In this Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast I took Michele Ciampa from Shotokan Karate Club Tasmania through The Price Amplifier which boosted his student value by 52%.

 

IN THIS EPISODE:

• How a simple, weekly social media post became the primary driver of student enrollment for a growing martial arts club.
• A surprising shift in pricing structure that could more than double annual revenue per student.
• Why leading enrollment conversations with value—not price—could be the key to better engagement and commitment.
• A new approach that slashes the number of students needed to meet financial goals while still enhancing the club’s impact.
• A strategic plan to engage new age groups, adding depth and variety to the dojo’s community.

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

 

TRANSCRIPTION

GEORGE: Hey, it's George Fourie. Welcome to another Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast. Today we're doing something new.

We're going to go with a full-on coaching call and do something a bit different and see if we can create some value, create a bit of conversation and really help one of our guests go to their next level, which we're going to discover what that is. And so somebody that I've known for quite a while, Michele Ciampa.

MICHELE: Hello.

GEORGE: Did I pronounce it correctly?

MICHELE: Yes, that's correct.

GEORGE: Michele Ciampa from Tasmania Shotokan Karate Club in Tasmania. So welcome! How are you doing, Michele?

MICHELE: Good. Yourself?

GEORGE: Good, good, good.

Cool. So if you mind just giving us a bit of a background. Yeah, just a brief overview about your karate club, who you teach, how long you've been going for, etc.

MICHELE: Absolutely. Okay. So I started teaching in 2019, just in a small community hall at first.

And then we had some renovations going on with that. So I had to find another location. So I found a place in a dance studio for a little while, and then I was back to the community hall.

And then just last year in October, I decided I'll just gamble everything and take a jump. And I opened in the main street of lovely Bernie here in Tasmania.

GEORGE: Congratulations!

MICHELE: Thank you. So at the moment, we teach very traditional Shotokan Karate.

I like to keep it as authentic as possible. Not really that many other karate clubs around. There's a few but it's not huge, like in the mainland.

So yeah, we've got a bit of a gimmick like the main street. And, you know, obviously people walk past and see the big signs every day. So that helps.

At the moment, I've got 54 students, mostly children. So my goal is now to try to get more teens and adults involved.

GEORGE: Cool. Okay, awesome. So congrats on going full time.

MICHELE: Thank you.

GEORGE: How's that been, been going full time? What do you feel has been different since you've taken the leap?

MICHELE: Obviously much busier. So once I used to only teach two days a week. I used to teach Tuesdays and Thursdays.

And then I took the gamble. I'm a chef by trade. So I'm used to those crazy chef hours. And I thought the dojo started to build and I thought, I'll put all my energy into this place and see how it runs. Definitely a lot busier.

And with more days open, it's more variety from the different people that can't make the Tuesday class or whatever, they can come on a Wednesday or Thursday or Friday or yes, I'm doing five days a week at the moment.

GEORGE: Very cool. All right.

So what's the big goal for you? Like if we had to like, let's go high level. Like if we had to have this chat like three years from now, and we were looking back over like all you've liked your progress, what would have to happen for you to feel happy about the movement forward?

MICHELE: Honestly, just the character building is the main thing. The difference you see in the students, like some people who come in, they're really shy or awkward or have some anxiety problems. And just seeing their confidence grow is incredible.

Like just helping people's lives and the same way that it's helped myself. So if I can get, you know, enough people like that, and obviously the skill level is important as well.

GEORGE: Gotcha. So, okay. So making an impact with your martial arts is super important.

MICHELE: Absolutely. Yeah.

GEORGE: What if we had to wrap some numbers around that? So you had 54 students at the moment. What would be significant for you for a number of students that you feel you are making a decent impact in your community?

MICHELE: So at the moment, I'm already seeing a huge impact with the students I do have, and they're all doing really well in putting in the effort. Obviously, the more people I can help, the better.

So probably around the hundred mark would be perfect and who knows, it might grow and grow.

GEORGE: Okay. So is hundreds like the ultimate goal? Like, you know, if you think you like the day when you started the business, you tap into this big vision and you like, sometimes we hold ourselves back in our thinking and think, well, yeah, that's not really possible.

And what was that vision? What was that, man, if I could get my business to that, that'll be the ultimate for you personally and for your community?

MICHELE: Yeah. So I can't really put a number on it, to be honest. Just the more people I can help, the better.

I mean, with the space that we have around 100 or if more, then obviously we can open more, more hours and who knows, eventually another location.

GEORGE: Okay. All right. So tell me about that. So, okay. So location and maybe another location.

Do you have a sort of ideal where you think you'd want to have X amount of locations?

MICHELE: Not really. I haven't really put much thought into it. I have had people message me saying, I wish you were in our area, this and that.

And so it's been kind of put in my head, but nothing, I'd prefer to focus on what I do at the moment and do this right before jumping out and doing other things.

So my priority now is to build this up and I'd especially like to get more teens and adults involved because at the moment they're mostly kids from seven to 12 is my main amount of students. So if I can impact teenage lives in those crucial years as well as development.

GEORGE: What is the total number of students that would both make a big impact and scare you at the same time?

MICHELE: I'd say, yeah, 150, 200 would probably be a bit, we'd be pushing it to fit everyone in. But obviously they're not all going to train at the same time.

GEORGE: Yeah, cool. Remember, we're trying to talk about a vision, right? So when we talk about vision, it's good to sort of remove current circumstances because then we get into like logistics, because then we do the what ifs in our mind.

So we're like, well, can't really do that because I don't have the space or I don't have X amount of instructors trained up. So we can't really do that. So, and forgive me for sort of probing on it, right?

Because this is sort of, if we don't have the destination, then we can't be super clear on the path. So a goal is good. Like I like to look at it always as a three-year vision, like what is the vision?

Bring it down to 12-month goals because then we can sort of work towards a goal number, like let's say a hundred. That's a good goal to work towards, right? That's a goal, but is it the vision?

So just sort of breaking the two apart. So I'll rephrase the question just to see if we can get some more clarity on like, all right, well, that's where we would like to, you know, that's essentially where we'd like to get it. 

If all things were possible, the situation was like, let's say you had all the instructors or you had, you know, the space, where would you see a vision for Shotokan Karate Club Tasmania?

MICHELE: A vision as in like the community or?

GEORGE: Yeah, like let's, if we just refine a number, right? I like to get clear on a number because then we know, like a number we can measure, right? Like what number of either locations would be an ideal place for you to get to and amount of students in total?

MICHELE: Right. So if we're talking about just this location, I'd say 150.

GEORGE: Is it one or 150?

MICHELE: 100 or 150. Okay, 100 we'll say. That's, you know, a more easy to get to goal or realistic, I guess.

 If I had two locations, then I'd be looking to probably double that. So yeah, at least 200, 300

GEORGE: Do you feel 150 is unrealistic?

MICHELE: I don't think it's unrealistic. I believe we can do it. It's just I need to get my marketing right, I guess, to the right people.

GEORGE: Okay. All right, cool. So we have a number, right? 150?

MICHELE: Yep, we'll go with that

GEORGE: Gotcha. Right. Awesome.

At this point in time, it's good to wrap sort of numbers around it. What do 150 students look like in dollars for you?

MICHELE: So I charge $80 a month. So they pay a monthly fee and then they can join as many classes as they like in that month. 

GEORGE: All right. So that's the goal. You've got 54 students.

We want to get to 150. What has been working well? Where's the bulk of your students coming from right now through marketing, word of mouth, bit of both?

MICHELE: Honestly, the local groups, Facebook groups. I did try a few ads and not many signups from the ads. I get a lot of inquiries, but not many people follow up. 

But mostly I just post and share things in the local community groups. And that's where I'm getting most people.

GEORGE: Great. Okay. Do you have a number of how many leads you get from that, give or take?

MICHELE: I'd say the majority have come from the community group. So I'd say at least 40 of those, out of the 54 that I have, have come from posting in groups.

GEORGE: Gotcha. Okay. And then what's your frequency for posting in the groups?

MICHELE: Usually once a week.

GEORGE: Once a week. Okay. All right. Cool. And then the leads that would come from that would be like a handful?

MICHELE: Usually we get about, if we're going month by month, probably we'd get eight to five new students every month. So not a lot, and obviously sometimes we have drop-offs and we need to work the retention rate as well.

GEORGE: Okay, cool. And so ads haven't worked much for you, you mentioned?

MICHELE: No. I've tried it a few times and it must be the way I'm doing it or something.

GEORGE: It could be. What we find is sometimes when ads work when you post it, it's great, but it also gives a false expectation of how ads work because in our experience, we've done ads for hundreds of martial arts schools.

You can have a super good week, an okay week, and two terrible, well, one terrible week, two weeks that are okay, and one week that's really good. And if you always look at it in that context, it helps.

It also, the strategy of how we go about it. So we use the Facebook ad formula that we use, we would be split testing about 16 variations of ads because we want to always see what is working. 

So we find ads is a little bit of experience of knowing what needs to be in the copy, how to address the actual market, what the offer is, how do they start, how easy is it for them to start, like is the risk on you or is the risk on them, and then testing the different graphics and knowing what type of graphics to test.

But even though we've tested hundreds of graphics, we still test it every time because every time something happens, we get a different result. So with your, what would be through your trial process? 

So when, how do people start with you? Free trial, paid trial?

MICHELE: So they have one, the first lesson free. I used to do three lessons for free. I found that the first lesson free works much better.

So I just started going with that. So most people will come in if they like it or not, I'll give them a membership form regardless. And if I see them next week, that will do.

If not, sometimes I'll follow up. And also some students that have left for other sports, I'll follow up on them sometimes, say how's it going, if they're interested to come back. And some of them do come back.

So I think it's always important to connect with people as well that way.

GEORGE: Gotcha. Okay. So three free classes.

MICHELE: One now. I used to do three, but now I only do the one and that's working better for me. More people have been signing up since I'll do the one class.

GEORGE: All right, perfect. And so when you sign them up, what is, how does that process look? What do they get?

Do they, they got to join? Is there a joining fee? Do they have to pay like purchase a uniform, et cetera?

MICHELE: So there's a $40 membership fee and then the monthly fee, which is $80, and then a uniform is around $60.

GEORGE: Where do you feel mostly stuck? Like what is a, where do you feel is the businesses perhaps like you're stuck or there's like, it's a bit broken?

MICHELE: So the kids' classes are all going fine. It's mainly the adults and teens class. So we are not really getting the numbers that I'd like.

So, we get some people come in and they'll try for a little bit and they decide it's not for them and they don't come back or. Yeah. So I'd really like to get more adults and yeah, just trying to get them in is the hard part.

GEORGE: Okay. I want to just move away from the adults and teens. I know that's something that you want to build and I know that's important to you for obviously for the club to have, you know, a good blend of all the age groups as well.

And I mean, we could talk more about the motivation behind that. Do you have an immediate, like sort of, there's a, there's an income goal or there's like a number that you need to get to. Obviously you've taken a lot of risk as well, because you've gone in full time.

You've mentioned you've gone full time, so you've got to pay the bills, right? It's for you to make an impact in the community. There's got to be income.

So, and our model is always, you know, we want to help great martial arts like yourself, build a business that fulfills your purpose. And for your purpose to be present, you've got to have the income you desire, the impact you want to create in your community and through your martial arts, and then the lifestyle that goes with that. And in the beginning phases, the lifestyle is, well, it's not so much lifestyle because it's easy to breathe on the mat.

You've got to make it work. So what is, what is like, is there a dollar number or a student number that you know, all right, now we're good. We're like, things are smooth.

The pressure is off. You're getting the income that you need to make the club work and you can still live a comfortable life.

MICHELE: Well, I'd say that 150 marks would be perfect. Because that would give me, you know, to cover the bills and also give me a bit more of a comfortable life.

GEORGE: Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. So 150 at your current pricing.

MICHELE: Yes.

GEORGE: Gotcha. Okay. What if you could half that?

MICHELE: Half the number.

GEORGE: The goal. Yeah.

MICHELE: Could do. I mean, that would still get me by. So.

GEORGE: Yeah. Instead of the target being like 150, you could get your same income goal by maybe even 75. I don't know. We've got to run the numbers.

MICHELE: I'd say around 80.

GEORGE: Okay. So here's what's important to look at. If we're going to look at anything that's going to grow your business, we've got to have the numbers dialed in.

And I think this is a, I think that's often overlooked because everyone looks at, okay, well, we've got our club, we've got our memberships, we feel the pricing is accurate for the market and let's run ads. But then ads don't really work because ads come with a dollar figure. 

Leads cost. Then there's a learning curve converting cold leads because a lead that comes in via Facebook ad, it's going to be a little different than the lead that was referred by one of your members or had some intent, meaning they went to Google and they did a search and they found you and now they're interested. That is a whole different lead because they showed intent.

Facebook lead is pretty much being interrupted from maybe doom scrolling. And so that takes a whole different conversion strategy to get them going. Now, the thing with the ads, and I know we sort of, we're just assuming that ads is the strategy because we've got a few other strategies that we can do.

But either way, we need to make sure that your fees are in alignment with a good pricing strategy that's got enough margin, enough profit. Otherwise, it's impossible to run ads because, I mean, if we were running ads for a mug, for example, what's that? Five bucks, 10 bucks.

And we're paying two, three dollars a click. To make a sale for the mug, we're going to have to sell a lot of mugs, right? So we can't just sell one mug.

We're going to have to sell the box or we might even need to get them on recurring. So maybe it's, well, you can buy 10 for a hundred dollars or get new mugs on subscription. Or we sell mugs and we sell cutlery and we sell something else.

So we've got to raise the value of the offer. So if you think of the point where you can make the biggest impact, it's re-engineering the economics of your pricing. And so I had a, we do this, this is the first thing we do in our Partners‘ onboarding calls.

And I spoke to a member last week whose goal was 200 students to hit his income goal and go full time. And we reduced that to 67.

So it's the easiest thing to do and it's also the hardest thing to do. Yeah. And let me explain why it's the easiest thing to do.

It's the easiest thing to do because you just got to do it, right? It's the hardest thing to do because we've got mind clutter that we've got to get over and how we value our pricing. So let me ask you this.

How did you get to $80 a month?

MICHELE: So I used to be way too cheap at the start, the whole can't charge money for martial arts mentality that a lot of martial artists have. And I realized that I have to go out the door because if I want to do this, I'm benefiting the community.

And so that whole mentality of, oh, I shouldn't charge too much because it took me a really long time to be able to charge what I do. It wasn't until I moved into this new location where I had the overheads and I could have had to, otherwise I wouldn't be able to be doing what I am doing today. So yeah, I started really cheap.

I think it was, it may have been $10 a lesson or something. Yeah. It may have been even cheaper at one stage.

So yeah. And then once I got in this location, I found $80 was what I would need to do.

GEORGE: Okay. Alright.

MICHELE: And it's kind of in the middle. I don't like to compare myself to other clubs. Most kind of, we're kind of in the middle. Some are around the 80 mark, some are around the 60 mark. So I'm not so expensive that I'm too overboard, but I'm not too cheap.

GEORGE: Okay.

MICHELE: Does that make sense?

GEORGE: Yeah. Cool. I do want to challenge you on that though, because I think you've got some margin to work with.

And I feel comparison is the thief of joy compared to other clubs. It's just you're trying to be the average amongst other clubs. Whereas if you're the best, then I feel you've got a chance the best, right? Provided of course, and sometimes people take this wrong when we explore this.

It's like, you know, we can deliver low power, low quality martial arts and charge high. Your martial art is there. It's legit. You're doing the thing that we know you are doing. And you provide that impact and you charge accordingly, because pricing itself dictates value, right?

I mean, if you had to swap, you know, you get a Mercedes and you get a Kia, both great cars, one economical, one luxury. What if you swap the pricing? What if you just swap the pricing and instead of playing a couple of, you know, I don't know what I did.

I'm not that good on pricing with cars, but let's just say 50, 60 grand for Kia versus 200K for a Mercedes. Let's say you swap those. Let's say you just swap the pricing, but nothing else.

How are you perceiving the value of those vehicles? It's almost like you're automatically just saying, well, the Kia is better.

MICHELE: Yeah, yeah. Right?

GEORGE: You know what I mean? And it's without any rational other thought, it's just the price dictates the value. So if you are the best, it's hard saying that you're the best when you're the cheapest.

MICHELE: Yeah, yeah. Well, we're definitely not the cheapest. We're definitely like one of the higher priced dojo around the area.

So yeah, I think there's another couple that are the same price or a little bit cheaper, but yeah, I'm definitely up the top I think in pricing. Which sometimes does scare people off a bit. I think a lot of people screw face up when I do give them the monthly fee price, particularly the walk-ins.

When I get walk-ins, they always give them a card and stuff anyway, but a lot of them kind of screw the face up a bit. And at the end of the day, this is the…

GEORGE: How soon does that come up in pricing and the price conversation and where do you cover that? 

MICHELE: That's usually one of the first things they ask is how much.

GEORGE: Yeah. So next time somebody walks in and asks you that, I would change the posture of the conversation. Because here's the thing, when people walk into a place doing karate, the only question they know what to ask is the price.

MICHELE: Right. 

GEORGE: They've got no idea what's going on there. They've got no idea the value.

They've got no idea the impact and the impact it's going to make on them, their child.

MICHELE: Yeah.

GEORGE: And without that context, the price is just a number that I want to pay or not. Right. Because it means nothing.

So if somebody walks in and the first thing that they ask is and you give them the joy of answering that, it's kind of done them a disservice because they don't know what that means. 

And so the next time somebody does that and walks in, I would just say, sure, happy to talk about price. So you meet them where they're at and you agree with them.

And then you take control of the conversation and just say, is it okay if I ask you a few questions just to make sure it's a good fit? Okay. And most reasonable people would say yes.

If no, I just want a price, then you can revert back and say, well, price for what? Like, I don't know your needs. I don't know what you want.

We've got several programs. If I can ask you a few questions, I'll be able to tell you exactly which of our programs is a fit for you or not. So changing your posture on taking control of the conversation now puts you in the authority position to be able to diagnose before you prescribe.

Because it's the same if you had to walk into the doctors at the doctors and just say, I'm sick, give me this. And he just said, grab these. Like you wouldn't feel good about it.

And clearly he's not a really good doctor, right? So he's going to ask you questions and try to understand the symptoms before we can prescribe the solution. And so doing that, reversing those roles, it changes the posture and it shows that you are professional and that you are the authority.

Because if you know whether you can help someone or not through your program, now you can tell them about the memberships. And if you discover that it's not a good fit for them and you can tell them politely and say, look, I don't believe we're the right club for you, that really sets you above.

MICHELE: Yeah, which I haven't had to do before. I've had a few. Not so much about the money side, but about other things.

They don't want to rush their kids in and even ask how much if they can grade earlier and this and that. I'm like, we're not the right place for that. Yeah, I have had those.

I have had to knock people back, but not really for the money side. Sometimes, you know, people are struggling with that. Sometimes I'll come up with some type of deal for people.

GEORGE: Okay. All right. So I want to give you two strategies that you can try on. Now, what I'm going to suggest is not to go, it's not to rip the band aid off, meaning you're going to email all your members tomorrow and tell them that this is what's happening.

We just got to try something on. And trying something on would be trying a new pricing structure. Now, just one clarification, what do people get for 80 bucks a month? 

MICHELE: So it's unlimited classes. So they've got five days a week they can train.

GEORGE: Perfect. Okay. 

Without going into separating different tiers and things like that for now, we can talk about that at a later stage. I just want to give you a strategy for how you can change your pricing strategy and try it on like literally with a new person that walks in. Now, it's going to make you feel a bit uncomfortable. 

MICHELE: Okay. Right. Nothing grows in the comfort zone.

GEORGE: Well, exactly. Thank you. Yeah.

A hundred percent. Right. So discomfort, it kind of means we're leaning into the right direction.

And two things are going to happen. Like someone's going to not blink and just go ahead like they would, or someone's going to say, no, that's too much. Now, when you get that feedback, you might want to just revert back.

Like internally, you're going to say, oh, well, yeah, I was, you know, that little voice in your head was right. It's too much. Right.

Or you just haven't gotten comfortable enough with that pricing yourself. And so you're feeling that it's too expensive is kind of giving off that vibe that you're not comfortable with it as well. So it might take a few times of getting comfortable with expressing what that, what they get for that and what the value is and go by that.

Because if I can train five days a week for a month, divide. So that's 20 classes. I'm paying four bucks a class.

MICHELE: Yeah. Right. Yeah. I never even thought of it like that.

GEORGE: Yeah. Have you inquired at a local swimming school or maybe gymnastics and see what they charge kids?

MICHELE: No. 

GEORGE: Right. And I know and just for context for everyone listening. So Tasmania, but smaller, smaller towns, less population, but still people would pay on par, you know, good dollars for swimming and those types of activities for kids.

So if you had to compare what you were doing, the value that you're delivering, because we can obviously argue all day that martial arts is better.

MICHELE: Yeah. Yeah.

For me, more like, you know, more essential. I wouldn't say more. You know what I mean?

It's good. It's just, let's not go into the comparison war, but it provides as much value as swimming and definitely gymnastics and all the other activities. Right.

So we know martial arts make a massive impact on kids' lives.

MICHELE: Absolutely. Yeah.

GEORGE: I'll be pricing accordingly. Right. So if you're going to do a comparison, that's probably where you should be, if at all, making a comparison, right?

Because you're going to find you're always underpriced. So here's a pricing strategy that you can try tomorrow. If we can take your annual student value from $960 per year, because that's what a student pays at the moment, to $2,028.

MICHELE: Yeah. Right. Just writing this down.

GEORGE: Can we give it a go?

 MICHELE: We can try it.

GEORGE: Okay. So the strategy is to start with a smaller number. And so for you to increase your, if you stay on the same terms of $80 a month for what we're talking about is you're doubling your price to like $160 a month or more. 

Right. Which we don't want to do. We want to change the terms.

And so we want to make the number easier to get started. And so if you change your pricing terms to weekly, for example, now it's a lesser number to start with. And instead of going with an even number, and if you had to look at what's available in the market, you could find a nice sweet spot of the calculation I did was $39 a week.

Or let's just start with that. If we had to say that what you charge and what you deliver is $39 a week, how do you feel about that?

MICHELE: Yeah. When you say it like that, it doesn't sound like much at all.

GEORGE: It doesn't. Only $39 a week. And you can train five times a week.

So even if I showed up twice, you know, and we never want to work, we want to work towards outcomes. So we don't want to talk about each class. But if you think of, you know, mum walks in and what is the logical conversation?

What's the conversation she's going to have with her husband? But how is she going to explain the pricing to her husband? So it's always good to think the mum that walked in with a child has, you know, there's going to be emotion involved.

You're going to establish the value. She's going to see it. But now she's going to have to have a conversation with her husband.

And so all that emotion is gone. And so we want to have a rational strategy of what's the conversation she's going to have with her husband. And that is, well, if he trains two times a week, it's only $19 a class.

Gymnastics is $26 or whatever that is. Right. We can play around with things like that.

But if they do train five times a week, they're getting it for only like $7.80 a class. Right. So for as little as $7.80 a class. Now, I wouldn't want to just sell based on price, but that is, you know, just for rationality, you can put that into place. So let me ask you this. If the next prospect that walks in tomorrow, today, today.

MICHELE: Probably will be. There we go. Yeah.

GEORGE: So Michele, how would you feel about charging $39 a week?

MICHELE: I think that's fine. Yeah, I think.

GEORGE: Yeah.

MICHELE: Yeah. So my whole thing is just with that, like, do we still charge it the month or they pay by the week?

GEORGE: Pay by the week.

MICHELE: Pay by the week. Right.

GEORGE: Yeah. So there might be a few logistics, right, to get that going. But it is as simple as just making the decision.

The worst that could happen is one week from now, it completely bombs and we have to resort to a different number, not $80 a week, $80 a month, maybe $80 a week. But we got to revert to a different number.

Right. But for now, you've got something that you can change right now. And it just takes a decision.

MICHELE: Right.

GEORGE: And here's the impact of the decision, is you completely change the goal number of students you need to be able to make the impact that you want, to be able to pay for the full time facilities, be able for you to do, invest in your martial arts, invest in your training so that you can provide the value for your students.

MICHELE: Absolutely. Yeah, it sounds good. 

GEORGE: We're going to do it.

MICHELE:  Let's do it. 

GEORGE: All right. Perfect. All right. So I just want to, before we wrap things up, I want to give you a couple of tools and resources that you can use.

I'm going to send over the student, I'm going to send over the Progress Tracker. So the Progress Tracker is a system we have that goes over all. Helps you keep track of your core numbers, how many leads you're getting, how many trial appointments you're getting from those leads, what are the conversions like from lead to trial and then trial to member. So I'm going to share this with you.

This is something that we cover in our OnRamp, in our Partners Program. Okay. And what I'm also going to do for you just as a bonus is I'm going to give you an email strategy that we covered in one of our Partners Events, the Partners Experience.

And it's literally to go to your existing student base and create an offer to cross-promote to the parents. So your best paying customers are your existing students. They are already there.

They've already invested into the club. And so all that they have to do is just to put up the right offer for the right person at the right time.

MICHELE: Right.

GEORGE: So that's going to be an easy way for you to start. And maybe we can then look at how you can, yeah, how you can just put a different offer in front of them and yeah. Right.

Fill up a bit of your teens classes and your adults.

MICHELE: Right. Just to be clear on this. So the 39 per week, that's just for any new coming members, right?

GEORGE: Yeah.

MICHELE: It makes more sense because yeah, I wouldn't want to change the ones that I do have now.

GEORGE: Yeah, for sure.

So that is a completely different strategy for a different time. So the way we sequence these things matters, right? And this is what we found up to now, the best sequencing to do this.

Try it on first with new prospects. And from that point, we can go to your existing student base and upgrade that. That is the ripping off the bandaid, right?

MICHELE: Right.

GEORGE: That we use the student price upgrader. So it's a three part email strategy that we use to upgrade existing students.

Yep. It can, you know, ruffle a few, a few feathers, but for the most part, you'll be surprised that when you communicate your vision clearly of why you're doing what you're doing, most people jump on board and you find that the people that do tend to drop off other people that were going to drop off anyway.

Most of the people that we do this with, our clients that we do this with, they get praise from their students because they know they were being charged way too cheap.

Very interesting.

MICHELE: Yeah.

GEORGE: All right. Michele, thanks for jumping on. Thanks for doing this.

I'm really looking forward to hearing your, your, your progress, how this goes.

MICHELE: So how long are we going to run this for? And when do we touch base again to see how this is going?

GEORGE: You can shoot me a message. Okay. And let me know how you go for now. Your job would be to implement the new pricing and yeah, report back how it goes.

MICHELE: Excellent. We'll do it. Thank you very much.

GEORGE: Well, good stuff. All right, Michele. Thanks so much for jumping in.

I’ll speak to you soon.

MICHELE: Will do.

 

 

 

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In this martial arts business case study, Evan and Erica share how they scaled their martial arts school from 30 to 170 members, boosting monthly recurring revenue by $10,000.

 

IN THIS EPISODE:

• A unique perspective of Evan and Erica on the connection between music and martial arts
• The business relationship when it comes to their martial arts school
• Problems that Evan and Erica faced in their martial arts school business
• Balancing martial arts tradition and business
• The benefits of joining the Partners program and the influence of its community
• What is the A.I.R. model, and how is it going to help you in your martial arts business
• Involvement of Evan and Erica’s children in the martial arts school
• Driven by a vision of financial independence and lifestyle flexibility
• Breaking away from Conventional Life
• And more

 

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

 

TRANSCRIPTION

GEORGE: Hey, it's George Fourie. Welcome to another Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast. Today, I've got two awesome guests with me, and this is my favorite episode to be doing because it's a martial arts business case study with two amazing clients who I've known for a little over a year.

Evan Whetter and Erika Graf, soon to be Erika Whetter, welcome to the show.

ERICA: Thank you.

EVAN: Thanks, George. It's great to be here.

GEORGE: You've got a bit of an interesting story, and I want to explore both because you're long-time business owners and you're also two very well-established musicians, which I really admire because that was like part of my history for a long time in my life. Leaving school, I played drums, and I didn't want to do anything else but play drums.

And I would play in cover bands and bands, and I would travel all around, and that was my thing. Until I realized I couldn't cut it as a musician, and then life took over. But you guys have really made it work, and we're going to talk about all the martial arts stuff and everything. But you also run a music school, right?

ERICA: Yes, yeah.

GEORGE: So martial artists and musicians.

EVAN: Yes, we get that a lot.

GEORGE: You do? How does that work together?

EVAN: Yeah.

GEORGE: How does it work together? Because in my mind, I mean, what is your perspective? For me, I can see the link because I feel that when you're a musician, you've got this creative gene, call it, I don't know what you call it, but you've got this creative side to you, and then you've probably got that same thing in martial arts, where you've got that self-expression.

EVAN: Yeah, absolutely. I think with both arts. Essentially, it's like learning a language. So, you're learning a vocabulary, and then you're starting to have some basic conversations. And it's the same. Music, you're learning, you know, the technical, physical aspect of it, plus the vocabulary, and then with what we do, we actually met studying jazz, and so that's an improvised form of music.

And you know, the way we train in martial arts, there's an element of improvisation there as well, especially once you leave the kata and enter into the free-flowing. So that is the connection.

GEORGE: And jazz has got this whole different element to it, right? This freedom of expression. I can remember for the longest time, I used to drive to a friend of mine who was a bassist, and he had this woodwork. He lived at a wood—he worked at a woodwork factory, and we would set up our equipment between all this dust. And we just had this rule.

We had these ideas of music and directions we wanted to go. And we had this rule that we'll sit outside and talk about it. And then, on eye contact, we just got to play the first note, and we'll go.

It was just interesting because we just had this connection, and we would just play. And sometimes it would, we weren't recording stuff, but sometimes we would just hit these grooves, and we would like, “This is our goal.” Well, we thought it was cool, right?

It was interesting because we had this musical connection of expressing our passions, but we could never get other musicians to join the crew. Yeah.

EVAN: That's the hardest thing. People in everything; it's always people.

ERICA: Yeah.

EVAN: And I think that's why these days there's a bit of an allure to the online world and that you could actually create a large company and make a fortune but not have to deal with people. You can just do it all in your undies from your laptop.

GEORGE: Right.

EVAN: I don’t know how that’s going for you, George. I know you've had a good crack at building a great business, and yeah, it's always people, right?

GEORGE: Always people, yeah. I'm always only visible in the black shirt, top-down, board shorts, board shorts. Let's loop to martial arts. So, you guys run a school. Tell us a bit like where you're based, what you teach, and so forth.

EVAN: We're based in the Adelaide Hills, and our martial art lineage is Japanese Jiu-Jitsu.  So, it's quite a large. Japanese Jiu Jitsu is quite a large, what we would call a classical martial art. So that means it's a very old martial art and pre-sporting concept of martial arts.

So, coming from Japan, that means it was pre-modern era, pre—the, you know, the forming of their modern government. So, it goes back to some of us, yeah. So, essentially, we're talking 900 years old. But it's a fantastic art, really deep, includes weapons and unarmed throws.

Everything that you associate with Japanese martial arts comes from Japanese Jiu-Jitsu. So, strikes, kicks, weapons, throws, grappling, standing up on the floor. We even have course techniques, course archery, all sorts of stuff. We haven't done that part, but there's a lot. There's a lot there.

GEORGE: Cool. So, between the two of you, you both run the school, you both run the music school. What's the business relationship when it comes to the martial arts school between the two of you?

ERICA: We're both very much heavily involved in running the classes, teaching it, and training, obviously for our own, because you know, we are the lead. So, we love training as well. I guess that's why we started, really. But, as far as driving the business, I think Evan is the driver, and I'm very much a hundred percent his partner in supporting it and doing whatever we need to do to make it happen.

And, but, yeah, I guess, on the floor and being in there with everyone is really, I know you don't see me too much, George, but yeah, that's really where I'm working a lot. So, whatever I need to do to help clear the deck for Evan outside of the dojo is how I feel to make sure that he's got the mental headspace free to grow the, I guess, the back end, grow the business at the back end.

GEORGE: Gotcha. So, would you say that's where the divide is? Like Evan, you drive the business, but you’re all hands-on. Erica, on the mats, the relationships with the students, the parents.

EVAN: Yeah, and look, I guess we’re both kind of equal in the dojo. We both have the same rank. So, it works pretty well. I think one of the advantages that we have is like, you know, there's quite a few studios like this now that they have some fantastic women that are really skilled and that are also great role models. And Erica is fantastic, you know, asset to our business in that sense.

When I started martial arts training, it was all guys. We would get there fully dressed. It would be training in a, like a school hall or like some scout hall or something. We would essentially get changed right there in the same room that we trained in.

So, when I bought Erica into, I said, “Oh yeah, you know what? She came to try it out.” I was in my early 20s too. She walks in, and there's just a bunch of guys who's dropping their decks.

ERICA: They were all naked.

GEORGE: I guess that's changed.

ERICA: Yes, it has changed.

GEORGE: Yeah. Okay, cool.

EVAN: New environment, yes.

GEORGE: New environment, that's cool. People ask about how do I grow the ladies’ program, the women's programs. There's always got to be a strong woman leader that does martial arts. And probably I'm generalizing in a way, but typically that's what I've seen, you know, because there are ladies that are stepping up being leaders.

It's awesome to see, and it does just drive the community to, “Oh, we can also do that. It's not just male-dominated.”

EVAN: Yeah. And I think also women have, when it comes to the actual arts, women are in some, I mean, men are technically stronger, I guess physically, but women move far better and tend to be, once again, a generalization, but they're often more flexible and dynamic in their movement. So, with a martial art like jiu-jitsu, and this has been really well popularized with BJJ, is the essence is not in, you know, meeting someone head-on, strength for strength and speed for speed, but essentially being able to defeat a stronger, bigger opponent.

So, in that sense and from a self-defense perspective, women are incredible warriors when they're trained, and they bring a different type of saying to the martial arts.

GEORGE: Yeah, a hundred percent. I want to loop back just to our journey here together. So, we met, I think it was May 2020, 2022, actually.

EVAN: ‘23.

GEORGE: ’23?

EVAN: It’s just last year.

GEORGE: It's just last year. Yeah, sorry. I'm somehow thinking about the event that we just hosted with Zulfi Ahmed, and I'm thinking, yeah, okay. That was 2023. Yeah.

EVAN: That was an incredible event. That event really changed our trajectory, and yeah, we've got some great numbers to back that up.

GEORGE: That's cool. Well, let's jump into the nuts and bolts. So, we'll jump into the numbers in a minute. Going back into the journey. So, when you guys, initially, when we had the conversation and you jumped on board in Partners, can you recall what were the big things that you were stuck with or what you needed to do or needed to work on in the business?

EVAN: We had very little in the way of advertising and business systems in place. Like historically in our martial arts, what I described earlier in terms of, you know, very small dojos, male-dominated, operating in school halls was really the norm. And so, even within our art, there was a lot of suspicion around anybody that approached it as a business.

And whether it was actually possible to, I bet this is going to sound really strange, but keep the art pure and teach high-quality martial arts as a business. It was almost like, and what's interesting is, even our most senior practitioners in Japan all had day jobs. So, it was just this culture, a different culture, that we were trying to break out of.

And that was a big challenge. And that was where partners has also been a massive help because of the community that we've gotten access to. And then, you know, to find yourself in a position where suddenly you've got overheads, significant overheads, and running a full-time dojo. Yeah, there was definitely a cash flow.

Cash flow was probably the main driver for our…

GEORGE: You touch on something that I deal with so often. It's funny when you run ads to help martial arts schools. Like this case study, there's so many case studies of people running ethical, great businesses, teaching great martial arts, have upskilled their martial arts because they're now running a successful business. Yet, it's like you become the perfect target to get rocks thrown at you because you're now, wait for it, a dojo because you're simply more successful than the guy next to you.

And I feel it. It's pretty toxic, right? Now, I want to go just… I'm going to lean into that because what you're saying is actually quite a big thing. And I see it all the time that people are into art, and they want to preserve the art.

But because the culture is different that, well, my leaders never had a business, and they were never successful. And it's almost like it now you're going against everything that you stood for because somehow if you're successful, it's linked to your being unethical and not preserving the art. What's your take on that?

Because if you want to preserve the art, don't you want to have more people training in the art? Because is it going to die with the leaders? Because nobody's training it? There's no money being invested into school, teaching it, and the instructors being able to teach it. What's your take on that?

EVAN: I’m going to let you answer that, and then I'll…

ERICA: Yeah, it's spot on what you say, and it's really fascinating. I feel like in all of our endeavors that we've pursued, you know, we've had the same with music as well, coming our backgrounds in blues as well, and we're the same thing. We did the same within what you're saying within the blues scene, and, you know, the, the romantic idea of, you know, to really play the blues well, you've got to be this poor, struggling musician. And we did the…broke that.

We put our business hats on, and we saw it more logically as well. Although we still loved it with same approach. So, I guess Evan and I are a little bit weird like that, whereas we really do love these old art forms, the blues, the very old-style martial arts, but we see how it can—it really is still relevant in today's world, and it has a place in today's world.

And I do think people should keep being educated and learning about it because they can benefit from it a lot. And we feel like there's a lot of value that it still has because it has integrity. That saying, if you're a person of integrity or what you do is of integrity, just keep doing what you do and just let time prove you right over time. My mom always says time will tell.

So, you just have to study the force. And so, we're a little bit weird like that is we don't really worry about… We believe what we do, and we believe in what we pursue, and we don't really worry about what other people think too much. And we do believe it's the right thing in building a bigger audience and creating more awareness around, if I go back to martial arts, around the martial arts.

And just in the short amount of time we've owned a school, it's just coming up three years, we're already seeing the benefits in the community, how it's affecting kids. There's a real niche in our area and families. And we're seeing people change and their confidence grow, and they're actually developing real skill sets that hopefully they never have to use, but it’s there.

So, when you've got that at the forefront and that big picture, it makes it easy to think this is the right decision. I know our teachers, who we respect so much, they are still very skeptical of what we do. But we don't really mind because I feel like, since Evan and I got together, we've always pursued these things where people are quite skeptical.

Maybe it helps that we're together, because we kind of help each other–

GEORGE: A hundred percent.

ERICA: –the big picture. Surf over the crap, as they say. We just keep going and just… yeah.

EVAN: Yeah. As a disclaimer there, our actual main teacher, my teacher that I've had for over 20 years, has been really supportive. He still takes a class every Saturday at our dojo, and he comes up twice a week to give Erica and I personal lessons because he sees that out of all of the people that he's taught over the years, his ability to make impact with what he's done has come down to a certain point, what Erica and I have created because none of his other students. Although there's been many of them, and a lot of them way more qualified than what we are, none of them have been able to scale his impact like we have.

I just have to say that we've had a lot of support there in that, and that's given us somebody that also gives us credibility as well. So, we're not just out there like as a breakaway.

ERICA: Yeah, true. Absolutely.

EVAN: But yet other dojos around the country tend to look at what we do, and they justify our success like, “Oh, you just got so lucky. You just happened to be in the right place.” Like, yeah, if anybody opened a dojo there. That's going to go off, right? Or some people say, “Oh, yeah, with your music school connections, you know, obviously yeah, it's, it's, it's great for you guys.”

And what they mean is they're trying to actually make them excuse their own lack of performance in that area. And while feeling threatened by what other successful martial artists and instructors are doing, this is where it all comes from, right? It comes from them and the insecurity.

GEORGE: Thanks for sharing because there's so much to take from that. I hope that with things that you're doing and saying right here and like doing these types of podcasts that we maybe scratch and make people reflect just a little bit that's going through that same scenario and maybe look at, like maybe there's a lesson here. Maybe there's room to grow and evolve with times, and we wouldn't want to have more people impacted by training martial arts.

All right. So, you guys jumped on board. What's made the biggest impact for you, like being in Partners?

EVAN: It's being a part of a community that normalizes the struggles that you go through as a martial arts business owner, having access to some incredible tools, pretty well plug and play a lot of it, and that's been great. There's been a few great things that have worked really well for us. Ideas that we've gotten from other people in the group. It's not rocket science.

It's things like having events like an open day, for example, and then being able to use that to focus a lot of your marketing around. You might go for a period of time where you're generating a number of leads or inquiries and having a reason to reach out to those people and say, “Hey, we're having this event.” And then it brings through the people that they were interested at one time, but it just wasn't quite the right time for them.

So little ideas like that. The platform, the educational platform that you have, is just fantastic because pretty well, anything that I need to do. I can just go on there and find fantastic content that I can just steal. Well, it's not really stealing if somebody's giving it to you, right?

GEORGE: Exactly. Only to be stolen by active members, as simple as that.

EVAN: That's it. But being able to leverage all of that, and I think, I know I've listed a whole bunch of things here. Because it's very difficult to pick the one most impactful thing, it's really a holistic approach to building a martial arts business.

And so, when you talk about marketing, marketing is like, you can't really separate that from anything. And your model with attract, retain, all of that, that's brilliant because it shows the holistic view that you need. So, yeah, that's probably—hopefully, that's answered your question. It's a really difficult question that one.

GEORGE: That's cool. I get what you're saying because the model we focus on, ATTRACT, INCREASE, RETAIN, it's the things that we focus on. If we think of like outcomes, it's to give you a business that fulfills your purpose, and our definition in that is that's got three things that have got to go with purpose is: the income to make it happen, the impact that you create from martial arts and then the lifestyle that you live.

Is it eat, sleep, breathe on the mats, or do you have a bit of a balance? And that model, we've changed the nine accelerators that lived around this Venn diagram if you had to look at it, and those little levers start changing, but it's always good to see that, as months go by, we might focus on attracting it's all leads, but then realize that, hang on, there's a retention is coming up just like we had a hot seat last week with one of the members to do a deep dive on that.

So, it's always good to look at it because it's an ongoing thing, right? Business is just an ongoing organism that keeps evolving. So, it's good to be addressing those different things as we move along.

Awesome. So, thanks for sharing. What results have you achieved by implementing that? Where did you guys start, and where you're at the moment when it comes to student numbers?

EVAN: Yeah, well, I was actually just looking at that over the 12-month period.  In May of 2023, we had 53 members, but really, there was actually probably only about 30 real members paying customers.

Even some of those there was, probably 60% or 70% of them that, were only training once a week.  So, it was our turnover in May of 2023 was $2,903. Not a great deal to live on there, right?

But then fast forward 12 months, we were up around 133 members. It was probably getting close to 150, but quite a few of those that those extra ones were still in a trial period, so we didn't count them. We added an extra $10,000 to our monthly income. Our income was $12,394. That was three months ago. Currently, we're sitting around 170 members.

What's happened is, not just do we have many more members, but we have more members that are actually A students. I'll give you just an example, just to kind of tie in what we were discussing. Even the idea of having students pay a membership fee, the way that we—traditionally, in our martial art, you would come in, you would pay cash, somebody would have like a book, and they would, you write your name in and the date and the amount of money that you just paid so that they could keep track of it.

There was no obligation to rock up. And so, changing then to that subscription model where people were paying a membership, a weekly membership, that was a big jump for us. It probably took a lot of our capacity to do that. When we first sat down with you, George, that was one of the things you looked at was the fact that we weren't charging enough. I can't remember what we were charging, but it was—I think it might have been about—I can't remember what we were charging, but it was less than what we are—a lot less than what we are now.

And then, the fact that they were only training once a week was a problem. We had a huge amount of students training once a week. What's interesting is I trusted you, and I said, “Okay, we're going to make a focus of really shifting everybody to twice a week.” But my values were still challenged around that but I just went with it anyway.

It's really only been the last month that I came to the real deep-down understanding that we're not. If I say to somebody, “Sure, you can train once a week.” You know what? I'm actually doing the wrong thing because I know that that is not going to get them the results that they want, that they're going to barely struggle to actually maintain the skills that they have. Seriously, it's just a matter of time before they quit.

The reason I know that is because we've got the data. What I came to understand, and when I hear people talk about this, I want to say this, but I know they're not ready to hear it yet because they're still trying to, “I need a customer. I need to get a customer. I'll do whatever you want.” You know, yep?

GEORGE: Yeah.

EVAN: I'll do whatever you want. Can’t afford it? Let's make it half the price for you, but don't; it's just for you. All of these weird deals that you end up with, like weird mutants.

It comes down to the fact that I hadn't yet accepted that for me to do the right thing, the actual right thing, I had to ignore the fact that I needed a student and focus on what they needed. And that if I said any less than what I knew they needed, I was actually doing the wrong thing. I was actually ripping them off by taking 25 bucks a week instead of 40 or whatever and making sure they're training twice a week.

That was huge for me. It took 12 months for me to get there, even though I went by faith at first, and I'm really glad I did because it paid well.

GEORGE: That's so cool. You've just nailed it on the head with the explanation there. It's not that you're being; I mean, you still have your integrity. You feel you're being honest, but if you're standing strong to deliver a promise and an outcome, then how is that going to happen if they only going to train once a week? They never really going to internalize the skills, and one out of seven days a week to magically get the skills, the discipline, the habits? It’s not really going to happen, right?

And so, it's so refreshing to hear that you can have that honest conversation with people and say, “Well, maybe it's actually not for you. If that's all you can do, we can maybe start you here, but if you really want the result that you just said that you wanted, that is what it takes.”

EVAN: And of course, then they get sick, and they miss one, and then they school camp, and they miss the next week all of a sudden. How many times have they trained that much? Once?

GEORGE: Yeah. Very, very cool. So, by the way, sorry, congratulations. 30 students, 170 students in what? That's 14 months?

EVAN: Yeah.

GEORGE: That's like you could really just reach out and give yourself all a good pat on the back. Yeah, wow, that is truly amazing. How's business and life changed since that happening?

ERICA: Yes, it's still a learning curve for us. I was just saying the other day because we've also got a yoga program. We've put in there as well. I was saying to one of our yoga students, he's also a business owner in his own field, just say, “Yeah, it's just been a constant evolution of just trying to figure out where our rhythm is.”

I just made a little passing comment, and Evan picked up on it and said, “Yeah, it's interesting that you said that.” We're still breaking away from that norm of social pressure, perceived social expectations, and what normal people do, whereas the rhythm that you have in a week or in your life where it's like you work your job on the weekends, you have the time to do housework or whatever you need to do and recharge, and then you go back to work.

I realized that I think deep down, I'm still actually trying to fit my – I'm just speaking to myself now – my idea, my model of how to live life in that framework. But all along, I know I never wanted to do that. I've always been escaping that, but I actually still had that framework in the back of my mind and trying to break out of that.

The reason why I say that is because I've just got to look at the reality of what we've created here and the way our natural rhythms are going with our business. And you know, I've noticed Saturdays for us is a huge day. It's impossible to do anything else, and it's an important day.

We have lots of late nights with the kids. Evan has brought four kids to the mix, and two of them are training quite a lot. They're there like four days a week, and by choice, 12-year-old, he's now the day he doesn't have to be there. He's actually volunteering to catch the bus to train and to help out with the classes after school.  He’s just showing up now, which is great.

So yeah, we've got a lot of late nights, school nights, dinner at night. It's just the season we're in at the moment, and part of me was like, I'm feeling a little bit guilty about that. Gosh, are we doing the right thing here? They're working hard with us and for us.

But on the flip side, I'm seeing them grow, seeing how much they're benefiting from it, their confidence, dealing with people, their ability, their capacity to handle a lot of stuff, the pressure of performing, so to speak. It's just done them so good.

GEORGE: You've inspired them.

ERICA: Yeah, well, they're also seeing us work, that's also helping. Just really getting out of that, the normal framework of how most people in society operate. It's taken me a long, long time. It's really weird because I come from that music background as well.

Still trying to break out of it, and I was still trying to fit myself into there. I haven't really answered your question other than it's acceptance. Acceptance that the way we've chosen to live our life is different from society.

And then, just really, truly having a look at what we want and how we want to create it and just forgetting about what the rest of the world says and saying, what is it that we're creating here? What does our life look like? What truly is going to work for us based on our vision?

EVAN: Yeah. I think the way to sum that up is there's a conventional path, and then there's non-conventional paths. Everybody wants a non-conventional path for the most part. Not everybody, but a lot of people, they choose a non-conventional path, but then everything that we've learned is from somebody that's on a conventional path.

It's from somebody that has been educated by somebody that's on a conventional path. You've got this battle rather than looking at it as normal versus weird, right?  Because if you ask me wanting to sell your whole life for a paycheck, working hours and hours and hours to make somebody else's family successful, and you spend 50 years selling your whole life for that, to me, that's weird.

But then we come to this challenge because as we start to break away from that conventional path, our identity is really challenged. I think that's how I would answer your question is that I know that we're not where we need to be to be able to make the impact that we want to have. It comes down to us and really our identity. I will hold back on the marketing or close it all down because I started getting overwhelmed.

Then I need to rebuild myself and get myself going, and this is where the Partners community comes into it because this is not about nuts and bolts. This is about other martial arts school owners that are going through the same journey that can help normalize that. You don't even have to discuss it because you just know. When you're speaking with somebody, you know that they know.

You have that feeling of, “Okay, I understand.” Then, when you put a situation out or a challenge that you're dealing with in the group, there's a whole bunch of people there that have been through the same thing, and that can really help normalize that non-conventional path, which in turn gives you just that fine-tune that you need and that confidence that you need to just go for it.

Like a little bit like the two a week. Understanding that two a week is actually the right thing. I'm doing the right thing here. I'm not doing it because I'm trying to actually take somebody's money, more of somebody's money. I'm doing it because if I do less, I'm actually ripping them off.

You're not meaning to rip them off, but I’m selling them on a fantasy instead of an actual practical program that can help them achieve their goals.

GEORGE: So, you touched on vision there, Erika. What is the vision? What is next for Evan and Erika? Getting married soon? Congrats.

ERICA: Yeah.

GEORGE: Beyond that, what's the vision? Where do you see you can play martial arts headed?

ERICA: I can really only speak for myself, But I think we're on a par. I guess when I think about my life and my journey, I want to create a life where being fit and healthy is super important. Being financially independent is super important because I want to be in control of my time and how I invest my time.

And so, I want to set up a life where I don't want to have to just rock up to work to pay the bills, and that's my life. It's got to have more meaning to that. And I want to tie it into the way I just live life. That's it. I'm just living life.

I'm not out there just trying to pay the bills, which is what so many people do.  So, creating a community, I guess, because we've got a few other things going on, but specifically around martial arts, I really do love training and do see the value that it can have in the community. And I think the more people that get involved, I think just the better, really. In a way, it's a bit selfish.

So, if we can grow a successful school that we can set up and have a fantastic community around that, at that some point, it's not just a hundred percent reliant on Evan and I. We're able to step away from it and be a bit more choosy on how many classes we teach because we've got other people who have come up, just black belts, they're now qualified instructors. If they've got a vision to create their own dojo, we can help them set that. But that's just growing our community.

But just establishing that community, setting ourselves up financially so that we can live the life that we want and train when we want, but also having done that, knowing that we've really created some great value within the community.

EVAN: Yeah. I think that's essentially it. And it comes down to also the legacy aspect of that of raising up other leaders. Because there's more of what we do within the dojo, and I know this is the powerful thing about martial arts is, you can just train in martial arts, and that will improve your character. But then when you show in a character development program specifically for the kids, but also right through, you start changing lives.

You start…Dave Kovar, right? He says to his students, “How much is this punch worth?” And they're like, one says, “A million dollars.” And then another one says, “Oh, $5,000,000.” And he says, “No. You know what? This punch is actually worth nothing.  It's just a punch.  But your ability to focus, that's a six-figure paycheck in a job in 10 years for you.”

If you can build these things, you start changing society. You start filling that gap. The world is a crazy place at the moment, and we're all dealing with technology. It probably took us 50 years to work out. It would be a great idea to put a seatbelt in the back of the car. I mean, how many human?

GEORGE: Never when I was a kid, yeah.

EVAN: That's right. So, learning how to adapt to technology is huge. How that's affecting people's anxiety levels, and their depression levels, and their ability to focus and concentrate is massive for helping people to achieve the ultimate goal, which is happiness, right?

ERICA: Yeah.

EVAN: So that, in essence, is what we do at the very essence. And so, you can have everything that you want. And one mentor of mine, a business mentor, he was very well set up, then he got chronic fatigue. And he literally had a life that we talk about where he could travel; he built a large company, he had lots of investments, he was financially set, then chronic fatigue, then went through a divorce, then couldn't actually get out of bed in the morning. But he had it all, as far as what we think.

And then what I learned is I said to him, “So why do you do what you do?” And he said, “Well, for us, it's the ability to impact and wake up in the morning and be able to make a difference.” And that goes beyond, I think. Once you’ve got the money piece sorted out, then it's into the significance piece. You're creating a life that is significant to you by the number of other people that you've been able to impact.

GEORGE: Love it. Awesome. I have one last question for you. Who would you recommend Partners to and why?

ERICA: I think as we go along with what we've been talking about, if you love martial arts, firstly, you've got a vision to create a different life, and you've got the courage to, I encourage you to have the courage, just borrow a bit of courage from someone else to just really act out on that dream and that vision.

You’ve absolutely got to reach out to Partners because, like Evan said, you need that community. And if you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together. And having that community of people who are on that same journey is just absolutely integral because, without them, you're going to be blown by the winds, the storms of life.

Also, the resources that you provide, George, is just absolutely phenomenal. If you've just got a little bit of a dream, give it a shot.

EVAN: Yeah. And hey, it all comes down to, you won't regret the investment you make in yourself. You don't need to reinvent the wheel here. There's plenty of creative opportunity, running your business without having to reinvent the wheel. Like they say, you can borrow from what other people are doing really well.

I think that's the thing. If anybody wants to go to the next level, then this is for them. As a martial arts school owner, this, this is a great place to start. Once again, just touching on what you talked about earlier with the, what do you call that?

GEORGE: Attract, increase, retain.

EVAN: So, the genius model for martial arts school owners. That is brilliant because no matter where you are, whether you've got 15 people or whether you've got 1500 people in your martial arts community, you can plug into that genius model, and understand how to go to the next level.

It's not necessarily about just small school, struggling school owners. It's actually, what I've found is most of the people in the community may have started out that way, but they don't stay that way for very long. So, yeah, we very appreciate you, George. Thank you so much for having us on the show.

GEORGE: That's awesome. Thanks so much.

EVAN: Thank you for having us as part of your community.

GEORGE: You are most welcome. And just on that genius model, that's the model, what it's called. I call it The School Scale Plan. I've got a 15-minute video that I actually break it down in each component of how that works. I'll leave a link to that in the show notes, martialartsmedia.com/152, which is the number of this episode.

Can we make a deal?

EVAN: Sure.

GEORGE: That I have you back on the podcast when, what is the next milestone for you?

EVAN: Well, I think 200, but that's probably a bit too close.

GEORGE: We're not talking about next week's goal. We're talking about like…

ERICA: I mean, 250 is the next milestone for us.

EVAN: There's a lot to go under the bridge to go from where we are to 250 because things change.

GEORGE: A hundred percent.

EVAN: We've observed that with a lot of the other people we've gotten access to through this community. So, there’s a big difference between somebody running a school with 150 students and that next level up, that next jump, because you can't do it on your own. So, yeah, maybe we can have a chat.

GEORGE: There we go. We'll do that. Well, Evan, Erica, thanks so much. Been great having you on the show, and I'll see you guys on the calls, and we'll chat soon.

ERICA: Fantastic. Thank you, George.

EVAN: Thanks, George.

 

 

 

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Breaking down the price barrier: Are your martial arts tuition fees simply too cheap? Are you undervaluing your classes? There’s poison in the pricing, and it might not be what you think.

IN THIS EPISODE:

• The stigma surrounding martial arts schools that charge premium prices
• The Myth of the “McDojo” label often given to successful martial arts schools 
• Overcoming the mindset blocks around martial arts tuition fees
• How to charge your worth and price your martial arts classes to represent it’s true value
• And more

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

 

TRANSCRIPTION

Hey, it's George Fourie. Welcome to another Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast. But today I want to talk about the poison in pricing for martial arts classes, for martial arts tuition.

Are martial arts classes just way too cheap? Are martial arts school owners charging way too much for their classes and tuition? Are they just ripping people off? Are people getting the value for what they are paying? Or are they the dreaded controversial McDojo if they charge too much? 

All right! Lots to unpack here. I will dive deep into this, probably ruffling a few feathers in my take on this, but it needs to be said and unpacked. So, let's do this.

For show notes, for the transcript of this episode, and all links mentioned, go to martialartsmedia.com/151. Let's jump in. 

If you've listened to my podcast for a while, okay if you haven't, but we talk a lot about marketing, lead generation, and getting and attracting new students for martial arts schools. That is the primary conversation because I guess in a way, I'm a little bit known for it.

People always come to me for that. But here's what's interesting: the first conversation that I had when we onboard martial arts schools into our Partners program was not about any marketing. We're always talking about offers and we're always talking about pricing.

It's probably the conversation that's valued the least, but it makes the biggest impact because when we fix this in a strategic way that's without selling your soul and all these limited negative beliefs that come up, providing good value and charging a premium, good premium rate for what your classes are worth.

It makes a huge impact because martial arts school owners come up with the idea that they need all these hundreds of students to hit their income goal to have a decent life and be able to provide their martial arts services without having to have a job, a side job to keep the dream alive, etc. 

You know, for martial arts school owners that want to do this full-time. They have this idea of all these students they need and all of a sudden, we half that by just tweaking the numbers, changing the terms, changing how we go about all this.

Now I want to address a few things that come up with us. First up, I probably want to say that there is no wrong and no judgment in any martial arts school owner who provides a great service, and loves what they do. They serve the art of what they do and they want to share that and maybe they just want to do it part time and maybe they just want to keep it as a hobby.

That is all awesome and great, but… it's always a but, right? What I don't agree with is throwing rocks at martial arts schools and labeling them McDojo or whatever simply because they are more successful than said martial arts school owner, right? 

It seems to be a common thing that schools that charge a premium get hated on and just because they are more successful than someone else, automatically they just get labeled as a scam, they're ripping people off, etc. 

Now, I've been working with martial arts school owners for 10 plus years, 12 plus years, and I can tell you that from my experience, I have yet to see that McDojo whatever people are getting ripped off, all the guys that are charging the premium prices deliver the best service, they got more time to devote to martial arts, they got more time to spend with their students, and they can provide so much more value because they are charging a premium price. So, I've only seen the opposite.

I've never seen this belt factory in all these terms that are being discussed. Do I say that they don't exist? Of course, they probably exist. Of course, some people probably water down their martial arts.

But I think it's so quick to just throw this label and throw others under the bus for them to be successful. Now, I run Facebook ads to promote what we do, and I've got a free training, a free 15-minute training, where we go over The School Scale Plan™ and this has helped a bunch of our clients achieve a lot of success. I share it, and it's a free 15-minute training.

And if I will share it below, there is also an offer for two of our best training that we've packaged together. So, it is present, but the training is not about the offer, the training is 100% free. Don't insult the training before you know, just because there's an offer, there is it's okay to buy stuff and invest in stuff.

If it is worth your while, it's also okay to ignore it if it's not right. So, I'm running ads for this training that we do. And I find the comments really, really interesting.

It's very telling why a lot of people are successful and others aren't. If this is you and it rubs you up the wrong way, you can hate on me, or you can maybe take it to heart. And maybe it's something that we should address because I'm not perfect.

I know nobody's perfect. We've all got room to learn. We've all got room to grow.

I'm a guy who invests a ton of money and resources into coaching and improving myself on a day-to-day basis, whether that's with skills for marketing, whether that's into my martial arts, whatever it is, I invest a lot of time and money to be that 1%, 2% better on a day to day basis. 

So, there's this constant evolvement of just improving myself and you as a martial artist, I'm sure you're the same, right? So back to the comments on my ads. Now, for me, again, there's a lesson in that because can I just improve my ads and word it in a better way that communicates the value and what we are trying to do?

But then there is just the poison in the pricing, and this attitude that it's somehow noble to be poor. It's somehow noble to be the cheapest. And the minute anybody charges a premium, it means that they are a McDojo and ripping people off.

I think it's a lot of garbage. I think it's a lot of lack of personal responsibility can you provide more value? Can you provide a better service by charging more fees? Because how can you have all these instructors? How can you train your instructors? How can you have the best equipment? How can you invest in it as a business if you are the cheapest? Price in itself has value. I mean, you can't tell me you're the best and the cheapest.

Nothing in the world works like that. If you go to buy a Mercedes versus a Kia, they're both great cars, but which one is better? Well, again, probably a preference, right? But the price in itself does carry a lot of value to that. 

And more price means you can deliver a better service because if you can't make the rent and you can't pay for the mats and you can't pay for your training and you can't pay your staff, then nobody's showing up 100% to deliver the best that they can. Because there are so many other commitments taken up in life.

Again, if that's what wants to be done, there's nothing wrong with it. Just don't hate on the guys who are investing in themselves, investing in their staff, investing in their equipment, and building a business so that they can impact more people. 

I mean, if martial arts is about impacting people, wouldn't you want to impact more? I mean, that's the thing that drew me to martial arts was the impact, seeing what was happening when my son was on the mats and training and seeing how much impact martial arts has for young people, for people, for me at the time as well, it changes lives.

And I wanted to be part of that. I wanted to be part of martial arts changing lives. Can we get the message of martial arts across to more people? So, I see this war in the comments of “I charge $4 a class. At least I'm honest.” 

I'm like, at least I'm honest. Is this somehow a link to honesty and charging what you're worth? Are we maybe just underselling ourselves and we don't know how to value what our martial arts classes are about? I want you to think about that.

I want you to ponder on this. Now, what is the solution? I don't want to make this whole podcast about a rant and the downside. Let's flip the lid.

What if we do want to raise our prices? What if we do want to be part of the solution and offer a premium and offer classes at a sophisticated rate? Before I go there, I'll just loop back into one thing. The biggest issue, let's say we're trying to fix this issue of pricing. The first issue that we have is comparison.

I frequently hear martial arts go on to say, well, we only have the hall, etc. Bob's martial arts next door has full-time facilities so they can charge more. Well, maybe, maybe not.

But where is the true value of martial arts coming from? Where's the true value coming from? Is it the equipment? Is it the facilities? That gives a higher perceived value and it's nice to be in the owned facilities with the air con and nice mats and clean toilets versus the hall, right? 

So, there is that. But where is the true value? The true value of martial arts lives in the mind of the person who is starting. And that could be different for anyone because it could be, I want to learn self-defense, I had something bad happen and I want to learn self-defense.

So, there's a bigger urgency for me. I have a child that lacks confidence and wants to be better. Everybody wants the best for their children, right? Now, if you are the expert martial arts school owner and I bring my child to you and you discover that this is my real need because I might not tell you, but you're the expert and you realize that I have a child that I'm concerned about.

I'm concerned about their well-being, their confidence, how they're going to go through school, how they're going to go through life. And you can articulate that problem better than anyone else and then show me exactly the process that you take your students through. 

And you could tell me success stories of your other students that have gone through the same training and how they become role models in their community or, you know, improve at their school or whatever the success story is.

I'm not asking about price anymore, right? I'm not going to say, well, XYZ martial arts school charges five bucks less or only two bucks a class. No, because you're the expert, you're the authority. I want to give you money, right? Because that's where the value lies. If you want to compare, go and do a real comparison.

I live in Australia. I just enrolled my daughter in gymnastics. It was a six-month waiting list.

She gets only one class a week and it works out $280 for 10 classes, so $28 per class. My daughter goes to swimming. That's kind of the equivalent, right, for a 30-minute class.

So, if you want to do a real comparison, go look at what people are charging for essentials, well, in Australia, essential skills are swimming, and gymnastics, it's a great sport, but think how essential martial arts is for kids and their well-being. And I do feel that people should charge the equivalent. So, let me turn this into a lesson.

How can you look at improving your pricing? Well, question that voice inside. When you raise your price and you try and push up the number, how does that make you feel? What is the answer that you can come up with? How do you justify that to yourself? 

Because here's the thing, this is the real conversations we have, right? It's not about the martial arts itself. The real hard conversations that we have in our Partners Onboarding Program are the beliefs, the conversation you have about yourself, about the value that you provide to your students.

So, question that. Maybe you need someone like a coach to speak to. If you don't have one, you can reach out to me on Facebook.

I'm happy to have that conversation with you and really unpack that and see how we raise your perception about what you deliver so that you can charge a better premium. So why do we do this first? Because if you want to run ads and you want to increase your student base, we can't do that if your pricing is too low. 

If there's not going to be a return on investment because you've got charging, paying money for ads and you've got super low fees and the costs of the ad exceed your pricing it's not going to work, right? So, to make sure that ads are profitable, this is the conversation that we have first and foremost.

What can you do to fix things? Question your beliefs. You can't hate successful school owners and then expect to magically become one. You can't hate on them for making money and then somehow feel that your identity will adapt and become one, become something you hate, right? 

So, the conversation to have is about how you fix your perception and belief about money and about what value is. Change that conversation in your mind first because we can't grow into what we hate and what we despise.

And here's the beauty, you could change your price tomorrow and you don't have to rip off the band-aid, you could just start new pricing with new students, try it on, see how it feels, present it to a few people, and if you get an objection, the question to ask yourself is are you getting an objection because the market says it's not the right price or because you don't believe, you still don't believe that it is the right price and your belief is just transferring over to them. 

On the flip side, you just need one student to say yes, two students to say yes, and all of a sudden, you've changed your business, you've changed the future of your business, the profit of your business, which means you can invest more into your martial arts training. If you want to take that trip to Thailand and go train, Brazil, wherever it is, or Japan, and you want to invest in training, now you can.

You can employ that instructor instead of getting them to just be a backup instructor or assistant instructor for free now that you can pay them. You can do all these things to move your business forward with simple price economics and you know what, your students will probably thank you for it and feel that they are getting way more value in return. Anyway, hope that helps. See you in the next podcast. 

 

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