152 – [Martial Arts Business Case Study] From 30 – 170 Students In 14 Months While Running A Music School

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

 

IN THIS EPISODE:

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

 

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

 

TRANSCRIPTION

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

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

ERICA: Thank you.

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

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

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

ERICA: Yes, yeah.

GEORGE: So martial artists and musicians.

EVAN: Yes, we get that a lot.

GEORGE: You do? How does that work together?

EVAN: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ERICA: Yeah.

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

GEORGE: Right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ERICA: They were all naked.

GEORGE: I guess that's changed.

ERICA: Yes, it has changed.

GEORGE: Yeah. Okay, cool.

EVAN: New environment, yes.

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

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

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

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

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

EVAN: ‘23.

GEORGE: ’23?

EVAN: It’s just last year.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cash flow was probably the main driver for our…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GEORGE: A hundred percent.

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

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

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

ERICA: Yeah, true. Absolutely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GEORGE: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

EVAN: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GEORGE: You've inspired them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ERICA: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GEORGE: Never when I was a kid, yeah.

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

ERICA: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GEORGE: Attract, increase, retain.

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

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

GEORGE: That's awesome. Thanks so much.

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

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

Can we make a deal?

EVAN: Sure.

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

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

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

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

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

GEORGE: A hundred percent.

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

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

ERICA: Fantastic. Thank you, George.

EVAN: Thanks, George.

 

 

 

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151 – From Cheap To Premium: The Poison Of Low Pricing In Martial Arts

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


IN THIS EPISODE:

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

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

 

TRANSCRIPTION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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150 – George Fourie: From Life Lessons To Founding Martial Arts Media™

The tables turn as the interviewer becomes the interviewee: George Fourie shares his life experiences and journey through marketing and martial arts on the Kyl Reber Podcast.


IN THIS EPISODE:

  • George's journey from studying computer programming to selling computers, working on a cruise ship, and eventually starting Martial Arts Media™
  • The story behind George's most impactful $37 sale
  • George's near-death experience as a pivotal wake-up call that transformed his outlook on life and career
  • How George discovered a passion for martial arts and saw potential in combining this with his marketing expertise
  • How Martial Arts Media™ was founded, focusing on supporting school owners to grow their businesses through digital marketing
  • And more

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

 

TRANSCRIPTION

Hey, it's George Fourie. Welcome to the Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast. Today, I am going to feature an episode, an interview that I had on the Kyl Reber Podcast. Kyl, a good friend of mine, interviewed me. You can look him up on kylreber.com.au. Also, martialartsmedia.com/145.

I had the pleasure of having Kyl on our podcast. By the way, I was looking at it. In episode 145, we were talking about him having 370 students. I know that number's almost up to 500 now. They are booming, to put it mildly. Anyway, go have a listen to that if you haven't yet. 

For this episode, I really wanted to feature it because I got to tell you. I've been trying to record a podcast where I tell a bit of my story and just background where I came from, how this all got together, and I've given the pieces and inside of this over the years. I just had a look. We had episode 150, and I actually started this podcast in 2016, July of 2016.

I'm probably in the race for the longest-going podcast with the least amount of episodes, but 150 awesome episodes it has been, and I'm going to continue to do this for a while. Anyway, I've really wanted to have an in-depth– about my story, and I tried to record it a couple of times solo by myself, and I've got to say, it felt weird.

I did it about three times, and I deleted it every time. Then, I got on Kyl’s podcast, and Kyl gave me 10 questions just to prepare for the podcast. I did that, and I thought it was going to be enough, but Kyl's questioning technique was really solid and in-depth. Every time I answered, he dug a little deeper and dug a little deeper.

I’ve got to be honest. I probably spoke about things that I maybe just haven't shared over the years. Nothing too serious, but just things that I've buried in my past and let go. But Kyl did a really good job of unpacking all the details about me and asking a lot of questions. So, this podcast is going to be a bit longer. 

I highly recommend you check out Kyl Reber’s podcast. I will have all the links for that at martialartsmedia.com/150. That's it for me. I hope you enjoy this. I would love to know your feedback afterward. Let's dig in.

GEORGE: One thing I told myself at an early age was if I feel uncomfortable, then I'm at the right place.

KYL: All right. 

GEORGE: Something is happening here. 

KYL: Spot on. 

GEORGE: I’ve got to get comfortable. 

KYL: Good morning or good afternoon, whatever time of day you're listening to this podcast. This is the Kyl Reber Podcast. This podcast is one of those ones that doesn't really have a formula. It doesn't have a demographic because everybody has a story, and as I'm starting to use the tag, I have a lot of famous friends that you may never know, but this podcast is aimed at getting inside people's heads and looking at the big picture, and what they may be on the surface may be very different to what's underneath, and there may be a lot of parts to these people that you may have known this person and now you can find out for the first time. 

My next guest, I have not known for a great amount of time, but I'm getting to know him better as time goes on. I'm finding he's an exceptionally interesting human, but I am probably going to learn more about him. I've been on his podcast. Now, I'm returning the favor, and he's coming on mine. 

George Fourie, how are you, my friend? 

GEORGE: I'm doing great. Thanks, Kyl. Thanks for saving me on that intro. There are a lot of things that you didn't tell me that I'm not prepared for. 

KYL: As I said, we'll duck off on tangents as we go, and we'll do it as we are as we see it coming. For those who are new to this, there are 10 questions that George got a few days ago. 

Some of them he has to put a bit of thought into. Some of them, he doesn't. Some of them, I might prompt him. Some of them we'll duck off in tangents and that's all part of the game. The 10 questions start with number one, which sometimes turns into the longest question. Birth to now in seven minutes. Three, two, one, go. 

GEORGE: All right. Seven minutes. All right. 

KYL: It's never seven minutes, mate. Don't worry. It's like 30. 

GEORGE: All right. 40 South Africa, great childhood, pretty much. 

KYL: What part of South Africa? 

GEORGE: Strand, Somerset West, which will be about 20, 30 minutes from Cape Town if you look at it on a map. I'm of the Great White is what it's called. False Bay. Well, If you look at the bay, that's what it's called. Played rugby—that's compulsory in South Africa.

KYL: As you should.

GEORGE: If I look at your significant things that I've really traveled back to and looked at where things happened in my life that steered me into different directions. My dad lost his job when we were 12. I remember us driving in a car and my mom telling us that our dad just lost his job. We were fine, which was because he started doing maintenance work and so forth. And then he held through a ceiling and broke his back. That just took us on a whole–our family on an interesting downward spiral for quite some time. 

It's probably reinforced the thing that no one's out to get you, no one's out to help you, and you better make things on your own. In our country, I was always the kid with cash at school, but I also didn't sleep much because I worked three jobs. 

KYL: How old were you when you got your first job?  

GEORGE: 12. 

KYL: Okay. 

GEORGE: At the Super Tube, like a slide. Then, I started delivering newspapers during the day, but then I figured that daytime was taking away the surfing time, so I started doing it in the morning. I'd get up at four in the morning and do my paper rounds. 

KYL: Surfing took over rugby, or surfing and rugby at the same time? 

GEORGE: Surfing took over rugby. It was a bit of a war at school because when I reached high school, I was like, “Why aren't you playing rugby?” I said, “I want to surf.” It didn't go down well. And then, I played rugby, and then I broke my collarbone when I tackled someone, and that really pissed me off because I couldn't surf. 

And so that was rugby out the window. So, yeah, surfing drums—that was my two best. 

KYL: Okay. School in South Africa. We have an interpretation. So, we're talking the 1980s?

GEORGE: 1980s– I finished school in 1995. 

KYL: What was high school like in South Africa? Was there still that, you know, like, again, we see what our interpretation is, but what was it like? Was there still that separation, or were you in an area that acknowledged that there wasn't any? What was that like for you? 

GEORGE: To be honest, I grew up in that era that I had– I was pretty much unaware of what it was. It was just we were divided. That is how–

KYL: That was the way it is.

GEORGE: Yeah. Like, I mean, you would walk on the beaches and it will say, “Whites Only.” That's a thing. And then I heard of this Mandela guy that's coming out of prison, and I was like, “Who's he?” And then, the whole thing got explained, “Well, this is wrong.” And I didn't really know it because that's how it was, right? 

It's strange because then you're like, “Oh, okay. Hang on.” But then there's still this confusion. And then, that was the first time that was probably like–I was probably like–we finished school at about 18, about around 16, 17. That was the first time people of a different color that weren't white actually came to our school. 

It was in the middle of that real transition of when things started to change. 

KYL: Was it a big deal at the time? Was it a big deal for you, or was it just, okay, that's what it is now? 

GEORGE: It was a big–with all things, politics, there's panic. There was weird things happening. People would knock on your door and say, “Hey, we just want to check your house out because we want to claim that this is ours.” When Nelson Mandela came in, there was a complete–like all politics. We can't go to politics, right? 

KYL: No, no, no. 

GEORGE: No? So, yeah, there was a lot of that. We've all got opinions. I feel it got better and it got worse, and then, you know, if we look at where things are at now, yeah. But the country's come a long way. There's a lot more unity, and it changed a lot. It's definitely changed a lot. 

KYL: It couldn't–I mean, like, again, not to get into politics, but it couldn't change when all that was happening, wasn't it? I mean, for it not to change would have meant a lot of really bad repercussions. So, high school finished. What happened then? 

GEORGE: I hated school. I hated the rules. 

KYL: You know the amount of people that are doing these amazing things now that all tell me how much they hated school? 

GEORGE: Well, I just didn't fit in. I didn't fit in with a thinking- 

KYL: This wasn't you. 

GEORGE: I didn't fit in with the thinking–coming from South Africa, there was a bit of a ‘Do as I say, not as I do’ philosophy. Corporal punishment was the thing. I preferred it because it meant I didn't have to sit in the attention. 

KYL: Got it over and done with? 

GEORGE: Yeah. But I mean the rules, right? If my hair was touching my ears, fringe touching my forehead, that's an inspection failed. I just didn't agree with it, and so I rebelled against this. 

KYL: I was going to say, “Did you not do it just because you can?” 

GEORGE: Kind of. Probably that, right? And so it came to a point where they would have the head inspections, and the woodwork teacher would say, “All right. Boys, look that way. George, get out.” All in one seat, and I was like, “What?” And I'm standing there trying to hide, and it's not happening. So, anyway, I finished school, and I just needed to do nothing.

Nothing meant surf, play drums, and work in restaurants, and that was okay. Then my dad said, “Look, you better go and get your life into gear.” I said, “Well, I want to do marketing.” And they were like, “Well, everybody does marketing.” I'll go do the marketing. 

KYL: Why did that click with you? What was there something that made you feel that I really liked doing this? Did you like talking to people or just that interaction, or what was it? 

GEORGE: It's probably just for, like, I mean, all the failed entrepreneurial ventures that I took on during school– 

KYL: Yeah, right. 

GEORGE: –but it looked like a path without a ceiling where everything else did. And yeah, there was just a part of me that, I don't know. It just resonated with me. I didn't even know that much about it. 

KYL: Because I never heard a lot of talking to people, so would you say you're extroverted or an introverted-extrovert, or if you need to do it, you'll do it?

GEORGE: I'm probably more introverted. I'm extroverted when I have to be. 

KYL: Yeah. 

GEORGE: But it does tire me out, and I'm good with it, right? I'm okay to talk at events, host them, and be that guy. It fires me up when I do it, but I do like space to just focus and do the thing I want to do. 

KYL: Okay. So, when you did the marketing, where– 

GEORGE: I didn’t. 

KYL: You didn't? 

GEORGE: No… 

KYL: Okay, cool. 

GEORGE: I studied computer programming. 

KYL: All right.

Martial Arts Media

GEORGE: Everybody says, “Well, that's not the way to go.” So, I go study computer programming, and it was funny, right? Because I get into the class, and these kids have clearly been programming since two days after they were born.  And I'm like, “Where do I put this thing on?” Like literally. 

KYL: This is late, late 90s? 

GEORGE: This is 97. 

KYL: Okay. So, that'd be still in the–that was when I was at university. That's the era of floppy disks and massive computer labs, and these things that you needed two people to carry. 

GEORGE: Yep. Yeah, it took a while to get into that, but finally, I did. And I enjoyed the technicality and the problem-solving—the problem-solving, probably a lot. But six months in, I started selling computers to my classmates. 

KYL: Was that a don't-ask-me-where-I-got-this-from situation or?

GEORGE: No, no, no, no. We signed up for a supplier. I and a school buddy of mine, we found a supplier. Look, there was probably a bit of wangling of portraying we are way bigger than we are to get the account, but we got the account and we started. Obviously, I had a captive audience, and it was just, “Well, this is great.” 

And then, when I finished studying, I was like, “Well, I want to crack at this business. I was going to open a business.” I was just over 20, opened a computer retail and support store.

KYL: Okay. 

GEORGE: My buddy and I went door-knocking in the industrial area, and we just knocked door-to-door, handout flyers that we printed out of our little inkjet, test jet, whatever, printer. We've got a client, and we're like, “Yeah.”

We set up. I've got photos of this, but we emptied out the garage, and we put our desks. We had this garage where we had this official computer business, and then we got another client. And then all of a sudden, we got clients, and we became the talk of the town, literally, because the guys that were deemed to be nothing—and yeah, I had the headmaster tell me that we will equate to nothing in life. 

KYL: Yeah. 

GEORGE: So, it's like a– 

KYL: And I guess that reinforces now even – we won't jump too far ahead – but reinforce now if you want something, you can't wait for it to come to you. You've got to make it happen. If you'd have sat in that garage and just waited for a client to come to you, it wouldn't happen, would it? 

GEORGE: Exactly, yeah. And so, because, I mean–actually, we set up the office before because that's what you do, right? Procrastination things. 

KYL: Oh, yeah. You need a tidy desk. I'm just going to tidy up for the– 

GEORGE: How many business owners start a business and spend six months on their logo? 

KYL: Yeah. 

GEORGE: Because nobody cares about that, right? Anyway, we got going, and we got good traction. Young to have all these business lessons, right? But we went all the way through to just before the year 2000, when Y2K, the online computer crash. 

And I'd love to say it was that, but it was like me and my business partner having clashes and not understanding a lot of marketing and what we were doing. Sometimes, he appeared a bit deceptive, and people didn't like it. And so, we had this clash of personalities starting to appear, and then we lost it all. We lost it. I was crushed, ashamed, embarrassed. 

KYL: Yeah. 

GEORGE: And I just looked at this mountain of debt that I had on my shoulders. I was like, “All right. We’ll take a few months off. We'll try this, and we'll try this.” But I had this permanent knot in my stomach, “Oh, I've got all this debt. I don't know how I'm going to pay things.” And now, I'm like, “Well, I've got to look for a job.” I'm a little too dusty on computer programming skills. Where do I find a job? So I'll go, I start looking for jobs and I can't get a job. I finally got a job, commission only—selling timeshare. 

KYL: Oh, God. 

GEORGE: Right. This is a part of the story I don't often tell because when I say that, people are like, “Oh, you're one of those guys, or you were–” Well, I'm not. But anyway, I'll get a job setting. To explain that entirely, the vacation ownership, timeshare, holiday, program. Not the guy that phones you up and says, “Hey, you won this free thing.” 

But then, we sit at the desk, people come in, and we've got to present this product to them. 

KYL: Yeah. 

GEORGE: And they buy or they don't. Anyway, I had this job for three months, commission only, and I was that bad that I got fired. Yeah, all right. This is going well. But there's something here. And so, I see this other company advertising… it’s a timeshare -based company. I walked into this office, and there was a guy; he was about a year older than me, and I'm just early twenties, right? 

A year older than me, a flash suit like Armani suit. Probably the – you could say the real salesman look, but he was professional, right? 

KYL: Yeah. 

GEORGE: I walked in there. Look, I try to draw from false confidence and really portray myself as what I am. But this guy, Zane Rinquest – we were still friends on Facebook – he rips into me, right? He called his BS meter was so dialed in, and he destroyed me, right? 

It challenged me, like, “How can you do this? How?” I'm like, I can be more upset, but I remember walking out there, shaking. I walked to my car, and I was like, I don't know what just happened to me, but whatever happens is, I want to know what this guy knows about human psychology, understanding people, and being able to communicate. 

The next day, he called me and he was like, “Yeah, you're hired.” Two weeks later, I made my first sale, and then I was hooked on what just happened—being able to present a product to people and then actually joining it. I got hooked on this industry for many years. 

We traveled around in vans, like in a combi style thing, visit resorts in South Africa. That was my life. I did, when I lost the computer business, vouch to never touch a computer again. That was out of my system. Anyway, life goes on. Seven years, eight years, I moved up to Johannesburg. I break my neck in a car accident. 

KYL: Okay. Good one. 

GEORGE: Yeah. The hemorrhage, that's the scar on the side of my head. 

KYL: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Martial Arts Media George Fourie

GEORGE: And dents in my head. Yes, I break my neck and hemorrhage, and yeah, there I am in the hospital. I didn't have insurance. But in South Africa, and you're in a public hospital called Joburg General, it's pretty grim.

KYL: I was going to say, you'd–one thing that was popping into my head then the difference between Joburg to where you were growing up would have probably been a very different kettle of fish, wouldn't it?

GEORGE: Well, look, if I landed up in a different hospital but with no insurance – that's where I landed up – and I just watched these people. I've been here for two months, and it looked like – no offense to anyone – it just felt like I was in a homeless ward, and I've been there for months, just not being taken care of. Well, I had a head injury, so I went from ecstatic laughing comedian, probably when I was, you know, when I was medicated, to neurotic. Losing my temper, blowing up, and getting rage-filled with rage. 

I was trying to plan my way up because I was like, well, nobody else is going to get because I was interfering with the whole process. But anyway, two weeks in, this doctor walks in, and he's doing his checkup and goes through this paper. Well, you know, go through the sheet, and he laughs, and he laughs. 

And I said, “Why are you laughing?” He says, “Well, guys like you that come in here, we normally don't operate.” I said, “Why?” He says, “Because you're dead in two weeks.” And he walks out. 

KYL: Thanks? 

GEORGE: And my laughter, together with his, I just went numb. 

KYL: Yeah. 

GEORGE: All right. And if anyone's listening, that's ever had a near-death experience, that was like probably the wake-up call I needed.

KYL: How old were you when this happened? 

GEORGE: 28, 28. 

KYL: Okay. That's not getting old, but that's getting, you know, where maybe things should be happening that you see, where society thinks things should be happening, and then they're not happening. 

GEORGE: Exactly. Yeah. But I'm doing all right. You know what I mean? But I'm also partying a lot. There's that aspect of life. And so, I realized I knew I've always wanted to leave South Africa and life is short. I just experienced that. I've got to get out of here. How do I get out of the country? Where do I go? How do I go? 

The one thing when you're in the timeshare industry, you can get a job anywhere in the world, pretty much, but it's risky, right? 

KYL: Yeah, of course. 

GEORGE: But you know you've got the skill to carry yourself through. And so, I looked at Tenerife and Spain and everywhere. And then, one of my old managers from Cape Town started working on carnival cruise lines in the States. It wasn't time-shared, but they were selling VIP cruise memberships, like a free package.  

And I was like, “Well, this sounds interesting.” And yeah, I went down that track, applied, got the call from Arizona one night, and then they accepted me. I flew, and got my ticket out at the end of 2004. 

KYL: To jump back a section there, do you have siblings? Brothers and sisters? 

GEORGE: Yeah. 

KYL: Parents, how were they about you wanting to leave the country? 

GEORGE: I think they were okay with it. In South Africa—I can't speak for everyone, right? But I know from where I'm at was, you knew from day one that you’re either in a family with money, right? That was not us. You are either going to become a doctor or a lawyer, something or an accountant, something super educated.

KYL: Yeah. 

GEORGE: There's this vast difference in pay brackets in South Africa. 

KYL: Okay. 

GEORGE: There is lower, and there's middle, you know. It's more of a middle-class, upper-class. I'm just saying, class. I'm just talking about– 

KYL: I know what you mean, yeah. 

GEORGE: In South Africa, there's this big gap. 

KYL: There's a massive gap. 

GEORGE: Yeah, and those guys are normally exceptionally wealthy. You're either that, you run your own business, or you're in sales. Not generalizing, but that's, there's obviously, you can have sports careers. But the way to the top, it’s a hard road. 

KYL: Yeah. 

GEORGE: If you're none of that, then your normal ticket out is to go to the UK and bring back pounds Hopefully, you set yourself up, give yourself a start, or you leave, and you're an expat, which is probably why you find so many South Africans everywhere. 

KYL: It is. You do see a lot of South Africans. While in Brisbane, you see a lot of South Africans. So, you go back to it, you leave, jump on the cruise? 

GEORGE: Yeah. I'm based in New Orleans- 

KYL: Oh my God. 

GEORGE: -which is just a crazy city. 

KYL: Never sleeps? 

GEORGE: Yeah. I'm working 60 to 70 hours a week on the cruise ships. But when you pull in, you're in the Caribbean for three days a week. So, the ship stops, and I'm on holiday. Wednesday mornings, we’re in Jamaica. On Thursdays, we're in the Cayman Islands, and on Fridays, we're in Cozumel, Mexico. 

There's exceptionally work hard and then there's party as hard. 

KYL: Work hard, party harder. 

GEORGE: Yeah. 

KYL: Do you feel in that situation like, again, you're working hard but you're also partying hard? To switch from party hard back to work hard was just one of the things you did, or was it like-? 

GEORGE: It was merged.  

KYL: Roger. 

GEORGE: Because it's just a lifestyle, right? I mean, you look at it. 

KYL: That's what I mean.

GEORGE: It's like a bit of a bubble. It's a fairytale, really. You're on a cruise ship; there are three and a half thousand new people every week. The job that we had, we were a concession on board, meaning it wasn't owned by the cruise line, which means I had a guest cabin from day one and guest privileges. 

It was very comfortable in the way we lived, and you don't pay US dollars, and it was great. You don't pay for meals. You don't pay rent. 

KYL: I was going to say you wouldn't have to really open your wallet, would you? 

GEORGE: Well, in the crew bar, you do every night or like a dollar a beer type of thing. 

KYL: And all sorts. 

GEORGE: Yeah. It's buy around for $5 and just put around. So, I did that for six months. Well, after six months, I went back to South Africa, flew back to Los Angeles, did Los Angeles for two weeks, then went down to San Diego, then got based in Vancouver, did the Alaska run for three months, did Hawaii, which was pretty epic because I wasn't allowed to work because we guys that live in the States will be familiar with this. 

Maybe not so much in Australia, but every state has a different law. Where the cruise ship leaves from, you're in that jurisdiction, then you begin into the new jurisdiction. If you want to do business, it's a different law. And so, our company had jurisdiction in 50 states. And so, when we entered Hawaiian waters, I was given the option to leave or stay on board, cruise for free, live for free. 

KYL: How is that even an option? Oh, I don't know. 

GEORGE: Clearly. Yeah. Clearly, I stayed in Hawaii, and then we rerouted to Mexico. In between this, this is where the story probably draws. We're way beyond seven minutes. 

KYL: Mate, I told you… 

GEORGE: I met a lady on board from Perth, Australia, and I was actually planning to come to Perth on holiday. That was the plan. Then I had a son show up, so I realized, well, I guess I'm moving to Australia. I didn't know how. 

KYL: Got to grow off a little bit. 

GEORGE: Yeah. I just realized I've got my cruise ship days at an end, and I'm moving to Perth. 

KYL: Yeah. 

GEORGE: I had a holiday visa booked, right? It wasn't like I had to arrange anything. It was interesting, though, because I flew from Acapulco in the middle of the heat to Washington DC– 

KYL: Oh, geez. 

GEORGE: –a little snow, to get my passport stamped the next day, flew to Los Angeles, flew to Sydney, flew to Perth. And so, yeah, I got to Perth, and I'm on a holiday visa, right? I'm exploring, “Well, okay, I've got to stay in Australia.” 

KYL: What year are we in now?

GEORGE: 2006. 

KYL: Okay. 

GEORGE: 2006, I'm like, well, how do I stay? I'd go to the Immigration office and never forget this guy because he had that one eye. I explained my story now; just a bit of a difference, right? 

Oh, Africa, in South Africa, there's gray law, right? Gray law means that there's a law here and there's a law here, but you can bullshit your way into that law, right? Everything is so solvable with a good story. Australia, really, as well.  

KYL: You're right, or you're wrong, that or it's that, it’s black, or it's white. 

Anyway, I tell my story, which is an honest, sincere, valid story. But this guy pretty much says to me, “Look, anybody can get a girl pregnant to try and stay in Australia, and that's just not going to gel here.” That really rubbed me up the wrong way because I'm really happy to go. I'm trying to do the right thing here. How do we do this? 

And so it came to, I realized, well, hang on. Actually, I've got to leave. I had a No Further Stay clause on my visa, so I had to move, you know. I flew to Bali for eight days, came back, and just got destroyed at the gate. 

KYL: Yeah, right. 

GEORGE: It was 4 am, I walked, and the girl said to me, “So, you did a visa run?” And I gulped because it was a visa run. They actually know that this is a thing. Then she goes on the computer and she says, “Well, I see that you tried to have your No Further Stay clause removed, and we denied it.” And so, I'm the only guy there at 4 am, and everybody starts gathering, and these guys jump into bed, and I say, “Look, this is my story.”

It is, and they interrogated me for about 30 minutes, and then the guy picked up my bag. He says, “Okay, you're free to go.” He picks up a bag, and he hears something inside it and shakes it. He says, “What's that?” And drops my bag. He takes, leans in, and he opens, and he gets a bunch of, I think it was spirulina, and he looks at me and he says, “What's in this?” 

I'm like, “Spirulina.” He looked at me, and while he's looking at me, because he's trying to see if I've got a reaction, opens the lid and he throws it all out on the counter. Messy spirulina, obviously, and said, “Okay, you're free to go.” That's rattled me. Holy crap. 

Then, my son was born, and I had to do it again. But this time, cash was running out. I've been living off savings from the ship. I did three days, I got back, and I was so prepared. I was so nervous. I said to the guy, “Look, this is it.” He said, “Look, I believe everything you're saying, but we protect the visa.” And that's it. I said, “Look, well, I'm going back to South Africa to sort this out.” 

I had about a year to prepare for my visa. And then, at the end of that year, I went back to South Africa. I was there for six weeks. I set the appointment. I got the appointment for the day before I came back to Australia. That's all I had. I started that appointment, and I presented. I had this big file with everything indexed, and it was perfection, right? Everything that was, and she went through and said, “Okay, we'll contact you.” I said, “No, you don't get it.” 

KYL: Like, “I'm leaving tomorrow.” 

GEORGE: And if I get there, it's not happening. Then there was an Aussie guy, and he'd look through the file and say, Hey, look, everything looks good. Come back tomorrow. We'll give you your visa.” And that was my Australian visa. 

KYL: Jesus. 

GEORGE: So, we're in Perth; we're allowed to stay and not continue to do visa runs. 

KYL: What's transpired probably from, let's say, 2007 to now? 

GEORGE: Well, a big thing that happened at that time was I bought a computer.  

KYL: Oh, you gave in. 

GEORGE: I bought a laptop, and I started to learn online marketing because I couldn't work. Don't worry. Is anybody, tax man, listening? I've been to work in Australia, but I was online, and I was learning how to–I still had my US bank accounts and everything. I started learning Google AdWords and how to do marketing online. 

That's where my passion for online marketing really started. Hang on, I understand the sales and sales concept. 

KYL: Yeah. 

GEORGE: Here's this whole new medium where this happens online through pages, through websites. This was before Facebook, and anything was the thing. That was Myspace. But I started, I picked up a book with Perry Marshall, The Definitive Guide to Google AdWords. 

I started reading this, yeah. In 2007, when I got back, I got a job at a timeshare company, of course. 

KYL: Would you believe it? 

GEORGE: It was– 

KYL: That’s what you know. 

GEORGE: Yeah. So, I got a job with Accord. They flew me to the Gold Coast. We did two weeks of training. And so, that set me up, and I was back in motion, but between this, I started doing online marketing, and I would be sitting at the resort at the vines, and I would see all these PayPal notifications coming through because I'm making sales.

One of them works. And so, this thing of leverage, and I've just started to, well, hang on, this is working. 

KYL: Yeah. 

GEORGE: I mean, I've got to give this a go. Then, I started the online marketing.

KYL: Fast forward to now, you run a company, Martial Arts Media™. Now, a 60-second blurb on that. What is that company? 

GEORGE: Help martial arts school owners with growth through digital marketing. 

KYL: And you're covering people from all across the world doing that? So you've got what, Australia, New Zealand? 

GEORGE: Canada, well, not Canada at the moment. US, Ireland. 

KYL: Okay. Martial arts for you, what's your experience in martial arts? The reason I ask this is one thing that's always got me with you, and I think it's a real good–it's a good thing. You're not–you're helping lifelong martial artists run their businesses better, and I think this is the misconception. You don't have to be a lifelong martial artist in order to be a good businessman. 

They're two different worlds. And that is, I think, maybe one of your strengths. But you have done some martial arts before? 

Martial arts marketing

GEORGE: Yeah, I think it's worth just going, gleaning two, three minutes to the little gap there. So, my son turns five, I've never done martial arts. I walked through a shopping mall. There's a bunch of guys promoting a program, and I like, “This could be great for a kid.” Awesome. And so, I enroll my son, go on a trial, and I'm watching this class happen, and I'm like, “This is awesome.” This is from my experience. I'm just looking at it through the lens. This is perfect. Personal development, all these things that I did about mindset and doing my sales career, all the things– 

KYL: Are your business brains kicking in? 

GEORGE: Yeah. I'm thinking, this is happening in physical form, right? I'm not my business brain, just my parenting brain. 

KYL: Yeah, yeah. 

GEORGE: It's getting learned. Skills and lessons that he's got no idea what it is, but he's learning focus, determination, and resilience. And I'm just watching this, and I'm like, “This is freaking amazing.” 

He's five, and he's training once a week, twice a week, three times a week. And now it's just the thing, right? Like he's training three times a week. Here's where it starts to come together: I watched the guys doing marketing, and I'm like, “But if they did it this way?” 

Look, at this time, we're talking 2000, and what's that? 2011, 10 years. Well, more than 10 years, but unofficially. But there wasn't, as all this online marketing stuff wasn't as prominent in local businesses as it is today. 

KYL: No. 

GEORGE: But I had these ideas like, “Well, you can do this with these easy email campaigns. You can do this.” I don't know how Google ads work. Out of the love of what they were doing, I said, “I've got some ideas for you. I'd love to share them.” I sat with him in the office one day and said, “Hey, there's all these things that you can be doing that you can just enhance your business.” And they said, “Well, can you do it?” 

I said, “Well, yeah, I don't want to, but this is how it works.” I said, “Well, we'll work something out.” So, we did that. I started doing one thing for them, and then they got results. And then they said, “Well, can you do this?” I said, “Yeah, can.” Then, we added this, and then we added that. And so all of a sudden, I'm spending all my time at this school, my son's training was training, chatting to the owners, I’m helping them. 

And so, we're talking over two, or three years, right? The thing is, I don't know any martial arts school outside this one place. That's my only perspective of the martial arts industry. But I'm just in love with all this that's happening. 

Somewhere along the line and, this was Graham McDonnell, “Hey, why aren't you training?” And I'm like, that's a weird question. At that point, I haven't even considered it, right? I was like–you guys were like, “I'll be all the excuses you hear, right? Of a 36–” I was 36 at the time. Turned 47 two days ago. I was like, “Because I'm too old. I'm too broken.” 

I had all these things that were okay. And then, I tried a class, and then I was like,

“Oh, here I am.” I'm, you know, without being cliche, but I'm hooked, right? Because I've experienced all this from the sideline, and now, for the first time– 

KYL: You’re in it. 

GEORGE: –I'm in it. Yeah. That's just become the thing. Now, this is consuming my life, right? I'm training, my son's training, I'm helping the school, and somewhere along the line there, I realized, “Well, like this has either got to be the thing or nothing.” I was working doing other stuff. 

That's a whole other tangent we weren't going to supplement my income, but I felt that I've always looked for the thing that I'm passionate about, that I love. If I can put my marketing and sales skills behind it and promote an ethical product that answers people's lives in a big way, that's a dream world for me. 

KYL: Yeah. 

GEORGE: And so, that was Martial Arts Media™. It was born, and I just thought, “Well, that’s going to be my life.” 

KYL: When you realized that that was a thing that could be done, and then you probably went out to other schools, and you know, however, that gestated and grew, was it– I'm dissing my own kind here, was it alarming how – what's the word – archaic some of our clubs? Well, some clubs were in their promotion, if they were promoted at all, to see what they weren't doing more than what they were. 

GEORGE: Yeah, all hats off to Phil Britten and Graham McDonnell. What I didn't realize is they were just at another level at that time. They had built a business foundation that was exceptional but way above the average school. 

KYL: 100%.

GEORGE: That was my perception of this is how the industry is, which I did learn later that there's a lot of guys that are way more up and coming and working towards that. My coach spoke about it the other day. It's how the typical–he was talking about a yoga instructor, how a typical yoga school is born, but it's the same as the martial arts, right? If you start training, you fall in love, then you maybe teach a few classes, and then you think, “I'm going to open my own school.” 

It starts as a hobby that turns into a business. You had the business mind, or some did it, or some evolved that over time, but it's something that you are all into. So, yeah. With that, there's obviously a lot, sometimes missing in the business side, that comes afterward. 

KYL: And this is a thing like I said. It's always a hurdle, even in just the management of clubs and that sort of thing, and businesses, just because you're the highest rank or you've been there the longest doesn't necessarily mean you (a) know what everything you're doing and (b) you might be the best fit for the job. Was that a bit interesting sometimes these people, I'm not being resistant, but you going in going, “Hey, look, I've been doing martial arts for a blip on the radar, but I reckon you could run your business better if you did this, this, and this?” 

GEORGE: It's funny. It's always been–it's normally someone else that does coaching that would say, “You're not a martial arts school owner. How can you help martial arts school owners?” I'm like, “Nobody's asked me how to run a better class yet.” 

KYL: So, that's the thing. That's your niche. You're not doing necessarily; this is how you teach: I kick better, or I choke better, or whatever you're doing. This is how you get more students. This might be how you work with your staff better. This might be how you promote better and run your ads better. That's your thing, isn't it? 

GEORGE: 100%. I mean, I'm very open about what I don't give advice on, but as you know, we have a community where I know that that advice is there. 

KYL: That's doing itself. 

GEORGE: Yeah. That comes from the school owners like yourself. Those guys will be there for 20 to 40 years. They've got the experience, and they've done it all before. That's where the whole mastermind concept really becomes a value. But for anybody that's really passionate about marketing and really cares, and I'm not talking about the guys that buy a course and then, “Oh, I'll pick a niche.” 

KYL: Yeah. 

George Fourie Martial Arts Marketing

GEORGE: That drives me a bit when people chase the thing because there might be money there, right? I didn't gel with that. I started it for different reasons. Although I know my journey in martial arts is different, I value it as much. 

I feel that if you spend enough time, I have understanding problems that people are going through and having enough conversations, you detach from your being in the motion of running it, and you come up with different perspectives and different solutions. I guess it's the program mind programming that I learned in programming is you have to solve solutions with systems.

I find I'm just way more passionate about it because I love the product, and I love what martial arts does, what it did for my son, and what it did for me; that's where it all comes from. And if I think about the time I spend, I mean, I'm talking with school owners like yourself, at least, we have three to four Zoom sessions a week, anything from six to 10 hours per week. 

From that, I gather understanding and then go to the drawing board and say, “Okay, well, how would we do things this way?” Or “How do we go about it this way?” And it is ever evolving because if we look at what we're doing now, prior to COVID, I don't want to say that word in case you get flagged on YouTube or anything. 

But you know, if you think of how the market sophistication and everything develops over time, it's forever changing and evolving. It's good to have the good guys win, right? With the right tools. 

KYL: And I think that's the thing. If they–and the interesting thing there is you saying how you're learning sometimes from us as much as we're learning from you because there are systems that we've done for 20-plus years, and I think it's good. Sometimes, you will even add a conversation before this offline. You challenged that, and you go, “Why? Why do you do that?”

And it's like, “Well, that's just what you fucking do.” And it's like, “Why does it have to be what you do?” And then I think that's good because, at the end of the day, we are passionate about martial arts. We are lifelong martial artists, but it's none of us–I think you can pick apart somebody who is really just in this for the money, and they don't last long.  

But then, the people who are passionate about it, it does also still need to pay the rent. So, there is another area that we need to make sure we do focus on because, yeah, you have to let your passion pay the bills, but you've also–the bills don't stop coming in.

GEORGE: 100%. 100%. Well, I told you it'd be more than seven minutes. 

KYL: It wasn't that long. That's all that was. It's nearly lunchtime. All right. Let's get into question two. All right. Three reasons you get out of bed every morning. 

GEORGE: I live in paradise. I've moved from Perth to the Sunshine Coast. 

KYL: Was that a hard move or an easy move? 

GEORGE: Easiest best thing I've done ever. Waking up at the crack of dawn, ocean sticking my feet into the sand, having a swim. That's reason number one. 

KYL: You're an early riser? 

GEORGE: I don't think I'm natural. I can easily carried away and we burn the midnight oil,  but because I value the morning, yeah, it's getting easier as I get older. 

KYL: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly right. 

GEORGE: And I've got a 17-year-old son who's–he's up at four, and he goes to go surf. 

KYL: Yeah. 

GEORGE: When I hear him leave, the guilt kicks in, or I sleep light, and then I hear him leave, and I'm like, “I guess I better get up then.”

KYL: You're not surfing as much as you did when you were a kid? 

GEORGE: I am. I've got an annular disc tear at the moment, which has thrown a bit of complications in all activity. So yeah, a little bit depressing. There's no Jiu-Jitsu at the moment, and there's no surfing at the moment, and these walks and swims in the ocean. 

KYL: It's what you can do. 

GEORGE: Exactly, yeah. It's made me appreciate that even more, just the fact that, yeah, I've got to get out. I've got to get in the ocean. 

KYL: As you said before, you were talking before when you had that chat to Phil and Graham, that you're 36 and you're too old. Now you're 47, and there's still all these things that you're doing, as we've had many discussions. I always look at my parents, and then you probably might look at your parents, and what their movement patterns were when they were 47. It's not what we're doing. 

GEORGE: Yeah, a hundred percent. 

KYL: Oh, it’s your attitude towards it. Have you got a number two and three? 

GEORGE: Family and kids? Spend time with on them, making sure we connect first thing in the morning, sometime in the morning, before the blocks scatter away. And then number three is, I'd say, the business. Business is a passion. It is this blended thing and problem-solving, creating solutions for martial arts school owners. That's a thing that I, yeah, get up and like. 

KYL: When you say it's a passion, I mean, clearly, you're deriving income from it, but what's made it a passion? What defines it as a passion for you over? This is just a means to an end.  

GEORGE: It’s probably the outcome that it delivers. If I had to go, take my skill, and do real estate at the sheer numbers of what the return on investment would be, it's the same skills applied to a different problem with a slightly different funnel and a different application to it. 

KYL: Yeah.

GEORGE: But it's the same. Principles really applied. If it was a money thing, that'd be easy, right? Because you could take the thing elsewhere. There are a few things that I guess make it a passion. It's the freedom of the way I live. I get to live once on the Sunshine Coast. 

KYL: Because you're what, 95% online? 

GEORGE: Yeah, probably. Yep. There's that. But then when I'm not, there's–oh, you mean as the business itself? As in working?

KYL: Yes. So, if you work from home and leave and go somewhere, you will do that. But one thing that I thought about before, probably with a lot of the work that you've had, you've never really had an office as such. You may have had one initially in that garage, but other than that, you've pretty much just worked your own hours and own space.  

GEORGE: Yeah. I did have a co-working office in Perth, and I had one that I just moved to the Sunshine Coast because I needed a place to head now. But the first time I did that, it was really because my daughter was born, and I realized I was not going to get anything done here. A lot of good has come from that. 

But I played with the idea. I saw a friend of mine get a nice office space in Mooloolaba and it overlooks the ocean. It's just tempting. But then I've got to go there, and I've got to–now I'm adding an extra 40-minute commute. 

KYL: There's still a process involved, isn't there? 

GEORGE: Yeah. Where I can just come back, good coffee at home. The freedom of being here, but also, if let's go travel, I can make the space and time, and I can run the business. I don't need to shut the business down. And sometimes people say, “Oh, you need to take a break.” I'm like, “Hang on. I built this thing that I don't need to escape from it.” 

I can get on a plane. I'll probably do it over the weekend so that I don't disrupt my calls, but I can change countries within a week and continue the business, and everything will be good.

KYL: And the people that say that they don't really understand that, maybe they've just never been exposed to it, asked it. In order to get to where we are, where we want to be, there's that element of seven odd days a week. We may be–I had this last year overseas. I was overseas doing Zoom calls. I did think I did one with you, and then I did a couple of other stuff's going on. 

People going, “Why are you doing that?” And I said, “I do an hour Zoom call, and the other 23 hours, I'm in Thailand enjoying myself.” I think that's a fair trade-off. 

GEORGE: 100%. Being able to do it more frequently than anyone else. Look, there's obviously some nice aspects in having a job that when it comes five o'clock, you can completely switch off, but I don't think I'm ever been wired. 

KYL: No. I don't think some of us are built for that. 

GEORGE: Yeah. I think that's just all of us that are entrepreneurs, right? You know that you can't really turn it off. 

KYL: No, I don't think it's ever off. You're in the shower thinking about something, you're walking down the street, you're driving the car. There's always something in your mind. All right, my friend. Number three is two guilty pleasures that you have. 

GEORGE: Coffee. 

KYL: How many a day? 

GEORGE: Three. I could turn it down. 

KYL: Go to mix? 

GEORGE: Go to mix. Oh, wow, you're asking. I don't–I have a flat white. 

KYL: Yeah, so just a flat white? 

GEORGE: I buy beans where–I got a nice coffee machine below. If I find–If I drink a good coffee somewhere, I'll buy the beans. 

KYL: Okay.

GEORGE: Yep. 

KYL: So you're a grind the beans, like full-blown in the house? You're not just a stick a pot in and push a button. You're that guy? 

GEORGE: Grind the beans, yep. 

KYL: Okay. 

GEORGE: I do the things. Really bad latte art, but– 

KYL: Do you find coffee as a source of inspiration? Do you find you work better after you've had a coffee? 

GEORGE: Yeah. I hate to have the dependency, and then I think about that often. I used to–I got this from one of our old clients, Amanda. She was like, “Avoid coffee the first two hours of the day.” I always used to do that. 

And then I've been hosting really early. Coaching calls like 6 am for me, which kind of works. It's the time I can pick works across the world in the best way. I do find it throws me a bit off. If I start having coffee too early, it probably messes with the adrenals a bit. 

Yeah, I enjoy it, but I am conscious of the stimulation. 

KYL: It's whatever works. You got a second one? 

Martial arts marketing

GEORGE: We can't call it guilty, but surfing and Jiu-Jitsu are probably tied. It's just both are non-existent as we speak, which, yeah. 

KYL: Again, a guy who's had exposure to many different martial arts, many different martial arts schools, different styles, what has Jiu-Jitsu got for you? Not to say it's better than any other, but what has it got that's clicked with you? 

GEORGE: So what's interesting is when I did Karate, I started doing Muay Thai, and I loved it. I loved Zen Do Kai and Muay Thai. It was always lingering to me the fact that I've had this hemorrhage. I went to see a neurosurgeon. I guess you'd never gotta see doctors, right? You should avoid them because they always tell you. But he had one of the take his glasses moment off and said, “Look, dude. You can't get punched in the head. The chances of you injuring yourself in an arena are, it's not on.” 

I didn't like that, obviously. I kept training, and I spoke to the guys, and like, “Okay, when we spar, just don't hit me in the head.” But then guys will say, “Well, hit me in the head because this is weird.” And so now, it has become really weird. I'd punch the guys in the head, and no one's punching me. 

I felt like I was half-arsing it. And so, I thought I would try Jiu-Jitsu. God, I hated it. I was like, “Man, I don't know what's going on here.” 

KYL: It's incredibly–and this is the thing. Our demographic is older here in our mornings, for example. For an older male who hasn't had that exposure, and you played rugby and that sort of thing, but to have another guy on top of you and you can't get them off or there's just that feeling of—I call it the two H's; helpless and humiliated. It's incredibly confronting. 

GEORGE: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Probably even harder if you come from that rugby, and I'll probably – look, I'm not a big guy, but I'm not a small guy either – and if guys are like that, 20 kilos less, there's still this aspect of, can I out muscle? And when all that fails in Jiu-Jitsu, that's double confronting. 

KYL: I've got nothing. 

GEORGE: Yeah, yeah. All right. Look, it was probably part of that as well, but I guess just did not understand what was going on. It took me three months of really training, forcing myself to do it because I love martial arts. I know I can't do that. I'm going to have to do this. 

KYL: Yeah. 

GEORGE: And then slowly, I got hooked. For me again, I've referred to problem-solving a lot, programming. 

KYL: That is what Jiu-Jitsu is. 

GEORGE: Yeah. I don't know if maybe it appeals to that analytical brain of having to solve problems and that challenge. And also, I guess it's this unreachable goal that it's just never done. You never feel good at it. Do you feel good? I know you're good. 

KYL: No, it doesn't. I think there is a constant from someone who's been doing Jiu-Jitsu in particular for 22, 23 years, I think. There is never–the whole hammer and the nail thing, which can be quite cliché, I think, but yeah, there are days where you just go, “I'm fucking, I'm killing it.” And then, literally within 24 hours, you come, and you go, “I suck.” 

I think that's the thing, the beauty of Jiu-Jitsu and martial arts in general. There is just never a point where, like, you know, that phrase where it ends up. I don't think that's actually a phrase like, “It never ends up.” 

It's always going, and then you can be a higher rank and an older guy, and you have this 19-year-old purple belt come in, and he destroys you. But then the problem is you go, “Okay. I've got to cross from the physical brain into my spiritual brain, and what can I do to combat that?” 

We could do a separate podcast on that, but to answer your question, no, it never gets easier. Whatever that word is. One thing I always say is, “It never gets easier. You handle hard better. “ I think that's one thing I took away from a presentation I saw a little while ago. 

I think, like you said, you have this issue where you can't do it at the moment. There will come a point where you can do it again, and I think that's the thing that I think we don't bear in mind. Martial arts don't have seasons, and I remember a mentor of mine said this years ago. He said it during the Big C. 

At the time, he said, “I've been doing martial arts for nearly 60 years. If I miss out on training for six or seven months, that is just a blip on the radar. It doesn't even register.” 

GEORGE: Interesting, yeah. 

KYL: I said, “That's the way he looks at it.” That's good, man. I mean, look, it'll come back sooner or later. The surfing side of things that just a little – because surfing is a one-man sport, I guess you'd say – is that just your little time alone in the wilderness too? Do you verse the ocean? 

GEORGE: Probably, but I mean, I started surfing when I was 12, and if you had to zoom out, there were these big gaps where I did nothing. I lived in Johannesburg for three years. I lived in Perth, struggled to get good surf, and got a bit frustrated.  

There's been these gaps where it's like completely been removed in my life. It's the same, I guess, in Jiu-Jitsu, just on a smaller scale. But it's always there, and I always go back to it. 

KYL: Yeah. 

GEORGE: Yeah, it's probably very similar in that. It's never done. You're always improving. 

KYL: Yeah. 

GEORGE: There's always a challenge. There's always something out there that can keep you humble. The ocean is very humbling. 

KYL: Yes. 

GEORGE: Yeah, very humbling. 

KYL: Much. 

GEORGE: Yeah, if I think of just life and death situations, I'll put myself in. Sometimes, it’s probably just young and stupid, but yeah. I don't do that as much more, but I really find enjoyment in it. There's being in nature–if someone's got choking you, you can't think of anything else, kind of in the ocean as well, and you’re just one in nature. 

KYL: You and the sea? 

GEORGE: Yeah. 

KYL: Yeah, very good. Very good. All right. Question four. One thing you bought that has literally made you happy every day after? 

GEORGE: Coffee machine? 

KYL: I was going to say, “It's a coffee machine, isn't it?” 

GEORGE: To add a different flavor to it, recently, a Weber. 

KYL: Yeah, okay. All right. That's good. That's good. I don't know if you saw, but I was gifted a Tomahawk steak yesterday, and I cooked out on the Weber last night, and that was just amazing.

GEORGE: Yeah nice. I'm a rump guy, but– 

KYL: Beautiful. What's your go-to–are you learning the versatility of a Weber, the roasts, and you can do all this other stuff with it? 

GEORGE: Yeah, I've got a book for cooking. Christmas, but I don't want to go on this tangent. But I made a significant diet change last year because of kidney stones and stuff, and I've been on a carnivore diet for about six months. I pretty much eat steak every day. 

KYL: The Weber would be servicing those needs quite well. 

GEORGE: It does it to perfection. 

KYL: Very good. Very good. All right. Now, question five. One thing – you've probably got a few of these – one thing everyone thought you were crazy doing but did it anyway, and it paid off?  

GEORGE: Well, I wrote martialartsmedia.com. 

KYL: Okay. 

GEORGE: Yeah, that probably leaves it at that. I mean, we could take probably every business, right? Every business you do. But yeah, probably martialartsmedia.com if I think of the thing that paid off as well. 

KYL: Is there someone, not to name names, but was there somebody or a group of people when you said, “I think I'm going to make this a thing.” When no one, how do you even believe you'll make any income out of that? 

GEORGE: Yeah. A lot from within the industry, which was surprising. But a lot of slack within the industry, which was confronting in itself at times because of the path that I,  you know, not being a martial arts school owner from the get-go, I started the podcast, Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast, that was my ticket to really learn about martial arts school owners, because I knew nothing. So, my positioning was probably a bit off because I was like, I don't know a thing, and I need to get all the knowledge. But yeah, I guess sometimes I ran into things that I didn't expect. 

KYL: Would you get a bit of that – and we've touched on this earlier – but did you get a bit of what would you know on a thing like that sort of resistance? 

GEORGE: It's funny when I get it because I got it recently, and it's a guy that's just started coaching. It's always funny that when people start in the business of coaching, that's their differentiation point is: Can I pull everybody else down? And so, that makes me a prime target. I get it. 

So yeah, I do get a bit of that, and I should probably play it in this podcast if that's the case. Maybe I haven't been that upfront with my story because sometimes I do have to tell people that I'm not a school owner, and they're surprised. 

So, there is that. Yeah, I mean, as I explained, I'm going to get backlash. I'm probably going to get backlash. We're always going to get backlash, right? 

KYL: Oh, haters. Haters are going to hate, and that's the thing. But the group that you have created from everything I see, they seem to be a group of people that, I mean, you're always going to get people that are resistant to change, and as you said, the longer someone's been in the industry, probably the more resistant to change. 

But from my experience, I'm very clear that there are things that I don't know. I'm not going to ask you to jump on the mats and teach a Muay Thai class of 30 people, but I will ask you because I don't know it. How do I run this better? How do I do this better? 

It's the same old thing. Like if you don't know your way around cars, you take your car to a mechanic to fix it. You don't open the bonnet and go, “I reckon I can fucking do this.” That's probably–and sometimes for people, that's very hard for them to make that admission and let that go.  

GEORGE: Yeah, you know, I think it could be a lot of it is caused by me and marketing too. It's really easy for somebody to go into my podcast and, let's say, see five videos where I talk about marketing and business. That is a teaching, that is where I am actually teaching something where that could be perceived that that's always how the conversation evolves. Like I'm the guru who knows everything that's always saying, but in actual fact, when I deal with school owners, I think it's a lot less of me and more of them.

It's more of understanding, and it's not a top-down command-and-conquer way of coaching. It's more of understanding and being able to help people go from one step to the next, from getting out of their way.  

GEORGE: It's funny that a lot of people see me as the guy that does the marketing. I help school owners with marketing, but if I think of the thing that makes the biggest impact is the thing of self-worth and pricing. 

KYL: Yeah. It seems to be like, and again, we just spoke about this offline, it's almost like a taboo topic, you know? We can't talk about that because, for a lot of martial artists, it may go against our core values, but as I'm learning myself, at the end of the day, the rent has to be paid, everything goes up, and the worth, you talk about someone that's been in another field for 30 plus years. 

Yeah, they would be on this level here, yet for whatever reason, we so often undersell ourselves. 

GEORGE: Yeah, Kevin Blundell says it’s okay to be in the part-time role, teach, and do it for charity and do all that. At the minute you charge a dollar, you've got an obligation to fulfill a service. 

KYL: Yeah. 

GEORGE: And you can't fulfill much for a dollar. So, you have to be realistic about charging what you're worth to be able to fill the service. You can see it. If you look at a lot of schools that do charge a premium, they are the best schools. 

I don't think you can–and just perception of that as well, right? I know this is such a touchy subject, and I guess I've got to be careful what I say because it's so easy to take it out of context, but you can't be the cheapest and then tell me you’re the best. 

KYL: Yeah. 

GEORGE: Why isn't a Mercedes 10 grand? Why can’t I buy the AMG for 10 grand? Why is it not more expensive than the Kia? They both get you from A to B, but who's the best? And that's if you want to be the best ever. If you don't, none of this is it's got to be this way.

But there is value in pricing itself. If someone is struggling to make rent and trying to do this full time and it's just not working well, then you've got to be open to looking at different ways of how you can make it profitable so you can be rewarded for what you do. It's not evil. 

KYL: You would say, well, I don't know what percentage, but it'd be a lot of people who come across to you or you converse with. There would be people grossly undercharging and underselling themselves, wouldn't there? 

GEORGE: 100%. 

KYL: Do you think that's a bit of a, I said it before, just a bit of a tradition in martial arts? We're meant to be the nice guys. And this is, again, I'm going to have to be careful that I don't take stuff out of context, but it's something that I'm learning because the first thing is when we charge more, we're accused of being money grabbers or whatever, or now it's all about the money. 

KYL: What’s that? 

GEORGE: How do you get accused? 

KYL: The people who aren't coming, the people who aren't paying, and then it's always interesting. There's this group of people that, if you are charging a group of people, will complain about the price, and there are obviously reasons for that. But then there is that other group of people that don't bat an eyelid because they see worth in what you're doing. And I think that's the big thing.

We talk so much about self-worth and being worthful, and yet here we are as the leaders. We're not putting that worth on ourselves. It's something that I know I still come to terms with. I think when we started working together, I think it was literally the first real conversation that we had together was, and again, it's not what are you charging; it's what are you worth. 

GEORGE: And what are you getting in return? There's lots for me to say about this. If I think of the holding back, like what holds you back, again, if we look at the pathway, it started as a passion, became a business. Now, you've got to put your business hat on. Now, you've got to charge. Some people have beliefs from back in the day that's carried over about money. 

Money is bad. Money doesn't grow on trees—money grabber. And then, you get the Tall Poppy Syndrome. I've got less than you, so I've got to drag you down. And it's so prominent in Australia. 

KYL: Yeah, it is. 

GEORGE: So, you've got that. And then, let's say your leader, your instructor is, you know, did it for love or passion and never bought a business, and now you're exceeding him in student numbers and wealth. You've got to watch that you don't step out of line. There's a lot of odds against you to be successful. And then, martial arts school owners that should be supportive. This could probably also be the worst and pull you down, or are you better than us, or we the cheapest, or whatever angle to try and differentiate instead of being complimentary towards that.  

KYL: Crazy, isn't it? Just because of the amount of experience, you would say, like Kevin Blundell you were talking about before, the number of years and time that has gone into that, and again, you'll pay, I don't know, for a tennis lesson or a horse riding lesson or whatever or surfing lesson, and quite often they can be more expensive, and that's not to say that they're not worth as much as what we do, but you go. They charge that, and people don't blink an eyelid, yet I'm deliberating over putting my price up five bucks, you know, yet you'll go across the road here and buy a coffee for six. 

GEORGE: So, for anyone that struggles with that, you just got to get clear on your reason why. The reason why you're charging that or why it needs to go up, you're doing X, Y, Z, and this is why we're going up with us. That's a good place to start. What is your reason why? And you've got to get comfortable with that. 

I always feel, and maybe this is because of that history in the time machine industry, where these things like this was built into your head, and it's never about the money. It's always said it's about the money, but it always comes down to the value. It really comes down to the value. 

We used to see that with what we used to do, people will find money if they saw that they've got a struggling marriage and they know that this is going to force them to take vacation time and spend together as a family, people find–they'll find it– 

KYL: If you want it to work, it'll work. 

GEORGE: Exactly. And now, when we look at something like martial arts, the thing that you've always got to look at is, what phone do they have? If they've got one of these, these iPhones, what are they paying per month for that? Do they need it?  Probably not. 

What else are they spending on that they don't need? That's irrational spending. So, if the need was bigger and it was that important to them to do this martial arts training, would they find the money? Is it really that expensive that it's out of reach? I'm not saying everyone, obviously, everybody doesn't have the same situation, right? But if you can present it in that way and people know the value in it, then would they sacrifice something? 

Is there something that they can sacrifice to make it happen? I'm not saying of the charge. I'm just saying charge your worth. There’s a big difference. 

KYL: I think there's a massive difference and I think it's a thing we get. Well, look, I know, I get it mixed up because I'm the guy that regardless of how much I've done, I'm still like [making sounds] and I'm like [making sounds]. I remember recently, I had a conversation with someone about this and, I said, “Are you justifying it to them or are you justifying it to yourself?” 

And I said, “Oh, it's definitely the second one. It's definitely the second one.” All right. Four things you cannot live without, animate or inanimate. Coffee machine? 

GEORGE: Coffee machine, the ocean, the Audible app does me good on my phones. 

KYL: What are you listening to at the moment? 

GEORGE: Scientific advertising. 

KYL: Oh, Jesus. That's a lot of big words. 

GEORGE: Yeah. I've gone back into a big mission of digging up all my old marketing books, so I'm in a big–just getting into the fundamentals of copywriting again. 

KYL: Okay. You're a guy who gets the most he can out of a day. Do you listen to Audible at that one-and-a-half speed, two-times speed? 

GEORGE: No. Sometimes at 1.25. 

KYL: I tried it, and I just went, “Oh my God.” This is too hard.  

GEORGE: Because I find I need that pause to reflect on what I just heard sometimes. 

KYL: So do I. 

GEORGE: It's not like I just want to try and get it in my mind. I actually enjoy listening to it. Yeah, no. 

KYL: Have you got a fourth one? 

GEORGE: I don't. Steak knife, a good steak knife. 

KYL: A good steak knife. Well, if you eat a lot of steak, you need a good steak knife.  There's nothing worse than having a nice steak and a shit knife, and you can't cut it up properly. That's big. It's accessories, man. It's accessories. 

Number seven, if you were not doing what you were doing in life right now, what would have been option number two? 

GEORGE: Full-time drummer.

KYL: Full-time what? 

GEORGE: Drummer. 

KYL: Drummer. 

GEORGE: Yeah. 

KYL: Okay. Favorite band/demonstration of drumming prowess. 

GEORGE: Tool. 

KYL: Tool? Okay. Okay. I’ve got to say that's not what I expected from you. 

GEORGE: What did you expect? 

KYL: I don't know. I don't know. I would have–I don't know, maybe a little bit of, I don't know, Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin, but you're jumping– 

GEORGE: Led Zeppelin? But Tool's just, it's on a level of its own. 

KYL: Have you ever seen him live? 

GEORGE: Yeah, it was a week before the Big C shut everything down. 

KYL: Okay. Oh, yeah. Yeah. 

GEORGE: That’s the last thing I could see in Perth. 

KYL: I saw Maynard James Keenan got his black belt in Jiu-Jitsu, too. 

GEORGE: He did? 

KYL: Yeah. Okay. When you say full-time drummer, was the concept of joining a band ever there, or did you play them loud in your bedroom and drive your parents nuts? 

GEORGE: Both. I played in a few bands with my school buddies. 

KYL: Yeah. 

GEORGE: We were pretty good. 

KYL: Okay. 

GEORGE: We got number 10 on the local charts. 

KYL: Okay. 

GEORGE: National South African charts. 

KYL: That’s a win. 

GEORGE: A band called Ordeal 

KYL: Ordeal. Oh, that sounds deep. That sounds really deep. 

GEORGE: It was. I had a guitarist-vocalist, Jean, who sounded like Scott Weiland from Stone Temple Pilots. Our guitarist could play every Metallica’s Solo Backwards. Like Kirk Hammett, crazy and yeah, it was fun days. I really tried to venture into that career. I played drums every day, every night, bands, and it was just after I'd lost my business, there was just too much on my back to even think, you know, I'm going to take this on as financially viable. 

KYL: Do you have a kit now? Do you have a kit now that you muck around on? 

GEORGE: I've got an electronic Roland TD-8 that I use. 

KYL: If you stick the headphones on and just look like an idiot? 

GEORGE: Yeah, yeah, yeah, pretty much it. Rock star with the music playing. 

KYL: Yeah. 

GEORGE: Depending on how bad I'm playing in the day, depends on how bad the music. 

KYL: Is there a song that you will play on drums that lights your fire?

GEORGE: Oh, there's lots. There's a lot of Pearl Jam, Queens of the Stone Age. 

KYL: You're really showing your 90s grunge. 

GEORGE: Yeah, it's all of those all louder stuff. Yeah, Chili Peppers, Funk Rock. Jane's Addiction. 

KYL: Wow. 

GEORGE: Yeah. 

KYL: See, this is a side of George. I just didn't say it's interesting. We share a lot of music tastes. Very good. Very good. Question number eight – I think we've answered this, but let's give it a crack – one time you backed yourself when everything was saying to give up? 

GEORGE: Yeah, it was Martial Arts Media™. I guess if I had to give it more context, there was a stage where I had parted ways with the school where I've trained. I was in this middle where there were no clients at the podcast running. And that was probably the one time I felt like, “Man, is this happening? Am I being a fraud  to myself?” 

Because I don't even have a client base where I'm actually doing this, we're talking about a month where that happened. 

KYL: Yeah. 

GEORGE: And then I flew to Sydney, and I met up with a bunch of other school owners, and it really recalibrated and got my momentum again. But that was an interesting time because I was really looking myself in the mirror and like, “Am I nothing?” Am I providing absolutely no value? 

KYL: So, you work with, not to get back to that pricing discussion and real worth, but do you find that's one thing you see in a lot of school owners when you start working with them? There’s this – I could say I'm in this bracket – that level of vulnerability? 

We have this persona, but inside, we're like, “I just don't know if I can do this. I just don’t know if I've got what it takes to actually do this.” 

GEORGE: Yeah. One of my coaches once said, “I guess what's easy to do right is you hang on to the old George.” Or the old Kyl. There's growth, and then with all growth, there's always its imposter syndrome, right? 

KYL: Yep. 

GEORGE: You're always in a comfort zone. Everything happens in breaking out of the comfort zone. You're in the comfort zone and every time there's growth, it means that you're in a new comfort zone, and now that means there's discomfort. And you know, humans will fight like hell to stay in their comfort zone and have that little voice telling you, “You've got to get back. You're out of line, and you don't belong here.” 

And so, you've always got to–one thing I told myself at an early age was if I feel uncomfortable, then I'm at the right place. 

KYL: Yeah. 

GEORGE: All right. Something is happening here. 

KYL: Spot on. 

GEORGE: I’ve got to get comfortable. 

KYL: You've got to do it. 

GEORGE: Yeah. 

KYL: And I think that's something that—oh, God, we can have a full conversation about that. It's back to handling hard better, but we need to make ourselves uncomfortable, and comfortable, and just push ourselves through. Again, you'd see a lot of change in people that come on board with you from what they were when they started to what they're doing now, and that would be very rewarding, too.

Martial arts school marketing

GEORGE: Yeah, a hundred percent. It's very rewarding. If I look at some clients where they started and where they were at, some starting out, some like lifelong martial artists and that different perspective, a different take on marketing. It always starts with marketing, but it's marketing that creates problems that can be solved. That always leads to conversions and styles, and then obviously got retention, but retention is the biggest thing. But to get that front-end right and really challenge beliefs, and charge the worth, keep doing that. 

There's a lot of depth and work to be done there. I know marketers love to make it all sound easy. It's simple, but it's definitely not easy, right? Because it's just the depth. If you take all the martial arts analogies, you learn to punch from day one, and 10 years later, you're still trying to perfect this punch. It's depth. 

KYL: It's just that constant chip away. I say to people, “You've just got to do it every day. Every single day.” 

GEORGE: There is one shortcut. I do feel there is one shortcut, and the only shortcut you have is to follow people who've done what you've done or someone who's helped someone else get where you are. 

Sometimes it's hard to look at–I think there's a bit of a gap as well where you look at it and say, “Well, XYZ has five schools and 2000 students. I should be doing that.” He wasn't doing that, that got in there. He was doing this. 

KYL: That's one. I was just about like this, and you would see it now because when I started teaching martial arts, to have a full-time center in Brisbane, even just a space or like a shed or an address, that was rare. I reckon, probably in the mid-90s, I can think of probably four or five that had an actual space. Now, you have people; that's their first step. 

They're getting spaces, and they're doing this. Would you say, from your experience, patience is something that we need, too? These guys like, “Yeah, it's been two months. Why don't I have 300 students?” And I say, “Because it's been two months, that's why.” 

GEORGE: Yeah. I mean, yeah, with all things, right? I think if all martial arts school owners had to live the martial arts philosophy in business, I'd probably not have a business, right? 

KYL: That's right. 

GEORGE: Because it's really just that level of resilience, now, if I say there's a shortcut, there are two paths, right? You can go the hard path, and you can take the easy part. The only easy part is you grab the lessons that were learned from someone else, and that's got a plan to take you there. 

KYL: Yeah. 

GEORGE: Put the right things at the right time—sequence matters. I think sequence matters. If I could tell a quick story. I'll go back to this. When I started helping martial arts school owners, I knew Google AdWords and Google AdWords was, I took the hard part, right? 

I bought a book for 17 bucks. I cringed spending 17 bucks on a book. And then, I started running ads, and it's not like Facebook ads today where you can put something up, get a message, and you've got a lead. It was like you had to build a landing page. You had to get a hundred clicks and then go and look at your data, and then optimize. 

It was this never-ending track of throwing money at stuff. And when you don't know what you're doing, it's hard to throw money at stuff. I did that until I spent, like, I was down to my last 300 bucks that I was ever going to invest in a business. And then, I made a sale for $37, and it was the best $37 I've ever made because– 

KYL: I love the way you even know the amount. It was $37. 

GEORGE: Yeah, because it was $37, and I got a hundred percent commission of it, right? Somebody in the States, I was in Perth when I was legal, I’m paying tax, somebody in the States bought this book that I've never seen or knew. They bought it from an ad from a page that I created. And that was like, whoa. 

Then, I spent another 30 bucks and made another sale. All of a sudden, I was in business, but it was a hard path, right? If I had money to invest in a coach or somebody could show me, “Hey, actually, all this money that you're spending right now, we can shortcut that.” 

It's never completely–the shortcut isn't without obstacles of itself. 

KYL: No. 

GEORGE: But at least if there's some data to work with that, “Hey, this happens to work in this way that's better.” And I think this is one thing that I'm always trying to find: How can I get the result quicker? When I started, I was the website guy, like I developed websites for guys. I believe that taking traffic from Google to the website was the best way. The problem was the delay in getting that done. 

KYL: Yeah. 

GEORGE: The website, traffic. And so, when I discovered how to do Facebook ads in a way that I could put the ad up, you don't even need a website. You can have a conversation with someone.  The minimal amount of effort could be done. 

KYL: Yeah. 

GEORGE: Not having a conversation. Can we sell conversations? That's where I really try to turn the whole system around. I'm looping back to that full circle with all that, but that was a big realization.

Can we get someone the result quicker? That's the first thing that we try and do. Can we get a good offer? Can we put it in front of the right people? Can we do the simplest way of following up? We'll get everything else. 

KYL: Yeah, remove all the bullshit. 

GEORGE: Yeah, we'll get what every other, and sometimes marketers say, “Oh, you need a website. You need this and this.” Well, yeah, you do later, but get your message right. Sorry, I hate the fact that you've got these agencies that promise the world and give this perception that you don't need to understand your message, and they will call the leads for you, and they'll do this. 

It creates this level of codependency where you're always at the mercy of the next hire, the next agency that's going to magically build your business. Sometimes, the path we take is probably not the path that everybody wants, but it's definitely the path that everyone needs. 

KYL: Exactly. And I think it's that learning—always learning, too. I just love the way you keep referring back to this coach, my coach, that you're providing all this experience to people, but you're still gaining experience yourself.  

GEORGE: A hundred percent. 

KYL: Three pieces of advice to people who are finding reasons to not back themselves, to instead back themselves. 

GEORGE: Number one, read The Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Have you read it?  

KYL: Yeah. Yeah. I have. I have. 

GEORGE: Yeah, right. If I ever think of a guy that – go read the book for anyone listening – but this guy was put in Nazi death camps and had to find joy in a bowl of mud water with a fish head for lunch. 

He just had one belief that he's got to get through this so he can document the story and help people. If you ever feel life sucks, pick up the audiobook or read that book. 

KYL: Very good. Very good recommendation there. I'm proud of you. Number two? 

GEORGE: If you've lost hope, take focus away from yourself and go and help someone else. 

KYL: Okay. 

GEORGE: We'll get it back to you and find someone else that you can help. And number three, there's a lesson in everything. So, in hindsight, if you're dealing with something right now, there's a lesson that's going to come up in the near future. Six months down the line or a year, you're going to say, “Ah, okay. That's why that happened.” 

If you had to step outside of your situation and be honest with yourself… What is that lesson you've got to learn now? 

KYL: Yeah. And I guess going back to those things like you said about helping somebody, I read somewhere that the amount of endorphin or dopamine release you receive from just being kind to someone is a real natural high. It puts things back into perspective, doesn't it? 

GEORGE: 100%. 

KYL: Okay. Very good. Well, number 10 is a quote to live by. 

GEORGE: Right. I don't have many quotes, but I've got one, and I'll have to give you some context. The quote is, “Do the work once.”

KYL: Okay. 

GEORGE: Context is, it's easy to have a system, whatever thing and you keep doing the work, doing the same thing. 

KYL: Yeah. 

GEORGE: Whereas, if you had to step back, zoom out, build the framework, build a system, have no work without a framework, have the framework, have the process, then do the work within the work. Instead of doing things on repeat and building things, can you zoom out, create a system, or simplify it? 

Do the thinking once; do the work once. Within the work is doing the thinking because if you really think about it and everything's being thought out now, it's like you to train on the train tracks, getting to the station. 

KYL: Do you find now, because again, you are so into IT and all that, do you find that might be hard for people to do now? Because as soon as they try, like to try and physically get into something they got to put all that other stuff and distractions out. Do you find that that might be harder to do than maybe ever before? 

GEORGE: With distractions? 

KYL: Yeah. 

GEORGE: Yeah, a hundred percent. A hundred percent. 

KYL: You'll be right into something trying to really, and again like we were talking about something earlier that I got to put together, and then you get a Facebook message, or you get the email chimes and all. So, you got to like to try and shut all that down, and have you said that the way that – I'm not trying to say – if we lock down and do something as I said, it's done. We've only got to do it once, you know. 

GEORGE: I guess. And what goes with that is, can you build an asset? Process and standard operating procedure—that's an asset. If you can document something, get it out of your head the way you want it. It's never going to be perfect. 

That's why I love Google Docs because it just evolves. But the quicker you can get it out of your mind and then add the nuances to it, it makes it simple for you and for you to take a step back out of your business because people are doing it. It also takes the blame away from people because it's always the procedure's fault and not the human. 

KYL: Yeah. 

GEORGE: I mean, it could be the human's fault too, right, if they don't apply it. But the first thing that when things go wrong with things that we do, where's that in the SOP? 

KYL: Yeah. 

GEORGE: It's not? Okay. Can you add it in? Right. It is. Okay. Well, why was it skipped? It just adds that level of responsibility, too. The process got to live outside a human because if that human goes, and that's the human that knows, has the knowledge and the expertise to do it, especially because I guess it's maybe it's a little different because I've always been online. I've never had anybody in my office, I've always hired people in different countries, and I’m online. 

So, just tightening up those systems and making sure everything has a safe place to live. Everything's got a process and a way that it's run. 

KYL: It's definitely something that I know I got to work on because there's so much up here that is not here. But we'll get better at that as we go. Well, that was a good chat.  

GEORGE: Great. That’s awesome. 

KYL: Yeah, I think as I said, as we said at the start, there will be people listening to this that know you in one plane, but now there are all these other things, and I think that's the interesting thing. There are so many different sides to us. It's that thing. Just because we do a job doesn't mean that we are doing that job. There are so many other moving parts. 

George, thank you very much for your time. 

GEORGE: Thank you. 

KYL: I know you're very busy. I know you have probably a few more hours of online stuff to do today, but I really appreciate your time, mate, and thank you for everything you're doing for the martial arts community. 

GEORGE: Oh, thank you, Kyl. It's been a pleasure. 

KYL: Man, that is another episode done. If you like what we do and you'd like to listen to more, you can listen to us on Spotify. We have our YouTube channel. We'll have all George's contacts up on this podcast if you'd like to get in touch with George personally and chat to him more about stuff, but give us a like, a share, a follow, and that'll be it. George, thank you, my friend. 

GEORGE: Thank you. 

KYL: It's lunchtime where we are, and we will see you guys later. Bye. Bye. 

GEORGE: There we go. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Maybe you learned a thing or two about me, good or bad. I don't know. We'd love to know your thoughts. However, if you want to share some feedback, I'd much appreciate it. 

You can in a few ways. Take a screenshot of this podcast where you listen to it in whichever format and tag me on socials. You can also find me on Facebook, facebook.com/george.fourie, or go look me up, send me a friend request, and yeah, I would love to chat and hear your feedback. Awesome. 

And if you do need some help growing your martial arts school in the sense of strategy, digital marketing, business growth, a bit of automation, or getting your time back, I would love to chat. We made a few changes to how we onboard and work with martial arts school owners. Currently, we are not accepting new clients, but you can go to the waitlist. 

Jump on there, and we'll let you know when we have a spot. We can tell you all the details of how it works and see if it's the right fit for you. You could go to martialartsmedia.com/waitlist and jump in there, leave your details, and we'll reach out to you when we have a spot available.

Anyway, that's it for me. I hope you enjoyed the podcast, and I'll see you in the next one. Cheers.

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

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

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

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 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
  • Charging Fair Tuition for Martial Arts Classes
  • An Overview of Buzz Durkin’s Success is Waiting: The Martial Arts School Owner's Guide to Teaching, Business, and Life Book

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

And 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 that, 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 was 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 to is internal marketing. We do internal marketing with some social presence, too. We do a lot of posting on Facebook, 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 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 was 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 sidekick, 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 sidekick, 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 life.

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 incidences outside the dojo, I think it's going to make people want to 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 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, on 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 student is 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 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 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, 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 that 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 does this apply 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. 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 the 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 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, 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 by 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’ birthday, 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 a 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 was seeing that you opened your first martial arts school in ‘74. That's a good three years before I arrived in 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 and 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 – 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's 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 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 belief.  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 saying, “This is the greatest thing you'll ever do.”

And the lacking in 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 an increase in tuition, 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 professional. 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 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 video that we spoke about right in 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, 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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147 – Buzz Durkin: The Martial Arts Master Of Lifetime Student Value


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 Durkin

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 Durkin

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.


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

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140 – Signing Up New Martial Arts Students With Dead Leads

Here’s a proven strategy to revive old prospects and re-sign former martial arts students through email, SMS, and Facebook Messenger.


IN THIS EPISODE:

  • How leads collected via Facebook Messenger, email, and walk-in prospects can be a valuable resource to reach out to nonresponsive leads
  • Having a conversation strategy that caters to potential martial arts students that are not ready to commit yet
  • How to restart a conversation with dead martial arts leads using The Conversation Carrots
  • The pitfall to avoid when reconnecting with dead leads and what to do instead
  • Using the 9-word Bullet Boomerang to boost student signups
  • And more

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

 

TRANSCRIPTION

Hey, it's George Fourie. Welcome back to another Martial Arts Media™ Business podcast. Today I'm going to be talking about signing up students with dead leads or leads that you have just forgotten about.

Leads that have inquired, they never signed up, or you were having a conversation with them and they ghosted you or just disappeared. Or perhaps you have those old students that left unless they left on bad terms and you don't want them back.

But otherwise, just students that left and something life got in the way and you didn't hear from them again and they left. So we're going to talk about a few simple strategies to restart the conversations with those dead leads, all students that have left, super simple but super profitable.

Hang around to the end. I've got a great resource for you, a PDF that we call Conversation Carrots. It's one of the most popular resources we have in our Partners Program, a really simple way to engage and start conversations. I'll give you the details at the end of the podcast, and how to access that. All right, let's jump in.

All right, before we get into the good stuff, a quick life update for any of you that have followed the podcast for a while and know that I haven't posted much on social in a while and done a podcast, this will take 30 seconds approximately.

So I'm recording this in 2023, February. In October last year, we decided to move the family from Perth to the Sunshine Coast. If you're not from Australia, that's equivalent to moving from San Diego to New York, it's that far, and that's what we did.

What decided us to move? Well in the mid-last year, we came here on holiday. I was hosting our first Partners Intensive, which is an event that we run for our Partners group. And we came on holiday the week before.

Absolutely loved it here, loved the beaches, and just loved the vibe of it. And we decided we wanted to do something new, that I'm closer to hosting events on this side of the country but also close to the states for travel and events that we want to host over there. And so we made the big move. That's it. 

Now, we're back and on track. The other thing that's been keeping us busy the last couple of months is onboarding new clients and working on a few cool things that I'm going to announce in the next month, a couple of weeks or so. Update done, right?

Let's jump into the good stuff. So how does one sign up students from dead leads?

All right, so let's look at a few scenarios. You have leads piled up in your Messenger. If you collect leads via Facebook Messenger, perhaps you have inquiries via Messenger or you have them from your website. So you have email leads, and you have them in your database, preferred.

We'll talk about that maybe a little bit. Maybe people walked in and you took down their details, whatever the scenario, you had people that were inquired but never joined. 

Now, if you had to track back the last few months, the last few years, how many of these people do you have in your database? If you still have them, we've got a few cool things that we can do with them and I'll chat about that in just a bit. 

All right, so these perfect prospects inquired, but they never joined. Now, I guess a dangerous thing for us to do is to make some assumptions about them, that they inquired, but now they're just not interested. Well, it could be, but it could also be just something else that happened that we can't control. 

Life got in the way. Maybe they were tied up in some other engagement and they just haven't had Covid, or maybe it's something deeper, right? There's a fear of what this whole martial life thing is about and they're just not comfortable stepping up and taking action on starting their training yet. 

Or one more option could be they just don't know who you are and they're just not sure about you. So they're just still doing a bit of their research, googling about having a look, trying to see if they can talk to people following, stalking you on all your social profiles, etc. That's them. 

Now, we could put them in the category of, look, they didn't inquire the first time and why would we need to talk to them? I mean, they inquired and they're not interested. Well, as we just discussed, that may not be the case. 

And so your prospects are going to fall into one of two categories. They're either ready now or they're not ready now. And the majority is probably not ready now. And so it's important that we capitalize on the ones that are ready to join, but then there's also the big bulk of prospects that come into your world and they're just not ready. 

Now, if you're doing paid Facebook advertising or any Google advertising, any marketing for that matter, you've invested some money into getting these leads. 

And so it's important that you have a marketing strategy that doesn't just cater to those that are ready now, but also those that are in your pipeline that might join later. So I want to talk about that strategy. 

So when you have people in your pipeline, well, how do you restart the conversation? Here's what I think is a bad way to do it. A bad way from my perspective would just be to shove more offers down their throat, never asking any questions, never starting a conversation, and just making an offer to offer, to offer. 

Now that might happen, but your chances of repulsing them and exiting your world by about offer number two or three is very, very likely. 

So what is a better way to do it? Well, let's look at how conversions work. Typically, before your prospects start training and start joining there is a conversation, right? There's got to be a conversation that's going to lead to them getting started. 

So if it's all about conversations, and we've spoken about this before, then why don't we just sell more conversations, because conversations will lead to the actual conversions? So how do we start conversations? How do we sell more conversations on email and social? 

Well, it's really, really simple, and we've spoken about these on a few podcast episodes, I believe on podcast episode number 44, is we start a conversation, we ask a real simple question. 

Now, there are a lot of names for these people, call them 9-word emails. We used to call them a Bullet Boomerang because a bullet sort of pierces through and then comes back, the conversation. 

But they've been termed in our Partners group as Conversation Carrots. Conversation Carrots, meaning it's a conversation, they're like something that you're dangling to start a conversation. And so if you think of a carrot in front of a donkey, it's kind of like bait. 

Well, I don't want to see it as bait, but it's a really simple way to start a conversation. We call these Conversation Carrots. And if you want to download the Conversation Carrots, you can just go to this podcast episode, which is martialartsmedia.com/140 for number 140. Just click the resources tab and you can download these.

So Conversation Carrots is a really simple way for you to start the conversations, start the conversations that can lead to a higher level conversation of whether are they ready to get started. 

So we divide these into a few categories. Mainly it could be super direct. Are you still interested in training in martial arts? That's super direct, but it could also be a bit more low-level, meaning a situational-type question. It could be how old is your child who's looking to start training in martial arts. Anything that really sparks the conversation. 

And so if you have a list of prospects, whether it's on email or Messenger or text message, you could just send out these little Conversation Carrots because all that they are doing is they are there to start a conversation. That's it.

A good way to complicate this is to give the answer already and say, are still interested in martial arts, insert offer here. No, now you've just given away the whole reason why you sent this message and it kind of destroys the whole purpose of it. 

So keep it super simple, and make it conversational. So if you have old prospects and also students that have stopped training with you, they also fall under this category. So students that trained, maybe you changing seasons and you know it's between years, like going from one season to the next or one year to the next. It's a great way to just send out a message and see if you can re-spark the interest. Start the conversation, conversation leads to the conversion. 

A follow-up strategy that we do after this, we call this our four-day Student Scale Campaign. And this is a four-day email strategy that helps sign people up. So this is a bit more working with a strategic irresistible martial arts offer and then creating a strict deadline and then a four-day email sequence that we have that sign people up. 

So I wanted to share what can get you started, martialartsmedia.com/140, download the Conversation Carrots, and that'll get you started. Go grab all those old leads that haven't joined all those old students and take this sheet from the Conversation Carrots, and send out that message, start a conversation. 

And when you sign up your first student from this, do me a favor and please let me know. Tag me in one of the social posts on Facebook or wherever you are watching this, or send us a message from martialartsmedia.com and let me know when you sign up your next student from this super simple strategy. 

Awesome. And if you got some value out of this, please do me a favor. If you can just share this with a martial arts school owner that you feel will get some great value from this. And we've also just revamped our Facebook group, or martial arts school owners, the martial arts media business community. 

You can access that at martialartsmedia.group. So not.com, you can just go martialartsmedia.group. That'll take you to our Facebook group, request to join, just answer a couple of questions, and jump in there. 

And I look forward to seeing you inside the community. Speak soon. Cheers.

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

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86 – Using Facebook Messenger Bots For Martial Arts Schools

How martial arts school Messenger bots can help educate your future students when you're not present.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN: 

  • How martial arts school messenger bots help with relationships
  • The power of speed replies
  • Getting conversations started without you
  • And more

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


TRANSCRIPTION

The quicker you reply, the better response you get at the end of the day. So what a bot actually does for you is it gives you the opportunity to reply instantly and start building a bit of relationship, or sharing information, or maybe even directing people to a paid trial. 

Hey George here. I hope you're well. I'm on my usual walk with the girl. So exciting stuff, in about 90 minutes from now I am meeting with our messenger bot developer. So we're busy mapping out a messenger bot for our Partner members. And so, quick couple of things about bots. I don't know if that's something that you're familiar with or not, but it's basically if you think of email automation in a way, where you have a sequence of follow up messages, well a messenger bot does the same thing. It just does it a bit more instant and looks real in a way, but obviously is an automated way of following people up. 

So there are pluses and minuses to it. I always feel that to have an optimal sales process nothing's ever going to beat face-to-face or person-to-person live contact, provided of course you've got some cool selling skills and so forth, and you know how to present your offers in the right way. But then a big benefit about having a bot is the instant reply feature. When you look at email marketing, email can sit for a day or even longer, and it's okay to take a bit longer to reply. But with messaging people expect a bit more of an urgent reply. The quicker you reply, the better response you get at the end of the day. 

So what a bot actually does for you is gives you the opportunity to reply instantly, and start building a bit of relationship, or sharing information, or maybe even directing people to a paid trial while you're busy and while you're on the mats and before you actually get to them and be able to speak to them one-on-one through the chat, or get on the phone, or however you want to do it. 

So there are two ways to do it. One is to start the conversation, which is my favourite. I prefer to use it as a conversation starter and not to be the actual conversation. And I think a lot, especially of the bot developers, get really crazy about it. They get all technical and create these long sequences and so forth. But at the end of the day, for me, the way I look at it is I just want to be able to speak to someone, start a conversation, and provide them with useful information before I could have the real conversation, and the one-to-one chat. 

That's pretty much what it's all about, for us at least. You can get really fancy with it and have all these long fancy sequences, but for me and for our members, we've got different ways of following up with chat on a one-to-one basis. So the bots really going to facilitate in helping start that conversation, and just give a bit of breathing space, or a bit of time for someone to actually soak up some videos, read up some information, and ultimately if they're ready, sign up for the paid trial. 

So anyway, that's me. I've got to jump to the meeting fairly soon. Just wrapping up the last couple of questions and things that we're going to work on and how are we're going to format the whole bot. So, exciting stuff. We'll let you know more about it once we have it up. 

If that's something that does interest you and you'd like to have a messenger bot built out for you and for your school that you can plug and play, and just swap out a couple of words and be good to go, then yeah, just hit me up with a message wherever you're watching this. Just reach out to my profile, send me a message and we'll have a chat, and see if we could help. Cool. Have an awesome day. I'm going to head back, speak 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.

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

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

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


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

1. Join the Martial Arts Media community.

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

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

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

3. Work with me and my team privately.

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

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

***NEW*** Now available on Spotify!

Podcast Sponsored by Martial Arts Media Partners

85 – Martial Arts Marketing BS!

When martial arts marketing agencies make promises too good to be true, it probably is.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN: 

  • Why you should avoid those ‘too good to be true’ marketing strategies 
  • Why a ‘quick fix’ does more harm than good
  • How a wrong offer damages the culture in your martial arts school 
  • How to hire the right martial arts business coach
  • And more

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


TRANSCRIPTION

Be a bit cautious. Before you just throw money at a company that gives all these unrealistic promises. Having a bit of a gut check and think is that realistic? Because if it's too good to be true, it probably is.

GEORGE: Hey George here, hope you're well. So when is too good to be true, too good to be true? So chatting to someone in Rhode Island yesterday, great martial artist and talking about getting burnt with marketing companies, and I like to keep this podcast positive, but there are some things that just piss me off, and this is one of them because whenever somebody makes promises, it's always a red flag for me. 

If somebody makes a promise and say they'll get you so many martial arts students sign-ups in X amount of time, guaranteed. I think, all right, that's interesting. Maybe that's true, but at what cost and at what expense?

There's one thing to sell a trick and one thing to actually know a strategy and unfortunately what happens is, and all respect to everybody starting out of business and trying to try to get things ahead, but when you start making money at the expense of others, that just doesn't sit well with me. It just doesn't. 

The one thing that attracted me to the martial arts industry was when you look at the things that you see on the wall of an average martial arts school and you probably have it as well. Discipline, respect, confidence, focus, depending on what type of school you have. But it's those values that resonate with me. And that kind of got me going in the industry. Because it was like, “Okay, it's the practical personal development.” But then if I see people working in the industry or maybe they're from the outside or… That doesn't gel with those values that… I'm just not a fan of that.

So here's the thing, it's really easy to sell a tactic. And what I mean by that is you get started, you figure some little trick and tactic out and it works. One part of it works. Only one part of it works and now you go shout it from the rooftops and you go post in all the martial arts groups and you tell everybody about this cool thing that you've got going. And people fall for it because it taps into the secret desire of having a quick fix. 

The secret desire of I can push this button or give this company money and they just going to do everything for me. And I've never once seen that work. I haven't. For a little bit there, I was trying to be that company, but it's not ethically and humanly possible because you can only ever serve one component.

And unless you are doing everything from the minute people engage with you to being the instructor on the mat and furthering that… Have that congruent flow of what you're doing. It's just not possible. So here's what fired me up about this is this company made all these promises and they put this ridiculous offer on the front end for people to buy. And on the front end it looks, wow, it's irresistible. So of course people take it, but what type of people are taking it? Well, the people that you probably don't want in your school because they were just bargain hunters.

They just saw something that was so good, so irresistible, so great that they went and bought it. So for the lead company, well paid, they delivered on their promise. Because they got you the signups, not the sign-ups that you wanted, but they got you some sign-ups. But for you as a school owner, you sit with the crap. And I remember speaking to Kevin Blundell a couple of years back now and on… Perhaps it's podcast number 20. If you go to martialartsmedia.com/20, it might be this podcast. But he was talking about having the wrong offer, having the wrong front end offer and the damage that that did.

It took them more than a year to actually clean out the bad students that they attracted. So be a bit cautious before you just throw money at a company that gives all these unrealistic promises. Have a bit of a gut check and think is that realistic? Because if it's too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true. And it might work on the front end, but at what cost for you, your culture, your existing students and everyone in the backend? Anyway, that's all I wanted to share. I might share some other stuff that really pissed me off on another episode.

But hey, if you need help with this kind of stuff, and I'm not talking about a quick fix, but talking to real help, real help to scale your business, to grow your business with a real marketing strategy from the front end to the backend, something that's got to work with your offer on the front end, when people connect with you to something that's got to be congruent with your sales process. And super clear about that. 

Your process, not someone else's but yours. Because someone else's process might not work for you. Then send me a message. No hard pressure, no weirdness. We'll have a chat and if I feel we can help, we'll go take the conversation further. Awesome. I'm going to run off. Get some other work done. I will 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.

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

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

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


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

1. Join the Martial Arts Media community.

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

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

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

3. Work with me and my team privately.

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

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

***NEW*** Now available on Spotify!

Podcast Sponsored by Martial Arts Media Partners

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CAN-SPAM Compliance

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

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

Choice/Opt-Out

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

Use of External Links

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

You must not:

Acceptable Use

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

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

Restricted Access

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

Use of Testimonials

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

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

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

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

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

How Do We Protect Your Information and Secure Information Transmissions?

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

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

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

Disclaimer and Limitation of Liability

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

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

Policy Changes

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

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

Contact

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

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

Email: team (at) martialartsmedia dot com

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