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

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

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

IN THIS EPISODE:

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

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



TRANSCRIPTION

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

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

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

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

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

George: Good stuff.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I couldn’t do anything.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

George: How old are you, then?

Mark: I was 19. 

George: 19. Okay.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

George: Very fascinating.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Great question.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark: Yeah, that's exactly right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

George: Exactly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

George: Love that. Cool, Mark.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

 

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

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

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

IN THIS EPISODE:

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

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



TRANSCRIPTION

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

Hakan: Hey George.

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

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

Hakan: Pleasure to be here. Thank you

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

hakan_manav_martial_arts_business_growth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hakan: Absolutely. Absolutely 

George: If someone else is not in that position. 

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

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

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

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

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

Hakan: Yes. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hakan: Yeah.

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

Hakan: Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

George: We're talking about leadership. 

Hakan: Yeah. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hakan: No problem. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hakan: Thank you

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

 

 

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18 – The Art Of Martial Arts Coaching With Paul Schreiner From Marcelo Garcia Academy

Paul Schreiner is not your average martial arts coach. Discover how he articulates the art of jiu-jitsu and shares working with Marcelo Garcia.

martial arts coaching

IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:

  • The deeper meaning of martial arts and jiu jitsu in particular
  • Having the discipline to drill, revise and optimise techniques
  • Why letting go of your ego is not as modest as it's made out to be
  • The core habit that Paul has adopted from working with Marcelo Garcia
  • B.J. Penn's powerful ‘marriage of jiu-jitsu' statement
  • What you can expect when training at Marcelo Garcia Academy
  • And more

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


TRANSCRIPTION

Developing expert knowledge or expert ability is your own process of discovery and taking ownership for your learning.

Hi, this is George Fourie and welcome to another episode of the Martial Arts Media Business podcast, episode number 18. I have with me today Paul Schreiner. Now, Paul Schreiner is a coach at Marcelo Garcia's Academy in New York, and if you recall episode 13 with Jess Fraser from the Australian Girls in GI, Jess was talking about Paul within all her traveling around the globe of training at different clubs and learning jiu-jitsu.

Paul Schreiner was the person that left the biggest impact, that stood out for her with his unique coaching abilities and being able to articulate his learning and making an impact on someone, getting his message across of, not just teaching different techniques, but also being able to explain the art and the transitioning of the different moves and so forth. So this is a very in-depth conversation, I enjoyed this. This is not so much about the business side of martial arts, although as a martial arts business owner, you will get a lot of value from this, just learning from about how they go about things and working with Marcelo Garcia and just the pure passion for martial arts. There's a lot of gold in this episode.

Now, of course, for more of the business stuff, you can head over to martialartsmedia.com/plan to be exact. We give away a free martial arts business plan for online media, which kind of defines how you can market your business, what you should focus on. It gives you a bit of a holistic view of how you can approach online marketing and covers a lot of the pitfalls that people are facing right now with marketing, doing one marketing strategy and it's not working, or it stops working and this gives you a bit of a holistic view and approach of how you can approach marketing your business and get your leads.

Now, as always, the show notes, transcriptions and all links mentioned in this episode can be found at martialartsmedia.com/18, that's the number 18. And I want to keep this short and jump straight into the interview, so please welcome to the show Paul Schreiner.

GEORGE: Good day everyone, today I have with me is Paul Schreiner. Now, if you recall on episode 13, I interviewed Jess Fraser and Jess was discussing, within her travels, training at Marcelo Garcia Academy and the one person that stood out for her as a coach was Paul Schreiner. So I wanted to get Paul for an interview and just have a chat about his involvement in jiu-jitsu, his coaching methods and so forth. So welcome to the call Paul.

PAUL: Thanks for having me.

GEORGE: Awesome. So I guess just to go right from the beginning – who is Paul Schreiner?

download-4PAUL: Let's see… I'm basically just a guy that does jiu-jitsu full-time. I'm 38, I started jiu-jitsu when I was 17, I think. I'm from California, so I grew up surfing about. I grew up in a pretty crazy family, progressive family. My dad was kind of a social activist and we lived out of a VW van a lot and drove to Central America every summer, so I got a lot of world exposure that way I guess. I grew up surfing and I wrestled my senior year in high school, actually my junior year in high school, and then I was looking to continue with a sport. I saw that there was jiu-jitsu in town. This was back in 96-97, and I started training jiu-jitsu and other than some injuries, I haven't really looked back. So teaching was just a logical progression for how to stay involved with the sport for me.

GEORGE: So from your training, did you evolve into tournaments and so forth?

PAUL: Yeah, in the beginning, I was just still mostly focused on surfing and traveling. Jiu-jitsu was a hobby for the first couple of years, and I injured my knee on a surf trip and I had to take a couple of years off of everything, I had to take about a year and a half- two years off. I got an infection in my knee, it required a bunch of surgeries to try to get it more or less functional again. And at the point, when I went back to jiu-jitsu, I actually just recently told this story, I haven't thought about it for a while, but I remember I was driving past the academy and it wasn't there and then I was driving closer to my house and then I saw it just had reopened, the school I started at had reopened at my neighbourhood, and my old coach, Garth Taylor's truck was out front, so I just pulled into the parking lot and walked in and Garth was training with B.J. Penn, and J.D. And they were getting ready for the world championship when they were both brown belts, and B.J. was just getting his black belt the following week to compete as a black belt in the world championship. So I walked in, I saw those guys training and I've been out of it for about a year or two, so I just hadn't been exposed to that babble of jiu-jitsu and I walked in, and I was like, this is what I want to do. So basically, ever since that day, I've been training full-time with the intention.

Back then, my intention was to compete in tournaments and I competed a lot for a bunch of years and pretty early on in my competition, I realized that it was valuable to compete, not just for me, but as a part of the school, and that it would be an invaluable experience to have if I wanted to coach and teach jiu-jitsu someday. So I always looked at competition through the lens of the personal challenge to win and as a way to experience jiu-jitsu on a deeper level and something that I'd be able to share with other people someday.

GEORGE: So what does that mean for you? The deeper side of jiu-jitsu?

PAUL: I guess it's just the idea of taking anything and getting better at it every day. The idea that you're working towards this perfection, this excellence – perfection that isn't attainable, but the excellence, the near perfection is something that we can experience and just try to sharpen ourselves. I feel like also I was a little directionless as a teenager and as a young adult and jiu-jitsu just gave me something that I can always, no matter what else I was doing in my life, I could always train and I felt like a better version of myself for it. And then, just the other lesson that jiu-jitsu teaches us is how to confront our ego, or how to get our ass kicked and get smashed and get held down and not be able to get out, but not give up either and learn how to find space and breathe and survive in any situation.

xThose are some of the deeper things, nothing too esoteric or spiritual, just the idea that it's something that we can make incremental progress at; we apply ourselves, we show up every day and we show up with respect and the requisite concentration and give it our best. I was in college, I took a lot of art classes and one of my painting and drawing teachers, Howard Ikemoto was, to this day, was probably the most influential teacher I've had in my life, just in terms of how he approached the process really.

For me, it was never so much about the result, it was always about the process and it still is. To this day, I make time a few hours a week to drill and work on new positions and go back to stuff I haven't done that I used to do ten years ago, I don't do anymore, and see if I can reconnect with those techniques and if it fits in with what I'm doing now, so I'm still trying to engage myself better as a martial artist. And then I try to pass along and communicate that passion for falling in love with the process and being respectful of the process and that's really what I'm trying to pass on to the students, rather than any particular idea of jiu-jitsu.

GEORGE: So you highlight the process of applying and you said that this teacher was your most influential teacher because of that – can you elaborate a bit more on the process and how you apply it?

PAUL: Yeah, not to be disappointing or not to disappoint, but I don't have a particular methodology really. That teacher, and also, I started to get involved with Zen Buddhism when I was in my early twenties and meditation, so the process for me it was just  trying, or giving my best or going and fighting. And then, afterward, the breaking down, the natural analytics of what you do after a match, breaking that down with my coach, my coaches, with myself, sometimes writing things down, just trying to search for, watching videos, studying afterward. And then the next day, trying to literally forget everything that I had studied and then go in as a blank slate again and practice whatever my coach said to practice that day, without asking questions and train and then have the questions come and then have the process to break it down again and restart the next day.

And just looking for sparks from inside for me, for whatever reason that's the way I respond as a learner of anything, I try to find a little insight to a particular situation and then try to see if I can expand that across the board in whatever I'm studying. I mentioned this recently in another interview, but for me now, my process that I'm understanding, my own learning process in jiu-jitsu, I've been trying to apply it to fly fishing, which is something I've taken up more seriously in the past three or four years. I did it as a kid and then I got out of it and I'm getting back into it and trying to understand and figure out how to get better at that too and enjoy the ride.

GEORGE: Awesome, it's not disappointing at all. It sounds like you're aware of what you do and then just being open minded about what you did, analyzing and breaking it down and just really improving it.

PAUL: And another thing I would say, it's a part of understanding yourself, especially for someone who's competitive – reasonably competitive, I'm not extremely competitive anymore I think, but it is how you relate to your ego and I think there's a little bit off, people bullshit around the idea of, that we were completely letting go of our ego and we step in the door and for me at least, it was more trying to understand how to harness my ego and my desire to beat whatever training partner that was beating me.

download-5Figure out and study what techniques and what timing I needed to equalize and maybe even pass them in trying and then, again, forget about that and then be able to be just present and aware and in the moment. You get smashed and you get held down by the same person every day and it starts to drive you crazy and without making a personal grudge you couldn't channel that ego into figuring out what you need to do to make yourself better and more complete in jiu-jitsu. I was always, and I still continue to be driven, not just by competition jiu-jitsu, but I'm still trying to understand what jiu-jitsu is. It's a big thing, it comes to self-defense and self-control and competition and Vale Tudo and everything else. I'`m still, as you can see, sorting it out.

GEORGE: You're miles ahead.

PAUL: Thank you.

GEORGE: So, how did working at the Marcelo Garcia Academy come about?

PAUL: Even before Marcelo came onto the scene in 2003, when most of us become aware of Marcelo and his break up from Abu Dhabi, a lot of people obviously knew who he was already: he won the world's at every belt level, from blue juvenile to purple adult, and brown adult. So it wasn't so much of a surprise that he was something special, I wasn't super aware of him. Except in Brazil, I heard people talking about this kid from Fabio's school that was amazing and then after 2003, I became a big fan of his. In 2004, I attended a seminar that he taught and we got to know each other.

Then, at the time, from about 2000 to 2007, 2008, I was spending about four to six months a year in Brazil, training and competing, so I would run into Marcelo in tournaments. We'd always talk, just say hi. I interviewed him one time for “On the Mat,” the website. And we just kind of stayed in touch and then I was with Dave Camarillo, who was one of my main training partners for a long time. At the Pan Ams in 2006 I think, or maybe 2007 Pan Ams, and I just competed and Marcelo was there and I introduced Dave to Marcelo. Then Marcelo invited us out to New York to help him train for Abu Dhabi. Dave Camarillo bought me a ticket and we came to New York for two weeks and trained with Marcelo, so that was how I got to know him better.

And then after that, every time, if he had a big event coming up or if I had something I was competing in, I would try to make the trip from California to New York and then later to Florida and then back to New York to help him train, or helping get myself ready. So that was kind of the genesis of me getting to know Marcelo and we always got along really good with him, he's kind of, what you see is what you get. I feel like a lot of us, I'm sure you feel like you know him already, he's the guy who always has a big smile and he never has to act or pretend like he's a tough guy and he's just an absolute beast when he steps on the mat.

We always got along, he has a great sense of humor. We became friends and at some point, I told him I'd be interested in moving out there just to train with him and I guess one thing led to another and he opened a school in New York and invited me to come be the instructor, the other instructor with him. So I moved here to New York in 2009 and I have been here ever since, teaching and training full-time. Now we have a number of other teachers at the school, we have Bernardo Faria, we have Marcos Tinoco, Mansher Khera, Matheus Diniz, Jonathan Satava, Joe Borges. We have some up and coming people, who are going to be great teachers, like Scott Caplan and Phil, so yeah, we're in good company here.

GEORGE: That's excellent. Something that you mentioned, you had a lot of depth within your club that there's just so many good trainers, but I do want to ask you, and I guess there's many, but what are sort of the core one or two things that you've learned from Marcelo?

PAUL: One is showing up – not that I was unaware of the importance of that before, but Marcelo doesn't, as a coach, he never asks you to do anything that he doesn't do himself, so there's nothing artificial about training, there's a culture of hard work that you guys are all in there together, making yourselves better, and it really helps you believe in yourself, or it helps you believe in the technique. I was told one time, a lot earlier in my jiu-jitsu journey, that the most import thing, above all else, is that you believe in the technique and that will substitute even for belief in yourself when things get really rough.

download-6If you believe in the technique and commit to it, there are some situations where things are so bad in a fight that if you're just thinking how could I do it, you could potentially give up, but if you have that faith in the technique, it's going to work. Marcelo has that absolute belief in the technique. If the technique is going to work, it's going to work against anyone. It's not like it's going to fall apart if this guy's bigger and stronger than you. So I think that the value of hard work and showing up every day and being there twice a day and cutting out the distractions from your life, the pressure, just staying ahead of your opponent and being aggressive, looking for the finish – that's what I respect about Marcelo's jiu-jitsu.

It's not overly strategic, it's about two people fighting until one person quits basically, which I think is the big idea behind jiu-jitsu, that's what made me fall in love with it in the first place. It wasn't because I can sweep and win a match by two points, which I'm happy to do. I'd rather win by two points or by an advantage than lose, but the idea is to step out there and fight until you make your opponent tap. And Marcelo really epitomizes that spirit, he would almost rather lose the match than hold anything back and not go for the kill.

GEORGE: That's powerful, right there. I want to step back to just your coaching methods – and I know you mentioned that you're not so focused on a particular process and so forth. But it's something that, when Jess Fraser spoke about this, she was really inspired by the way that you teach and explain jiu-jitsu as such. Can you elaborate a bit more on that, on your teaching method and how you handle different people and different learning abilities and different styles and so forth?

PAUL: Yeah, sure. As a governing principle, I'm always trying to strip down, rather than elaborate whatever I'm doing. A lot of times in the past I was given credit I didn't deserve as a good coach when looking back I don't think I was because I was a good explainer of moves. And I think that's almost one of the least important things about coaching now, being the teacher, being the explainer of moves. It's more about getting your student to be able to do it and understanding how the moves connect and the art of redirecting your opponent's attack against them.

download-7Your attacks and your jiu-jitsu are connecting together within your body and then relating in a binary way with what's coming at you. It's not a mess, it's not just you throwing techniques against the wall. Our jiu-jitsu is connected to what our opponent is doing. And then understanding the physics of it and the mechanics of jiu-jitsu in a very simple way that we can communicate, but also understanding the art, what's going on between the moves to our opponent, or to our students rather. I heard B.J. said this one time: jiu-jitsu is the marriage or the union of basically two things: the technique and the will to win.

And you can't just train one and not train the other. You can be the most technical guy but have no desire to win, no will that pulls you through the fight to survive and find the way to turn the fight and go for the kill. We can't only have that belief in ourselves or that desire to kill and not have the technique to back it up, it's really both. And again, it relates to, our belief in the technique helps to build our will, and it helps to build our will in the general sense and it helps to build our will within the fight. So it's getting our students to understand how they can access their own power. And I'm a blue belt at that, I'm a purple belt at that, you look at someone like Fabio Gurgel or Marcelo, a lot of the greats – they're black belts with that.

And another thing that I think, you definitely see them in the art world, in the creative world that I've always been adherent of is that you take what works. If I see Marcelo teach a great class, I steal it, you know? And I figure out how to make it maybe mine in a way that I can communicate it with my words. I see the way he puts things together so that it teaches to the level of where the students at, of what they're going to get out of it in the simplest way possible, so that you don't have to go off and elaborate on principles: the principles are included in the lesson in the simplest way, so that your student discovers it, rather than you delivering it and hand feeding it.

And so much of developing expert knowledge or expert ability is your own process of discovery and taking ownership for your learning. To the best of my ability, I try to see the way my student learns and I try to tailor in some sense what I'm teaching to that and teach just above that level so that they have to extend themselves and really dig to get that. And then there's just the physicality of it too, you kind of have to go through the fire a little bit, it can't be too easy. I'm always trying to balance accessibility and experience.

GEORGE: That's a good answer. I did want to ask you, what can people expect when training at Marcelo Garcia Academy?  Guess you've kind of answered that – is there anything else that there is to add to that?

PAUL: I like to think that the single most important thing is that we're welcoming, we're nice to people. Regardless of jiu-jitsu, if you treat other people well and with respect, it seems to come back around. That said, we have a culture of hard work, so you can expect to train hard, but if you don't want to, if it's not in your future to ever compete and you have no interest in it, you're not going to be forced into competition, or competition training. You can just come in and train, but the idea is, we built a culture and we built a room where people can train hard, train safe and shake hands and be friends before and after.

That's I think how we framed training and the culture and the environment of Marcelo's is the thing I'm most proud of and the biggest thing that hopefully you can count on when you come. That really comes from the top, that comes from Marcelo, that's the way he is and that's the culture he's created and that's the product of the people he's surrounded himself with at the gym. People who, if their ego is too big, it's too much about them, they usually don't end up fitting in in the long term. That's the thing I'm most proud of from the gym and I think that's hopefully what you can expect when you come to train at Marcelo's. Technical jiu-jitsu, hard training and a good vibe at the academy.

GEORGE: Paul, it's been great chatting with you. I've got two more questions for you: one would be, do you still get to surf in New York?

PAUL: Yeah, I do, I surf when I can. My timing is atrocious now, but there's the good surf, there are good waves here, there are really good waves. It's a little bit more fickle than what I'm used to in California, it's not like good point brakes, at least that I'm aware of. For the most part, it's a lot of beach breaks, and the sand moves around, you kind of have to be on it with the swell direction in the wind. I usually just call my friends that are better at that stuff than I am and they tell me where it's going to be good and I try to get out there. Yeah, I try to fish a lot too, which is my other option for getting out of the city, so I try to go upstate and fish the Delaware River and the Farmington River. I fly fish when I can as well.

GEORGE: Sounds good. Paul, it's been great chatting to you – if anybody wants to learn more about you and find out more about you, where can they reach out to you?

PAUL: You can always walk into the academy at Marcelo's. I'm there 6 days a week typically, for some Part of the day. I teach Monday through Friday and then I teach a class on Saturday every other week. I have a website, it’s www.paulschreinerjj.com, so you can get in touch with me through that, I'm also on Instagram. I have Facebook, but I'm not super on it about checking it. That's it – again, the easiest way is to just come by Marcelo's. I know it's a bit far for you guys, but you'd be surprised at how many Australians we have at the academy, any given day there's a number of Australian visitors there.

And I have to say, from what I see here in New York, the level of jiu-jitsu is getting really high around the world and Australia really seems to be closing the gap with a lot of really technical competitors. I think being so far away from the center and being so much in a periphery, people really have to take ownership of their training. Like what Jess does, you have to travel and we end up with people that are a lot more passionate about it and that's what it takes to be good. It's that passion.

GEORGE: That's it, awesome. Paul – thanks again for making the time and I hope to connect with you again soon.

PAUL: Anytime, thank you, George.

GEORGE: Thank you, cheers.

PAUL: Cheers.

GEORGE: And there you have it  – thanks for listening, hope you enjoyed that interview. I learnt a lot, especially as a jiu-jitsu student as well, it made a big impact on me, just how they break things down, especially the key thing that stood out for me – well, one of many, but the one thing that really stood out was mentioning how it's not just about the technique, but having the will and faith in the technique and trusting the technique that it's going to work and you can't have one without other, you can't just have the will and no technique, and you can't just have technique without the will. That really really stood out for me, amongst other things.

Thanks a lot for listening, I hope you enjoyed this how. Again, the show notes are at martialartsmedia.com/18, and if you enjoyed the show and you enjoyed all these shows, please head out to martialartsmedia.com/iTunes and there's a little picture there below, you'll see a link, or a blue button that says “View on iTunes,” and please head over there, just leave us a good review – a 5-star review helps us get our rankings up within the show. So if you are enjoying it, that is the one thing that we can ask in return, which would really really mean a lot to us.

That's it, thank you very much for tuning in. I'll be back again next week with another episode. Have a great week, I'll chat with you soon – cheers.

 

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IP addresses are used by your computer every time you are connected to the Internet. Your IP address is a number that is used by computers on the network to identify your computer. IP addresses are automatically collected by our web server as part of demographic and profile data known as “traffic data” so that data (such as the Web pages you request) can be sent to you.

Email Information

If you choose to correspond with us through email, we may retain the content of your email messages together with your email address and our responses. We provide the same protections for these electronic communications that we employ in the maintenance of information received online, mail and telephone. This also applies when you register for our website, sign up through any of our forms using your email address or make a purchase on this site. For further information see the email policies below.

How Do We Use the Information That You Provide to Us?

Broadly speaking, we use personal information for purposes of administering our business activities, providing customer service and making available other items and services to our customers and prospective customers.

will not obtain personally-identifying information about you when you visit our site, unless you choose to provide such information to us, nor will such information be sold or otherwise transferred to unaffiliated third parties without the approval of the user at the time of collection.

We may disclose information when legally compelled to do so, in other words, when we, in good faith, believe that the law requires it or for the protection of our legal rights.

Email Policies

We are committed to keeping your e-mail address confidential. We do not sell, rent, or lease our subscription lists to third parties, and we will not provide your personal information to any third party individual, government agency, or company at any time unless strictly compelled to do so by law.

We will use your e-mail address solely to provide timely information about .

We will maintain the information you send via e-mail in accordance with applicable federal law.

CAN-SPAM Compliance

Our site provides users the opportunity to opt-out of receiving communications from us and our partners by reading the unsubscribe instructions located at the bottom of any e-mail they receive from us at anytime.

Users who no longer wish to receive our newsletter or promotional materials may opt-out of receiving these communications by clicking on the unsubscribe link in the e-mail.

Choice/Opt-Out

Our site provides users the opportunity to opt-out of receiving communications from us and our partners by reading the unsubscribe instructions located at the bottom of any e-mail they receive from us at anytime. Users who no longer wish to receive our newsletter or promotional materials may opt-out of receiving these communications by clicking on the unsubscribe link in the e-mail.

Use of External Links

All copyrights, trademarks, patents and other intellectual property rights in and on our website and all content and software located on the site shall remain the sole property of or its licensors. The use of our trademarks, content and intellectual property is forbidden without the express written consent from .

You must not:

Acceptable Use

You agree to use our website only for lawful purposes, and in a way that does not infringe the rights of, restrict or inhibit anyone else”s use and enjoyment of the website. Prohibited behavior includes harassing or causing distress or inconvenience to any other user, transmitting obscene or offensive content or disrupting the normal flow of dialogue within our website.

You must not use our website to send unsolicited commercial communications. You must not use the content on our website for any marketing related purpose without our express written consent.

Restricted Access

We may in the future need to restrict access to parts (or all) of our website and reserve full rights to do so. If, at any point, we provide you with a username and password for you to access restricted areas of our website, you must ensure that both your username and password are kept confidential.

Use of Testimonials

In accordance to with the FTC guidelines concerning the use of endorsements and testimonials in advertising, please be aware of the following:

Testimonials that appear on this site are actually received via text, audio or video submission. They are individual experiences, reflecting real life experiences of those who have used our products and/or services in some way. They are individual results and results do vary. We do not claim that they are typical results. The testimonials are not necessarily representative of all of those who will use our products and/or services.

The testimonials displayed in any form on this site (text, audio, video or other) are reproduced verbatim, except for correction of grammatical or typing errors. Some may have been shortened. In other words, not the whole message received by the testimonial writer is displayed when it seems too lengthy or not the whole statement seems relevant for the general public.

is not responsible for any of the opinions or comments posted on https://martialartsmedia.com. is not a forum for testimonials, however provides testimonials as a means for customers to share their experiences with one another. To protect against abuse, all testimonials appear after they have been reviewed by management of . doe not share the opinions, views or commentary of any testimonials on https://martialartsmedia.com – the opinions are strictly the views of the testimonial source.

The testimonials are never intended to make claims that our products and/or services can be used to diagnose, treat, cure, mitigate or prevent any disease. Any such claims, implicit or explicit, in any shape or form, have not been clinically tested or evaluated.

How Do We Protect Your Information and Secure Information Transmissions?

Email is not recognized as a secure medium of communication. For this reason, we request that you do not send private information to us by email. However, doing so is allowed, but at your own risk. Some of the information you may enter on our website may be transmitted securely via a secure medium known as Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL. Credit Card information and other sensitive information is never transmitted via email.

may use software programs to create summary statistics, which are used for such purposes as assessing the number of visitors to the different sections of our site, what information is of most and least interest, determining technical design specifications, and identifying system performance or problem areas.

For site security purposes and to ensure that this service remains available to all users, uses software programs to monitor network traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change information, or otherwise cause damage.

Disclaimer and Limitation of Liability

makes no representations, warranties, or assurances as to the accuracy, currency or completeness of the content contain on this website or any sites linked to this site.

All the materials on this site are provided “as is” without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of merchantability, noninfringement of intellectual property or fitness for any particular purpose. In no event shall or its agents or associates be liable for any damages whatsoever (including, without limitation, damages for loss of profits, business interruption, loss of information, injury or death) arising out of the use of or inability to use the materials, even if has been advised of the possibility of such loss or damages.

Policy Changes

We reserve the right to amend this privacy policy at any time with or without notice. However, please be assured that if the privacy policy changes in the future, we will not use the personal information you have submitted to us under this privacy policy in a manner that is materially inconsistent with this privacy policy, without your prior consent.

We are committed to conducting our business in accordance with these principles in order to ensure that the confidentiality of personal information is protected and maintained.

Contact

If you have any questions regarding this policy, or your dealings with our website, please contact us here:

Martial Arts Media™
Suite 218
5/115 Grand Boulevard
Joondalup WA
6027
Australia

Email: team (at) martialartsmedia dot com

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