119 – How To Run 70 Martial Arts Classes Per Week And Only Teach 6

Brett Fenton recently got married, went on 2 honeymoon vacations, and returned to his martial arts school with more students signed up. We discussed the ‘Instructor Team Blueprint’ that made this possible.

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IN THIS EPISODE:

  • Creating a value-based culture in your martial arts school
  • How to build an instructor team that runs like clockwork without you
  • The method to spot and develop high-potential instructors
  • Why investing in instructor training helps ensure your school's success
  • Do this when instructors clash with your culture 
  • And more

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

 

TRANSCRIPTION

To create a team that can also be exciting and informative and follow your values and your culture onto that mat space is so important, because then you can be your best as well, not just on the floor but off the floor, where you can problem-solve for parents and students off the mat, because that's just as important as what they're learning on the mat. The moment I switched over to that way of thinking, it all started to change.

GEORGE: Good day. George here. Welcome to the Martial Arts Media Business Podcast. Today I've got a repeat guest with me. Really happy to have Brett Fenton back. Good day, Brett.

BRETT: Hey, George. Good to be back on the podcast again.

GEORGE: The last time we spoke, things were different, right? We were just lockdowns moving in and out, and we were talking about virtual gradings, a few epic things of what you're doing. If anybody wants to backtrack on that, Episode 98, but today I want to talk about something else. 

I chat to Brett every week in our Partners group, in our coaching calls, and Brett's always got a ton of value to share. One thing that's come up is Brett runs about 70 classes per week at Red Dragon Martial Arts, and is only teaching six.

I want to get down to the number one question school owners always ask me is, “How do we get more instructors? How do we go about that process?” I want to, on your behalf, pick Brett's brain today and just get all the insights on how that's going about. 

Brett, just a quick intro for those that haven't listened to the previous podcasts. Just give a quick roundup on your background, where you're based, what you guys do and so forth.

Brett Fenton

BRETT: Absolutely, George. I've been doing martial arts pretty much all my life, but I got really serious in my late teens. Got started doing Wing Chun Kung Fu, Jow Ga Kung Fu and some Tai Chi, and started teaching classes. As I think most of us do, it's just you're the standout student in the class and so you get thrown up at the front to run warm-ups, and then all of a sudden you're good at that, so then you start teaching classes.

I was doing that in the early '90s, had my first school in '94, and then I started Red Dragon Martial Arts in '97. We're about to hit 24 years of running classes. That's changed, obviously, from the small community hall where we had 20 students to now we're over 400 students. We only had two classes a week. Now we have 70 classes a week, and we have two training rooms, a gym, a full-time professional facility, and an instructor team of over 20.

Yeah, as you said, I only run six of those classes at best on any given week. I love running classes. I love teaching classes. I teach probably more private lessons than I teach classes. I'll probably do between 10 and 20 private lessons a week. That's where I try to add more value to our teaching staff, I suppose, in that element. I'm teaching the instructors or our elite athletes.

Yeah, it's about I was that instructor that basically taught classes for free, was pulled off the bench for no reason other than I was good, and I wanted to come up with a better way of doing it. I've been lucky enough over the last few years to hang out and pick the brains of some of the best people in the world, like Dave Kovar, Roland Osborne, those kinds of guys, and just learn as much as I can. Fred DePalma is another one.

They're my mentors, and this is my variation and version of that that works well in my school, so yeah. That's what we're going to probably chat about today.

GEORGE: Yeah, perfect. You've implemented that really well, just by your lifestyle. I mean, let's talk about that, right, because a couple of months ago you got married. Congratulations.

BRETT: Thank you.

GEORGE: You were able to completely switch off, completely switch off, and go on a honeymoon. I think you had two honeymoons, didn't you?

BRETT: Well, we'll get to that. Yes.

GEORGE: Right. For the purpose of this, you were able to take a break, leave things over to your team, go on a holiday, get back with a school that has grown and retained its students. How do you go about that? Where do you start going from, it's a one-man show, and obviously you grow a team, but you could actually have the confidence and faith in your team that you can take that complete step back?

BRETT: Absolutely. I still remember. It doesn't happen as much these days, but up until 10 years ago, I couldn't even leave the floor without the parents going, “Oh, the class doesn't run as well without you. You're the superstar instructor. We are paying for you.”

I think all instructors, particularly school owners, feel that pain, that they can't even have a day off. They come in sick, eyes hanging out of their head. They're exhausted.

My retort, I suppose, to customers and parents alike, would be to say to them, “If I teach less classes, when I'm on that floor, I'm fresh. I'm invigorated. I'm excited. I love being there.” If I'm on there for …

I was teaching 40 classes a week at one stage 10 years ago, just because I needed to be on the floor and I didn't have a team that was capable without me, but there were days where I wasn't a great instructor. I was cranky. I was exhausted. I was burnt out. They're not getting the best of you when you like that.

To create a team that can also be exciting and informative and follow your values and your culture onto that mat space is so important, because then you can be your best as well, not just on the floor but off the floor, where you can problem-solve for parents and students off the mat, because that's just as important as what they're learning on the mat. The moment I switched over to that way of thinking, it all started to change.

Yeah, as you said, I just got married about three months ago. We went to Tasmania, spent two weeks in isolation with no reception. Everything went smoothly, came back, was back for about two weeks, and then I took my wife away for her 50th birthday in the Whitsundays on our yacht, and we didn't have any reception there either for a week.

Loved the ability to do that, and know that my team is looking after their baby as much as it is my baby, because they love the place. They're invested in it. They've grown up there. It's really important to know who to pick when it comes to that, so that you have that peace of mind when you go away and have some days off, let alone if you're sick or unwell.

Because I see too many martial arts schools out there closing their doors for the day because the instructor's sick, and you just can't do that and be professional at the same time.

GEORGE: Yeah, cool. I liked what you said, that they take care of their baby as much as yours. Before we get into the biggest obstacles and how school owners have got to make this transition, I'd like to talk about culture. How did you install that culture? 

Before we get to that, we've got a really great download for you, for something that's going to really help you on choosing the right instructor, what ethics and characteristics you've really got to look out for. I'll mention how you can grab that, but let's chat about culture. How did you go about installing that culture within your team?

BRETT: No worries. A number of years back, we actually went through a bit of a slump with our culture. Had a few changes, a few instructors left, and it happened. In business for 25 years, there are going to be shifts in culture, particularly when I change direction and I see a way of changing. It's always going to happen, and we've had that happen probably five different times over 25 years.

It can be just as simple as we're adding a new program, or we decided we want to go from being a small-town community hall to having our own facility. There were people that didn't like that idea. They thought that, no, that's not martial arts. Then going from that to having multiple rooms with air conditioning, that's like, “Well, now that's not martial arts.” To some of your instructors, that's like you're turning into a gym.

We had a lot of obstacles to overcome, to keep growing and going in the direction that I thought that the school needed to go in, but also where I thought the majority of my students deserve to have their school go in. I'm always looking out for them to have the best facilities, the best instruction that they can have, but that doesn't come without its challenges.

Basically, we sat down with an expert that is an expert in culture, and I'm lucky enough that my wife's also a culture manager. She works in the culture industry in her business. She, along with one of my best friends, Matt … he lives in Canberra and he's big on culture there … they came together and we created these value systems for our school, that are unbreakable rules that we run our business by and run our school by.

Then they were up on the wall in massive posters, so things like we believe … and they're all belief statements. “We believe that everybody has the opportunity to become a black belt, not just the athletes,” so things like that. “We believe that nobody should blow another person's candle out.” 

We have all these belief systems, and they're everywhere throughout our school. That tells everyone, “This is what we believe in.” I'm also a massive Simon Sinek fan, and he's obviously worldwide. He gets brought into businesses to help with culture. I've listened to all of his podcasts, his interviews, his books, his TED Talks, you name it.

For me, culture is the number one thing as far as I'm concerned. It doesn't matter what you teach. It doesn't matter if you're doing martial arts, gymnastics, or dance. I don't care. If your culture is not right, you'll never grow and you'll never have harmony inside there, and you'll never have a day off because you'll be having to micromanage your team all the time.

I don't micromanage my team. I actually sit in this office, where I am now. I spend most of my time in this office, even when the classes are running, and I pop out, just have chats to the parents if I get a message on my watch or my phone.

I don't teach classes. I've got cameras right above me, where I am right now. There's 12 cameras. I can look up there and see how it's all going if I really want to, but at the end of the day, I trust my team.

They are well-trained. We do monthly training sessions where we go through any of the issues we had during the last month. We've noted it all, we fix it all and we move on.

We listen to our feedback from our students and our parents, so yeah, it's all important. It's an ongoing process that doesn't happen overnight, but yeah, it has to happen.

GEORGE: All right, perfect. You're installing the beliefs. That's very known amongst the culture within the students, so that helps. Now, how does this transition over when you start trying to spot the talent and seeing, all right, well, who's the next instructor? How does it go from being a student to transitioning someone and inviting them to become an instructor?

Martial Arts Instructor

BRETT: Very important, George, in the fact that I think we already do it the day we have people come in and do a trial class. We're very big on not just accepting everybody as a student. They have to have pretty much the same, I suppose, values that we have anyway. It doesn't matter.

If you come in and you go, “Oh, I'm a 10-time world champion,” and you've got a bad attitude, I'm probably not going to accept you as a student. I'll go, “Mate, just go down the road, or go to the AIS or wherever you need to go to feed that ego.”

I'm looking for people that are like-minded to us, have the same values or want the same values, and want to train hard. They want to enjoy their training. They want to be nice to everybody. They're not there for their own selfish reasons all the time. It's pretty much from the day they walk in for their trial. We're almost pre-editing the instructor team by that.

Then that leads us down the path to maybe a month or two in and we see people that are training really hard, everybody gravitates towards them, their personality is infectious, and that's a big thing. My instructor team, it's always on personality first, and then skill and talent is way, way down the track, because you can't teach personality. You literally can get someone who's very technical and very skilled and can put an entire class to sleep, because they get down that rabbit hole of technical stuff.

You get someone who's personable, who's what we like to call Disney, so they're very exciting. Everybody loves to be around them. They can teach people opening letters and that would be an exciting class. It doesn't matter what they're teaching, which makes it easy because you can get them when they're only six to twelve months down the track, teaching how to kick something or how to punch something, or how to hold a kick shield or how to do one technique, but the way they teach it will be amazing.

That's our number one, I suppose, way of wading through all of the student body to find the diamonds in the rough. We do that from personality first, and then we teach them the skills, not just the martial art skills but the teaching skills, which is so important, how to pass on your knowledge.

GEORGE: Why Disney?

BRETT: I think Disney has been doing it for nearly a hundred years, and they've always improved on what they've done. In the industry all over the world, managers and business owners from all over the world actually go to Disney's, their college, where they learn how to do staff management, how they get to present and perform at an elite level. I often say to our instructors that when we're out there teaching, we're not just passing on knowledge. Every parent and every kid that's watching us, we're performing at the same time. How we perform in front of them will keep them engaged.

I think back to when I was in school. The number-ones, the teachers that always got the information across to me best, were the ones that engaged me very well. We want our instructors to be very engaging, very likable and very knowledgeable, obviously.

We have to make sure that we start with them being likable, because nobody's going to listen to them if they're not. They're just going to switch off. It doesn't matter how skilled they are. Yeah, Disney does it best, I think, and they still do it to this day, running a course on that, so very, very useful to learn.

GEORGE: All right, perfect. We're about to go with this. I want to make this episode super practical. Now, full disclosure, Brett and I worked together on a course. It's called The Instructor Team Blueprint. I'll talk more about that, but really what I want to do in this episode is I want to extract some things from the course that were really useful, but I think that can make the most impact from the get-go.

I think the number one question that always comes up in our group is how do you go about finding the right instructors or inviting them, how does that process go. I want to dive a bit more into that.

Then as a gift with this episode, if you download the actual transcript, we'll include the Character Traits to Clarify, which is basically a list of what character traits you're looking for and how you go about finding that in the instructor that you want. To bring that back to here, let's talk about spotting the talent.

You mentioned you plant the seed from the get-go. How does it go from there? How do you get people on board your team and take it from there?

BRETT: No worries, George. First thing is obviously, spotting the talent, to go up to them and say, “You're really skilled at this skill. You'd make a really good instructor one day.” If you see them naturally just going over and helping other people, that's a very key indicator, but just by someone who's at the school, they don't miss classes. When they grade, they grade at a really high level. They're highly personable, so they're that Disney.

Once you start to see that, that's when you can approach them and say, “Listen, I think further down the track, you'd become a really good instructor. Have you ever thought about becoming one?”

If they say, “No, I hadn't, but that's pretty cool,” you go, “Well, we do instructor training once a month. You're more than welcome to come along and have a look at it and see if you enjoy it. If you do, you can come to that until such time as you feel that you're confident enough to start helping us out,” and then just giving them small roles as they go. It might be, “Do you want to come in once a week and help with our three-to-six-year-old class,” or our seven-to-12-year-old class or our adult class, whichever one they like.

Then from there, it just grows. It's, again, growing their ability to stand in front of an audience, their ability to have confidence in their knowledge. Because even though they may present really well in a grading, when they come to teach somebody else, they may find that they get too nervous, they can't talk.

We need to teach them the skills of doing that. We do mock classes when we do our instructor training to help people get through their anxiety when it comes to teaching, if they struggle. A lot of our instructors, funnily enough, have a lot of anxiety, and this is one of the best things for them, because they learn to cope with their anxiety.

They learn the tools to use, whether it's the breathing tools, mindset drills, things like that. It just makes them even better martial artists, because now they're not worried all the time. They can stand up in front of an audience, be in class, and present. They take that out into the real world as well, and it makes them better out there, whether they're working or just in their personal life.

GEORGE: All right. Just backtracking, you've invited them, they come to instructor training. How does it progress from that point?

BRETT: With our adults, they'll just basically go up into our advanced rank. When they get to an advanced rank, they can start assisting in classes if they've been doing the instructor training. Because we don't want anyone assisting until they've been through our instructor training, because they don't know the correct language to use. They don't know the correct way to correct. 

They might just go up to a kid and just go, “That's terrible, fix it.” That could be the day that that poor kid's come in and he's having a hard day as it is. Then you've had this assistant come in for his very first class, has no idea what your culture is on the floor when it comes to teaching, and that kid's now, “I don't want to train anymore,” and he leaves. You can lose students quickly that way.

We want to make sure that all of our assistant instructors know what to say, how to say it. They are empathetic as well as being personable. For our junior instructors, we have what we call Black Belt Club. They go into that after they get to an intermediate belt.

That means that they can come out and they can show other kids how to do things like push-ups, how they can hold pads and kick shields. They can direct them. They can help set up the floor, but again, they still come to our instructor training, because we don't want them, again, using the wrong terminology, using the wrong communication skills.

We can have 10-year-olds out there doing that. We have some really good 8-to-10-year-olds that will help. They'll be partners in our jiu jitsu program, where it's so hard for a three-to-six-year-old sometimes to partner up with another kid, because they just don't understand roleplaying and taking turns. We usually put them with one of our juniors and they do the techniques on them, and then that makes it a lot easier. You get through a class a lot faster and at a higher level.

Then once they've been doing that up to about the age of 14, we then put them into our junior instructor program. That will be, like say in our Kung Fu, it would be our SWAT team. In our Extreme, it's our X team. In our jiu jitsu, it's our Sub Club, so we have a variety of different levels.

Then that means that they can actually take a group on their own, so they have a group of kids. Usually when they first start, it will be the white belts, because they're easy to teach. They're keen for knowledge. They look up to these kids, and basically build their skills out on the floor while they're still doing their instructor training every month.

Once we get up to an adult, they can then go up to Senior Instructor level. Whether they're being paid or not, it's up to them. If they are being paid, though, we don't start them until they're 14 years of age. They must be volunteering first, to basically make sure that they are part of our culture on the floor as an instructor, not just there for the money.

GEORGE: Yeah, cool. Funny enough, we just spoke a bit about this on our Partners Power Hour call earlier, but let's talk about money and compensation, because that's another question that comes up. How do you compensate instructors? When do you start paying, when do you not pay, or is it different for everyone? How do you go about that? Obviously, taking into consideration we've got an international audience, so we'll leave the Australia terms out, but just in a general concept.

Martial Arts Instructor

BRETT: It depends on the student. It's, again, coming down to knowing what your student's goals are. Why are they teaching, at the end of the day? For some of our instructors, they've been teaching for 10 years. They don't want a dime. They actually find it insulting. It's an insult if they get paid, because we can't actually pay them what they're worth. If I've got a lawyer who wants to teach class, I can't pay him $200 an hour to teach my class. He's not going to give up his job. He just loves doing it, because it makes him feel valued.

There's a lot of value in contributing back into the school as an instructor. I did it for a good 15 years before even seeing a dime, but I love it. It was my apprenticeship, I always call it, in instructing. For some people, that's all they want, and they'll teach one class, maybe two classes a week. There's no expectation for them to teach, but they love it and they do it. Sometimes it's for decades.

Then you've got the instructors that go, “You know what, I'd rather do this than do a normal job. I don't want to do a normal job. I want to do this.” Whether they're coming out of high school, they're in their late teens, and they go, “I want to do this,” then we talk about them going down that pathway of becoming a qualified instructor, being paid. 

I've got one instructor that's been here for 10 years, and he's been paid more in the last 10 years than any of our other instructors, just because he is a superstar. He could ask me to go anywhere all over the world, back when we could fly places. I'd go, “Sure, just make sure you get back here in a couple of weeks.” He's that valuable.

Then I've got instructors that were six-year-olds that are now 20-year-olds and they don't want to have a normal job, so they're getting paid as well. It really depends on what their goals are and where they see their future. If they just want to teach one class a week or two classes a week, and they love teaching and they don't want to be remunerated, that's fine, we don't pay them, but we give them so many other bonuses. We give them stuff, like they get uniforms, they get gifts all the time. 

If I think they deserve something, I'll take them out to dinner, you name it. We just make sure that they feel special. It's one of those things. They need to feel valued, more so than the financial side of it. That's why a lot of people volunteer in the first place, it's that value that they feel for their contribution. We don't want to undermine that.

GEORGE: Perfect. Sometimes paid, sometimes not, just depends on the person. We were discussing, as you mentioned as well, it's important that you can't pay a lawyer $200 an hour, type of thing. You've got to have the balance. Obviously, if you've got to pay someone, that you pay them something that's valued, but also not an insult. For those people, it might be better for them to have the social norm of just being able to contribute and be valued in a different way.

BRETT: Absolutely. They may also get paid really well in their job, but where they are, they don't have that esteem. They're not put up on a pedestal. They might be like a mechanic, who earns 50 bucks an hour but nobody even talks to him. Then all of a sudden he's out on the floor and he's a black belt, and everybody is listening to every word that he says. You can't buy that. 

That's just pure pride that he loves, and you couldn't pay him for it. Think about it. Most of our instructors paid to be in that position. They paid fees to get to that position, like I did when I was training. Yeah, we just want to make sure that they feel valued and that we appreciate everything they do, and that they are held in esteem with their student base.

GEORGE: Just interesting, let's flip the tables quickly. What happens when it goes not to plan and you get the instructor that is not aligned with the beliefs, or they were aligned with the beliefs but the ego is growing with the position, or they're just getting off track or something happens in their life and it derails them, and they start to separate the alignment where you and the club are going versus on their journey? How do you deal with that type of conflict?

BRETT: Oh, there's obviously a number of ways that people do deal with it. Like a lot of school owners, I'm sure that I've had it happen to me so many times over the years. It just becomes part and parcel. Students leave, instructors leave. It's just what happens. There's a few ways you can deal with it. You can be obviously nasty about it and just kick them out. You can force them out by taking away their shifts or whatever, or you can just have someone come in and take over their class.

I like to do it from another way and go, “Okay, what do I need to do? Obviously I don't want you here, because you're not good for our culture.” I can either get them to come back on board with our culture, which is Plan A. Plan B is to then go, “How can I help you to go out and do your own thing?” 

Whether that's going and teaching for somebody else, because it usually is only around the instructor that has their own opinions on how it should happen. They're not in line with my opinions or the school owner's opinions. Then there's going to be that fraction happening inside the classes all the time.

That person probably needs to go and run their own school. Then you go down the pathway of, okay, “Well, which way would you like to do it? Would you like to do it with my support? Would you like to do it as our branding, without our branding, or do you just want to just go and do your own thing?” You give them some avenues to go down. 

We've had ones that have gone just down their own way and not wanted any help whatsoever. We've had some that have gone with help. Yeah, at the end of the day, you're looking at their future still, like you would any other instructor. If it doesn't align with the direction we're going in, that's okay, because we can't all go down the same path.

We want to try and make it as amiable as possible. I don't want to have them out there being competition, as they say. I'd like them to be on the same page as us and looking out for each other. I'm still great friends with all my instructors of 30-plus years. I had to do the same thing at some stage to them. I had to go out on my own, but I did it respectfully, because I saw a different pathway that I wanted to go down. I was respectful, and I'm still in contact with them and I still train with them, and I still get them to come in and guest-instruct and all that stuff happens.

Yeah, it's understanding where you've come from and then understanding where you want to go. I understand that from my perspective and their perspective. I think that takes a little bit of empathy, to understand it from the other person's perspective. It's not the wrong thing to do, they've just got a different direction they want to go in, and so we help them.

GEORGE: Yeah, totally. Because that is a concern that a lot of school owners mention, if you don't want to get someone on board, you make them the star of the school, and they decide they're too entrepreneurial and they want to open up their own school. The intention was just to grab what they can, and they make a run for it. What you're saying is you're just approaching that with a bit more of an empathetic approach, and you want to make sure you instill those values and that there is an open path that people can leave.

Brett Fenton

BRETT: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, because I've been down the pathway. I've had instructors just leave and not tell me, and then go and open up in opposition. I think as long-term instructors, we've all had that happen. That's just because we didn't read the warning signs early enough. That's part of growing. 

We often talk about in the industry, if you get a black belt, it doesn't mean to say you're an instructor. Then after you've been instructing for say a good 10 years, you'd probably have been a black belt instructor if you'd been doing it properly. Then after you've owned your school probably for 20 years, maybe now you're a black belt school owner.

You try to look at it in that vein, that you've got to be improving your skills as an instructor, but then also as a school owner and then as a business owner. They're all skills that you need to be growing. Part of growing as a business owner is understanding that your staff will want to leave at some stage, like students want to leave, and that you've got to find an amicable way of making that happen, so that if they need to come back to you for help later on, there's a doorway for them to come through. 

Because if they leave under bad terms, then they don't feel like there is a doorway, or there usually isn't because it's not amicable. I've been down that path many times, and would have preferred it not to be that way, but these days I'm a lot better on that. That just comes from experience. The only true way of getting it is to go through it.

GEORGE: Exactly, yeah. I like Ross Cameron‘s philosophy. He calls it the bus, you know. Everyone's on the bus, they get on the bus, and sometimes they jump off the bus. You help them get from one place to the next. It's their time to hop off the bus and go do their own thing.

BRETT: Yep. You can't get upset about it. You helped them in their journey to where they got to. The fact that people will stay for 5, 10, 15, 20 years is crazy, that they want to stay that long. That means you've done something right.

Rather than looking at it from the point of what I did wrong for them to leave, you've got to look at it from the perspective of that you did something right for a very long period of time, and then learned from it. That's what we're always trying to do. I'm definitely trying to do that all the time. Perfect at it, not, but I'm always trying to improve the way I do it.

GEORGE: Awesome. We wanted to include a couple of things and resources you could use from this episode. If you go to the website, if you're listening to this, martialartsmedia.com/119. That's where all the resources for this episode are going to look.

As I mentioned earlier, Brett and I, we spent some time, and my job was to extract everything out of Brett's mind and help him put together a program that covers the Instructor Team Blueprint in six steps.

We've gone from the team skill plan, how to assess how many instructors you're going to need and fulfilling those positions, spotting the right talent, systemizing the training accordingly, running the instructor training boot camp, how to do that, rewards and recognition, payments and a whole bunch of other things. From what we just discussed … and, Brett, I'm about to put you on the spot here, forgive me.

BRETT: That's okay.

GEORGE: When you download the transcript of this podcast, we've included the Character Trait Clarifier. It's basically a list of what you're looking for as in work ethic, popularity, their passion, communication, leadership skills. Just going through a process of how to basically score people, score your students, and see if they've got the right attributes and right values and the right character traits to become an instructor.

Putting you on the spot, Brett, just talking, it reminded me of how people find it hard to get people to transition from student to instructor and how that process goes. You've got something called the Instructor Letter of Offer.

BRETT: Yep.

GEORGE: Do you mind telling us about that? Then I'm going to ask if you wouldn't mind including it.

BRETT: Okay. No worries. Absolutely. I can definitely include that. I'll send it through to you. It basically is a formal letter that we would send out to an instructor that's maybe even been doing the instructor training. They've come in, maybe done one session, and we've gone, “You know what? We think that they would be the right fit.”

It can be a teenager, it can be an adult, it doesn't matter. It can be even a kid, if you really want to start your junior instructor team that way.

Just the formal part of it just states everything that you expect of them, that you've found that they would be the right fit, that they have the necessary skills as far as their personality goes and they fit the culture. It's really important that they understand what they're in for, that it's an important role, that's it's not just being plucked off the floor and put up on the front of the class, which obviously, we still do that to this day. We have instructors, but we don't pick on anyone that doesn't do instructor training, but you have to start somewhere.

I remember getting plucked off and just put on the front of the stage and, “Here you go, run a warm-up.” There's a better way to do it. During class, walk around, find the right people. Find if they're interested, invite them to the first session. If after that they seem interested, they do a really good job, then you can send them the offer to join our instructor training squad and go from there. You can have levels of that.

You can write the letter for, “We'd like you to become a junior instructor,” or we'd like you to become an assistant instructor, a senior instructor. You can basically format it to suit whatever your needs are.

Just the sheer fact of getting something in the post that's formally saying that we want you in our team, that's a pretty proud moment for most people. Rather than just coming up and slapping them on the back and going, “Hey, you want to be an instructor?” It's a big difference in the mindset then. It just shows how much we think about these things. It's professional.

GEORGE: Perfect. All right. Thanks for that. We'll include that with the transcript, and as a bonus, what we'll extract is just, with the Character Trait Clarifier, there's a snippet in Module 2 of how we went about that and how you go about working with that. I'll get our video editor to just edit, give you that snippet so that you know how to work through the worksheet and you know how to go through the PDF.

Other than that, Brett, thanks so much. I mean, if you've got anything to add about the Instructor Team Blueprint.

Instructor team blueprint

Just for reference, if you want to grab the course, you can go to martialartsmedia.com/courses and just look for The Instructor Team Blueprint. It's up there. It's really a good value for the amount of knowledge and work that's gone into it. Yeah, it's a really good value. Brett, have you got anything to add on that, about the program?

BRETT: I think that I wish it would have been around 20-something years ago when I was first teaching classes, and I had to travel all over the world to do that and then bring instructors from overseas to here. It's just been one of those things, that I know all of us long-term school owners wish we had more information back when we did, but now we do.

It's just a combination of 25, 30 years of teaching and all the things that I did incorrectly and correctly, fined-tuned into a nice, easy-to-learn-and-use course that I think would suit anybody that's trying to grow their school and not want to be at their school 24/7, teaching every single class 'til they're 85.

I don't want to retire. This is my retirement. When I'm at my school, I like being here, but I would hate to think that I'd be like my instructor, who is in his seventies, and if he's not at the school, it's closed. I don't want to be that. I want to be able to take time off. I want to be able to be unwell and not have to get up and go to my class and teach. Thank God I didn't have to worry about COVID.

Even to the point where my team is so proficient that when we did lockdown last week, I taught no classes. They were so good. They teach it all. It was amazing. I just go here. There's Zoom, off you go.

They just report back to me how it went, so it's perfect. It allows you to have a life. It allows you to have your family. It allows you to do other things, and it allows you to really enjoy your martial arts again and enjoy your school, rather than being stressed out about it all the time. Yeah, it costs you a bit of money to pay a really good team, but it's worth it in the long run, for sure.

GEORGE: Awesome. Cool, Brett. Thanks so much. Great having you back on again, and we'll chat again next week.

BRETT: See you soon, absolutely.

 

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

1. Join the Martial Arts Media™ community.

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

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

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

3. Work with me and my team privately.

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

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

***NEW*** Now available on Spotify!

99 – The COVID Safe Return Plan Course For Martial Arts Schools

Walt Missingham from MAIA, The Martial Arts Industry Association, shares insights about the COVID Safe Martial Arts Instructor Course.

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

  • Removing fear and ensuring safety with a COVID safe return plan for your martial arts school
  • What MAIA’s COVID Safe Martial Arts Instructors Certification Program is
  • How to get certified and the benefits martial arts instructors can reap
  • How does it differ from the courses provided by the government and other institutions 
  • And more

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

 

TRANSCRIPTION

This is a coming together of a range of people in the martial arts industry to put out a course that people can educate themselves and then go to their respective local government and state governments, because as many of your listeners will know, they are being asked to provide a COVID safe return plan. And that is beyond the administrative capacities of many of our martial arts teachers.

GEORGE: Good day, this is George and welcome to the Martial Arts Media business podcast. I’m joined today by Walt Missingham from MAIA, the Martial Arts Industry Association. And at the time of recording this, we are talking about the pandemic and COVID-19 that has drastically obviously impacted the martial arts industry community.

So I want to talk about a few things that they have put in place to basically give some assurance to the public in regards to legalities and so forth, with running your school and with all the restrictions and everything that goes with that. So welcome to the call Walt.

WALT: Yes, thanks for giving us the opportunity to speak with you George.

GEORGE: Fantastic. So if you could just give us a 2-3 minute introduction of who you are and what the focus is of what you're doing?

covid safe martial arts

WALT: I really don't think I need to introduce myself, anyone who doesn't know who I am is probably not in our industry. I'm the president of the peak body for Martial Arts in Australia, the Martial Arts Industry Association. We deal with all manner of problems and programs associated with martial arts.

But the key focus, as you correctly said at your introduction, is the COVID-19 pandemic and again, as you correctly said, that's impacting not just the industry here in Australia, but globally. And so like many organisations, that's been our key focus for the last several months.

GEORGE: Gotcha. Now, with everything going on, you've put together a COVID safe martial arts instructor certification program – what is that about?

WALT: We identified a number of key problems, by reaching out to different people in the industry, liaising not just with people from martial arts, but people from the board of coaching community. You may not be aware, but we liaised with the Australian Coaching Council for the construction of this certification program. And a sister certification program for non martial arts coaches: swimming, football, etc. has also been released and that's only been released three days ago and we're just passing 4000 coaches have gone through that program, the coaches and officials.

So one of the problems that we very early identified is that it's perfectly reasonable, but most instructors had a concern about when we can resume and what we can do when we resume. And it's a fair comment to say that a lot of the information from the government has been unhelpful, confusing and ambiguous.

So we put together a certification program that just cuts to the bone in terms of what information a coach or an instructor needed. There's an education component to it and there's also a procedural component to it about what to do and what not to do in teaching martial arts classes under the various phase 1, phase 2, phase 3 conditions.

But we also identified through polling companies that the return date is not the biggest problem that our industry faces; that date will occur at a point in the future. In the near future by the looks of it. The problem is the large numbers of people that were giving us feedback that they were not going to go back to training because they are frightened to do so.

So we have two problems, one is we can't teach under government regulation, but that changes at a point in the near future. But the more substantive problem is the fear component that people have in the general community. I mean, my goodness, I saw the other day a woman driving in her car with a face mask on.

And apart from the overwhelming advice that face masks aren't going to help you, I mean, what is she going to catch driving around in her own car? And that's the sort of illogical fear that we have to deal with and we have to do it in a considered…

We have to empathise with these people and we do that by getting proper training and proper information out there. Which is why we moved towards the COVID Safe Martial Arts Instructors Certification Program. To create a non-political, it's an online course, it's free of charge. In fact, it cost us money.

The MAIA has committed considerable financial resources to assist our industry in recovery. And then this logo that is getting huge prominence, you know that George, you've looked on social media, this thing is not just all over social media in Australia. We’re assisting bodies in Canada, the USA, England throughout Europe and Asia, getting similar programs up and running.

GEORGE: Fantastic. So can you give us an idea, so what is in the actual certification program?

WALT: Well, you go through it step by step. First of all, it outlines how the disease is transmitted, what the disease is, it exposes a lot of the myths as well, there's a lot of people out there who were rushing to get, for example, the flu vaccine and that's one of the questions – does the flu vaccine protect you from the COVID-19 virus? Answer, no, it doesn't. And there's a whole lot of myth exposed there. And then we move from that section of the course to the actual procedural specifics of running a COVID safe martial arts class.

GEORGE: OK. So now, what does it really mean for a school to do this? Like, how does it help, in which way would it help them?

covid safe martial arts

WALT: I've always taken the view that education in any subject is a help, but never more urgent than right now. We're dealing with, at the moment, and I'm just getting some figures. We’re now knocking on the door of 10,000 instructors having gone through this.

Let's do the math, let's look at how many students those instructors are coming in contact with. Their websites, their social media, their interaction at every level is pushing the COVID safe martial arts school logo. There is a point, the pressure from other sources, such as parents is going to be enormous for people to be COVID safe certified.

There is also the insurance component. Insurers are looking at this type of education. I know for a fact there are some insurers that are specifically looking at excluding claims of in sport, if they emanate from COVID safe infections, and that's a very serious thing that we’re currently liaising with insurers on behalf of our industry.

There are a lot of other things out there that many people, they get about their day to day business of teaching martial arts aren't aware of. And we’re addressing that as well and the COVID safe certification is part of how we're addressing that with insurors.

GEORGE: OK. I guess just to play the devil's advocate here, right? So how does this differ – I know there's mention of a few government courses and things like that?

WALT: Really? Name them.

GEORGE: So I'm just going through a couple of comments here.

WALT: I said, I didn't say name the comments, I said name the government courses.

GEORGE: Yes. Yes, I'm just reading here: Australian Government Course, Australian Coach Mission Course, all the health organisation courses… and that's all that's coming up from the list here.

WALT: And that's fairly nondescript, so…

GEORGE: OK.

WALT: We’re really talking about probably fictionalized versions of something in someone's mind. But to move on from that: even if those courses existed, and I'm fairly confident that most of them don't, how do they address martial arts?

GEORGE: Not sure.

WALT: Well, I'll answer that for you, although the silence answered it: they don't.

GEORGE: Perfect. OK. What else do we need to know? What else do we need to…

WALT: I'll give you an example of misinformation, just by way. And I won't name names to embarrass the people. The COVID Safe Martial Arts Instructors Program rolled out. It is without question the most successful mass communication of the martial arts industry ever in Australia.

The volume of people doing it, and the comments and social media are enormous. The fact that other countries are taking it up, not only are we leading the way in Australia, we are leading the way in the world in terms of instructor education and how to deal with the aftermath of this pandemic.

But to give you an example of how poor the level of grasp of the problem is by some in our industry: there was a group of martial artists that said, oh no, we're not doing that course; we're doing the official course run by the Australian Coaching Council. Now of course, if you read the fine print of the Australian Coaching Council Course, they acknowledge the help that the MAIA provided them in constructing a coach course based on the martial arts instructors certification course. 

So in other words, they're doing the same course by a different name, but for them, no this is the official one. And when you have that level or that lack of intellectual evaluation of something, it gives you cause for pause that these people actually drive cars and vote, let alone teach martial arts. Next question George?

GEORGE: Perfect. OK. So, my questions are on my limited experience with this, so I'll take your guidance on where we should steer this conversation in your experience. But from looking at something like this, is it endorsed by the government, or…

WALT: Any course – which is why in your earlier question I knew that that was going up the wrong pathway. As a matter of policy, the government will not endorse any course. This is up to industry. In fact, they even say if you go to their website, “This is the responsibility of industry bodies.”

GEORGE: All right. So what else should we know about this? I'd ask you this way. Which questions should I be asking you in regards to this?covid safe martial artsWALT: Well, it's an interesting take on an interview George. I think we've covered it.

I mean really, this is about two things: this is about making people aware of the course and making them aware of the second thing: it's non political, it's free. Just for argument's sake, if we were motivated financially and we were charging for this course and we’re currently kicking over 10,000 and when we go global, we’ll be looking at more like 250,000 then if money was our objective, then we'd be doing OK wouldn't we? We wouldn't be doing too badly at all.

But money is not our objective. This is a coming together of a range of people in the martial arts industry to put out a course that people can educate themselves and then go to their respective local government and state governments, because as many of your listeners will know, they are being asked to provide a COVID safe return plan. And that is beyond the administrative capacities of many of our martial arts teachers.

They don't know where to start, they don't know what to do. How do I know that? I'm getting on average a 100 emails a day asking for help with stuff like that and we're giving it to people. Any people, not just members of MAIA – anyone in our industry we're helping.

So this is the problem: you've got a gap between what is required and how to get to that point just to satisfy the minimum requirements of the government. In some jurisdictions, it's not just about waiting for the government to say, oh you can now do this and this – you must submit a recovery, a resumption plan, a pathway back.

And that is something that a lot of our people in our industry are simply having trouble with. We've done that for them. They click on this thing, they get certified and we’ve even put up template pathway plans for them as well.

GEORGE: Ok, perfect. So once a martial arts school owner or instructor has completed the course, what's the next step from that point?

WALT: OK. Then that's up to them, isn't it? I would think it would be a real good idea to be using that logo in your advertising. We also provide support materials, like posters, COVID safe martial arts school posters that show procedures that you can print up and put in your dojo, your training area. We have a range of things. You see, we didn't just look at this as oh, we've got to do a certification course. We have a range of initiatives that we’re rolling out from this point into November of this year. 

All of them focused on educating instructors, helping instructors with marketing and getting students back into the classes of our industry. Not just classes in the MAIA membership, even though that is very, very large. We have approximately 3000 accredited instructors under the MAIA banner – there's no one else that can make that claim.

And so we have a large number of people already, but this is bigger than that. This is an industry based problem. We have never faced a problem of this magnitude before and I hope never again. And this is where we have pulled together many, many people.

Look at our COVID safe martial arts Australia website, covidsafemartialartsschools.com and you'll see a supporters list. Look at the list of the thousands of now certified COVID safe instructors. You go through those names and you'll see, you've been around the block a few times George, you'll see instructors there that have been highly critical of me personally, and highly critical of the MAIA – and yet, they're listed there. 

Because they see, they're grown ups, they can see the need for this, this is a time where people put aside whatever preconceptions they have and all work together for the betterment of our industry. Because this is a really big problem. There are many instructors and schools George that have closed down and I fear they won't be coming back. And we've got to minimise that damage to our industry. That's our job and that's what we're doing.

GEORGE: Fantastic. Walt, thanks so much for taking the time to chat. I know we've actually had a chat a long time coming, it was going to be on different terms, but glad to have had a chat.

WALT: I'm happy to always talk to you George and it's important that we get out there and communicate. I think that information is important, the right information is important. If you'll just do me this favor and just send me the link from next week, I'm doing a lot of media and we're going to be putting a media link on our site so we would be happy to put your podcast up there on our site, which is being seen George by thousands of people every day, so I think maybe it's a good idea if you do that.

GEORGE: Perfect. Thanks so much and for anyone that missed the link, it's covidsafemartialartsschool.com.

WALT: In fact, covidsafemartialartsschool.com.

GEORGE: Perfect, yes, so double s. And we'll have that link in…

WALT: It's not hard to find, yeah, you can put it on there, it's not hard to find. Half the planet seems to be able to find it at the moment, so we’re having to bring in extra people to help. It's a good problem to have, it means we're reaching people, but it's still a problem. The administrative logistics at the moment for this are enormous. But we're gonna keep at it and we're gonna do our absolute best for everyone out there to help them to get their schools back on deck and their students back into the classroom.

GEORGE: Fantastic. Walt, thanks so much.

WALT: My pleasure George, as always. We'll talk again no doubt. Thank you mate, bye bye.

GEORGE: Thank you.

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

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

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

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

 

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

1. Join the Martial Arts Media community.

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

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

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

3. Work with me and my team privately.

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

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

***NEW*** Now available on Spotify!

Podcast Sponsored by Martial Arts Media Partners

98 – Brett Fenton – Evaluating Your Martial Arts Life & Transitioning To Virtual Gradings

Lifelong martial artist Brett Fenton talks about taking action fast, navigating through obstacles and transitioning to virtual gradings.

.
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

  • How Brett navigated his martial arts business through the pandemic
  • Evaluating if it’s your time to throw in the towel
  • The steps Brett took to pivot his business successfully
  • How Brett's agile leadership helped his team to adapt the right mindset
  • Brett's recovery plan
  • And more

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

 

TRANSCRIPTION

It is a great time to evaluate where you sat as far as life goes. So you can go, “Do I really love doing martial arts? Do I love teaching? Do I love turning up and doing all of this?” Here's the perfect opportunity for some people in the world to go, “You know what, I'm gonna actually jump out of this, because it's not actually something I enjoy doing anymore.”

But for me, it actually made me assess the other way and go. “I love this so much, I've got to keep this going. I will turn over every rock to find a way to make this keep happening.”

GEORGE: Hey everyone, this is George Fourie from martialartsmedia.com and welcome to another Martial Arts Media business podcast. So I have with me today something that I speak to quite regularly within our Partners program. Great martial artist, great school owner, Brett Fenton from Red Dragon Martial Arts. How are you doing today Brett?

BRETT: I'm awesome George, thanks for having me on your podcast.

GEORGE: Thank you. And so a little bit of an insight: this is round two, but round one.

BRETT: Correct.

GEORGE: So we actually did a podcast… Well, it would be a good six months ago?

BRETT: Yeah, absolutely.

GEORGE: Yeah. And I had my laptop stolen unfortunately and there were two files that did not upload into the cloud. And one of them was Brett’s podcast. So it's been a long time in the making. Lots of change in the world, but here we are.

BRETT: Absolutely, a bit of a different environment now.

GEORGE: Exactly. So we can chat a bit about that, but first up, just for anyone who doesn't know who you are, just give us a bit of a roundup: who you are, what you do and a bit of your background.

martial arts virtual gradings

BRETT: Absolutely, thanks George. I’m a lifetime martial artist. I've been training since I was a kid, and jumped around different styles depending on which family member taught it to me, or friend. Didn't have a lot of money as a kid, so I latched on to anyone that looked that knew any martial arts and basically got it for free as a kid. Moved to Brisbane in the late 80s and basically started training with my still sifu Tom Lowe for the last 30 years.

I trained with him in Wing Chun, Jow Ga Kung Fu, Wu Style Tai Chi funnily enough, because he thought I was an angry young teenager that needed some calming down, so he taught me that. Later on, taught me crucial lion and dragon dancing, so I did all the whole Chinese culture, immersed myself in their culture for a very long time.

Lived over near Sunnybank for a long time as well, then obviously went down the route of when the UFC came out, MMA, Brazilian jiu-jitsu with John Will. Trained and traveled overseas a lot, started with the extreme martial arts in the mid to late 90s and 2000s and started bringing that out, probably late 2000s started teaching that, and Kali and Escrima with Ray Floro.

So just basically, just gone on this journey of trying to find the very best martial arts to suit me. And funnily enough along the way, a lot of other people that I've taught have gone, “That's cool, I want to learn it.”

And so now we have over 400 students. We run nearly 100 classes a week, full-time facility with multiple rooms. But we started in 97’ in a community hall, so we've done the usual kind of thing for most professional martial arts instructors. Community hall to full-time school over about 23 years. And that's pretty much my story, so that's all I keep doing today.

GEORGE: Perfect. So you were mentioning you were on this search for the perfect martial arts for you. Now, knowing, working with you from my perspective, you're a guy that sort of, you just jump in head-on into different directions and you're pretty quick to take action. But also get in front of, you know, what is going on with whatever you take on. So for you that you've done all these styles and all of these different things, what’s the sort of martial arts that resonates with you the most?

BRETT: Yeah, I get asked that question quite a lot, especially by my students here, which is my favorite. They always go, “Sifu. what's your favorite style?” I go, “It's like asking which is your favorite child; depends on the day and the time.” So depends on which one is upsetting you the most. I like… again, I still train, I love my kung-fu because I grew up in the Bruce Lee era, so for me it's still a big part of who I am.

But I also love the nuances and the complexities of the Brazilian  jiu-jitsu. I was only just watching UFC yesterday and just watching two high-level jiu-jitsu guys in a cage, throwing crazy control, like twisters and stuff in an octagon. And that was exciting. So I still find that exciting, I love hanging out with, chatting with my coaches like John Will, he's like, he's a wealth of knowledge that I love to just chat to all the time. And so just that kind of stuff is really exciting.

I love blades, I had my first knife when I was six years old and I've got a collection, probably not as good as Ray Flores’ collection, but I have a pretty good collection of knives that have been given to me over the years by students or family and friends. So I've always loved any kind of bladed weapon. So yeah, at the end of the day, I'm fully immersed in it. I gave up being a top-level sportsman in tennis, cricket, volleyball to just pursue martial arts and that was hard, as like a 20 to 22 year old, I could have gone down there.

Martial arts was just such a pull to me that I went… I preferred myself as far as the martial arts goes, preferred myself as a person when I was doing martial arts than I did as an athlete in other sports and stuff. So I went down that road fairly early on as a young adult male and it's paid off, because this is all I do for a living now.

GEORGE: Got it. So, a quick backstory on how you transitioned to where you’re at with your school and everything and then we can take on a bit more of a conversation just on current matters, the current climate and how you plan on getting through that. So what was the… You stepped into martial arts: what was the transition for you going into school owner? You mentioned, from the school hall, etc. Elaborate a bit more on that.

martial arts virtual gradingsBRETT: Yep. So I started with my sifu at the moment in 1989. Started doing Wing Chun and then later on, about a year or so later Jow Ga Kung Fu and then Tai Chi. Early on, he probably recognized that I had a passion for passing on knowledge. I probably did it just organically with my classmates. Like, when I saw someone having an issue with learning something, I would always go over and help them.

And so it was very early on that I found myself up the front doing the warmups, probably within a year or so and then after that running small group classes. And we actually had a very big martial art school for the time back in the early 90s, ten schools, like all satellite schools around Brisbane, running one or two nights a week in community halls with hundreds of students.

And so for me, I was like “Wow, this is amazing.” I would literally drive from one school, I'd finish teaching – this is probably like 1992, I would finish teach at our Indooroopilly headquarters at 7:30 or whatever and then I’d drive into the city, the YMCA in the city and teach a class there 8:30, finish at 9:30 and then probably head out to Jindalee All sports and do a white session.

And so for me, six – seven days a week of martial arts training and weight training and fitness training was not, I didn't think of it as anything special, I was just completely wrapped up in the whole thing. So that led me to running my own school in 94’. Like, one of his branches, was quite successful at that. Then I moved up towards the Sunshine Coast and I've made my school in 1997 and we've been running that one ever since. It obviously has evolved and grown since then.

GEORGE: Gotcha, okay. So quite the story. Now, I mean things have dramatically changed obviously, talking depending on when you listen to this podcast, but I think it's important to just address the current situation of where things are at. Because I think anyone in the world has never faced anything like now and some people have obviously, you know, really felt the pressure.

And also not, you know, kind of waited in freeze mode and didn't take any action. And others have really sort of embraced the change as much as possible, you know, to really get through this pandemic that we're facing right now. So walk me through just how's it been for you and what have you done to navigate through this?

BRETT: Absolutely, thanks George. One of the biggest things I think was that I noticed it is a great time to evaluate where you sat as far as life goes. You can go, “Do I really love doing martial arts? Do I love teaching? Do I love turning up and doing all of this?”

Here's the perfect opportunity for some people in the world to go, “You know what, I'm gonna actually jump out of this, because it's not actually something I enjoy doing anymore.” But for me, it actually made me assess the other way and go. “I love this so much, I've got to keep this going. I will turn over every rock to find a way to make this keep happening.”

We started on March 23rd, we were given information, which was a week ahead of what I thought the schedule was going to be and when we were going to be told to basically close down physical training. So I know that I was chatting with you, leading up to that, saying we're gonna set up Zoom classes and we already were thinking that way and overnight it happened.

And so within 24 hours, I had to go from being on this side of the camera, where I would sit and have conversations with you and the Partners and I was the person watching, I was being the viewer most of the time, to actually steering the ship on the other side of Zoom. And so 24 hours of educating myself from how Zoom worked, creating like breakout rooms and doing all that and we were up and running the very next night with our full Zoom classes, with everything still running, same timetable.

For me, I reveled in that excitement. I like being challenged, I like being out of my comfort zone. I sometimes get stressed out by doing it and I know that meditating is good for that and I do do that every day, but I get excited when there's… when it's kind of like ice skating. I found that very exciting and challenging. Stressful, but exciting. So for me, I was a lot for that I and I still am.

Like, I'm always thinking ahead a week or two ahead, going “Alright, this is what we're gonna do over the next couple of weeks.” and I'm already planning, it goes into my calendar, these are the things I need to do. And I know that you see on a Monday, when you ask every single Monday in Partners, “What's your plan?” So I already know what it is, so I just type it straight in. So I already know what my plan is for the week. And I go ahead and execute. And that's what I do.

GEORGE: Yeah. Personally, I think entrepreneurs were made for this. I mean, you know, that's what we do right? We solve problems. Interesting that you mentioned, you know, where a lot of people jump ship. Maybe it was just the easy way out. I think it also, it really… like you were saying, it really makes you think deeper.

Like, am I… Is this what I really want? And I think that's where, you know, if people have been following their niche or, you know, trying to make money in an industry or something. And you didn't have that gut check before you started it, you were just hoping to make financial gains, which is – hey, it's, obviously, that's okay as well, because that's what, you know, people do in business.

But it's a good time to reevaluate and really sit back and think, “Okay, well is this what I really want?” And then how to go from that. Now, how did you say to see this playing out? I guess, you know, at the time of recording this, where you're at in Queensland there's been some restrictions left. I know in Perth we can… there's already gyms or training outside, restriction of up to ten people, that's moving over I think next week. So what's the plan for you? Where do you see this evolving?

BRETT: Absolutely. One of the things that I've noticed like, we've got a week and then we go to having ten people in an outdoor space, so we can do I suppose boot camps, or outdoor classes. The biggest issue for us is that mostly our classes are at night and it's winter, so once we hit five o'clock, it's going to be too dark to do classes. So in fairness to everyone that trains in our school, we can't fit everyone into their classes. We'll get the three to six year olds done and then everyone else wouldn't be able to.

So we're going to continue to run our Zoom classes, but we're bringing our instructor team now into the school, because up until now we've only been allowed to have two people in the building. And when we run two floors, three instructors to a floor, it's a little bit hard to do that. But now we can do that, we have multiple cameras, multiple laptops going, multiple TVs going.

And that'll allow us to use our breakout rooms to break everyone into small classes. It'll actually be probably easier, because they'd actually be able to verbally tell each other when they need to move people from one breakout room to another. At the moment, we'd be messaging each other, “Can you move such and such over to me, I'm teaching them to do this,” and I have to sit there and pretty much just be a DJ, so it's… my job on Monday, Wednesday, Friday classes is, I'm DJing the whole Zoom classes and I'm shuffling people around. 

It's an interesting time and I saw in the U.S. just the other day, someone's… because they've lifted restrictions now a little bit there. And they said, we're not doing Zoom gradings now, we're not doing our virtual grading. We're gonna do them in person and there was actually quite a bit of backlash about that, because people aren't ready for such a quick change.

And so it's, we're gonna keep our gradings going this weekend. We've got Friday, Saturday, Sunday scheduled for 50-plus gratings. They're all private one-on-one gradings that I'm doing and because – again, we can't change people quickly.

Like, I know I can change quickly because obviously we've got that entrepreneurial kind of spirit thing going on, but for most people it's gonna take a leading of a month to see any kind of changes and we have to plan that for them and slowly bring them up to the boil. And so having them watch Zoom classes while we're teaching back in the school starts to build that familiarity with the students, to see the school again, they start getting excited about doing it.

We started booking in our Calendly bookings, started on Saturday. So straight away, as soon as that notice went through from our Premier, I created calendars for all of our classes to allow ten people to come in from June. So June 12th, we are allowed to have 20 people in the building and so that basically means ten people in each room.

And so we've done our booking for an entire timetable and I literally on Saturday night, watched my phone do two hundred and something emails while people booked in for their classes. So they're excited and it gives them a month to get themselves sorted out. We've got to set up all of our stations for sanitary stations, signage, all of that stuff. We've got to get our processes in place so that we are above and beyond the call of duty as far as what we implement when June 12 comes along. We want to make sure that we're one of the… I suppose the spearheads of that and we showcase how to do this the right way. So it's very important.

GEORGE: Yeah totally. I mean, there's so much that goes into it, right? I mean, if you ever thought your processes were in place, now your processes just change after every premiere announcement.

BRETT: Yeah.

GEORGE: It's new systems, it's new things. You know, interesting things that I see, I think where a lot of guys might find it challenging, where people just shut shop and thought that everything would go back to normal. Well, I know about you, but I sincerely doubt that… you were just mentioning that, I mean, there's been this whole behavior. People have adapted their behavior. You know, there was shock and there was fear, there's all this and… yep, things are gonna slowly return back to normal, but what is that? 

Does that mean 100% physical classes? Does that mean a bit of a hybrid and a balance of, there's online and there's physical. And how do you see this playing up? Another thing that I want to really ask you is how are you managing with your team throughout this? Because I know you've got a large team and how are you managing them and getting them to have this right mindset with all the changes? I know that's two questions, but…

martial arts virtual gradings

BRETT: Yes, that's okay no worries. So again, it's one of those things, you've got to go slowly. I think that we're lucky, we've been reasonably lucky in Australia that they've given us plenty of lead-in time and they've planned this fairly well. There's no knee-jerk reactions, which is good because people don't react well to that. They don't like…

We saw when they released a little bit of the rope and allowed people to go shopping – it was literally Boxing Day sales every day for the last two weeks since they did that. So people have gone… They've been cooped up for so long now, they're exploding.

So we're trying to make sure that we're very, we're over communicating with all of our students to make sure that they understand that there is a limit of how many people can come in and if you do not book in, you'll still be doing the online classes. We're going to give them both and my idea is to keep doing that even beyond like, let's say six – twelve months to still be running that system.

Because we have students that have been on the spectrum ADD, DHD, Autism, doesn't matter, Asperger's, where they don't like being around people, but they love martial arts and they love the benefits of martial arts. And so they will be able to still do it from home with Zoom. The hardest part is to train the staff and the instructors to not just focus on the class, the physical class they’re teaching and the physical students they’re teaching, but also to focus on the ones that are up on the TV doing the Zoom class.

And so like, we've got massive TVs that are going up in each room, where they'll be able to look up and just see who's up there training. And it's just about teaching them to not forget about them. They've had to undergo a very big learning curve and most of them aren't entrepreneurial. Some of them are, they do their own little side gigs as well, but to most this is overwhelming most of the time to them.

So some of my team haven't been out to teach online classes, because they don't like looking at themselves on a camera, they don't like being in that environment and so basically, we've put them into hibernation. We keep contact with them, make sure they're okay, but I've already spoken to one and as soon as we can go back, we're gonna actually up, we're gonna start doing Sunday classes and we expect it to be quiet, so she's the perfect person for that because it'll introduce her back into normal classes and she'll just do the set there Sunday classes and give her a row back in the school without putting her under too much pressure.

And again, most of our instructors are old students. They've all gone through from white belt to black belt, they're homegrown and so we treat them still like they're our students as far as the way we kind of bring them into new situations like we were experiencing at the moment, but slowly doing it is I think the key.

GEORGE: Cool. So what's the situation that you actually navigated someone through that? Because that obviously brings up a lot of beliefs and you know… I guess block for people where they go, “Hang on, I just don't feel comfortable being in front of the camera.” You know, for some people that might just be that introverted personality and they’re just never gonna be that.

You know, we’re all different and that's all good but what's their situation, that you actually manage to navigate someone past that and just say, “Hey look, well…”It's kind of just like having a conversation, it's not a Hollywood show, you know? It's like you’re doing a normal class, but you've just got this screen in front of you. Did you manage to navigate past that? Was there anybody in your staff that they were struggling with that, but you managed to push them past that point?

martial arts virtual gradings

BRETT: Well, we've had obviously with our team, they've gone through a gamut of emotions. For a lot of them, their first biggest worry was, I’m going to lose my job, so a lot of our instructors not just work for me, they work for other businesses. And on that day, the other ones shut them down and they went, “No, we can't keep going.” I kept going even though we were like, they were teaching from their living rooms, or their bedrooms, or their garages.

They kept going, I kept paying them for their classes and I tried to maintain as much normality for them and reassure them that we will get through this, looking to the future and saying that when we get through this, we're not going to change what we do now. This is just a different version of what we do.

And so 90% of our teams were teaching through this. And one actually seemed to prefer it, because the whole social distancing was doing her head in, trying to stop children from touching each other and just frustrated her. As soon as it went to the virtual environment, she didn’t have to worry about that, that was not a problem and an anxiety she had to experience anymore.

So that actually, it was like she was happy when it happened. So she's gonna have to prepare for the other side now as we come back in and whether that means that she still teaches from home via Zoom and she doesn't lose Zoom kids, that's fine. And we have that ability to have them teaching, if they're not happy to be in here and be around students because they're worried about it, they can still be able to teach because we'll still have students at home doing Zoom and so they'll be able to take care of the Zoom students.

And so again, I think it's about being flexible. It's about being able to like Evan, flow with the times and I think one of the things that I think everyone probably, particularly in the business world now will quantify, is that small businesses had an advantage because we've been known to like to chop and change directions quickly with the times, with whatever we were given.

We could change and adapt, whereas a lot of the big businesses fell over because they had certain systems and procedures. They ended up having to just kill their staff and here's why so many people are out of work. And it's from the big businesses, which I know like in Australia kind of mindset is, they're always considered safe. Like go work for a blue chip company, or a big business.

Who would want to work for Virgin at the moment? You wouldn't want to work for a lot of those big companies because they couldn't adapt. They’re just too big, they're like the Titanic. Whereas a lot of the small businesses, we can zig and zag and not feel that pain as much and also be able to connect with our staff and our team to make sure that they're feeling okay and navigate them through this minefield of emotions and turmoil that they could be experiencing.

But I think we've done really well, like I'm proud of my team. They've handled it really well and we're preparing now to go back into semi normal classes and then in another months’ time after that, so July, it should be mostly like we were before we went into lockdown. Hundred to a building, like this mostly social distancing, but I think this will play out till the end of the year. I think by Christmas we might be out actually to give a high five and hug some people.

GEORGE: Yeah, I mean, hats off to you, because I know you've just been on to it then, you know, everyday we checked. You've implemented this and you've jumped into a new direction, implemented new strategies and really taken it on. What are you excited about, coming in the next… I know, excitement for a lot of people when I ask that, they’re like…

BRETT: It’s fear.

GEORGE: What does that word mean? But I mean, if you really put the opportunity hat on and really look at it, “Okay, things have changed, things have shifted,” – what are you excited about in the next coming weeks?

martial arts virtual gradings

BRETT: Well, again, I've tried to maintain, I actually turned one of my students who wanted to do an in-person grading and they don't want to do a Zoom one, it's not like a real grading. And I said, “Well you know, it's not the same as an in-person grading – it's different. It could actually potentially be better, because you're doing it one-on-one.” Now, it's gonna be a different feel, we may never get to do this again. This may be the only time in history where we do every single person in the school as a Zoom grading. 

So like, and that's the truth, it basically may never happen again. So for me that's exciting. I've pulled out all stops to make this grading the most spectacular grading that they'll ever experience virtually, because it may never happen again. So I'm excited to do that like, literally from this Thursday, it’s Monday today, so from Thursday, from 7AM until about 7PM, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I am grading every thirty minutes and I know how exhausting that’s going to be.

But I also find that exciting and I'm a big fan like, I'm a… what do you call it, I’m a podcast savant. I just like, I just go and listen to podcasts 24/7. It’s my favorite thing, I don’t listen to radio, but that's what I listen to. And it used to be tapes in my car, then it was CDs, now it's podcasts.

And so I’ve always been a big fan of Tony Robbins, lucky enough to have done some training with him, done UPW and a few other things with him. And one of the things that he always talks about is to the professionals, like the professional athlete, or a professional entrepreneur: when they see something that could be scary, feel fearful, they look at the same thing and they look at it as excitement, because your body goes through exactly the same chemicals, endorphins, okay, the adrenaline. It's exactly the same thing as fear.

Like, if you looked at it side by side, okay, anyone that's ever fought in the ring, or competed in a jiu-jitsu tournament, or done MMA, or just been up in front of someone to do a grading, you've got two options: fear, which is, “Oh, I'm going to stuff this up,” or “I'm gonna get hurt,” or “I'm no good at this,” to exciting “Oh, I can’t wait, this is so cool.” Exactly the same experience, it's the outcome that's different.

And so for most martial artists, I think most should have done pretty well through this, if they've got that kind of background. They would have gone, “Wow this is exciting. This is just like another competition, this is another chance to to show my skill, to really challenge myself,” because I think if any industry was really prepared for this, it'd be the martial arts industry, because that's what we do.

We live for the challenge, that's what makes us different. Most normal people can't understand martial artists, they look at them and go, “Do you enjoy touching each other and checking each other out and…” – really? Because that's not normal behavior.

And so that's kind of set us I think apart from everybody else in the world who's freaking out and putting their head under the duna as Scomo likes to say. So yeah, and I think we're well prepared for that and for me, I'm excited to do it, literally, I'll be doing a 65 hour- 70 hour week, this week and 60 of those hours are in four days. That's like, it's insane, but I'm up for that. I love that stuff.

GEORGE: Yeah cool. So if you don’t mind, before we finish up and I think this would be really valuable for other school owners, can you walk us through what you are actually doing with your virtual grading? How's the day going to plan out, what have you done prior and how's the whole process going to roll out?

BRETT: Yep. So similar set up to what we would normally do with a grading and here's another thing, that's the one of the things that I'm looking at as positive coming out of the COVID-19 thing is that, we now have some new systems that we never had before. So everyone that ever wanted to have their curriculums online and available to their students and we're struggling with like, getting like, whether it's IT departments of your website, website developers to actually pull the trigger and do it – they all jumped to it the night this happened. Within two days you had all of the ability to do this. 

And so that was a benefit, being able to schedule all of our gradings on Calendly. I know I can just look at my Calendly now and it is literally 200+ appointments long. It's just like this big list, but I know who's next and in all of my Zoom gradings, they all have their own unique code. All I have to do is click on there, then next I'll click and it brings me to the next Zoom invitation and I'm ready to grade them on my laptop right here, right where I am now, this is exactly where I'll be Thursday through to Sunday.

I will shift from one room to the other depending on the grading, and basically one of the other things I'm doing that's pretty cool is, we've over delivered, which I think is really important. So every student normally only gets a certificate and their belt; this time they’re getting a backpack with a certificate, their belt, a bumper sticker and a gift.

So there's probably $200 worth of value in there for a $50 grading. So they're gonna see that. We're also developing a virtual certificate that pops up on their screen saying “Congratulations, you've passed your virtual grading.” And that'll be branded, but it'll look really space-agey kinda like, very new looking, sparkly, I don't know.

Liam and the design team did that at our printers to do that, so he's designing that this week and everyone's coming in to pick up their backpacks. So every 15 minutes, they're picking up a backpack. We're videoing the whole process and we're going to do a video at the end where it basically just crunches it into a little, probably three-minute version, well they call those videos…

GEORGE: Time-lapse.

BRETT: Timelapse, that's it. Yeah, we're gonna do a time-lapse video from the four days to show it with a soundtrack behind it. So that's something cool. I'm also photographing myself this Wednesday in front of all the logos, so in front of the school like, we're all buzzy here with all the different uniforms that I wear for all the different styles.

So we’ve got seven different martial arts styles in the school, so I'm going to be basically getting changed, doing a new photo with a plain background, with this background sorry. And then every single student when they grade, there's going to be a list inside their backpack of all the things they have to do so they have to take a photo of themselves with their new belt on, their new certificate with a plain background.

So like, white, yellow, as long as it’s not dark, nice clear background, then send the photo to me. I'll then superimpose that into the photo next to me on the wall back and then post that onto our Facebook page. And so it will be like they were there. So we're just going to make this virtual, because again, it's a virtual grading, so we can use Photoshop and make it look cool in a virtual world.

Like, you know, everyone's been loving the Zoom backgrounds that create their own, I've got a few, I’ve used the matrix dojo in one of my classes one day. Everyone over the age of 30 thought that was cool; everyone else was going…

GEORGE: What’s that?

BRETT: Yeah, exactly, they had no idea what it was. And again, it's about building hype and excitement around something that they may never ever experience ever again. And one of the things I've been talking to the parents is, that a lot of people under the age of 25 have never, ever, ever experienced any kind of thing like this, like any kind of hardship. they've been pretty cruisy for the last 25 years as far as the world economy, the way the world's gone, no big wars, it's been really good, okay? Since 9/11, it's been pretty cruisy. So this is really something that's bonded the whole world together, an experience that everyone's going through. 

So let's make something out of it, let's come out of it and say “What did I get out of doing that? Did I get better about my relationships? Did I get better at learning new tools and skills? Or did I just watch Netflix for 12 hours a day?” So like what did you do with it? And so it'll be an interesting year, next year will be an interesting year to see what tools did people get and where did they take those tools.

Like for us, I want to go VR. I want to put VR goggles on students in the home environment, so they're part of this class that we run here. So if this leads us down the road to that, then I'm happy because I was already thinking about it two years ago as adding it to my already system. Because I’m a big fan of Gary Vaynerchuk and I’ve spent some time with him and he's keen to get VR up and running so I'm like, “Cool, I'll look into that at some stage.”

GEORGE: Yeah, totally agree with you. and that's the thing: if anybody thinks this is a phase, nope, it's just the stepping stone, because it's brought this… it's funny you know, I've been doing these Zoom webinars about three to five a week for a long time. And inviting anyone to a Zoom meeting was always a weird thing. This Sunday my two-year-old daughter was having a Zoom party.

BRETT: Yep.

GEORGE: Because that's what you can do. But it's brought a lot of these technology things, it's just accelerated the normality of it. And people just really had to step into it, so it was that or nothing. And now that everybody's so accustomed to it, it's definitely not going away. This is leading to the next thing and if you think of, I had a chat with someone about virtual reality the other day and she was showing me what they were doing in the automated mining industry.

And when I saw that, I was like “Oh, okay, this makes sense.” You know? It's taking objects and putting it in the lounge and you can walk around it… it's like a whole new experience. Now, yep martial arts: it's never gonna go away, the physicality of it. But I think the learning experience is definitely going to enhance in ways that we can't even comprehend right now.

BRETT: Yeah.

GEORGE: Yep, for all those thinking that we're just going back to normal – I’d relook at that perspective and really think of “Okay, well how are things gonna be different from here on and how are we going to embrace this.”

So yeah, there's so much good that's come from it. Yep, there's been a lot of hardship, you know, there’s been a lot of industries that are wiped out. There’s a lot of things that, you know, by no means are okay. But then there are the things that are okay, you know? I see people are friendlier, you know? When people see each other, you know, a lot of people are more… just friendlier greetings.

My teenage son that used to just skate has spent a lot more time at home. It's been really good for us, he's been doing a lot of work around the house which has been interesting for a 13 year old boy to be repainting the door and doing things. I mean, those are little things, right? But I think there’s just so much benefit to what's happened and…

BRETT: Mmm.

GEORGE: It's good to just sit back and reflect and think, “Right how am I gonna play my part in this next chapter moving forward?”

martial arts virtual gradings

BRETT: Absolutely, absolutely. I think that humans have always been like… aren't very good at adapting to situations and then thriving in it. And so I'm sure back when Henry Ford was designing the first motor vehicle, everyone was like, “Yeah, that'll never exist,” like planes didn't exist and it was just… computers! I think back to when I was a kid: when I was 6 years old, not only did a computer not exist; the thought of one didn't exist.

And how fast technology has come in a very short period, what's the next 10 to 20 years going to look like in this space? And I think yeah, you gotta be open-minded enough to go, “Okay, I'm going to adapt to whatever comes that way and I'll try it.” And I think that again, as martial artists, we're usually pretty good at failing forward so we’re adapted, like learning to fail and then get back up and go again.

And so the last 2 or 3 months, it's been all about failing and learning, failing and learning. I had to reschedule my entire Zoom calendar because I did a Zoom code for every single class and that meant I got messages and notifications every day for every single class that came up. So I just went. “No, we have one place where we all go and then we'll go into breakout rooms.” And that took me about a week to realize that that was not a great idea, So yeah, but you learn, that's what it's all about.

GEORGE: Yeah, that's it. A simple thing that I did was, I actually just purchased one domain name and had one meeting link. And because I just got sick of going back and forth.

BRETT: Yep.

GEORGE: What was the meeting number, what was the ID. So just create one link, one domain name, forward it automatically. If anybody wants to meet you, just give them the domain name and now you've just got back-to-back meetings.

BRETT: Yeah, exactly, yeah. I learnt that really quickly. And again, love learning, so it's been fun. Challenging, but fun.

GEORGE: Awesome, that's it. Hey Brett, thanks being on the second time, actually nailing it this time. Perfect, thanks so much for being on. Thanks,it's always good to chat to you, because you're always on top of what's happening and you're always quick to implement and do things. If anybody wants to connect with you, what's the best way to do that?

BRETT: I'm on Facebook, Instagram, our website reddragon.com.au. Just easy enough, a Facebook message is the easiest one these days I think so. Just look me up on Facebook, it’s pretty easy to find people these days.

And yeah, just give me a shout out if you need any information or any help in any direction. I do a lot of mentoring for school owners, the smaller schools that want to try and go full-time, or they're having troubles with staff and how to train up instructors, I do a lot of work on that. So I'm always available, just hit me up. And yeah, my only thing would be, George, make sure you upload this one to the cloud, right after we finish.

GEORGE: I was thinking that just when you were saying that, just when I was giving props about how cool this episode was, I was thinking, hey I'm gonna make sure this one uploads to Google Drive – now.

BRETT: Absolutely, absolutely, because we’ve spoken in the past, I don't do retakes. The next time we interview, it will be different again. You could redo this one straight after, it would be different again.

GEORGE: Yeah, that’s cool.

BRETT: I’m not good at sticking to scripts.

GEORGE: Perfect, thanks so much for being on Brett.

BRETT: My pleasure!

GEORGE: I'll speak to you soon.

BRETT:  All right, see you guys, bye.

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

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

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

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

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97 – Updated Jobkeeper And Financial Essentials That Every Aussie Martial Arts School Owner Should Know

David Simpson, the Martial Arts Accountant, shares up to date financial advice for martial arts school owners to combat the crisis.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

  • What is JobKeeper and are you eligible for it
  • The common pitfalls that you should avoid during a financial crisis
  • Should you opt in or out of bank's cash assistance and loan deferment programs
  • Helpful survival tips for managing your martial arts business during an economic downturn
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There's a number of areas that there is some sort of assistance and that is the banks allowing you to defer payments. I've not gone into their nitty-gritty, because it's one that I'm not overly in favor of. I've spoken about this with a couple of our clients. They may delay payments, but the interest my believe is, will continue to accrue and that's going to put you behind. So if you can continue to meet those loan repayments, yep, or restart them as soon as possible.

There's the offer from the banks to lend you an unsecured amount. Once again, the pitfall is, tomorrow, or the day after, or the week after, or the month after, you've got to pay it back. And that's the thing that really concerns me that people will rush in and borrow money or defer payments.

GEORGE: Welcome to a live recording of the Martial Arts Media business podcast. We are doing this via Zoom, we are doing this as a live session. If you are in the Martial Arts Media Business Community right now, you can look for the link attached to this video. Jump on, that way you're going to get the most out of this call.

So the purpose of this call is to bring you up-to-date information about finances, what to be doing with your finances at this point in time and stimulus packages, JobKeeper updates, things that are relevant to you right now. So to deliver that for you, I've brought on the one and only martial arts accountant David Simpson. How are you today?

DAVID: I'm fine George thank you, how are you?

GEORGE: Pretty good, thanks. Look, so we did the session live in our Partners group, where we work with school owners on marketing and so forth. Obviously, that's not the core topic right now. We are more focused on a lot of attention and doing pivoting with videos and keeping businesses afloat is a lot of the focus. And so I wanted to come and do a rerun of that session.

And I wanted to do this as a podcast, just that, number one, obviously, things are changing day to day, information is constantly updated. There's new information coming out that we need to be up-to-date with. So I wanted to bring David on and get this out to you and there we go. So David first up, just before we get started: if you can give us just a two to three-minute round up, just who you are, what you do and so forth?

DAVID: I am a martial artist. I run a dojo here in Cowra, plus another one in Cootamundra about an hour away. And I’ve been a martial artist since 1978, this goes back a few years. I've been running the school for the last 12-13 years.

In all that time, I've also been an accountant. I did my studies and I took over running my own practice back in 1988. I would say to people that I've been in the industry for 40 years. I've probably got 25 repetitious years, where I've done the same thing over and over again. And on top of that, another 15 years of real experience where you're doing stuff and changing what you're actually doing.

I move my accounting practice, or I’m moving my accounting practice to focus on gyms and martial arts schools, because that's where my passion is and I think I've got a lot to offer to them. In my own personal training as a martial artist, I am a third degree black belt and also a black belt equivalent in Muay Thai. I go over the seas to train in Thailand, but that's been cancelled because of things happening now. But I've also managed to travel to China, New Zealand, Japan, all as part of my martial arts.

GEORGE: Oh fantastic. Okay, so if you're on this call live, please use the chat feature and ask questions. If you're watching this on Facebook, jump onto the Zoom session. That way you'll be able to ask questions and you're going to get the most out of the session. So I'm going to first ask: when the whole pandemic started and as the shifts have happened over the last couple of weeks, what are the first things that you did in your business as an accountant?

DAVID: What did I do in my business as an accountant was, I just went back and had a look at what we could afford to do as far as what can happen to our income. We've made decisions on how we were going to proceed forward as far as, we decided, we're going with the video classes and things like that. And then we had to decide what was going to keep us in good with fair trading.

We had to make sure that we weren't asking people to pay for a full service which we weren't delivering, so we went back and restructured our fee system for the time being. We notified our students and their parents of this and we moved forward from there.

We also then looked at what we could afford to do without government support, that was really important for us. We knew we wanted to keep this going. In my own case what is also interesting is, I'm actually constructing a new building for the dojo at this very time.

We were about a third of the way into it when the pandemic hit. We're about 80% completed now, so that's still happening. And so that's in the back of my mind as well. But it was a matter of restructuring, looking at our staffing situation. What we could do without killing ourselves.

GEORGE: Gotcha, okay. So what information is pressing that martial arts school owners need to know right now? And let's just start there, then we can elaborate on some of the specs of JobKeeper and all the other things as well.

DAVID: Well I was going to say, the main thing that is important now is the JobKeeper. That is the major assistance that is being offered to all businesses and in particular the martial arts schools. A lot of the other assistance out there that they're talking about – and I haven't looked at individual states as far as the state's own grants, but I know in New South Wales, the 10,000 grant that they're offering in New South Wales is going to be useless unless you have employees. So it just doesn't appear.

So it is looking at what's going on in these various areas, because that is what's going to financially keep a lot of us afloat and allow us to walk out of this at the end of it with a very, very strong business again.

GEORGE: Okay, so more on that: are you saying that if you don't have employees you don't qualify whatsoever?

DAVID: Okay, if you don't have employees, you qualify for JobKeeper or you can qualify for the JobKeeper. But you don't qualify for some of the earlier assistance packages that were announced. So there was the cash flow business one, which was between $10,000 and $50,000 in the first instance, only applies if you have employees, or had employees. So that's not going to apply to some but it will to others.

The non-assistance ones as I call them, the increased write-off of assets and things like that, if you spend up to 150,000 – it sounds good, but for most of us, it's not going to be anything that applies, because we don't have the cash flow to go ahead and do those things.

So a lot of the initial stuff that came out was actually of no major assistance to anyone. It was just to make people feel good and that's a horrible thing to say about the government, but sorry that's what I said. JobKeeper on the other hand offers assistance in retention of our employees, and actually in a lot of cases assisting them more than they would have had if they just worked their job.

But it also provides assistance to some of us as business operators, or business participants, depending upon what your particular structure is of your dojo, as far as the legal entity it's running through. So if you're running as a sole trader, you’re up for some assistance there for you potentially because you dropped your turnover, even if you don't have employees. So that's what the big thing is.

GEORGE: All right. Ross said in the chat here, “Queensland has the job support loan based on PAYG.

DAVID: Okay. So as I said, I haven't looked into those. Victoria and New South Wales have two very similar ones and basically they're linked PAYG, but you use the funds for any other expenses. It's not necessarily supporting the employment of your staff, it is to do with other expenses.

I'm guessing that because someone is going to be entitled to JobKeeper if they have employees, that Queensland one is still going to be linked in to, whether or not you have employees. But the utilization of that money can be for anything else. But the fact that they've gone with the loan, yeah, think twice before you take it on, because you have to pay it back.

GEORGE: Yeah, gotcha. I saw somebody post in Canada, he was using… The bank actually offered him all these delays on payments and so forth. And when he calculated it, it was costing him five grand to actually do it. And he had no way to actually get out of it, so there was no way he could back up. What are the pitfalls in this?

Like, if we had to be a real devil's advocate, you know, a lot of it looks great. Yep, here comes the money, you can do this. You know, you were saying it makes the government look good. What should we be really looking out for that looks great on the outside, but long-term has got some potential damaging effects?

DAVID: Okay, there's a number of areas that there is some sort of assistance. And that is the banks allowing you to defer payments. I've not gone into their nitty-gritty, because it's one that I'm not overly in favor of. I've spoken about this with a couple of our clients.

They may delay payments, but the interest my believe is, will continue to accrue and that's going to put you behind. So if you can continue to meet those loan repayments, yep, or restart them as soon as possible. There's the offer from the banks to lend you unsecured amounts.

Once again, the pitfall is, tomorrow, or the day after, or the week after, or the month after, you've got to pay it back. And that's the thing that really concerns me, being able to… That people will rush in and borrow monies or defer payments.

The other one is landlords. You are able to negotiate with your landlords to get some rental relief and that's one that hasn't come out in the… awful lot of how they're going to be supported. But they also have issues that they've got to look at, as far as their ability to pay their debt or whatever.

But the thing there quite often is that you're going to then have to find the resources at a later stage to compensate for that, depending upon the agreement you come to with your landlord. So once again, be very careful of what you are doing. Expenses… There's also support in relation to power and electricity and gas and things like that.

They seem to be a little bit more honest at least, if they're going to knock back the payments, they're not going to come back and bite you again then. They're looking at doing reductions in the actual cost to you. The thing you've got to look at is, anything you are doing – and this is probably not for our group so much, but for much smaller operators who are doing this as a hobby is, is it worth putting yourself into potential debt and then looking at where you can go in the future? Can you reopen, really reopen or not?

I think we're going to find a lot of our compatriots are going to actually disappear out of the system because they're not going to be able to come back in. So the big thing is future debt. That's what you should be careful of. What future debt you put yourself into.

GEORGE: Gotcha. Okay, cool. So if you guys have questions like, this is your opportunity, right? You've got an accountant giving time, it's free, right?

DAVID: I'm going to send a bill later, don’t worry!

GEORGE: Okay, cool, cool. So anything you need to know this is your opportunity to ask questions. And I'm going to keep probing, but I would love for you to jump in the chat, because anything that you need to know about finances, money and what you should be doing, what you should  look out for, please let us know.

Ross saying, good debit as in stock of or business development. All right, perfect. Let's just go to the worst-case scenario, right? I'm a school, I haven't been able to pivot, cash flow is starting to wear real thin and I'm faced with a couple of choices, not many.

Firstly, what are your choices? You know, at what point do you actually say to someone, “It's time to get a job,” or get some assistance? Go, you know, make a call and go into some debt and take that risk. Where would you go with that?

DAVID: My feeling is, as I said, JobKeeper is probably the strongest assistance, which is $1,500 a fortnight. If I can qualify for it, I would be applying for it straight away, even if I don't think I need it. Because we can then turn around and put that back into the development of the dojo once we reopen, which could be as soon as what, July if we're lucky.

But yeah, I would be making the decisions. Look at it now and really go through your stages. Look at the worst-case scenario and find out, you know, how long you can keep going.

But you should not go to the stage where you're going to go into massive debt if you can't get out of it in a short period of say, six months. And I'm… Because really when you look at it, most of our businesses are the sort of business that don't have a strong asset backing.

They're based on current cash flows. And if it means closing it down now and then reopening in six months time and starting that up, that's going to be a better option than digging yourself a really deep financial hole now and trying to trade out of it later on.

GEORGE: Perfect. You might have to make the call and just say, “Look, let's temporarily close doors,” and then it's really just starting from scratch. Oh well, it might be something from scratch completely but… yeah.

DAVID: You won't be starting from scratch completely, because you've got your database of all of your old students. You can come back in and make contact. I think this group has been able to do a lot with their live classes, their streaming classes, their video classes and that has kept a lot of interest and kept their students connected.

And I'm getting messages now for a while saying, “Yeah, when do you think we might be back? Because we're so looking forward to getting back again. The classes are great, it's helping us, but we want to get back together again.” And so, being able to contact them on that level is going to work, it really is.

GEORGE: Alright, perfect. I've got a few questions just in the Facebook group in here. Yes I guess just on that, you know, we are discussing the doom and gloom, like the heavy consequences. But I mean, you know, my advice for anyone is: there is a choice to go down that route and there is a choice to choose and adapt.

I'm just looking on, you know, a part of this group yesterday, one of the guys, I think it was Ben, yeah, 33 online trials, he's replaced everyone that's canceled and it's growing.

So it's out there I know for summer, so it's a hard thing to swallow. That, you know, you’re venturing into this online world that you didn't initially plan. But it's… The online business is definitely better than the consequences of no business. Yeah, definitely so. Alright so David, let me just cross over here. David was asking, “Is JobKeeper tax free? Does it add to your gross turnover?”

DAVID: JobKeeper is taxable income. That is something that we were hoping to get around before, but no. They came back and said it is taxable income. It does not have GST on it, so basically it's not a matter of 1/10th of it or 1/11th of it goes back to the tax department’s GST. But it will be taxable income to the entity.

So basically, if you are doing, if your employees… yes, the $1500 a fortnight comes in and then you pay at the $1500. So it has a zero impact on your income. So you're paying them and not having to pay tax or to supply the income. If you registered as a business participant, it will be taxable income to the entity. So maybe if you're a sole trader, or the partnership, or the trust, or the company. it will be taxable income to the entity.

Yeah, so there is that. But if we then turn around and use that money either for our own income, or to support the expenses of the dojo, we've got the offsetting expenses as well.

GEORGE: That's good to know – Brett, I'm going to jump to your question and then just want to make sure… just to keep it congruent. So David's follow-up question was “Details on the ultimate income tests for schools, less than 12 months old?”

DAVID: Yes.

GEORGE: It's registered for GST.

DAVID: Okay, so going back, we'll take that the other way around: if the school is not registered for GST, that is not an issue because what happens is that it’s being based on your tax returns. So as long as you have lodged a tax return for the year ended 2018 and showing that there is income from it, if the tax return is also launched for 2019, that's even better.

But if not, so long as you've got a tax agent or an accountant who's got you an extension of time, everything there is going to be sweet. You don't need to be necessarily lodging business activity statements. Going back to if the school is under 12 months old, the alternative is, you look at when it was started and there are two or three sort of tests you look at, which depends on what's going to suit you the best, starting from the first full month of operation.

So you can take all of the income for the period up until the end of March from when you started. So if you started mid-October from the 1st of November and use that to work out your average monthly income, or average quarterly income, depending upon what you're using and then compare that to the current now, it should be easily done and those records are all there. They've actually come to the party and said, yes, if you've got a new start up, but also the new start up can be where you have increased dramatically your turnover.

So if you've had a massive growth, you can use that as the basis and a massive growth can be as low as 15%. So they've got a couple of different scenarios with 50% 25% 15%, but if you've got a massive increase in your student base and your fee base, you can still use that. So even though you may have been in business for two, three, four, five years, you can still turn their words to your advantage.

GEORGE: This is good info. All right, so now I'm going to jump to your questions in a minute. Brett’s asking in the chat here, “George, my 70 year old instructor hasn't done anything to help himself and he's overwhelmed. He has an ABN and hasn't learned…” – learned, earned?

DAVID: Earned.

GEORGE: “…earned anything since March this year. What do you recommend as far as JobKeeper, versus JobKeeper with his age?

DAVID: Question: is he on the pension? Age pensions are a big thing. Because if he’s age 70, this may be something that is running parallel, so he would need to go into those. Basically, if he has just closed shop, we may have a little bit of a difficulty in proving that he's still active in the business, so he needs to be possibly doing something there…

GEORGE: Brett’s saying not on pension.

DAVID: He's not on the pension? Okay. So basically, he should get in contact with his accountant. Is it a very large school, as in would his GST have been registered in the past?

GEORGE: He says “Doing private lessons, only twenty students, no GST.”

Okay. So he's still like a micro business. That's not a problem: get in contact with its accountant and get the registration for JobKeeper done. It's a lot simpler dealing with the ATO to do JobKeeper than it is with the Centrelink than the ATO with JobKeeper.

I believe it's a much better way of doing it. So yeah, I'd be looking at that because if he's not in the age pension at 70, he may be in receipt of some personal superannuation pension. If that's the case, being 70 it's not taxable income. The only taxable income is going to be his investments, his school fees and JobKeeper when he gets that. But it sounds like he's dropped his 30% quite easily. I'd be getting that registered.

GEORGE: Cool, Brett’s saying “Thank you.” All right, checking the Facebook group here. You have a question from Darnell. “I had 192 tax dollars taken from the staff for the $1500 JobKeeper, is that correct?”

DAVID: Yes, it is. So 750 a week, the tax on 750 is 96 dollars, so that's 192 for the fortnight.

GEORGE: Cool and Darnell is saying “One thing we have found as an advantage is having staff with excessive annual leave. Take this leave under the JobKeeper program, this might help some schools. Yep, actually my wife's a radiation therapist as well, they've all been on annual leave.

DAVID: Yep, yep.

GEORGE: Annual leave at home, great.

DAVID: What we all want.

GEORGE: All right, cool, let's see… Diana, hey Diana. “I didn't have employees. I've applied.

DAVID: Only to JobKeeper and it has been declined, as my partner earns $2,000 more of the threshold.”

GEORGE: “However, he has spent more money on his salary, trying to adequate his home office. Any suggestions to make it fair for us?”

DAVID: Okay for you for starters: so you run your own school as a sole trader? That's the question. Wait till we get a yes or no back on that. So if you're running in as a sole trader, you can still register for JobKeeper for yourself, so long as you qualify under the reduced turnover.

So if you can meet that, what you do is you register for jobkeeper, but once again, the tax department – I know everyone hates them, but they're a lot easier to deal with than the Centrelink. And you will qualify for that.

GEORGE: Diana is saying “Yes.”

DAVID: So it is a sole trader, yep. So that's fine. So it's just simple, you can do it yourself, but seriously, I recommend that your accountant does it for you, not because I'm trying to get more fees for them, but it just keeps it nice and simple.

What has to happen is, you will sign a declaration saying “`Yes, I qualify,” and then on a monthly basis within seven days at the end of the month, you will have to report your turnover each month. But once you qualify, that stays in place until the 27th of September.

So you'll receive payments all the way up to there. So even say for example, if we go back to running our dojos at full speed from the 1st of June, if we've qualified for jobkeeper, we will continue to get those fortnight payments made and we would continue, with our employees paying them of course. But if it's for ourselves, we continue to get that and that it's going to help subsidize getting up and running again.

GEORGE: All right, perfect, this is really good. I hope you guys are getting great value from it. If you are, just give me a thumbs up. If you're watching this on Facebook, give us a thumbs up and let us know.

So two questions – Ross I'll jump to you in a minute. Jack Leung is asking “Hi David, George: if we get to reopen our school soon and the business gets better, say in three months in July. Say the drop in turnover is less than 30%, do we still get a JobKeeper?”

DAVID: Yes. Okay, so the way it works is, when you've qualified through your drop of income, so we're looking at say month of March, month of April, whatever. Once you've met that qualification, it’s in. It keeps going until the end of the program, which is a six-month program to the 27th of September. You are going to be reporting your monthly income, but that isn't to make sure that you're still qualified; it's merely to look at what the numbers are doing.

And we've been told that it's so the government can use that to see how the economy itself is going on a monthly basis, to look at whether there's any growth happening there, or if we’re returning to normal. So categorically they're stating that, once you qualify, you don't have to re-qualify every month. It's, you've qualified and it just moves forward.

GEORGE: Perfect. Jack, let us know if that was sufficient. “All right, cool.” And let's jump to Ross: “Looking forward, do you believe that banks will ease lending policies, as I'm looking to buy a building for my dojo over the next six to twelve months.”

DAVID: Honestly, no I don't. The reason for that is they are scared as hell. With all the, not just with this, but prior to this the investigation, they went into the banking system. They clamped down really harshly on what they were doing there.

They're looking at supposedly giving some leniency at the present time and if they do do that, they're going to put themselves in a situation where they can't afford to be too lenient once we come out of this again. They're going to stay fairly harsh, because they've had their fingers burnt.

It's just no way they're going to be, oh, back to the… the 80s was a wonderful time for borrowing. Yeah, you walk in there and say “Look, I don’t really need the money, but can I have a couple of hundred thousand dollars,” and they just give it to you. But in more recent times the investigations into them, the Royal Commission, it just brought up too many things. and because of that they're very, very downshot.

GEORGE: Okay, perfect. So follow up here from, Jack “Some people got PAYG boosting when they lodged their BAS on the 28th of April. Some lodged two weeks and got nothing – do you know what's happening? System over crashed. Some lodged two weeks in advance, but got nothing. 

DAVID: That's interesting. I'm not sure how they can launch two weeks in advance, because depending if it's a BAS, though they've got to report their GST sales etc. Basically it is just a system thing, they're doing their best. They’ve still got a two week time frame.

Of course, to be eligible for that cash flow boost, they had to be registered before the 12th of March for PAYG withholding. So some of those who aren't getting anything may be the ones that were not registered for the PAYG withholding, but I've seen the ones that my clients that have been launched, they've been coming through fairly quickly.

GEORGE: Cool. So just to go in for some questions. Jack, let us know if that was sufficient. If you are on the Zoom call David, Ross, Diana, any other questions from you. And if you're watching this on Facebook live, give us a shout if you have a question.

I know there's a bit of a delay in the Facebook group, while we are just waiting for one last take off question. Anything that you'd like to add? Anything that I haven't asked or haven't explored or that, you know, it's good to pay attention to now and in the next coming months, and especially in the next coming months obviously in the lockdown states, what we’re in at the time of recording this, versus you know, when we start swapping things around?

DAVID: I suppose I've been focusing on what's happening now on the lockdown stage and looking from the point of view of what's going to be coming to us in the form of assistance. Once we come out of this, we haven't got a big time frame to make use of any of the benefits that the government is offering us from a tax point of view, because 30th of June, it switches off unless they decide to extend. I think the main thing is that we really need to look at what skills we've picked up over this period and how we incorporate that back into our business.

I mean, it's time to look at our business not as just what we've been doing and we were talking about the 78 year old sensei who has just not done anything. That may not be to do with his classes or anything else, but I think we've gone into a very, very rapid learning period here that gives us a chance to take a little bit of time to step back and look at our businesses, our day shows from the point of view, “Gee what can we do here? What can we do to expand and make this even better? How should we be using technology,” and things like that. I know it's not the Australia counting thing but they're the things that are going to provide you with extra income streams and also the way to move forward.

I think we should also be looking very seriously at what is the structure of our business. And an example that I'll give is, if you have a situation where you have two or more business owners running their business through a partnership and they're just doing it as a partnership and not taking any sort of salary in the form of PAYG withholding, under the current circumstances you can only get support for one of them.

GEORGE: Wow.

DAVID: You may have three people who are actively working in the business and working it hard and are drawing their salary, their income from it – only one will get supported. You can only have one business participant, unless they are an employee, which means, solo traders, yeah, there’s only one of you here anyway.

If it's a partnership, that could be up to 20 technically, but if it's running through a trust or a company, you really need to, you have the opportunity there to do a PAYG withholding and so everyone who's on wages can be supported. So yeah, we're not going to have another pandemic we hope, but there are a whole lot of reasons why we should look at how we are structuring our businesses. That's the big thing.

GEORGE: Perfect. So just, and I'm going to take this as probably the last question Jack saying, “Session’s very helpful, thanks once again for putting your time together.” yeah thank you so much. A couple of questions jumping in, yes so Ross asking “How long will you ask for rate relief from the landlord? I've asked for six months, then offered two months. Structure of business you would suggest a company and trust.”

DAVID: Okay. I would ask the landlord for six months and see what they come back with. And then if they've given you two months, depending on what you're talking about relief – is it a 100% relief or is at 50% relief. And then once we get close to the end of that period, enter into the negotiations again.

Talk to them again, because the thing is, they don't want an empty building. Any intelligent landlord knows that having a tenant that is paying less than full market is better than no tenant at all, especially in this period where you're actually not doing any damage to the budget. There's no wear and tear, it's empty, it’s not doing anything.

So they have got cost, granted. If they've given you a 100% relief for the couple of months, I would approach them and ask them to seriously consider doing another two months or three months at half rental, even after we’re reestablished, because there's a lot of ground to be recovered to get us up and running again. And yeah, even if it means that we pick it up a little bit later on. But yeah, I'd be asking that.

As far as the structure side of things: it's horses for courses. It depends very much.I mean, if you are a sole trader, you are the only business owner, going into a company may not be necessarily the right thing to do. Having said that, my dojos run through a company. I am the only business owner involved in that company or in the dojo, but I also have another business to the side.

And because of the way I've done that, I'm fortunate in that I don't have to aggregate the income from my accounting practice with the income from my dojo in working out if either one of those businesses qualifies for JobKeeper. And it also means I have the ability to do different things moving forward. It's very much a matter of talking with someone who knows what they're talking about to see what suits you. And they've got to listen, it's what suits you, not what they want to pedal.

GEORGE: Okay, so Ross saying 50% is what he requested and levels of protection as a question.

DAVID: I'm assuming you're talking about the structure.

GEORGE: Yeah.

DAVID: You've got to have the appropriate insurance in place is a big thing. Levels of protection are not with companies and trusts and not what everyone expects them to be. They think, “Yeah, I have a company, I’m safe.” No, it depends upon how… because you'll be in there as a shareholder and a director and it can come back to how you act and what you have in place. So levels of protection may not be a 100% there.

If you're talking about asset protection as a different thing, that depends upon what assets you have and what people you had in your life as far as partners and things like that, the best way of putting all that together. So once again, it's not a “one size fits all” matter, you really need to get it tailored to fit your circumstances. Very much so.

GEORGE: Awesome. I think that does it, I mean that was a lot. Thanks so much, that's being super variable.

DAVID: My pleasure.

GEORGE: I'd like to just put this out to anyone listening, you know. David is a martial artist, martial arts school owner, knows the business side inside out and fortunate enough to be an accountant as well, so has a different set of eyes looking into the business. So if that's something you need help with, you need a new accountant, or if you just want to chat with David and ask advice, definitely reach out to him and I’d like to ask what is the best way that people can reach out to you David?

DAVID: Okay, well you can get me through Facebook and things like that of course, but probably an initial email is probably one of the quickest ways, or a phone call. So my email, George the one that you have, it’s david@bailliesimpson.com.au, or you can get me on my mobile which is 0427 400 222.

GEORGE: And it just started ringing.

DAVID: Nah, I’m not here! If it comes through without any identification of the number, I won’t answer it. So you’ll get a message back, you leave me a message and then I’ll leave it back, but you get to many scam calls coming through, trying to sell you something.

GEORGE: Yeah.

DAVID: I'm quite happy to speak with anyone, because it really is difficult to give a generic answer to a lot of things, especially when you start talking about structuring and things like that. It becomes a relationship, you need to sit back, have a chat, find out where the person is, what they're doing, what is their situation and then talk about it.

GEORGE: That's perfect. So I mean, this was really good as in, to give those generalities, the general consensus of what we were discussing. But if you need the real structure, you know, for your particular situation, do reach out to David. We'll be sharing this video, but we’ll also be publishing this on martialartsmedia.com. David, thanks again for your time.

DAVID: My pleasure, my pleasure.

GEORGE: Much appreciated and I'll speak to you soon.

DAVID: Ok, thank you.

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

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

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

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

 

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

1. Join the Martial Arts Media community.

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

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

3. Work with me and my team privately.

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

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30 – Matt Wickham: Running A Building Business By Day, Martial Arts School Owner And Instructor By Night

Matt Wickham shares his journey of running 2 businesses simultaneously while hosting the world's best martial artists in their small town.

matt wickham

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

  • The benefits of inviting top martial artists from all over the world to come and train with your students
  • The importance of advancing your martial art skills and upgrading your credentials constantly
  • How traveling to various martial art schools helped Matt Wickham learn new techniques in running his martial arts business
  • How he manages to operate two businesses consecutively back to back in a small town
  • Keeping the work and family life balance
  • And more

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


TRANSCRIPTION

Hi, this is George Fourie and welcome to another martial arts media business podcast episode and were up to number 30. And today I have with me a kind of a legend in the industry, Matt Wickham, who a lot of people are familiar with, although he operates from a very small town in Victoria. And that's part of the topic, we discuss operating a martial arts school in a very small town, where obviously your marketing reach is a lot smaller then it would be in a big city and how he manages to operate with both of his businesses, side by side. So he's into the building industry and that's a family business, and then he has his passion, his martial arts business.

But even operating in such a small town, he still manages to pull all the big names into his school and he invites people from all over the world to come and train with his students so that he can pass on the knowledge that he's been able to gather throughout his own travels. So great episode and lots of talk about that. I'm going to keep this intro very short today and we're going to jump right into the episode and chat with matt. As always, you can find all the transcripts on the website, so martialartsmedia.com/30, so that's the number 30. And again, if you reading this episode – the podcast players are right on the website, they're also in the app, so if you have a mobile phone, you can just download it and get the episodes delivered straight to you.

So that's it from me, let's jump right into the episode and please welcome to the show, Matt Wickham.

GEORGE: Good day everyone, today I have with me Matt Wickham.

MATT: Good day how you going?

GEORGE: Good good. Let’s start with, where exactly on the map are you? I was attempting to visit you on my recent trip to Melbourne, but you’re just outside of Melbourne is that right?  

MATT: That’s right. I’m situated on the Murray River, on the border of New South Wales and Victoria, it’s about two or three hours from Melbourne, in a small community called Echuca, population is probably, in Echuca I think it’s about 12000, across the river there's an extra couple of thousand, so in the community there are about 20,000 people.

GEORGE: OK, so really small town. So, I guess let’s just start from the beginning and I had a look at your website, there was a whole list of credentials, I couldn’t really get to the end of the website, there was a lot of credentials. In your words, who is Matt Wickham?

MATT: Who is Matt Wickham, all right. Matt Wickham is a country boy that from the age of 12 started learning martial arts and just fell into it. Actually, I probably fell into it, but it was partly because I loved seeing Bruce Lee and from Bruce Lee, then getting a slight bullying sort of thing from school, a mate of mine told me to start doing some martial arts so I started from there. When I got to around about 18, one of my instructors sort of said, “Look, you'd be pretty cool at running a class.” I belonged to a football club in my local area – it’s not actually in Echuca, it was out of it. And the local football club there closed down, so there was a lot of kids that didn't do have a lot, that had to travel into Echuca, which was a half an hour away from where I lived at that stage.

matt wickham

So I thought I would start up in the local hall there in a Zen Do Kai martial arts class. So an 18-year-old, had no idea about teaching anything. I had my instructor come out, run the first class and then he just sort of said – here you go, there's the class. And basically, I just had to learn from there. While that was happening, I also did my apprenticeship in building with my father, it was sort of a family business that kept me going, and once I finished my apprenticeship, probably around about 20 -21, I wanted to branch out and learn a bit more about martial arts. And I moved to Melbourne for about 18 months – didn't have a job, just went down there and just picked up any sort of work I could just to keep going, but every night I wanted to learn any sort of martial art.

So I did classes in Kendo, Ioto, I did Aikido, Muay Thai and also like advanced classes in Zen Do Kai. Tried to travel around different clubs to see what sort of stuff instructors were doing in Zen Do Kai system. And at that time I had no work, pretty broke and wanted to keep training, but I just realized I had to come back to Echuca. And my father was getting a bit older and a bit hard for work, he needed the extra help, so I moved back to Echuca just sort of early, probably 92 I think it was. And then I got back to my old club, and I said, oh this is the things that's going on and I just started to show them all the stuff that I learned over the 18 months in Melbourne.

And they didn't really seem acceptable about what I wanted to show them and I was a bit put back by that. Because I thought, well, here’s some stuff that I’ve learned from high ranking instructors in Melbourne. Because we’re so isolated, sometimes with isolation, you're afraid to see something new come up. So I decided to open up my own club and I opened up a full-time facility in the centre of Echuca, upstairs above a hairdresser salon. Had no idea how to run a martial art or a business. So I went in, advertised, set it all up with mats and started running kids’ classes to Muay Thai classes and Zen Do Kai classes. I was doing about 2-3 classes at night, morning classes, and working during the day with my father in his building business. And I was really, really, really struggling to keep the business going.

The odd night I would have, when I first started, the Muay Thai was really massive and big, so I had huge classes in this tiny little shop in Echuca and that was the only thing that was keeping me going. And the kids turning up, I had huge kids’ classes, but I had no business idea on how to run a business, or how to keep things moving along. And I just got so busy with building, that I was just burning the stick from each end and just decided I need to pull back. So I pulled back on the teaching and I just hired a hall and I started back into a hall, teaching twice a week in a local church hall and still helping out with the building business.

And suddenly my father, it was getting a bit too much for him, so I ended up taking over the building business and I did a few business coaching classes. Trying to manage both was really hard, really tough. My passion was really the martial arts and teaching and learning myself and weekends, traveling to seminars, trying to learn as much as I can. And I found that from a small community, people do really want to travel, to learn extra stuff, I was keen as mustard, I would travel because I knew that was the only way for me to advance my skills. So I would travel two to three hours, just to do an hour seminar, or a 2-hour seminar, and then come back and keep that motivation going and learning for myself.

Because when you're teaching classes, you don't sometimes get that chance to keep your own skills up. The building business, my father retired and I ended up taking over the building business from then on. And it got pretty heavy, I ended up having about 3-4 guys working full time in the building business. I was working on the tools during the day as well as doing quoting at night time after training and seminars and classes. And today, I'm still even building today, but the struggle of getting things perfect, I wanted things to be perfect in my martial arts training and my coaching, but also in my business.

And then I got married and had kids and you know family life, they want things and I knew that my martial arts was at that stage, it was more just like a hobby and an opportunity came up that I knew one of my instructors bought this business and upstairs, there was a huge area that I thought, well, we’re looking at about 2000 at this stage, huge area. And I said, I’ll hire that out to help out with the rent as well, it’s nice of him to do that, it was in the main street of Echuca. So I opened that up, and again, I went in full steam ahead, pulled down walls and set up. I had a full time boxing ring setup, I had heaps and heaps of people coming in and taking classes and I was running all the classes, doing all the classes myself and not asking for help or coaching any people to becoming instructors.

Again, just doing too much, it’s pretty hard on your family as well, when you're trying to make a dollar. But again, I wasn’t really prepared for running two businesses properly. And I did some more courses to try and get my head around running two businesses and also making sure that I can have a balance between work, my hobby, which is my martial arts, and also my wife. Again, I ended up putting a lot of weight on, because I was just doing stuff, I wasn't doing things properly, I wasn't looking out for myself, I was just keeping things moving along and I just lost track of myself a lot.

And I found that, because I lost track of myself and what I was doing, was reflecting on my passion, my martial arts and classes sort of dropped down a lot. I kept on beating myself up, thinking, what's going on, because I believed that I was teaching great stuff, trying to keep up with the times, with good tuition and stuff like that, but I thought, obviously it was something to do with myself, because I looked overweight. I was probably 30kg overweight, I put on a lot of weight.

Didn't do a lot in the classes myself, I wasn’t demonstrating a lot. And I started to get instructors to help out with classes. They were great, they were doing a fantastic job in the classes, but I wasn’t really structuring, I didn't have any programs set up to help these instructors, I didn't give any clear guidelines on where to go and how to do stuff. I was really just stretching it really thin between both businesses. The building business was going great, I had these guys working, I relied on them a lot to keep things moving along.

But then, the quality of the building started to collapse a little bit, because I wasn't watching what was going on in the building business, because I wasn't on site as much, I was quoting and keeping these gentlemen going for work, but my timbers let me down a little bit. It was getting to a stage that I had to do something about it, so ended up contacting, I did a course, and they were talking about business coaching, and I thought, well, I think I need to do this to get myself back on track. I had no idea, most of the stuff I was doing was very self-taught, in regards to business and marketing and done courses from here to there and in the building industry, they have courses all the time and I just did a few of those, but not really understanding.

I just sort of did them and just did a bare minimum of each area, not really focusing a 100%. And I think to myself when I look back, I should have really just focused a 100% on one business, because I could have made it a lot better than what it is. And also for me I think, being in my father’s building business, I didn't want to let him down. As a martial artist, you don't want to let you coach or your instructor down and my father was very passionate about his business and I didn't really want to let him down and I didn't really want to see that his business had failed if I stopped.

And I still do today think about that and part of that is what I wanted the business coach to understand is and he showed me that I should be able to run both businesses very successfully, so that was a line that we wanted to take in that direction, trying to keep both businesses running successfully, but manage them in a way that you have control in what you're doing. Also, some things, flaws in my personality that I needed to sort out as well. I had to work out, I was overweight, and he said Matt, you need to look after yourself, the number one person is yourself, I was letting my family down and everybody else down because I wasn't looking after myself.

GEORGE: Two things: sorry to interrupt you there. I just want to go back: firstly, you mentioned when you started traveling and you started to get out of your comfort zone – I wouldn't say comfort zone, but out of your town and having a look at what other martial arts schools were doing and you mentioned the people in your town weren’t really open to that. Can you recall what were the biggest takeaways that you wanted to implement in the martial arts arena in your town that wasn't being done already?

MATT: There were a few things. When I did the traveling around, for me it was quite easy to go and travel. At that stage, I was only looking at what the classes and the teaching process was, so I was learning off the instructors on how they teach and the drills and the techniques on how they teach a particular way and the techniques that they do. I love doing that, I love watching instructors and watching them how they communicate and how they demonstrate, I was learning off those guys. But something that I wanted to bring back to Echuca was – and that I'm really passionate about as well, when I first started my training, no one was willing to travel to do a seminar.

I don’t know if they were just frightened, the fear of getting to a seminar and going, I'm not good enough to be here, I'm not sure what it was. But I still do this today, I try and bring the expertise to Echuca, I know it’s only a very small town, but I want the people, my students to get that opportunity that I went out and got beforehand. So I try and bring people to Echuca to say, hey, these guys have done this, they've become real champions, they're fantastic instructors. So I try, sometimes it’s cost me a lot of money to ring people in, but I want my students to experience more than just what's in my own club.

For example, just in the last day or so, I've just locked in Robert Drysdale to come to our club. And it’s in a small town, we've got 20,000 in Echuca, we're 2-3 hours away from Melbourne and we've got a UFC fighter, 6-time world jiu-jitsu champion coming to Echuca. So I've had a lot of opportunities, where I've asked these people, would you be interested coming to Echuca, I want to expose my students to these professionals, these legends, these mentors. I just want people to see these people and say, hey, we can be there, we can have the opportunity to be as good as these guys.

GEORGE: And how do you go about that, to get a big name like that out to you, to your town?

MATT: George, I'm just very lucky.

GEORGE: It’s got to be some magic dude!

MATT: I've had some great mentors and great coaches over the years, and my Brazilian jiu-jitsu coach at the moment, I started doing jiu-jitsu in the late 90s and I got onto this great coach and he's given me these opportunities and I just see these guys and I think, I want to train with these guys. And they themselves have this opportunity and I just tap into it. So I was very fortunate that my coach had Robert coming to Australia and I said, he actually said, why don't you have him to Echuca – we will, we’ll have him here in Echuca.

Also we've got coming up Dave Kovar coming up to do an instructor boot camp and instructor college. And again, instructors around this northern area that I live in Echuca don't get that opportunity and I'm trying to help the martial arts community around here to give them the opportunity to come and learn from these professionals. And Dave’s helped me a lot over the years and how I got to Dave Kovar was from Sean Allen, and Phil and Graham from Perth. These guys were talking about Dave Kovar, and I was fortunate that he came to a club in Bendigo, which is about an hour away from Echuca and Melbourne and he was there and I just sort of said to him, is anyone interested in a seminar sort of thing and that where we got hooked up with Dave.

It’s been about 3-4 years that we've been associated with Dave and he's sort of helped our business grow by his guidance, it’s fantastic. So going back to what you're saying, those are the things I took away from those clubs. But the only thing I regret now, I wish I knew how they marketed those clubs back then. Marketing now is a huge thing for a martial art cub to keep going. And I wish that I took more notice of how they ran, what sort of programs or teaching to more detail, that's what I’m finding interesting nowadays. I’m trying to get people through the door, because you know that the hardest step for someone to start martial arts is to get them through that door.

And that's what we find that, at our club at the moment, that that first step is the hardest. And also first time, first time stepping in the club – am I going to get hurt, am I going to get kicked, am I going to get punched, what's going to happen? So over probably the last, it was in 2010 I started up a new gym, started up a new full time facility, and this time I wanted to make sure I set up, so with the help of Phil and Graham and Sean Allen and Dave Kovar, I put in a program, a teaching program in place and then I just started to set up, tried to make up a community, a community spirit within my club.

Using Facebook – now I use Facebook a fair bit to market my club, to try to create a community within my club that people are having fun, it’s a family friendly club, that's how I promote it. So if someone's coming in for the first time, they know that it’s a family friendly club, they're going to feel comfortable coming through that door. We set up with our marketing stuff, it’s more about the community spirit in the club. People are training together, smiling, having fun and learning, and then you see them also training hard, competing in kickboxing, jiu-jitsu tournaments, showing the different levels that we can take them.

That's where we're on at the moment in regards to our marketing, we're focusing more on trying to create a culture or a community spirit within our club. Not trying to push advertising so much, I don't try and push that we've got free sessions coming on, or this and that. It’s just small marketing on the community spirit type of thing. Get people involved in our community, it’s a friendly place, everybody’s friendly sort of thing.

GEORGE: For sure. It sparks a conversation I had earlier with Brannon Beliso from America. And this is really my question to you, the leading question: we were looking at how – it’s a discussion that keeps on coming up, how the same marketing doesn't work in two different locations. So you can't have the same marketing message and think it’s going to work in location A and location B, depending of course on the dynamics.

And this is something that we've been finding and we’ve been talking about his two locations that, what works in San Francisco doesn’t work in Millbrae. And it’s something we've been seeing a lot with Facebook marketing as well. So my question to you is, what have you seen that people are doing in Melbourne and in the bigger cities from a marketing perspective that you've tried to implement where you are, which is a smaller town, that simply just doesn't work with the people and the community?

MATT: That's a really good question, because what we see in Melbourne – I know in Echuca, my fees aren't as much as Melbourne and we're trying to educate people. For me, I had to educate people around the town because some people don't know where we are and what we do, and in Melbourne, there's a lot more people there and I see that they're putting up special deals and stuff like that and I tried them here, putting up a special deal from even something that Matt was working on the five, beginner classes sort of thing, we tried that for a short while. It worked in some classes, but we couldn't retain them. That was probably because of our following up and stuff like that, but we found this community sort of spirit thing working better for us, we're trying to get people educated about it, in the area what we actually do at the club, instead pushing the hard push: come in and get your free lesson, or there is a special deal on.

We’re working on that at this stage and we tried heaps and heaps, you know what it looks like, it’s all trial and error. And I still don't think I've actually hit the nail on the head yet, we're still trying to work it out, what works for us in Echuca. Because I know other guys have different marketing programs and I’ve tried some of that, and as you said, does not work for us, or I tried it but I had the wrong recipe. I think that you have to have the right recipe to set that up and if you don't understand it properly, I think that's when you sort of lose, if you don't know how to do it properly.

GEORGE: And here's the thing with that – sorry to cut you off there again: these deals and paid trials as we like to call them, it’s something we've had great success with our clients doing paid trials, but then sometimes, we also don't. And the reasoning, my reasoning behind that is, when you put up a great offer is, you're putting an offer out to someone who is already sold on the idea that martial arts is going to work for them or their child. So you're more than likely talking to a person that's already done some research and they're ready to take their credit card out.

But then, there are five different conversations happening, five different type of people, because there’s a person that is just completely unaware of martial arts and what the benefits are, so they're not even looking for martial arts. And then, you're going to find a person that, maybe there's a problem: their child is getting bullied, they're lacking in confidence or something. They know they've got a problem, but they haven't linked martial arts yet as the actual solution. And then there's one step up that may be the person that sees, all right: martial arts is the solution, but where do I do it?  And then maybe they know and you can go and level up and go, OK, this person know martial arts is the reason and the answer, and they know about you, Wickham’s Martial Arts, but they still don't know if you're the right fit for what they are doing.

So if you look at marketing that way, it’s not really as easy as putting an offer up and especially I think in an area like where you are, because you've only got so many people to work with. So just putting up an offer all the time, you could eliminate four different types of people that are not yet aware of martial arts, or interested yet, or it's not engaged, it’s not in their radar whatsoever. And with those type of people, you've got to market completely differently, because you've really got to educate them and pinpoint the need, or create the need before they would even look at the offer.

So yeah, I really think this is a bigger play in smaller areas, because, in a place like where you are, where there are 20,000 people, for you to run things like Google ads and things like that, it wouldn’t really bring much results, because there’s not that many people actually looking. And I could be wrong, but just statistically: we looked at running ads for someone in Darwin, and we kind of said, look, it’s probably not the best way to go, because there's just not enough people searching for martial arts training through Google. So there's got to be those different ways, and I like your way of community, because community is trust and community can get people to talk, and that's the thing, it’s probably going to work the best for you in the smaller type area.

MATT: Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's right. Cause people in a local community, there's so much other things going on, but we want people to feel part of the group, and people do, at the end of the day, they want to feel part of the club, they want to feel part of the gym that helps them and also that can be contributing in some ways. So yeah, definitely, that's what we’re working on, the community approach. We hit the nail on the head, we tried marketing deals, but it just hasn't worked as much, hardly at all really. So that's what we’re working on, that community spirit, to show that we have people learning and having fun and they're progressing along and kicking some goals in their personal lives.

GEORGE: Awesome. And on the goals, I see on your website, you've got a list of 15 school rules – can you elaborate a bit more on that? Is that something that you're very strict on?

MATT: That's basically about the Dojo rules when I first started, that was one of my instructor’s basic rules at the gym. He actually gave them to me a long time ago and we actually put that on the website I think by mistake, but I like keeping it there and just setting some rules for the club that everybody can read and say, OK, these are the basic rules in their classes: that everybody has to work, some basic guidelines at the club. Showing a bit of discipline, respect, so that's what the rules are basically up there for.

GEORGE: OK, awesome. So back to running two businesses: you were saying that you discovered a few things and so forth, but I'm going to guess that at the end of the day, it’s gotta be, you in the building industry, that's a whole project by itself, I guess it creates a big time commitment as is. And then you've got the martial arts school. How do you go about juggling both businesses, side by side, by night, affecting your family life completely and so forth?

MATT: I have a great support family; my wife is fantastic. And her parents were in the building industry as well, so she has a bit of an idea of what the building industry is like. She's very supportive of me, and she gives me lots of time to keep on these things. But usually, when she says she needs help, she needs some support, I'm there 100%, I just drop everything. For my family I just drop everything, for them. But I'm very fortunate to have great support. I've got three kids, Melvis is 17 and I've got twins, Mitch and Chloe, they're 15. Mitchell now does, he trains every night, does martial arts, or both of them do martial arts – Chloe actually now teaches our 6-10-year-old kick boxing classes and Mitchell competes regularly in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, so we travel all around the place doing competitions and stuff now.

And I really love seeing these guys being involved in the club. My family is sort of involved with martial arts, which makes a huge help with me. And I know down the track, building now is getting very competitive, I'm competing against the larger building contractors and I've always done houses and renovation, stuff like that. It’s getting to a point now that even the trends that I’m looking at now for work is the renovation, so a lot of it change the direction of the building business over the years so I don't get too busy and I don't want to be traveling out of town, because I won’t be able to get back in time for classes.

So it's restricted me on how far I can go with my building business, so I don't take on as much when I could take on and also, having the martial arts at night time restricts me from going out and having meetings with clients as well. There is some good points and bad points. For the bad points, I don’t get the opportunity to push my building business more by talking with clients after work, or show them around houses and jobs, stuff like that, spending the quality time and the one on one time that I really want to, without employing someone else to do that. It’s getting to the point now as I get older as well and because it’s so competitive in the building industry, it is making it a lot harder nowadays to keep motivated for me, especially keep me motivated to keep the business going, when my passion is still much for martial arts.

And I love just teaching and learning and I'm not quite there in regards to the martial arts business as well, I've got so much more to learn: setting up programs and setting up certain things to keep going, so I have a legacy setup, that's what I really want, that legacy that it’s still there when my kids get in their twenties and they can start running more classes if they want to. There’s an opportunity for them to take over the business. I don't think Mitchell wants to take over the building business, I'm not really sure, but you never know, we don't know what direction our kids will take. But it’s definitely getting harder for me now as I get older, running two businesses, more so running out of steam, running out of motivation. You've got to try and advertise both businesses, I find it really hard.

The goal was, in 2010 when I started up this new martial arts centre that I wanted to get to a place that we have enough members that I would probably fold back and just do small jobs on the building, small renovation jobs and focus more on the martial arts business, so I can put a 100% into that business. Because I see myself, there's opportunities there to grow that business and I think for me, I feel like I'm letting myself down not pushing 100%. But on the other side, I don't want to let my father down by letting his business just vanish, because he's worked so hard over the years. That's probably something inside of me that I have to sort of work out and in time, it will sort itself out I reckon.

GEORGE: For sure. What would you say the next step is for you with your martial arts business and moving forward?

MATT: Next step would be – George, for me, over the years, I’ve been trying to set up, trying to focus on my coaching with instructors, instructing students to take the next level. I want people to, as I said before – a legacy. I want to set the gym up to a point that people can actually have a job in martial arts. Have a job in teaching martial arts. When I first started martial arts, people would go, oh, is that your hobby? And I would go, yes, that’s a hobby. But even now, they ask me the question, is that a business, or is it a hobby? What am I doing? Now I say it’s my business: I've got two businesses that I run, it’s not a hobby, it’s a business.

And I think back 20 years ago, martial arts were looked at as a hobby and it wasn't looked at as a martial arts business. And last year I was happy enough to travel up with Matt Ball to America to see Dave Kovar's business over in America and then sort of resonated with me in saying, yes, we can do this. This guy has done it. And I think that's what I want to do. I want to set my focus on setting up Wickham’s martial art as more of a full time business, instead of a part time business. So that's sort of the direction I think I would like to take it in the future.

GEORGE: Awesome. Well Matt, it’s been great chatting to you, and if anybody wants to know more about you and your school and the town you live and so forth, where can they find out more about you?

MATT: Probably on our website, www.wickhamsmartialarts.com. That's probably the best idea to get all that. On Facebook as well, were very heavily in Facebook community as well, so you can find the Wickham’s Martial Arts page on Facebook.

GEORGE: Cool, well link to that. And I also see mattwickham.com.au. A personal one.

MATT: Yeah, that’s mattwickham.com.au.

GEORGE: Here we go, cool, two websites to check out. Awesome Matt, thanks a lot, I hope to chat to you soon.

MATT: All right, thanks George.

GEORGE: Thanks.

MATT: Thank you.

GEORGE: Cheers.

And there you have it – thank you very much, Matt, for coming to the show and sharing your story with us. If you want the see notes, you can download that from martialartsmedia.com/30, and if you're enjoying these podcasts and you like to learn more or have any suggestions for any shows or so forth, you can contact us on martialartsmedia.com, but also you can head to Facebook and if you want to leave us a bit of a review, that would be awesome.

I know it's very hard to leave reviews on the podcast apps like in iTunes and in stutter, so you can find us Martial Arts Media on Facebook if you go to the direct URL, it's facebook.com/martialartmedia, not with the s, somebody, unfortunately, already took that. But if you just type in the search box Martial Arts Media, you should be able to find us there.

Thanks again, thanks for listening and we're going to be back again next week for another great episode and I will chat with you soon. Thanks, cheers.

 

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