martial arts student retention Archives – Martial Arts Media™ | Marketing For Martial Arts Schools With George Fourie

149 – What Happens When All Your Martial Arts Leads Are “Tire-Kickers”

March 27, 2024 by George Fourie Leave a Comment

If you’re running Facebook ads and all your martial arts leads are tire-kickers, your problem might be two-fold. Here’s the fix.

IN THIS EPISODE:

What’s potentially causing the wrong quality of martial arts leads
The pitfall of labeling your martial arts prospects as tire-kickers
How better Facebook ads attract better martial arts prospects
Fixing low-quality martial arts leads with paid trials
And more

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

TRANSCRIPTION

Hey there, George Fourie here. Welcome to another Martial Arts Media™ Business podcast. Today, I want to talk about your martial arts leads being tire-kickers. What if they are all tire-kickers, non-responsive, or just the wrong demographic or bad quality when you are running Facebook ads, Google ads, or from any other marketing source?

I’m going to dive into the details with a few little twists to this conversation. For show notes and all the resources of this podcast, head over to martialartsmedia.com/149. Let's jump in.

What happens when all my leads are tire-kickers? They inquired via the website, Facebook ads, or Google ads. They've put their hand up, disappeared, or never put their hand up. We can't get hold of them, and that's that. All the leads are tire-kickers, or they are responsive, but they're just the wrong type of lead.

They won't fit the culture of your club, or they won't be fit for the products that you have, the martial arts services that you offer, and the classes that you run. These are all things that can be fixed within your targeting, quality, and messaging. But here's the danger. I want to address the danger of labeling all your prospects as tire-kickers.

A few of my members in our Partners group brought this up: I love you, and you're not being singled out. Actually, I can count about six or seven encounters where this has come up, and that's just this year. So, you're definitely not being singled out. This is done with love. I hope that this is helpful for you and for you, the listener, as well.

Labeling all your leads as tire-kickers. Here's the danger. Let's say you're running an ad campaign, and you've got 20 to 30 leads in your CRM. It's just a list of names. And you get one bad response, two bad, three, and all of a sudden, your sales mojo motivation dies out.

And you're like, “Oh, really?” They’re all tire-kickers. Maybe it was only three, maybe it was five, but all of a sudden, you give everybody this unanimous label. Now, what if you took those 20 to 30 people off the list and put them all in a room together, all in a room together, or all on the mats? And you looked at all these people, all their faces, and they all put their hand up.

They responded to your ad, right? Can you look them all in the eye and say, “You're all tire-kickers. All of you are wasting my time. It's like all of you got together and collectively decided that you're going to waste my time.” A bit unrealistic, right? But it's very easy for us to look at a lead list and then throw a label out.

The danger that I want to address is it's their fault and not yours. So, immediately, you relinquish all responsibility for the leads, not furthering the conversation or signing up, and it's their fault and not yours. Now, I'm not here to debate whether that's true or not because there can be parts where it's their fault.

But if it's all their fault, you've got no room for improvement. They've got nothing that you can fix. You could never really say it's them. And yep, I come from an old school sales training where things were beaten down into my brain, not literally, but the message was enforced all the time—that it's never about the prospect.

You're the sales guy. It's your job to be persuasive, engaging, have charisma, and actually engage in a relationship. Sell the program and actually get them interested. Uncover the underlying objections or problems that they are facing and the reason why they put their hand up. Maybe they are super paranoid about taking this first step.

There's a lot there to unpack. This whole process between them putting their hand up and saying, “Hey, I'm interested,” and to actually go ahead, it can be a little fragile process. And so, we have to take it with care that this person is stepping potentially into an unknown territory.

They've never trained in martial arts before. They don't know what it's about. They've seen people beating each other up at UFC. They've got these perceived concepts of what it can be like completely untrue, but they have all these things going on, or it's super personal, right? There's something that happened in their life that they really need this.

And sure, as hell, they're not going to tell you after one message or phone call. We have to respect that part of all this. So, how do you get better at this? Well, a 100% percent responsibility. 100% responsibility. It's your responsibility to fix it. Let's look at a few examples. All right.

Well, you are running an ad campaign. You're running an ad campaign, and maybe you have the luxury of getting hundreds of leads. But the quality is bad, and that could be for demographics. You live in an area that's a low socioeconomic area, and it's just the quality of leads that you get are not people that are going to afford your services.

If that's the case, well, then you've got to look at the options to mitigate that. A couple of things that you can do is have a good front-end paid trial offer, or we do things like in Messenger, where we use gated questions. We ask people if they can afford to invest in their health, the well-being of their kids, themselves, and so forth.

If that is a problem, we can address that and modify that as we go. If it's messaging, well, messaging can be fixed by knowing the process of how to take people from that first engagement and position yourself as an authority. Make sure you appear as a human being, not just a company logo.

I'm talking about Facebook ads here. If you're running Facebook ads, you're running it to a page; all that they see is a logo. They don't see a human. So, you got to insert some human elements in it—not just an AI bot, real human elements—so that people know that they're talking to a human, and that way, you get a cool human interaction.

A further danger I see with the disconnect is the more disconnected you want to be from the actual marketing, the more this belief of an unsatisfaction of the quality of the leads and labeling people as tire-kickers. It really comes up because, number one, if you're disconnected from the marketing, you might be getting some cookie-cutter ad from an ad agency or something that you saw somebody else do it, run on Facebook.

You thought that was cool. But a lot of that stuff misses a lot of depth. A lot of depth of who are you? What makes you unique? Especially if they're seeing a lot of martial arts ads, right? What makes you stand out? What makes you so special? What makes you better than all of them?

And then, if you've got somebody helping you with ads, well, there's got to be a bit of a feedback loop because if on the front-end, and we see this often, that we look at ads and it looks like the ads are doing great because of the numbers and we see like 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 leads come through. But on the back end, they're not converting.

If that's the case, there needs to be a feedback loop that you can speak to someone like a coach or an agency that addresses the objections that are coming up on the mats. You can take that and you can add that to your ads, and keep optimizing your message.

That is the only real way to do it. There's no magic flick of the switch. I believe it's good to have models of ads that work. I mean, that's how we start. When we start with our school owners in our Partners program, rolling out ads is easy because we've done it so many times. Getting started is really easy, and getting some traction is easy, but getting real, real traction takes some refinement and takes some depth.

So, what can you fix? Targeting, messaging. If you're getting the wrong quality of leads, make sure you increase that. If leads are non-responsive, then make sure that you have enough touch points available where you can follow up. We go Messenger, we go SMS, phone, as well as email. That is four places where we can actually communicate with them from four options.

Most of that is automated except for the phone call, but that gives you a lot of touch points where you can follow up and make sure that you get hold of your leads. If you're following up through text, then make sure that you are positioning yourself as the expert. You know how to ask the questions and move people from curious to serious to sign up.

For us in our Partners program, we use a system. We call The Messenger Signup Method, and it really, really works well in the sense of when people don't want to pick up the phone because maybe they don't like being sold, or I've had about four phone calls today that I haven't answered. It's just because I don't. It's great to fly under the radar.

If you know how to have a conversation via text and get your paid trials or appointments booked, it's definitely the way to go. Anyway, I hope that's helpful. I'll catch you in the next episode.

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

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148 – 3 Ways To Increase Your Show-Up Rate For Martial Arts Trial Appointments

March 12, 2024 by George Fourie Leave a Comment

Here’s how using an irresistible martial arts offer can almost completely squash your no-show rate for martial arts trial appointments.

IN THIS EPISODE:

Adding a human touch to automated messages with martial arts prospects
How to write a successful follow-up email sequence
Comparing free and paid martial arts trials
Using high-converting landing pages when you’re time-poor
Using The Messenger Signup Method to sign up prospects
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. Today, I'm going to be talking about how to reduce no-shows. Prospect inquires, books a trial appointment with you, but then ghost you; they don't show up. And sometimes, it's really hard to re-engage and get the conversation back going and get them to reschedule.

So, I'm going to be talking about a couple of ways that you can reduce no-shows, almost eliminate them completely. Some are going to be simpler, and some are going to be a little bit more complex. There's going to be a few options for you to consider. I'm going to cover those. Make sure to head over to martialartsmedia.com/148. That is where we've got the show notes, downloads, and everything for this episode. Head over there, and hey, let's jump in.

Okay, some context first. I was talking at a martial arts business event in Texas late last year, that’s 2023 and was chatting to a lot of martial arts business owners that were experiencing a lot of no-shows. A bunch of these guys was using different types of marketing agencies and just various problems that were coming up, mainly no-shows.

Out of the 10 leads that they were getting, only three were actually showing up—three to four. I’m kind of shocked, to be honest. That's like a really, really high no-show, right? So, there are a few things that you can do to mitigate this now. There are a couple of dangers and a couple of things to consider here, right?

If you are trying to automate things as much as possible and be as hands-off as possible, that might be the price that you're going to pay, right? Is that you're going to have some no-shows, and there's going to be little investment of time and following up and doing things, but you're going to get fewer leads. You're going to be paying a lot more for leads to show up. That's just going to be the nature of the beast for you.

But, if you're keen to be a bit more invested and thinking, “Well, I want to get my dollars’ worth.” Like, “I want to really reduce the cost per acquisition of getting these students in, really want to bring that cost down, control it.” There are a couple of things that you can do, so let's explore them.

Number one is, first up, just looking at the automation that happens, your automated follow-up sequences. What happens once a new trial, a parent or an adult books a trial to come and take their first class with you? What happens from that point?

Are they getting automated email messages instantly and then timed all the way to their appointment? Are they getting text messages or follow-ups? What else? Is there some personalization? Maybe it's a real quick, like a video message—something that is a bit more personal. Because, let's face it, we're living in a world of AI automation, and everything is getting automated.

The more human elements are getting removed, the more kind of numb you get to the messaging, right? Because it's almost like you're not responsible for answering to a human. So, you feel off the hook if you don't stick to your word for the machine, right? The more personalization you're going to remove from that process, you're probably going to be experiencing some form of no-shows. So, that's the first thing to look at.

Look at what you can automate, but rather than automate, is there some personalization that you can do? It could be just grabbing the phone, doing a quick video message, and saying, “Hey, Johnny, I saw you're booked in for a class on X, Y, Z day. I’m really looking forward to meeting you. So is the team.” Whatever you want to do, right? Or show them around, etc.

If you don't want to be that specific, the way you can get out of that is to say, “Hey, George. I just wanted to say thanks so much for booking your class.” You can introduce yourself, but make it a bit more automated, but still have a personal feel to it. That's one thing you can do, right? Optimize your automation, but then insert some form of personalization that makes it a bit more personal if that’s what you want—human to human. All right. That's option number one.

Option number two is to change your trial. Change your trial format to a paid trial system. If you're running free trials, this is pretty much what's going to be happening, right? Is that booking for the first appointment? When somebody is paying for the trial, and it's a paid trial, then that does change the concept.

Now, I've spoken a lot about paid trials on this podcast, not going to go into that right now. I will leave some links in the show notes where you can access those. You know, just looking at the comparison of free and paid trials. But what the paid trial is going to do for you is if you are selling a paid trial and you actually focus on collecting the money upfront, now you've got a prospect that is first up a customer. They've given you money, and they're going to be way more committed, obviously, to show up.

Using a paid trial, but then actually getting them to commit and making the payment before coming, that's going to really increase your shop. It's probably going to solve the problem 100% completely. Now, pros and cons to this: you've got to sell the trial and collect the money. How do you do this?

Well, with our ads, what we mainly focus on is what we call The Messenger Signup Method, which is a system that we use to sign prospects up via text; flies under the radar, and you're going from taking prospects from curious to serious to signed up. That is a process we take. We sell the trial first, collect the money, and then get them to book the trial afterward, right?

They’re already financially invested before booking the trial appointment. That changes the frame completely, right? Because if someone's giving you a couple of dollars, it means that the trust element is out of the way. They feel comfortable enough to actually give you money, and it's going to definitely increase your show-up rates.

Number three, what if you don't want to be messaging people and you don't want to be spending any time on the follow-up? This can be done, but you must be aware of the fact that you're going to need to spend some money to collect data to be able to optimize this process. What are we doing here? In this process, we are running a paid trial with the numbers here are important.

We play with different numbers to make this a complete no-brainer offer and make it really easy for people to buy, and we send them directly to a landing page. So, they go directly to a landing page. The landing page does all the selling of the paid trial for you. It's got proof of testimonials. It’s got the irresistible offer worded in the right way so that it communicates value, and people can go to the page directly and buy the paid trial.

So, the benefit here is you've taken all human elements out of it. The prospects have actually got to buy it. The cons are if you don't know how to structure a page with all the correct elements that are going to make it convert, then you're going to be testing for a long time. We've done a lot of tests on this.

We stopped tracking that formula, that structure at about eight or 9000 trials. We stopped tracking it. Now, we've simplified it and we keep optimizing it a lot more. We've got a lot of data behind it. It is 100% doable. You've got to be in mind in the beginning, that you're probably going to pay a bit more to acquire a student because you've got to optimize the landing pages.

The risky part of this is, if you don't know what you're doing, don't do it. I won't be like–what's the right word? I won't boast or say I know everything because I think I know enough to know that I still don't know anything because the data decides. Even for us, we can put our best foot forward, and our best tests, and then we still have to optimize.

We still need to optimize every time there's a hundred clicks on every page. We still need to look, compare, and do optimization, but when you hit that sweet spot, it definitely is super helpful. Those are the strategies.

So, real quick, just for a recap: Improve your automation and add some human element to it. Number two, go for a paid trial and start supporting the sale via messenger by selling the paid trial. Number three is to get a well-designed landing page. You can ask us about how that works and which formulas, and concepts work, and go for it that way.

A couple of things to note: Things that we've got that will definitely help our irresistible martial arts offer formula, how to structure a paid trial in the right way with the right numbers, and we've got a few shortcuts on the right numbers that convert the best, and then using The Messenger Signup Method and our landing page structure for paid trials. That's it.

I hope that is helpful. Any questions should be a message where you listen to this episode and I'll catch you on the next one.

Have a good one. Cheers.

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

Enjoyed the show? Get more martial arts business tips when you subscribe on iTunes, listen on Spotify, or watch and subscribe on Youtube.

147 – Buzz Durkin: The Martial Arts Master Of Lifetime Student Value

January 3, 2024 by George Fourie Leave a Comment

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Discover how Buzz Durkin, the headmaster of Uechiryu Karate, effortlessly keeps martial arts students for as long as 52 years.

IN THIS EPISODE:

Internal marketing – a strategy used by Buzz Durkin to attract new students
Community building within a martial arts school
Teaching beyond physical skills and the importance of using the physical curriculum
What is AAA theory – Awareness, Appreciation, and Action, and how is it important to martial arts students
An overview of Buzz Durkin’s Success is Waiting: The Martial Arts School Owner's Guide to Teaching, Business, and Life book
Charging fair tuition for martial arts classes
And more

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

TRANSCRIPTION

GEORGE: Hey, it's George Fourie. Welcome to the Martial Arts Media™ Business podcast. Today, I am interviewing a true master in martial arts and business, Buzz Durkin. I was really fortunate to spend some time with Buzz when I hosted our Martial Arts Media™ Intensive event, which was part of the Bushi Ban Power Week hosted by none other than Grandmaster Zulfi Ahmed.

As part of the Bushi Ban Power Week, we hosted the Martial Arts Media™ Intensive, and I had Buzz share a talk in regards to retention and keeping students for life and how they basically work all their marketing from the ground up. I was so inspired by the speech; well, so was everyone else. He got a true standing ovation, and I invited him to speak at one of our events online, which is the Partners Intensive. Our members were just blown away by the information. I wanted to bring that over to you as part of the podcast, so I'm going to share a video on this page. If you want to go visit it, martialartsmedia.com/147.

Buzz shared a video during his talk showing how every Saturday, how much experience, and how many black belts they have. It ranged from four years to, I think, 44 years of experience, and I can't recall counting. There were at least 20, 30, got to be like 30 people at least.

Anyway, Buzz is truly a master at keeping it simple, keeping students for life, and he's got some valuable strategies to share. So, without further ado, jump in all the show notes on martialartsmedia.com/147. That’s the numbers one, four, seven. Jump in. Let's go.

GEORGE: Buzz Durkin, welcome to the Martial Arts Media™ Business podcast.

BUZZ: It's my pleasure to be here. I'm happy to be here with you, George.

GEORGE: Good to see you again, and we'll loop back to that story. But a question I always like to ask first is, what's the number one thing that you do to attract new students into your school?

BUZZ: Well, the number one thing we do after all these years that's evolved is internal marketing. We do internal marketing with some social presence, too. We do a lot of posting on Facebook, and Instagram, just about every day or at least every other day. Our main venue for acquiring new students is through internal marketing. Parent's nights out, pizza parties, and birthday parties, where we encourage our students to bring their friends, inviting their friends and school teachers to our black belt promotions.

So, we concentrate mainly on the student body that we have and how can we grow that family from within primarily.

GEORGE: Very interesting. So, everything from the inside out. And so, when it comes to promotions, you're still sort of doing a little bit of outbound because you're saying with the social and so forth, but the focus is what's happening internally and making that the message to attract more students?

BUZZ: Yes. We like to make our students raving fans, and we like to make our students want their friends to study and train with them, whether they’re five years old or 50 years old. So, we try and provide a high degree of value in every single class so that the students will want to talk about what a great experience they had. And like we say, we don't teach good classes here. Every class has to be a great class.

And I think the marketing– I think anything starts on the floor. I think it all starts with good instruction. You have to have something of substance that you're teaching, and you have to do it in an effective way. I think it all ebbs and flows on the quality of instruction on the floor. Everything should spring forth from that, I think.

GEORGE: I know you're the master at keeping students, and I want to tell this little backstory. So, we met officially for the first time at Grandmaster Zulfi's Bushi Ban Power Week, where we got to host our event during the Power Week, which was the Martial Arts Media™ Intensive. Buzz Durkin was one of the featured speakers. You shared a video during your talk that I can't recall how many students there were, and I'm probably, if that's okay with you, I'll share it within this podcast, just in the show notes so that people can see it.

But you had, I think I counted about at least 20, 25, 30 students that have been with you from four years to about 50 years. Is that right?

BUZZ: Yeah. Yeah. We let one junior black belt in there. There was one four years, yes, but that is correct. That's correct.

GEORGE: What keeps that level of community, unity, and commitment? Because I mean, yep. We love martial arts, and we love dedicating ourselves to the art, but staying to the course for that long, there's got to be something more to that, right?

BUZZ: Well, I think a lot of teachers think of the martial arts, regardless of style, of being one dimensional, physical, develop that side kick, develop that armbar, develop that spinning back kick. It's multi-dimensional. My philosophy has always been that if through your physical curriculum, through the physical curriculum of doing the side kick, the punch, et cetera, if by doing that, if you can show your students or the people who are studying with you how to develop mental, emotional, and even spiritual strength, they'll stay with you forever.

And the reason is they need their mental strength. They need that emotional strength more than they need the physical strength out in the real world. I mean, what is a student more likely to use on a daily basis? A spinning back kick or courtesy or self-control? So, I think the secret for us has been that we're able to use our physical curriculum and, through the physical curriculum, make the students aware of the fact that it helps them mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. When I say spiritually, I don't mean in a religious sense but in an attitudinal sense.

I think having an approach that is multi-dimensional, and everything's based on the physical curriculum that's why they come to us. That's why they do martial arts. They want to learn how to defend themselves, and that's critical. But that's not the end all be all if you want to keep students making it a part of their lives.

I think what happens is there's so much negativity out in the world. It can drain your batteries. It can make you whether you're an adult who has an obnoxious boss at work or whether you're a young person who's having a tough time in school, the outside world can drain your energy. I like to think of the people who come down to the dojo. It's recharged their batteries. Recharging.

Why are they being recharged? They're being recharged because they’re being in a supportive group. They're being with friendly people. They're being with cooperative people. They're being with people who want to get better like them, sharing the same goals, and that stuff doesn't get old. So physical alone gets old.

I'm the best bar in the dojo. I can beat everybody up in the dojo. So what? In the scheme of life, what does that mean? It's important to have those skills. I'm not saying that it isn't, but it doesn't get all that.

I need my self-control. Someone cut me off in traffic driving the car. Do I lose my temper, or can I take a deep breath? If a good teacher relates what's going on on the floor with these types of incidents outside the dojo, I think it's going to make people want to keep coming back. It's really a unique community that we all have.

It's more than lifting weights. It's more than going to the gym. It's a unique community where the body, the mind, and the spirit are all developed. And we all know this. I don't want to sound cliches, but it's important.

We have the ability to do that through our wonderful martial arts. The teachers that do that will find the students want to keep coming back to recharge their batteries. Keep coming back to recharge, and they'll use your dojo and your school as a place to do that. So that's what I have found, and that's what's worked well for us. So, it's not unusual on a Saturday morning for us to have 30 plus black belts, all of whom have been studying for at least 25 years.

And these aren't senseis. These are just people– adults who want to enjoy it. Another thing that happens when you take that approach is you develop a wonderful sense of community, a wonderful sense of, not to be too corny, but a wonderful sense of family. People like to come in and develop friendships over the years.

Some of the best friendships are through the dojo, coming to a class, and seeing my buddy I haven't seen in a week or a couple of nights. It's wonderful.

GEORGE: I love that. In a practical sense, we've got the direction; it's more about not so much about the physical, well, it is about the physical, but way more high level.

BUZZ: Physical plus.

GEORGE: Physical plus, right? So, let's talk about that plus, like, in a practical sense. Because you've got your curriculum, and you've got the things that you're teaching. How, on a practical level, do you teach all that on the mats?

BUZZ: Well, let's suppose we have a student who we know is lacking in confidence. We work with that student in developing confidence and saying how important confidence is in life, et cetera. So, when the students are ready, we set them up for success. We might have that student perform individually in front of the entire class. Set everyone off to the side and have the student do a particular technique, a different kata or kumite, or whatever.

And just by doing that, getting up in front of supportive, friendly, happy people, they gain confidence. Before that student would leave the middle of the floor, we'd say, “Now, that's the same confidence you can use in doing your sales project or your sales presentation tomorrow.”

Same thing with the kids. If someone's shy or introverted, we set them up so that they can come out of that shell a little by doing something, maybe in front of the class or in front of several of the teachers. And we always relate that to, “You can use that in school tomorrow, can't you?” or “You can use that at work. You see how easy you could do it?”

So, using the physical curriculum– and I don't want to sell that short. I mean, the students have to be in shape. If you teach fluff, they'll never come back. But if you can teach something that'll stick with them, mind, body, spirit. It's like, I really believe we need– everyone needs to be charged up.

There's so much that will drain. It’s support from one student to another. One of my favorite sayings is, “As the individual gets better, the class gets better. As the class gets better, the individual gets better.” It's a mutually symbiotic thing that the class gets better, and I'm a member of that class.

I can't help but get better physically, and mentally, showing more self-control. I mean, the self-control that a black belt may use working with a junior student, we articulate. That's the same self-control you're going to use X, Y, and Z outside the dojo, you know. The same type of fear that's overcome by sparring with someone in a safe way in the dojo is the same kind of fear you'll overcome when you have to do a project at work or things like that.

I know I sound like a broken record. I keep going back to it, but I think it's so important if, through your physical curriculum, you can develop it in your student’s physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional strength. We all need emotional strength. Let's face it. I think you'll be well-served, and students appreciate that. Students have become aware of how much the dojo has helped them, and even people who leave will come back.

I mean, this week alone, we had two black belts come back. One of whom has been away for 13 years. The other has been away for four years. So, they felt the need to get back into the camaraderie of the dojo, the support of the dojo, and the physical excellence of the dojo.

GEORGE: I love it. So, it's really subtle in a way you're teaching the physical, but always noticing where this applies in life.

BUZZ: Yes. Yes. And I think that's very important. It's my opinion. If it's just physical, physical is important, but if it's just physical, that's not a reason to keep a 45-year-old man who's been with, you know, it's got to be more than physical. Along with the physical. Am I making any sense?

GEORGE: Hundred percent. You apply. Talking Pasadena. I invited you over to speak to our Partners’ group online, and they were really thankful for that. Again, Buzz, you were the favorite of the event. I just got to tell you that.

BUZZ: You say that to everyone.

GEORGE: No. Well, you know, I've got to say, like, I know, I know. I know, we don't have egos in martial arts, right?

BUZZ: We martial artists don't have any ego, right?

GEORGE: No. Nothing. Not at all. But when you put up a three-day event, and you put in all the effort, and you hear that, you know, you weren’t the favorite, it's something that you've got to process. I'm kidding. But yeah, our members were really thankful for you sharing all the strategies and philosophies. One thing that stuck was a three-step process that you use within awareness and taking action. Do you mind sharing that?

BUZZ: Yeah, we call it AAA theory, and you have an awareness of what's going on, an appreciation for what's going on, and you take action. I think it's so important to be aware of what's going on at your school. Don't hide behind a desk. Don't hide in the office with the door locked. Having an awareness of what's going on. By the way, isn't that what we teach? We teach awareness on how to become more aware. So, awareness, appreciation, and action.

Our teachers are always looking for reasons to do that. That I used was, and this was not too long ago, I walked by the men's changing room before a class, and one of our students, who's been with us for a while, said, “I bought a new truck.” My ears picked up, and he was talking to his buddies in the changing room about how he's got this new truck. He's so thrilled with it. He's so happy with it. It's beautiful.

So, we came out to the dojo, and before class started, I said, “Hey, congratulations on your new truck. I heard you got a new truck.” “Oh, I did, Mr. Durkin. It was great.” I appreciated the fact that he was so enthusiastic about it, that he told his buddies about it, and that he was very excited about it. So, I showed an appreciation.

I said, “Congratulations. Good for you. I think that's wonderful.” Before I went home that night, I took out one of my little note cards and said– no, but I take it back. I took out one of my note cards and I said, “Congratulations, Dave, on your new truck.” The next morning, I went up to the local gas station up the street, and I got him a $50 gift card for a tank full of gas. Nowadays, a quarter tank full of gas.

I sent that $50 gift certificate with my personal little note, and I just wrote, “Happy motoring.” An old expression, happy motoring, and sent it off to him. And when he came in next week, he was telling everybody, “Oh my God. Look at what Mr. Durkin did. Look at the dojo did.” And I thought he was just so appreciative.

Now, here's the other side of the coin. He's a third-degree black belt. He's been with me a long time. His two children are junior black belts. All the income they have paid to the dojo. What's $50? It's like nothing. It was a no-brainer. It's $50 out of pocket versus thousands of dollars that he's paid on martial arts training for his children.

Another example is awareness. Not a class goes by. I'm not teaching a junior class, for instance, and I'll still go out and shake hands with all the parents. I think that's critical. I welcome them like I'd welcome them if they came to my house. And I saw a mother whose younger sibling was sitting next to her, who's not a student.

Her brother was on the floor as a youngster. And the mother said to me, “Look at little Joanie, she just got a Kindness Award. A Kindness Award from her class at her elementary school.” And I said, “That's great little Joanie. Congratulations.” I had an awareness. I was glad I found out about that. I showed appreciation for it.

I said, “That's very meaningful. That's what martial arts is about, too, being kind to people.” And before I went home for the night, I wrote a little note saying to Joanie care of her parents, of course. And I said, “Congratulations on getting your Kindness Award. That's wonderful.” Two, or three sentences.

Well, you would have thought the next time they came in that they won an Academy Award, you know, that the mother was thrilled and it was so nice. It's very interesting. I'm a strong believer in handwritten notes. What do we get in the mail? In America, we get bills, junk mail, and very little personal mail.

What we have found is when we send out these notes, so often they end up on the home refrigerator, tacked to the refrigerator for everyone to see. I call it the AAA, where you have an awareness of what's going on outside the school with your students and appreciate it. Take an appreciation for it even though it may not be that big a deal to you, and that's no good unless you take action and acknowledge it. I think we do a pretty good job of doing that, along with AAA theory – awareness, appreciation, and action.

GEORGE: It feels like the personal note always loops into this strategy, right? It’s always the thank you, the appreciation part. The action and appreciation part is always based on showing appreciation through physical notes. Almost always?

BUZZ: Almost always. I mean, depending on the situation. We'll make phone calls. George, this is going to sound really weird, and I don't want people listening to think I'm too weird, but it's not unusual. On certain students’ birthdays, we'll call them up and have two or three members of the staff sing birthday to them.

GEORGE: That's epic.

BUZZ: Just why? Because it's fun. We don’t take ourselves too seriously. I think it’s important to be self-deprecating. Through cards, through phone calls, through messages, through private messages. I don’t think you can communicate too much, and I think you should not be afraid of communicating with your students. Everyone likes to feel special. You like to feel special, I'm sure.

I like to feel special. Every opportunity you have to make your student feel special, he's going to reaffirm the fact that, “Man, am I glad I'm here?” I think every teacher who's teaching martial arts has the opportunity to make their students feel special. I'm not talking about rah-rah, way participation awards, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm talking about balancing that with something of substance, something that could save someone's life, something that could keep somebody out of trouble, and a place where someone develops so much confidence in themselves that they never have a need to fight. You can develop a place where they have so much confidence in themselves and they're having a great time doing it.

The students will just stay. Again, I'll keep going back to multi-dimensional. Now, I come from very traditional styles called Uechi-Ryū, UECHI, Uechi-Ryū, it's an Okinawan style of karate. We have four kumites, two-person pre-arranged drills, and we have eight kata.

And that's all we have. That's what we do. But we're able to integrate all these things into what's happening outside the dojo walls than what's happening inside the dojo walls. You know, what's important and to keep people coming back is your belief as the sensei in what you do. Your belief in what you do.

The students, if they see something in you, they like. If they see something in you, they admire. If they see something in you, some skill that they want to have, and they realize that you got that skill through the curriculum you're teaching them, they'll buy into it.

GEORGE: Very cool. I love it. I want to check just more about a little bit going into your history because I was looking– I saw that you opened your first martial arts school in ‘74. That's a good three years before I arrived on Earth. So, it goes back.

It feels like you've got this such a strong, obviously devotion to your martial arts, but then it feels like these traditions have– it's very simple what you do, but you do it so elegantly and with such focus and it's obviously just paid off heaps and bounds to your success in the industry and, mind, body, and spirit.

Where does all this originate from? Is it coming all the way back to the roots that this evolved from, or maybe I can ask it in a different way, and that is, where does Buzz Durkin get recharged?

BUZZ: Well, that's very interesting. I started my training in 1966, and times were very different then. Martial arts schools were small, dingy, dirty, and if you wanted to really train, you'd have to go up onto the fourth floor of a building to get to the dojo. You know, no one rented space on the first floor. It was too expensive, and it always bugged me that the martial arts schools were like that.

No showers, no good facilities. They weren't ventilated properly. And yet health clubs at the time were springing up all over America and beautiful facilities. And why can't a martial arts school be like that? One of my missions was to build our own school and have it built to custom to our design and make it a place where a student would be proud to come. A place where a student would be proud to show their friends. This is where I work out.

In 1974, I opened the dojo. For 14 years, we rented a space of about 1800 square feet with the goal of someday building our own school. That dream came true in 1988. We built our own freestanding building, 8,000 square feet. It's beautiful. It's got hardwood floors, showers, locker rooms, the whole thing

Thirty-five years later – in 1988, it still holds up. People come in, and they think it's a new building. I know, George, how much martial arts training helped me. I know how much it helped me and what it's done for me in my life. And if I can give back just a fraction of that to even one student, I will consider my mission as a success.

I know how much it's helped me and what it's done for me and, as time has gone on, how it's enabled me to make a wonderful living, and, if I can have that happen to the students who study with me, that'd be great. You know, one thing I'm very proud of is that we have an association. 12 of my senior students own their own dojos. They make a wonderful living teaching. They're all professional martial artists, and it's just a wonderful thing to see. We all get together for seminars, black belt testing, and social events. You know, I don't know. It's like everyone listening to this call: you love martial arts.

And in my opinion, there's nothing better than it. So, what got Buzz Durkin? I know how much it did for me when I grew up. I grew up in an upper-middle-class family, never got into fights, never got into– never was troublesome. I went into the service for a couple of years because I had to because everyone was doing it at that time. I just thought martial arts training karate would be something good to know as I go off into the military.

I never had a dream that I'd be doing it full-time 50-something years later. That's what happened, and I don't regret one single day of it.

GEORGE: Amazing. Buzz, before we wrap things up, I want to ask you about your book, Success is Waiting: The Martial Arts School Owner's Guide to Teaching, Business, and Life. I actually wanted to have a copy in my hand, but I don't. It's in the mail. There we go. I love it.

BUZZ: I always have a copy of the book around somewhere.

GEORGE: Can you share a bit? What is in the book, and what are the philosophies around that? Knowing what I know of just being in your presence for two of your talks, is that sort of the foundation of the book, or tell us more about the book?

BUZZ: The book is a hundred percent truisms and all anecdotal stories that I have, anecdotal stories that I’ve learned, that I've lived through during the past, at the time I wrote the book several years ago, forty plus years of teaching and working with people, working with different people. The first part of the book is loaded with anecdotal stories that I'm sure every martial arts teacher has experienced.

I talk about how I dealt with that anecdotal experience and what it taught me. And how I learned about human nature because of this anecdotal experience that I had at the dojo. Another section of the dojo goes to examples of great customer service, how to be aware, and how to be appreciative.

We have a section there on outstanding student service. The last section is basically on running the business and techniques and skills to acquire a successful dojo, whether saving a certain percentage of your income every month or planning ahead. It's basically a little bit of my starts, my history of what got me interested in the martial arts, anecdotal stories that have happened through the years, student service tips, and, quite frankly, business tips

And, you know, one of the things that got me, it keeps me excited is I started my karate training in 1966 with George Mattson. I don't know if that name rings a bell. He was the first American to receive a black belt in weight in Okinawan Karate, Uechi-Ryū Karate, and believe it or not, he's 86 years old. He's still teaching two or three times a week down in Florida.

I still have my original teacher after all these years, which I think is, I'm very proud of. He's been an inspiration to me. I think primarily what I've learned from him is perseverance. You know, when we went ahead to– and my dream was to build our own school.

I was mocked and laughed at. Realtors, “You're crazy. You'll never get alone. You'll never get that kind of money to run a karate school.” In those days, karate schools were little storefronts, you know. You could roll up the rug, take down the heavy bag, and be gone

And from my teacher, primarily perseverance. Stick with what you want to do. Believe in what you want to do. Don't listen to the naysayers. I think that's great advice for every martial arts dojo owner.

If you want something, go for it. There's nothing that can hold you back except your own personal beliefs. We teach people to believe in yourself and be self-confident. We have to be that. We can't be afraid to ask for X amount of dollars for tuition and say, “This is the greatest thing you'll ever do.”

And the lack of confidence to say, “This is what I should charge fairly.” That makes any sense. The other thing that I find as time goes on and we're celebrating our 50th anniversary, and I think all true martial artists will find this to be true, it's a joyful experience, and it gets more joyful as time goes by because you understand it more. The more you understand it, the happier it makes you.

I really believe that if a young school owner is out there, keep at it, stick with it, and plow through it. It's a wonderful experience, and we can do so much good for our communities by running a proper martial arts school. You can help so many people. It's just a wonderful, wonderful thing. I'm pretty excited about it.

GEORGE: I love it. I’m really glad that you mentioned charging your worth because I really feel you do a disservice when you don't charge your worth; where you might be.

BUZZ: I agree. A hundred percent, yeah.

GEORGE: –where you might be thinking you're doing people a favor, but you're not, because it's just true that when people pay, they pay attention. When they pay more, they value it more. You know, it can't be the best thing in the world if I'm paying next to nothing for it. So, there's got to be– it's got a way up; the financial, what I invest has got a way up with the quality of service that I'm getting.

BUZZ: Yeah. Yes. If you don't charge– if you charge a pittance, that shows you the value you think of it. I mean, I get that so many times when I talk to especially young school owners, “Well, I really should be charging more.” Well, charge more and make it worth, you know. But one little tip that we do whenever we have a tuition increase, whenever we do, we add some value to the program, whether it's an upgrade in the changing rooms, whether it's an advanced, an extra class, whether it's a more private lesson or whatever.

So, we never go up on tuition without adding some value to what's going on here. But I think it's sad when teachers will think that, “This is the best thing since sliced bread. It's great. We have the best program, but I can't charge that. That's too much. I can't charge that.”

And a lot of times, people don't understand how they should charge. They pick a number out of the air and say, “That's a good number.” That's not the way to do it, you know. You write down your pros and cons, your expenses, your income, what you need to run, not only your school but your household, and come up with a figure.

If I have a hundred students, I have to charge this. If I have 300 students, I have to charge this to cover expenses, et cetera. We add so much to the community. The martial arts school deserves to make a good living. Deserves to make a good living. Every bit as important as any doctor in the community, as any lawyer in the community, as any CPA in the community.

And they don't do half of what the good that we do. I would encourage every school owner, especially new school owners, to be bold and, you know, back up what you say by charging what is fair, right? People will appreciate that. People will appreciate that.

And I think, probably the highest tuition around, we have probably the biggest school around. You said it earlier. If you charge something the fair price of value, people will value it. You know, as historically, as I look, when our tuition went up, our retention got better. Isn't that strange? People valued it more, you know.

GEORGE: There's a famous copywriter, Dan Kennedy. I don't know if you've read any of his books.

BUZZ: Yes, I know who he is. Yes.

GEORGE: Right. Dan Kennedy's philosophy on pricing is you're only strategic, competitive edge in the market is to be the most expensive, not the second most expensive, not the third, but the most. And when you're the most expensive, then you've set yourself as a category of one because why are you the most expensive? Then people start to ask questions, and it's like, if you had to walk into a Mercedes motor garage versus a Kia, they are both great vehicles; they both get you from A to B, but Mercedes is probably going to have a nicer floor.

Salespeople are maybe going to be dressed more professionally. It's going to be a different level of experience. You're going to get a feel of the experience. Because you're going to

BUZZ: That is so true. Bingo. A hundred percent. That is so articulated well. That's very, very, very true.

GEORGE: Awesome.

BUZZ: We have a wonderful thing going on. I know you do a tremendous amount of good through your teachings and the opportunities you present to other school owners, so kudos to you. It’s a wonderful thing that we do, and let's keep doing it

GEORGE: I love it. Well, Buzz, thanks so much for hanging out. I much appreciate your time and it's always a pleasure to be in your presence and learning from you and your philosophies. I walk away and recharged, so that's amazing. Where can people-

BUZZ: Well, thank you. Go ahead.

GEORGE: Sorry. Where can people go and learn about you and if they want to reach out to you if that's an option?

BUZZ: If anyone wants to talk to me, they can reach out to me. I'd be happy to talk to any school owners. If you're interested in my philosophy and stuff, the book is on Amazon, and it’s done pretty well, actually. I value our friendship very much. It was a pleasure meeting you for the first time, and every time I meet with you, I like you more. So, everything's good.

GEORGE: That's awesome. Amazing. Buzz, thanks so much. Have a great evening, and I’ll speak to you soon.

BUZZ: My pleasure. Thank you very much for the opportunity. Bye bye.

GEORGE: Bye.

How epic was that? Did you get some value and some insight from Buzz Durkin? What is the one thing that you can grab from this and implement in your school today? Reach out to me wherever you find me on social, on Facebook, look me up, or shoot me an email at george@martialartsmedia.com, and let me know what is the one thing that you got from this.

I would love to know, and if you got a lot of value out of this, do me a favor, and please share it with one of your martial arts friends, an instructor, a school owner, and even better if you can tag me where you do that, I will give you all the praise for sharing this episode and passing on the magic.

All right. Thanks so much for tuning in. Remember martialartsmedia.com/147. You'll find the show notes and all the videos that we spoke about right at the beginning of all the black belts, and if you need help growing and scaling your martial arts school, we have a great community. We call Partners where we get together every week, we mastermind and share some awesome marketing strategies, business growth strategies, and so forth.

If you want to know more, reach out to our website, go to our website, martialartsmedia.com/scale. This is a short little form. Tell me a bit about yourself, what you have going on, what you're working on, and where you're stuck, and I'll reach out and see if we can be of help.

All right. Thanks so much. I'll see you in the next episode. Cheers.

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104 – John Smallios – Aligning Your Jiu Jitsu School With A Higher Mission & Purpose

October 27, 2020 by George Fourie Leave a Comment

Every student at Higher Jiu Jitsu knows their mission statement. John Smallios shares how a clear purpose simplifies their message.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

The mission statement that John upholds in his Jiu Jitsu academy
The critical factors that influenced the close-knit culture in Higher Jiu Jitsu
The one thing that John avoided which now guides his students on the same path to learning
Aristotle’s philosophy of learning
And more

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

TRANSCRIPTION

With regards to the mission, hopefully if you ask any Higher Jiu Jitsu student, they will tell you that our mission at Higher Jiu Jitsu is we help everyday people build quality of life with Gracie Jiu Jitsu. And that's in my mind all the time.

GEORGE: Good day, George here, and welcome to another Martial Arts Media Business Podcast, episode number 104. So today I've got an old friend with me, someone I haven't spoken to in a while, and we got chatting again on Facebook and thought we'd catch up, talk a bit about Jiu Jitsu business and things past the whole pandemic. So I'm with John Smallios.

JOHN: How is it going, man?

GEORGE: Good. How are you?

JOHN: I'm doing well. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me on.

GEORGE: Your school's name is Higher Jiu Jitsu, right?

JOHN: Yep. That's the one.

GEORGE: I've always wanted to ask you, where did you get the name Higher Jiu Jitsu? What was the thinking behind it?

JOHN: It's pretty cool, right? Well, basically, I had a nutrition coaching and personal training venture that I was into at the beginning, and the name of that was Higher Health, because I was always interested in getting better and improving on health in many different ways. And there's always ways to improve in that realm. And then I was running the BJJ Commune.

I think there might have been a time maybe when you came to Higher potentially. I think it was still the commune at that time. And the commune was that because it was an open map pretty much. Everyone was more than welcome to come. There was no affiliation at the time. And then things developed and changed. And then I was faced with a little bit of a spot where it was very hard running two businesses at the same time.

And I was kind of doing a similar thing, because I was looking at helping people, whether it was during nutrition or movement, or in this case Jiu Jitsu. So I thought, you know what? It's time to amalgamate the two and make it one, and Higher Jiu Jitsu was born. And I like it. It's got a nice ring to it. And I just love the idea now that it's endless refinement and you can always do better on the Jiu Jitsu mats and off the Jiu Jitsu mats, of course. But Higher Jiu Jitsu it is.

GEORGE: There we go. Actually, you just from minded me now of the first conversation we had, because you worked with us way back, version one of our Academy Program, which is a coaching program for school owners with marketing and emails and contents and so forth. I recall being on a call with you and you had this divided attention of how are you going to make this thing a thing?

Because you had the health of the business working with Jiu Jitsu. But when I stopped by in Sydney at your location and you had me joining for the open mat session there, I recall that step was already refined and you were already on your way with this whole amalgamated venture, as you say.

JOHN: Yeah. It was actually really tough at the time because I'm just so passionate about all of those realms. It was hard to make… I think I put more pressure on myself than I had to at the time and I wanted everything to just be seamless and perfect, in a way. Things aren't always perfect. But I guess changes had to be made and it was within me. I'm sure you weren't the only person I was chatting to that about.

It was just a constant dilemma in my head like, how can I make this work better? Because I wanted to represent one particular movement, one particular philosophy, and I didn't like being split through the middle. At least that was in my own perception. Maybe other people didn't take it like that or see it like that. But in my case, I wanted to have one sole purpose. That's how it worked out.

And it was much better off because now all my heart and soul is going into the one avenue and I can improve all different aspects of that one particular direction, which is awesome. And so now I have a health program within my Jiu Jitsu school. I don't do too much personal training with regards to movement coaching anymore. But in saying that, when I'm doing private class with my students, I'm definitely teaching them how to move and I'm definitely teaching them how to build awareness throughout their body and throughout their own movements.

So in a way, the first dream still lives on. It's a different brand, I guess. I did marketing at uni. So I was studying branding or studying all different aspects of marketing. So perhaps in my head I guess I was a bit more choosy and just wanted it to be on point. But now I feel good. Now I feel like Higher Jiu Jitsu is my one and only professional kind of endeavor. And day in and out, I'm looking at improving on it in all aspects of it. So it's worked out well.

GEORGE: Yeah. Perfect. I think sometimes as entrepreneurs we can get stuck in how the vehicle has got to run. And so now you're divided. We sort of just jumped in on the story that we know together, but I think we should just probably give some more context for you on what this was on how you were going on the health side and how you were going on the Jiu Jitsu side.

But as I was referencing, I think you get so stuck in the vehicle that you forget actually the higher outcome that you're trying to serve. And so removing yourself from the vehicle, which is health and which is Jiu Jitsu, and thinking, all right, well, what is it that I actually want people to get? What is that outcome? And then something that I've been really working on is how do I incorporate that in my actual mission statement?

And not a mission statement of the, hey, here's the thing that you put in the wall or shove under the desk and never look at, but just something that is congruent with the outcome that you want to serve within your business for you personally, but also an outcome obviously that you want for, in your case, your students or your clients as such.

JOHN: Okay. So in that case, I thought about this long and hard, and whether I was working with my client with regards to movement, or if they came up to me and said, “John, I want to lose weight. I need a nutrition program,” or if they said, “John, I want to learn Jiu Jitsu,” my goal, and it is the same thing to this day, is to help the client, the student build quality of life.

And quality of life for me is something more than health. It's on the mat. It's off the mat. It's your physical being. It's your mental being. It's your emotional side. It's everything in one. And it's your ability to flourish in life. And I was thinking, even though there's different avenues and different roads that I thought I was on, it was all within the one highway, I guess, within the one direction of building quality of life.

So with regards to the mission, hopefully if you ask any Higher Jiu Jitsu student, they will tell you that our mission at Higher Jiu Jitsu is we help everyday people build quality of life with Gracie Jiu Jitsu. And that's in my mind all the time. So it means that, again, the purpose is quality of life. And who do I serve? I serve the everyday person.

And the everyday person is of different age groups and different professions and might have different interests, but is not like an athlete who's looking to be a world leader. That's not the student that I think will flourish at Higher Jiu Jitsu. I think it's the everyday person that's going to really, really thrive at our school. And how do we do that? We do that with Gracie Jiu Jitsu.

And of course, Gracie Jiu Jitsu can encompass anything and everything. So Gracie Jiu Jitsu is your diet. It is your health. It is your movement in Jiu Jitsu. It is self-defense. It is all of these aspects. So that's the mission statement right there: we help everyday people build quality of life with Gracie Jiu Jitsu.

GEORGE: I like that. I was not aware that we were going to have this type of conversation. It's really cool. And I like it because it's something that I'm spending a lot of time with now. I'm not going to reveal my mission statement just yet on this call because it is a work in progress. You said you were struggling to get this refined. I know that refining that takes a lot of work.

But in doing that, it brings a lot of clarity, because there's a lot of things that you just eliminate. And I guess I'd put that to you. How does that change the way you go about attracting students or talking to people? Because now I guess you're more aligned, right? You're more in center of, well, this is what I'm trying to achieve and this is who it's for. So how do you find that adapts your message? And I'm curious to know because it's very important to you, because as you mentioned, all your students should actually know what the mission statement is as well.

JOHN: That's my job there. So in all of our communications, the things that I do and say publicly and just every day in the gym ought to reflect that if I'm going to be true to it. And I think I found a nice touch, just the touching point there. Okay. So how does it affect my communication when I'm talking to people on a YouTube video or on a call with a potential student who wants to be a part of the school?

For that, and I'm not afraid anymore to acknowledge that our school is not for everybody. And there are some people who I much prefer go into a highly competitive school. And there are a lot of highly competitive schools around the area that just love and would live and breathe competition all the time. And look, we have students that compete. I competed a whole bunch as much as I could earlier on in my Jiu Jitsu journey.

And so I'm not against competition in the slightest. But it's nice that we have a lens with which we can discern between student A and student B; the student who wants the hard, super tough training, and then the student who's more than happy to be a little bit more patient. And more than anything, I think the student who's looking to enjoy the art.

The art is a bit different, because we're not really… Well, I'm not overly interested in practicing the sport of Jiu Jitsu. So rarely, very, very rarely, unless there's a comp coming up or something or I talk about the points, I'm talking about positions, I'm talking about safety whilst we're training Jiu Jitsu. I'm talking about your ability to manage distance to prevent strikes, let's say, even though that's not in the sporting realm.

All of that is reflected in my communications online. And hopefully that's what people get. I talk a lot about movement and how the body works with regards to techniques and talking about how to gain leverage. Because when you're looking for leverage in Jiu Jitsu, you're doing that through your own body and through the grounds and through your opponent.

So definitely there's a lot of things that I can focus on more than others and it makes my life so much better. And it makes everyone's lives better and easier, I guess. Because if you don't like kind of the tone of what we do and say, then just tune out. That's fine. And then I've found that you can't please everybody. I'm sure you know that. Over the years when I first started the school, I wanted to please everybody. And I don't think that has the effect…

GEORGE: And you pleased no one.

JOHN: Yeah. In a way, it was like a school, where you didn't know if we're here or there. Whereas over the years, I've kind of really… I wouldn't say I've been stubborn about it at all. I'm still trying to be open-minded, for sure. Some students will come in and I'll say, “Hey, man, maybe this isn't the spot for you.

Maybe go to the school up the road and try them out as well. Find the school that's most important for you.” So, yeah, definitely it helps. Knowing who you are, I'd say, knowing your values as a school and as a person can most definitely help you attract the people that are going to get the most utility out of what you're offering.

GEORGE: I like that. It comes down to a couple of things, right? I think maturity, just maturing in your business and getting in tune with, what is the type of business that you want? What is the type of business that you want to build? I mean, if you are the guy that wants to build multiple schools and take a step back and not be that involved, maybe you'd take a bit of a different approach.

But if you want to stay close to the business, close to the purpose, close to the mission and be really in tune with what your customers want and build a business that you actually love and not despise, I think that's a big thing. Because it's very easy to get caught up in this fake want of growth and want this moving thing. But it's very easy in business to build this thing that you despise as well.

You build this business that you look at and you're like, “Oh, what have I built? I've built a monster that I don't want.” And that's when you're going to have to talk with a mirror and reflect and think, all right, well, I don't want to take this thing. What is it that I want to build? Anything to add on that, John, before we move on?

JOHN: Most definitely I do, because I think that's just really important. So when I got into Jiu Jitsu, George, it was love at first sight. I was watching the UFC and then I went and did a class on Jiu Jitsu. And I'd always wanted an athletic endeavor. I just hadn't found that yet. I wasn't good at soccer. I never got picked into the rep teams, unfortunately, at the time.

Now, I tried boxing and my parents didn't want me to do that. I tried to do rugby league. My parents didn't let me do that. And then I was like 18 and I found Jiu Jitsu. And I was like, wow, this is something that I can really hone in on. And I can really take it and enjoy it and do something with it. And so I started off at SPMA, as it was known in the day, as Anthony Perosh and Elvis Sinosic school.

And that was a beautiful experience right there. And they did things a certain way. And then as a white belt, I flew off to Brazil to get stuck into it, into the Mecca of Jiu Jitsu or what I thought was the Mecca at the time. And I got to go to many different schools. I was traveling and I was using Jiu Jitsu as the vehicle to travel, really. So I'd go all the way up to the North of Brazil, to the South of Brazil, and all along the way I just stopped at different schools and trained and learned. And that was awesome.

I went to America and I went to the East Coast, West Coast, training and learning all there. And Europe, I've spent some time in Greece and Italy training there as well. And I think that experience really helped me just see how schools run and see what aspects of schools I liked and what I didn't really like. And I think Elvis and Anthony's school at the time, they were very successful. They're great businessmen.

And they built that school up to something that was a monster academy. I think it had definitely over 500, 600 students, I think at the time, within two venues. And I guess being a student there, you could see the nature of that, how it reflects in life, and I guess all the challenges that they faced. And at the time, I think I was a little bit critical, but I'm not critical anymore at all because I understand that because now I'm a school owner myself.

So I understand the dilemmas that we face. And so with Higher Jiu Jitsu, I'm just happy that I've managed to incorporate all the things that I love about our school. So as a super passionate, enthusiastic white and blue and purple belt, I came in and I've managed to create the school. There's still a few things that we can improve on. But right now, I'm very, very satisfied that we have the school that has all the beautiful things that I love about a Jiu Jitsu school.

Most definitely the culture. You go to different schools and within minutes you can feel the vibes. You can sense the moods of students and teachers and the Jiu Jitsu. And I love coming into Higher Jiu Jitsu and many students tell me that as well. I had a student come in last week that was like, “Man, your school, it's an electric vibe.” And that makes me really happy. And that's something that I really want to focus on.

Post-class when we're shaking hands after the class, well, now we get fist bumps due to the nature of the times right now. But with every fist bump, I'll call out my student's name. And I know every student's name at Higher Jiu Jitsu. And I hardly forget them, which I'm very proud of, but that's important. There's a lot of teachers that don't know their students because they have so many students that it just becomes impossible to really remember names, for example.

But I make sure that I know every student's name and every other student knows each other's names. And we've got a very, very nice tight-knit community. So I think just the fact that the experience of seeing different schools and now seeing the likes and dislikes has helped me create something that I thoroughly adore right now. That's Higher Jiu Jitsu. So anyone can come in. Everyone can feel it for themselves. Some people might not like it. So be it. And the people that like our school tend to absolutely love our school.

GEORGE: You seem very attentive to the feel, the culture. And I was actually going to ask you, how do you feel the mission statement plays a big role in the actual culture? But then you also mentioned that you know everyone by their first name and you call their names as you address them. I think we all do some form of a handshake and a fist bump. Attention to detail is what I'm hearing. But what else do you feel contributes to a great culture in your school?

JOHN: There's a lot to do with that, a lot of aspects of that. Here's one really big one: having everybody on the same page, going in the same direction. In 2016, we affiliated with Pedro Sauer Association. And prior to that, we didn't really… Well, I had a syllabus, but I had made that up myself. And there were a few holes in there and we weren't super certain about implementing it with every class.

Whereas now we have a syllabus and it means that every student is on the same path of learning. And of course, students can go to different seminars and students jump on YouTube and BJJ fanatics and try these different DVDs and different techniques. Of course. And that's not a problem. But the syllabus is the thing that guides everybody in that same direction.

So when you come into class, like the higher belts would help the lower belts. Because the higher belts know the techniques that we're practicing, they get to help them. And I think the knowledge has to go from the top down, as in I'm coming to class and I'm teaching and I'm sharing the technique of the day and the details that work for me and that are required for the technique to be on point.

But then you've got the higher belts taking over, and we'll call out the newbie, the beginners, and say, “Hey, come with me for this class. I'll help you out.” And then the newbie, they feel like they're well looked after. They feel like they're welcome. They don't feel like a burden to the rest of the class because they don't know anything. And before you know it, they're a part of the school, too.

And with that being said, the higher belts, they also get to learn and they also get to learn by teaching. So I think the fact that everybody's on the same page really, really helps. Whereas previously, we had, as you know, the Jiu Jitsu commune. I was actually promoting the fact that we don't have an affiliation. There'll be students coming in from different schools, different systems, different trains of thought, different philosophies, and it wouldn't create a cohesive kind of a group.

Everyone had their own ideas and it was a little bit just like, “This is what I do. Okay. This is what I do. This is what I do.” And you couldn't go deeper. I think the syllabus is just such a big help. There's a lot of other things that we do at Higher Jiu Jitsu, too. So when a member comes in and signs up, I tell them, “You're not just paying for Jiu Jitsu tuition, you're paying to be part of a community.”

So on the first Friday of every month, we have the hangout. And that's just when we go out for dinner and drinks. And I remember when I was like a white and blue belt, if somebody asked me if we managed to go to have some dinner after the training, it felt great. It was awesome. You get to hang out with your Jiu Jitsu friends. I always found that the conversation with Jiu Jitsu people was always free flowing and you don't ever have to try because if you never run out of things to say, it goes back to Jiu Jitsu all the time.

And just the best people you find on the mat. Everyone's awesome. The people who have the humility to have Jiu Jitsu as part of their lives, they're just great people that associate with Jiu Jitsu. So the hangout really helps to kind of get off the mat and have some other conversations outside of Jiu Jitsu and eat and drink together and have some fun. We do the Higher Hikes now that it's summertime.

So that's us going out on a Sunday and meeting up and having some time off the mats and hanging out together. And there's many, many aspects of Higher that I think really helped that culture. Most definitely. Does that answer your question?

GEORGE: Yeah, totally. I was fascinated just by your perspective of sort of top-down and I never really thought of it with… And especially in times of COVID, people spend a lot more time online and studying online and online Jiu Jitsu, online this. There's a Zoom class for pretty much everything. How do you feel that could impact?

If you've got sort of this top-down approach and you've experienced having this commune effect of just too many influences or too many perspectives, how do you feel that can actually impact the way you teach and the way you go about things if you've got the syllabus or more like a philosophy that you sort of stand by? And people are plugging into different philosophies all around and checking things and picking up different techniques. Do you feel that compliments or sometimes there's a bit of a clash or they need a bit of a course restructuring in the direction in that?

JOHN: I don't think it affects anything. Firstly, I'll mention, too, that I think the knowledge is top-down, but also bottom-up as well. On Fridays, George, it's a Lab Friday. So what lab is, is we come in and I don't have an agenda for the day. Every other class that I come in, I know what I'm going to share. There or thereabouts, the class goes a different route, maybe someone asks a question and it sends me on a loop into answering that person's question. That's rare though.

But Lab Fridays is when people come in and it's like a basic Q&A. So the white belt can come in and say, “Hey, I learned this on YouTube. What do you think?” And I'll say, “Yeah, that's pretty cool. Maybe you can think about this and this aspect as well.” So it allows for a lot more open-minded learning. And that's why I started the commune, because I wanted to be a bit more open-minded and I didn't want to have a super stringent focus on a syllabus.

And I think A, the syllabus that we have, it's evolving. It hasn't been stagnant. And every time I teach the syllabus, every time we go through cycles of the syllabus, it's a new me. All of our coaches are always learning. And we do courses ourselves and we learn ourselves as well. So the cross collar choke that I did yesterday would have been a different cross collar choke than we did three months ago.

There would have been many different details that added to it. And if the students are concentrating, if they're focused in on details, then they can see that the technique is always evolving, because that's what Jiu Jitsu does. Jiu Jitsu doesn't stay the same. It's always an evolving martial art. And if you can see here, that's our logo. Can you see that triangle?

The triangle, what we have is it's one part of the triangle, the second, and third part comes up and then it drops down. So it's not a closed triangle. It's a triangle that the top is always open and it allows for new techniques to come in and maybe some techniques to be jettisoned if they're not effective anymore. So I think our art is just an amazing one.

And I think if we stay stagnant in martial art, then just like in life, if you stay stagnant, if you don't want to learn anymore, if you don't want to develop yourself, then very soon you'll find yourself falling behind. And that's the same with our Jiu Jitsu as well. So with that being said, George, it's never been a problem. We've got some very enthusiastic students that always do their homework and always go beyond our program.

And I have no problems with that, as long as they're respectful to the class. So what I don't like to see if I'm teaching a cross-culture because I did last night, is to see two students doing something completely different because they want to. I don't think that's been a good student in that class. If you're going to come to the class, then focus, there or thereabouts on what the class is.

So if we're doing a cross collar choke and then you develop it into your own Apilado or a triangle that's kind of related to the cross collar, I have absolutely no problems with that. But if the whole class is doing guard and then you choose to do mounts because you're learning your own mount DVD, and it's not an open mat, it's a scheduled class, then I almost feel like you don't really need to be in that class.

So it hasn't been a problem at all whatsoever. If anything, I like students just going elsewhere. It shows me that they're keen to learn and that they're enthusiastic. I think sometimes, depending on your experience level, if you start looking a little bit too far beyond the syllabus, I think it can have adverse effects on your learning. So for example, the way, Phil, my teacher puts it to me.

He's like, “When I studied marketing at Macquarie, all the subjects of the Macquarie uni marketing degree, I did them at Macquarie.” Whereas if I had done branding at Macquarie and consumer behavior and New South, and then something else that Sydney Uni, then it really takes away from the effectiveness of the whole program.” So if you're a white belt at Higher, I'd probably advise you to go on to Pedro Sauer online. That's our online portal.

And we have Master Sauer and all the black belts of the association that share technique on that portal. And it tends to be more focused on our way of doing things on the mechanics that we do and the techniques that we have in the syllabus. And then I think as a blue belt and beyond, I think there's no problems whatsoever in you looking elsewhere. And then bring it back. Bring it back to the crew. Bring it back to the nest, share your knowledge, and then we all get better.

GEORGE: I love it. So we have a mutual friend who was on the podcast on episode 101 – Costa Prasoulas. Hello, Costa. And you seem to share a lot of similar philosophies. Is that due to your Greek heritage or is that something else that you just pay attention to?

JOHN: I don't know. What philosophies do we share? Cons is an awesome guy. His values are on point and he's a guy by the book. He's respectful and he's honorable and he's a school owner as well. And he's been in the game for a very long time. I guess I'm happy that I share similar views as him. But what in particular?

GEORGE: It's not something that I can actually put a finger on. It's just when I speak to you and when I speak to him, I can hear congruences in the values, just the way you approach things. Very attention to detail. Very in-depth. Very thought out. I mean, just a simple thing where I think most guys would go get a logo designed and you'd kind of just say to the graphic designer, well, just put something together.

And you'll just look at it and say, okay, that's good. Where you actually show a triangle where actually there's a purpose behind it. That's a very fine attention to detail level that most people just don't think of. And discussing your mission statement, the thought, and I think the real deep work that went into really thinking of this is exactly what this is supposed to communicate by itself without you having to say it.

There's a real in-depth attention to detail and values that come from that. I hope that I did it justice, but there's just some similarities there in the way you guys communicate.

JOHN: Yeah. Maybe it is our Greek backgrounds. All right. Let me kind of give you a little something. So Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, distinguished two aspects of learning: the ethos of something and then technique. So the ethos of something is, I'm probably going to botch it up for sure now, but just the overarching kind of idea behind it. How can I say it? The philosophy behind it, perhaps, and the way that you go about this particular thing.

GEORGE: That's the reason why?

JOHN: Yeah, that's definitely a part of it, too. And then you've got the how, which is the technique, which is the ins and outs of doing things. And I think it's really important that we have an idea of both. So Higher Jiu Jitsu has an awesome syllabus, for sure, full of really beautiful techniques. But if various techniques are done in a way that's not congruent with people's intentions of being there, then they're just techniques.

So what I'm trying to do here is kind of bring a beautiful ethos, a beautiful vibe, a beautiful feel to Higher Jiu Jitsu. And then within that, kind of add the technical aspect as well. And I think having those two aligned helps to create the fireworks of a beautiful Jiu Jitsu school. I don't know. Does that help, a bit of Greek philosophy in there?

GEORGE: Yeah, totally. You did it great. I don't know Greek philosophy, but for me, that sounds awesome.

JOHN: Well, Cons is really keen on his Greek philosophy. I think he dropped some knowledge in your podcast as well. Cons is awesome. I haven't gone to his school for a little bit, but I plan to go there again soon. It's just hard as a school owner. The night off that I have, I'm wanting to spend it with my kid and my wife, because usually I'm not home. But Con, I'll be coming to your school very soon again.

GEORGE: That's perfect. Hey, John, so good to catch up. Wanted to chat a bit, how are you going with your kid? How's the new little man in life affecting life?

JOHN: I'll tell you what, it's amazing. It's so beautiful. You think you love something and then a kid comes along and it's like, whoa, I've never felt this before. It's just a whole new realm that's opened up in my heart with this boy. And every moment that I spend with him is just a gift, that's so beautiful. Yesterday he rolled. He was on his back and he's been working on it a little bit.

I've seen him. He's trying to turn here and there and he could never really succeed with it. But yesterday, just by himself, I had him on his back and then I was in the kitchen and I came back and he was on his tummy. I was like, wow, that's awesome. So having a kid is amazing. It presents a lot of challenges, for sure, with regards to running a school.

I guess you've touched on it, George, I'm pretty thorough with my work and I love my work. And I put my heart and soul into everything that I do and I want to put my heart and soul into being a dad and into being a husband and into being good to my family. And then I want to continue putting heart and soul into the school. And it's just a little bit hard logistically because when I'm at home and I'm trying to do my writing, because I try to write every day, I try to write a thousand words a day so I can get my articles out so I can keep the pages of podcasts going and the emails have to be written.

No one's going to write them for me. So I'm trying to be there in the morning, trying to write my emails. And I can see Roscoe, my son, just staring at me and smiling maybe in the corner of my eye. It's so distracting and I want to just sit there and cuddle him and play with him for the next five hours. So it's difficult. It presents some challenges, but these are such beautiful challenges and I'm more than happy to kind of work through them and find a way and I guess work with my wife. It's teamwork. I think teamwork is really, really important.

Touching on that, I think teamwork is a big one. As school owners, I think we need help from other people. And I think a lot of the times I've fallen into the trap of trying to do everything by myself. Whereas now I guess I have no choice but to delegate. So I felt like there are some awesome students at Higher Jiu Jitsu that have aspirations of their own school.

So I'm bringing them in now and showing them the ways that I do things. And then hopefully there are some certain tasks and things around Higher Jiu Jitsu that I don't necessarily have to do. And so that's how I'm slowly trying to delegate to other students and then I can focus on the things that I do well, that are unique for me. And so writing those articles I think is an important one. I don't want to delegate that. I love doing that. Yeah. So it's just an ongoing challenge. As you know, you're a dad, how do you find balancing work and family life?

GEORGE: It's always a learning experience and being attentive. I mean, kids know only one currency and that's time. They don't understand work, this, that. Where I live, which was a good idea right before we had kids, this is a lounge converted into an office, which is great, but it has no door, which means my daughter will come and jump on the couch and I'm like that's gone.

For me, I mean, the big discipline is early mornings, just getting a solid, early routine in. I'm up between 4:30 and 5:00 and just knock out some hours of deep work, getting some creativity in. And if I can just set that momentum early, that just helps the tone for the rest of the day, that at least I've set that momentum. And then, yeah, once the kids are out the door, I have my space, then it's simpler.

I mean, it's always a juggle. It's always a challenge. I think just really trying to be when I'm attentive, to be attentive. The beauty of our life and probably the most disruptive in our lives as well, these mobile things, just really trying to put them aside and when I'm attentive, I'm attentive.

JOHN: That's the thing, because your attention is so important. And it's hard to direct your attention and you can't pull your attention left and right all the time, because I don't think it works like that. I think if you want to do deep work, as you said, I love that book, by the way, if that's what you were referring to; if you need that, then you need… I like having time gaps.

So I like working in an hour, at least two hour blocks, and really delving into the depths of the task or the job that I have at hand. So it is difficult, but that's all right. We manage and we live on. We continue and we do our best to kind of move forward with it and make it all a little bit better every day.

GEORGE: Yeah, totally. Hey, John, it's been great chatting to you and good to catch up. I'm looking forward to getting on your mats again. Real quick before we go, if people would like to learn a bit more from you, where can they go?

JOHN: Hey, hey, hey, the Higher Jiu Jitsu podcast. That's where they can go. Can I plug it?

GEORGE: Of course, you can.

JOHN: Thanks, George. So it's me and me and my student, Matty. It's his birthday today. Happy birthday, Matty. We have the Higher Jiu Jitsu podcast, and I think we're about 28 episodes in. And it's plenty of fun. The why on the podcast is an interesting one, because sometimes it is for us just to come in and have a chat, but it's to help the everyday people on that journey of Jiu Jitsu, really.

And we take all different dilemmas. Sometimes a student will ask me a little question in class and I'm like, ooh, that'll make a nice podcast. Or if there are certain kinds of themes or patterns of problems that I can see, then that's our chance to open things up and work on the ins and outs of how to approach the problem and what to do in order to get better.

So the Higher Jiu Jitsu Podcast. Everybody, check it out. It's plenty of fun. I think it's cool – higherjiujitsu.com.au. If you're coming to Sydney, you're more than welcome. We're in Woolloomooloo. We're right just on the outskirts of the city, which is actually really nice. A beautiful school at the PCYC City of Sydney. So if you're ever in Sydney, come in. You're more than welcome. Thanks, George. Thanks for having me, man. It's been a pleasure to chat to you. Thanks for all the work that you do with the Australian Martial Arts Community. I think your work is making everyone better as well. So keep it up. It's awesome.

GEORGE: Thank you, John. Much appreciate it. And look forward to seeing you back on the mat.

JOHN: Yes. Perfect. Thanks, George.

GEORGE: Thanks, John. Speak to you soon.

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101 – Costa Prasoulas – Applying Philosophy And Martial Arts To The Fight Of Life

July 14, 2020 by George Fourie 1 Comment

Martial arts school owner Costa Prasoulas shares how philosophy influences his life of acting and martial arts.

.IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

Costa’s ancient ancestral history of martial arts
The philosophy that Costa upholds in his martial arts academy
How Costa’s career in martial arts movies began
Observing martial arts fight scenes from a different perspective
The self defense approach to Covid-19
And more

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TRANSCRIPTION

I think of philosophy and its beautiful relation to martial arts is the fact not that it gives you answers, but it creates questions. It creates an open channel of thinking. In relation to martial arts, there's not one answer. There's many ways from a technical avenue, from a stylistic perspective and many answers, there's not one thing, right? That's why there's so many variations and so many possibilities.

GEORGE: Good day, this is George and welcome to another Martial Arts Media™ business podcast. So today I'm joined with a special guest all the way from Marrickville, Sydney, New South Wales. We were going to, actually like a lot of things, do this interview a couple of months back, but at the time of recording this, as we all know, the world changed and so things got delayed. So welcome to the call Costa Prasoulas. How are you today Costa?

COSTA: Yeah good thank you George, I'm very well thank you. It’s nice to be with you.

GEORGE: Cool. Costa has an interesting background and who better to tell us – look, if somebody has a Wikipedia page, it deserves mentioning, right?

So who better to tell us a bit of an intro and then Costa can take over, but… Costa Prasoulas is an Australian actor and martial artist trained in Muay Thai, Hapkido, Taekwondo, Pankration and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, having won the Australian Open Martial Arts Championship in 1992, Intercontinental Kickboxing Champion and won a silver medal at the 2009 World Games. His acting credits include Cop's Enemy and Z-End.

How cool is that? My work was done for me and a really good intro.

COSTA: It's quite interesting, you know, I didn't even know that I had a Wikipedia page until about last year when my daughter came up and she is like, “Dad, guess what?” I said “What?” She goes “Oh, we were looking at you at school with some friends of mine. My daughter is in year 12 mind you. And she goes, “You’re on Wikipedia!”

I said, “Really?” I had no idea. And so it only came to my attention that I was actually on Wikipedia like maybe over the last sort of what, 18 months. So it's quite interesting. But it's cool that you said that, I didn't even know myself.

GEORGE: That actually makes it a lot better, you know. If it was instigated from the marketing standpoint and, you know, it's still good that you can get it. But the fact that it was up there without you knowing…

COSTA: Yeah, I had no idea. I had absolutely no idea, no idea.

GEORGE: That can lead to the next question, like: how did it come to that? I mean, you've obviously done some cool things within the martial arts space and then movies. So give us a bit of a background, how this all got started for you and where you came from?

COSTA: Sure. Primarily, from a very young age, I was about five and a half or six years of age when I started really sort of getting involved with martial arts. And the primary reason was my father. My father was actually, he dabbled in amateur Greco-Roman wrestling in Greece.

When my parents sort of settled then in Australia, in Sydney and I was, you know, my dad was always sort of in the combative arts anyways, so I had that primarily from a cultural background, that Hellenic combative ideal of you know, mind, body and spirit. My ancient ancestors you know. And so that was kind of like, I never really sort of, I kind of grew up with that sort of mentality. To me that was normal because of the way that my life as a young kid sort of was involved in that.

So I kind of like progressed with some other martial arts as well. With Hapkido, Taekwondo, I moved on to Muay Thai, I spent quite a number of years competing in kickboxing, sort of Muay Thai and stuff like that. I spent a lot of time in Europe, because we have quite a bit of family in Greece, so I kind of lived over in Europe for quite a few years. I competed quite a bit in Europe, spent a bit of time in Holland, sort of Muay Thai kickboxing style is more dutch or European K1 style, which was quite sort of not very popular back then, especially in the 90s.

It was sort of very new to the sort of Australia South Pacific region. I spent a bit of time in Thailand, travelled to South Korea, traveled quite a bit. Over the course of those years, I was involved in quite a few sort of choreography and martial arts sort of scenes. You know, doing bits and pieces for commercials and stuff like that.

Then finally I had one of my friends, and she's sort of like to me, well, why don't you get an agent and do this professionally? And it kind of sort of led to that, there was a production that was happening maybe about 10 years ago, 11 years ago and I was kind of involved behind the scenes for choreography. I think it was half an Australian-Indonesian production and we’ve got a lot of Asian cinema mates. You know, there's always combat and there's lava death and revenge, there's always something happening, so it's pretty cool, you know, it's our style, right?

And there was this fight scene that I needed to create between the main actor and three villains. And these guys were all fantastic actors, but their martial arts skills left a lot to be desired. And they were wonderful actors, great guys, but they needed a lot of training.

And I primarily turned to the director, I said, “Listen,” I said, “I need to work with these guys,” because when you do stuff like this on screen as opposed to competitive or real sort of situational combat, it's very different. It's very, very, very, very different. You know, you extend your kicks, you need to do your thrust. And you always take use of your environment.

So if we're say for example doing a scene, I don’t know, I’m just going to pick say in a coffee shop or something, right? We're utilizing tables, chairs, stuff that could be used as weapons and you take all this into consideration. Then you know, the number one priority is safety. And usually with action things, I think that it's hardcore action movies especially martial artists don't get enough credit as much as they deserve, simply because it's not just dialogue where if you make a mistake, or there's a slip-up or some kind of retake needs to happen, it can be done.

Whereas with fight scenes, especially when you're dealing with weapons, the tables and chairs and you’re looking all of a sudden like Jackie Chan, what these guys do, they’ll spend easily eight to nine hours to pull up a two to three minutes scene. It's just massive, because you're doing a number of different takes and angles and there's mistakes and then you’ve got injuries and you’ve got… So there's a lot at play, there's a lot more to handle.

Anyway, I said to him, you know, we need to do this, we need to spend X amount of time. So we kind of sort of started to progress down that avenue. And then he was sort of running out of time, so it was going over budget, it was going over time so there's all these little factors to take into consideration. And he goes, “You know what mate?” He goes, “Stuff it, you do it.” Because it's an Asian movie, right?

So you've got to remember that the Europeans are usually the bad guys, you know, in a lot of the Asian movies. So you’ve got to understand the historical context of why that happens. So he goes, “You'd be perfect for it, so no problem.” So it kind of like took off from there, and it was a major movie, especially in… That movie was quite big in Indonesia.

It kind of like stems from there, it's been an interesting sort of… I really enjoyed it, especially because I don't really compete much now. Now I'm focusing on my Academy and my acting, I love my family as well, so I try to juggle my time quite effectively at work. It's pretty cool, it's pretty cool.

I've been getting a lot more drama serious roles, I kind of like being stigmatized, kind of like a mafia boss, you know, that kind of role. So the last couple of years my roles have been primarily more of a, like a godfather, you know, like a stand over guy, like that “Don't mess with me” kind of dude, you know, which is pretty cool, you know, it’s nice.

GEORGE: Yeah, I saw a few clips and you match that persona pretty good. Yeah, you’ve got the martial arts experience, you were with a bunch of actors, they’re actors, but they don’t know what they’re doing – how does that process work to actually get actors on par with a scene and how much of it is orchestrated and improvised? Is it 100% orchestrated and is that why the length of the time, or…?

COSTA: Mmm, that’s a good question. So you'll find that with straight out actors, it takes a long time to train them. So if they’re doing usually a big budget production, where you get big Hollywood actors, or you know, mainstream high end actors, they’ll spend the time to train them and they’ll, for example look at the film that we all love, like John Wick and yeah you can go look and see that Keanu Reeves was already trained, he had been training in martial arts for years.

But in this particular one, they wanted to change it, so they brought in Jean Jacques Machado, they brought in a lot of guys with another element and he was just training relentlessly for like 3 to 6 months. And this guy has been consistently active and they were able to pull off this scene. So there was a combination of choreography and sort of go with the flow, let's improvise. So with guys like him, you can.

If you take someone, let's say for example, that’s had no sort of athletic training and really hasn't been evolving in forms of martial arts or combat, it's really difficult. So that's why you'll find, depending on the region, depending on what they're doing is they'll use people that will have a background in it. Or you know, a lot of the extras, all the supporting actors, will be very highly trained martial artists to make the flow seem effective.

You know, when you think of Liam Neeson in “Taken”, where he’ll do… the camera angles are very close, so you know where you see he’s not doing much, and he’s very sort of like a one hit, one finish and done. That’s how they get around working with guys like that. So they don't have to overly train them, because they’re more drama based actors, they’re not fight actors.

Whereas, if we go back a bit, where you’ve got guys like Keanu Reeves and Van Damme, you know all these guys. Like Jason Statham, he’s a classic example, you know, these guys are all trained. It's much easier for them to flow, so they can work well. So if you and I both trained and you were in a supporting scene, we would improvise a lot and we would work off each other, so that would reduce that flow. And that's why you'll see scenes, have you ever seen the movie called “The Raid”?

GEORGE: No.

COSTA: Ok. watch “The Raid.” So… it's pretty cool. They did like a 15 minute high impact fight scene where they were just going with the flow. And this probably took them, whereas with a normal actor it would take him 3 days to shoot a 10 minute scene, they did it in a span of like 12 hours, just like that.

And some people are highly skilled, but they're terrible on camera. Like they’ve just got no reaction, because you've got to fake it. If you punch me here and I don't react to that, well it doesn't look very realistic on film, does it? You're trying to sell it.

GEORGE: That's interesting. I've always tried to look at movies just from the devil's advocate point of view of, hang on, was that really your hand and how was the angle and how did the punch land? Was it from you, was it from someone else, and was it a double? Yeah.

COSTA: Accidents do happen though. They do happen, a lot of people get injured, you know? There's many people who have had broken foot or broken ribs or mishaps and stuff like that. And it just depends on sometimes you just get caught up in the moment, or you could be on uneven terrain and you’re working off ladders or tables or chairs, accidents do happen. People do get hurt – it’s not intentional, but it can happen, especially when you’re dealing with weaponry in another sort of environment and stuff. And there's also, there's many things, there's also the continuity factor.

So for example, when you’re looking at a base movie, let’s say for example we're doing a scene, we’re doing a dialogue scene, we’re sitting, let's take the coffee shop like we did before – this is where you'll notice things like, they're having a conversation but we’re doing a number of retakes, so we’re there for an extensive amount of time, where you’re drinking say for example, I don't know, sparkling mineral water. But your glass is half full, you're wearing your Breitling watch on your left hand and your hair is styled this way and your shirt has got one button untucked. And then you'll see the same thing later on, but the glass is empty, your shirt looks a little bit differently. That's because they're doing a number of retakes, all this stuff comes into effect too.

So if you've caught a punch on your right side and you're kind of like tripled with bleeding, the makeup comes in and the director of photography to create continuity purposes, because it's very difficult. If you have to do for example a sidekick to the knee, and we’ve got a kick, you’re doing this, you might end up shooting like 50-60, a 100 sidekicks over and over and over again. Say, you start to sweat, all this stuff comes into it.

It's quite…it's a lot harder than what people think, it's not that simple. That's why I said to you in the beginning, I said, there's a much higher appreciation for those action sequences and what some of the big actors and the stunt guys actually go through to produce the final product, it's actually quite an intense process.

GEORGE: I think I'll be looking at 2-3 minute fight scenes with a new level of eyes.

COSTA: Yeah yeah, you tend to appreciate it a lot more, a lot more.

GEORGE: So you've got Zeus Academy?

COSTA: Yes I do.

GEORGE: And so with your background of acting, have any of your students followed that same path? Or have you directed them in that way when you spot some talent?

COSTA: Not necessarily. I have offered my students when there has been opening for extras roles, or you know, like background roles and they need people, I will offer it and some of them have been involved in a few short films, like for the Toronto film festival, Sydney film festival, you know the Cannes film festival, they're doing a lot of short films, productions and stuff like that. Nothing major, like not big budget productions or sort of mid budget productions.

I think it's not something that I push them to do, it's something that if any of them are interested in that avenue, at some point I'll probably look into it, but I have offered when there has been opportunities arisen and some have taken part, but I don't really push them down that avenue. As a professor, a martial instructor of the academy, people have different goals. Primarily all of our students that come don't come for that reason.

It wouldn't be for martial arts choreography or for that, you know, it will always be something. If something changes in the future, especially some of the guys that have been with me for 10-15 years and they enjoy this and they want to pursue this, definitely.

But I think it's a very oversaturated industry, to be honest with you. It's very little, like the way that the industry works now is very different to what it used to be. So most of the time now, you know, people will make a lot of short films, they’ll make a lot of black pilot productions with the goal to eventually get it on Netflix, or Stan, something like that and get picked up.

And if that’s a success, you get a percentile cut and you’re progressed to a seasonal production, whereas… and most of this is free work, you know, it's a very, very oversaturated industry. Especially, here in Australia it's very difficult, especially with action movies, very few productions get done here, they’re more in the hardy tardy kind of thing, they’re not into that kind of hardcore Asian, that John Wick sort of Transporter style movies. You’ve got a lot more Europeans and Americans and Asians that do that style, you know?

GEORGE: Fantastic. So behind you there's a nice display of different trophies and so forth. Give us a bit of background on what's going on there.

COSTA: Yeah. I just mixed up all of my intercontinental kickboxing title belt, a couple of trophies like some, a gold medal from the Sydney BJJ comp, I've just… it's bits and pieces. It's nice, this is some of the stuff that I have. I'm at home now, so I’m not in the office, this is a small one, my home stuff, there's a lot of stuff in the gym. I don't primarily like to make the Zeus Academy about me, I like to have the impression that it is about the academy, you know?

GEORGE: Lovely.

COSTA: That way it gives me a little bit more freedom to do my acting and do some other stuff that I do. So the way that I work with Zeus Academy, we’ve kind of got 5 branches. So we've got our standard martial arts training and different classes, where we offer Muay Thai, high level Muay Thai. High-level Brazilian jiu jitsu, Pankration, mixed martial arts, Hapkido and we have our kids’ taekwondo/kickboxing programs.

So we have those styles that we teach there. So then my second avenue is, I do quite a bit of work, I used to and I still do occasionally, but not as much as I did before, due to all the circumstances that have happened throughout the world and stuff. I do quite a bit of work with corrective services and security, sort of protection, sort of area. I do a lot of the training of the guards personally myself.

I also do my film work and we run quite a few anti-bullying programs for schools and we also have remedial massage, personal training, weight control and you know personal sort of little things that we work on with individualistic sort of people, depending on, you know, their personal issues that they're dealing with. And we've also got our manager in Zeus, she's pretty much our psychologist and does a few other things as well.

So I kind of run it with those five sort of little sub branches, but all under one academy. So there's many things that I kind of like to do with Zeus Academy in that respect, so it’s kind of like a little bit different from your average martial arts Academy. And it's not that I kind of like planned to take it to any of these specific avenues. I truly believe like if you work hard and you have faith and you believe in what you do, you're very passionate about what you’re doing and you know, you keep at it things fall into place, you know.

And that's kind of like, it’s kind of happened, with the competitive scene, I love competition. I'm not, I don't push it. We have a few very, very high-level competitors. Not a huge amount, but I do find that they take a lot more of my time and a lot of time that I would like to spend. And it’s great, I understand it because I did it myself, I used to compete quite a bit over here and in Europe as well and Asia.

But it's not something that I'm a big fan of going down that avenue. I will support it as much as I possibly can, but to go into that sort of fight lifestyle it's just a whole lot of time consuming with very little return, to be honest with you.

GEORGE: Yeah, totally. So I'm curious just on your, on your academy, you mentioned your you know you've got five sort of different pillars.

COSTA: Mhm.

GEORGE: So different audiences. So when it comes to marketing, is it, do you focus on one primary target audience and then there's a bit of cross-promotion in between, or you sort of just have people coming in from all angles across all five pillars?

COSTA: So from a marketing perspective, I just market the academy, primarily I always market the Academy for its philosophy. The philosophy of the Academy, because I do a lot of, I actually studied philosophy quite extensively ever since I was young. So I studied a lot of Socrates, Aristotle and stuff like that. I think of philosophy and its beautiful relation to martial arts in the fact not that it gives you answers, but it creates questions. It creates an open channel of thinking.

In relation to martial arts, there's not one answer. There's many ways from a technical avenue, from a stylistic perspective and many answers, there's not one thing, right? That's why there's so many variations and so many possibilities. And I think that's what philosophy does.

So when I market Zeus Academy, it's more about the philosophy of the academy. We try to make the fist work as a whole in terms of, you know, mind, body and spirit. If one of the fingers are injured or damaged or is not functioning properly, then the whole unit is not going to be able to form at its maximum capacity of power. So we try emphasizing that balance.

I think people are in there, we look at sort of those various aspects of it, but in other terms of marketing, we work a lot with referrals. So we work a lot with referrals. And I also get a lot of clients through my acting. So there's a lot where I’ll be on set and they go “Wow man that's great! What do you do?” It's like, ok, yeah.

So I actually had a guy join us, he actually signed up last night. It was a fellow actor. “I've always wanted to do Muay Thai, I’ve always wanted to do BJJ, I always watch the UFC,” and it's like, that's great. You know, I didn't… I hate the UFC, yeah I'm not a big fan of the UFC. But I get that through my own individual thing.

So from terms of marketing from all the five different aspects, it'll be more by referral, sort of personal thing. But when we're doing general marketing, we just sort of market the academy. I keep it very simple, like it's very rare that I’ll, you know, “Come now and get this free,” I'm not a big believer in things like that.

I'm a big believer in “Less is more.” Like one of my marketing strategies that I sort of do on social media will always be related to something that I do to the philosophy of life. And I think as the leader of the Academy, I think you’ve got to lead by example.

When I think back to my ancestors, Alexander the Great, Leonidas, or Constantine the Great, which is where my name comes from, Constantine, they were always in the front line. They were the first one on the battlefield. They weren't sitting behind, directing, they were saying “This is what we're going to do and this is how we should do it.” So I’ve always kind of had that philosophy with myself and with my students, you know? So I try to do the same.

I try to lead, it's just been one of those things that I kind of do. And it's kind of worked for me and I'm also a big believer in, you know, knowledge is power, but I think yes and no. I think knowledge without action is okay, but you need to take action. So that kind of like means that’s philosophy too, well let's take action. If I can do it and I'm almost 50, you can do it too, you know?

GEORGE: I love that! I was going to ask you about, I was looking at your social media posts and the essence of the philosophy coming through that – it kind of reminds me that the day I started training martial arts and I don't know if you know my story, but I mean my martial arts lifespan is really short, I started when I was 36. But one thing, when you were mentioning the connection of mind, body and spirit, you know, that's what was the selling point for me.

It was all the personal development work and everything that I've done over the years and really trying to master myself and find myself, you know, finding martial arts was kind of the vehicle of the physical, you know. That was the body part which really connected for me. So if you look at the philosophy of Zeus Academy, what is that one core philosophy that sort of stems over all five different styles and avenues that you have?

COSTA: I would say one word. If I could sum up my Academy in one word, it would be family. Because family gives you a sense of security. It gives you a sense of protection, it gives you a sense of strength. It gives you a sense of knowing that there's going to be someone there, or anything there beside you to be there at your best points, but also at your worst points.
Because we all fight different battles and strength is not just a physical thing. It's like you just said before, it's all those three attributes, right? I think our family, not so much when I say the word family, I'm talking about encompassing all of those avenues and those attributes and those qualities that we all possess.

And it's one of those things and I think really you know what I'm talking about. But it's really hard to explain this to people that don't train. They don't want to get involved, especially when you real hardcore, tough like in close, like heavy, like kind of like grappling systems or really, really, really up close and personal hard style Muay Thai and stuff like that, you really develop a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood and family.

And that's what I mean by the term family, you know, you get that vibe and you get that sense of belongingness, again you know that you're part of something that is within you as well as external. I don't know how else to explain it, but that's what I meant.

GEORGE: It's 100% clear, what you’re saying is 100% clear. I love that perspective that you share, because I don't hear a lot of people talk that deep, you know, about this. For me it’s an ongoing learning cycle. I mean just everything, the mind and martial arts. The mind, the body and spirit as you mentioned.

COSTA: 100%. And I think we always start… I mean it doesn’t matter what you do, I don't think what age… it doesn't really matter what your mind frame is when you begin with. I think once you spend an extensive amount of time, we all link to that, right? And it doesn't matter what you're doing. Whether you're working on losing weight, you get that mental, emotional and internal satisfaction and understanding that you start to apply to your everyday life.

You know, whether you're a hardcore competitor, you know you start dealing with nerves and soft control and composure and feeling pressure. And no matter how many times I step into that ring, my heart is pounding! And I’ve got to channel that energy to my advantage and the more I do it, the more I'm able to channel that fear to a more positive approach. It doesn’t mean it goes away, it’s there and that’s where it’s always going to be.

And I don't care who you are, I don’t care how many fights you've had: every time you step in that ring your heart pumps and you feel that, right? But you just start to channel that energy to a more positive effect. It's like saying don't be happy, don't cry, don't laugh, and don’t feel fear. It's not going to happen, it's not going to happen at any point in time. It's just how you channel that, right? And I think the more you stay involved when you train you really start to learn these qualities about yourself a lot more.

And eventually, you might start young and you see in many aspects and I've seen this throughout a number of decades of their training. So now I'm a bit closer, this would be like my 40th year probably, like training from young life. And so when you're young you know, your parents are trying to develop that strength, confidence, that eye contact, all those qualities right.

And then you sort of get to your teens, when you start to be a little bit more mentally aware how your physical presence, your mates. And you may start to compete, even if you don't like, you know, you may be trained with people that do compete.

So it gives you that sharpness. And then you go through that whole sort of phase and if you learn to battle through those, you know, those points where, you know, you're going to get hit. You're going to get knocked down. You're going to get beaten up, you're going to get some shocking injuries.

I don't even want to start with my injuries, I'll be here for like ten minutes. Blown out knees, knee reconstructions, fascitis in the elbow, disc fusion, you know. Dislocated ribs, dislocated rib cartilage, you name it. It's like, it's just consistently it hasn’t stopped. So you know, we don't play long balls for a living, do we?

But it teaches you to fight through life. And I think it was actually Sylvester Stallone that said the best thing in the Rocky movie, no one hits harder than life. So when you learn to overcome and channel these things, and the only way you’ll learn to overcome and channel through them, is by using what you said before, that is mental, any internal physical strength and attributes.

Because the external physical presence doesn't matter at this point. And you learn to overcome and become a fighter in life. And as you progress, irrespective of age, I think when you get to sort of our age and over, you’re kind of like, you are more appreciative of this. And it's a constant learning thing, isn’t it? Like, “Oh master Costa, master Costa!” Yeah for sure, it's a title man but it doesn't really mean anything, you know.

I mean at the end of the day, we're constantly learning. Constantly, constantly. There's always something to it. I think the day that we think that we know it all is this day we stop growing.

That's my philosophy as a whole thing through the Academy, from the top. And I try to sort of slowly, you know, nurture our instructors that have, you know, that work at our Academy, that teach for me. All my instructors have been with me for a minimum of six to seven years, if not more, that have been featured in our Academy. And the idea is, I want it like that, because I want this philosophy to talk to it. I don't want it to be because it's me; I want it to be because it’s the Academy.

As you keep getting older and older, you know, we’ve got some, you know, students that are in their sixties. Yeah, one guy's almost seventy. So it's really nice to see these people, you know, and they're pushing and challenging themselves and they're doing stuff that they never thought was possible.

So I never think it's too late to start, but I think we, all at some point after a level of training, at some point in time, especially within these systems, especially in the system that I teach at the Academy, we really appreciate this mind and body evolving and the connection to life.

When you see that, I think you also create a lot of longevity in your students. And it also gives them a sense of attachment. So for example, we'll go through little things. I was talking to one of my students yesterday and he asked me a question about Muay Thai. And, you know, how it's more of a sport and stuff like that.

Actually, I said this when we were at the convention together, when I did the Muay Thai as well. And you know, a lot of people don't know that Muay Thai is actually a very traditional martial art and it comes from pre-Thailand, before Thailand was actually called Thailand. It was Siam, right?

So it was the Siamese people, their military forces were trained to defend the people of this land. And there were a lot of weapons involved in, there was archery and there was ground techniques and it was stone throwing techniques. And there was all of this stuff that was used in those times back then, you know. And in order to preserve this beautiful art, they were training it and they made it into more of a ring sport, which is what we have today.

But there's a lot of traditions, you know. The way that we bow, the Mongkon and what that symbolizes. And I don’t know if a lot of people know the Mongkon actually comes from the ancient times, which was embedded into the warriors back then. But before they would go on the battlefield, then it was either blessed by a holy man or a priest. And there's always some, you know, amulet or stone or something in Mong Kong and it would never be touched by the warrior.

So even to this day, when you see a Muay Thai fighter get out of the ring, and you will see the ropes, come around, you come to your instructor, your corner man, they will whisper a prayer or you know a blessing of some sort and then he will remove the Mong Kong, the warrior doesn't touch it. So it was to keep the evil spirits away, to keep the warrior and the fighter safe on the battlefield, or in the arena.

And you know, we talked about this thing and I hear people like training like seven, eight, nine years in Muay Thai, and they’re like, “Wow man! it's like, it's good stuff!” And this is where the mental stuff comes in and you start to appreciate. And not only that: mentally, you make a connection to way back in history and thinking, “Wow man, I'm doing something that was done centuries ago,” you know?

And I'm carrying this tradition on.” And you feel that sense of connection. And I think if you're able to touch people like this, you create a very, very, very, long journey. A sense of, you know, lasting students. Yeah, I guess.

So this is the core approach I kind of like to use with all my systems. And I think it's important because I think that the past has a lot to teach us and a lot of stuff that we can take. You know. I'll learn something from you and you might have learned it from someone else. You know, it kind of like carries on.

It's not always something new, it's something that was always there, but we just adapt. And that's the secret, I think the adaptation of taking these things and adapting to how we see fit in our current circumstances. I think that's an important point, you know?

GEORGE: Yeah, exactly why I do these interviews, it's just, I learn so much. It’s a very selfish thing, you know, like I mean yeah, people saying “Yes, it's marketing,” and stuff, but the podcast interview is for me, it's selfish in the way that I like to learn. And that's why I can just talk and listen – well, I listen more than I talk, fortunately, in the podcast.

It's just exploring and you’ve got such a wealth of knowledge to share, just those things you just shared about Muay Thai. You know, it makes me think of, you know, I’ve never stepped, you know, in a ring like that, but I just love watching that ritual of fighters walking around the ring and blessing, walking along the rope and there’s just something magical to it.

COSTA: When you hear stuff like this and even if you… you get a much nicer appreciation. And I think if people had this appreciation stylistically as well, we all would understand that we're kind of like trying to get through the same journey through different paths. But in the end, we’re trying to meet the same kind of goal, you know? In that heightened level of spirit and awareness and achievement and you know, progression, success, learning and all of those things, you know.

GEORGE: I wanted to ask you just before we wrap things up but here we mentioned the things in the world have changed and so forth in a… I mean, I don't like to talk about it that much, but in the context of what we spoke about, I mean, let's be real right: people faced challenges in different lights, you know?

Some people saw this as an opportunity, some people were really struggling with it, you know. I think it was a… to me, I look at it as a real test on humanity just in general, you know. How do we cope with diversity and you know, how do we adapt when things don't go the way we had them or are used to living, for example.

With all this perspective that you have and the philosophy that you shared, how did you approach all this? And what are the things, when all this started to develop, what are the things that sort of really resonated with you from all the years of study that you've done of philosophy that you really put to practice to pull you through?

COSTA: It's a really good question. It was an interesting time. I viewed this as a form of self-defense. I mean, it wasn't a direct or physical – well, it was and it wasn't, but you know in a way it was a self-defense sort of like situation, or kind of like scenario that the world had faced. Like, we needed to protect ourselves in a different way of course, but nonetheless the overall sort of theoretical way is, “Okay, we need to protect ourselves. What do I need to do?”

You know, we all have good days, we all have bad days. We try to have more good days than bad days and I think once you accept, I think the key point here is accepting the fact that you're going to have bad days. You're going to fail, you're going to trip, you're going to stumble, and you’re going to be pissed off. You're not going to be your best. You accept the fact, but you know the next day is a new day and you know, it's a good thing to step up your game and get a little bit better and make amends and change things.

And you know, then we kind of like minimize the bad days as opposed to the good days. They’re going to be there and we need to accept that they're going to be there, but if it’s a 50/50 ratio, we try to make that you know, a 60/40 and then a 70/30 and 80/20. And you know hopefully we get to a 90/10 ratio and that's where we want to be, right? But it's going to be there.

It's going to be there. It's like one of those things that we said before, you can’t eliminate, and you can't get rid of fear. It's going to be there. It’s how you channel it and how you react to it.

So this is how I kind of viewed the whole situation. What did I do? I probably did a ton of things that I probably never would have done, you know? I started writing a book about what, six years ago. It's about internal strength, unleashing the warrior within kind of thing.

So it's got to do with a lot of the stuff that we've been discussing. So it’s got to do with some training, it’s got to do with some physical stuff, it’s got to do with some mental stuff, it's got to do with historical moments in history and the way that things had adapted, had changed to that particular individual who’s taking part and what the mind frame might have been like. Some of the stuff that's happened to me and I've encountered, I got a chance to actually work on my book, which was great.

GEORGE: Great.

COSTA: We really got our online platform working. Just something that I had the intention of doing, but never really got around to it. Got an app, online training done. Yeah, I hooked up a major partnership deal between Zeus Academy and Nike.

GEORGE: Oh yeah?

COSTA: Yeah. So I don't even think a lot of this stuff would have been done if that wasn't the case. Did I plan for, you know, to do these things? Not entirely, but I think the best way that I can explain it and this is why I use the term self-defense was, if I'm in a self-defense situation, I look at my options.

So the first thing that I would look at where we’re sitting now, yeah, I would look at what I have in my environment, right? I've got this chair right next to me, so it can be used as a defensive and an offensive tool. This is how I think, right? With my tools.

So this is the kind of way I thought about it. I'll write a book, the online training, will do this, I’ve got to look at maybe attaching the Academy to something unique, prestigious and world class that people can associate with, and I have this ability to do because of my acting, you know? It's not something that’s simple and it's not something that I can solve, “I'm going to attach myself to it.” It kind of like fell into it, opportunities arose and I just took it.

What I do think though, I think that depending on people's circumstances, you know, some people have got it a lot harder than others, depending on where you are and what you have access to. I think that people that have been in the game for a lot longer, whatever game they're in, whatever industry they’re in, I think the ones that have been in there a lot longer are always far better, because they're able to ride the storm a little bit easier.

So with us, you know, teaching for how many years, over 20 years, I've had Zeus Academy for about 20 years, I've been teaching since 93. I could ride that with that wave a little bit longer. And also we had a lot more students that were loyal. I was kind of blessed from that perspective. I think it's tough for different people facing different situations. I mean, there was a guy who's only been open for a year or two and couldn’t sustain it, so he had to close. I think that's a key role as well.

I also think that people don't get into survival mode. So this is why I look at this as self-defense. So the first thing that happened was like, I was in survival mode. So my clear objective is to survive. I don't want to win, I don't want to gain, I don't want to get anything – I want to survive first.

Once I survive and I've gotten myself to a point where there's no threat to me now, I can then look at progressing. So I think from a philosophical mindset I portray that this is important. And I think people panic. Either they go too defensive, or they go too offensive. You’ve got to ride your time, you've got to be patient.

I think it's a classic example of… Like, if you have someone in side control. And they’re big and they’re strong and they’re battling you, it’s time to attack. The time to defend, you're on top, right? You’ve got to gas them,you got to ride them out, you’ve got to wait for the right moment until you attack the man, you go to attack the mount or you go for submission, or whatever the case may be, that's just from a technical perspective.

So when I take that approach and that's how I kind of handled that situation. That's how I think of it. Did I think of it intentionally? No, that's just the way I think, that’s just sort of my mentality, how I do things, you know? And on a positive note, it gave me a lot more time with my kids that I probably didn't get a chance to spend, you know what I mean? And I can't put a value on that.

I just truly hope that, just in terms of a humanity kind of thing, people become a little bit more compassionate and understanding with each other. And you know what, at the end of the day George, sometimes you need shit like this to happen that people can just come out of it and say, “Hang on: there are far more important things to life than just running around like a madman, becoming a slave to the system.”

Because a lot of us, and I'm sure you’re guilty of it, and I'm guilty of it and we're all guilty of it at some point in time, right? So it kind of makes you take a step back and, you know, analyze it. So that's how I work, I sort of thought about it and built a sort of approach.

GEORGE: Fantastic. Hey Costa, thanks so much, this was awesome. If people want to get in touch with you and know more about you, what should they do? Where should they go?

COSTA: Very simple. Our website is zeusacademy.com.au, but .com works as well. And email is info@zeusacademy.com.au. Instagram is, I'm quite active on Instagram, a lot more than Facebook. Instagram is my name, Costa Prasoulas and Facebook is the same as well. I'm usually quite active on my social media, I try to answer and talk to as many people as I can. I usually get through all of my emails and stuff like that, so if someone wants to get in contact, I'll be more than happy to, you know, touch base and say hello and answer questions people have and stuff like that. It’s great. I look forward to catching up with you too my man, soon!

GEORGE: Yes! When we can cross borders.

COSTA: Yeah, definitely, definitely, definitely, yeah.

GEORGE: Fantastic. Costa, thank you so much, thanks for doing this. Great speaking to you and I'll speak to you soon.

COSTA: Thank you for having me, it's been a pleasure.

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.

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.

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

100 – The Story & Lessons Learnt From 100 Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast Episodes

July 9, 2020 by George Fourie Leave a Comment

Reflections of 100 Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast episodes and where it all began.

.IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

Why you should keep a close ear to the ground like never before
Reflections and celebrations for 100 Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast Episodes
How I got started helping martial arts school owners
Why there could still be a ‘gold rush’ coming your way
And more

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

TRANSCRIPTION

If there's one thing that's more important than ever, it's to have a real close ear to the ground. There's a thing in marketing where we refer to speaking to the conversation going on in people's mind. Now, the interesting thing in the last few months has been that kind of conversation has sometimes shifted on a day to day basis, sometimes multiple times a day.

Hey, this is George Fourie and welcome to the episode number 100 of the Martial Arts Media business podcast! How cool is that? I've been waiting to say that number for quite a while. 100 episodes. Cool! So that is, I don't know, 30-40 hours of interviews with top martial arts school owners, top martial artists, top leaders from around the world and just sharing great resources and marketing tips and things that have worked for us in the work that we do with martial arts school owners.

So, look, thanks for listening if this is episode number one for you. Welcome! Here's to the next hundred episodes and there's 100 behind us that were pretty cool. I'd like to think. And if this is your 100th episode, or close to that, thanks for all the support, really, really appreciate it. Love the feedback that I've gotten from the podcast.

And if you are listening and I don't know who you are, and we haven't had a connection, then do reach out to connect with me on Facebook or leave us a review on iTunes or Spotify or wherever you listen to this podcast, it would be much appreciated.

So I've had a few things planned for episode number 100. But in all honesty, I just want to kind of sit back and reflect and share a couple of things that I've learned over my journey of doing this podcast, and more importantly, a couple of things that I've learned especially the last few months. At the time of recording this, martial arts has faced a few hardships around the world. And yeah, I mean, it's been some interesting chart times with the whole pandemic and everything.

And for me, it's been really, really focused on keeping a real close ear to the ground and being real present all the time. And especially, you know, doing, especially in our Partners group where we have martial art school owners that we work with from all around the globe.

It's really interesting to just see the different perspectives from where school owners that you know, from across Australia and New Zealand, I mean, every state in Australia, different opinion, every state in the United States different opinion, then New Zealand, UK, so never before have I seen just so many, you know, there's just so many different nuances and different variations of where you can be in and, you know what approach you can be taking.

The great thing is being able to ‘predict the future’ based on who's ahead of the curve. And that's been New Zealand and Perth, where, where I'm based. And if you're not in any of those places, I can tell you that there's been a huge influx of a student boom, you know, of people getting back into training and getting on the mats and, you know, some of our clients have had some of their best months.

So if that's not you, I hope and you know, and things aren't great for you right now, I hope that's some of the most positive news that you've heard. And so there's one tip I can give you from that is just have a close ear to the ground because the minute things shift for you, you want to be on top of it and just grab on to the gold rush if we can call it that.

So look, I want to share a couple of things that I probably don't talk about as such, and it's probably a bit more about my story. And I don't like to talk about my story. I like to speak to people or share stuff or learn from people. And that's why I do the interviews. But I mean, there's a big reason why I do all this. And some of you know, some of you don't, I'm not a martial arts school owner, if that's the first time you've heard this, now you have.

And for some people, when people hear that they would be like, ‘why do I want to work with school owners?’ Some in just curiosity. And then, you know, some people have really taken offense to it. Why would you work with school owners, you're not one of us.

I've heard things in that line, which I always find interesting because I mean, you don't go to your doctor and ask them if they've got Covid-19 before they diagnose you, you kind of expect that they understand the problem or, you know, you don't go to your accountant and make sure that he's a martial artist before helping you with numbers. Unless His name is David Simpson, who is a martial arts accountant. So, you know, in the same sense, marketing is the same for any type of business.

Predominantly, the principles are the same, but the details differ and the details you learn by experience, but you know when you work in marketing, it's really I wouldn't say it's simple, but I mean, it's really easy to adapt to whichever industry you are interested in. In my case, passionately. So if we had to, if we had to compare stories, I mean, our stories would be very different when it comes to martial arts, but we're not when it comes to purpose and why we do things, I think we share a lot of similarities. And I'll tell you why.

So, you might have heard this story before. But the way I got into martial arts was really following my son's footsteps. So I enrolled my son into martial arts when he was about four and a half, five. And that was his first activity. I'm from South Africa. I just moved to Australia that time. And so young parents want to do the right thing and put my child on the right path.

And so I enrolled my son into martial arts and I was really impressed by just how martial arts played out and the things that he was doing, the uplift in energy on how the classes were running, the confidence, the you know, just the real enthusiasm that was happening in the classes and the link for me.

For me, you know, in my life I've I mean I started out as a drummer and a surfer like those were my two things that I just wanted to do and then I studied computer programming, I opened a computer business. I did great but also failed super hard to the point that and I lost…a complete sidetrack, but we did well, we did really well. And in 1999, when the big, you know, computers were going to crash, which they never did. Well, our business did crash and I was 21 and ended up with a huge pile of debt. Ego crushed.

And I actually didn't switch on a computer again, until I was 30. Until I ended up in Australia. I didn't touch a computer, that's how destroyed I was by losing the business. So in the time between that I was really trying to find myself and I ended up in sales jobs and doing a lot of extensive work in sales. But trying to find myself in the sense of there's a lot of personal development, there's a lot of things going on to really find and master ‘the self’.

And so, when I saw martial arts, in practice, to me, the link was, this is personal development in the physical form. This is everything that I've been trying to learn and adapt my mind for focus, discipline, and confidence. This was it happening in the physical form, and I could just see how the accelerated way of achieving all those things through martial arts. So I was really hooked and inspired.

I took my sons to martial arts about three times a week. Maybe I was more excited about it than he was, but he loved it. And you know, he kept training. And so that was my introduction to martial arts.

So my son was training and somewhere along the line there, I offered the school where he was training, some kind of advice on marketing, a couple of things that I've done in marketing outside the industry that worked super well. And I was watching what they were doing and I said to one of the instructors. Look, there's a couple of things that I've done, that can really help you and I just want to share them. There was no intention of wanting a client or wanting to do business.

At this point in time, there were no Facebook groups, or maybe they were, I just weren't hanging out in them. It was just things that I knew that would work so I shared it with him and… actually what happened, they asked me if I just wanted to do it. And I didn't really want to take on a client. I was happy doing what I was, you know, selling products and doing things online.

But at that time, I had been doing online marketing for quite a while, but I thought, “Hey, there is an opportunity to learn here.” So I took it on, they got results, and they asked me, “How can you do that as well?” And I said, “Well, yeah, okay.” And I did that. And so look, things happen. And I kept helping the school that kept getting results. And so it went on and you can listen to the first couple of episodes on the podcast to get a better perspective on how that went.

And so anyway, somewhere along the line of me helping them, helping the school and my son training, somebody asked me why aren't I training in martial arts? And I'd kind of avoided the question for a long time. I was 36 at the time 43 now at the time recording this and they asked, “Why don't you want to go training?” I said, “I don't know.” And so I came up with all the excuses you hear, I'm too old, but it doesn't work like it used to.

But then I thought why not? Good question. Why don't I give this a go? And so I did. And so without a cliché, I was hooked. I really was. I took my first class and I was like, “This is cool.” The timing for me was just great. Been going through a separation, a change in life.

Really trying to find something that I am really passionate about in business. So I've come from this computer background. I had some business skills. I was building a business online, but there was a piece missing in my life. And that was something that I really cared about, right something that I could really sink my teeth into.

So anyway, life goes on and I reached a point where life was getting too much, my son was training in martial arts. So I was trying to juggle a business, was helping the school and I kind of just had to make the choice and I think this is where our stories probably align.

If I were to ask you, “when did you decide to become a martial art owner?” Like at what point in time were you training martial arts and then you decided that this was going to be your life? Now maybe that was for personal gain for what you got out of martial arts. Maybe that was for the impact that you wanted to create through martial arts.

Either way, that’s what happened for me and there was a distinct time in my life, where I looked at myself in the mirror and said, Well, this is how I want life to be. If I want life to be about something, it's about this. It's about martial arts. So I'm going to just do this, help martial art school owners grow because I'm passionate about the transformation. I knew what the results delivered.

And for me, I couldn't think of what could be a better life than to support and apply all my marketing skills and learn and grow from that, towards something that delivers the outcome that martial arts delivers. And that was it. That was the shift for me. So I decided to turn it into a business and it's become that martialartsmedia.com. It's interviewing martial arts school owners, helping martial arts school owners with marketing. We've shifted a bit from websites and things like that just because I want to make sure that I give the best value in the things that I'm most passionate about. And that's martial arts and marketing. So, that brings us here today, a hundred episodes later.

So no, I didn't buy a course. And somebody told me ‘you got to pick a niche’ or market to work in and are we? Hmmm martial arts is a good idea. No, this happened way before that. I didn't decide, “Hang on, I'm going to apply. I'm going to choose something and then go and do it. Yay, it looks like this money there. Let's go do that.” No, it came from a sense of the transformation that I received and that I witnessed, and that I wanted to support. And that's kind of how this has evolved for me.

So how does this look from here on? Well, it's refinement of the way I interview, the questioning, the questions that I'm going to ask, the resources that we are going to provide with podcasts. And my goal is just to be the top resource for martial arts training and for martial arts school owners on the planet. And I know that's not all from me, that that means a collective effort. And there's a lot of things that we are doing right now to really bring that collective effort together.

I'd like to say I feel really comfortable where I am at this point in life and what the value that we deliver and I mean, look, if, when, whenever, as a self-critic, right, you're like, “Wow, am I really doing the right thing?” And then when you look at your clients results, then it's like, “Alright, cool. We're doing good things. People are getting results. People are signing up as students. Schools are growing, and that's all I could really wish for.” So, look a bit long winded there. But uh, first and foremost, again, thanks. Thanks for tuning in. And thanks for listening to the podcast.

And it is if there's one piece of advice I can give you right now, you know, going through the whole pandemic over the last few months, depending when you're listening to this. If there's one thing that's more important than ever, it's to have a real close ear to the ground. There's a thing in marketing where we refer to speaking to the conversation going on in people's mind.

Now, the interesting thing in the last few months has been that kind of conversation has sometimes shifted on a day to day basis, sometimes multiple times a day. And predominantly it's based on what the government's saying, what are the legal entities saying is the ‘get go’ in your area? What are you allowed to do and what are you not allowed to do? Now if you choose to do your own thing, no matter what the rules, it's a bit risky.

You know, I was on a coaching call yesterday and somebody was telling me about running classes with 12 people instead of five based on their restrictions. In Perth right now there's no restrictions, We can almost do whatever we want. But this was, I think, in the UK where they were pushing the limits now. Whether you feel and whether governments are being unrealistic or not, hey, that's a debate and a rabbit hole. I don't want to go down because, yeah, there's not a lot that makes sense.

But there's not a lot of people that have navigated through a pandemic, either. All that I know is if you're going to break the rules, and something goes wrong, or somebody gets injured, or somebody gets sick or even somebody gets injured, and you weren't abiding to the rules and the restriction rules, you got a whole bunch of other problems on your plate which you don't need right now.

So reasonable, unreasonable? Safer to play things by the book and you do have options, right you do have options, you do have options to sign people up to, if you have overflow to run the classes on Zoom, you do have the option to create a wait list. There's options if you are smart about it. There are always options to keep growing, keep taking names. And the big secret of that would be obviously keep a close ear to the ground and know where people are at.

And if you are going to be marketing, don’t feel weird about it. And I say that because some people have felt weird about marketing during a pandemic. And if you are running ads and you know people get sometimes people keep hateful or stupid comments. It's just an ad and it's just someone's opinion and they don't know you, they don't know who you are, whatever they say is just on their limited perception of what they experiencing in the moment, they're probably just having a crap day and they saw this and it triggered them in the wrong way. Problem of social media, right?

People see one thing and then they attach their own story and context to it and make it super vocal. And if you are sitting on the receiving end, it can be a bit disturbing. Remove all emotion out of your marketing, you know, and just see it as marketing. And if people don't like it, sometimes people will hate it and be signing up. You know, that's a sign of good marketing because it means you are polarizing it super well and it’s very direct and attracting a certain crowd and not another crowd.

So anyway, I'm going to leave that at that. But hey, thanks so much for tuning in. Look forward to taking you on the next journey of the next hundred episodes and if you haven't yet, please leave us a review, you can just go to martialartsmedia.com/itunes, martialartsmedia.com/spotify and just get give us give us a thumbs up. TIf you got any value over the last hundred episodes, that's one thing I can ask of you is just leave us a great review and if there's somebody else that can benefit from this podcast, then please pass it on. And if you want to reach out to me, you can just go to messagegeorge.com, that opens up Messenger. Send me a message and I would love to chat and see if we can help you grow and scale your school.

Thanks again. I'll speak to you soon. Cheers!

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.

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.

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

May 19, 2020 by George Fourie Leave a Comment

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.

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.

BRETT: 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…

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?

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?

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?”

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.

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

May 11, 2020 by George Fourie 1 Comment

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

.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
And more

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

TRANSCRIPTION

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.

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

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96 – Rhonda Britten – Turning The Worst Day Of Your Life Into Fearless Living And Success

April 24, 2020 by George Fourie Leave a Comment

Rhonda Britten shares her story of overcoming a child's worst nightmare, to practical strategies that you can use to live a fearless, unstoppable life.

.IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

The exercises that founded Rhonda Britten’s fearless living today
Helpful tips to work through your anxiety and fears
Gratitude vs. acknowledgment
How your ‘wheel of fear’ and ‘wheel of freedom’ work together
And more

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

TRANSCRIPTION

People that have a difficult time with gratitude blame the world. The world is at fault. They can't be grateful because they blame the world. People that have a difficult time with acknowledgment, blame themselves.

GEORGE: Hey, this is George Fourie and welcome to another episode of the Martial Arts Media business podcast. So today I'm joined with a special guest. Once again not chatting to a martial artist, but someone that can really, really help inspire this community. And I'm speaking today to Rhonda Britten. How are you today Rhonda?

RHONDA: I'm very fine George and I'm so excited to be here.

GEORGE: Thank you so much for taking the time. So real quick, Rhonda is from fearlessliving.org. Rhonda has also been featured on Oprah I believe and had a TV show?

RHONDA: Yep, 600 episodes of television and I actually aired all over the world. I've done six hundred episodes of television, I've got an Emmy. Written four books, first life coach on TV, Oprah several times, Steve Harvey… And most importantly, just somebody who has devoted her life to helping people understand how fear really works.

Not from a theoretical perspective, but really from a practical application perspective. So yeah, so I've been around the block. I've been master coaching for 25 years, I was one of the first original life coaches and now here I am with you George.

GEORGE: Awesome. So what brings us here today obviously is a different climate out there of global pandemic and so forth. And there is a lot of fear in the air. People are experiencing a lot of fear, but people are also being pushed in a position of leadership, which can be kind of a contradiction, right? Because if you’re feeling fear yourself but you're in this position to step up and lead… Where do you find the instincts to actually do that?

RHONDA: Well, what you're talking about right, is knowing the why behind your, you know, like Simon Sinek says right, like the big why, right? But what I know to be true is that, you know, times of crisis actually define us and actually tell us who we really are. Because right now I think, you know, most people don't say they're afraid. Like, what people don’t come to me and go “I'm afraid, I'm scared,” right?

And when I meet people and I tell them I'm a fear expert, they're like “oh I don't have any fears, I'm not scared.” but right now with the global pandemic, you can't hide from your fear, right? It's all over the place.

And so right now, if you have a crack in your foundation, that crack is showing, right? That crack is showing. And as a leader, as somebody who has to, you know, stand up and lead, those cracks are opportunities for you to transform your tribe, transform your business, transform yourselves. So it's not about hiding the cracks; in fact right now, leaders need to be not only clear and focused, but they also need to be vulnerable.

So that's one of the things that I know to be true. So you have cracks in your foundation – OK, awesome. Now you get to look at your foundation with clear eyes, not pretend it's better than it has been and actually admit to yourself what isn't working for you and what is working for you.

And not only, you know, fill in the cracks, but actually think about creating a whole new foundation, so that not only can you build from where you are right here and right now, but that you can build no matter what the environment is, no matter what happens in the world.

GEORGE: Awesome, so you just mentioned, you were saying that in a moment of crisis you really sort of define. Now, you've got quite a fascinating story and I think people need to hear it if people aren't familiar with you. I would love for you to just share your story, to really give context of how you got to this knowledge and what you’re really referring to here.

RHONDA: Yeah, thank you, I really appreciate you asking me that George. And what you're referring to of course is the worst day of my life. And I'll tell the short version of the story. I was 14 years old and my parents were in the midst of a divorce and it happened to be father's day. My father was coming to take us out to brunch and, you know, my father walked in and went, “Come on, come on”, because that's what dads do. And my mom's putting on her blue eyeshadow, fluffing up her beehive hairdo.

And my sisters are fighting it out in the bathroom and me and my mom start, you know, walking out towards my dad to get to the car, to go out to the fancy sunday brunch. My sister's still fighting it out and as me and my mom and dad walk out, my dad mentioned that he wanted to get his coat from the car.

And as he lifted the boot as they say, lifted the trunk, I noticed he didn't grab a coat, but he in fact grabbed a gun and he started screaming at my mother “you made me do this! You made me do this!” – and he fires. Now I started screaming “Dad, what are you doing?! What are you doing dad?! Stop!” and he cocked the gun and he pointed it at me. And I absolutely 100% believed I was next.

And he looked at me, I looked at him. I blinked, he blinked. It seemed like eternity, but I'm sure it was only a few seconds. And then my mother, with already one bullet inside her, saw what's happening and screamed “No, don’t!” and so that bullet intended for me, my father took and shot my mother a second time. And that second bullet went through my mother's abdomen out her back and landed smack dab in the car horn. And the car horn just beeeeeeeeep.

Hey, I mean over 20 years, if I heard a car horn, I was right back there in the moment. And then my father cocked the gun again and fell to his knees, put the gun to his head and fired. So in a matter of two minutes, I am the sole witness of my father murdering my mother and committing suicide in front of me.

Now, I don't know how other people would respond to it, but I know what I did. I blamed myself, right? Because I was the only one out there that could have changed it. I didn't jump in front of my mother, I did nothing heroic. I didn't grab the gun, I didn't kick my father in the shins, right?

I did nothing heroic. I just… Dad's out there and I said, don't ,stop, don't. And the level of guilt and shame that I felt basically took happiness off the table for me. Like, you can't be happy and watch your mom die, sorry, not an option anymore for me.

So I basically split in two that day. The outside of me was fine. I'm fine, you know, I'm sure we've all played the fine game, right? Like, no, I'm fine, plenty of money in the bank, I'm good, yeah, fine. But inside, you're scared to bejeebers, right? And that's how I was.

Like, outside I pretended I was fine. Kept going to school, got straight A's, I'm fine. But inside, I was deathly afraid that there was something seriously wrong with me. I mean, one, my father's blood ran through my veins and I became afraid of feeling that there was something, like really damaged about me, like, really wrong with me.

And so I went away to college, which I thought, yay, nobody knows my story, I can hide from it. When in fact, me hiding it and me stuffing it down even further, had me start drinking. I discovered alcohol, became an alcoholic, got three DUIs. Decided, you know what, this isn't worth living for. So I tried to kill myself three times.

And it was that third suicide attempt George that I realized something. I realized I'm not good at killing myself. And yeah, I'm not dying George, I'm not dying. Because George, I got to tell you: that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to die. And here I am, very much alive after you try to kill yourself three times, they do put you in the psychiatric ward to evaluate you.

And so I was there, I don’t know, three or four days. They evaluated me, I'm not crazy, and left me to go home by myself. And I remember sitting in my little studio apartment and going, uh okay, I'm not dying. Okay, I better figure this out, because how I'm living isn't working for me. Like, this is miserable, right?

And now I want to preface this George by saying, you know, during this whole time, during these years, I was reading books and going to therapy and doing workshops. I mean, I read my first self-help book when I was 12. So, you know, I have been devoted to personal growth and self-development ever since I can remember, it's what I'm passionate about.

And so I was doing everything right that I thought I should do. And yet it wasn't relieving me of the burden of thinking there was something wrong with me. That there's something seriously like, wrong. And so it wasn't until that third suicide attempt when I'm sitting in my apartment all by myself and I say to myself, well, I guess I have to figure this out.

And I started out of desperation making up exercises for myself – and shockingly, they started working. Still today, I'm still shocked that they work and every time they work for people, which is all the time, I still get shocked when people send me a, you know, note saying “oh my gosh, changed my life.” I'm always like, “really?”, you know, because it's just, you know, it's just still so amazing to me that the work that changed my life changes so many others.

And so I started doing exercises, they started working. Made more exercises up, those worked. And then eventually, you know, it took me many years to start something called fearless living of course. But it was the exercises I started with in that studio apartment all by myself in Los Angeles are really the foundation of fearless living today.

GEORGE: Wow. That's quite a story. Now, I really want to backtrack because you mentioned that you had the self-worth issues.

RHONDA: Yeah!

GEORGE: That you took the blame on yourself.

RHONDA: Sure, of course.

GEORGE: And I really want to get to the exercises, because that really, I think, you know, people in general. I know I’ve had, you know, the self-talk moments.

RHONDA: Yeah, self attack. Like, who do you think you are, what's your problem, why don't you get it together, right? Yeah.

GEORGE: How did you get pass that? Like, obviously you've got to make the decision and have the awareness that it's actually a problem that you need to change it. But let's say you’re at that point and, you know, alright, well as you were after your third suicide, you know, alright, well, something's got to change.

RHONDA: Something's got to change.

GEORGE: How do you go pass that?

RHONDA: Well, one of the very first exercises I created actually addresses this very thing. And I remember sitting in my apartment, like I said, I don't know what to do. And I actually said to myself George, I gotta go back to kindergarten. I actually said that. Like, I've got to go back to kindergarten. And I said to myself what do they do in kindergarten? Well, they give you gold stars.

So I went out and bought a calendar and gold stars. And at this point you have to remember that I didn't feel worthy to be happy or worthy to be successful or worthy to be loved. Even though out in the world I was so good at faking, people that met me probably were like “Yeah, that Rhonda, she's great,” you know. But again, like, I didn't think that, I didn't agree with that one bit.

So, I got gold stars, got a calendar and I decided that for 30 days, I was going to keep track of anything that I did that was good. Because I felt so not worth living for and why did I exist that I wanted to find anything worth saving. Like, that’s what I was looking for. What we’re saving here? Am I worth saving?

So, I kept track for 30 days and gave myself a gold star for anything good and George, these were things like, got angry and didn’t break anything. Ok? Like, oh, you know, felt rejected, but didn’t run away, right? Like, I'm talking basic things, but back then, that was like a life saver for me.

Me getting angry and not destroying anything, or me feeling humiliated or upset and not walking away was a miracle, right? And so, after those 30 days, I had a calendar filled with gold stars. And that gave me hope that there is something worth saving.

Now, that exercise George has turned into what I call acknowledgments. And acknowledgments are something the high achievers are really bad at. And people that are attracted to fearless living and self help junkies, they’re also really bad at it, because they, you know, they kind of pride themselves on telling themselves the truth about how they’re screwing up so they can improve themselves. When in fact, acknowledgments are going to give you more bang for your buck and your acknowledgments are actually a way for you to have confidence, the way to actually create steady confidence.

So it’s something like this, you do it this way: today I acknowledge myself for and acknowledge yourself for any movement forward. And I'm talking about any movement forward. I have an exercise called “stretch, risk or die” that I teach my clients how like, their comfort zone is right in the middle and there's a structure on the “risk or die” zone and I say, even if you’re moving from your comfort zone to your stretch zone, you acknowledge yourself.

So George, I want to caveat this: because it’s not acknowledging yourself for being perfect. It's not acknowledging yourself for getting it done. It's not acknowledging yourself for how well you did it – it is literally, I had a new thought: acknowledge yourself. Right?

Oh, I made a phone call. Phone call went crappy, didn't go the way I wanted – doesn't matter, acknowledge yourself for making the phone call. So you're basically acknowledging without judging, without putting a oh good or bad on it. You're just acknowledging movement forward.

And when I started just simply giving myself credit for the movement I was making, not how well I did it, but just the movement, that changed everything. Because the confidence started to rise, self esteem started to rise. And when I work with clients and they’re like, I need more self confidence, I go, do this exercise and I guarantee in three days you'll feel better.

I've had parents do this with their kids: within 24 hours, 48 hours, they feel better. I mean, it's a confidence booster big time. Because we, as high achievers, well, we don't give ourselves those acknowledgments, we only see the next thing we have to do and how we can do it better, right? And how we should have done it better. And how it could have been faster. And all of that actually erodes our self confidence and self esteem. So that star exercise turned into acknowledgments.

GEORGE: And I love this exercise. So it's almost like practicing gratitude, but at the micro level. Like if you're struggling with gratitude it's like, well, I've got nothing to be grateful for, or this really peels back the layers. Right?

RHONDA: Well, I like to think of it this way. In the world of fearless living, gratitude and acknowledgments are for different reasons. So gratitude is about the world out there, right? So I'm grateful that today Los Angeles is like, the number one clean air city in the world, which never happens, right? So I'm really grateful that I'm breathing clean air and that this global pandemic has created.

I can see the stars and the moon better than I ever have before. I'm really grateful for this moment that I get to see the sky the way that I do, right? So gratitude is about out there. Acknowledgments are all about you. They're about you. So it's very different.

And usually George, people that have a difficult time with gratitude blame the world. The world is at fault. They can't be grateful because they blame the world. People that have a difficult time with acknowledgments, blame themselves.

And as most high achievers, most people that are making it on their own, businesses, want to do better, they have a tendency to blame themselves. And so acknowledgments for most of my clients are the hardest work sometimes that they do. Because just to give themselves credit takes an enormous amount of surrender, an enormous amount of willingness, enormous amount of perfectionism has to go away, you know? All that fear stuff.

So acknowledgments are all about you taking responsibility and claiming the movement that you made, again, whether it worked or not, whether it was good or not, whether how it looked or not – irrelevant. Did you have a new thought? Did you make a movement? Did you do something? Right? And then when you do that, you're going to start giving yourself credit and this is the reason that acknowledgments are so powerful, is that they become a diary of our effort.

I don't know about you George, but most of my life, if I made an effort and it didn't turn out the way I wanted, I forgot all about that effort. Right? I was like, well, that didn't work and I just threw it out the window, right? This becomes a diary and a reminder for you to go, oh wait, id o know how to do that. I did do that. Life is good, right? So it just changes.

GEORGE: Thanks so much for clarifying that, because that makes a lot of sense to me. Gratitude versus acknowledgments: gratitude out there, acknowledgments in here.

RHONDA: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

GEORGE: How can we tie this into the topic of fear and how things are holding us back?

RHONDA: Ah! Well, you know, fear is insidious. So let me just say a little bit about neuroscience and I know you probably know all this already, but I'll just say it, just in case, you know, so we have a firm foundation. You know, the way the brain and our neurobiology works is that the brain doesn't know the difference between a physical fear and an emotional fear. Ok?

And I know the people who listen to you, physical fear is like their specialty, right? Like, they help people through their physical fears. But those physical fears and emotional fears again, we don't know the difference.

So a fear of rejection and a fear of height to the body and brain are the same thing. All right? The other thing about the way the brain works, the brain does not know the difference between something imagined and something real.

So we walk into a room and we don't think we belong there and, you know, we're going to make up a story about it and we live out that story then. Because we actually are, we're hanging on to the imagined story we've made up. So the brain doesn't know the difference. The other thing about the brain is they’re doing research now and they’re starting to prove that some of our fears are actually handed down through our DNA.

So, you know, some of the things that you may have a fear of failure, or a fear of rejection or a fear of success, or a fear of loss or a fear of identity, or you know, etc. Etc. Fear of speaking in public, right? Any fear. Perfectionist, procrastination etc. All of those things are ways, I'll just put it this way: fear’s number one job is to keep us safe.

And so, your fears are handed down through your DNA, you experience fear as you're growing up, you don't know it because it's just reality. You don't think of it as, I'm afraid of my mom or my dad or my fellow students unless they are hitting you. You just know that they're mean, or you know, you judge them and you put them aside.

So how fear works is that fear wants to keep you in a safe place. The challenge is George, safety means that it's the same. And they’ve been proving this in neuroscience now that the brain actually and the way we work, body and brain, is we’re energy machines. And in order to conserve energy, the brain automatically – it has a problem, it has a problem, global pandemic. Problem. And the brain automatically to save energy, looks in the past for the solution.

So it's looking for a template in the past, going through your books that you already own and going, I've got to have a book here about global pandemic. I'm sure I've cured this before, I'm sure I did this before. And there is no template! Right? So then what happens? Our body and brain gets panicked, because now we don't know what to do, because again, the way that the body and brain find information is looking in the past. Well, the past template does not solve the current problem. And rarely does, right?

So we’re actually unconsciously, not knowing we’re doing it, looking in the past, super fast, auto responder, right? To solve a problem that we’re experiencing in the present, that past template, we’ve outgrown, it doesn't work for us anymore.

Which then, we’re trying to use a past template in the present to create a new future and you and I both know that doesn't work. So I want you to imagine for a minute that you're trying to, you know, create a new business, or make more money or find some steady ground in this pandemic. In order to do that, automatically, your brain is going to look in the past – it's not there. So now you’re in the unknown.

So I like to say that freedom, freedom equals your capacity to live in the unknown. Freedom equals your capacity to live in the unknown. But our body and brain are completely petrified of the unknown, they don't wanna live there. They’re concerned about security and safety. And remember one of our number one core needs is safety. And when we don't feel safe, we retreat. And instead, we want to move forward, right? Does that make sense?

GEORGE: Yeah, terribly.

RHONDA: I feel like I'm missing a little piece there. I feel like I'm missing something, so I hope you're going to ask me about it, I just know there's something I didn't connect.

GEORGE: Well, let's take a step forward, right? How do we navigate then into the sphere of the unknown? How do we go there?

RHONDA: Yeah. So let me talk you through the “stretch, risk or die” exercise, because I think that's going to be the best illustration. So think of your comfort zone. I mean, we all know what a comfort zone is. Our comfort zone is what we do, you know, I like to tell people, think of your comfort zone as your life right now.

So married, not married, kids, no kids, you know, worried about your bank account, not worried about your bank account. Whatever is happening today, in this moment, let's make it your comfort zone, even though it's not very comfortable.

So think about it as a bullseye, a bullseye on a dart board. The second ring around that comfort zone is called the stretch zone. And now, the stretch zone is the things George, that you now you can do, you just haven’t done.

Like, think about all the things, I can think about a whole bunch of things that I know I can do and I haven’t done. You know, how much vegetables should I be eating? I know I should be going to sleep – oh, I know I should be making that extra thousand steps on my pedometer, right? I know these things; why aren't I doing it? This is the tricky part George because the stretch zone is the simplest zone, because you know you can do it. But in fact, it's where we beat ourselves up the most because we know we can do it and we’re not doing it! Ok?

GEORGE: Right.

RHONDA: So we’re ruthless with ourselves! We're so mean to ourselves! Now, the circle around the stretch zone is called the risk zone. And the risk zone is the things you don't know if you could succeed or not. You're not sure you could do it. The die zone is outside of that, the die zone is like, I don't know if I can do that, – I don't even know if I want to do it, right?

So I think about when I trained for a marathon. A marathon was definitely a die for me, I haven't run since high school, right? So a stretch for me was, sure I would walk 5 miles, no problem. I should my comfort zone was walking 5 miles; a stretch would have been, you know, maybe walking 7 or 8 miles, right? Like I probably can do it, you know. A risk was running a mile, or running 3 miles – I didn't know if I could actually run a mile. I haven't run since high school. So I don't know, I don't know if I could succeed or not.

And then like I said, the die was running the marathon. So I want you to imagine that in between the comfort zone, the stretch zone, the risk zone, the die zone, is a band of fear. And for you to move from your comfort zone to your stretch zone, you must move through what I call the wheel of fear. And in order to move from the stretch zone to the risk zone, you must move through that band of fear.

So we blow it, we go, “I have to add more vegetables” and then we don't add the vegetables and then we beat ourselves up for it. That actually has made our neural pathways stronger in the fact of beating ourselves up, putting ourselves down and proving that we are unworthy. Proving that you're lazy, proving that you're stupid, proving that you don't have it to be successful, right?

So every time that we want to make a change in our life, we actually are rubbing up against the wheel of fear, what I call the wheel of fear. And most of us don't know how that works. Most of us don't have a relationship with our fear. And so they just blame themselves, put themselves down, think it's their fault. But it's actually not, it's how we're wired. And once you know how you're wired, you can make a different choice and move from that wheel of fear to the wheel of freedom.

GEORGE: I love that.

RHONDA: Does that make sense?

GEORGE: Yeah, totally. So I've got this visual picture of the wheels of how…

RHONDA: Yeah

GEORGE: …you know, the band of fear really sits. So it's really never a question of feeling comfortable at what, reaching a level of comfort in our comfort zone thinking, okay, I'm now comfortable where I'm at – it's time to take the next step. It's always taking that leap into that stretch of fear and knowing, well, hang on: I've gotta embrace the fear because fear means I'm going in the right direction.

RHONDA: Yeah, I mean it's like, think of it this way. You know, fear is really subtle, so let me just step back with this. Most people like you and I George don't say I'm afraid or I'm scared. I mean, I am shocked that I'm a fear expert because I never, even when I was going through with my parents and after, you know, those nightmares every night for 14 years of becoming an alcoholic, I never would have said I'm afraid or scared. I never would have said that. But what people don't see and what I didn't see is that fear doesn't show up as, you know, like a big giant monster.

Fear shows up in our behaviors and our problems. So how do we know that we have fear, that fear’s on patrol? If we procrastinate, there's a fear under that.

If we get overwhelmed, there's a fear under that. If we're a perfectionist, there's a fear under that. If we get anxious, there's a fear under that. If we judge, there's a fear under that. If we're comparing, there's a fear under that. If we complain, there’s a fear under that, right? So all the things that we think, “God I wish I would quit people-pleasing. God, I wish I wouldn’t be a perfectionist. God, I've gotta quit procrastinating.” all those things we’re like, I wish I could quit doing.

All of those are just fear responses. Those are not the fear itself; that is just the response that we're having to the fear that keeps us then stuck, stuck and small and convinces us, because we're not doing those things that we then don't have a right, or we don't have what it takes to actually go for the dream we want, or actually make the changes that we really want to make, right?

So in order to really see fear for what it is, we have to really start with our fear responses. And actually no, you're not a procrastinator because you're stupid or, you know, lazy: you’re a procrastinator because you're afraid of something underneath that. And that's where the wheel of fear comes in.

Because I believe wholeheartedly, based on the work that I've done and the research I've done, is that the only way that you can truly change your life is by changing your filtering system. And the best way to change your filtering system is to have a mental model that really sets you free. So I created a mental model called the “wheel of fear.” And the wheel of fear basically explains to you, shows you how you operate when you get triggered, right? And so like, I have two pairs of glasses here wait, what – yep, I do have two pairs of glasses.

So let's just imagine that for a minute George, that these are my wheel of fear glasses that I have on right now. So I'm looking at the global pandemic through my wheel of fear glasses. What am I going to look at? There's not enough opportunity. The government isn't coming faster. How am I going to get toilet paper? Where's my water? Oh my god, I'm going to… right? Like, those are the fear glasses. If you put on what we call the “wheel of freedom” glasses, you actually change the complete filtering system. And you see something, just a different world.

And you see opportunity and possibility and hope and goodness and clean air, and you see something completely different. So that's what I'm dedicated to, is helping people understand how their wheel of fear works and what their wheel of fear is, so that they can choose every day to move from their wheel of fear to their wheel of freedom.

So, you know, the wheel of fear has four parts and again, I could go into that but, you know, I believe that everybody has a core fear that they have that really runs them. And my core fear is, I don't want to be seen as a loser. Now, if you say to me oh Rhonda, I know my core fear: I don't want to be seen as lazy. It's like, trust me, you're wrong. You're wrong, you're dead wrong.

I have only met two people in my 25 years that actually knew what their wheel of fear was, because you will think that your wheel of fear is your fear response. That’s not your core fear, right? So, all your procrastination, your perfectionism, your anxiety, you’re overwhelmed, you're beating yourself up, you're putting yourself down – all those are just fear responses and there's something else driving those behaviors.

And for me, on my wheel of fear, that for me is the fear of being seen as a loser. The fear of being thought of as a loser, that anybody could see it, think it, smell it around me, right? And I'm automatically, my automatic system will go into overdrive the minute I think even for a second that you're thinking that, right?

And that's how we do, we're always operating unless for consciousness we're awake unless we're aware, we're operating to try to preserve ourselves, rather than to shed ourselves, right? To release ourselves. So that's, you know, that's our basic opportunity here, is who's going to win the wheel of fear or a wheel of freedom.

GEORGE: All right, so let's make this practical and let's choose someone out of the audience to be a guinea pig.

RHONDA: Oooooh, ok!

GEORGE: So I really relate to that, right? Again, I think I relate to that, but I could be wrong. Where you mention, all right well, you don't want to be a loser.

So here's something I know that comes up for me: I know that when I get into creative mode, I need to create content. I have this war of art moment. I procrastinate, or I find things to do. I actually, I was talking to Kylie Ryan about this, I mentioned, you know, I was just about to create a new program for our Partners group. And before I knew it, I was down at the store buying a new monitor. It was important, right?

And I’ve noticed, if I set aside a day and according to my Kolbe I should, you know, multitask and do things at the last minute, which is detrimental to me, but I do that. But either way if I know my day is set out that, this is my creation day and I've got to create things – I know that I'm going to find things to do throughout the day and put things, put obstacles in my way and I catch myself doing it. So let's, it's like that is an example.

RHONDA: Yeah, I love that. So that's basically the writer’s, you know, that's a writer's dilemma. As a writer, you know, every, every writer says they love to write, but they hate to sit down, right? Like the hardest thing is to sit down, right?

Every writer would tell you their house was spotless before they'll ever sit down and write a word, right? And on one level, just to talk about it from an ethereal level, is that on one level your brain is switching modes, right? Like creative, incubating and creating is very different than executing, ok? So, you know, you probably are in execution mode most of the time and now you're switching to creative mode. Well, that's a different way to be.

And part of creating is actually dabbling, you know, kind of scat, like kind of just hanging out, cleaning the house, you know, like that actually helps your whole body and brain release. It's kind of like when you want a good idea, where do we all go? We go to the shower, right? We go to the shower, because we're not thinking anymore, we're just in the shower and all of a sudden, an idea pops.

Well, it's that same theory when we're trying to create. Creativity is a, well there's a muse to creativity and you have to court the muse and so it's like, I think you're trying to… On one hand, I want you to be able to create from 9:00 to 5:00, or whatever you want.

I mean when I'm on a deadline for a book, I can write 3 o'clock in the morning – 4 o'clock in the afternoon, because I've got a deadline, right? I'm on purpose. I have zero procrastination. But if I'm not clear about what I'm doing or if I've been in execution mode, there has to be a space for me to change my energy and to prepare the space for me to be creative. So that's one part of it.

The other thing is that there are costs and benefits for you to be creative. So let's just talk about those: what do you think are some costs of you being creative? You came up with this new program. What are some costs? Let's just make them up.

GEORGE: Yeah well, costs are, is it going to be good enough?

RHONDA: Yeah, going to be good enough, yeah. Is anybody going to like it? Are people going to quit? They’re going to be like, oh he's gone downhill I'm leaving, right? Right?

GEORGE: That's, that's a cost, yeah.

RHONDA: Yeah, yeah. So all these, these are costs. So the benefits, what would the benefits be?

GEORGE: Benefits would be that my members get value and they get something that they can action that's going to move them forward.

RHONDA: Right, right. So there's good benefits and you're devoted. So this is what I know about you George: I know that even though you procrastinate because the costs are very high actually, I know that you as a human being are so devoted to your tribe that you actually will create that course.

It won't be when you say it is, it will be based on when it needs to be, because you’re a last-minute person – by the way, so am I. So, you know, I'm the person creating a course, like I'm teaching a class tomorrow and I haven't even thought about it yet.

Like, it's not even a thought in my head. Like, irrelevant to me, because it's tomorrow. After you and I get off the phone I'll be like, oh, tomorrow, yeah I need to think about that. And then I'll start and I'll jot down some notes.

But I, just like you, work at the last minute. So if I'm trying to force myself to go out of my own system, that in itself doesn't work. But I want you to hear that you rationally know the right answer – oh, I'm going to sit down and do this program. But fear comes in and goes, but we don't know how. And we don't have a guaranteed result. And who do you think you are? Come on, you know, you've been doing this for a long time right now.

Yeah, you say you know what you're doing, but what if they don't like it? You know, okay what if this loses your business? What if everybody knows you’re a fraud? What if, what if, what if, what if, right?

And again, you may not be thinking those thoughts. It may not be in your head, right? But they're inside of what I call the wheel of fear. They're the ways that the wheel of fear is, because you're saying to the wheel of fear, “Well I'm going to grow now. I'm going to change. I'm going to add, I'm going to create.” And the wheel of fear is like, “Ah not a good idea thank you very much! This is going to be bad.”

And so it tries to get you to be distracted and get you to go by that monitor and have you, you know, stamped in the middle of the night and then start working at 2:00 in the morning, right?

GEORGE: Totally. Okay, so I catch myself doing this. And I acknowledge my fear. What's my next step?

RHONDA: Well I don't know: are you going to sit down and write or are you just acknowledging your fear?

GEORGE: Right.

RHONDA: So there's a couple things. So like I said, we have something called the wheel of fear and a wheel of freedom, but to bypass that right now, to give you a really quick, quick way to start dealing with this, is actually start having a dialogue with fear. So the first thing you do is you never fight with fear. Never. It always wins.

Fear is as smart as you are, as educated as you are, as spiritual as you are, it knows everything you know, and it's way smarter than you. So we never argue with fear. So a fear says, this is going to be bad. This is what you'd say to fear: you're right, it's going to be bad and I'm going to do it anyway.

Oh well, this is, you know, I know you think this is going to bring value and you're going to suck it up and get it done but, you know, what if George doesn't like it? What if Harry doesn't like it? Well, they might not like it, that's right, they may not like it and I'm going to do it anyway. Okay, well you're making a fatal mistake. I might be making a fatal mistake, thank you so much – I'm going to do it anyway. Okay, well don't come crying to me. Okay. Right?

So one of the ways that we bypass is not fighting and not arguing. This is one of the tools inside the wheel of freedom, what I call the wheel freedom. One of the things that I teach my clients is how do you talk to fear and how do you move beyond fear. And what do you focus on instead? And what we focus on on the wheel of fear and wheel of freedom is, there's something called the essential nature.

Remember how I told you, like I don't want to be seen as a loser? Well, on my wheel of freedom what I focus on instead is being authentic. So if I'm afraid to be a loser or I think loser around my job is Rhonda Britten is – if I was being authentic right now, what would I do? Oh – I would say this, I would do this.

So you need to, you know, to have another shift of a mental model. It can't be just you and the project because it's bigger than the project. It's got to be like who you are and what really works for you. So whether it's, you know, being authentic, like, well if I was being authentic, would I be doing this project? Or it could be, if I was being compassionate with myself, or if I was being comfortable to myself, right?

But there's another frame that you have to decide to step into and take action from that new frame. So me being authentic is, you know, if you're afraid to be a loser, you're afraid if you're authentic that you're going to be a loser. And I have to know that that's not true. Like right, that's not true. If I was being authentic, who would I be? Oh. I would sit down and I might tell my group that it's going to be done next week and not be done now, right?

Or oh, I'm going to tell myself that maybe I don't know as much as I think I do and I have to do some research. Or maybe I do need somebody to help me be accountable to, right? Tell yourself the truth. But never, never, never, argue with fear/

GEORGE: I love that. Rhonda, so good. Before we wrap things up, I just want to bring it back to my audience. And looking at, you know, we’ve got martial arts school others that we work with, people are faced in various directions. You know, some people have had their income shot down 100%.

RHONDA: Yeah.

GEORGE: Many of them are Partners within our group of martial artists made the pivot online and are venturing in that new arena.

RHONDA: New world, yeah.

GEORGE: Yeah and I don't want to shift the topic too much and, you know, go down a whole new angle. But I just want to talk about the topic of money, because this has come up a lot of times where, I think especially in the martial arts space, there's been so much emphasis placed on the value that they deliver physically. And if they switch to the online, the detachment of what they deliver physically and they are doing online…

RHONDA: Yes

GEORGE: …They feel that it's just not right to charge money, or that they've got to do it for goodwill.

RHONDA: Yes.

GEORGE: what would be your take on that and the relationship of money and feeling comfortable making that shift?

RHONDA: So I'm going to say two things: one is, I have an exercise that we can do in just a minute, but um… The thing is that, you know, I have a client of mine who's a martial artist. He's a… what kind of trainer is that, you know, in the cage, the cage trainers, right? Um…

GEORGE: Mixed martial arts.

RHONDA: Yeah, and he's… Yeah, right, mixed martial arts. So he is, you know, he said the same thing to me. He's like, you know, but I have to touch them and I have to move them. I'm saying, yeah, but right now what do you think everybody needs that are your clients?

I don't know about you, but I think they need a mindset. I think they need maybe critiques on… Like, you could put matches on line and you could critique them. You could help them understand their body better. Like, there are so many refinements, right? Like if you talk to a boxer, a martial artist: the work is not done in the ring, right? The work is done outside the ring, right? So using that attitude of like, okay, I'm not in the ring right now, I'm not with them physically: so what can I do? How can I support them?

That's going to give them a competitive edge and even better when we get back in the ring? And I think that's the mindset that you have to think of that you're doing like the heavy lifting, the deep, rooted work, right? The deep rooted work, without the physical body being there.

So I think that mindset work, getting people to understand that they can use their body, taking care of themselves, making sure they're staying in shape etc etc, doing the fine muscles, etc etc – I mean, this is important and valuable work that people will pay for. They will be happy to pay because they want to belong somewhere.

Because everybody, most people out there are feeling very, very alone, even though they have five people living in their house and they're stuck with them. They feel very alone and they want somebody that understands them, that knows them like this. That knows them in their power like this. They want to be seen, they want to be remembered, they want to be heard – and they want focus.

And you're the one to give them that, because you're their trainer. You're there whether there's a gym owner, a trainer, you know, you're their master. So help them during this time, it's your responsibility. I don't know that's a…

GEORGE: Yes, that is spot-on and very in alignment with what I've been telling our clients iIs really think of the outcome. There's an outcome that people actually get from the martial arts and if you can provide that through a different medium, that's going to keep them together until, you know, the new normal.

RHONDA: That's right. But again, you and I both know martial arts is a lot of mindset stuff. So if your mind is caught in the cracks in your foundation as I said earlier, then you get to do your mindset work alongside your clients. And you get to lead them through that. And that's your opportunity and that is one of the greatest gifts you can give to them. And I promise you this they will remember you forever, leading them through this. They will remember you forever.

You know, I mean I think about the people that I've been talking to and I will never forget them, because they're helping, they're supporting, they’re being with, you know, like we're doing this together, right? So you're not just becoming, you know, who they've trained with; you're really becoming their mentor at a whole new level. So I invite you to take it. Yeah. And do you want me to throw this last exercise out? Because I promised I would, but again, I don't need to. I mean, are you complete, what do you think?

GEORGE: If you have the time Rhonda, I would love it.

RHONDA: I’ll just throw it out, because I actually said I would share it, so I want to give it. Another exercise to actually take about, whether it’s abundance or mindset whatever it is, you know, we're focused on the things like, “oh I've got to give everything away.” and again, goodwill is nice but what can you give for goodwill and what will you charge for you? You have to really start to understand that like, I'm doing a lot of Facebook lives right now for goodwill.

But I'm also charging my clients and I'm also charging for my courses, ok? I'm giving people a longer time to pay and some people I've been talking to are reducing fees 50% for one month or two months and then that's it so that their clients stay with them. But again, you don't have to do that to pay on what you provide, right?

So this exercise that I'm going to tell you and I'll end with this is control versus no control. So grab a piece of paper, put a line down the middle and on the left hand side write “control” and on the right hand side write “no control.” and I want you to write down all the things you are in control of and all the things you're not in control of.

Now, I'm sure you've probably done something like this already with your folks George, is like what do they control, what don't they control. But this is the kicker, this is what I do is my clients. I take it to the next level is, all the things they can control, I want them to grade themselves. I want them to rate themselves from one to ten. Ten is, I'm not going to have a problem with my sleep, I'm the greatest sleeper in the whole world. Water? I'm a ninja! I'm a nine! Right? Or is it, I'm two with my sleep and I'm three with my vegetables and I'm four in connection, right?

So write all the things you're in control of and give yourself a scorecard, rate yourself. Because what I know to be true is, when you're focused on the things you can't control, when you're getting worried about the things you can't control, I guarantee you you're not controlling the things you can. You're not taking care of business where you can.

So I invite you to just do the control – no control. Have the control there, rate yourself, give yourself a scorecard. Focus there, because then when you do that, you'll get your power back. You feel empowered again and then the things you can’t control kind of recede in the background, right?

GEORGE: Simple. What a great…

RHONDA: Simple, but not easy to do, right?

GEORGE: Exactly, exactly. But that's gold and I'm going to do it right now.

RHONDA: It's an amazing exercise, I can't tell you how many clients I have worked with, I've been doing that exercise with clients for over 20 years and I cannot tell you how it changes their life. Because it's not just a list, oh I can do this, I can do this. But it's like, no – rate yourself. That rating gives you like, oh crap, I’ve got to focus on this, it gives you a focus now.

GEORGE: Right.

RHONDA: Do you mind if I give a gift to your listeners?

GEORGE: Please do!

RHONDA: Ok, so I actually feel compelled to… I don't normally give two gifts, but I did talk about “stretch, risk or die”, so I do want to give them all the worksheets for that, so they can really understand it at a deeper level.

So go to fearlessliving.org/risk, and yes, you're going to have to put your name and email in because it's inside a member center. If you don't want to get emails or whatever, of course you can just unsubscribe right away. But again, you're going to need to do that in order to become a member to get the course.

But the other thing that I realized I had just the other day which is so funny. I'd already talked to like six groups and forgot I had this: I actually have created a course called “How To Overcome Fear Of The Unknown”. Hellooo! Helloo! Duh! And when I realized that, I was like wait a minute I have a course called “How To Overcome Fear Of The Unknown”.

So if you'd like that course as well, go ahead and grab that and that's at fearlessliving.org/gift. So fearlessliving.org/risk for stretch, risk or die and fearlessliving.org/gift for the gifts. And again, sign up, put your email in, you'll get access to the course. Unsubscribe if you don't want to hear from me ever again.

GEORGE: That's gold Rhonda, thank you so much for being so generous with your time. Thank you for the great gifts. I know I got, you know, my secret finish about doing this podcast is like I get to speak to awesome guests like you and just learn. And I know everybody listening to this is going to get so much value. So Rhonda, thank you so much, really appreciate your time.

RHONDA: You’re welcome – be fearless.

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.

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The Martial Arts Business Pivot Gameplan

April 17, 2020 by George Fourie Leave a Comment

How to get your martial arts students to commit, show up, and fill your pipeline with new prospects in uncertain times.

.IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

How to shift from being a fear consumer to a content creator
The new 9 accelerators that you should focus on in the ‘new normal’
Getting back into growth mode
And more

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

[thrive_2step id='6552′]Download the PDF transcription[/thrive_2step]

TRANSCRIPTION

Hey, George here. Hope you're well. I've just put together our new Martial Arts Pivot Game Plan. I want to go through just the big picture of the plan with you. Over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to be sharing probably a bit more in depth in regards to the certain topics that we're going to discuss here. Been having a lot of conversations with a lot of martial arts school owners over the past couple of weeks and really trying to refine what is going to happen from now, moving forward. So I'm going to map it out for you. I'm not the best at handwriting and drawing, but I think it will give you a good context of what the plan looks like and how to move forward.

First up, let's start with the now. Let's work it from the inside out, but let's work it where we are at. Right now, most martial arts school owners and maybe for you too is, we're consumed in a state of fear, fear from the media, the social media. Just there's not a lot of positivity out there, right? We're kind of consumed with a lot of fear, right? At this point, you're kind of sitting in a, well, we'll just call it a fear consumer stage.

Now, what makes us scared, if we look at the business side of it, is right now we're in a situation where students are canceling. With students canceling, that's going to obviously, as a… within the business, impact your cash flow. And then personally, wait from here. Like, how am I going to provide for my family if the cash disappears and people aren't paying? And it's going to have a bigger impact on your family.

Then on this side, number two. For number two, we've got no normal classes. The platform has changed, hasn't it? And depending on where you're at, I know for most school owners at this point in time still in lockdown, not able to run classes other than virtually. So we're sitting in a situation of no normal classes and that kind of makes the students feel a little uncertain. Like what's going on? What's going to happen? And for you, it's a fear of the future, for fear of the future for them as well. Like where does this go if we can't have our normal classes?

And then number three, which is important but hasn't been really the focus of anyone right now, is no new sign-ups. Impact on the business, if you're not bringing on new students in this type of climate, if you're stagnating, you're really declining because things aren't just the way they are, right? So if you're going to stay the same, then there's going to be a dramatic decline in the business.

By the way, if you're watching this live, just give me a thumbs up or leave me a comment below that says live. If you're watching the replay, just comment replay just so I know. All right, cool.

So here we are, right? Students are canceling, no normal classes, no new sign-ups. And we want to flip this fear consumer mindset. And instead of being on the fear, on the defense, we really want to dial into the offense. And we've got to flip things around and we've got to become the creator, right? Creator versus consumer. Okay. So let's flip these around.

Students are canceling. What do we want them to do? Well, first up, we want them to commit. This is where the video gets a bit better, right? You're not focusing on the problems. Let's look at the solutions, right? So first up, we want them to commit. No normal classes. Instead of them getting hung up about the normal classes, we want to change their perspective and make sure they show up, start showing up to the new medium, which we'll talk about in just a minute. And then we've got no new sign ups. Instead of having no new sign ups, we want to split this around and, once again, have a full pipeline, a full pipeline of new prospects that want to get started with martial arts. Not in the same way of course, but they want a get started. If this is resonating with you, let me know in the comment below. We'd love to know your feedback.

So let's map this out further and let's dive into what I'd like to refer to as our new nine accelerators that we need to focus on. If we've got to stop students canceling, get used to the norm of no normal classes and there's no new sign ups and we want to flip these around, we want to get them to commit, to show up and have a full pipeline, then here's how this looks.

First up on the commit side, we've got to over-communicate. Right now, coming in the position where we can't communicate enough, we have to constantly keep communicating. And taking into consideration that there's no physical location right now, so there's got to be a lot of communication online, back and forth, whether it's one-on-one, whether it's in the groups, you name it.

Number two. We want to engage our community. This is one important aspect where I think a lot of people are missing the point when it comes to creating online videos, is you've got to engage your community, now more so than ever because… I mean, all your students and yourself, you're used to going into the physical location. There's that physical connection. There's that ability to shake hands, how dare we, high fives, all those things, there's connection. We don't have that right now. So we really got to focus on how we engage our community in the time that we show.

And number three, we got to multiply the value. This could be a mindset shift as well, right? Because if we're really focused on that the only value we provide is physical martial arts, within the contact, then we might struggle with that. So we've got to find other ways to multiply the value. Over-deliver in other ways within the online hemisphere.

All right. Number two. No normal classes, we want them to show up. So how are we going to do that? Well, first up, we've got to really embrace online. Because here's a fact, and again, this could be done in 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, but as of right now, for most school owners, you're an online business and you're not a physical martial arts business. That's just where you're at right now. So it's important to embrace online. I think what's important to also look at is whatever you do now in this current climate is going to add so much value to your memberships down the line when things return back to normal or the new normal, right? So we've got to embrace online.

Number two, we want to dial in the discipline with our students. So we're going to make sure they still show up and we've got to build systems around the fact that we want to make sure that they are still arriving at the classes, the virtual classes, because if we're going to lose the discipline, then slowly but surely the commitment to martial arts is going to disintegrate. So dial in the discipline.

And number three, here, is present a plan. Present the new plan because as we were talking about earlier, uncertainty, there's uncertainty and not knowing where things are headed, then that creates doubt and it enhances the fear and then people are going to start canceling and so forth. So if we have a clear plan and we show them how this is going to work, how the classes work, where this is going, how your gradings are going to work in the future, now we've got something to hang onto, it gives us certainty in a time when most people need a lot of certainty, right?

That's been most of the focus for most school owners right now. But let's look at the growth side, because we got to keep this business going, we got to keep the economy going, we got to keep our business moving forward. So we want to turn no new sign ups into a full pipeline. How are we going to do that? Well, we've got to change a couple of things. First up, we need a new offer. The offer that we ran a couple of weeks ago before all the climate changed, where we got sent to our cocoons, where we got to stay indoors, before that happened, that used to work then, but this is now. Yep. And will we get back to the previous way we used to have our offers? Perhaps so. But right now, our offers need to change.

With that, we need a new message. Where our messaging was potentially focused on something aspirational, confidence and goals and a future, we're now looking at more of a survival of how we're going to get through this and support our messaging so that it's a message of how do we get through this versus how do we go for these big goals and so forth.

So for a new message. Then with that, we've got to embrace the new medium, the new delivery. Going back to our point up here, if you're running an online business, which right now you are, then running an online business is more than just streaming classes, right? It's more than just streaming classes. So you've got to embrace the medium and really look at it in a way of, “All right. Well, if we're going to bring new students in, then how does our on-boarding change from now? How are we going to onboard our students? How are we going to deliver the right content at the right time for them so that we are in effect selling the consumption of our content?”

I'm going to leave that. But just as a quick recap. On the mindset shift, this is really important. We want to move out of the fear consumer mindset, and that means maybe turning social media off just for a little bit if it's needed to be done, right? If you need to spend less time on social media, then maybe that's a good idea. Less consumption, less consuming the fear of the media and take the creator stance. Create more content, create more videos and be on the offense instead of playing the defense.

The problems that we're tackling head on, students canceling, no normal classes, no new sign ups, and we want to flip all those on their heads. Instead of students canceling, we want to make sure that they commit, we want to make sure they show up to the new classes and we want to get back to having a full pipeline of prospects we can speak to.

Then the nine accelerators that we're going to focus on. We've got to over-communicate. Over communicate right now. Make sure that we're engaging our community. Multiply the value over and above what we used to do in the past. Embrace the online space. Take note that you now have an online business versus a standard brick and mortar martial arts business. Dial in the discipline and make sure that your students are showing up. To do that, make sure that you've got a great plan in place that they're engaged. Then how are we going to scale or how are we going to start growing again? How are we going to get that curve happening? Well, we've got to have a new offer in place, a new message and a new medium.

So I'm going to leave that with you. I'm sharing a lot of this in our Facebook group. You can find that at martialartsmedia.com… Sorry, martialartsmedia.group. You can find us there or just comment the word group below, I'll get you the link. If you need more help in implementing this plan, then just type help below or send me a message and we can have a chat and I'll see if we can help you with a plan that we are rolling out in the next couple of weeks, expanding on this game plan right here. All right. Hope that was helpful. I'll see you in the next video. Speak soon.

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.

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

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