in negative media attention. That negative media attention can destroy your own school but it can also negatively impact all of the other schools in the industry.

GEORGE: Okay. So, I mean, because I haven't really seen anything big in the media. Is this something that's sort of it's covered up before it sort of blows up type of thing? Or are there things going on in the underground that are just it's going to cause some obstacles and problems down the line?

DAMIEN: Sometimes things don't come to public light because there's out of court settlements with gag orders attached. So things like defamation or if someone sues for something. If there's a pre-trial settlement, the details are not made public.

Whereas if it goes to trial, the details can be found, for example, on the AustLII website, which is the Australian Law Library Index which catalogs all of the various cases that have gone to trial and come to a conclusion.

What insurance companies will often do is settle out of court. So if they settle out of court, that's usually based on there's a confidentiality agreement that you, you know, can't say what happened or what the accusation was or those sorts of things. You just take your money and shut up.

If you look at the AustLII library for things in relation to martial arts, there's a lot of disputes over contracts, there's a lot of disputes over trademarks. But a lot of stuff doesn't make public light that way. The other way that it can become public is if it goes to criminal trial. So like an instructor has perhaps, as has happened in a number of cases over the years, sexually assaulted students.

Other ways it happens is if it ends up on A Current Affair, and I can think of a couple of big instances over the last few years. One, in fact, in Melbourne actually led to a change in legislation relating to knives and martial arts weapons. A Current Affair ran a big story. It was a beat-up about a particular school and the particular instructor who focused particularly on knife fighting. And the next thing you know, the Victorian Government has changed the legislation based on that particular story.

The White Paper that was released on that, rather than a regulatory impact statement, gave the specifics of why the legislation came into being and how that was influenced by certain members of the industry who perhaps overstepped their authority to represent.

GEORGE: So where does the problem really start? You know, 'cause I guess the first thing I always … Like when I stepped into helping martial arts school owners with the marketing and so forth, I guess a big attraction to me was the ethical side of it. You know, like if this is what you practice as in an art, then I'd assume that's the way you live your life as well. Which I'm kind of shocked to see sometimes is completely not the case. But-

DAMIEN: Yeah. And I found that there's a direct relationship between the number of times an instructor mentions ethics and the amount of ethics they actually demonstrate themselves. Particularly some of the instructors I've met and worked with over the last sort of 35 years. There's been a lot of them go on and on and on about concepts like Bushido and loyalty and honor and justice and courage and these sorts of things, and yet that's lacking in their own lives in every way, shape or form.

They use the martial arts to feed their own egos. Now, there's a lot of those but it's a huge industry. I mean, the martial arts industry in Australia, nobody can really put a finger on how big it is. The Australia Bureau of Statistics varies, depending on which question is asked. And the Australian Sports Commission only looks at sporting bodies. It doesn't cover all of those martial arts organizations, some of which are quite large, that don't participate in Australian Sports Commission approved sporting activities.

So, you know, if you're not doing sport taekwondo or sport karate or sport jujitsu or sport judo, if you're doing recreational karate in a school hall somewhere, you're not in the figures. So, you know, no one really knows how big the industry is.

So it's broken up. Some people are really, really good. Some people are really, really bad and they tend to color it for the good people. But most people are just pretty much happy amateurs stumbling along, not deliberately meaning to injure anybody or cause anybody any grief. But they do so out of ignorance.

Martial artists tend to be quite credulous so they believe what their teacher told them without fact-checking and those sorts of things as a general rule. So if someone's teacher told them that a particular technique is invincible, then they've got no reason to check. That is the way a lot of people think.

Likewise, you know, I had a person who ran in the 1970s a large martial arts organization in Australia, probably the largest for about 20 years in this country, tell me that direct debit would never work because nobody would give you their bank account details. He was talking from a position of ignorance rather than being a professional business owner in the 21st century. That level of credulity, it just is a problem.

GEORGE: All right. So even if your instructor does these, what is it, these, what's it, yellow bamboo? I think it's called yellow bamboo. You must have seen that video. I think it's yellow bamboo, yeah.

DAMIEN: Yeah. Look, there's an awful lot of martial arts schools out there where the instructor's built up this reputation for being awesome at what they do because they only ever do it against non-resisting students. The real world is a different thing altogether.

So if they're not constantly testing the techniques against a resisting opponent, which is not the same thing as sparring. Sparring is, generally speaking, quite well-mannered and predictable. If they're not constantly pressure testing through scenarios and those sorts of things, or even combat sports application, then any claim that a technique is invincible is probably not true.

There are no absolutes. You know, martial arts instructors often tell their students, you know, if someone pulls a knife you run away. But you can't always run away and what if you can't run as good as the other guy? Again, the absolute of just run away is not true in all of that. You know, you can't always run away.

GEORGE: Yeah. So, I mean, what's the solution here? Because, I mean, if we look at the sort of evolution of this path, right? So let's say I'm an instructor and I'm training martial arts and I get this urge that I've got to create a school. You know, maybe it starts in my backyard and I get a few students, and then that sort of, you know, builds on itself. And then I'm like, “All right, I've got to get into premises.”

So where's the big gap and how do you fix the gap of where all these problems occur with risk management?

DAMIEN: Well, the same thing happens in a lot of other industries. You know, you get a lot of people, like they might be a very good craftsman at what they do. They might be a very good carpenter. They make wonderful chairs and tables and their things are well sought after. So they go out and they start and they set up a little shop, a little factory, to try and sell their wares.

That shop might not be zoned correctly. So they might set it up, you know, in an area where it's too noisy and finds themselves in trouble with the council. So martial arts schools, same sort of thing. They might not be insured for manufacturing things. Somebody sits on one of the chairs or does something with one of the chairs that they've built and it causes an injury, they might suddenly find that they needed insurance.

You know, it's no different really with the martial arts sector except that the martial arts sector is selling services based on, in a lot of cases, fantasy from what people have seen on TV. So there is no central body. Various countries and organizations have tried over the years, from the Dai Nippon Butokukai back in Japan pre-war and post war trying to coordinate all Japanese martial arts. That didn't work.

The Japan Karate Federation, the World Karate Federation. There have been so many organizations over the years try and bring all martial artists together, but martial artists are as diverse as language groups and cultures. You know, it's like saying that everybody's the same. And they're not. The martial arts themselves are not homogenous. They're very diverse.

People practice martial arts for different reasons. Some people want self-defense, or they think they do. Some want to get fit. Some for cultural reasons. Some do it because their friends do it. There's no one reason why people do martial arts.

So, you know, we're not all covered by the sporting bodies, for example. We're not all covered by international organizations and bodies because of the politics that are associated with those. It's a hugely diverse industry. And that's one of its strengths but it's also its biggest weakness.

GEORGE: So let's say I was a school owner and I'm not covered in any way. What do you think are the first steps that need to happen?

DAMIEN: Usually Google to start with, and do a basic business plan. You know, most small businesses fail in the first five years. They fail 'cause they fail to plan. You need to do a basic business plan. That basic business plan will ask the questions that you need to look at and address in relation to planning, zoning, insurance, accounting.

Like, you know, what's the best business structure for you? Are you going to be a sole trader, are you going to be part of a club or an incorporated not-for-profit association? Are you going to be a company? Is a family trust required? You know, you need advice from experts in the martial arts and the martial arts business sector, like you do in any business sector.

So I'd start with Google and a business plan. The business plan will set you on the right track for asking those questions.

GEORGE: Sounds good. So let's just touch on advertising. And I actually want to, you mentioned Japan and I know you've done some extensive traveling there the last couple of months. But let's talk about advertising because, you know, you mentioned that there's misleading advertising. And right now, at the time of recording this, there's a big shuffle on Facebook. A big change in structure in valuing more one-to-one interaction, valuing more local news.

So there's a lot of changes happening. And the first thing that marketers always do is they shut. Do they? This is the end? And marketers destroy everything. It's normally marketing becoming easier and people pushing boundaries, doing advertising and just it's becoming too easy. And because it becomes too easy there's not enough control.

And, I mean, I've seen this over the years in different platforms. Google being number one, known as the Big Google Slap where everybody lost all their AdWords accounts. Search engines being slapped. I mean, it's just a trend. It's a trend of the platform gets popular, there are eyeballs. Too many advertisers come onto the platform, make silly errors, it devalues the actual platform. And because the platform gets devalued, peoples' eyeballs go elsewhere and they've got to protect what they obviously own. Like with Facebook and such.

So, I mean, that's the things I'm seeing like in what's relevant right now with advertising, is there's a big cleanup happening. And I would suspect that if a lot of school owners had to lose their Facebook accounts, which happens, ad accounts get suspended on a day-to-day basis, their business will go with it. Because that's their one lead generation source. So your take on advertising and being within the boundaries?

DAMIEN: Well, I learnt very early on that you don't have one advertising method that tries to bring you 20 students a month. You have 20 that try and bring you one. That way if one fails or one changes, you've still got the other 19 acting as a redundancy. Again, it comes back to risk management.

To have all of your eggs in the Facebook market or the Facebook basket, so to speak, is a bit short sighted. You need to have those other methods out there. You've still got things like referrals, signage, people just knowing where you are. You know, there's a lot of other methods.

Some things don't work anymore. Yellow Pages, for example, doesn't work for us at all. Because we test and measure just about everything. Flyers in the letterbox don't work anymore. Again, we know that because we test and measure. We used to do the first four weeks of every year we'd do 10,000 flyers a week around our local area and then watch the associated web hits go up as people type in the web address and looked at our website and everything. That just stopped. It's not like it dwindled. It's one year it worked, the next year it did not. Or the year after.

So if we were putting all of our eggs in that particular basket, that would have been disastrous for us as an organization. You've just got to be somewhat diversified while staying on trend for the more current ways that people shop and think. You know, maybe Instagram will work for you in your area. Maybe it won't. Maybe Facebook is good in your area. Maybe it's not. Maybe Google AdWords works better.

Maybe you're in a country town and the newspaper advertising still works. You know, there's a lot of variables. You've got to know your own marketplace, your own client base and who comes to your school and who buys your services. A lot of people don't. They try and take a cookie-cutter approach. And, you know, for years everyone was buying their ads from organizations in America. MASuccess, those sorts of things.

And one thing I found early on in the '90s was that if there's an American flag on a uniform in an ad, that ad doesn't work in Australia. It might work in America but it doesn't work here. So you learn what your individual market requirements are and you've always got to be testing and measuring.

GEORGE: Yeah, so true. I mean, we've seen that with the same franchise, same marketing, same everything. Two different locations, two different results. Everything the same. And, you know, we always talk about, in my presentation I talk about five levels of awareness. I call it The Five Stages of the Student’s Signup Cycle. You know, there's your marketing but there's always the message that was received before and leading up to actually seeing your marketing. And that's going to also affect the actual response at the end of the day.

So, Damien, tell me about Japan. Tell me about your trip. Just to change gears here. Tell me about your trip to Japan and what did you get out of that experience?

DAMIEN: Well, we go to Okinawa, which obviously is part of Japan, every year to train with our Goju Sensei and with our Kobudo Sensei. Two different organizations but closely related. We just love the place, we love the people, we love the training. And we like, or I particularly like, those lightbulb moments that you get where practices within the martial arts that are remnants of where it came from, suddenly their purpose becomes apparent.

So, for example, a lot of the stories and things that are passed down, in martial arts schools in Australia at least, come from publications from the 1960s that were written by people that actually had very limited exposure to what they were writing about.

So these stories took on a life of their own. So there was, you know, the old Okinawan practice, for example, of practicing their training or their martial arts at the tombs of their family. So family tombs are a big thing in Okinawa and it was an even bigger thing pre-World War II.

And the theory was that they were, you know, spiritually connecting with their ancestors and all those sorts of things. And when we spoke to the Okinawans about it, apart from the sort of raised eyebrows to work out whether we were taking the piss, it was, “Well, the grass is cut short there. There are no snakes.” Everywhere else you could get bitten by a snake. And it's like, “Oh, that's very pragmatic.”

There's a lot of those sorts of things and, being a bit of a karate nerd and amateur historian, I really appreciate those moments. But the people are the main thing.

GEORGE: The people. So what are the sort of key things that you learn that you come back and you take a different approach in your school?

DAMIEN: Well, our journey with the Okinawan karate deal, like I was doing Zen Do Kai up until 2008. But in 1999 I started with Okinawan Goju as well. And my idea was to refine the Kata. Make them better, make them more practical, make them more understandable. Because if we've been doing this particular template of movements for the last 100, 150 years, it must have had a purpose.

So trying to find the purpose, trying to find the applications, was what sort of drove me down that path. So this year, on the way to Okinawa, we also went to China. To Fuzhou, which is where Kanryo Higashionna, who was Chōjun Miyagi, the founder of Goju's teacher, trained. And we found the or had found through a couple of years of research, the school where he trained.

And we wanted to go there and see what they were doing and why they were doing it, and how closely related it was to what we were doing. And I was pleasantly surprised that what they were doing was not that far removed from what we were doing. Some of it looked different but the applications were the same. The hip movement, the arm movement, the actual applications in different forms was the same.

Which for me, as a martial arts teacher, was good. I quite enjoyed that connection. So we're still fact-checking some of the things that they told us and we'll hopefully be publishing some information. It's a little bit of a historical addition, if you will, to the current sort of communal knowledge on origins of karate in Okinawa and the origins of Goju-Ryu in particular.

GEORGE: It sounds like you have a book coming out.

DAMIEN: I wouldn't say a book. Maybe a couple of articles but, I don't know, I don't think it's exciting enough for most people to justify the costs of publishing.

GEORGE: I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

DAMIEN: Well, based on the reaction I've had from some quarters on the Blitz article that was done about this for the December/January issue, what I found is by saying certain things it challenges people's beliefs to the core. And people's beliefs about their martial arts is very akin to people's beliefs about their religion. So we need to make sure that all our ducks are in a row.

GEORGE: Yeah. Yeah, I could see it opening a big can of worms. Yeah, especially if you touch on things, like you mentioned, with the tombstones and just things that people base their entire martial arts career upon, and now it sort of gets challenged. Yeah.

DAMIEN: Yeah, I think the Kung Fu TV series in the 1970s and then, you know, the later, the Ninja phase and all of those things that have been trends through the martial arts over the years have all left their little remnants in popular culture and the way people perceive martial arts and what they can be.

You know, like there's this common perception that karate is an antique and is not street effective. And if you're not doing Krav Maga then, you know, you're not doing the right thing. Or even in the MMA circles. But the core of a lot of Krav Maga technique came from karate. Krav Maga is a mixed martial art or a hybrid martial art. It forgets where some of its core techniques come from.

The MMA people that talk about, you know, the dominance of MMA fighters or this, that and the other forget that guys like Georges St-Pierre or Lyoto Machida and those guys were karate practitioners primarily. You know, everything has its place. So it's just another trend.

GEORGE: Yeah, so how do you … I mean, let's say I'm a prospect and I walk into Southern Cross Martial Arts and that's my thinking. My thinking is I've come from, you know, I'm looking at UFC and I've got this certain perception and that's sort of what I see as what I want. Or maybe what I don't want. How do you have that conversation?

DAMIEN: As much as possible, we put them on the floor and they start to train. And it's more about feeling and moving than it is about talking. The only way to change people's perceptions is to show them. You can tell them till you're blue in the face but people are so used to marketers lying to them now that they don't believe you.

So we get 'em on the floor and show them why we do what we do. We don't beat anybody up or anything like that, don't get me wrong. But get them on the floor to train, to feel their body moving and take it from there. And, look, what we do is not for everybody. Some people, some younger people want to spar more, for example. I did when I was in my 20s.

Now we're fully cognizant of the fact that people have jobs to go to and an income to make. They don't all want to live like, you know, karate hobos like we did with broken bits and pieces all the time. It's a different world. And we know more as well.

GEORGE: Awesome. Damien, I'm going to ask you one more question and now that I think of it, this could actually probably spur on a whole different episode, as such. But you mentioned that you work with kids with autism.

DAMIEN: Yep.

GEORGE: Now, this could probably be a much longer conversation but I just wanted to touch on it. What advice would you have for people that work with kids with autism or special needs?

DAMIEN: Well, we have a saying in the world of those that work with kids with autism. Basically, once you've met one autistic kid you've met one autistic kid. Meaning basically that they're all different. While there are stereotypical behaviors, each child is different, is motivated differently, works differently, mentally, physically, and so on.

But don't make assumptions and don't jump into conclusions. And the first thing that people need to do is get educated. There's plenty of programs out there on what autism actually is. Don't rely on memes that you read on Facebook. And actually, to be blunt, get a clue.

There's a lot of people now claiming that they specialize in teaching autistic kids. And we pick up the pieces. Yelling at them, screaming at them. You know, it's ridiculous what some people are doing. And it's, “Oh, this is the tradition.” Really? You know, it's not.

GEORGE: You mean, I can't believe all the memes I see on Facebook?

DAMIEN: No. Facebook is a wonderful way of connecting the world and so on, but it can also do so much harm. And some of these memes that are floating around. You know, like there's a correlation being found between gut flora and autism. Now, correlation does not indicate causation. All right, it's just something that they need to investigate further.

But you've got people out there that are advocating parents with autistic children get them to drink bleach, for example, because it'll kill the bad microbes and so. And it's horrendously harmful. But if you've worked with some of the parents that are so desperate to help their child, some of them try it. Based on some crap they see on the internet. It just…

So, yeah, I've seen martial arts schools advertise that they can cure autism. If that's not a potential A Current Affair episode, I don't know what is. You know, martial arts is good for children on the spectrum if they're working with caring and educated instructors. Because it has its consistency. Things are done pretty much the same way each class, as in your warm ups and those sorts of things. There's a predictability about it that makes them feel comfortable.

And we've had some amazing successes with some of our autistic kids. With one of our junior black belts now, he's 12, he's been with us for eight years. You know, his whole persona has changed based on the lessons that he's learned for dealing with other people. Just out of counting out loud in class and things like that.

GEORGE: Fascinating.

DAMIEN: Yeah, so I'd say that my main advice would be to get educated and get a clue rather than getting your education by getting on, say, Facebook. And I see this on a daily basis, and I've started deleting these groups. But they'll get on a martial arts business group, for example, and say I've got an autistic kid who's just joined my class. What do I do? And you'll get all of this stuff. It will be regurgitated by people.

And it all tends to be very stereotypical. It doesn't take into account that every autistic child is just as much an individual or unique as every other child that we teach. So, you know, we need to get to know them. A lot of kids with the autism spectrum have sensory processing disorders. So the idea of kiai, or kiai-ing in class, if that child is sensitive to noise, is going to be a major barrier.

Or they might have sensory processing issues with things touching their head. So if you wear helmets in class for sparring, that might be the issue and you need to work a way around that. There are so many different things.

GEORGE: Well, yeah, it seems like really putting aside everything, your practice and your tradition of what you do, and really customizing it to what's going to be the obstacles with this child and really playing a real close ear on the ground.

DAMIEN: Yeah.

GEORGE: I mean, a close ear on the ground to really understand what their needs and what their obstacles are in how this tradition is going to affect them.

DAMIEN: Yeah. And it's not a matter of lowering your standards. It's a matter of lowering your time expectations and having more patience. But just because somebody processes information in a different way doesn't mean that they can't do a front kick the same way as everybody else. It just might take them a slightly different way to get to that point.

There's just so many variables. And we've built up somewhat of an unexpected expertise with autism. It wasn't our goal. And we've spoken to our parents on a number of occasions. Do they want separate classes for the kids on the spectrum? And the overwhelming answer is no because they need to learn to deal with regular people.

GEORGE: Definitely.

DAMIEN: So by segregating all the autistic kids into the one class, all they get to deal with is other autistic people. And to be quite honest, most autistic people don't want that.

GEORGE: Yeah. That's awesome. Damien, that can probably spark a whole new episode. And I'm happy to have you on again if anyone's got questions about that. I know, you know, for I always mention this in our Martial Arts Media Academy program. You've just got to be so careful where you get advice from. It's easier, you know, Facebook has made it easier for everybody to connect but some people should not have an opinion verbally.

It's just a fact. You know, I mean, and Joe Rogan actually says it the best. You know, if you get a million people, there's going to be a hundred thousand assholes that don't know what's going on. Out of every hundred thousand or thousand? And those are mostly the most vocal ones. So it's very easy to just take advice because every comment looks equal. But you don't know the background of that person, what they've done, their ethics, their education. So, yeah, you've got to be so careful.

DAMIEN: One of the ones that comes up regularly is the link between … No, actually I'm going to rephrase that because there is no link. But the purported link between autism and vaccinations. Now, the doctor, who's no longer a doctor because he lost his medical license, who did that study had a financial interest in another vaccination. He fabricated a report and a link to no evidence whatsoever so that he could sell his vaccination.

Now, he got caught and it was all redacted and the Lancet redacted the report and so on. But that myth, since then, since Wakefield's report, has perpetuated itself and the internet is making it worse and worse and worse and worse to the point where diseases like a polio and whooping cough and so on are making a comeback. They were all but eradicated. Because people don't want their children to catch autism. It's not something that you catch.

But there are some good organizations out there that are doing training. I'm doing a presentation, or my wife and I are doing a presentation, for the Titan's event in May on working with kids on the spectrum and would just like to get more information out there so that people are not traumatizing these kids with something that should be profoundly helpful.

GEORGE: Fascinating. Awesome stuff. For anybody, there's a … And, you know, just we'll close, probably close it off here, but there's a book, Trust Me, I'm Lying, by Ryan Holiday. If you ever want a true perspective of how media can get manipulated, he was a self-confessed media manipulator. His job was to plant rumors, spread them, create the media behind it. There would be rallies.

Until they saw the consequences of people dying because of fake news spreading in such a way that the consequences kick in. It's a brilliant read, just to get a perspective of don't get all your information from a Facebook post. Because that article was probably written with intent or paid by someone to write. And they did their own research with whatever they could find, and they wrote it and put it together. And it creates a perception where the intent was really just to disrupt. So, yeah, probably a good way to end that off.

DAMIEN: No problem.

GEORGE: Awesome. And Damien, thanks again for coming on. If anybody wants to get in touch with you and learn more about you, where should they go?

DAMIEN: The best point of contact would either be via our website, which you mentioned earlier, www.southerncrossmartialarts.com, or Facebook is probably the easiest way. I'm not good with telephones.

GEORGE: Skype video, it works.

DAMIEN: Yeah.

GEORGE: All right. Awesome. Thanks, Damien.

DAMIEN: No worries.

GEORGE: Thanks for being on. I'll speak to you soon. Cheers.

DAMIEN: Cheers. Bye.

 

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27 – Turning 2 Weeks ‘Quiet Time’ Into 96 Martial Arts Paid Trial Students (And How To Retain 90% Of Them)

Attracting 96 new martial arts paid trial students in 2 weeks is fantastic. But retaining them by providing value is another. Paul Veldman shares how.

Martial Arts Paid Trials - George Fourie and Paul Veldman

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

  • What the exact martial arts paid trial offer was
  • The marketing components applied to attract 96 new paid trial signups
  • Having the right incentive to retain your new student
  • The one thing almost no martial arts schools are doing to retain their students for life
  • Valuing your reputation over dollars earned
  • Why email is still a leading force for martial arts marketing
  • And more

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


TRANSCRIPTION

And what I had saw coming back in was some faces and names that I hadn't seen for years, saying, can we take up his offer?

Hi, this is George Fourie and welcome to another episode of the martial arts media business podcast, episode number 27. I have with me for round 2 today, Shihan Paul Veldman from Kando Martial Arts in Hughesdale and also from Martial Arts Business Success and we're going to be talking about a couple of things, but we're going to start with a really, really successful campaign that Paul had in December, that we helped him with and that generated well over 90 paid trials in the end, which is now the official number, which it was 86, there were 96 results from that.

And we're going to break it down, not just the signup process: we talk a lot about generating leads because that's my specialty, but I wanted to really get a background view of what happens. You put out a great offer, you put out a great trial like that, and you've got this flood of new students that sign up, but what do you do then? How do you manage to get them into your club on a permanent basis, signing them up for a long term member? And we're going to take a look at the different steps and components that go into that, to really turn these paid trial leads into ongoing and long-term club members.

So lots of great things to talk about, and not to jump the gun yet, but if you do want to have a look at the actual page that we used that helped generate Paul more than 90 paid trials at the end of the day, then go and have a look at martialartsmedia.com/mabs – M-A-B-S. I did a short seven-minute video, it just gives you a bit of an overview of how the whole page works, different components, the up-sells, and that's going to put a lot of this interview into perspective, so whether you do that before or after the interview, just make a note of that, because that's really going to help you understand the different components, and how that can help your marketing.

All right, I want to get going. For all other show notes and links and everything mentioned in this episode, you can go to martialartsmedia.com/27,  download the transcript and everything else is on the website for you. That's it for me, I hope you enjoy this interview – you're going to learn a lot from this I can guarantee that, and welcome to the show once again Mr. Paul Veldman.

GEORGE: Good day everyone, today I'm with Paul Veldman sitting in front of me this time, round two. Welcome, Paul.

PAUL: Good morning.

GEORGE: Cool. And today we're going to touch on a few things, but I guess our highlight is going to be, last year towards the end of the year, we did a campaign. We helped Paul to get a package for a paid trial, and got really good results with it.

PAUL: We ended up with 96 results over a two-week period.

GEORGE: Two weeks, yeah.

PAUL: But the really surprising thing George, that I enjoyed, was in December, we tend to find we drop off our marketing. We know that on Facebook, the pay per clicks gets more expensive because we're competing with all the retailers for Christmas business, but we thought we’d give it a little bit of a go, mostly just hitting out a lot of old inquiries, old members. And the results were astounding, it was actually scary how good they were. So between the three clubs, we ended up with 96 paid trials.

GEORGE: All right, excellent. So there are lots of ways we can go with that, let’s just define – what I really want to cover here today is, not only the paid trial section, because we put a lot of emphasis on getting the lead in, but then there's obviously got to be the follow-up, how we're going to keep them in, how we're going retain them as a student for the long term. But for people that are not familiar with the whole paid trial system and so forth, what exactly was the offer and how did you go about that.

PAUL: A little while ago, we went to paid trials. What we found was, when we did the 2 free classes, which was quite traditional, then if you joined up, you get a uniform, we’d get a lot of tyre kickers. People would come in, there was no commitment, they'd do their free class or two, they'd stay, or they wouldn't stay. And really over two classes, it was really hard to show the value of the program. So what we moved to initially, and what we do as our current intro program is, we do $29 for a uniform and four weeks, and there's a lot of variations of that around, we found that it works really, really well for us.

It gives them time to come in, have a look at our view of the class, not just putting on a pizzazz class, trying to impress the parents. They make a commitment, and if the parents put their hand in their pocket, or a student puts their hand in the pocket, even just for a small amount, there is that I guess more committed approach to their classes, because they paid for them, and we qualify people. If they can't afford $30 or they're not prepared to pay for $30, then they're probably not the right person for us anyway.

So what we did with the Christmas special, was we left it at the $29,95, but we doubled the time, because we understood that we were closed for a couple of weeks over Christmas, kids were on holidays, parents might be committed without school activities, or like most parents, would like to have a bit of break. So we did a $29.95, plus 8 weeks of trial. Now, that extends things out a little bit more than usual, which takes a little bit more tracking, but we found I think, that we've had, out of the 96, I think we had 88 come in already and start their trials. So we're very, very happy with that part as well.27 – Turning 2 Weeks 'Quiet Time' Into 96 Martial Arts Paid Trial Students (And How To Retain 90% Of Them)

GEORGE: All right, excellent. I guess the biggest concern for anybody would be: all right, so this person has paid $29. Now they can milk the club for a full 8 weeks and potentially leave. So, how do you get around, taking someone who's coming to that paid trial system and getting them to commit for the long term?

PAUL: That's a really good question. I think what you've got to look at is the whole series or the whole process of taking someone from not doing martial arts at all to being a student. The way I like to look at it is like a chain. And I know some people, we use the term funnels, but if you look at the chain analogy, think about each step along the way as one link in the chain.

So your first link is your marketing: you've got to put your offer there, you've got to put it in front of the right people and at the right time. Hopefully, that will entice them to make the inquiry. And the inquiry might be an email or a phone call, they'll walk in and come and see a class. So the next step in the chain is, well, how are they dealt with when they walk in? What's your reception procedure like, is someone at the desk nice and friendly, is the phone answered in a timely manner?

You train your staff to smile when they answer the phone, emails are answered the same day. So there's that customer service element that is that first impression. From there, the goal of that is to get them into actually start their trial, get on the mats and then I guess you hand over the responsibility to your mat staff. They work their magic, they build value over however long the trial period is for and along the way, you're talking to the parents as well. You're talking to the parents, or talking to the adult student, touching on their goals, seeing if their fit is right for the club because it’s a two-way street.

Some students are not right for your club, just like sometimes the club is not right for the student. And then, when you get to the end of that trial period, effectively, you're making another offer. You might look at it as an upgrade almost, because if they've paid for a period of time, then what we're asking them to do is commit – did you like what we did, are you happy with how it went, can you see yourself staying? And that takes them to becoming one of your students. Then comes what I think is probably the most important part, and that's retention. That's a couple of sessions on its own, but the old adage is – and I can't remember the exact numbers, but I think along the lines of, it costs 7 times more to get a new student in than it does to retain a student.

So for us, retention is a really, really big thing. And like all clubs, we have ups and downs. January is a dangerous time for losing students, chatting to people across the board, it sounds like there have been a few hits this time around, I think we lost 19 students. That's probably a bit more than normal, but we expect to take that hit in January. And also, that's why that December intake was really good for us, because we wouldn't normally have those trials coming through.

GEORGE: Yes. OK, excellent. Now, just the details on that, because someone's come in for 8 weeks and they've only made that $29 commitment, financially. So what are you doing to speed up that process of getting them in a payment cycle that they're actually committing to the club?

PAUL: That's a good question. We offer incentives to join within the 8 weeks, which is normally a 4-week period. So we a have a $99 joining fee, and it’s not one of these fluffy ones that you brittle on your bit of paper and then never use it – we actually do use it, but we waive that if they join within the trial period. So for example, for the 8-week period, we’ll be talking to them after 4 weeks. For the 4-week period, the mat staff are doing a follow-up at 2 weeks, checking with the parents, how they're going, setting an appointment to sit down and talk about the ongoing program, discussing the options on training program, training fees and showing the benefit being the discounted rate of signing up during that trial period.

So, there's a Call to Action there, so they don't just finish their trial and they wander off into the sunset and three months later they might come back if you've been chasing them up. We've just started up a small satellite club, just a once a week club and we're running that by school terms. What we're doing for the Call to Action there is, we're giving them a discount rate if they pay on time. So, for example, the school term is ten weeks, the early bird rate, as we're calling it, is $17 a class, but if they pay after the term starts, it's $22 a class. So we're trying to make an incentive, like a reward incentive. And it's very, very important to word it that way – this is a reward for doing it early, not a punishment for doing it late.

GEORGE: Yeah, OK, cool. It sounds like there's a lot of relationship building, there's a lot of interaction, it’s really setting that foundation. You're using the paid trial almost like a relationship building type process, with the new prospects.

PAUL: Yeah, absolutely. One of the things I like about the paid trial is – and I say this to the customers who come in or the trials who come in: this is a really low-cost way for you to find out about us. Like I said, if you come in for 1 or 2 classes, I can put on all the bells and whistles, I can put my best instructors and I can run the most fun class, but if you come in for 4 weeks, you're going to get a really good cross section of what the club is about, you're going to see all the classes, you're going to see all the instructor in action.

It’s a really great way to try out a martial art, without putting your hand in your pocket too much. I’ll give you an example: I have a friend of mine who joined up at another club a while ago, outside of town. And when she spoke to me, she ended up paying something like $350 to get started. Now, she had a free class, then she had to pay a month upfront, then she had to pay the actual joining fee, then she had to buy a uniform. Now, she had two kids who wanted to train, but she ended up only putting one in because the initial cost was too much.

And that's a big hit for a parent, especially because, as you know these days, chances are, your child might turn around in six months’ time and go, I don't want to do that anymore. So for us, it’s a really low-key way to come in, try us out, get a feel for what we're about and then as we say, if you don't like us, we part company as friends. And that's why also we don't do contracts, I think these days, contracts or term of agreements are a little bit outdated because it’s such a consumerist society.

GEORGE: I think the backlash with being tied in and being punished for trying to leave and things, I don't know – I think the repercussions of that personally, can be so damaging to your brand, because if someone leaves the club and they've been punished for leaving, they're in that contract. From my side, I would see that as you're letting someone know they're really leaving for whatever reason they are, so it could be personal, or it could be that they don't like it, or maybe they just don't like training anymore. But now it’s almost like salt on the wound, and saying, all right: I'm going to keep you for this much longer. And I think that the longer you keep someone in the system, you're more open to being badmouthed and getting bad publicity.

PAUL: Absolutely. And don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against running contracts, we did that for a while. You'll tend to get fewer sign ups because people are a little bit more wary about committing, but what you do is a business. And often with income, that you feed your family with, you guarantee that. Now, my point of view is, and to be honest, my wife said to me at one stage, if you're not going to hold people to the contracts, which I never did, why bother with them? We might as well put them on month by month, and get more people in.

But like I said, I have no problem with contracts, because people going to a contract understand what they're signing up for. They're making a commitment, and really, martial arts should be a commitment. I’d love to turn around and say, give me 12 months. You've got to give me at least 12 months before you really get even a feel for martial arts, but as you said, people feel like they're being punished. They do forget they signed that agreement. They do forget that that was the deal they made with you at the start. I think, even if you do run contracts, there has to be something on more compassionate grounds. Like I said, people move, people's work situations change. There's got to be a bit of wiggle room because, at the end of the day, we're about the people. And if you lose that perspective that you're here for the student, people will sniff it out pretty quickly.

You've got some really big clubs around, that unfortunately can fall under that McDojo label because they've lost that compassionate touch with their students. I don't mind contracts or not contracts, they don't work well for me because I've never held someone to one anyway. Every time someone said, look, this has happened, we need to leave, I’d go – no problem at all. And as my wife said, well why are we bothering? Let’s just get rid of it.

GEORGE: For sure. And, by all means, anyone listening, I stand corrected – if there's something I'm missing with that point, please leave a comment below this episode and challenge my viewpoint, cause I'm looking at it purely from a consumer perspective. Our business provides services for martial arts schools, but I don't personally own the school myself. So I stand to be corrected, but I know that for any purchase situation I make, that's something that I don't want to be experiencing at the end of the day.

PAUL: Yeah, absolutely. And like I said, people will try to do what they want to do. If they have enough after a 6-month or a 12-month contract, even if they signed it, they'll want to get out of it. And as you said George, you've got to balance out how much your reputation is worth. You're not in the wrong by enforcing the contract, because they've signed it, but that person that either closes their bank account down, or you might have to chase for money, or you're billing them when they're not training, they're not out there saying good things about you. And to be honest, that damage to your reputation all is it unfair, is probably not worth the money you're getting out of them.

GEORGE: Definitely. So, let’s go back to the paid trial offer: have you ever had any backlash from students, where current students see, wow, you're putting this excellent offer together on your Facebook page, and they can get 8 weeks, or 4 weeks, or whatever the offer is, but the offer is just attractive and they're already in this agreement as such and they may be joined way before this paid trial system was in place.

27 – Turning 2 Weeks 'Quiet Time' Into 96 Martial Arts Paid Trial Students (And How To Retain 90% Of Them)

PAUL: Yeah, we had that once or twice, not much, though. We run a system here now where when students join they can lock in their fees. So the fee you pay when you join now is the fee you pay forever, we lock that in. And that was something I got off Master Ridvan (listen to the podcast with Master Ridvan’s son Hakan Manav). And I think that's a really nice way to reward loyalty from your students. Saying that, the fee we're at when we lock in, it’s a pretty comfortable fee for us, but we can also guarantee that while you're with us, while you don't change programs, we'll never change that, so once you've been with us for quite a while, you’re at a lower rate, so there's that reward.

And as I point out to them, you've had the advantage of being able to train longer. You've been here, you've been getting the benefits longer. We did have the usual administration hiccups here and there, we did have it on the last special we sent out, a couple of people go back saying, email back saying, we joined up a month ago. Well, that's fantastic, I hope you're really enjoying yourself, we'll update the database. But I think it’s like anything: if I go and buy a microwave oven, or a stereo system today, and then in three months’ time, it’s on special – that's just life. That's the way the cookie crumbles.

GEORGE: There you go. I guess you've just got to be strategic on how often you change your offer and for how long a time because if you're changing your offers week by week, you are probably going to get a lot more backlash. And I guess also, train your audience to just be open to that fluctuating special all the time almost.

PAUL: Absolutely. And like I said, our intro special is our intro special. We'll get inquiries, asking how long it goes for, and we'll say, that's it, that's our intro special always. But then we'll make it more special, occasionally. Well do the 8-week trial run and four, or we might do a 2 for 1, or we've got a really great system that you've helped us set up, where they can bump up their first trial to their second trial for only $19 more.

And that's really, really worked well. With just a tick of a box, for half the price, you get a second offer. Now, did people get that a while ago? No, they didn't, but I don't think there's much resentment there, because you get used to what you're doing, and every now and again, I have got to remind my club owners and also myself that our intro special is still a really good offer stand alone, let alone if we bump it up to a better offer.

GEORGE: All right, excellent. I’m a big fan of the “lock people in,” secure their fee if they stay a member. It’s probably one of the best retention strategies I've learned online. When you launch a membership of any kind, get your opening price, get people into that and make it known that the price has gone up and they are guaranteed that fee for as long as they stay a member.

PAUL: Yeah, and I like it too, because like I said, I think it’s a bit of a reward for loyalty. Realistically, what they're getting is, every time CPA comes around each year, they're getting this discount. So if the CPA is 2%, all their fees just dropped downward 2%. We've been running for about 18 years, I think we looked at it the other day: we've got 38 or 40 people actively training, who have been with us for 10 years or more.

And the fact that they're on these dirt cheap fees is really nice. And I remember when I first brought this in, my mentor at the time went, well that's crazy! Because what happens if they stay with you for 10 years and they're paying fees from ten years ago? And I said, I know, right? They've been with me for 10 years and they've been paying fees for 10 years! Anyone who puts up with me for 10 years deserves some sort of reward.

GEORGE: All right, so going back right to the beginning: you got the offer up and you created a decent offer, so let’s touch on all the marketing elements that went with the offer.

PAUL: Yeah, it was interesting, because anyone who knows me knows that I'm really I.T. incompetent. Which is why I really enjoy working with George. So what we did was, we did a couple of prongs. We did the email system, to offer it to all inquiries, but also all our old members. We did a Facebook boost, and then we did a referral, we pushed it pretty hard through the current students as well. And what I was kind of pleasantly surprised with was how many old members reignited.

And I’ll be honest, it was actually an accident that that part of the database was put in. I just didn't think to say don't send it, unusually our intro offer is only for new members. And what I had seen coming back in was some faces and names that I hadn't seen for years, saying, well, can we take up this offer? Well, why not? These guys have left on good terms, it would be lovely to have them come back in and what a great way for someone to start up again if they've been umming and ahhing, which is give them a uniform and a couple of months of training, just to get them back into the start of the new year.

So that sort of thing was really kind of a pleasant surprise, because like I said, I hadn't actually thought I was going to email that to ex-members. It was more along the lines of prospects who had come in, showed interest, but not converted. And we're talking from kids who had maybe been little dragons, all the way up to black belts, who said, look, we’d love to come back in and give it a try and see if it’s what we're still looking for. And it was nice to see them back on the mats.

GEORGE: Yes, especially with Facebook and social media, people really neglect I think the importance of email because email first and foremost – it’s sort of the golden age of the internet. It always started: build an email list and you've got a database of people that you own. Which, in reverse, when you have a Facebook presence, it’s awesome, but it’s still also control of Facebook and the algorithms and what. And I’ll touch on a few changes that are coming up that could potentially be quite scary for a few businesses.

So the whole email list, I think it’s really important to focus on that as a school, because you're getting all this data anyway from all your students, and having that database list of people that you can email at any given point in time, that really can push your conversions up. Also, looking that it’s another touch point. We talk about 6 to 8 interaction with your brand before a conversion happens, whatever that may be: the phone call, the message.

But if you just concentrating on that one medium and it’s just Facebook for example, it might take a lot more, whereas, that personal email that's going to land up in the inbox, it could be that they see it for the first time, because some people just don't like logging into Facebook all the time – I know that's hard to believe sometimes, but it might count as the additional touch point to drive the conversion, or it could actually be the interaction itself.

PAUL: Yeah, I'm a big believer in, you've got to have multiple streams of students. I think gone are the days where you would do a pamphlet drop, or an ad in the yellow pages, or pre-historic days where you'd get one idea and 20 students happen. I think these days unless you're really niching yourself – and there are people out there who do that, multiple streams work really, really well. And the first one for us and the most important one is referrals.

Because if you're not getting referrals from your student base, you're not doing something right. And it might not be not taking great classes, but maybe you're not letting your students know that you appreciate referrals. We have a referral reward system, which we use quite often, and I really like doing it. I love giving away free months of training to the parents when they bring someone in. We're just looking at wrapping it up to include little kids because the parents get a free month, and the kids get nothing.

So we're looking at giving something to the kids if they bring a friend in. Because these should be your raving fans. If you're doing a good job, your parents and adult students should be really appreciating what you're teaching them. They should be getting a lot out of the classes and they should be wanting to spread the word. We don't want to become evangelists, but if they should be talking to people, we have a VIP pass, that we always give out to people when they join up and we give those out to students regularly. That intro program I spoke about, gives someone a free one of those. And we say, use it for your siblings, use it for your friends. Stick your name on there. There's a space n there where they can put they name on so we know who referred them.

But for me, that's one of the first and foremost things. And to be honest, I think that you should have 3 to 4 streams minimum running. It kind of sounds like a lot of work, but it’s not. If you think about it, one of them is referrals. So if you're treating your people right and letting them know that you have a referral system in place, letting them know that you really appreciate referrals, there's a simple one. If you're in a full-time venue, the look of your venue itself is a referral. If it’s looking nice and neat and you've got nice sides, you've got the front, that should draw people’s attention to it.

And it’s a little bit like, as you said, George, people need to be touched on quite a bit. It’s like if you start looking for a certain type a car: I think I'm going to go buy a Volkswagen. Suddenly, there are Volkswagens everywhere, you've never noticed them before. One of the ships has just arrived with a lot of Volkswagens, or I'm just noticing that Volkswagen. So maybe people were umming and ahhing about doing martial arts, and they saw your ad.

Or, they saw someone else's ad, and they drive past your studio and go, oh, there's a martial arts club. And there's one, there's one. I think as martial arts club owners when we drive around, buildings fall into one or two categories: could I run a club there, or could I not run a club there? You drive past any empty building; you weigh it up. So, between your referrals, your building, regularly staying in contact with your email list – and not just to sell them thing and, I'm speaking with you who taught me this, but keep them informed. Give them these little bits of information, give them nice to have hints, give them some fitness tips, or self-defence tips, keep them engaged.

Then you've got your Facebook, which is the here and now generation, and then you might do some traditional marketing things. We've had some great success just doing occasional pamphlet drop around certain clubs for some reason. The demographic there seemed to really respond to the pamphlet drop, whereas in other clubs, we just don't. You get nothing back from it, and again, that comes back to your test and measure.

GEORGE: I actually remember, because the Facebook ad was doing really well, and I think you had about 40 sign ups, and you mentioned to me you're hoping to push those up to 60. And I remember when the email campaign kicked in, there was that jump that took it from that 60 to the 80 and up.

PAUL: Yeah, and I think that one of the biggest things on that was the Call to Action that you had put a countdown on the landing page.

GEORGE: Yes.

PAUL: And I remember, I was driving home to get my son to bring him back for training, and the emails when the sales came through would be on my phone. And all the way home, in those last 40 minutes before it closed down on my way home, the phone was just going ding, ding, ding, ding, as more and more sales were coming through, and I'm thinking –  this is crazy! This is really, really, ridiculous. And we had a couple of people ring up just after, and say, look, we missed it, can we do it? And we said yes to that, it was neither here nor there for me, a couple more. But that combination of things, the nice landing page, the offer, the Call to Action. And we did the Call to Action really simply, because of a day before we closed for Christmas, and we didn't want to deal with it after we closed.

GEORGE: Awesome. If you would like to see the page and the whole system, if you go to mam.com/mabs, m-a-b-s, you'll see there about a 7-minute video of the page and how it's laid out and how the upsell worked, which really can boost that conversion with about 30%, so do have a look at that. The link will be on this episode, but also, talking about MABS, Paul, you now also have a coaching program – would you like to share more about that?

PAUL: Yeah, I would. Michelle Hext and I – if you've met Michelle Hext, you'll know that she's an absolute gun with online programs, but also a very, very good martial artist and martial arts business owner. She was one of my business mentors, and she really helped us to niche down our program. And that was one of her specialties back then. She would run a women's only Taekwondo club, which was just going gangbusters, really, really honed her ideal clientele down.

So we partnered up a little while ago, I think the both of us, we've both got our other streams of what we do, myself with my clubs, Michelle with her online courses, and we put MABS together, which is Martial Arts Business Success – if you can say that three times quickly. It’s kind of a fun thing to do because we both are really vested in martial arts, something we've both done since we were quite young.

I love teaching and my career has gone from teaching students, to teaching instructors, to now helping business owners, and I really, really enjoy it. Because I’ve got to say, I find it kind of frustrating when I see really good instructors out there who are struggling to make a living, and it’s through no real fault of their own. But a lot of us, especially in my age and all that are stuck in this rut that ‘build it and they will come’. And it just doesn’t work, there's too much competition these days, there's too much around, too many things competing for people’s time and money.

And what MABS is all about – to say budget, I’ll say budget with price, certainly not with content. It’s a nice, easy in of grassroots, skills and packets that you can use straight away. I’ll give you an example: last two packets I've done was building a leadership team. It’s one for your team on the mats and one for your team on the desk. So how to, as a club owner, how to build up certain elements of your business and your club that are really, really important, not just for day to day running, but for expanding.

GEORGE: All right, awesome. And you can access that at www.mabs.com.au.

PAUL: Aha, yep. If you type in Martial Arts Business Success on Facebook, it’s a closed group, so just apply for the application. It’s a free group, you don't need to join MABS to join that group. We have another group of the guys who have joined up, where we go into things in a little bit more depth, but even in the free group, there's a really, really good bunch of guys and girls on there, martial arts club owners and the discussion on there is really good.

You can throw any problems up there, and suddenly you've got not just Michelle and I answering questions: you've got ten people who have goodness knows how many years of experience in the martial arts industry, who are more than happy to input their advice. And to be honest, to me, that's what martial arts is all about. We're a martial arts community, and we should be backing each other. You and I were having a conversation before we started recording about the competition in the local area.

And as I said to you, if I get on Google and look at how many people are within a 5km radius of my club, there are about 60,000 people. And really, my goal is to tap this place out at 800, so there's plenty to go around. And I think within 5 km of here, there are another four full-time clubs. So we have a bit of a joke, if you throw a stick in a certain direction, you'll probably hit a martial arts instructor – you've just got to work out which one you want to hit.

GEORGE: All right, awesome. Paul – it’s been great chatting to you, as always, and I hope to speak to you again, maybe for round three.

PAUL: Thanks, George, great to talk to you.

GEORGE: Cheers.

And there you have it – thank you, Paul Veldman. I hope you got a lot out of that interview, I certainly did. A few things that really stood out for me: one is the conversion process from paid trial to member. And if you think of it in these steps, that your paid trial is just your paid trial, that's getting them in the door, and getting them committed, now they're in a different state of mind and in a different process because they are really training.

All right, so what is the next offer? What is the next offer that you're going to give them to incentivise them to take that next step: becoming a member. And then a nice bonus incentive – and I've seen a lot of great companies do this. Most companies don't latch onto this, but why not serve your existing members and lock in their current membership rate at that fixed rate from the day that they join? It’s just a great way to reward loyalty.

Now, if you want to go see the page that we created for Paul and his team that helped him generate more than 90 paid trials over the December period, then go to martialartsmedia.com/mabs – M-A-B-S, and there's a short 7-minute video that explains how that page works and then there's also a special offer for you, if you would like us to do that exact same page and set up for you that you can start using that for your paid trial system.

27 – Turning 2 Weeks 'Quiet Time' Into 96 Martial Arts Paid Trial Students (And How To Retain 90% Of Them)

 

And that's it – thank you very much for listening. I’ll be back next week again with another awesome interview. Until then, bye for now – cheers.

 

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26 – How To Run A Successful Martial Arts Open Day

A profitable martial arts open day can position you for a successful year. Darryl Thornton from Shukokai Karate shares how.

martial arts open day

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

  • Why you can and should run your open day for one hour
  • The secret to presenting an offer (a common discussion on the Martial Arts Media Business Podcast)
  • Getting your existing martial arts students involved as a unit
  • Can you handle 20, 30, 50 or 70+ new students right now? Here's how to prepare
  • This simple technique can attract those extra members that didn't get to join on the day
  • The importance of studying martial arts with other cultures
  • And more

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


TRANSCRIPTION

I think it's important, one of the people, so the only reason he came back was because of the email.

Hi, this is George Fourie and welcome to the Martial Arts Media business podcast, episode number 26. I am finally back with a few interviews and I've got four awesome interviews lined up for you. I just did a trip to Melbourne and met up with a few great school owners. Learned a lot, got a lot of advice from different perspectives, different ways of doing things and I'm going to bring it all to you. So lots of gold and information just shared, I will probably do a recap of all this after all of the interviews, so look out for that. But for now, I just want to bring you the interviews, just as they are.

For a change, it wasn't a Skype or a phone call type interview, it was face to face, so it was great to have the different live dynamics of these interviews and you're going to get a lot of value from this. We've got a lot of great information to share and today I have on the show with me Darryl Thornton from Shukokai Karate in Cranbourne in Melbourne area. And Darryl has great success with his open days and I guess you can rather call it an open hour, rather than an open day, because they only run it from 12 to 1 and all the energy is focused on that one hour, instead of multiple hours or five hours, where everybody's energy is scattered and high and low and everybody's walking in at a different time, so much easier to manage one hour.

It is the pride and joy of all his students, they all want to be a part of it and everybody's energy is high for that one hour. And of course, he presents an exclusive offer and the process which he's going to outline for you has generated 70 students for them on the day and an additional 19 afterward. So Darryl is going to give you all the insights and everything of that. So, I'm going to jump into this episode.

Now, the transcripts and show notes and everything else that you need are available as always on martialartsmedia.com/26, and that's it from me – hope you enjoy this interview, it was awesome, I'm sure you're going to get great value from this. Pease welcome to the show Darryl Thornton from Shukokai Karate.

GEORGE: Good day all. Today I'm with Darryl Thornton. Now, I'm sitting and for a change, it’s not a Skype interview, I'm sitting in front of him at Shukokai Karate in Cranbourne Melbourne. And Darryl is the state coach for Karate Victoria, state coaching director for Karate Victoria and Darryl has had very good success with his open days. So today I'm going to be asking questions about his process, his recent success with it and we're going to have a bit of a chat, so welcome to the show.

DARRYL: Thank you, thank you.GEORGE: Cool. So first and foremost, before we get into everything – who is Darryl Thornton?

DARRYL: Well, that's a big open question. Well, I'm a dad, so I've got two children, 16-year-old twins. I’m a karate coach, first and foremost I think, it’s my main job. I've been teaching karate for quite a few years now, have my club in Cranbourne as George said. We've been growing quite steadily over the last few years and we've now got to a point where we've got our own building and were going ahead really well, so we are very happy with where we are at the moment, but there's always room for more growth. Hopefully, George is helping me out with that!

GEORGE: Yeah, for sure. All right, cool, so let’s just go back to now, depending on when you're listening to this, at the moment, beginning of the year, which is always a booming time for all martial arts schools, and Darryl just had a very successful open day – can you give us a few details on that?

DARRYL: So we run an open day on the first weekend after school goes back. It’s a really important time for parents, when they're looking to put their children in the activities for the year, so we capitalize on that. I'm promoting our open day on the first Saturday after school goes back. And we have ours on a Saturday around midday, so just around lunch time.

We find that people often have things to do in the afternoon and mornings, and midday is the ultimate time, also because of the weather. Every year for the last three, it’s been around 40 degrees, so we have it at 12 being much lighter in the day, then it would be too hot, because you have people sitting around in your Dojo for over an hour, you don't want them sitting there and baking for too long.

GEORGE: So an hour?

DARRYL: An hour. Just over an hour. The actual open day itself goes for an hour, but then, with people signing up and for the volume of people that are in the place, it takes probably another 20-30 minutes to get them out the door. We try to capitalize on a smaller timeframe, because it’s short and sharp and people go, it’s just an hour a day, it’s not a big part of their day. And also they know that they have to be there by a particular time. If you have an open day and it runs over the whole day, people don't know what time they should be there, what time the demonstrations are on and you can't maximize the impact. If you have it spread over such a big period of time.

GEORGE: That's awesome, I like that, because I see a lot of people doing the open day and it's sort of a half day or something, but just the whole psychology of having an event – and it’s really just focused on that one specific time, and obviously, it gives you guys the opportunity to really put all your energy into that one hour, because that's all you've got.

DARRYL: Yeah, it's much easier to get your members there for that one hour too, versus, trying to get them there for the whole day, or half the day. We had a pretty good turnout, probably with our membership, we would've had 30 of our teen adults group probably, maybe the same in our juniors, which is our 7-12-year-old group. Our little ninjas, which is our youngest group, 3-6 year olds, they're probably the hardest ones to get here, but the ones that were here, they were really good, they were really well received by the people.

We had a three-year-old in the group, white belt, brand new and the people loved it, they thought she was fantastic. And it’s a good opportunity for your members to also build their confidence and show their self-esteem. We had white belts in there, which I think for me is fantastic, because I open it to any member. Anyone is allowed to come along and be a part of the demonstration. I don't pick and choose who does it, I don't mind if they make mistakes during the demonstration, I think that's important, and if they do, that's part of learning.

GEORGE: All right, cool. So walk us through the dynamics, because you had a lot of success, you mentioned 70 members?

DARRYL: On the day, yeah, and 20 two days after. 90 people joined from the open day.

GEORGE: That's awesome.

DARRYL: Yeah, it’s a big number. It’s a lot to manage obviously afterward. It's a lot of data entry and then it’s a lot of new people on your mat and what we do is, we sell the membership on the day, all the trail as such. Then the first time they come, they get their uniform, so you have to be well organized as well. You need to, if you work, you probably need to have Monday off, because you have to go and pick up the uniforms, you have to get them to your Dojo, you have to sort them, write the new members names on them, so when they come in, it's easy to find, especially if you've got a big number, you don't want to be trying to find the right size and things like that.

So part of the open day when they join is we measure them for their uniform, write it on their form what size of uniform they're getting and then it’s easy to manage it when they come in. Of course, you're going to get the odd one or two that doesn't fit, so you have to have a bit of extra stock to make sure that you've got enough to cater for that, but we're pretty accurate on our measurements. We've got a measuring stick, like most Dojos probably do, use a bo staff with the sizes sort of marked on it, stand it next to the person and mark on what size of uniform they need.GEORGE: All right, so let’s look at the dynamics – what actually happens: people arrive at 12?

DARRYL: Mostly, they come in around about 12, we have probably 2 or 3 of our senior members, the ones who know more about the club than a white belt at the front door. So they might be in uniform, or in the club polo, whatever they choose to be. They'll welcome them, bring them into the club and ask them to come and sit around the perimeter of the training area, so they'll sit around the edge of the perimeter on the floor, and then what we do, because it's 37 degrees, I’ll get a couple of our younger members, most of our leadership group to go around and give them water, because it's hot and it’s a good way to welcome them as well, and make sure we're looking after them.

So once we get everybody in, we had a 130 people in the Dojo on Saturday, which is quite a few people to manage. We probably had 80-90 of our own people at the same time, so a couple of hundred people inside the Dojo is always good for the atmosphere. I start off by introducing myself and the club and explain a bit about what we are and where we are from and what we do and the benefits of what we do. And then we start off with some demonstrations and I make sure that our demonstrations are just our regular members, I think it’s very important. I remember going to a demonstration when I first started karate and I thought, geez, I'm never going to be able to do that, that looks way too hard, I can't do that.

So I will always be mindful of making sure that people understand that everyone can and we have children with special needs and all sorts of things, and they're also a part of the demonstration. Not that I particularly ask them to come long, but we particularly are an open club. We believe that everybody can do karate, so we've had a really good success with some children that have special needs and we've got one boy that has a functioning autism, but he's been with us for 5 years, and he's a part of the demonstration. I think that by having him, he encourages others that might think that it’s not right for them. We have members making mistakes during demonstrations and I think that's OK too, because you don't want everyone to be exactly perfect, because we're not, no one is always perfect, are they?

So we let everybody be involved, we don't mind mistakes. We don't coach before, so we don't pre-determine what they're going to do, it’s all on the five. I talk during the demonstration and one of my other senior instructors will take the demonstration. We do different groups, so we'll do our 3-6 year olds and they demonstrate, we get our juniors and then we do our adult teams. In between the groups coming on the mat, I talk about what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, what's important about the skills they're learning. I think we did four demonstrations per group, so each group did four different things.

They might have done some basics: some impact, some self-defense, and the little ones play the game, cause the little ones in our organization is a game sense program, so they played a game, which I think is good to show people that's it’s about fun as well, because I think that without the fun, kids are not going to come, they'll get bored really fast. And then, we interlace the regular members with our elite members.

We've got a few high level competitors and they did some demonstrations in between to show people that you can get from point A to point B through hard work and training and I think that shows people the true value of what the training is. And then at the end of it, I have an offer. So this year, our offer was four weeks of training and a uniform for $49, which is less than a half price of what it normally would be. And if they want to join, they just have to come out to the reception area and fill in one form, and that's it, they're done. And the first class they start, the uniform is ready for them to start training.

GEORGE: Excellent. So you make this offer to everybody at the same time, everybody that's in the room?

DARRYL: Everybody that's in the room. In front of everyone, I often would hold up a uniform and say, you get a uniform and four weeks of unlimited classes, so you can come as much as you'd like during the four weeks, for today only – this is the deal. You really need to put a timeframe – we talked about this with online things, but the timeframe is important. Making sure that people have got a trigger to buy. If you just say, this is the offer, people walk away and they'll think about it, but we want them to buy it on the day.

We also have some giveaways on the day, when we advertise, we often advertise a free sausage sizzle, giveaways, demonstrations – that's part of the whole process. We give away things like an impact shield, focus mitts, maybe a T-shirt or something like that and when they come in, we collect their name and their email address.

So what I do with that is, I send them a thank you email: thank you for coming to our open day, or thank you for joining, depending on whether they joined or not, and we actually had really good success from that this year, because we had 72 join on the day, and then, I sent the email out on Sunday to the people who didn't join to say, thanks for coming along, we appreciate your time, hope you enjoyed the demonstrations: if you didn't get an opportunity to join on Saturday, and you'd still like to join, we'll extend the offer for two days, just for you. However, if you've got any family members or friends that might like to join, please extend the offer to them. And from that, we had 19 turn up on Monday and Tuesday.

GEORGE: Awesome.

DARRYL: Yeah, which I was really pleased with, obviously.

GEORGE: Yes.DARRYL: I think it’s important, one of the people that came in on Monday, Tuesday said the only reason he came back was because of the email. He felt that it was a real personal sort of touch, that he got an email that said, thank you for coming.

GEORGE: Yes, and I'm so glad you're saying that, because I know I've said this stuff many times, and sometimes I feel like I repeat it too much, but those are just such core elements, the deadline. If you could have the worst offer and just put a deadline on it, and it would be a better offer. It might not be a great offer, but people are going to respond to a deadline, otherwise there's no urgency to act now, it’s just a psychological trigger. And then personal emails: just sending out an email. And we do email marketing, we're always talking about the personal email that goes out from an individual to an individual, not, this and this karate…

DARRYL: No, no, I start it with…

GEORGE: …with a big colourful newsletter, because that screams company.

DARRYL: No, I just wrote my name, obviously, I had on the bottom of it Shukokai Karate Cranbourne, but it was from Darryl Thornton – it was not from Shukokai Karate Cranbourne, it was from me. And it was me personally, I would personally like to thank you for coming on the day, I hope you enjoyed what we did. I think it’s important.

GEORGE: Yes.

DARRYL: And even with the welcome letter, the welcome email, that is an automated email that we have set up through our student database, but it’s still personal, because it says their name, and it’s from me.

GEORGE: There you go, and they can reply to that?

DARRYL: Yes, they can reply.

GEORGE: And that is, I guess, something to take note of: it doesn't have to be a one on one email, because you can set up an automated email, as long as you or someone is monitoring it and they will actually reply.

DARRYL: I did get some replies from both the joining ones and the thank you ones for just coming on the day. So I actually got a couple of people respond, especially with the offer to extend it – is that just for children, or is it for adults too? It was just a question, so that in my mind I thought – well, maybe I'm not quite clear on the day that the offer was for everybody, we have adult members training, maybe we need to be clearer on that. So you learn all the time when you do them, it’s an evolving thing, marketing, as you well know. It changes daily, I think. You've got to be very mindful of it. I think even with the images you promote; you should probably make sure that you promote every group that you want.

GEORGE: Exactly.

DARRYL: If you're running multiple ads, maybe making sure that you've got different photos in each one and things like that, that would be important. Our flyer that we put out for our open day, that only has children on it, but that's our target audience really, and most of our adults, a good proportion of our adult membership is parents of children that train.

GEORGE: So, I guess we need to backtrack a bit, because, you got a 130 people in and 70 – well, 90 of them joined.

DARRYL: That's right.

GEORGE: That's 80% closing ratio.

DARRYL: Yes, I've done all the math.

GEORGE: So that's excellent in itself and again, the things that I see that are really working here is the deadline, focused energy – you've got one hour, and there's no scattered audience, there's no scattered message. It's, this is it, all these people are in this one presentation. But the key question I didn't ask is: how did you get the 130 people in?

DARRYL: Yes, that's important, isn't it? We did flyer marketing and online marketing, so we did both. I think it’s important to have both. I have a flyer that is a just an A5 size, so, glossy, shiny, with some photos of kids on it. We put out 30,000 flyers and they're delivered via pamphlet distribution, our catalogue distribution. And then we did four Facebook ads, so we did an event, and we promoted the event and that was OK, as far as the response we got from it, but by far the biggest response was my proof of my flyer as a photograph, just boosted, as an ad.

That was probably the best response we had on Facebook – the most comments, shares, likes, was of just that one photo. So I had that photo running three ads itself, the same photo, which you might tell me is the wrong thing to do, but I just wanted it to be in everybody's face all the time, so they had no doubt that our open day was on Saturday. And I think it proved itself that it worked, with the response we got.

GEORGE: I think it’s great. The boosted post definitely works, there's a place for everything, I guess when it’s done for the same thing all the time, for the same person, you can burn someone out.

DARRYL: Yeah, I agree.

GEORGE: But when you're doing an event…

DARRYL: It’s an event, it's a bit different. The advertising is always something that is a bit tricky, you never know – open days are funny, for me, I get really anxious and nervous about them in the day leading up to it, because it’s like putting out birthday invitations and not knowing if anybody’s going to turn out. But you've just got to trust yourself, because we have done them for a few years now, and they've always been successful. I've built my club around them really. There's always the other marketing that gets the regular numbers coming through the door, but the open day is a big event.

The members love it, they love coming to it, people that joined up said to me, I want to be part of it next year. And you go, wow, that's pretty cool, the people are already going, I want to be part of it, I want to be up there. I want to be that person. That's good, you know. The other thing I think I didn't mention is that, with the advertising, the timeframe is important too. The flyers need to be around ten days prior to event, they have to be delivered ten days before.

The Facebook advertising, I start a little bit earlier, maybe about a week earlier for the event, so it’s around about two weeks, or just outside two weeks that I start the event advertising and then I periodically added in photographs and things like that for the open day to keep promoting it, reminding people that it's coming up, it's only 24 hours away, 48 hours away, those type of thing as well.

GEORGE: All right, great. Now, a key question would be: firstly, there's one event a year.

DARRYL: Yeah, I don't have another one.

GEORGE: OK. And then, what is the retention? This is something someone always wants to know: you bring all these people in, how many of them stick?

DARRYL: You lose a few early, and there are no two ways about it. It’s like any paid trial. Karate or martial arts as a rule, is not for everybody and some of the kids come in, they see it, they go, I want to do that. And then when they try it, they don't really like it. But it’s not too many that do that, it’s a small percentage of that. We had really good success with last year’s open day with retention: I would say 50% would be retention, which I think for that type of event is a good number, because those people, that 50% become die-hard fans.

They're the ones that really support your club. They bring in the 50% you lose again, and then some. They bring in more again, and I think that it’s an interesting study of why they become real fans of your club. I guess because they see where you can end up. For me, the open day is a real big confidence thing for the members. It shows them, they see how much self-esteem they have and how much belief they have in what we do. It’s a real proud moment for an instructor when you've got your average members, just the ones that come and train twice a week, standing up there and showing their skills, I think it’s really, really important.

GEORGE: For sure, and it puts it into perspective.

DARRYL: Yeah, I think it does.

GEORGE: All right, awesome. Darryl, that's been great. Thanks for sharing.

DARRYL: You're welcome.

GEORGE: Thanks for sharing all the details, anything else you'd like to share, especially I know with your coaching side and the karate side?

DARRYL: No, not really. I guess we, if anyone's interested in what we do, we're at cranbournekarate.com.au, on Facebook we've got pretty good following on Facebook, which is Shukokai Karate Cranbourne. We're a pretty busy club, we've quite a few members, we've got sort of the A level players in the WKF group as well, so I think it’s great when you have a club that has multiple things going on at the same time. We’ll have members training in our Dojo on a Saturday, we’ll also have members training over in Footscray Victoria University, the part of the state team.

We might even on the same weekend have members training in Sydney in a national training camp. We can have people overseas competing, one time, we can have people competing locally at the same time – we have members traveling to Japan later in the year. Our junior group is traveling to Japan, which I think is going to be amazing, the kids are going to love getting the opportunity to train in Japan with our senseis.

And then at the end, they've got a tournament where they will be competing with the Japanese kids. And the cultural part I think is very important, that the kids get to meet people from other countries and they form lifelong bonds with other people, see other cultures, and it’s really, really important. Karate is important, but there's the other part that you can get a lot more from the martial art than just punching and kicking.

GEORGE: Definitely, understanding the culture and interacting with different cultures.

DARRYL: I know kids that are in their 20s now and they've got friends they've been seeing in Japan since they've been 12, so they're really close friends every time they catch up, they go and stay at their house. They do home stays, they come over here and do the same, so I think it’s really, really important. It’s good to be able to defend yourself and all that type of thing, and be able to punch and kick. But I think there's much more to what we do than just punching and kicking.

GEORGE: Cultural lifestyle.

DARRYL: I think that the punching and kicking are the side benefit of what we do, not the main benefit.

GEORGE: Awesome. Darryl – thanks a lot for your time, and I will chat to you soon.

DARRYL: Thank you.

GEORGE: Cheers!

And there you have it, event based marketing. There's going to be a theme that's going to jump out through these few episodes – pay attention to that. I think it's gold; I'm learning lots from it. There all these little things that just drive conversion, it helps, event-based marketing, it’s the easiest way to get people to action, because that is the only time they can take the action. I hope you got great value out of that.

As I mentioned, transcripts are available on martialartsmedia.com/26 and if you're getting great value from these shows, please go leave us some feedback on iTunes. I know it’s a bit clunky, but martialartsmedia.com/itunes and just follow the little button that shows up in iTunes and you can leave a review in there. A five-star review will be great to help us get some good publicity for the show.

So that's it, back again next week with another awesome interview and I will speak to you soon. Have a good week to you then – cheers!

 

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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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