81 – McDojo: A Word That Actually Might Get You Killed

Calling out ‘fake’ martial artists has built Rob the brand McDojoLife with over 300k social followers, but sometimes it comes with a threat to his life.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN: 

  • What is a McDojo really
  • How McDojoLife came into existence
  • Rob’s 5 rules in considering if a martial arts school is a McDojo
  • How to run an effective paid trial offer
  • And more

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


TRANSCRIPTION

But sometimes people misunderstand what I'm trying to do and if I call out an instructor or I call out somebody that I think is doing something wrong, which I would never do without really doing my research, then sometimes their students, some of their students may have some type of a slight mental handicap, not making fun of them, but that has happened where I had a student who was on the spectrum somewhere and he threatened to kill me.

GEORGE: Hey, this is George and welcome to the Martial Arts Media Business Podcast. So today, I have a different guest with me. And when I say different, but we are going to explore a whole different topic. So one thing that comes up every time I speak to a martial arts school and the last couple of shows, I've explored the conversation of what is a McDojo? 

What is a McDojo really? It's a term thrown around, it's thrown around quite loosely. A lot of people are quick to label a school a McDojo or they're not, and then there's obviously people that are really fake martial artists out there that need to be called out.

And somebody that does really successfully and has a huge following on Instagram is Rob from McDojo Life. Now welcome to the call Rob.

ROB: Hey, thanks for having me, man. I appreciate you having me on.

GEORGE: Awesome. So now, here's an interesting little twist. I can only introduce Rob as Rob and I can't actually share what his last name is. Why is that, Rob?

ROB: Well, I… you can't really get my last name because I actually get death threats often, so I don't like people looking me up that way. So you can't have that. But that's the only reason. It's not that I'm not trying to be cordial or anything like that. I just don't want people finding out any information about me because that always goes bad, especially with my job, I pretty much call people out all the time, so I try to keep my personal and my business separate as much as I can.

GEORGE: All right, that's really interesting. So you've got, well let's talk about, right, because you've got a huge following on social media, yeah?

ROB: Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Roughly right now currently about 300,000 between the different social medias, between Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and now I've started up a Twitch and YouTube, so it's been growing.

GEORGE: Okay, so what's the whole drive behind this? What's the purpose behind McDojo Life?

ROB: Well, the idea is that our job as martial arts instructors is to teach people how to defend themselves. And we would hope that if we do our jobs correctly, we can actually protect people in their times where they might have to protect their lives or a loved one's lives or anything like that. The problem when you have a shyster or a charlatan or someone who's out there lying to their students is that those students are basically taking that person, those students… those instructors are taking advantage of those students. 

And what's going to happen is we as martial artists are already aware that those people are being ripped off. We already know because we can look at this from our perspective, people who have been doing it for years and go, “Yo, that's wrong. That's incorrect.”

But from a student's perspective, they've put in a lot of time, effort, and years and years of dedication into an art or into a person, like the instructor, who might be teaching them something that can get them seriously, seriously injured. And I would imagine that there would be more of an uproar about this kind of thing, especially when it comes to things like pedophiles in the martial arts, people who rip people off financially in the martial arts, people who lie about their belt rank and their fight record when it comes to martial arts.

So it just blows my mind how many people are indifferent and the old saying goes, “Real evil is not like evil. It's indifference.” And so all these great martial artists are like, “Hey, if we just let them be, then what will happen is our art will grow and they'll eventually dissipate.” And that's not the case. I've been posting every day, pretty much a new video, sometimes I post some of my old favourites just because I like to, but every day for five years and I have yet to run out of material. And I realized that these folks are growing exponentially because they're getting really good at business and there's a stigma about great martial artists or good martial artists being called McDojos.

So what's eventually happening is all the frauds that are learning these business systems on how to grow their studios are growing, because that's what those systems are for. And all of these fantastic martial artists are failing horribly because they're worried they're going to be labelled a McDojo if they're financially successful, not understanding that if you're not financially successful, your business will fail and no one will follow you because you aren't teaching anymore. You're going to be working at a Winn-Dixie or whatever the hell else you do.

And so the idea of what I'm doing is to open up people's minds to what the real issues are and that usually isn't monetary. Usually. There are usually much bigger issues than a studio being successful. Usually people who hate on that kind of stuff are just that, they're hating on because they're not that successful, and that's a shame. Hopefully, the idea is to create a conversation between different martial artists, between different arts, that we can all come together to an agreement on what is and what is not legit.

GEORGE: All right, interesting. Because I work with a group of schools owners we call Partners, and one of the biggest filters that we put in place, and to me, it's almost kind of like, I wouldn't say a joke, but it's like you've got to be teaching a legitimate martial arts and you've got to be helping students actually achieve the results. For me, from what I see just obviously around where we are based in Australia, I don't really, it's not a common thing that I see a martial arts practice that is really, really shady.

But then I watch all these videos come about and I always question, “Is this current or is it just things that have come from a long time?” Or is that, your knowledge from sharing all this stuff all the time, is it something that's current?

ROB: Of course.

GEORGE: And you mentioned it's a growing cult?

ROB: Yeah, again, like I said, what typically people who are illegitimate do is they try to hang out and then try to study and learn from things that are legitimate. And what happens is we kind of get wrapped up into our own little bubble and our own little world, and become a little bit more selfish. And we forget that no one in the… no one, you can feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, no one actually cares about the consumer, period, in the martial arts community. No one, no one cares.

There's no one looking out for the person who's about to become a student. We only look after the people who are already paying us money. We only look after the studios and how to help them grow, how to help retention. But no one has ever touched on the fact that there's no one actually helping out people who are getting into the martial arts.

For instance, when somebody walks into our studio for the very first time, any studio, your goal is to sign them up. That's the goal, right? To meet the sales quota, to get the person from point A to point B, because we as martial artists truly believe that our art will help them. And that's the goal. Our facility is awesome. Us, us, us.

What we forget is that might not necessarily be true. What the consumer was looking for might not be our studio. But that's not a great way to look at it from a business perspective. So from a business perspective, we're going to try to sell that person any damn way. We would never have somebody walk in and potentially go, “You know what, we're really not a good fit for you.” We would never do that, because we want to help you and we feel like our studio is the best studio for A, B, and C.

No one actually cares to help educate that person before they walk in the door. Guide them to the studio that's going to be the best fit for them, not the best fit for the owner, but the best fit for them. No one really seems to care on educating the general public on what martial arts is, the difference between karate, TaeKwonDo, and stuff like that. As a matter of fact, there are plenty of sales scripts out there to where if somebody calls and they say, “Oh this is so and so's TaeKwonDo.” “Oh TaeKwonDo, I was looking for karate.” And then flipping that on the person to get them sold on TaeKwonDo as opposed to karate.

And so I think what happens is that that's where you get a lot of that McDojo mentality is the fact that it is a little bit shady and the idea is to educate. And that's all I care about. I want to educate them. Somebody is looking to get their grandson into karate because their grandson said karate. And the grandson was really looking for jiu jitsu and explained jiu jitsu, but accidentally said the word karate. Well the grandparent might not understand the difference, and so takes it at face value.

Where I think that that's where a lot of the pitfalls fall is people not necessarily getting to where they're supposed to really be. And I think that that's where the shadiness kind of comes into play. “Well, I'm looking for karate.” Well if I stumble across to get back to your point, if it’s current or not, if I stumble across Kyūsho Jitsu as opposed to jiu jitsu, well Kyūsho Jitsu, that's George Dillman's client and they believe that they can knock people out with their mind. Well, that's ridiculous. That's, you cannot knock someone out with your mind, right. It's ridiculous, right. It's a fraud. But there are thousands of people who believe this.

Or Indonesian Silat – if you look at Indonesia today, someone sent me a video of only a year ago where there was a martial arts demonstration of kids, eight year olds, laying down in front of a truck and the truck runs them over, and the idea was their qi was supposed to protect them from this truck. Two kids died. I've never shared that video because I can't because it will get taken down, but two kids died because they believed in this mysticism.

So is current? Yeah, it's very much current. And the problem is that most of us as martial artists are so busy worried about us, us, us, we're forgetting that they are other people out there getting taken advantage of.

GEORGE: Okay, cool. And I'm going to play devil's advocate with this just because it's going to make an interesting conversation, right.

ROB: Yeah, definitely. I would love it. I would love it.

GEORGE: So one thing that came up, Indonesian Silat, because I actually have a client that does Indonesian Silat and I know they're pretty legit. So I guess I just want to give some context on there could be people, obviously in a style that does a shady practice, which obviously is then detrimental to the guys that are being legitimate.

So from educating, the perspective of educating students, I guess what I'm going to ask, let's say this is the scenario, right, that kid wants to do jiu jitsu and grandparent or parent understands karate or vice versa. How much do you think that would matter if the end result for the child that wants to gain confidence, discipline, and be a better human being, how much do you think that makes a difference?

ROB: Well, why not do football or baseball or basketball or soccer then? If that's all you're into it for, right? But if the devil's in the details and the details happen to be a range of combat that's physically effective to helping you, then I would imagine that whenever somebody looks at something, like for instance, a father in jail, which is another area that can come up, and the father in jail talks to the mom and goes, “I'd really like you to get our son in jiu jitsu.” For specifically, because let's say that he was a black belt in jiu jitsu for some reason. Obviously, this is a hypothetical conversation, but just painting a picture, right.

Let's say he understands that jiu jitsu is effective. It's been proven physically to help you defend yourself on the street. It's been proven in sport. It's a proven art when it comes to self-defense. There are shady people who teach jiu jitsu who don't know what they're doing, right. And so, not all jiu jitsu is going to be created equal and as a matter of fact, if I just take the I out of the first jiu jitsu and it is J-U jitsu, it becomes a different art or if I take the I out of the second one and it's jiu jutsu, now it's a different art as well. And so that can be very confusing as a consumer, as a parent, right.

So, but when you walk into the door and you talk to those people and you first start taking the art, it'd be like the difference between saying, “My child says he wants to play baseball,” and I put him in football. Well why? He wanted to play baseball. And will he still get confidence? Sure. Will he still be in an activity where there's other people? Sure. But you can get all of that in different, pretty much any activity that involved team sports or groups.

So when it comes to your art and your style, it kind of boils down to the details and what you're looking for as a consumer. Am I looking to work closely, especially with women, am I looking to be so close to somebody else that their sweat is pouring on my face? Well if that's not for you and you accidentally sign up for jiu jitsu, you're going to be miserable, especially if you get stuck with a contract for over a year. You're going to have people sweating on you for a year when you didn't want that at all.

So I think that it's very important that you decide what style that you want to do because they are quite different and they all do ask of you different things. Like for instance, if you did a traditional karate, like an Okinawan karate, you're going to be asked to do kata. That's going to be a pretty standard thing. Where if you say, “I don't want to do kata,” and then all of a sudden again, you signed up for this karate, well shit, I'm stuck here for a year and I have to do kata and I hate it. Or it could be the opposite. You don't want to wrestle, and yet you signed up for sambo. Well, that sucks, but now you're stuck in a contract for a year.

So I do think that it matters. But you can also get those exact same stimulus, like confidence, being physically active, having a good social environment, you can get that pretty much anywhere. You just have to trust and trust that that's still helping you with those things.

GEORGE: Yeah, totally. One thing we're really big on in our group is content creation that actually educates the right prospect. And I take this just from the more bullying the authority type of concept. There's nothing more frustrating when you're doing marketing and you, I think you're chasing offers month to month, and month to month, you're just trying to get numbers in.

But from an education standpoint, one thing we always go through how do you position yourself as the authority, and you don't play in the same field of everybody that's trying to just nail the offers down. But how do you start playing that higher field of the people that are, maybe they've got a problem that martial art solves, but they're not prospects for martial arts yet. And how do you start talking to those people on a higher level? But then start an education process with content.

But on a flip note, so you did get a lot of backlash with what you do. Now, what do you say to the legitimate martial artists that say to you, “Well, you just spreading the bad vibes. You're just spreading the negative.” What's your response to that?

ROB: Well, it depends on how they address it. I think every case is a little different, very similar to every customer is going to be different, every student is going to be different. It just kind of depends on how they approach it.

I like an open dialogue. I love it, because I learn stuff too. It's great. I don't know everything about every art in existence. It will take me a lifetime to learn everything about one art. So trying to be able to get a good handle on most arts is a fairly difficult job. Trying to, I'm not trying to be an authority on it, but I've kind of been put in that position where people assume that I am. And then I have to take that and go, “Okay, well I guess I am at this moment, so I might as well learn as much as I can.”

But when it comes to a verbal discourse and when it comes to having somebody who addresses the negative, I always try to talk with them in the grand scheme of things about what I'm trying to do, which is to open a dialogue more than anything else. I want people to be as educated as they can, and I try to do that through humor, because I feel like that's usually the best way to break the ice with any subject, especially if it's uncomfortable. Just a crack joke, man. So I usually start off with usually one liner jokes.

But I also have an analogy, and I want you to kind of think about this and maybe this will help shed light on it. Let's say we're all in a pool and I'm hanging out, and we'll say I'm karate, right. And we'll say you're jiu jitsu and TaeKwonDo is hanging out. Hell, even aikido guy is over there, right, and we're all hanging out and we're all swimming in the pool and we're all enjoying ourselves, right.

And then all of a sudden, here comes the Bujinkan ninjutsu guys and they walk up to the side of the pool and they start peeing in it. Not actually in the pool peeing, but standing out by the pool peeing into the pool. Now, if this was a public swimming pool, no one would be quiet about it. We would look at the person and say, “Stop.”

But since this is a martial arts school, no one says anything. They go, “You know what, we're just going to keep swimming over here and we're going to ignore that guy and he'll go away.” But that's not how it really works. That's not how life works. So what can happen is somebody else is going to walk by and see that that's okay behavior and they're going to walk up to the pool and oh, here comes the George Dillman guys with the no touch knockout stuff and they start doing it too. And then, the next thing you know, here comes the Silat guys who try to put the qi around their arms and try to stab themselves. Oh it doesn't work, they cut their arm, ah. That happens quite often by the way. I've got plenty of video of it. But then they start peeing in the pool.

Eventually, if we don't say anything, there's going to be more people peeing in the pool than people in the pool. And what's going to happen is we can make a decision, either we talk to them now but it's too late and they've taken all of our students and they've ruined that taste and they put a bad taste in their mouth. Those people are never going to join another martial arts studio. Nine times out of 10, once they go into that first studio and they have a bad taste in their mouth, they may, may try one more. But if they get a second bad taste in their mouth, they're never going to do martial arts again.

And so what's happening is those legitimate martial arts studios are losing not just profit, but potential students who will help carry their art over to the next generation, simply because they were too busy worrying about themselves to actually say something about something that's wrong.

And so, I understand that not everybody is going to agree with how I do what I do. But I don't do it with violence. I never encourage anybody to dojo storm anybody. I am vocally against people speaking out at people during their seminars. I think that our goal is to spread information, very similar to a smoking campaign that we had years ago. 

If I want people to stop smoking, I don't punch the president of Marlboro in the face. That doesn't help anything. It makes me an asshole, right. But if I want them to stop smoking, I'll spread information, and then the more people who get that information, before they walk into their first class, before they talk to their first instructor, they'll have a better handle on how to make their own decisions, first. And that's kind of the goal.

And so, I'm not trying to make anybody's decisions for them. What I am trying to do is get them to have a more open dialogue, so they can make their own decisions and research better on their own.

GEORGE: Awesome, cool. Okay, Rob, so now you've got this huge social following. It's got a lot of traction. Obviously, that polarizes a lot of people and it creates love, humor, and hate, right. Now tell me about the hate, because you were saying, this was out of context, I was about to introduce Rob and I was like, “Hang on, what's your last name?” And he said, “Well, I'm not telling you that.” And then the conversation led to, “Well, I get death threats.” Tell me about that.

ROB: Well, with anything that grows big, the bigger it gets, the more people are going to follow you just simply to watch you fail. There's always going to be those people and the term for it is haters. There's always going to be your haters.

But it's funny, because they're like some of your biggest cheerleaders, because they're the ones who are commenting, helping your algorithms, showing more people about your stuff. Even if they… what do they say, bad press is still good press; any press is good press.

But sometimes, people do take it too far. I do get death threats from time to time, which is why I don't give out my last name and I try to avoid that as much as possible. I don't have anything to hide in terms of my particular martial arts stuff. I try to post up stuff of me from time to time. That way, people can see like, “I'm a goofball, man. I still swing nunchucks whether that's good for the streets or not, I don't care, I still enjoy it. And I don't think every martial art that you do has to be about getting into a cage and fighting someone or a life or death situation. I don't think that every martial art has to be that way.

But sometimes, people misunderstand what I'm trying to do and if I call out an instructor or I call out somebody that I think is doing something wrong, which I would never do without really doing my research, then sometimes their students, some of their students may have some type of a slight mental handicap, not making fun of them, but that has happened where I had a student who was on the spectrum somewhere and he threatened to kill me.

Now, when you get a death threat from somebody who obviously has some type of a social disorder, I take that seriously. I really think that this dude has the possibility of doing that, because it's not like I hide where I am. I tell people, “Yo, I'm going to go in to the US Open or I'm going to this tournament or I'm going to the Martial Arts Super Show in Vegas.” So I tell people where I'm going to go.

But I don't want them to know where my house is. I don't want them to know my neighborhood. If they see me in public, chance you're going to be much safer there. But yeah, I get death threats and I think that what I've really touched on was something I didn't expect, which is that martial arts and religion draw such a fine line, such a fine line.

To some people, martial arts is their religion, and just like any religion, if you yank that rug out from under somebody, you yank their belief structure out from under them all of a sudden and you prove to them that something is wrong. They're going to double down or they're going to agree with you. And most people double down. Even with proof in their face, they go, “You know what, you're still wrong. My instructor is not a pedophile.” 

And I can show them the court transcript and they'll be like, “Nah, I don't believe you.” I'm like, “Dude, what other proof do you need?” But they still don't believe it, even if you shove the proof in their face, because they still want to believe that their instructor that they spent 20 years of their life with is still a good human being, because what does it say about them that they followed a pedophile for 20 years and still think that, knowing he's a bad guy, they have to believe he's good.

And so taking that rug out from under people sometimes is really dangerous because it is a belief structure and that really shatters people. And so, they get violent sometimes. It's fair enough. It comes with the job.

GEORGE: Yeah, I've come to realize, especially the martial arts space, if you want to see where the trolls hang out on social, just like running ads or just telling people or ads is the best, especially because I work with martial arts school owners and sometimes that will attract the martial arts crowd and the context will just be, I just laugh, it just means I'm like, “All right. I'm moving forward. The hate's coming in. I'm doing something right.”

ROB: Yeah. And I do feel bad, I feel bad for legit… for instance, so people send me stuff a lot from Wing Chun kung fu and that art, if you're not familiar with it, has a lot of flow drills. It has a lot of sensitivity drills. When you're looking at it, it looks odd. But without context, if you're just looking at it, which is a big problem, which is why I try to explain that there's so many martial artists, if you're going to post a video of your technique, post context. Context is huge.

If I'm looking at a jiu jitsu drill, a solo drill, and somebody is just shrimping on the floor and that's your ad. That is the dumbest ad ever. Because me as a martial artist, if I'm in TaeKwonDo and I've never done jiu jitsu, still I could've done let's say 15 years of TaeKwonDo and I look at jiu jitsu for the first time, and I go, “What is he doing? That's stupid. I've never learned that in my 15 years of martial arts, and I'm going to make fun of it.” Well, that's because the guy didn't put in context.

This is a hip mistake. This is what this is for. Let me show you the times that it's been applied. Let me show you how it works and why it works. And then, now we're explaining our art and helping it grow rather than making it a detriment. I had a long conversation with someone on systema. Are you familiar with systema?

GEORGE: A little bit.

ROB: Yeah, so it's a Russian art and their big claim to fame is that they say that they taught it to the Spetsnaz. And so, fair enough, maybe you did. But I don't know if people are really familiar with how that stuff works, but they don't just teach one art to the military. Those are self-contracted, those are deals that you make with your government to get paid.

And so, for instance in the United States, we've had almost every art taught to our military. So to say, “Yeah, TaeKwonDo, you know the special forces uses it.” No, duh. But they use jiu jitsu and judo and samba and all these other arts. So to say that that's the claim to fame is ridiculous to me. But also, on a side note, have you ever, the movie ‘Men Who Stare at Goats'?

GEORGE: No.

ROB: So, there's a movie based on a true story that happened in the United States where a gentleman was given a whole bunch of LSD and used his mind to knock a goat out who was in another room. And because that incident happened and the goat actually passed out for some reason, they actually gave him his own platoon and allowed him to start teaching what they called the Jedi program and fed these officers, these military people, LSD and tried to teach them superpowers. Our government really did this. And so, whenever I hear people say, “Yeah, I taught the military.” I always think about ‘The Men Who Stare at Goats'. I'm like, “Yeah, but that crazy dude also taught him too.'

So in any case, but I had a conversation with the gentleman from systema about that same thing, about him posting videos or systema in general posting videos with no context. And we had an hour conversation about it, and he tried to explain it as if it was a drill, which I have no problem with. If I'm explaining a technique to a student or to a classroom, it's going to be done maybe at half speed or slower, so people can understand it, but you're still explaining what it's for.

Where in this art, people are waving their hand and people are falling down with no explanation. And so when you have that kind of stuff pumped through the airwaves with advertisements, it's not helping you, because you've got to remember that the person who's looking at your advertisement is looking at it from a student's perspective if they're going to buy anything from you.

And so they're getting a lot of information about how you teach your class, the tonality that you use, what type of person you are. And if I look at that and I go, “Man, I really like the way that guy teaches.” I would go to your class. I would go check that out. But if I look at it and I go, “I don't know what the hell that is.” Well, that's you as an instructor teaching a poor class, but you're teaching a poor class to thousands of people who are potential students.

So it's important that if you're going to show your stuff, you need to show context. It's so important from a consumer's perspective. They need to know what the hell they're looking at. And I think that that's where a lot of martial artists fail and that's why get a lot of that hate. I think that helps.

GEORGE: Yeah, you've hit the nail on the head. I talk about the context a lot. I've got a video surfing around somewhere, The Three Biggest Mistakes Martial Arts School Owners Make, and the big thing on it was context, because the go to thing is just pick up the phone and let's just do a line of everybody punching and kicking. And I'm like, “That can mean so many things.”

If I'm the prospect and I'm like, “I want to hit this class,” and I see an intense class, is that really the thing that I want to see? So just taking that first 15, 20 seconds of, “Hey, this is me from school this and this, and this is kind of what we're doing.” You could have the same content and just change the context around it, and speak to a different person.

So I think it really comes down to the context, but then also, for clarifying on the context is who are you trying to talk to. Let's start with the who and then you can develop the context, and then the content can just kind of follow.

ROB: I agree. That was something that I learned years ago when it came to, because I used to go to Bill Clark seminars. I don't know if you're familiar with Bill Clark, but he was one of the founders or he's one of the heads of ATA, American TaeKwonDo Association. But he was the gentleman who started a lot of the phone scripts and a lot of the business stuff in the United States on how to grow your business and treating martial arts studios like a business.

And I'll never forget him saying, “You don't want every client. Not every client is right for you. For instance, if I have a client who walks through the door, who's already haggling me for prices and stuff like that, who are already trying to get my price down, they're going to cause me the biggest bit of grief later on down the road.”

It's the ones who are willing to pay the price that you're asking for right away, those are going to be your best clients. The people who are willing to pay what it is you're asking for are going to be the ones who are going to break their backs for you because they're paying for it. They're not trying to look for some deal or try to shade you over right off the bat.

And so, you're right, you don't want… you've got to figure out who you're trying to get your prospects from, and that in itself could be tricky, but that also has so much to do with your advertising and how you do it. Are you doing a free trial? Are you doing a paid trial? I prefer paid trials. I'm real big about that. I don't think doing a paid trial, which a lot of people have a stigma, they think that paid trials automatically make you a McDojo, but then I ask them, I was like, “Is there any job you have ever done for free? Any job where you were working and you did it free?” You're like, “No.” Your mechanic's not going to look at you and go, “You know what, I'm going to look at your car for free. It's cool.” No, he's going to charge you for the time. He's going to give you a consulting fee or an assessment vehicle of your vehicle.

So I think it's, and also it helps you weed out bad clientele. If they're not willing to pay you the $5, $10, $20 bucks for your trial, they're not going to pay you monthly dues. They're not going to pay you a dime. You might as well just weed them out quick. So I really love paid trials. I'm a fan.

GEORGE: Yeah, totally. Free trial, from my experience, free trial can work only if you have a super advanced funnel of fulcrum people with your content and you've gone through that process and then work with a free trial.

But if you, free trial and that's your cold offer, especially on things like Facebook, that's hard work, because that's going to take a lot of work and a lot of energy. Then again, on something like Google where somebody has some intent. Yep, they could be a better prospect. But, yeah, the paid trial is where all our clients get the best results, definitely.

ROB: And the cool thing is it could become a free trial, which is usually how the game is played. You pay me, let's say, $20 bucks for three classes and you get a free uniform or a free pair of gloves depending on what your margin is. If it's a karate uniform from Century, I think they're $8 bucks wholesale. I'll give you a free uniform. You paid for it already. You paid me $20.

So then you're in my class and then after you decide either the first day or you want to do one trial, one class, however you want to do it, they already have a uniform that they can't wear literally anywhere else, it's a useless piece of thing unless they actually sign up. And then, on top of that, I can give you that money back and put it right towards the down payment.

There are so many different ways to get people in, and to me, it's not a shady thing, because it's a choice. It's an offer. It's nothing… I think the biggest thing is as long as you're upfront with the people. Just don't lie to them. Don't patronize the student. Don't try to pull the wool over their eyes with what I would consider shady sales tactics.

Now I will say this, I don't think handling objections is a shady business practice. People are going to object. That's just human nature. For instance, in one of the, what do they call, one of the five objections. Let's see if I can remember them off the top of my head. I can't afford it. I don't have the time. It's too far away, the location. Oh, what was it? I have to talk to my spouse. And I have to think about it. There we go. Boom, I still remember them. Not bad, huh?

And so, but yeah, so these objections are always going to come up. Always. They're going to come up every time you try to sell somebody on something. But that's why you do a good job of what I would consider a business tactic called giving a damn. If you actually care about your client, all of those objections are done before we have a conversation. Usually, if you really care about them, you're going to talk to them. “Hey man, what made you want to start martial arts?” “Man, you know, my doctor told me that if I don't lose 100 pounds, I'm going to have serious medical issues and I'm already having them.” “That's a big problem. I care about you. I want you not to die.”

So when you hit me with the objection of, “You know man, I just really don't have the time.” “Bullshit. Yes, you do. You had the time to walk in this door today. You had made the time to not die today. And what you're going to tell me is you're going to walk out the door with a doctor's order that says you have to lose this weight. There's a reason you came to this facility. There's a reason you walked in this door. Let me help you get from point A to point B, because I know for a fact I can.”

That's called caring. That's not like lying to them. All right, if it's the other way around. Let's say it's a fake martial arts studio and they go, “Hey, man, I really wanted to be here for self-defense.” And then you hit them with that old saying, “You know what, most people started for that reason.” And then you just use that to plug and play with whatever problem they have. That's shady. Most people started because they wanted to lose weight. And then the next guy walks in. Most people started because it's self-defense. That's a lie. You're lying to them, right.

But if you're hitting them with the truth, like, “You know what, we had Steven lose 50 pounds here. We've had Susan, she lost 15 pounds here.” Cases that I know personally, we had a guy come into the studio, at one of the studios I taught at who wanted to lose 30 pounds because he had a girl in his office that he was terrified to talk to. He lost 30 pounds with jiu jitsu, that class that I was teaching. Not only did he lose the 30 pounds, he asked her out and they became married and have kids now.

So those are real. That's real caring, right. But when you have the plug and play, like phone script script, where you're going, “Yeah, you know what, everybody started at this studio because of the reason you're saying you want to start.” That's a lie. That's shady. That's where I think most people get upset is when they're being lied to. I think that they respect the truth and I think that when you really care about your client and your student, they'll see the real you. They'll see that you really care, and they'll be more likely to sign up and stick with you because you care.

GEORGE: Love it. So I've got a string of questions because this conversation started from just wanting to talk McDojos and there's some great value coming from this, so thanks for that, Rob. I've got about, we've got about another five minutes or so, so I don't think I've got time for all the questions I want to ask. But let's start with this. Something that we really didn't clarify, I mean if we really look at the term McDojo, in your words, how do you define it as in, “This is a McDojo.”

ROB: I get that question a lot and I have a very definitive answer. So I have five rules. I call them rules. People said that they're signals, but I call them rules, because those are the rules that keep me in check. I don't go after studios unless they break these rules. It's very important to me, and that allows me to keep myself in check with balances.

So rule number one, no pedophiles. I think that if somebody's been a convicted child sex offender, they shouldn't be teaching martial arts and they also should not be legally around children. I know that that sounds like a no brainer and that law should already take place and intervene there, but it's not. There's actually a guy who owns a martial arts studio here in the United States, and the studio's called Warrior's Code. He has three martial arts studio. He was convicted of molesting a 15 year old girl, and for some reason, because of the plea deal that he took in court, he's still allowed to be around children. So I think that that's a huge one, and it happens a lot. There's a lot of pedophiles who do take refuge in opening up a small business, trying to hide the fact that they have ever molested somebody, and I think that that should be weeded out immediately. That's got to stop.

These kids are putting their livelihoods, they're putting their trust in somebody who's supposed to be there for them to help mentor them. And these people are taking advantage of them and that's unacceptable. I don't give a damn what the reason is or what the situation is. Once you've broken that child's trust, you should be done with the arts. Done, period.

GEORGE: Got it.

ROB: So that's number one. Number two is people lying about their belt rank or fight record. If you're going to lie about your belt record and fight records, your chances are good you're lying about pretty much anything else that you can get your hands on. People sweated, they spent years of their life to get their black belt. If you're not one, that's okay. It's okay to open up a martial arts studio as a brown belt. Do it, if that's your passion and you want to do that, you still know more than the new guy. Teach them, but don't lie about it. Don't be like a Charlie Zelenoff who says he's 200 and something and 0 boxer, when all he does is go into gyms, hand people gloves, and hit them as soon as they get gloves on, and calls that a victory. That's lying and that's not healthy for anybody.

Rule number three, shady business practices. There are plenty of gyms that do this. Please never do this if you're listening. But what they'll do is they'll be quite aware that they're about to close. They know they're about to close, and so what they'll do is they'll wait to close until they get that last month's payment and then shut their doors as soon as the payment comes in. And so they'll rip people off of a whole month's worth of payment, when they already knew, they were well aware they were going to close.

Or they'll open up a studio, take the first month's payment, close down, go to another town, and do the same thing. There's been a lot of cases of that as well. Or strong arming your students. Going to their door, when they don't make their payment on time, banging on the door and saying, “You need to give me my money or I'll hurt you.” That happens often as well, and so, that's shady business practices.

Or one that I'm not, I'm on the fence about, but having your students sign up for long-term contracts. Everybody knows damn good and well that the average martial arts student roughly drops out at about a year. So if you're having your students sign contracts for over two, three years, sometimes five years in one case that I saw, and then you're holding them to the full amount after they cancel, that's fairly shady, when you knew statistically that they were going to drop after a year. They didn't know that, but you did. And so that's an ethics thing. So that's rule number three.

Rule number four is no touch knockouts. You can't knock people out with your mind. I'm sorry. You can't do it. 

GEORGE: Unless you take LSD and you attack the goats, of course, yeah.

ROB: You know, I touch you here, you fall over. I hit your hand here and you have a seizure. That's a lie. It's a fallacy. It's not real. But plenty of people fall for it. It's ridiculous.

And then the last one is unsafe training practices and cult like behavior. You're their instructor and their mentor. You're not their spiritual and religious leader. That is not your job. I would never go to my barber and go, “You know man, I'm having this existential crisis. I really am glad that you're here to give me the spiritual advice.” No, I might ask the advice of another friend or a human being, but I'm not going to treat him like he's on such a high pedestal.

You're just a human being. If anybody out there is listening, if you make your students refer to you as sifu absolutely everywhere you go and that's your handle, ehh, a little ego going on there, right. That's just a little weird. But I'll let that slide.

But the unsafe training practices. There's no excuse for that. There's no reason for your students to be sparring full contact out on concrete with shoes and no head gear. That's how people get hurt and die. You accidentally knock somebody out. They fall if their six feet tall. That's six feet down for their head to land. They hit the back of their head on concrete. Now, they're dead.

Or the old school training method where you're hitting your students with sticks every time they get something wrong. You're abusing your students. They're paying you. Remember that. They can leave whenever they want. But that's where the cult like behavior comes in, because sometimes you can brainwash them and make them forget that they can just leave. And so that's one of those things that I think is kind of shady.

So those are my five and those are the ones I stick to. That, to me, is a real McDojo. I could care less how long it takes you to get your black belt. B.J. Penn, for instance, got his black belt, what, two and a half years, three years in jiu jitsu. And then people will turn around on the other hand and say, “Oh, you've got black belt in TaeKwonDo in two years. That's not real.” Well, what is it? Is it okay for just one person? Well, then it's not a rule. It's a guideline. And so that's why I stick to those five rules, because they apply all the time.

GEORGE: Awesome. Rob, this has been a great chat. Loved it. It was awesome, and you shed a lot of great value and a lot of context on the whole McDojo thing and yeah, so what I want to ask you is for anybody that doesn't know how to find you or if anybody wants to know more about what you do and the things that you share, where can they find you online if they haven't already?

ROB: Pretty much anything that is social media, you just type in McDojo life and I'll pop up. You can find, all of my original content is on YouTube. I try to make each social media a little different from the other. I usually do my live interviews, I usually do those on Facebook. So you can find me on Facebook at McDojo Life. Twitter, I'll randomly spew out information on Twitter, but I also share the videos on Instagram, on all of those as well. So look up any of those and you can find me at McDojo Life.

GEORGE: Awesome. Rob, thanks a lot for being on. Thanks for sharing, and I'll connect with you in the social hemisphere.

ROB: Sounds good, brother. Thank you.

GEORGE: Cheers, thanks.

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

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

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

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


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80 – Discovering Your Martial Arts Student’s Inner Greatness

It's great to know the real reason why your martial arts students want to join, but what if you could go one level deeper? Cat Zohar shares how.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN: 

  • How to improve your martial arts school’s student retention
  • Member engagement vs. customer service
  • Why member engagement is like fortune telling
  • How to identify your martial arts students inner greatness
  • And more

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


TRANSCRIPTION

GEORGE: Hey, this is George and welcome to another Martial Arts Media business podcast. So, I've got a repeat guest with me today, Cat Zohar, all the way from the States. Hi Cat.

CAT: Hi. How's everyone? Welcome, hello. Glad you're here if you are.

GEORGE: Cool. So, a quick intro. Why the episode number two and a bit about what are we going to be talking about here today. Recently on our Partners program, we co-created something with all Cat's expertise, all her IP, and we called it Retention by Design. Retention by Design, and Cat's going to correct me if I've misplaced the wording.

But something that we've focused on in our Partners program, we always talk about how to attract the right students, how to increase sign-ups and how to retain more members. And on the increased side, we talk about mastering sales. And with mastering sales, we're really big on really understanding the real reason why people join. Not the hey, I want confidence, but why the confidence? What is the deeper emotional reason why people go ahead?

Cat's taken that to a whole another level when it comes to retention. And instead of just uncovering and discovering what the actual emotional reason is why people go ahead and start martial arts, but she's developed a system where she can actually identify the personality traits and how to identify the actual greatness of the student in a more detailed way. Are they good at the competition, would they make a potential instructor, and so forth.

I'm not going to reveal too much from that, but what I really liked about the whole concept is it just takes things to a whole another level. And if you've got retention problems and football is a top priority over martial arts and a whole bunch of other things and you're finding price wars instead of value wars of why your martial arts program is superior, then this is going to be a lot of fun and a lot of value.

So with that, welcome again, Cat.

CAT: It's great to be here, George, thanks for having me.

GEORGE: So, just for a quick two-minute intro. Just for anybody who hasn't listened to the first episode, just give us a quick rundown, who is Cat?

CAT: Well, that's a loaded question. Cat is a person who has a marketing company that focuses on helping martial arts schools with their member engagement. Member engagement is probably a lot of my contribution to the martial arts industry and helping martial arts school owners not just sign up new members, but most importantly keep those members and keep them not just coming to classes, but keep them showing up happily and referring their friends and family members to their martial arts schools.

So, a lot of what Cat is, is a little special twist on taking a look at our relationships that we have with our students and how to be able to best serve our members. Not just in a sense of giving things, but most importantly in a sense of what they're able to receive by taking part in the martial arts class. Pretty much a combination of the martial arts business along with being a martial artist myself for over 30 years and a practitioner of the arts.

Cat Zohar

This is something that I have a good sense of direction on where martial arts instructors and well-meaning school owners tend to put more emphasis in certain areas, where if they were to shift some of that focus and attention to keeping their students through different things and not just teaching great classes, but also the process of which they help them develop personally and give them that personal development aspect in their program, they could actually do a lot less recruitment than what they may believe is necessary.

In the long run, it saves them a lot of that effort that goes into the ads and goes into the marketing and goes into the arduous task of getting new sign-ups each and every day. It definitely saves a lot of gray hairs from showing.

GEORGE: Awesome. So, let's break it down. Let's start with just the problem of this. Where did things go wrong with member engagement?

CAT: If I had to pinpoint, I always use this expression, member engagement is the opposite of customer service. Customer service waits for a problem to happen, and then figures out, what could we do to make it better, fix it? Member engagement eliminates the need for customer service because we try to pre-empt whatever that problem may be and just stop it from ever forming and ever even becoming an issue.

So, member engagement truly is, almost if you had a crystal ball and you were looking into it and you were saying, if that's the path for this new student that I have, I want to be sure that that thing that I just saw come up into my vision doesn't happen. Or, if that could be the ultimate outcome for this particular student, I want to ensure that that's exactly what their experience is going to be. So, it's almost like a fortune teller, if you will, looking into the crystal ball for the life journey of a martial arts student.

The truth of the matter is, here I am, I'm going to go off on a tangent because I guarantee my instructors never would have expected the fact that I, the geeky little six-year-old girl that signed up for martial arts classes would have been as invested into martial arts training as I am today. And I think that really is a lot of what … Instructors have preconceived notions of their students when they get started and they're not always favourable.

It's like, they're going to end up dropping out, or they're not going to end up going that far. Or they put high expectations on other students, like this is a superstar, they have so much ability, I can make them so great, and then become utterly disappointed that the student decides to pull out or they take a break or stop for football, or soccer as we call it. Yeah, that gets very dejecting in the whole school owners' job role.

GEORGE: It's really hard for this is just a practicality of life, right? Your assumption of people is generally wrong. It's almost like when you run a split test for ads. You always think that's the sure winner, and then it's typically not. And same thing with people. You can have a gut feel and some intuition with, all right this person is like this. You get a good feeling about it. But then there's all these other things that are going on that you could never predict. So, you can never really accurately assume.

And assumptions could also be dangerous. I see this in sales a lot. One thing with website development, always talking with copywriting. We always ask the question, if I had to walk into your school and ask what do you do here, what would be your answer?

Sometimes the question just goes, we started in Okinawa and we did this and there's this whole tangent of stuff. And I'm like, hang on, you lost me at 1964. I'm not here anymore. Because you completely missed the point. What I'm getting to with that, it's so easy to just assume your story is going to connect with someone, or just assume that somebody's here for confidence. But there's so much more going on behind the scenes.

And want to take this, not to a crystal ball level, of course, because it's actually a practical process that you put together. So where do we go from here? If we look at member engagement and you need to lift your game. Maybe people are dropping off and other sports are taking priority, etc., where do you start this whole process within the communication with the parents, etc.?

CAT: Great question, George. And everything that you've said so far has been completely spot-on with your analysis of where people, well, what do you guys do, what do you accomplish. And I think that is exactly where most school owners drop the ball is because they want to put someone on a trial membership, or they want to get them enrolled on something. And before that they're so eager to sign them up on a program or say I got one and celebrate that success, one of the most important areas to learn about the student is day one. It's on the intake process. It's the day you ask them to fill in a liability waiver form and permission slip to try a first class with you.

This is one of my strong beliefs is that If we were to ask better questions on that intake form, and not just one of those old lists of 50 different questions about will you be living in the area for the next year or so or questions that are a little bit less relevant to the life of the student as opposed to the life circumstances of the student is really telling.

How often is it that martial arts instructor as a parent, of say a child that's five, six, seven years old, what kind of a friend is your child? Does he get along well with others? How does he participate in group activities? These seem to be very reasonable questions for a future educator, a teacher, a martial arts instructor to learn and to know, especially from a parent's perspective before they begin teaching the student.

To me it seems like common knowledge that we would take the time to ask questions about the student that we're going to be teaching so that way we know how to teach them. But I don't think it happens nearly enough.

GEORGE: Okay, so let's look at how beneficial this is. Our goal is we want to keep more students and we want to learn more clear understanding of who they are, what they really want, what are their potential personality trait. So how do we go about uncovering a better understanding and being able to use that, not just on the sign-up process, but actually to keep them engaged throughout the program? My follow-up question would then be, how do we predict the actual times, where you were saying member engagement to actually replace the customer service. How do we go about that? I'm asking that now in case it doesn't slip my mind.

CAT: I hope I remember that question when it comes around to that part of the discussion here. Great great great pack here. An assessment. I think the number one way to be able to ask parents the important questions that we need answers to is through a simple assessment. What if this assessment was, oh, I don't know, 18-questions long and ranked them in order of different priorities as far as how they showed up most powerfully in a child's life. And a parent takes this on behalf of a child, or an adult student takes it for themselves based on how they react to different situations and things.

And giving them this type of simple, very straightforward matter of fact-type questionnaire that they could quickly take and basically, you're able to then get a little bit of a profile of who this person before you is, without making too many judgements, but just based on how their personality is showing up and how other students in your martial arts school may have also related to such questions.

GEORGE: Give us an example. I'm trying to just cut in. Just give us an example. So, assessment. If you could handpick a couple of things to give us an idea of how you go about the whole profiling.

CAT: Sure. So let's say if a student has really strong perseverance. Because we know our martial arts program teaches a student perseverance. Let me backtrack one step. Let's say that all these things that we say we teach in martial arts, confidence, perseverance, indomitable spirit. All of these traits were there. And then a parent was able to say, well, I definitely see my child, as opposed to say lacking, he needs more confidence.

What if we were able to take it from a completely different perspective? What if we were able to say that my child has so much fortitude, so much perseverance. He doesn't give up and sometimes he probably should. He's the one who stays to the end, and he's trying to be everybody's friend even when other kids may not be so nice to him in return. These are real frustrations a parent may have if they're dealing with everyday life with their child. It gets me so raging mad when I see other kids taking advantage of his good nature.

And I'm sure there's people listening to this recording right now and says, oh my gosh, I've heard parents say that to me last week. And they're probably thinking of their own student body and thinking to themselves like, I have students like that. Where if somebody took their very last snack for lunch, they would not even have a problem with it or let them do it because they're not aggressive or they're not assertive enough.

So we hear these things that parents want these things for their child. They don't want them to be bullied, they don't want them to be cornered. They want them to exude, not necessarily just confidence, but also assertiveness. They want them to be able to say when enough is enough and stand up for themselves so they're not being taken advantage of, which is completely understood.

But what if a parent was able to recognize, well the fact that they have such good endurance and what if that was really more like empathy. And what if their child's empathy was one of their strongest features and that was not a bad thing. That was a good thing. And we're able to recognize that first through the questions we ask. Like, for instance, how much empathy does your child display when working with other kids or in groups? How do they share empathy with their friends at school?

These types of questions that we're asking specifically, they may say, extremely much. He gets a five on a scale of one to five, five being the highest, that's my kid all the way. So, now we have a little bit of a different understanding of what this child really has initial greatness for because that's the way his personality is showing up. That's the way he communicates on an on-going basis. That's what mom hears from the school teacher every time they have a sit-down conference.

So, these are the types of things that now that the martial arts instructor's able to say, hey, we know you want confidence, and that's going to come with our martial arts program, but we're not going to let him lose one of the strongest qualities that he has with maybe say empathy, or maybe say fortitude or one of the other types of honour. He just has such great integrity, he's not going to tell a lie and he's going to be honest if something comes down to the wire about what happened in this particular situation.

These are all really good things but sometimes can perhaps be seen as a little bit more passive or a little bit meeker. And sometimes that could also lead to some of the reasons why parents bring their kid into a karate school or martial arts program in the very first place.

So all of that being said, gives us a chance to really hone in on where the areas are that a parent says this is great, as opposed to saying, ugh, we just need more discipline in this house because he just doesn't listen to any of the rules. As opposed to focusing the attention negatively on what's lacking, we just really want to shift the conversation and focus on the beginning of a new relationship on what's already there and build on that.

GEORGE: That's awesome. So, what I was getting at then was predictability. So we know in the program, and maybe this is a question down the line, actually because we can focus more on what we've just discussed here. But to that question because we're going to push it out and we're going to forget about it. So, let's discuss it.

So, predictability. So if we think customer service, member engagement. We want to combat problems and deal with situations before they actually arise. How do we go about looking at that journey and saying okay, white to black, let's just call it that. For example, we know in the next three to five years or whatever the journey is. Longer if it's Jiu Jitsu. That's going to be the journey of the student and there's going to be some obstacles where the student's going to want to quit, lose interest, etc. How do we go about that? That's a big question.

CAT: That really is. This may be a little bit of a more lengthy response to it as well. But in all fairness with time and our listeners' schedules here, let me address that this way. There's not a roadmap in any martial arts student's journey. There's a destination where X marks the spot. And if that's black belt, we know that that's what the goal is for a student that we want as martial arts instructors to see our students achieve.

But until that goal is also the student’s goal and the parents’ goal, we have a three-way obstacle. So, we can't just be pushing someone. The student has to want it. We can't want anything for our students more than our students want it for themselves. I didn't say it, I just probably said it better. I wasn't the first person to quote that.

The truth of the matter is if our students and our parents of these students don't want black belt just as much, they're not going to get it. Part of member engagement is really listening to find out what the outcome is that a student is looking for. And make sure that we're able to not just deliver that, but find out what the next outcome is going to be as well, too.

And, through something like the assessment where we know where a person's tendency tends to be strong, we can actually say, well given this amount of fortitude that your child has, and that perseverance, we're running a boot camp session where it's going to be a four-hour training day, but he's got the makeup, he's going to be great for this. This type of rank advancement camp, or this type of workshop that we're going to do, or this intensive training for a competition team, maybe, it's going to be right up his alley. This is going to be something he's going to do so great at.

And because he has that grit, has that perseverance that he's showing naturally, that it's there, it's within him, that's something now that we can take and expand over the course of yellow belt, green belt, blue belt, purple belt, red belt, black belt, and make that grow with him.

A parent comes in, they want confidence, we show them confidence. They say thank you very much, have a great day. We were able to do that in two weeks, that was worth it. And then you're done. But wait a minute. Because we tried to show up with something that wasn't necessarily already there. We tried to show them or give them something that we were able to throw at them or help them develop or help them gain. But we negated the fact that they already came prepared with something.

And that greatness they came prepared with is going to get us so much longer of a road to be able to work with and to be able to naturally appeal to what it is the child's already doing well at. And the parent recognizes, already on board with, keyword. They're already in alignment that yes, this is one of the greatnesses in their child. This is something they'd really excel at. You tell me what parent wants their child to fail and just fail miserably in anything that they do? And then, not only want them to fail miserably at what they do, wants them to do that consistently for about three to five years.

No. We make this into such a struggle, and that's where so many disconnects are going on with martial arts school owners because they see things as this is our curriculum, this is the way it has to be, this is everything that needs to be taught. But sometimes they miss the fact that, well, the student's probably not going to be ready for that after just two classes, six classes, eight classes. Every student is not identical. But the instruction was so great, they're always going to be ready that way. That isn't necessarily the case, either.

So, by giving them the proper instruction where we recognize areas of greatness. Let's say, perseverance, for one. They're able to then now suggest, with confidence, hey, our competition team requires a lot of perseverance from our competitors and it takes a little bit of commitment on the parents' part, too. So, I'm guessing if your kid has all that perseverance, you probably have a little bit of it up your sleeve, too. So, we're going to recommend that he gives try-outs a chance. Is that something you'd be interested in? Because he looks like he's got a lot of talent and a lot of ability to grow with that.

And they say yes, great. And now this is something that's able to move them in the direction of continuing on. So, it isn't necessarily just setting the goal of black belt, but also giving them something that does resonate with them. And that is worthy of their journey.

So how do we overcome and take the predictions with a crystal ball and different things and the membership process where a student may want to stop or may want to take a break? You always refer back to what the initial goodness was in their child from the start. And recognizing that. And recognizing where they're going with that. And recognizing the progress that that area's making.

Not so much about the areas of efficiency, but more so about the areas of progress and about the areas of growth. Not only was he great at something like this when he came in, but look at how much better he's getting at it. And wow, do you see how that transfers over for now to A, B, and C.

Sometimes it's kind of funny. Martial arts instructors want to get to 100%. Say this is 100% right here, and they say, well the best way to get to 100% is not to go from the 98 percentile to make it 2% higher and get there, but what's the area where it's like two, four, six per cent. The area that's 4%, I want to start here and really make it go all the way up. Why such an uphill battle? If the goal is to get to 100%, I want to find out where are we at 90. I don't want to have to go 100 degrees to be able to get there, I want a student to be able to go from 95, 96 and there we are. Look at what we just did.

But it's just an easier way to be able to show people. And then most importantly, instil that type of success in our students through the journey that they also enjoy the process. Sometimes it's counterintuitive what's easiest to be able to deliver with our programs.

GEORGE: So, there are two paths, really. There's the linear path, and then there's the personalized path. The linear path is, yep, there's some bumps in the road and we know that typically when a student goes from this to this, there's a drop off. Or this type of season might affect it. Or change in school, going into teams, all these things. So that's sort of the linear path of the constants that you can predict.

But then what you can't predict and what we're talking about here is focusing on the higher-level, the outcome, the individual path of the student. Where are they at in their journey? So taking it to that point, it's almost like saying, all right, here's the outcome that we want. Here's the outcome that the individual wants. That's what they want. Here's martial arts. How do we form the glue? What's the glue that's going to keep these two together.

And when Johnny here goes off-path, and loses sight, now we can sort of come back and say okay, Johnny wanted to be here, how is that going. Well, you're not there yet. Okay. So let's backtrack on that. So sometimes, it can be also, I guess, reminding of where they're at and what they actually wanted and are they there yet. What's your take on that?

CAT: Evaluation and communication always has to be part of the growth process, period. So, recognizing where a student begins, recognizing where a student is somewhere after a belt promotion, maybe. Having sit downs with parents and open communication about how the program's working in their life. These are all real, important parts of keeping engagement strong with your members.

And of course, any type of relationship is going to have its ups and its downs. It's not always smooth sailing 100% of the time. Isn't that the way the saying goes? It's the turbulence or it's the rocky waves that create the proficient sailor? It's not the calm waters that create the experienced sailor. And remembering that and recognizing that with parents when they come in. It's like, oh, this is a perfect opportunity for us to be able to really, truly express to little Billy here that this is part of the road of life, and we're going to work through this together. And getting him through that period or that experience. So, yeah, definitely.

But also recognizing that so often if there's a problem, their teachers are going to address it like, she just won't keep her hands to herself, she touches and smacks the kid next to her all the time and who cares that he keeps pulling her hair, but she needs to learn to keep her hands to herself. Whatever the situation is.

So often parents are just used to hearing what's wrong, what's broken, what's not right with this particular incident. How can they “fix their kid?” We've got to just recognize from the start when parents come in that there's nothing wrong with their kid and not to assume that there's something wrong with their kid. But, instead, assume that you're here, for what? To just do better at being who you are, right?

I don't want to change you when you come in for martial arts classes. And I think this is where we really have a disconnect a lot of times with the enrolment process. Because somehow, martial arts instructors get this idea that in order for me to do well at my job, I have to completely transform and change who you are as a person, or make you into something completely different than what you are. I don't think that's what parents want, either.

Just because they come in with a concern or a problem or a reason, doesn't mean that reason needs to be 100% of the focus of the entire relationship on-going. To refer back to say, he didn't have confidence, now he does. I'm a superstar, stay with me for the next six, seven, eight years, that's not necessarily the path to success. But, instead, recognizing since your child is so great with A, B, C, since your child does so good already with this particular element, I know he's going to find a lot of success with this and this and this. In fact, this is the reason why our instructor over here, Mr. Jojo or whatever his name is, is doing what he's going today teaching classes. Because he was quite similar.

So, recognizing that the process to growth isn't always the path of most resistance, but instead the least resistance. And recognizing areas of personal development that we could see for ourselves as martial arts instructors.

When I talk to school owners, I'm always amazed sometimes when I hear them express that I know this student's going to be getting ready to quit. Or I'll even ask them a question, who's the next student in your martial arts school that's going to quit? And they give me a name. I'm like, wait a minute, stop right there. You have a name of somebody who's going to quit in your mind. What have you done to prevent that? Nothing. I'm just waiting for it to happen.

I know if I take my vitamins every day I'm not going to get a cold, but when I feel a cold coming on, and I know a cold is coming on and I say, nah, no vitamin C. I'm not going to take any orange juice, I'm not going to have anything to help combat that in any way. I'm not going to make sure my diet's clean this week. No. No, I'm just going to let it happen. It's almost like saying, what's wrong with you?

I'm asking all the listeners to this recording right now. All three of you out there. One, two, and whoever else is listening to this right now. I'm asking you, please ask yourself that difficult question. Who's your next student to quit. And then whatever name comes to mind, what are you going to do about it? What are you going to do differently? Because if you were going to do the same thing, we already know what the outcome is, you're going to be right. Congratulations, you're going to be right again.

But none of the times where a student says that they're going to quit is it completely always, I never saw that coming. It's usually they missed a class, they missed two classes. This happened. Or we hear a little bit of a soft tell. Oh, well we're running into some problems at school. I hope he can keep his grades up. We hear a different type of tune about it. We hear different things about it all the time.

So, instead, a parent comes in says, we're running into some problems at school, we're going to have to stop karate so he can focus on schoolwork. Well, when has that ever been known to help? When has that ever been known to actually fix the schoolwork? So he's going to spend all his time with the tutor then? Actually, helping him excel at something that he's great at, like, I don't know, martial arts classes, is going to be great for his confidence to continue while he tries to improve at school. So, we're going to take the one thing he's struggling the most right now and make that 100% of his concentration and focus?

How would a parent do with that? If you were to say to a parent, let's just go ahead and tell you the only thing you could do 100% of the time is work on that one project you've been procrastinating on for the last year. How are they going to feel about that? Their reactions probably going to be about the same. Yeah, everybody needs a healthy outlet. Everybody needs some way to be able to feel good. So, we just recognize where that shows up. I hope that helps.

GEORGE: So, look, we've been talking a lot of big-picture ideas, big concepts. I want to quickly make this super practical. Because it's one thing when we did the thing for our Partners, Retention by Design, we broke it down as in a process. Let's be real. Maybe this is a simple conversation or simple listening for a lot of people. But for a lot of school owners this might be next level of the head. It's like, all right, I get the concept, but now what. How do I actually make a thing?

So you've made it really practical in a way of going from assessment to actually identifying the, I say personality trait, but the greatness, their inner greatness. And that whole concept as in a process. So, walk us through how that works. How do you go about it?

Cat Zohar

CAT: That's a really tough question to verbalize since it's so heavily based on visual aids. And unfortunately, I don't have my brochure with me right now. But one of the things that is really important is after we take the assessment, we do an evaluation on the assessment. And the assessment's easily broken down into six different categories, or six different areas. And each one has a rank of up to five points per section.

And basically, what we're looking for is out of three areas, which I refer to as our centralized qualities, we also have three contributing qualities. Every centralized quality is going to get matched with one contributing quality. And when these two come together, a centralized quality and a contributing quality, they make a butterfly. We call these butterfly themes. Each student has a unique butterfly theme. And there's nine different butterfly themes a student could actually fall under.

These particular themes aren't my creation as far as how they show up, but instead, science. It's different learning styles. It's the way that students learn best or tend to do best in certain environments. Some students tend to do better visually. Some students tend to do better by hearing the instructions broken down step by step by step. Other students do better when they actually get to demonstrate or physically participate.

So based on what a person's learning style is, we then are able to kind of direct or guide how we go about teaching the classes, how we go about instilling confidence in that student and for whatever their path is. And basically, use this as a little bit of a tool to be able to leverage what recommendations we make for this students' martial arts journey.

So, really after we have their butterfly theme figured out, the next step is for us to be able to communicate that with the parent and then give the parent some ways that this is going to benefit their child at home, too. So, when it comes down to cleaning up their room when they're asked, what's the best approach to get them. What's the best way to give that direction for the child? We're not just going to say it's always this way.

No. Instead, we're going to take it based on how their personality shows up and then recognize what kind of learner they are. And then from that be able to clearly and confidently share with the parent, one of the best ways for you to be able to coach your child, like we do here in the martial arts school in the art of personal development. And it's to give them this command for cleaning up their room. And them recognizing when it happens, that this was done by the process of what. Where their natural greatness tends to fall in.

It really helps you incorporate the martial arts that you teach at your martial arts school with parenting martial arts in a sense that they're able to give out to utilizing the same type of information that we just uncovered based on the assessment for them as well.

GEORGE: Awesome. So, I think here's what we're going to do. We could talk about this forever. it's a lengthy topic, so I want to be respectful of your time. I think here's what we're going to do. If you're listening to this podcast, you're going to have to head over to martialartsmedia.com and find this episode. We have not really planned this, so this will potentially be the worst presentation.

CAT: What are we doing here, George?

GEORGE: This is potentially the worst attempt at a cool offer. If you are still intrigued, listen on. So, we're going to put together something that you can take the assessment and you can implement this whole process in your business from front to back. And head to where the episode is. Just look for Cat Zohar on martialartsmedia.com.

We haven't worked out the details, which is why I'm saying this is probably the worst attempt at a sales offer on a podcast, ever. But the cool part about it is, if what we've spoken about is cool, if you have problems with your retention. If you know that understanding a student's true greatness is going to be super beneficial to understanding how that works.

And to make it in a practical way that you don't have to be a genius with a crystal ball to and really figure things out, but to have a practical sort of step-by-step way of going about it. Then, head over to this episode. We'll have a link where you can access more details. I think we'll shoot a quick video just to give a bit of a breakdown on what that actually is and how that works. How was that?

CAT: Yeah, sure. Sounds great. We'll give the assessment to anybody who wants to take it. So, if this has piqued your interest at all, good. Take the assessment. We'll send you back what your evaluation comes back as and have a conversation about your results. I think that sounds great.

GEORGE: We should ask. Where can people find out more about you and more about all this what you've got going on? And thanks for being on, again, Cat.

CAT: My pleasure. I love being able to share with martial arts community. This is where I grew up and this is where I plan to stay. This is my livelihood, so whatever I'm able to do to help martial arts school owners around the world is truly a good passion of mine and I'm happy to help any way I can in that way.

Best ways to learn about me are either my website CatZohar.com that has the links to all the different creations that my mind comes up with. There's BeginnerMinds.com too, which is the program we're discussing. Any of those sites are the best way to keep tabs on me. Or of course send me a Facebook friend request if you watch this and I'll be happy to connect with you over social media as well.

GEORGE: Awesome. Cool, cat. That sounds cool when you say it like that. Thanks for being on.

CAT: Why, thank you.

GEORGE: Thanks again for being on. As I mentioned, you can check out, obviously, all of Cat's websites. Catzohar.com and BeginnerMinds.com and we'll put together something special for you guys as a podcast listener. So, head over to the website, check that out, martialartsmedia.com. Cat, it's been great having you on again. Always great speaking to you and I'll speak to you again soon.

CAT: You too, George. Awesome. Thank you

GEORGE: Cheers.

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

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

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

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


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79 – A Different Approach To Running Self-Defence Courses For Corporates

Dave Friedman takes a unique approach for sharing his passion for running Krav Maga based self-defence courses for corporates.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN: 

  • What is personal safety really
  • About Live Safe Education, which aims to teach a spectrum of self-protection strategies to schools, companies, and businesses
  • How not to be more vulnerable or prone to becoming a victim of a crime
  • The advantages of learning self-defence and self-protection techniques in the workforce 
  • And more

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


TRANSCRIPTION

No matter how good you are, no matter what degree of black belt or dan you might be in your martial arts, if in the moment you freeze, and you're unable to physically act, it doesn't matter how good you are.

GEORGE: Good day, this is George Fourie, and welcome to another Martial Arts Media business podcast. Today, I am joined with Dave Friedman.

Dave Friedman, he's going to do the official, good intro, but he's from Krav Maga Australia, and something we're also going to talk about today is Live Safe, which is their company based on personal safety, and working with corporates and schools. Welcome to the call, Dave.

DAVE: Thanks, George. We appreciate you having me on.

GEORGE: Yeah, cool. This is the first time I actually have a South African guest on the podcast, other than myself, which is pretty cool.

DAVE: So now there are two accents that people won't understand.

GEORGE: Two accents, and I mean, we're not as good as the Kiwis, because apparently we're second best in the world. I don't know how that stat works. And I don't know why the Kiwis got it. It's not like they already have the All Blacks, you know? They have the All Blacks and now they've got the best accent as well. But anyway.

DAVE: That's right.

GEORGE: Yes, so I hope you can decipher the two accents. Well, I guess you're used to one, so now you've got two. Awesome, Dave. Thanks for being on.

I guess, just to kick off, if you can give sort of a bit of a background, just I guess also your background, all the way from South Africa; how you ended up in Australia, and then what you do in the martial arts space.

DAVE: Sure. I'm from Cape Town in South Africa, which is the good part of South Africa. I grew up doing judo as a kid, I represented my province, which is the equivalent of my state, up until about the age of 10. I then actually took quite a break from martial arts. I focused on soccer, I played soccer at quite a high level. And about the age of 18, 19, I got back into martial arts through Muay Thai and through Krav Maga.

So I trained quite a lot of Muay Thai, I competed in a few tournaments in South Africa, in Cape Town. At the same time, I was also training Krav Maga. I've been teaching Krav Maga since 1997, so 22, 23 years now, more so on the side. It wasn't my main, professional form of income, up until about a year ago.

I moved from Cape Town to Melbourne in 2008 with my wife. Most reasons, obviously just crime was on the up in South Africa. Also, more so for education, in terms of starting a family and just wanting my kids to be in a better education system. I've now got two boys, both born in Australia; a nine year old, and a six and a half year old. They both train at my Krav Maga school with me as well. So the bigger they get, the more nervous I get.

And yeah, so been in Australia, now teaching Krav Maga full time. And as mentioned, we've got two companies. Our first company is called Live Safe Education, and that does most of our work in schools and in corporate or businesses, where we teach a spectrum of self-protection, or personal safety, not just self-defense. And then Live Safe Education also owns a Krav Maga Dojo called Krav Maga Australia.

There, we have about 120 students currently, growing. We've owned Krav Maga Australia for seven months, and we've doubled the student base in that time. So we've gone from 70, from about 65 to 120 in seven months and still growing, which is great. We run kids and adult classes there, 11 sessions a week. And then during the workday, we focus on the schools and the corporates under the Live Safe banner.

GEORGE: All right, awesome. So I'm going to backtrack here, and I might have spoken a bit about this, but because … and we've got listeners from the United States, from New Zealand, a lot in Australia as well. Give a bit of context. I mean, it's always good for me to say Australia is great, but for different reasons that other people might see. And I think when people live here, it's easy to complain about minor things. Whereas when you come from a different perspective, you see things with different eyes.

DAVE: Sure.

GEORGE: What is your take? How different is it for you living in Australia versus South Africa?

DAVE: Look very, different. In South Africa, I think the difference being in South Africa, crime is literally or can be around the corner at any time. Whether you're at home, whether you're out having a coffee, or having a meal, walking in the street. There is a 24/7 concern of crime, and therefore, the average person growing up in South Africa, you have this 24/7 always a level of concern.

If you talk about Cooper's Color Code of Situational Awareness, he was a sergeant in the American army which came up with these color codes. He speaks about code white, yellow, red and black. Code white being where you're just oblivious, your situational awareness is almost at zero, and you're unaware of what's happening around you. And that's how many Australians live, because thankfully, we can afford to live like that. And that's one reason why we live here.

In South Africa, everybody is constantly in a code yellow at least, and code red at certain times. So you're never fully relaxed. You're always aware that, at any time, something could happen. When you stop at a red traffic light, you're looking for someone coming to carjack you. When you're getting out your car, you park in a spot, you first look up, you make sure there's no one close by, and then you get out of your car. Every part of your life in South Africa is governed by the constant threat of crime.

Although the concern or worry about crime in Australia is on the up at the moment, it's still nowhere near the levels of South Africa. Unfortunately … well not fortunately or unfortunately, but your average Australian is more often than not in that code white in terms of the level of situational awareness, which makes them more vulnerable, or prone to becoming a victim of crime, whether it be a very low level crime, like a mugging, or having something stolen, or something more severe.

Self-Defence Courses

Whereas what we do at Live Safe is just try and give people some very basic strategies and techniques, without affecting their daily life, but just where they can be close to that code yellow, particularly in transitional spaces, where they are more prone to becoming a victim of crime, in order to keep themselves safe from both the physical, but also the psychological aspects of becoming a victim of crime.

GEORGE: Yeah, cool. So we will definitely dive a bit deeper into that, but I was speaking to one of my friends the other day, and now if you bring this up, it's sort of … and I don't know if I'm accurate in saying it this way, but something when you grow up in South Africa and you're talking about the situational awareness, it is a different thing. I know it took me a couple of years to really drop my guard, until they broke into our house at the end of last year.

Now that situational awareness is right back where it was, but it's a different type of way of life. As you say, you're always assessing, you're always judging, you're always looking why you're standing there, why are you doing this? What's your intention? You're always trying to summarize a situation. And something that, when I grew up in South Africa, you'd never hear of things like you hear in Australia, like the king-hit. You know, where people get punched and they just … they die.

I've always thought about that, like is that just because, well, I mean, I'm used to just the report they live off crime, which also is a whole another story. But partly, the discussion came about, is it that when you grow up in a situational … like in a country where crime is not that on the forefront, that a king-hit catches you off-guard that you actually stumble down and die, whereas when people are more aware of their situation, it's less likely to happen. What are your thoughts on that, Dave?

DAVE: Great. No, I think again, In South Africa, because you … and again, one reason why we left there is because you have this natural level of aggression, concern, suspicion, and that's your base norm to anybody you meet or see, almost until proven otherwise.

Where I think in Australia, your base norm is that everyone's a good mate and a good bloke, and just wants to have a drink with you, and therefore, the person who is on that extra level of aggression, whether it be mental health, personality, drug-induced, or alcohol-induced … it isn't the assumed position. So yes, you're walking out of a club and you bump shoulders with somebody, in South Africa, you actually both turn around and you kind of make sure that there's no escalation, and then you turn and leave.

Here, you don't think about it. You keep leaving, and the next thing, if the person you bumped into turns around, and just king-hits you from behind, and you're taken completely by surprise, because the average Australian doesn't think that that's actually a possibility to happen. So they're not aware of it, so they're not taking that extra step to maybe just look over their shoulder, and just look at the reaction of the person you bumped into, as innocent as it may be, before actually determining that, “Yes, there's no concern. Yeah, I could carry on walking.”

It's small things like that. We're not saying you need big, impactful things to your life, but if you do bump into someone by mistake, just look over your shoulder, have a half a second look. Even if you smile, put your hand up and go, “Sorry, mate.” It doesn't affect your life, but it just gives you that ability to make a quick analysis, “Is there something going escalate here that I need to maybe take some sort of preventative action, or can I just carry on?” It's half a second, but it can make a big difference, as you've as you mentioned.

GEORGE: Yeah. That's awesome. Well, let's dive a bit more into something you mentioned before we spoke, which I found kind of fascinating, as in the differentiation in the definition of what you do. Where most people approaching corporates go the self-defense aspect, and they promote their-

DAVE: It's correct.

GEORGE: …as self-defense. You've chosen to go the opposite, which is personal safety. What's the reason behind that?

DAVE: Right. So number one, again, obviously just with my background, growing up was Africa and having these natural intuitions. What I never said earlier is that when I was working professionally before teaching Krav Maga, I was in the security environment, and particularly sort of high-level counter-terrorism security. Again, even when you're consulting on counter-terrorism, you're not consulting on what to do when there's a gunman inside your venue, you want to know what can you do to prevent the gunman getting into your venue in the first place. 

I say, “Avoidance and prevention, which is much better than the cure.” So I take that, my learnings, that analogy from counter-terrorism, combine it with my self-defense skills, and now I teach what we call personal safety. So we've come up with what we call the Live Safe model of personal safety, which talks about avoidance, prevention, effective escape.

That's what we teach people, so it's not just about self-defense. Yes, we need to learn how to punch and kick and defend ourselves from being held or grabbed or whatever, but we never ever want to use it. On one hand, I strongly believe in learning self-defense, because the confidence you gain from learning self-defense is very often enough to ensure that you don't become a victim of crime, because knowing you can defend yourself, you actually portray this aura of confidence that doesn't make you an easy victim.

But even before that, we want to talk about avoidance and prevention, so that we never have to even think about self-defense in the first place. So I can zoom in on each of those quickly.

GEORGE: Yeah, please.

DAVE: We talk about avoidance. So avoidance, we talk about making safe decisions in the first place. That can be something as simple as you're getting ready to leave the work day, it's 16:35, 17:30, sun's down. You've got a 20 minute walk to the train station, it's dark. Before you leave work, just lift your head up and ask your colleagues, is anybody else leaving in the next few minutes? If someone leaving in two, three minutes, hang back, take the three minutes, walk together in a group. It's just safer than walking by yourself.

Self-Defence Courses

You're going for an exercise, run or a walk in the mornings or evenings when it's dark. You have an option between a dark, unpopulated park, or a well-lit populated streets, take the well-lit populated streets. It might not seem like the best choice at that time, because you're late, you're urgent, we've all got to rush somewhere, the three minutes through the park is quicker at the time, but it's not the safe decision.

So in safe decision, we talk about avoid potentially dangerous environments altogether. Stay in a group, stay in well-lit areas, no matter what might seem pressing at that time. And the way I talk about it is always think of the two extremes of either choice.

Now hopefully, you never come to any extreme, but if the extreme is something happens to me, the park and instead of being five minutes late, I'm in hospital, versus staying in a populated area and I'm 15 minutes late, nevermind five minutes late … which of those two consequences would I prefer to deal with afterwards? And I would hope to think that being 15 minutes late is an easier consequence to deal with than being a hospital. And as I said, dealing with not only the physical, but also the psychological aspects of being involved in a crime. So that's where we talk about avoidance, making a safe decision to avoid an unsafe or a potentially dangerous situation altogether.

Under prevention, we talk about, if you can't avoid an environment altogether, at least have increased situational awareness that will allow you to make an early decision. And that can be simple things, again, these things don't have to impact your life. It can be just listening to gut-feel. So you are walking down the street, you see three, four guys walking towards you. Maybe you can see by body language, you can see they're maybe a bit intoxicated or affected by drugs, alcohol, mental illness, whatever it is. You just get that intuition, “Something doesn't feel, I don't feel safe.”

Why walk past them with a sense of saying, “Oh, I hope they don't hurt me.” Just cross the road, walk into a shop. Let them walk past you. Just make a safe decision, or an early decision to avoid becoming a victim of crime within an environment you can't necessarily avoid altogether. But you cannot make an early decision without situational awareness. And obviously, the biggest killer to date of situational awareness is our smartphones. When we walk and looking at our phones, we need to understand that we have zero to no situational awareness at that stage, and we are more prone to becoming a victim of crime. I'm going to talk about this further. I can talk a lot about this.

GEORGE: Yeah, man. It's great, and yeah, so the last one, effective escape.

DAVE: Yeah, that's great.

GEORGE: That's correct, yeah?

DAVE: And then effective escape means that if I'm either about to be or in a situation where I have become a victim of crime, then it's about an effective escape. And that word effective escape is very important, because if I'm by myself and I back my martial arts … never when I'm by myself, I'm pretty fit and active. I know that if someone's trying to attack me, maybe I can give them one kick or one punch. I can slow them down for a few seconds, and I can turn and run and get to safety.

But if I'm with my six year old kid, I can't run so fast. So maybe one little kick and running away, what am I going to do? Leave my six year old kid behind? My mother-in-law? Maybe we can discuss that, but my six year old kid? No. And I make that joke, my mother-in-law's listening. It's just a joke.

GEORGE: Love you, mother-in-law.

DAVE: If you're with your wife, if you're with your partner, if you're with your mother, if you're with your kids, you can't run so fast. The last thing you want to do is pick up your kid and run, but being chased now, and be caught by a potential criminal, three, four, 5 minutes later, when you're exhausted, and now you can't fight, and now you've got to deal with a fight.

That might take maybe one, two strikes, three strikes, four strikes. It might be putting him on the ground and sit on him until the police arrive, until backup arrives to assist you. But that is your effective escape, because running may not be an option for you, depending on your environment, who you're with, how far you are from a safe venue.

Escape has a whole range itself. It could be a distraction technique, it could be throwing something behind them and you running in one direction, because you're by yourself and you're a good runner. But it could be full strikes and techniques and everything else to go to full restraints on the ground, because there is no other effective way to escape. So an effective escape is a really important aspect of that.

GEORGE: Love it. That's awesome. Cool, Dave. A couple of questions, just steering towards our business owner listeners over here. So Live Safe, now, I really like how you define the personal safety aspect. What is typically your foot in the door with corporates, and how do you go about approaching them?

Thank you. Yeah. Thankfully, a lot of corporates are now coming to us, which is obviously great. What's interesting is they come to us for one of two reasons, either because they have decided there's a need for increased staff-wellness, and more and more so, staff wellbeing and staff-wellness is becoming a bigger priority for companies, and that's obviously good for us. That involves both companies assisting their staff with mental wellness, as well as physical wellness, and one impacts the other. We can talk about that as well.

So sometimes, it's a company that says, “We want to do this for our staff.” Whether it be as a general concept, and might be … We did a session last week as the company was having a staff-wellness week. As part of their staff-wellness week, they brought us in for one session, along with whatever other activities they did for their staff in that week. We did a session for the Sussan Group, which is quite a big retail clothing group, with the head office in Melbourne. And there, that actually came to us because their staff are 97% female, and their staff approached the manager of HR saying, “We don't feel safe walking to or from work. Is there something the company can do for us, or facilitate us doing some sort of training?”

DAVE: The company then researched a number of self-defense companies. They came across us, and again, they phoned a number of companies, but we're the only company they actually brought in for an interview, and ultimately got the work, purely based on the fact that we're the only company that spoke about the overall model of personal safety, and not just self-defense.

Self-Defence Courses

I think that's really important, that's what companies want. They don't just want to know that their staff can punch and kick, but they want to know that their staff can avoid becoming victims of crime through non-physical strategies and techniques that they can implement, and obviously, it has a range of benefits to staff members: confidence, empowerment, physical confidence, also helps with mental wellbeing, and mental confidence. It comes with loyalty to companies, staff know the companies are looking out for them, that they build loyalty amongst their staff members. And certainly, it has, even though it's not primary, it has a really good team building aspect.

When you have a number of staff from different divisions, different levels of seniority, all doing something for the first time, I'd know who's who, I'd know who's the janitor, or who's the CEO. I'd see the faces in front of me, and suddenly, they're all doing something at the same time, our sessions are very fun. If you look at some of our videos, there's always laughter and they're enjoying it. It's serious, but we learn it in a fun way to make sure that our participants enjoy being there.

Obviously, if you enjoy doing something, you're always more open to learning more of it. And we get a lot of positive feedback about how our sessions help increase general team building, staff engagement among staff that maybe work inside the different divisions, or departments that don't ordinarily talk to each. But suddenly now in the coffee room, they have something common to talk about and laugh about the next day or the next week. So that's kind of a side benefit for our clients as well.

GEORGE: That's awesome, because you're touching with some of the aspects there. I guess it comes down to the whole sell them what they want and give them what they need. Because most people … in my mind, because we do a lot of Facebook marketing for schools and just general marketings, and campaigns and copy, and it's like different exercises and things. We've got a group we call Partners, which is a group of school owners I work with, and we always sort of testing different ideas and things. You're talking, I'm like, in my mind, I'm thinking of different approaches that really go well, but I mean, I think the typical approach for a school owner would always be, can your staff defend yourself? Can they defend themselves?

But let's face it; that brings up a lot of resistance in a lot of people, because, “Ah, I don't want to fight. I don't want to punch people. I don't want to …” That it could be that whole mindset, that whole frame of thinking. Whereas, does your staff feel safe walking home at night? … is a whole completely different story. How you would combat that is the same avenue, but how you defined it is just, sets a whole different tone.

DAVE: Good, absolutely. And again, what we do, and I mentioned the example of walking down the street and just seeing a group of people that make you feel uneasy, and you walk into a shop across the road. Or asking some staff members before you leave, “Is anybody leaving soon?” These are very simple, basic things which they don't affect or significantly affect your life in any way. You said it to people, and you can kind of see the bells going off at the top of their head going, “But that's so simple.” But it is simple. And security doesn't have to be rocket science, or personal safety isn't rocket science. It's just a matter of having someone put it in your head, and these are things that can be very easily implemented.

I talked a lot about, obviously Melbourne, there's a lot of trams, and there's a number of incidents across Melbourne where people get attacked or sexually abused or whatever, on trams, because very often, you're on tram with a group of people, and if you towards the end of the tram stops, very often there's women who are situation where they're one-on-one on a tram with one other passenger. And if you read all the case studies again, all the time they say, “Yes, the passenger, he made me feel uneasy. 

It was the way he was looking at me, or maybe I could see he had mental health issues. The way he was talking to himself or shouting or swearing, or even getting angry and engaging the other passengers.” So then as the tram's getting emptier and emptier and emptier, again, if your head's not buried in your phone, but you have the situational awareness of going, “I can see that he's … not is, but potentially, or has the potential to become a problem.” Don't wait for a problem to manifest itself.

But if you can see that the potential is there for it to maybe, and definitely not, but may become a problem going forward, don't put yourself in a situation where either something may happen. Or even if it doesn't, if you feel vulnerable, no one deserves that, that feeling of vulnerability. So as people are getting off the tram, make an early decision. Whereas getting down to just three or four of you left on the tram, get off early. It doesn't matter if it's three, four, five stops prior to your stop. Don't be in a situation where you're one-on-one on that tram, just in case you are that 0.000001% of the person who might be attacked or abused. Now, to you, it's another percentage, but tell anybody who is that 0.000001%, how they feel, and it's their 100%.

So get off the tram early, wait for the next tram. Be 15 minutes late, take an Uber, spend an extra 10 or 15, $20, whatever it is. But it's an early safe decision to make, to avoid a situation. Even if it's not guaranteed, but potential, why be there? Why have even the possibility of becoming violent? Get off two stops early, three stops early. Find another way home. There's enough options out there for you. It's just having that situational awareness of being able to … 

I call it Analyze, Evaluate and Act. Analyze your environment, analyze the situation, analyze what's happening in front of you. Make an evaluation, threat or no threat. Danger or no danger. Danger, potential danger or no danger. And once you've made that evaluation, then act upon that, and make the safe, responsible early decision under that and act. So we're talking about Analyze, Evaluate and Act.

GEORGE: Awesome, love it. So just quickly, before we start sort of wrapping it up, if you had advice for any school owners that would think, all right, they want to start running self-defense-type programs for different corporates in their area, how would you go about starting the whole journey?

Self-Defence Courses

DAVE: I think similar to what we do at Live Safe, and obviously, our actual self-defense teaching is around the Krav Maga model, and through our Krav Maga Australia School. But don't just think of your striking, your punches, your kicks, even your releases from chokes, your holds and that kind of stuff as personal safety. That's an aspect of it. But also think of everything around it and what value-add you can give to people, almost un-sell your own product. 

Say, “I want to teach you self-defense, or I can teach you self-defense, but more importantly, I want to teach you how to never have to use self-defense in the first place.” Because if you're involved in a fight, somebody's going to lose. Somebody gets hurt, it's as simple as that. In a fight, somebody gets hurt. You just hope it's the other person, less so than you. And even if you win the fight, you might still get hurt. And there's still psychological effects after that as well.

It's a matter of what can we do beforehand to avoid ever having to be in a fight, but also, what can we do afterwards? You know that effective escape means running to safety, well, how do you define what is a safe place to run to? Or why are you walking? Are you constantly assessing what is the nearest safe place for you? Is it an open shop? Is it your house or a friend's house that might be nearby? 

If something were to happen now, where would you run? So there's this thinking in the moment, the more you can just have it sort of front of mind, or just in our subconscious, generally the less thinking there is. And we all know, when the actual event happens, and the adrenaline dump hits, and the stress level is increased, and the heart rate increases, our ability to think and make judgment calls becomes harder and harder.

So the more we plan for these and prepare for these, the easier we are to make a safe and responsible decision in the moment. But it's also about avoiding that moment. And also again, when we focused on, and both very much in our Krav Maga Australia the school, whenever we teach techniques, we don't only talk about the physical aspects of the street fights, but we also talk about the psychological aspects of the street fight. 

So as owners, do your research. What happens to the body when you experience an adrenaline dump? What are the effects that you have? Things like the elevated heart rate, the tunnel vision, auditory exclusion, the time slowing down, et cetera. What actually happens to the person, and how can we train to counteract those things?

It doesn't matter how good you are at any martial art. People ask me, “What's the best martial art in the world?” I'll say, “Whichever one you train the most.” It's simple, whichever one you train the most, whichever is your muscle memory and go-to, that's the best martial art. It's simple as that. But no matter how good you are, no matter what degree of black belt or dan you might be in any martial arts, if in the moment you freeze and you're unable to physically act, it doesn't matter how good you are.

So we also have to train the psychological aspect of not … making sure we don't go into that freeze mode, and we are in the fight mode, that we can fight. It might be a psychological fight or a mental fight, but we have to train our students in how to realistically understand and cope with what might happen to them in a street fight, in terms of them talking about their personal safety when they're not inside the gym. And therefore, so that they can deal with the psychological aspect in order to enable their physical training to actually be useful in that moment.

And that, to me, is a lot of surprise drills, high-heart elevation drills, et cetera. We do a lot of work, we'll train techniques in our gym, for example, we might train a technique on a choke release, whether it be someone's got one hand or two hands around your neck and they're choking you. We'd go through the technique, we'd train it, slowly. Then we train it at a bit more of a faster pace, and then we'll always do a surprise exercise. So eyes closed, and you don't quite know exactly when that choke's going to come on. 

Or we make them turn the lights off in the dojo, we make our students just walk around the dojo with 10, 15, 20 other people on the mats, and at some point, one of them suddenly going to just put the choke on them. It's a matter of trying to deal with the element of surprise and how quick they can go through that, Analyze, Evaluate and Act loop, to get to action, have a good, quick reaction and get out of it before they get into that freeze mode.

GEORGE: All right. Dave, that was really good. That was really helpful. You've got such a lot of cool little one-liners as snippets from this, from this interview. If somebody wants to hire you or perhaps get your advice on this, how can people get a hold of you? And how should they get in touch?

DAVE: All right, thanks, George. Yes, we do have the two websites, so for Live Safe, the website is livesafe.org.au. And for the Krav Maga Australia, it's kravmagaoz, K-R-A-V-M-A-G-A-O-Z.com.au are the two different websites, or on my phone number, 0424 184 618.

And again, as you say, it'd be nice if anybody wants to sort of hire us as a client, but again, unfortunately, my passion for teaching personal safety outweighs my passion for business. I'm more than happy to offer any advice, any tips that I have, both to other school owners or just to members of the public. Don't be shy, give me a call. I'm more than happy to offer whatever knowledge and assistance in whatever way I'm able to add value. I'm more than happy to.

GEORGE: That's awesome. Yeah, and if you're listening and you got great value out of this and it's spearheading perhaps a portion of your business that you've been trying to get going, yeah, do just reach out to Dave, even if it's just to say, “Hey, thanks. Thanks for the tips.” And yeah, that'd be great. Awesome. Dave, thanks again for being on. 

DAVE: George, appreciate you having me.

GEORGE: Yeah, you're welcome.

DAVE: Thanks, George, appreciate it.

GEORGE: Yeah, and good to have a similar sounding accent on board.

DAVE: Yeah, absolutely. I've got-

GEORGE: It means a lot.

DAVE: I could be at home.

GEORGE: Exactly. Awesome. Speak soon.

DAVE: Great. Thanks, George.

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

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

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

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


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78 – Geordie Lavers-McBain – Living & Breathing The Martial Arts Lifestyle

Geordie's life is 24/7 martial arts! We discuss creating your own style, tournaments, optimising KPI's and more.

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

  • How Geordie was able to develop his own martial arts style and why he refers to it as the best style
  • How he started teaching combat sports in the Australian army
  • The three battles one must win in self-defence
  • How to host successful martial arts tournaments
  • How to optimise key performance indicators in your school
  • And more

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


TRANSCRIPTION

If you can put those sorts of things together and you can work out what makes an elite athlete, what things should you focus on and you apply it to your business, OK, what makes a really good class? What makes a really good ad?

And even if the ad is to a completely different thing, or your classes are a completely different style, you can just put those key factor and key components together and work out what it is that's really important.

GEORGE: Hey, George here – welcome to another episode of the Martial Arts Media business podcast. This episode is going to be a little bit different. We’re busy driving in a car, we just finished an event in Sydney and I've got with me Geordie and Giorgio.

GIORGIO: How's it going guys?

GEORGE: Good, and I'm speaking today to someone I've been trying to interview for quite a long time and he's been hard to track down, but I'm finally in a car with him and he can't escape. So, welcome to the show Geordie Lavers McBain.

GEORDIE: Thanks for having me on George.

GEORGE: Cool, so just for the sound, I'm going to be passing the phone up and down. So we might sound like we’re going in and out, but here we go.

So first up Geordie – thanks for being on the call. Just for everyone that doesn't know who you're, you own multiple schools, you've got a long history in martial arts – give us the two-minute take – who's Geordie Lavers McBain?

GEORDIE: Ok, that's a complicated question. I'm a martial artist, I like just about all styles of martial arts. I teach my own style of martial arts in my school and I have a lot of combat sports that I also teach. I teach wrestling, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Muay Thai, MMA, I have guys who fight in Kyokushin, boxing – lots of different styles of combat sports, but I also have my own style of martial arts, which I've sort of combined with all the different styles that I've done over the years.

Geordie Lavers McBain

I've done a variety of different things, and have black belts in different things, so… yeah, so that's what I do there. Also, around jiu-jitsu tournaments in Queensland and wrestling tournaments in Queensland and I also am a defence force contractor with the army. I go on base two times a week and teachgrappling, close quarters grappling and different things like that, so it's pretty much me I guess.

GEORGE: Pretty much, but that's quite a full plate. So there's a lot of places we could start. I guess just starting – how did you get around to developing your own style?

GEORDIE: Yeah, so my own style was a combination, so basically what happened was, many years ago I've trained in a lot of different styles of martial arts, so I started teaching Zen Do Kai way back in the day and my instructor ended up leaving Zen Do Kai and then he sort of went on a different path, so I started doing my own system. And Zen Do Kai was the best of everything in progression, but I really sort of took that to heart.

So I started sort of thinking about, what other things I can incorporate into what we do. I looked at different ways to test that, so I bounced for about 15 years, so I sort of worked at a few things that worked in that environment. Also, I sort of was just looking at different ways that we could test things, such as like, how do we work out if body punctures were effective for multiple areas.

So, if I'm doing boxing and I’ve got a big glove on, I punch someone in the stomach and that works, then I put on say, a smaller glove in the Thai boxing sort of arena and I punch him in the stomach and it still works. Then I get a smaller glove, like in MMA glove and punch him in the stomach and it still works and then I put on like a little padded piece of felt, like in Kudo, and you still punch someone in the stomach and it works. Then you go in  Kyokushin, you punch them in the stomach it works, it's kind of like, well that punch is probably universally going to work because it's worked against fully resisting opponents, so we’ll incorporate that into our martial arts system.

But anything which only really sports specific, or only sort of works in one environment, we tend not to focus on that in our core curriculum and that's something that if people want to do, then they're going to learn that as an extra. So if someone becomes like an elite level jiu-jitsu player, and they want to learn some inverted guard or something, that's fine, that's something we’ll teach to them.

But in the context about martial arts curriculum, we’re not going to do that, because it’s not going to work in other environments, it's not going to work against someone in the streets, it's not going to work against multiple people, it’s not going to work when someone's armed, we’re probably not going to worry about incorporating an inverted guard in that sort of scenario, so we take that out of our curriculum. So we just try to have something which is really practical.

GEORGE: Got to say, how do you prioritize all that? Because I mean, that's a lot going on, is your own style sort of the top priority or what you focus on in the school? How do you juggle in between them all?

GEORDIE: Yeah, so my own style is kind of like my legacy I guess because it’s my style. People say what's the best style in the world and the normal answer is there isn't one. But when you have your own style and you have complete control over what the curriculum is, then it should be your style. So I believe that my style is the best style in the world because it's the best style for me. And if it wasn't, there was something that wasn't practical or something I didn't agree with, I could change it immediately and then it becomes the best style again.

So, that is my kind of hope for my legacy, our future generations and so on. It's my pressure testing and constantly re-evaluating through all the different combat sports we do, plus the stuff I do with the army. Plus different other groups of people that I teach in different contexts and environments, we sort of look at that. But as far as… basically we have grappling without a Gi, grappling with a Gi, striking without a Gi, striking with one and combine them together, with a Gi, without. In combat sports, sort of scenarios. And it comes together that way.

GEORGE: What a perfect… so just to give it some context as well, the question I haven't asked: so you're running multiple schools, right?

GEORDIE: Yeah, that's correct. So I have two full-time schools, which I run myself and I also have a part-time school, which I also teach at, because I train during the day near that school, so I work there. And I also have 10 other schools that my students run in different locations.

GEORGE: Cool. So, jumping over to the military – how does that fit into all this in the schedule?

GEORDIE: So, yeah, I'm there 2 days a week, so that's sort of how it fits into my personal schedule – is that what you meant?

GEORGE: Let's rephrase: first up, tell me a bit more about working with the military and how that got started.

Geordie Lavers McBain

GEORDIE: Ok, yeah. So, I've always been interested in that style of things, so I've done a lot of training with different people over the years and combative training and stuff like that and tried to find the truest sources of that sort of information, first-hand knowledge and so on. And anyway, what really happened was, when Kudo first sort of started growing up in Australia, Paul Cale who is in special forces and a commando introduced me to a heap of other soldiers that were all in the special forces still, they were soldiers that were involved in that combative style thing on base and on different bases all around. And through that, I got to meet these different people and then I eventually got invited onto a base to teach a seminar.

From that seminar, I got invited back again. They seemed to feel that the direction that I was teaching and the skillset which I was trying to impart, was much more along the lines of what they were after in developing with soldiers. And so from that, basically I ended up getting a defence force contract. I’ve got a pass which lets me on base any time of the day or night and I can go there all the time and train and teach and we run tournaments and competitions, with a variety of different rule sets, that sort of try to reflect the same features of what's going to happen out in the battlefield.

So what's important, how should you know that, what should people be able to do, what shouldn't they be able to do. If you've got all your gear on and you're rolling around on the ground, there are certain positions that just aren't going to work for you. If someone is… essentially, you've got your primary weapon, you've got your secondary weapon, which is both firearms. Then you've got a knife, which is usually on your hip, and you got to the last resort knife on your chest and how do we incorporate those sorts of things in close quarters and what stuff is happening from there.

Paul Cale worked the Australian combative program, so the army can use his program, which everybody in the Australian army has to know. And this sort of stuff is a continuation training, so away soldiers, once they’ve got their basic force down, they can continue on with those same goals and mindsets in place, of, be aggressive, push forward, never give up and other features of that.

For example, we don't do leg locks whatsoever in the army when we’re grappling, because… a few things. One, you've got boots on, too, if I'm playing with your legs, you can stab me or shoot me and usually when you go for a leg submission, you have to give up top domination to go to the bottom. In those sorts of circumstances, it's really not advantageous. So we’ve just got to make sure that were always staying with that mindset of, how do we get back on the Gi that we’re meant to be using and rather than make it into a mixed martial arts match or something like that, everything has to be always focused towards moving towards your objective in that situation.

We try to do our finals in a cage, because when you're doing room clearance drills and in urban warfare, if you kick a door and you have to go in and get someone, what's going to happen if you're going to be up against a wall. You're going to be up against something in that, they might put you against it, or you might put them against it. So we have to do a lot of drills that sort of relate to that and a lot of different martial arts styles have drills, they fight people against a wall, but you really can't go beyond things like, the information that the MMA has pulled out and the tactics and knowledge of that.

And then if you weaponise that and then you also have other people in your team doing the techniques, then you can really start to develop some really good tactics and then you can practice them against live people and develop competitions for them. That's what basically my role is to help do. We wear things like plate carriers, armed plate carries, which we put rubber inside of for PPE. And what happens is, you can throw people and choke them and use that against them and it becomes a little bit more realistic. And we just try to work out what tactics and what ways that can work, so… yeah. So that's pretty much how I got there and the stuff we do, I think.

GEORGE: OK. So, I mean, working at that high level of self-defence, you know, if you look at everyday martial arts schools, everybody likes to promote the aspect of self-defence: what do you feel is missing in that? I mean, if you're working on that type of level, where it has to be so realistic because it’s a life and death situation, how do you feel martial arts… What do you think martial arts schools can do better to make things a bit more realistic, or you know, up to the game with self-defence?

Geordie Lavers McBain

GEORDIE: Yeah, so pressure testing is really important.  Creating dynamic simulations, where you're recreating the environment in which you're hoping to defend yourself is important. Putting people under duress and stress and seeing how they perform. Also, like for me, there are three battles you've got to win in self-defence. So the first battle you have to win is an immediate physical battle, which is right now. There are enough techniques out there in the martial arts world to understand that.

Certain situations are going to be more extreme, a lot of people don't practice defending another person, or defending against somebody else with somebody else, but that sort of stuff probably isn't as important as making sure you've got some more fundamental, physical skills. And if you want to win the physical battle, that's anywhere from an hour to three seconds to two minutes, or you know, it really depends on how long it goes. Some self-defence situations can take a long time, others are over in a split second.

But you've got to move on to the next one, which is your legal battle. Even in the military, there are rules of engagement. Everyone is sort of obliged to follow some rules. And you have to follow those rules, if you don't, you're in breach of that. And in the real world, as a civilian, if we don't follow those rules, we might go to jail for the next 25 years.

And then, of course, you've got to win the moral battle, which is the last battle. Which is the battle of, are you happy with what you did? So, uncle Bob is there at Christmas time, he's had too much to drink and he grabs the butter knife and he threatens you with it. You know, it's a lethal weapon and you poke him in the eye with your finger and he's blind and every Christmas, you have to go back and see uncle Bob and your grandma won't talk to you anymore, because he's wearing a patch over his eye. Your mom won't speak so much to you, because you blinded Uncle Bob.

You're having a bit of trouble sleeping because you never really thought you're going to poke someone in the eye. It was a bit squishy and you sort of feel that every time you pick up something which is a bit squishy and it gives you nightmares. You're sort of losing that moral battle and if it's really full on, maybe that's going to be… Your life is now upset by that, you can't sleep every night, you're getting nightmares, it’s coming back to you, all because of something you did, which you might not have really meant to do.

So the reality is, you have to already be sure of what you're going to be able to do morally before you worry about what you're going to do. And then you also have to understand legally what you're going to have to do. So realistically, the last thing is actually the physical. You have to be morally prepared for what you're going to do. You have to be legally understood, what would a reasonable person do in that situation. Did you actually fear the… In correspondence to what you actually did to the person, was there? And then, physically, were you capable of actually doing it? So, I think that probably would be a good thing to start within focusing on self-defence.

GEORGE: Awesome. So just looking at the time we have, tell me a bit more about your tournaments and that side of your martial arts?

GEORDIE: Sure. I ran my first grappling tournament in 2003 and that was like shoot wrestling, combined with Brazilian jiu-jitsu and just some guys were doing different styles, sort of submission style wrestling back then in Queensland and we just wanted to get everyone together to do a tournament, there weren't really many tournaments around then. Mat Cooper was running tournaments, but there was no Internet really, telling anyone anything, so it was all word of mouth.

So I started then and then, that sort of moved forward to Daniel Lemoore, who was my jiu-jitsu coach and I decided to form a partnership and start running jiu-jitsu comps, try and lift the level of the Queensland competitors. We weren't doing so well in jiu-jitsu tournaments up here. I was actually taking students in a state 3-4 times every year, to go and compete in other states, so that we could lift our competition game. And we just figured, if we could run more comps here, we’d lift our end level locally, we wouldn't have to travel.

So that started out slow, the Queensland Brazilian jiu-jitsu, that's the name of our association, our circuit. We’re now affiliated with the Australian Federation of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, we did that about 4 years ago. So we run the state champions for that up in Queensland. This year, we've got 16 tournaments, next year we've already got 22 tournaments planned. We've got a regional Queensland, so… a lot of the other states, the state bodies who run the tournaments will only stay in their major cities.

So if they're in Victoria, the Victorian federation only really runs competitions in Melbourne, whereas we’re running competitions in Cairns, Townsville, Rockhampton, Gladstone, Mackay, up on the sunshine coast, Ipswich, Brisbane, Gold Coast – we’re trying to run competitions all over, we really want to be a circuit for the whole state. You know some of the competitions are quite small, some of the competitions took us 2-3 years before we actually made the money back on the flights and we try to have to best quality referees on our tournaments as well, so it took a bit of time.

The other thing we do is none of our staff are volunteers, everybody's paid. You give someone a t-shirt, we pay you for that, we pay everybody, we make sure we’re paying them above minimum wage and we try and look after our staff because our staff are important. We give our referees really good money because if you have bad referees, you have a bad tournament. So that's kind of the jiu-jitsu.

Geordie Lavers McBain

Also, we run wrestling tournaments, I've run a lot of Kudo tournaments as well and I run, even within my own club, because we do multiple styles, we run our own internal tournaments twice a year. I enjoy running tournaments, I find that once you've got a good system in place, it’s really, really easy to just continue on. I've got some really good staff members now, some of them are getting paid really well, some of them are almost on a wage, because what we're doing is, we're just making sure that they’re constantly able to organise the things that we need them to organise, so we can really offer a really good product to people who want to compete. We want to make sure it’s the smoothest and the easiest tournament.

We don't charge spectators at our tournaments either, especially jiu-jitsu, because to me, if you go watch jiu-jitsu, it's generally because your mom, your dad, your son, your daughter, your niece, your nephew – someone related to you, or some close personal friend is competing. You're not going there for the spectacle of it. No one is saying, “Hey, what are you doing Saturday or Sunday? Oh nothing. Oh, let's go watch a jiu-jitsu tournament,” – no one is doing that unless they're doing jiu-jitsu.

There are people who might go watch boxing or kickboxing or something, but no one is doing that for jiu-jitsu. It's probably pretty boring to watch, to be honest. The rules are really complicated, it's hard to sort of understand what's happening and the best guys in the world are the most exciting if you understand that when he changed his grip from the left lapel to the right lapel, that was really complex and something’s about to happen. But mom and dad don't get that, so why should we charge these people a spectator fee? So we also just make sure that everyone has the… We try to make everyone have the best experience that they can possibly have in our competitions.

We were doing really big customised medals, probably about 7 years before anybody else was doing that around. Really spent the money on things that we felt were important and we’re re-investing all the time, we’re actually sponsoring a movie, a Netflix level quality movie, to come out, a history of jiu-jitsu in Queensland. We’ve decided that we’re going to sponsor that. We don't have any credit control over it, so we’re just sort of hoping that it makes everyone look really good, hope it makes us look really good.

But the thing is, it might not. We've hired an independent director who's won multiple awards, and we’re like, OK, let's show everybody this. So we’re trying to put back in and the way we can do that is by running really good tournaments and people support it and we try to support the community back ourselves, so this is one of the things we're doing.

GEORGE: Awesome. So, on the business side, you've got lots going on. You're a man of few words, but your actions speak super loud of the things that you're doing. If we're talking on the business side, what do you feel is your big thing, your sort of zone of what you're doing in business that makes you really successful?

Geordie Lavers McBain

GEORDIE: I just really like teaching martial arts and teaching classes, so I think if you're passionate about what you do, people pick up on that. I can't even walk past a class that I'm not meant to be teaching and not want to get in there and teach. I think if you're genuine, people feel that genuineness and they want to follow on. I really love structure and systems. I really like analysing curriculums and developing systems for things and really trying to work out what the truth of something is and get the most result from that.

I'm lucky, I've trained a lot of champion athletes and my wife has 67 titles in 8 different combats. She's a world Muay Thai champion, Australian boxing champ, Australian Kyokushin champ, a high-level jiu-jitsu champion, multiple different things like that, national titles and so on. World combat wrestling champion, Kudo champion, MMA fighter… Heaps of different things like that. And basically, it’s just working out what works. And the business is exactly the same. So you sit there and go: how do I make something work?

So, once you work it out, if you get someone who’s a world Muay Thai champion, you can make them the world combat wrestling champion. She's hoping to get in the Olympic games for freestyle wrestling, coming up in Tokyo. If you can put those sorts of things together and you can work out what makes an elite athlete, what things should you focus on and you apply it to your business, OK, what makes a really good class? What makes a really good ad?

And even if the ad is to a completely different thing, or your classes are a completely different style, you can just put those key factor and key components together and work out what it is that's really important. What are the things that actually matter? Because there's a lot of fluff and there's a lot of other stuff out there that will get you a 1% return, or a 2% return here. But the reality is if you can get something that gives you a 25% return on effort, why spend time and effort on something that's going to give a lower yield result?

And then at the top end, you've got to be prepared to change so much of what you do. So I've done a lot of traditional martial arts styles and if you're saying to pure traditionalists that you can improve an aspect of what they do by, say, 80% if they change 2% of what they do, they won't do it. Like, my personal experience is that they just won't do it, because it's not traditional, it's not what they do. But if you say to an athlete, if you change 80% of what you do, I can give you a 2% return and you're at the top level – he'll change 80% of what they do.

Geordie Lavers McBain

And if you take that sort of association across to business, if someone could say to you, I can improve your bottom line by 2% if you change 80% of what you do – that's an improvement. Why not do that? Because it's never going to be the other way around, it's never going to be if you change 2%, you're going to get 80% in return. Sometimes you've got to make big changes and look at those sorts of things, how do I get that slight, different improvement? And you've got to take risks and you've got to try and see what's the most up-to-date thing out there.

The first set of kettlebells I ever got, I imported from… I think it was the Czech Republic, somewhere over in Eastern Europe and no one had them in Australia. And I got this really old wrestling book that was actually written in Russian and they had kettlebells there. And they had a lot of pictures and I thought, that looks like a really good thing, how do I get those things? Took me ages to find out what they were called – and now you can buy them from K-mart.

So if you want to stay cutting edge too, you can't just rest on your laurels and say, yep, we've worked that out. You've got to be always like, well, what's changing, what's the next most proven, effective thing that you can do. And a lot of fads end up being not very good. Even people who do ice cold baths, research has now shown that just stretching lightly after training gives you the same result in recovery, but because all the football teams are doing it, everyone just assumed it was the way you should do it. So don't always just jump on fads either, try and do a bit of research and try and really work it out. Just because the good guys do it, doesn't mean it's actually giving any effect.

GEORGE: Cool. So on that, on optimising, you're talking about optimising little, making little changes that really optimise your business etc: is there something that you… You know, with optimising, sometimes it's easier to remove stuff than to just add stuff. Because I think we always want to… there's a danger in always wanting the best thing, because you end up kind of going halfway in a lot of things. You major in minor tasks type of thing. So is there sort of a couple of things that you really focus on to optimise your results, and are there things that you've kind of just eliminated from your school that you don't do, that maybe the everyday martial arts school would do?

GEORDIE: That's a good question. Things, I guess the key performance indicators are really important to see what's happening, but culture is pretty important. So I sort of look at, like I'm a little bit of a, what do I want my martial arts school to look like, as far as, is this somewhere I’d want to train, is this somewhere I’d want to do it. Sometimes that can be a mistake, because really, then you just start marketing to yourself. You know, someone who's doing martial arts for 8 years old, that's pretty tricky, because there are not too many of those other guys out there. But on the same take, you've got to sort of look and go, what do I want it to look like? What do I want it to feel like? And how do I cut those things out that I don't like?

Like, I don't do birthday parties at my club, because I don't want to do that. It’s something where I'm like, for me, it doesn't feel like it's something that I want to do, so I don't do it. But I know people who are way more successful, who do them. But it's just not the culture that I want to do. So I get success not because I don't get those people who do the birthday party to join up, but because maybe the culture that I'm trying to instil in my students is one where they feel that that's not what we do here, so they like that and they stay a bit longer. I'm not sure, I'm not sure a 100% on that, but there's little things where I know I'm doing different to a lot of other schools, but I kind of feel like that is kind of helping.

GEORGE: Hey Geordie, thanks for being on. And if… Any last words if people want to find out more about you? Where do they go?

GEORDIE: Probably Facebook would be the easiest. I'm Geordie Lavers McBain, G-E-O-R-D-I-E, Lavers McBain. I'm sure if you write the first one, the second one will turn up. Yeah, if you want to reach out, my club is called Black Dragon Kai and yeah, I really appreciate you wanting to interview me – thank you very much, you’ve had some amazing martial artists before, so to be grouped with those people, it's a bit of an honour, so thanks heaps George.

GEORGE: You're welcome. Awesome – thanks a lot Geordie and thanks Giorgio for driving us and keeping the podcast running.

GIORGIO: You're welcome!

GEORGE: All right, awesome – cheers.

Awesome. Thanks for listening. If you want to connect with another top, 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

77 – What Happens When You Have The Wrong Martial Arts Business Coach

How to avoid hiring the wrong martial arts business coach who will take you nowhere faster.

.
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

  • Why do you even need a martial arts business coach
  • Beware of martial arts business coaches who coach what they can’t do
  • How to not get burnt by a martial arts business coach
  • How to choose the right martial arts business coach for your business needs
  • And more

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


TRANSCRIPTION

But the problem is, that the people that are actually doing the martial arts business coaching, have never actually done what they are coaching.

Hey, George here. Nice, sunny day here in Perth, having a quick walk with the baby girl.

So what happens when you hire the wrong martial arts business coach? I was on a call yesterday with a great school owner, really doing everything well, when you look at their marketing front. Great content, great with video, sharing a lot of value and there's a lot of give happening. But unfortunately, just not enough take, not enough coming back.

So looking at their Facebook page and their ad account, I could see there are just a couple of tweaks that would make a world of difference, but unfortunately, with the frustration of not getting things right, is the frustration in business coaching. And in investing, I think he mentioned up to $50,000 in coaching with top industry icons and just not getting the results with the coaching.

Now, if you're a professional and serious about your business, then the first thing you'd probably say is well, you know, it's 100% your responsibility, you know, to make things work. 100% true and that's exactly what this gentleman had to say. He knows it's 100% his responsibility and his job to make it all work.

But then here's the problem with martial arts business coaching, and sometimes you see people that have a high profile and they get praised within the industry for all the great things that they do, but the problem is that the people that are actually doing the coaching have never actually done what they are coaching.

So within the coaching session, you get very surface level type answers and not really getting help to actually move the needle and move you forward. So they might be trying to teach you how to run Facebook ads, but they're not the ones that have been running the ads, so I mean, they are a great coach to tell you how to run other parts of the business, but they're not actually specialized in getting the leads and getting traction on platforms like Facebook, Google, you know, whatever it is that you use for lead generation.

And going back to the client, the big problem was just the frustration of being told the same old thing, over, over and over again and not being able to plugin into real frameworks, real frameworks and real strategies that can actually get results. And yeah, marketing is never simple. There's always ups and downs, but if someone hasn't walked that path and run ad campaigns and done the lead generation for multiple schools, or for multiple locations and different demographics, then it's going to be very hard for them to coach you and give you a strategy that's actually going to work and move the needle for you and your business.

So what to do? Well first up, I mean, hire a specialist. Hire somebody that's actually done, walked the path that it is what you want to do. And in our case of what we are talking about here, that have run successful ad campaigns and have an actual framework, something that you can plug into, that you can model with a couple of tweaks, pulling in a couple of things, pulling a couple of strings and being able to make it work for your school.

So yeah, make sure that you get someone on board that can help you, first that obviously has the expertise and second of all, actually have the time and the resources and the infrastructure to be able to help you. I mean, maybe they get a good result, but are they actually going to be a good coach for you? Do they actually have the time to work on your business, instead of just work on their business at the end of the day?

So if you need help with actual lead generation, not how to run the class, about the curriculum and so forth – that's definitely not our cup of tea. A lot of people in the industry that can teach you that. But if you need help with actual lead generation, then it's worth having a chat with us. Seeing if what we have can be an option for you. If you need help, reach out to me. Just click on my profile or leave me a comment wherever you see this and we’ll just have a quick chat and see if what we have is a potential option to help you with your school.

Awesome – I'm wrapping up the walk. Still singing along – see you in the next video. Cheers!

Awesome. Thanks for listening. If you want to connect with other top, 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. 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 Community and an easy way to access it is if you just go to the domain name martialartsmedia.group. So martialartsmedia.group. G-r-o-u-p. There's not dot or anything. Martialartsmedia.group. Then we'll 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 work to 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

76 – Practical Tips On How To Grow Your Martial Arts School

Robbie Castellano from IMC Australia shares practical tips on how to grow your martial arts school.

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

  • How creating a 5-year plan grew Robbie Castellano’s school from 135 to 500 students
  • How local and international martial arts tournaments improve their student retention
  • The ultimate test for turning over your school
  • The importance of having an effective leadership program
  • How finding a strategic school location completes half of your marketing
  • And more

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

 

TRANSCRIPTION

GEORGE: G'day, this is George Fourie and welcome to another Martial Arts Media business podcast. I have today with me Robbie Castellano who is actually a returning guest. We won't get into the details why. He'll probably be a returning guest again, but this is the first actual official podcast we're doing together. So, welcome to the show Robbie.

ROBBIE: Thanks George. Glad to be here.

GEORGE: Awesome. So, just a bit of introduction. So, Robbie's based in Sydney. They run IMC Australia. And also looking at the website now, I'm seeing number one rated martial arts center in Australia as rated by ISKA. So, yeah, we're going to have a bit of a chat and hear what Robbie's up to. So, welcome to the show Robbie.

ROBBIE: Thank you George.

GEORGE: Cool. So, just give us a couple of minutes intro, just your background, what you've got going on, etc.

ROBBIE: Yeah. So, basically started as a kid. Went to a local karate school which is in Western Sydney. Started at the age of four, five. Trained up until I was a teenager and then started working part time for my instructor, teaching. Always loved teaching. So, it was always good to teach the kids and then eventually teaching adults. And then got to my twenties and decided I wanted to go and see the world, so I went traveling around the world for about seven years and I still came back home every now and then to teach a little bit, travel again before eventually settling and managing the school for my instructor and then eventually buying it out 100%.

GEORGE: Excellent. So, in the travels, were you actually instructing as well?

ROBBIE: Na, not really. I was always training, like I was in Thailand and Belarus and England and Colombia. I eventually stayed in Colombia for a few years where I eventually met my wife, but it was always just training, it's hard to teach in a different language.

GEORGE: Got you. I've always wondered if that's an opportunity for young kids if they are learning martial arts and they can instruct if there's an opportunity for them to actually travel abroad and just plug into different schools and instruct for a while.

ROBBIE: Yeah. I'm sure there would be, but I didn't do it, no.

GEORGE: Okay. So, from teaching to owning the school, how did that journey evolve?

ROBBIE: Yeah. So, basically I was in Thailand to do a bit of training with my wife and my instructor had a … he gave me a call saying that he's had a few problems with his current manager and basically asked me if I want to take the reins and manage the school for him. So, I did. I got on the first plane back and started managing the school. We sat down and had a chat, worked out a five year plan. So, I would manage it for five years and then eventually buying it out which I now own. Yeah. So, when we took over, it was up to about 135 students when I managed it and we built it up to about 500 mark now. So, it's going well.

GEORGE: Got you. So, how do you feel that helped, as in having that five year plan and having a good structure and sort of knowing, alright, this is where you're going and I guess, maybe easier to make the purchase as well, sort of.

ROBBIE: That's it. I'm pretty fortunate that I had an instructor, Paul Zadro, as a good mentor. He already did all the hard work of going to the conferences overseas and learning the dos and don'ts. So, we basically sat down and it was like an apprenticeship. The five year plan was to learn the ropes, how to run the floor, run the business side and yeah, to help me eventually to buy it out. So, without that five year plan, I probably wouldn't have been able to do it. So, we've designed that now in our whole IMC organization for the rest of the generation to come through and do the same thing.

GEORGE: Okay, fantastic. So, how does that look then? So, you've got the sort of five year structure where you know how to groom and educate and train people to take over location. How does that look? Do you … are you looking for that within instructors who can take that role or are you looking at that as more sort of an expansion type …

ROBBIE: Yeah. Look, a bit of both. We've got our leadership program and those youngsters that want to come through to eventually open up their own school, we tell them, this is what you have to do. They've got to go through all the reins of being an instructor and then floor manager, program director and then a school manager and then and then the system is to buy out, if they want. We pay our managers fairly highly. So, if they’re happy to just keep their wage and that's fine. If they want to go bigger and more responsibility, we've got a plan to buy it out as well, for them to buy it out.

GEORGE: Got you. How many instructors have taken up that role, taken that path?

ROBBIE: Yeah. At the moment, myself has done it. We've got another instructor Mitchel who runs the IMC Wetherill park school. He's doing it at the moment. He's on the five year journey. We're about to open up another school in the West of Sydney, a young girl and she's going to start the five year journey as well.

GEORGE: On the five year mark, so, does that take 100% ownership or do you still sort of run under a type of franchise model or?

ROBBIE: Yeah. Look, the deal that I had was, I'll take over 100%. Okay? That was always the plan. My instructor always wanted that for me. I've been with him since I was a kid. So, he helped me out. I would want the same for my juniors that have been with me forever too. So, yeah, I was to buy it out 100%. It was still under the IMC organization, but our schools are separately owned.

GEORGE: Got you. Okay. So, when it comes to … so, you have … you mentioned how many locations again?

ROBBIE: We now have four.

GEORGE: Four locations, all Sydney based?

ROBBIE: All Sydney based, yep.

GEORGE: All Sydney based. Okay. So, when it comes to things like marketing and the bigger picture, how do you guys go about that? Is that a team effort or do you still operate individually?

ROBBIE: Yeah definitely. Look, we're big on our organization with team effort. Be individually owned but we all work together. So, every Monday we'll come in, do a team meeting and we all throw out all our different ideas, marketing strategies, statistics, everything, and I think it's … it works in our favor because we've got a lot more heads together, create different ideas and to grow our schools all together. We swap and change instructors sometimes too. I'll send one of my junior instructors over to a different school for a week so they can pick up some new stuff and vice versa.

GEORGE: Yeah, that's super powerful. So, you almost have this whole mastermind group within your own organization and everybody can come from different angles and different perspectives.

ROBBIE: That's right. 100%. Yep. 100%.

GEORGE: So, how do you then take those … let's say, if we had to walk through it, you guys have your Monday meeting, somebody comes up with an idea, then what sort of a process of rolling it out within the schools? Would you trial something first at one school or would you just roll it out and run with it and access the results after?

ROBBIE: Yep. Look, every Monday we'll come through statistics, that's usually the first thing on the agenda, where we've lost, where we've gained and then we'll do our marketing for the month, what we're doing and then we always close the meeting with an idea. If someone's got an idea, we'll get that person to try it in their school, see how it goes and if it's successful, then we'll try it in the other schools. If it fails, then the other schools don't do it obviously.

GEORGE: Got you. So, can you say a bit more just about sort of that structure of that Monday meeting? So, you mentioned you've got statistics, you talk marketing, etc, is there anything else that you cover within moving the organization forward?

ROBBIE: So, we always talk about what we're doing that month. So, whether it's a life skill project or something like that, gradings or if we're doing seminars, how to organize that. But pretty basic standard meeting. Nothing too drastic. But it works. Everyone turns up and everyone is on the same page. That's important. If one ball drops, then the rest will crumble in the end. So, it's important to keep it all together.

GEORGE: Got you. Okay. So, let's talk a bit more about … so, you're based in Liverpool right?

ROBBIE: Yes. Western Sydney. Yep.

GEORGE: Western Sydney, got you. I believe that now that we're talking about it, Paul Zadro, I did see him on the news taking on the political role. Is that right?

ROBBIE: Yeah. I think he's got to that stage in his life where he needs another challenge. He's a very successful man, so I think he wanted that next challenge. So, he worked for the local Liverpool seat. Unfortunately he didn't win, but I'm sure he had a good experience. He made a lot of contacts as well. It was actually good for us to watch it so it all works.

GEORGE: Got you. Actually, I did another podcast interview yesterday with Jim Morrison in Canada and he was mentioning their 15th birthday this year and the mayor’s coming along. I was like, hang on, you can't let that story just rest. How do you get the mayor to attend your birthday?

He said, no, okay, they actually train together, but it was interesting that he mentioned how much community evolvement that creates, because of having the … obviously having the mayor and the kids train there, but just getting really involved with projects that they do with kids with autism and sort of being on the forefront. Would that open different avenues for you within the martial arts school with having Paul in that position?

ROBBIE: Oh yeah, for sure. Look, it's just another way to get your name out there. You know what I mean? We had the New South Wales Sports Minister come to our school with this campaign and he came to see what we do in school, how do kids train. We did a couple of demonstrations for him and that goes all over social media as well. So, it's just another avenue of marketing and getting your brand out there again. So, yeah, it definitely helps.

GEORGE: Got you. Okay. So, let's talk about Liverpool. So, we were just chatting about it earlier just … IMC Australia number one rated martial arts center as rated by ISKA. So, what's a big focus for you? Is it just … I guess let's start from the beginning. What styles do you teach?

ROBBIE: Yeah. So, basically we're a multi-style school. We teach karate, kickboxing, MMA, jiu jitsu. Our main clientele is kid's karate. Probably makes up 70% of our school. MMA, jiu jitsu is just sort of an extra thing for people to come and kickboxing program is pretty big as well, but our basic main focus is kid's karate.

GEORGE: Got you. And then the competition component with that is?

ROBBIE: Yeah. ISKA a good organization that has multi-styles, so you can do from kickboxing to middle ninjas, five year old kids competing. So, we always start on the ISKA circuit. It's probably the biggest in Australia as well, covering all the different states and we've always had a strong tournament team going into these martial arts tournaments and most of the years, we always rate number one. That helps our students with retention as well. Sometimes kids get bored in their normal training, so they want an extra bit of push, so they join the tournament team and they'll compete.

GEORGE: Got you. Okay. So, is that tournaments and things happening locally? Do you give students the opportunity to travel abroad?

ROBBIE: Yeah, pretty much. There's always a tournament nearly every month. Some are in Sydney, some are in the country. There's tournaments in Queensland, Melbourne, even in Perth where you are. I think Graham MacDonald runs the ISKA in WA. Every couple of years we take a team over to the US Open, compete over there. Last year we actually went to Jamaica for ISKA World Championships there which was awesome. I love traveling and when martial arts and traveling come together, I'm very happy with my life. Any opportunity to go overseas and take a team, we're onto it.

GEORGE: So, how did that help the team? When they go to a place like Jamaica. I spent a lot of time in Jamaica when I was in my young travel days when I was working on cruise ships. Crazy place, but it was always good fun. Just beautiful beaches and friendly people. So, when a team goes and they travel to a place like that, how does … what's the effect on just the culture and the team when they get back?

ROBBIE: Yeah. Well, you know yourself. If you're traveling and you go overseas, it's a whole new experience, you know what I mean? They get to see people from different countries, different styles, different ways of life. So, any type of traveling is good for anybody. You always come back a different person and I think it brings a team together as well. You spend a couple of weeks with somebody overseas on those tours, and it brings back a closer relationship too. So, it always works well. There's never a negative experience on these trips.

GEORGE: Got you. So, where are you guys headed as a … and you personally, you're part of the IMC group, what's the path forward for you?

ROBBIE: Yeah. So, look, we've designed our leadership program to keep growing. All that school was of course anyone's goal is to also keep growing. My personal goal is to open up another school which we're in the frame of doing hopefully this year and then, yeah, just keep going. Do as much as possible and the sky's the limit.

GEORGE: You mentioned your wife trains as well. So, is it just you in the business? Is it family business or?

ROBBIE: Yeah. It's just me and my wife. She mainly does all the admin for the school which I'm pretty lucky because that's what she studied in university. So, it all planned out and worked together. She stays at home, I pretty much run the school. I've got my manager of the school, so I don't have to always be there. I try to have at least a couple of days off in the week to spend with my family, but it's all about the system. You've got to design those systems, then you've got to stick to them and make sure they work. As soon as one of those systems kicks out, it all falls apart. So, I think it's so important that you have those right and stick to it.

GEORGE: I'd love to ask you about that. So, you're mentioning, obviously you're preparing to go for a second school, so yes, your systems have to be in place and you mentioned, okay, you've got your wife involved, but you mentioned she doesn't really come to the dojos, just working at home.

ROBBIE: Behind the scenes, yep. She's not behind the scenes.

GEORGE: You've got family, you've got kids, right?

ROBBIE: Yeah, I've got two little kids, five and two. My son who's five, he trains and he's one of those karate kids that pretty much lives at the school and he loves it. So, I'm very grateful for.

GEORGE: So, how do you manage this and moving forward? So, you mentioned you're really clear about your systems and then your family time. So, how do you create that balance and especially knowing that you've got the new location coming as well?

ROBBIE: Yeah. Well, it all comes down to the right person, right? If you can open up another school, you wouldn't do it unless you had someone that you believe in that could do it. So, that's where our leadership program comes into place. So, we have a person now that's ready to step up, she's pretty much been managing my school for the last couple of years. I sort of stood back a bit to see how she runs it all by herself and she's proven that she can do it easily. So, we sat her down and asked her if she wants to move forward and open up another school and run that one and she agreed. So, she's in the process now of training somebody to replace her which is awesome. All about the systems.

GEORGE: So, let's say you're starting the systems, what are the core systems that you have to have in place before you feel that you're ready to open that extra location?

ROBBIE: I think, well, my instructor always told me as a test, if you go on holidays for a month and your school grows by that person that you've left in charge, then they're capable of running the school on their own. If it fails and you lose students while you're away, then maybe that person isn't. So, that's one little test we do. We make sure everyone's trained up.

Okay. So, we've got our leadership program like I said and we have different levels in that leadership program and if someone isn't up to standard in a certain area, we make sure that they need more training. We do our staff training once every couple of months, a big staff training or we make sure everyone's up to speed because there's always new casuals and new leadership members. We just make sure our standard's high and up to date.

GEORGE: And sort of the core system? Like the system of systems that the … the one thing that kind of steers everything and puts everything in place, what would you say that is?

ROBBIE: Yeah. Look, it's pretty straight forward like every other school. You know what I mean? There's so much information out there now. You can go on Facebook and see a whole lot of stuff even for free. It's funny because, like I go to the ISKA tournaments and I speak to so many school owners that are trying to do martial arts full time and I tell them all the different stuff, they like to go to an EFC conference for example.

I tell them they should go if they want to grow. And then they don't do it. You know what I mean? It's simple stuff that you can follow and they just don't do it and then they wonder why they don't grow. You know what I mean? So, yeah, just all the basic normal stuff that's out there. Follow the system that everyone has created. There's plenty of information out there.

GEORGE: Okay, cool. So, Robbie, you're well established, you guys have got … you tick all the boxes, you've got the systems, you've done your ten thousand hours and beyond in business. So, if you had to break it down, what advice would you give to someone going from zero to a hundred, a hundred to two hundred, two hundred to three hundred students, etc?

ROBBIE: Yeah. Look, first of all, if I was … first thing I'd do is find the right location. All our schools and even our future schools, we open up on a main road. So, that's half of our marketing already done for us. You can try to beat the rent and get something a little bit cheaper in the back alleys, but you're going to pay more in marketing. So, all our schools must be on a main road. So, that's one thing I'd be looking at. The next thing is, is I'll be trying to find the first person that walks into my dojo with leadership skills and I'd be starting to train that person to help and eventually put them on staff. That would be my first things.

GEORGE: So, location, super important, and then really identifying that leader from the get go. Anything else from that point?

ROBBIE: From there, if I started to grow my school, the next thing I would a hundred percent put in would be a leadership program, whether it's kids or teenagers, because that's going to be your core of your school of who can run your school for you while you can concentrate on other things to grow. So, I'll be a hundred per cent be all for leadership programs straight away.

GEORGE: That's gold right there. Good location, half your marketing's done, find your right leader and start focusing on the team building.

ROBBIE: Straight away. Yep.

GEORGE: Anything else you would add to that?

ROBBIE: From there, the school would grow because you would've trained your staff to how you want it, to follow the systems, I'll probably sign up with, if I didn't have an organization like I do, I'd probably sign up with … I mean, there's plenty of companies out there that help you, I'd kind of like to stick with the Aussie groups. I'd be signing up for that straight away as well because that's going to help you grow your school. These guys have got it all in place for you.

That's what I keep saying to these guys that I was talking about. It's already done for them. They've just got to sign up and follow it. They don't do that. That's why they don't grow. So, if you're serious about going to school, find a good mentor that's done it before and follow the system. It's not rocket science.

GEORGE: Do the work, right? Okay, awesome. So, one or two more questions. You mentioned your location in Liverpool, right? So, you're on a main road. It's also probably, on a wild guess, reckon that Liverpool has the most martial arts schools per square meter in the whole of Australia. So, what's your take on that, on the competition?

ROBBIE: It's true, there's so many martial arts schools right where I am in … I remember telling my instructor about it when he offered me the job. I said, oh, but there's so many schools around here, how are we going to compete? He pretty much said if you do the things that I tell you to do, you'll be the biggest and you won't worry about them. That's what we did and now we are the biggest. I've got a school that's 200 meters down the road from me and he's still successful. He's got I think about 400 students and I've got 500 students. It doesn't matter.

Would I be bigger? Probably. I probably wouldn't be able to fit everyone in if he wasn't there, but it doesn't affect this really any way. As long as you keep your school professional and provide a good service, people always come. Know what I mean? So, it hasn't bothered us, no.

GEORGE: Thanks for being … I'm going to ask one question and I've been contemplating whether I should ask this question, but I think it's worth talking about it, because it's a … I've got my take on this word and question and a lot of people do. I'm going to keep my appointment back, my appointment, my opinion for now and I'm going to ask this question on a few podcasts and see how it goes. So, here it is. McDojo. The word McDojo. What does that mean to you?

ROBBIE: What is a McDojo? What even is a McDojo? I've heard the concept before. People say if you're big and you're charging quite high fees that you're a McDojo, I reckon it's all crap to be honest. Okay? Because, I mean our standard hasn't dropped and I challenge anyone who hasn't got a big score or has a smaller score and think that their standard is higher, then bring that student in, and see if they can keep some of our students. I'll bet you they can't.

So, just because we're large and we charge a higher fee, doesn't mean our standards drop. If anything, I think our standards rise because if we don't provide a good service and keep a higher standard, then they'll leave and they can go down to the road to the $10 a week school, that's fine. So, I think it's a load of crap to be honest.

GEORGE: Love it. Awesome. Robbie, it's been great having you on. Where can people go to connect with you or find more about you?

ROBBIE: Yeah, you can see our website, www.prestonskarate.com.au or you can add me on Facebook at Robbie Castellano. You should find me on friends of all the high profile martial arts in the country. So, yeah, add me, I'll be happy to help you if you have any questions.

GEORGE: Fantastic. Thanks a lot Robbie.

ROBBIE: Thanks George, really appreciate it mate. You're a legend and it's awesome what you're doing, I love it.

Awesome. Thanks for listening. If you want to connect with other top, 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. 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 Community and an easy way to access it is if you just go to the domain name martialartsmedia.group. So martialartsmedia.group. G-r-o-u-p. There's not dot or anything. Martialartsmedia.group. Then we'll take you straight there. Request to join and I will accept your invitation.

Thanks. I'll speak to you on the next episode. Cheers. 

 

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75 – Growing Your School With Video & Teaching Martial Arts For Special Needs (From A Wheelchair)

Jim Morrison talks about contributing to the community, creating content & teaching martial arts to kids with autism and special needs.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

  • The surprising benefits of giving back to your community
  • How Jim Morrison teaches Taekwondo in a wheelchair to students with special needs
  • The importance of being genuine about your martial arts business
  • How to communicate effectively to your target ‘avatar’
  • Useful techniques in creating awesome martial arts videos
  • And more

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

 

TRANSCRIPTION

You know, just like martial arts, we all start as white belts, right. Every single one of us, the greatest martial artists to ever walk the Earth, started on their first day and they sucked. And you know, we have to really embrace the suck, right, that's what it is. We know how hard martial arts are, right, if you can't embrace the suck, then you're never going anywhere from there.

GEORGE: Good day, this is George Fourie, and welcome to another Martial Arts Media Business Podcast episode. So today I'm speaking with Jim Morrison, all the way from Barrie, Ontario. How are you doing, Jim?

JIM: Awesome, how are you?

GEORGE: Very good, very good. Great to speak with you. This is the first time we've just been chatting before the show, and Jim's been going for about 15 years in his martial arts school, Champs Academy. And yeah, we're just going to have a conversation and add some value for you as the school owner. So let's jump in.

JIM: Awesome.

GEORGE: First up, Jim, just to … just give us a couple of minutes, who you are, what type of styles you teach, all the rest.

JIM: Awesome. We're a martial arts academy that primarily focuses on Taekwondo and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. We've had our studio in place here in Barrie for about 15 years. Before that I was in the martial arts industry teaching for my instructor for many, many years. I think since I was 17, I was teaching. And then I started martial arts when I was about eight years old, so it's a long time ago.

And yeah, we've grown and grown. We started as a small school out of a community center that expanded to a small unit and then that unit grew, and now we're in a 10000 square foot space, yeah, and we're looking to open another two schools in the next two years, so yeah. We're programmed for growth.

GEORGE: Awesome, so 15 years, break that down a bit. So you got started with the same business that you've got now, 15 years ago?

JIM: Yes. So we've been, Champs Academy has been in business for 15 years, this is our 15 year anniversary, so we're actually going to have a big anniversary party this year, mayor's coming and everything so it should be really fun. But we started 15 years ago, it was a small school, we were just teaching out of a community center.

I always had aspirations to make this a full time career, at the time I was working construction during the day, and teaching at night. But you know it was always a big thing for me to be able to make the plunge, and make myself a career martial artist.

And it was just, I'm a growth minded person, and over the years the industry's changed a lot, but I've been able to try and stay on top of all the growth and all the changes over the years. And yeah, I think we've done a good job of staying on top of the pulse of our community, and it's helped us kind of grow.

GEORGE: Hang on, you're not going to let that off so quickly. You've got your 15th birthday party, but the mayor is coming. How did you do that?

JIM: So actually, the mayor is, his family's training with us now, too, but before that we'd also made contact because what we do in our community, we do a lot of outreach stuff in our community. I think that's really important, because if you want to be the go-to location in your area, you need to make sure that you're present in everything you can possibly be in your community.

So we do a lot of work in the schools, we offer free bully prevention courses that we go into schools and teach. We go in and do self defense courses, stranger danger courses, things like that. We do Cub Scout groups, anything like that we do big group areas.

We also work with a lot of special needs in our community. So the word of our club gets out in so many different avenues, even outside our own marketing. We're so well known in the community by now that when I approach the mayor, the mayor's office knows who we are, so it's easier for us to get our foot in the door and put our name on his schedule, right?

So that's something we've always tried to work at is that easy way to start our marketing, to start to open up to the community, and give back, and it's something that gives you back in return. So it's helped us a lot.

GEORGE: That's fantastic. So you got … so you used that a lot as in a … I mean you probably can't use it as in the front of your marketing that you're taking the mayor along, can you?

JIM: Of course, you have to be respectful of the fact that he's going to fit in a job, and you're not the only thing he's dealing with every day. But I think whether it's the mayor, or we've got in contact with our local politicians in many different levels, and the big thing we try to do is be respectful of them, but we also encourage them to be part of what we do.

Even on small ways, whether it's sometimes we teach an autism group. And for example, autism in Ontario right now is, there's an issue with funding and things like that. So there's an opportunity there for us to a part of that, a voice in that community, because we work with a lot of autism groups, and that means we're on the page of the news as well.

So it helps both ways, obviously we're genuine about getting back to our community and helping these different groups, but at the same time, I'd be lying if I say it didn't help us in some way, because it does give us a voice outside of our club.

GEORGE: Yeah, it's such an underrated marketing strategy to just actually care and give, and if you do that, you can actually be surprised what comes your way. Instead of just thinking about, how do we get? How do you give, and things start to shape up for you.

JIM: Yeah, I think the ethics of what we teach, we always know that giving back is a part of that. We've all been taught that since day one in martial arts, but somewhere along the way when we start a business, we kind of want to put those ethics on a shelf or those ideas on a shelf. And I think if we explore them a little more, I think really there's a lot of benefit for our own club from giving back to our community, and doing anything we can, because it spreads the word of what we do.

And if that's the message of what we do, well, people connect with that. That's a passion that people connect with. And in this day and age, when people are inundated with marketing, and advertising, and flyers and media and commercials on TV, they have choices that they never had before, and when they hear somebody who's genuine and passionate about what they teach, and they see that they're somebody that cares about their community, I think that speaks volumes for what the product we sell is, and that's helping people get that message, too, right.

So I think we want to always expand in that general direction. It keeps in touch with my family's ethics, but as well as what I teach in the martial arts club.

GEORGE: Yeah, for sure. I'd like to talk a little more on that. I mean I work with a group of martial arts school owners called Partners, and a bit of our focus with marketing is … a lot of what you're saying is, how do you become an authority in your space? How do you stand out? And a lot about standing out is not by leading with the marketing of the offer, and how do you join, and how do you get a member in?

But rather, how do you give? How do you go that layer up, and how do you create content that provides value that connects with people that maybe they're a good prospect for martial arts, but they don't know it yet, or they have their problems that you can solve, but they don't know it yet.

Like you speak about autism, and I think most parents that have kids that have autism aren't thinking that martial art is the solution. So there's so much in your marketing that you can do, that is not about the offer, but it's about speaking to people on a higher level. So if you don't mind sharing, how do you go about speaking to groups that are potential prospects for your school, and how do you work within the community to get them through the doors?

JIM: Yeah, well that's a great question, because it's not an easy thing, because a lot of times it's even hard to find these specialty groups, even if you have the best of intentions. I think if we all started, the first time I ever started teaching any specialty groups is I was teaching Taekwondo, and I was approached by a parent that I was teaching the one son Taekwondo, and the other son was in a wheelchair. And she said something along the lines of, and I'm paraphrasing, “It's too bad there's nothing he can do like this, because it's helped my other son so much.”

 

And I said, “Well, if I had a group of kids like this, I'd be happy to do that,” and she said, “Well watch what you say, because I'm going to help you do that.” And the next thing I know, I'm in a rented wheelchair, teaching Taekwondo classes from a wheelchair, I don't actually have to use a wheelchair, thank god, but I'm teaching classes from a wheelchair to a group full of kids in wheelchairs. And it was such a great experience for me that I wanted to make sure that we continued to spread that message.

So then, when I had students that had autism, or I had a student that was in a wheelchair or something like that, we would highlight them. And what I mean by that is, any chance we got, not an advertisement, just to put something in the local newspaper, put on our website, put on our Facebook page, we're so proud of this student, and how far they've come. They are a leader in our school, and we're so proud of them, and to see how far they've come in their training.

And what we found was, a lot of people responded to that because just seeing that, hey, you know what, this is not something that is elitist just to the athletic kid from school. This is not just a … you know, martial arts, we have a horrible reputation. We have the worst … outside of our clubs, the marketing is horrendous. Most people think we, as people, are thugs, and we're tough guys, and we're all those other things, when the reality is we're almost the exact opposite of those things. Because the ethics of what we grew up with taught us to be so much more than that.

So I think it's up to us to break that wall down, and show people that everybody can do it. And that was kind of where we went with it, and right now we have three or four different special needs groups that we teach, specialty classes only for each of them, on top of the kids that we teach in our regular program that are special needs as well. It's become a niche for us, not intentionally, just because we're trying to reach out to the community that we serve.

GEORGE: That's fantastic. So do you actually then teach in a wheelchair?

JIM: Yes. I actually sit in a wheelchair, and like I say, I don't use it, and if you want to be humbled … If you ever want to feel humble, try and teach kids that actually sit in a wheelchair all day how to do things from a wheelchair. And muscles in your arms that you're not aware of, and your shoulders, will start to hurt in a way that you have not had any experience with, because they're so much stronger than we are at using their arms in different ways that we haven't had to use them in. So it's actually very humbling experience, but it's also very … I don't know, I guess it's something that I love doing. Something passionate for me.

GEORGE: That's fantastic. So tell me a bit more about that. So how do you then adapt, adjust your whole class structure, and like, what kind of strains does it put on you, and how do you prepare for that? How do you go about teaching a class from a wheelchair?

JIM: Well, whether it's from a wheelchair or any other special needs group, the first thing we always do is we have a system that our instructors use, and it's basically, it's our own self-assessment more than it is theirs. And what we look at is, we say, okay, what is the highest functioning action we can expect from this group, and it's usually higher than they actually think they're capable of.

So what do we think that is, and we have to draw a picture of what that specifically looks like for whatever group we're looking at. And then we look at the lowest functioning factor, and we say, okay, we have to meet them here, but we want to get them there. So we have to start to look at the physicality, very often the communication is a big factor, because like I say, we have a Down's Syndrome group as well, you know, they're not going to pick up on the same gestures and movements that you and I would in a class. Even the specifics of how you're holding your hand, things can be different depending on the physicality and the mental capabilities of the group that you're teaching.

 

And that's not to diminish where they're going to be going; it's just to say where the starting point is. So we always have a little chart, we do that, and that way any of the instructors that are, if another instructor's going to teach that, they can look at that chart and decide where on that chart they're going to focus that day. And of course, it can vary day to day, too, 'cause as any instructor knows, teaching any group of kids, there's days they come in ready to learn, and then there are days they come in, and I don't know who gave sugar to all these kids before they walked in here, but they washed it down with coffee. So on those days you going to do what you going to do, right?

GEORGE: Yeah. Definitely. Okay, so now … And just to clarify, so this is teaching Taekwondo classes, or Jujitsu, from the wheelchair? Or both?

JIM: The wheelchair classes are all done for Taekwondo specifically, it just lends itself a little easier to the techniques we teach. We see that the kids get a quicker grasp of the movement, and therefore they're encouraged. Of course, most physical situations that a kid is facing if they're in a wheelchair, they're very aware that they're working from a deficit of some kind, so one of the first things we have to do for all these kids, and this is the same for any kid, is build their confidence.

So they need to see some progress. Just like any kid would, right, so we just have to look at it from that same standpoint we would be teaching any kid off the street, and just say, hey, we need to build their confidence, so they know they can do this journey.

And then from there you can lead them down the journey you want, but if they don't believe in it, they're going to give up pretty quickly, regardless of whether they're in a wheelchair or special needs, or they're fine, and they just need to get started in martial arts, right? So we need to build that confidence before we step anywhere.

JIM: Sorry, that's why we find some of the Taekwondo techniques lend themselves a little easier to that.

GEORGE: Gotcha. And that was actually my next question, and I think you've probably answered it, with how does the mind-set differ? The mind-set of someone that has the special needs versus a normal child, and do you have to change the process of how you get them to instil that confidence in themselves?

JIM: Very often, yes. Because like I say, they face more challenges. I mean that's … things that we don't even think about, you know. When you pull up to a building, you and I don't have to figure out what part of the curb we have to get to, to get in a building. Something that simple, and those kind of things weigh on a person, you know, just think about all the things that weigh on us when we hit traffic, and it's slow, or things like that. Well you know, they're facing that plus when they get to the plaza they're going to, they can get in the door because they don't have a dip in the curb big enough for the wheelchair.

So you have to take into consideration what you're facing, so I think a lot of times, for us that's the biggest piece. For kids that are facing any more challenges than the average kid, whatever it is, like I say, start with that confidence piece and build from there, because the more success they could feel, there's nothing like seeing a kid break a board, right, but if you see a kid break a board who didn't think he could possibly break a board, there's something that changes inside you as a person when you see that, right, you get to be a part of something special.

And that's something, I think, that they experience, but also you as an instructor experience. So there is a mind-set we have to get past, and I can't attitude that we have to get past, because they really can't do a lot of the things that everybody else takes for granted. So we've going to get past that and give them some confidence, and give them some successes.

GEORGE: Yeah. I mean think about that next time you're stuck in traffic, you know? How tough life is.

JIM: Yeah. You know, we think about that with all our students. We try to … One of the things, getting back to the point we were saying is teaching from a passionate place, I think we try and talk to our instructors, and our staff and we say, look, you can't fake this thing we do. We don't have the kind of job we can call in, whether we're teaching anybody, an adult, a kid, we don't know what these people face in their daily life, and we could be the best thing that happened to them today. So we can't bring half an effort. We have to bring the best effort, and I think if we do that, it translates.

And like I say, in this day and age, people have choices they never had before. I started in the 80s, and my parents put me in the martial arts club that was closest to my house. That was it. That was their precursor for hiring a martial arts instructor for me. And it worked out great, I was very happy with it, but it could have easily worked out horribly, 'cause now that I know the industry a little bit better I know there's good and bad in everything. And our industry's no different, right?

GEORGE: That's it. So Jim, what's been the biggest shift for you over the last 15 years, from where you started up to now?

JIM: Well I think the biggest thing is to go to the idea of marketing. I think marketing, when we first started, first of all, like I say, they didn't have … people didn't have as many choices. There was one or two martial arts clubs in town, and even if the martial arts were something that the parent couldn't pronounce, if it was the closest thing to what they thought it was going to be, they just signed the kids up.

Nowadays, with the internet, it's a great thing but it's a curse, and it's a great thing because people have more choice, they have more variety, they can test drive things before they do it, they can go and look inside your facility before they get there. But it's a hard thing, because if you don't quite know how to communicate that to people, I think that you're missing out on clientele that they should be in your facility, they should be training with you.

And I think that's probably the biggest change in marketing, is getting a hand on what happens on the internet, whether it's your website, or social media, or specifically Google Analytics, and all the details. Getting content out there so people can taste test what you're doing, and they have an awareness of what you do. And the more we can do those things; those things I think are the big change over the last 15 years.

It used to be me and my students with flyers going door to door, nowadays, if I get a flyer I do what everybody else does, and I put it right in the recycling bin, and that's about the end of that. But we get so many clicks per video we've put out, and so much interest off Facebook, and our website, Instagram … That's the wave of the future. If you can't … You really have to get professionals on your side as far as what kind of web presence you're having, and that'll make a huge difference.

GEORGE: Definitely so. So do you have a … I guess when I hear the things that you have going on, you've got this big pool of ideas just sitting there to create content from. Do you have a specific strategy that you follow? To create content for your school?

JIM: Yes, well first of all we look at … The biggest thing is, we communicate what we do. So again, it's about being honest. Stick to the virtues that we teach every day. If we want to be honest about what we do, and what we don't do, I don't create MMA fighters. There are great clubs for that and I think it's fantastic, I fought MMA for a few years, but I don't want my kids to do it, so I don't teach it in my school, 'cause my kids are a very big part of my school now.

So I want to communicate exactly what we teach, so what we teach I want to show people the quality of what I teach, I want to give them a taste of what the class looks like, or feels like. I want them to see whatever my strengths are, I want to make sure I magnify those, and I want to make sure that I'm reaching the people that are looking for me. So again, that's about knowing you’re … I don't know if you guys use the same term, but we call it an avatar, which is your ideal customer.

So we always keep the ideal customer in mind and try and keep our content specific to reaching them as well. So it's two sided, it's making sure we're honest about what we're putting out there, but we're also making sure that we're targeting our avatar, so we're not wasting energy and money pretending we're something we're not.

GEORGE: Gotcha. Now I know that for a lot of schools, I know it's a bit of a … people get stuck when they want to create video, and I think even though martial arts school owners and instructors are super confident and know how to run and teach a class, there's something that just, there's this barrier that gets stuck when it comes to creating video and getting confident with that process. What was it like for you getting started with video, and how did you venture through any obstacles to get it in motion?

JIM: Yeah, well that's a great question 'cause I really sucked at it at first, so that's a great question. When we first started doing content and things like that, I really didn't know what to videotape, and I would just take my phone and videotape part of a class, and post it. And do the kind of things like that.

And it got mixed reviews, sometimes I'd get people saying, “Oh, that's a great thing,” or sometimes I'd videotape a class, and didn't realize that it looked a little hectic, 'cause I was taking a video of the part where they were having some free time. And so somebody else, they're like, “Wow, that doesn't look formatted or structured at all,” and now they get a bad taste of what we do.

So I didn't really know what to do. So I have to give credit where credit's due, my son, I have a … So I have a big family, I'm the proud dad of seven little kids, so.

GEORGE: Awesome.

JIM: I have seven kids, yeah, and my oldest son is 19, and he's now running our head office, and he's of course a little more in touch with technology than I am at 44. So he started getting really involved in what we videotape, and he's really good at researching what works out there. He started following some industry leaders, which I always recommend. Look for people that you know, whether you teach Jiu Jitsu, or you teach Taekwondo, or whatever you teach. Look for people anywhere in the world that are, who's got the most views, and who's popular for other people to watch.

Go and watch your heroes, the people you see who win tournaments and things like that, why are they getting views? You know and sometimes, we as martial artists want to give it the quick answer, “Well that's easy for that guy, he's Chuck Norris's student,” or something silly like that. Or, “That's easy for that guy, he's a world famous Jiu Jitsu fighter, it's Kit Dale,” or somebody like that. But it's not just the big name, right, it's making sure what people are really watching Kit Dale's site for is going to be those great Jujitsu tutorials, or those little pieces where they get a taste of something they want to learn.

So if you can mimic what they greats do, you don't have to know how to do the great content, you're just going to find your own niche inside that. And then I think, really, like I said to go back to, is being honest about what you offer. If you're not a Jiu Jitsu program, you know, don't model yourself after one, model yourself after what you really are targeting. And then you can specify to your avatar a lot easier.

GEORGE: Gotcha. And I'll probably add to that, because that also, and what I see is creating an obstacle. Because sometimes you look at your peers, and you look at the guys that you aspire to, but they're already at such a high level, and now you're entering this video realm and your expectations are to be exactly like they already are. And I think that puts a bit of a big roadblock in, because you want to get started, and just be perfect at it, but you've going to run the reps, right?

JIM: You know, just like martial arts, we all start as white belts, right. Every single one of us, the greatest martial artists to ever walk the Earth, started on their first day and they sucked. And you know, we have to really embrace the suck, right, that's what it is. We know how hard martial arts are, right. If you can't embrace the suck, then you're never going anywhere from there. If you could ever take a video of what it looked like your first day of martial arts, how proud would you be looking at that based on your current knowledge of martial arts? Well, you'd be almost embarrassed instantly, right?

Well it's the same thing with your first video. It's going to suck, but that's where you start. That's your starting point, and if you're not willing to take those steps and make those efforts, and try something new, try this, because if you haven't done social media marketing, and you haven't done it well, then you're not going to be able to go anywhere. But in that same breath, there is market leaders that can direct people, there are professionals out there that are really great, making sure you have a good website. Go to people, they're specific to our market in martial arts, and they design great websites that already attract great Google traffic.

There are people that already know how to use Facebook, and they can give you guys, anybody tips out there on how to find those little niches that they can target. You know, there's a lot of different resources out there, but just like martial arts, if you're not willing to go out and try these things, if you're not willing to go out and learn from somebody that's maybe a little further ahead than you, then you're going to stay a white belt, right, just like you would in a martial art.

GEORGE: Yeah, that's so true. I love that saying, and I heard that the first time in High Performance Habits, from Brennan Bechard. Embrace the suck.

JIM: Yeah, I read the same book. That's another thing I think is very important too, is martial artists, we're designed for growth. We have to realize, as martial artists, you and I, we should be constantly reading and listening to podcasts, and if you're not growing, you're dying. We have to really start to look for more things out there that can inspire and encourage us to grow, and become better at what we do. ‘Cause that's what we're doing here, that's what we're selling, so it's a lie if you're not doing it yourself.

You don't want to stand up there and tell everybody, “Growth is important, prove yourself, do these things,” and then you're going home to watch the same TV program and fall asleep in bed doing the same thing you did for the last five days.

I try and do something each day, just to grow, I don't think it's too hard, I think you can find some podcasts, or watch some videos online, or whatever you need to do to feel like you're making steps forward. And that kind of thing too can give you a little bit of confidence to take another step too, 'cause you can find people that are doing those things out there that you want to follow.

GEORGE: I love that, and I'll just add, one thing I'm noticing about you is, you're just doing what … you're just being true to yourself. And it's a big component of the things that we teach in our Partners program, we always talk about how do you create content? Well, just do what you do. If you have yourself in check, and you are growing, and you are being true to yourself, and you've got integrity, and you've got all these attributes that martial arts teaches, talks about, and you are living that, then just live it. Just live it, be it, and let that become your marketing. Let that become the way you spread your message.

JIM: Yeah, and then it just comes down to communication. And then it's just finding the avenues for communicating what you do. And then being honest with that, and putting it out there, right, like we just … I just spend the entire afternoon with my son, we were videoing different content for social media, we should have enough now for the next six months off of today's. Tiring day.

GEORGE: Awesome.

JIM: But yeah, great stuff, and but the thing was, I make a point like, because we don't teach high end MMA, for example. I'm using that as an example, but if you do, I mean, great, that's what you should focus on, and you should make sure you're communicating that. So there's no judgment on it, I just say that that's not what I sell. So because I don't sell that, I try to make sure each thing that I put out there is directly representative of what you would see when you walked into my club. So that means that when you walk into my club, you're already qualified to yourself as a customer.

So by the time I'm reaching these fingers out into the community to bring in people into our club, people that walk through my door, people that call me, people that email me, people that send us Facebook messages, which happens all the time, daily, all that stuff is already qualified as genuine leads because they know what we do. I've already given them a sample of what I do, so, and it's easy to find if you search me up, you'll find me everywhere. Instagram, Facebook, all over YouTube, everything, and that's purposeful. Because it's not, I'm not bragging, it's not something that I'm better than the next person, it's a window.

It's not about how good I am, it's a window into my club. So when you see that window, you can look in, and if it's not for you, you can decide that too, but if it is, you've already qualified yourself as somebody that would be interested in what we do. So we're not selling cars here, we're selling martial arts. If somebody walks through the door, if they make the effort to do that part, and we've done the advertising right, you should have 80 to 90% sign up rate minimum.

I mean that's a given, because if you've done a great job of your marketing, they're coming in for that, what you're selling. So they're already almost buying. They've got their wallet in their hand, they want to buy your product, so it should be an easy conversion at that point.

GEORGE: Just don't stand in their way.

JIM: Yeah. And make sure you know when to shut up, and you know when to talk, and you know when to answer questions, and you know when to listen, right?

GEORGE: That's it. Love it. Hey, so Jim it's been great speaking to you, and it sounds like we could speak another couple of hours, but we might do that on another one. What I do want to ask you though is, what would you do different? Going back over the years, what you've done, what's the one thing that you would tweak or look at differently in a way, moving forward, if you had to start all over?

JIM: I think what was really intimidating for me was a lot of the stepping my marketing to different angles, doing things that I hadn't done before. Because just like you're saying, I was intimidated at first, and when I first stepped into it I knew I sucked. I could watch other people do a much better job, and I didn't really understand that. I think I would just be a little gutsier with the going for that stuff, especially social media stuff. It's almost free. It's so cheap compared to any other marketing.

So I think what I would do if I could go back is spend more focus on those kind of things, and just do that, get that message out there more. I think I was a little bit too silent for too long with that, and now that we've got that ball rolling, we see the results of it, and it's great.

GEORGE: Love it, yeah, it's just something you've going to nurture and be patient with, and I guess just stay clear of all the distractions. I mean there's marketers pulling you in so many directions, and so many ideas, but it always comes down to the … I always, and I can't recall who mentioned this to me, but one of my coaches mentioned to me, always look at what people do, versus what they say.

JIM: Yes.

GEORGE: Which, people might be telling you to do this, but they're doing something completely different.

JIM: Yes.

GEORGE: And I think it's just important to focus, do the hard work. The hard work is creating the content, fine tuning your message, and looking after yourself. And if you can get that through, and be patient with it, you're going to build a following and it's going to start … that's where you get the whole snowball running down the mountain, and it just catches momentum. And you've got leads coming in from everywhere, and after a while you can't track where, it's just happening.

JIM: Yes. And I think that's the trick. Just get started, just go for it, just start putting your word out there. And like I say, be genuine with what you're putting out there, watch people that you trust, and watch what they're doing. And again, like you say, don't listen to what they say, watch what they do. Go follow them. Go follow them on Instagram, go follow them on Facebook, and you know what, the thing is that this day and age you can find all that information so easily, so you just have to be willing to take that next step and go for it, and follow the right people, and even make mistakes along the way. Be a white belt, embrace the suck, do your thing and just go with it, right?

GEORGE: Love it. Jim, been awesome speaking to you. If anybody wants to know more about you, and what you do, where can they go to find out?

JIM: Anybody can contact me anytime, I love helping people in my community, I love helping people in the martial arts community, so my email is direct from our website, so www.champsacademy.ca, or info@champsacademy.ca is our email. You can email me through there, I'm on Facebook as well, you can look for, I'm Jim Morrison, I know everybody's going to remember that, and I'm on Facebook, I'm on Instagram, I'm everywhere, so look for me there, and I can even put you in contact with my son, who handles a lot of this stuff as well, and he'd be happy to help. That's part of our mission.

GEORGE: Awesome. Fantastic, Jim, look forward to speaking to you again in the future.

JIM: Yeah, anytime.

GEORGE: Awesome, cheers.

JIM: Cheers.

Awesome. Thanks for listening. If you want to connect with other top, 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. 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 Community and an easy way to access it is if you just go to the domain name martialartsmedia.group. So martialartsmedia.group. G-r-o-u-p. There's not dot or anything. Martialartsmedia.group. Then we'll take you straight there. Request to join and I will accept your invitation.

Thanks. I'll speak to you on the next episode. Cheers. 

 

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

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***NEW*** Now available on Spotify!

74 – How To Sell Your Martial Arts School Into Profit Despite A Flood Disaster

Cheyne McMahon's school got flooded moments after going full time! With some help and sales skills, he turned disaster into profit.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

  • How Cheyne McMahon applied his experience in selling cars to selling martial arts memberships
  • How he was able to bounce back from a flooded dojo and an eight week hibernation to a full-time school
  • How he grew his 110 students in December to 185 students in February
  • Some valuable marketing hacks to attract potential students
  • The secrets to a profitable martial arts open day
  • And more

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

 

TRANSCRIPTION

As a teacher, if you don't think you're teaching the best quality chosen martial art that you're doing, then how can you convince other people that they should join you?

GEORGE: Good day, this is George Fourie and welcome to another Martial Arts Media Business Podcast. Today I'm joined with someone who I've gained a lot of respect for in the industry, being fortunate enough to work with him the last couple of months in one of our programs, our Partners program. I want to introduce you to Cheyne McMahon from Australian Karate Academy in Brisbane. How are you doing today, Cheyne?

CHEYNE: Yeah, good mate. Thanks for having me on.

GEORGE: Awesome, so welcome to the show. I know you've mentioned you've listened to a few of my episodes as well, so this is going to be an interesting conversation. There's a lot of value, you're getting some great results in your school and you're going to be sharing a lot of details on what you are doing, how you're going about it. First, if you want to give us a bit of background, just a bit about you, the school and how you got started in the industry, etc.

CHEYNE: Yeah, no worries. I started karate when I was four. My father was, I suppose he still is, my teacher. He started karate in 1967. He opened his first club in the Sunshine Coast in Queensland in 1976, so I followed him around and wanted to do karate. For the first couple of weeks apparently was holding me as I was walking around and I was crying. 33 years later, I'm still in love with karate. The longest break I had was six months off when I moved overseas. My dad started the Australian Karate Academy in ‘89, so this is our 30th year as the Australian Karate Academy. He and my mom were the main teachers. He retired a couple of years ago and I've since taken it over. We're in our 30th year and still going strong.

GEORGE: Fantastic. You went through school, you've been training all your life. At what point did you gravitate towards the teaching side of things?

CHEYNE: I started teaching with my mom when I was probably 14 or 15. Actually, one of my students now, I was there on his first lesson when I was 14. He was a six year old training with us for 15 years, then went off and had a career and came back a few years ago. In a couple of weeks, he's about to go for his third dan. I clearly remember his first lesson when he turned up, him and his sister. I started straight after school, so in year 12.

I was never really an academic, all I really wanted to do was karate. It was just karate. Karate was my life. In year ‘12, towards the end of year ‘12, I went on a three month tour of Europe for karate. No thought about, it's going to affect my ability to get into university or TAFE training or anything like that, that's not what I wanted, so I went over there and competed for Australia and stuff like that.

After school, I was lucky enough to qualify for a grant from the Queensland government, so I was being paid to teach karate and to train in karate as an 18 year old, as an elite athlete. From there man, every part-time job I've ever had was all revolving around karate, fitting in karate times, training, teaching, training. I've loved karate ever since I was four.

GEORGE: Alright, awesome. That's pretty cool to get a grant from the government as a sportsperson.

CHEYNE: I had to do some TAFE courses to keep it, but everything was revolving around the training. Staying in condition, first aid, those sorts of things. I think it went for about two years. I got 250 bucks a week. Big money, huge money, but my parents were pretty happy because they didn't have to pay me.

GEORGE: Exactly.

CHEYNE: I don't think they do that anymore. There's a lot of issues around the government funding stuff like that for karate, because karate didn't get into the olympics and stuff like that, so a bit of politics. It might change now with karate being in the olympics.

GEORGE: Yeah, definitely so. Let's backtrack, because we met, it was December last year, depending on when you're listening to this, that's 2018. The first time we spoke, you were in a bit of a situation with the school. Do you mind sharing a bit what had happened?

CHEYNE: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no problem. In September of 2018, I decided I was going to quit work and just concentrate on karate, so very happy to do that. Four weeks later we got flooded. Where we are in this big building, they took the roof off because there were dramas with the roof. And of course, we had rain for two weeks so we lost all of our mats, we had to close the dojo, obviously. We lost all of our carpet tiles and bags and we went from having an increased number of students to suddenly no classes for six weeks. In between that, the landlord told us we have to move in that building as well.

We were probably shut for eight weeks. I quit work, I committed to do karate and I realized if I keep going the same way as I'm going, I'm not going to earn as much money as I was selling cars. That's when I figured I need to find somebody. And I found you.

GEORGE: I don't want to let the story off there, because that's quite a big thing, right? It's a big thing already, having to burn the bridges going from employment, secure income, you know that there's money every month, and you burn the bridges, and then you start your business. That alone is a risky thing for anyone to do. I think it's what holds a lot of people back from taking that leap forward. You made the leap and then you had the rug pulled under you and flooding. What's going through your mind at this time?

CHEYNE: All the money going out of my account and nothing coming in. I know that I'm going to be doing karate for the next 30, 40, 50 years, so making that decision for me was not so hard. When you have a wife and a young family it's a little bit scary, and throw into that people not coming in to karate so there's no money coming through. In fact, the money's going out because I'm still paying rent, and still trying to pay myself, and pay for this, and pay for that.

Our numbers were steadily growing, slowly, maybe ten a month or ten a term so we were slowly building. It was okay when I was selling cars, which was my job because I still had an income so it wasn't such a huge drama, but when there was no income, and there was no students, and money is going out it was a very, very, very scary time. I almost called my boss up, my old boss to say. ‘Hey, can I come back to work?' There was only one way. There really was only one way forward and that was to come back bigger, better, stronger, and bolder than we were before. With your help, we're almost there. We're almost there.

GEORGE: That's awesome. That's really cool, and I'm happy to play such a small part in you moving forward. Do you think that also plays a big part in it, the fact that you see what the road looks like when the business doesn't work, that you just come back with this unstoppable determination to, you're going to…

CHEYNE: Yeah.

GEORGE: The stakes are a lot higher, right? It's so easy if you've got a part-time, full-time job and the school's just ticking along, right? Then when things really almost hit rock bottom, and you can see what life could potentially slip down to, you feel that really changed your drive and determination?

CHEYNE: As funny as it sounds, I think the flooding, all the water, all the problems that we had with the building… We couldn't get into the carpark and half the building was knocked down, and I couldn't put my signs out, that all played a part. If it wasn't for that, there's no way that we would be as strong as we are now. That played a massive part. I got to the point where it's balls to the wall or nothing. If it wasn't for the flooding, I don't think I would've had as much drive and determination as I do now to build our numbers back up, bigger and stronger.

One of the funny things is, I was talking to you on messenger about it, when I was talking to you was, ‘Cheyne, let's have a flood sale. Let's do a flood campaign.' And we did, and it was like. ‘Save the dojo,' and people got on board, and they brought in their friends and family and it was great. So I think that that sort of galvanized our members. I think it brought us together a bit more and made us a bit stronger, and moving forward, our dojo is 10 times, 100 times better than it was in November last year. I've got aircon, first time ever.

GEORGE: Nice.

CHEYNE: In 30 years of full time karate dojo, my parents have had, this is the first time we've ever had aircon. I haven't got the bill yet, I'm a bit scared.

GEORGE: That's a pleasure to have in Brisbane. For anyone listening, especially not in Australia, Brisbane is hot, but it's very, very sticky hot, as in you'll have a shower in the morning, you'll go dry off, you'll walk outside and it feels like you just got out the shower, right?

CHEYNE: It's two or three showers a day, for sure.

GEORGE: I would like to talk about just that whole turnaround, right? Because you reached out to me on messenger and whenever something happens that feels out of your control, then you've got to look at it and say, ‘Well, how do I turn this into something good?'

CHEYNE: Yeah.

GEORGE: So there's a situation that's bad, what can we do to turn it into something good. The reverse side of that is, if something bad happens, there's always a lesson in it. You're going to hit the lesson two years from now, or a year from now, somewhere down the track. You're going to look back and say, ‘I'm so glad that happened.'

What's a good way to look at things is, ‘Okay, well,' and it's a hard thing to do, but if something bad happens can you sit back and say, ‘Alright, well there's a lesson in here. What if I had to learn that lesson now? And what can I do?' That's the thinking of how I looked at it, and you mentioned the flood and I was like, ‘That's perfect.' It's not perfect, but it's such a great opportunity for you to say, ‘Hey,' because people generally care and people generally want to help. If this is what happened and you're just open about it, it's like, ‘Hey well, this is what happened, how do we turn this into something good?'

CHEYNE: Yeah. Every day I'm taking photos of the water. it's not just water, it was all the dirt that came with it. Because it's a construction zone outside, it was just so much dirt and mud and the karate mats, or martial arts mats, they're pretty resilient, you just clean them. There was just so much dirt that was sitting there for days that we couldn't get in. They were just irreplaceable, so we've obviously had to replace them, so we lost a lot of money and we had nowhere to train them because we can't train them on concrete.

Every problem, there's a solution. We were taking photos and putting them up on Facebook, and friends in other karate clubs were messaging me and asking me, ‘Do I want to come and bring my students to their clubs?' and stuff like that, so it was great. Everybody wants to help, as you said. I really appreciate those who came in and helped me. A lot of students came down and cleaned, and helped, and moved stuff and just made us a bit stronger.

GEORGE: That's the ending, what's the result from the sale that you ran?

CHEYNE: We ran a two week sale, just a quick one to bring in friends. I think we had about 15 to 20 and because they are referrals, we know that they're like your members already, they're friends of your members. It was very easy to convert them because they already wanted to join. Then we ran the 72 hour sale as well, which we talked about and ran through. The email follow up of four days, and I think we sold just over 20 grand which paid for a lot of the stuff that we lost. During that period I had no money coming in because I had no students, then people were happy to pay for it, for your training, so it was great.

GEORGE: That's awesome. Let's just touch on a few other things, there's so much I haven't asked you yet. You've got a background in sales. How do you think this helps you with interaction and signing up more students, at the end of the day?

CHEYNE: I sold a lot of things but probably the one I did the longest was selling cars. I did it for about seven or eight years. I moved into selling cars, I went from having a full time karate dojo to… my dad wanted to come back to training, and my wife wanted to go to uni, so there was not enough income. It was okay for me, but not for three people. I went the other way, instead of working 20 hours a week to working 60 hours a week. It was nuts.

I started selling cars, and straight away I could see the correlation between talking to people, especially on the phone. We used to get a lot of phone calls and people wanting your best price. It happens now, the first question a lot of people ask is, ‘How much are the fees?' Maybe that's not what they really want to ask, but that's just ingrained in people. You learn a lot of strategies of how to get around the price. I'm not saying that we're lying or hiding the truth, but in a lot of cases it's not the reason that they want to buy the car, not the reason that they're wanting more information about your karate school.

You start talking about the car or you start talking about the karate school, and you point at all the great things about the car. The car has five star ANCAP rating, it's two and a half thousand dollars off, it comes in five different colors. Using the same skills, you start talking about how many instructors you have at your little karate school. You've got full time school or all of these extra things that you've got. Air conditioning, that's my big one. Those sorts of things.

Selling a car and selling a membership is very similar, especially over the phone but in person, selling a car is so much easier and selling your karate school is so much easier in person. Because a person has committed to come in, so they're almost there, they just need a bit of a shove. When they're selling cars they usually bring a friend along with them, and they're the uncle that nobody likes. We call them “Eddy the expert” so you've not only got to overcome that person, you've got to overcome the customer, and always the customer's wife. Customers love them. And the same in karate.

You're selling something and the wife might say or the mom might say, ‘Let me have a chat to my husband and I'll get back to you.' In that instance, it's hard to get them back, the same as a car. If they say, ‘Let me go talk to my husband,' and maybe they don't. Maybe they don't have a husband, but everybody uses that excuse. I've used it in buying a fridge or buying a TV, and I know that I'm lying. I know that I'm lying. Because I don't have to talk to my wife, because my wife has already given me approval for this. People use that as an excuse.

Selling cars, you've got to look through the BS to really see what the reason is, why they don't want to buy the car, but more importantly, why they want to buy the car. Why they want to have little Johnny come and do karate. You ask very similar questions to the customer, ‘Why does little Johnny want to do karate?' ‘Because he's being bullied at school.' Okay, so it's about building his confidence and concentration and these sorts of things.

The more questions you ask, it's like an onion, you just start peeling layers. The same as selling cars, the same as selling a membership. Why, why, why, why, and you get to the real answer. A lot of people struggle with asking for money. If you can't ask for money selling cars, then you will starve. And the same as a martial arts school. If you can't ask for money right then and there, then the chances of them buying off you are very slim. It's 40 bucks, 20 bucks, 100 bucks, whatever it is that you're asking for, compared to 20000 dollars. 100 bucks is nothing. People buy 49 dollars and never turn up. People will walk away from 200 dollars but they won't walk away from 500.

When you're selling a car, you ask for a deposit. You always ask for two grand. Two thousand dollars. They say commit to two thousand dollars, you've sold a car. And if people go look, I'll give you 200 dollars. No, because you won't come back. 200 bucks people walk away from, like, ‘Oh well, don't worry about it, 200 bucks.' So that's why you want to ask for two grand. They might come back and say, ‘a thousand dollars.' Done. So you always ask for double. That's selling cars. If you can't ask for 49 dollars, the person standing in front of you, you're going to struggle to get members.

GEORGE: You mentioned some really valuable stuff there, especially with the excuses. Now, we all want to believe that people are 100% honest, which they are. People are 100% honest, and it's not that people come into your school to intentionally lie. There's a fight or flight situation that happens, and if a person is in a situation where they don't have the right, they haven't been sold on the value. They're not convinced yet, but they also don't know what to ask you.

They're in this situation, that they don't want to feel stupid and they've got these unanswered questions. They don't know exactly what's missing, but something's missing so fight or flight kicks in and now I say something, ‘I just need to think about it,' or, ‘I've got to speak to my wife,' or, ‘Got to go walk the dog,' or, ‘I don't make on the spot decisions.' There's a million of these things that are just knee-jerk type responses.

CHEYNE: Yeah, and they're not trying to offend you. They know that they're lying, but it's not a lie that they're uncomfortable doing. In your karate school, your martial arts school, if they don't buy right then and there a two week trial, four week trial, even a term, or monthly, whatever it is, then you haven't asked the right questions or you haven't given them enough information. And if they go, ‘Look, let me go and have a chat to my husband,' that might 100% be the reason. I don't know how many marriages or partnerships, where the partner doesn't know what the other person is doing.

So we used to say, ‘That's fine, give your husband a call, I'll sit here and wait.' And just sort of sit back and maybe have a coffee. That person's like, ‘Oh, well they're at work at the moment,' so they can't talk to you. Those sorts of things, so you give them, ‘Oh, well why don't we just do a two week for 29 dollars now, just to secure Johnny into one of our programs, and then you can have a chat to your husband. I'm still happy to offer you the four weeks, 49, once you've spoken to your husband.'

The most important thing is securing a place right now for your little Johnny. So you've got to give them urgency. If I could do that right now for nine dollars. Would you be happy to, for nine dollars, If I could offer you that two weeks for nine bucks? For seven dollars? Five dollars? What if I give you 12 months at half price, would you be happy to buy the car now? That was just coming out, sorry. Would you be happy to sign up now for 12 months and we'll give you 50% off. Surely, customer, at 50% off, you'd buy that membership wouldn't you, 50% off? You've just got to keep asking, asking, asking, and if they go, ‘Look, at nine dollars, happy to pay for two weeks,' at least you've got something. I mean it's not nine dollars but you've got a commitment. They're committed.

GEORGE: I guess you've got to also be, I could see your passion in-

CHEYNE: Yeah, sorry. I'm a rambler.

GEORGE: …In the sale, but that's awesome. I've got to ask the question, right? It's the elephant in the room. How many times have you been labeled the term ‘used car salesman?' And what do you think about that?

CHEYNE: When I was teaching and working, I never told people what I did for a living. People ask what were you doing, ‘Oh, salesman.' And they go, ‘What do you sell?' ‘Oh, bits and bobs,' and I'd talk about karate. But after a while, I couldn't care what people think about used cars salesmen. They do have a really bad reputation from years ago. This place I did work at, this was before I started, but if I offered you a thousand dollars for your trade in and you wanted five thousand, they would get your keys and throw them on the roof, and say, ‘Well good luck getting your keys.' That's a bad reputation of used car salesmen. It's sort of changing now with the internet and everybody being pretty open about how they work.

If you were a lawyer, you'd be like, ‘How many lawyers does it take to chain down to the bottom of the sea?' Those sorts of things. As a used car salesman, people just used to find it funny, because I'm pretty open and honest guy. Even when I sold cars, I wouldn't lie. I just wouldn't tell the whole truth. You only have to tell somebody as much as they need to hear. I'd never lie about the history of the car, you know. It was owned by Grandma Edith who drove five kilometers down the road on Sunday.

Those sorts of things, I wouldn't do that. I'm not that sort of person. A lot of the people I've worked with aren't like that. But some are, and I've worked with those guys, and they generally don't stay in one job for a long time. They're six months here, and eight months there, and three months there. I was lucky enough to stay in my first place for two years, second place for four years, and my last place for two years so I wasn't jumping around.

I guess it comes back to, when you buy anything, whether it's a car, a TV, martial arts membership… if you like the person, if you trust the person, then you buy off them. You might pay them a bit more money because you have a connection, or you like that person. Have you ever bought a TV or a washing machine and you liked that person, and you go back to that person? It happens, and maybe you don't go check all the other prices because you did and you know what, I like Johnny, he's a nice fellow. I'm going to recommend one of my friends to him. Go and see Johnny because I bought my car off him and he was really good to me.

That comes back to, you're running martial arts school too. This used to be my tagline: You come for karate but you stay for the jokes. I say all bad jokes, all dad jokes and one liners through my teaching, every class and I'm saying jokes left, right, and center for the parents in the kids classes, so the parents are laughing. The kids are looking at me like, ‘I don't get it,' so they don't think I'm funny, but the parents think I'm funny. You're not buying and staying with somebody that you like, and that you have a connection with, and somebody that you feel comfortable with, especially over a long period.

We've got a couple of guys who have been training with us for over 20 years, and that's training with my dad and training with me, having my dad as a mentor for years. These guys are in their 50s, 60s, 70s, some of them, and trusting me in my 30s. So obviously they like me, they like my karate, they like my personality and stuff like that. They're happy just to continue training with me, so it comes down to the person. It always comes down to the person.

GEORGE: I'll add to that. In a sales environment you get taught a lot of technique. It's all about the intent. I don't think there's any negativity around a technique, I think the negativity around the intent, using the technique.

CHEYNE: Totally.

GEORGE: That's what you're saying there, right, is people… the old saying of “connect with people they know, like and trust,” so that's the connection. If you're using the technique in a positive way and respectful of boundaries, then there's no negativity in that. A mentor of mine, James Schramko always says, ‘Sales is the situation of taking someone from one situation to a better alternative.' And sometimes people need a bit of help because, I tell you what, I wish that someone sold my parents on me doing karate when I was a kid, and I only started martial arts when I was 35.

I would've loved if somebody, really knowing how to uncover my needs, and how martial arts would be a good fit for me, and gently being able to, with good intent, pushing them into the right… I wouldn't say pushing, but guiding them into the right way of saying, ‘Yeah you should be doing karate.' Because it's a life changing thing, right? I think as a martial arts school owner and an instructor, you've got to believe that. You've got to really believe down to your gut that you are changing lives. If that's what you're doing, and you are using a bit of technique to help the right person makes the decision to join, then you've got to do it.

CHEYNE: As a teacher, if you don't think you're teaching the best quality chosen martial art that you're doing, then how can you convince other people that they should join you? I think that comes down to loving what you do. I've sold cars to people who came in looking for one car, and I've sold them a totally different, because it doesn't suit their needs. They're looking for a small car and they've got four people in their family, for example, those sorts of things. I would steer people away from certain cars, especially if there's somebody that I have a really good connection with.

You can't be friends with everybody, and it's really naïve to think that you can sell a car to everybody or sell a membership to everybody. You can't be friends with everybody, everybody has a different personality. A friend of mine I helped a couple of weeks ago, he's a karate friend of mine, and he and his wife are having a baby and they're looking at a certain car. I tried to steer, because he was set on that car, and I was helping him have a look around for that car, but I slowly steered him into a better car, and buying the car that I recommended. I helped him buy it and stuff like that. It's a much, much, much better car than that thing that he was looking at buying, because… and it's the same as a membership.

So many times people come in, and really the parents want to train too. A lot of times, dads come in too, they're 35, 40, 45, and they want to sign up little Johnny. But you know, out of the corner of their eye they're sort of watching the class, and they're looking at… and you know that they want to train. So those things you pick up if you're good at selling. Then you start asking questions, ‘Johnny have you ever done karate?' ‘No.' And then you say, ‘Have you ever thought about doing karate?' ‘Oh yeah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,' then all of a sudden that's two memberships sold instead of one.

One technique I do, and I've done it for ages is, when I get a phone call and I say, ‘This is Cheyne from the Australian Karate Academy,' ‘Oh yeah, hey. I'm just calling up about your karate classes.' And I say, ‘Sure, our adult classes are on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wed-‘ ‘Oh no, I'm calling for my son.' ‘Oh okay, no worries.' Immediately, I always talk about adult karate, like they're coming to join our adult karate. And nine times out of 10 it's the kids, but I always put it in their mind, ‘Oh, maybe I should do karate too.'

GEORGE: That's great. That's genius. I like that because you've just planted the seed.

CHEYNE: You're just planting the seed. ‘Johnny's dad, have you ever thought about doing karate?' ‘Oh, yeah.' my dad ran this campaign years ago in late 80s, early 90s. At the time we had no money. My dad was working at a juice factory and my mom was cleaning houses. My dad's passion was karate, and he was at uni studying teaching, and we had a full time karate club.

My dad put all of his money into a Sunday newspaper. Remember when people used to read newspapers? Sunday ad, it was like a quarter of a page on a Sunday and it said, ‘You… a black belt in karate.' My dad started a 12 month black belt course. A lot of people were very negative about it at that time, and probably still are but what people didn't realize is those guys are training five days a week, twice a day. Two hours in the morning and two hours at night.

He put this ad in, ‘You… a black belt in karate,' and we used that for years, man, because that was a Sunday and they put all of their money in, everything that we had into that ad. The phone just rang and rang and rang. My dad, he signed up people, so many people. It was just a simple idea that he had about people wanting to be a black belt. I even thought about writing that as a Facebook ad, I'll talk to you about that afterwards.

If you ask that question… because the end goal for a lot of people is getting to black belt. They don't realize there are lots of levels after black belt, but we do ask that question, ‘Have you ever thought of being a black belt in karate?' In karate, it's a big difference, 3, 5 years. It’s not BJJ which is ten years, we'll say. If you don't ask that question, that person may never, ever join and ten years later they're thinking, ‘I should've started karate.' If you ask that question, it's either a yes or a no. That's what we say in sales, they're all going to say yes or they're going to say no. If they say no, no skin off your nose. They say yes, man, that's a couple of thousand dollars. That's a thousand dollar question right there.

GEORGE: Awesome, so a couple of questions for you. In regards to working together, you started out with us a couple of months ago. We're recording this now in February, so you started out in December, right? It was just right before the floods etc. We did talk about the 72 hour sale that generated 20,000 dollars, so that was a good plus, but what were your student numbers at the time when we got started together?

CHEYNE: I was on track but because of the flood, and I didn't really know what I was doing, to be honest, mate. I think I was falling over members. We got down to 110. 110 is great for a lot of people, sure, and it was great for me, but not as my sole income, not as income. It's not enough. So you're down to 110.

GEORGE: Alright, perfect. Where are you at today?

CHEYNE: As of today, I actually signed up two new kids today, so we're at 185. 185 members training. That's not including family members who train for free, I don't like that word “free”. My family members and instructors. Members all up, people who are paying money, and some are paying for once a week, and some are paying for unlimited classes, is 185. As of right now at 1pm. I haven't checked my email, but yeah.

GEORGE: That's amazing, so you're 35 students off to doubling your school from the time we started three months ago.

CHEYNE: Yep. And to be honest, man, my goal was 250 in December of this year. I really thought it'd be 200. But now I'm looking at 200 in March, which is nuts. The good thing is we had everything in place to cater for those students. We've got ten instructors. Some are family members. My sister teaches, her husband teaches, he's a third dan as well. They met through karate, and I've got genuine friends who help out and teach classes, and some uni students who assist in classes as well. They're all black belts through me and they've all been on Queensland teams before, so it's great. We're in a very good position at the moment. But again, that was all set up for December of this year, not March of this year.

GEORGE: That's cool, so what are the three parts of the Partners program. 1 to 2 to 3, whatever you feel is good. What's made the biggest impact for you over the last few months?

CHEYNE: Definitely our open day, everything leading up to our open day. Being able to talk to the members of the community, because Partners is so small, it's not like there's 1,000 people on it. The great thing is being able to chat to guys like Darryl, and I can see Stacy and those guys doing the same sort of thing. We all have the same passion. We all want to teach the best martial art that we can, and make an income, to do that, and being able to talk to those guys about what's worked and what hasn't worked. It's great. And being able to talk to you, man, just Facebook message. If you don't reply in half an hour, I know that you're sleeping or you're dead.

So just being able to talk back so quickly is phenomenal, but probably the biggest one is our open day, and setting everything up for that open day. It's not like we just magically made an open day. It was months leading into it, or the weeks leading into it, all the preparation. Even behind me, you might be able to see the list of open day stuff that we had. I've written out everything, everything printed off. Everything was pointing towards a big open day, and it's only because I had the time to talk to you and set everything up. Without your help and without the other Partners' help, we couldn't do it.

I did an open day last year, and it was good, but this one was so much better. So much more organized. Even though my sister broke her toe on that morning, and the carpark was locked. We had drama, after drama, after drama, but because we prepared so well for it, it was just easy. Then it had a flow in effect after the open day. Having a chat to you about organizing the Facebook ad campaign afterwards and the follow up, all those sorts of stuff. We signed up 34 people on the day, just on the day they gave me their money, they gave me trust for that. After that, the two kids I signed up today was from the open day campaign. I just let it keep running and kept following up, and following your suggested email trail, and it was great.

GEORGE: That's awesome. That's so good to hear. Who would you recommend the Partners program to? And why?

CHEYNE: I would recommend it to people who are just sort of treading water, doing the same thing and expecting a different result, and that was me. That was me. I thought I knew the answers. I ran my karate club before, previously, full time and I think we got to about 220 members in one location, but man it was a lot of work. I was doing all of the classes there, all of the marketing, and all of the cleaning, and I burned myself out and, very close to quitting karate.

I would recommend it to those who are floundering, just wondering, well they get to a point… ‘Where are the next students coming from?' Or, ‘How do I market the customers better, how do I make my systems easier?' And, ‘Who do I talk to?' and those sorts of things. So those who love their chosen martial art and they're ready to go full time. I'd say just wait a little bit, and have a chat to you.

Even guys who've been doing it for 10, 15, 20 years. We all get stale, and we may have exhausted our current market. To those who've been doing in the same club for 20 years, maybe they need a refresher. They need a different angle, a new angle. The video stuff that we do is phenomenal. I think those sorts of people, and I've recommended a couple of my friends who just need a little bit of an arm twist, and I think it'll be beneficial for them.

GEORGE: Awesome. I remember, just before you did this, the 72 hour sale, you said to me that you almost didn't join, and you thought that you'd just wasted a bunch of money, right?

CHEYNE: Yeah, yeah. It's the fear. It's the same as buying a car. That's why people get cold feet. It was a big commitment. It's funny, because I knew at that time, I had to do it. I had to do something different. I can't keep doing the same thing, thinking I knew it all. It's ridiculous. It's that ego, man, that ego inside you. Whether you do karate, or Brazilian jiu-jitsu, or kung fu, or who-flung-dung, it's that ego inside you to go, ‘You know what? I'm a man, I can do it all myself.' You know?

I'm a black belt, I'm a fifth dan. I don't need anybody else's ideas or opinions. Once you sort of step back from yourself and really have a good look at yourself, you realize you can't. After I committed to you over the phone, I had a bit of a think and I went, ‘what have I done? Oh my god, it's a lot of money.' I thought, ‘It's just a total waste of money now. I'm just going to have to do something different.' Then I cooled down and had a think, and I had another chat to you and I realized this is definitely the way forward. It'll give you a change, you know. I am so happy that I found you, and I committed, and moved my ego to the side, and obviously we've made some money man, so it's been great.

GEORGE: That's awesome. So, for anyone listening that would like to know more about it, just go to martialartsmedia.com. Send us a message, and we can see if we can potentially help you and if our program is a good fit. Cheyne, it's been great speaking to you.

CHEYNE: Can I just say one thing? George, you asked me a lot of questions as well, about whether I would be a good fit for you. That made me feel really comfortable, instead of you not knowing anything about me, about my karate club. You asked me a lot of questions, maybe 20 to 30 questions. Just to make sure that you could help me, and I really appreciated that. Instead of just taking my money, you qualified me, and that's another thing that we do in sales. You've got to qualify, otherwise I'm just giving you money, you're just taking money. I really appreciate it and I could see that we were a good fit. A good personality, very similar to mine, very relaxed, but driven. Sorry, sorry I hijacked but I really, really appreciate it.

GEORGE: No, thank you. And thank you for acknowledging that. It takes a while in business to realize that… I guess you start putting your filters up, right? You realize that nobody just wants to make money, right? Especially in the martial arts industry. It's about passion. I'm not on the teaching side, I am on the service side of helping martial arts schools.

I'm in this industry because I've got a passion for martial arts, and I had many other opportunities where, believe me, I could make a lot more money if I ventured into that. But, as in life fulfillment as you sit there, you know that this is what drives you, this is what you want to do for your life. I sit in that same boat. Martial arts drives me, there's one thing that I want to propel forward and help and be a part of, is my club. It's martial arts and martial arts school owners.

Within that, there's also some reasoning that, and you mentioned this earlier, that everybody is not a good fit for everybody. I'd rather take the time discovering that, and making sure that if you are going to be a client, and we are going to work together, there's going to be a lot of energy from our part and there's going to be a lot of energy from your part. We've got to make sure that we can match those goals and say, ‘Alright, hey if you're going to come on board, we're going to be able to help you.'

Because if we can't, you're going to walk away unhappy, we're not going to feel good and be fulfilled. It's never really about, yeah of course there's money on the back end, but there's so much that has to happen before that. Before you can say, ‘Right, this is a school I can now really work with. I can help them move forward.' Let’s talk about taking that next step.

CHEYNE: Yeah, it's definitely got to be a two way street. Definitely got to be a two way street. It's been great, man, and being able to talk to you all the time is just fantastic. If anyone's out there thinking about it, just send him a message. Just pick up the phone, give him a call. Very easy.

GEORGE: Much appreciated there, Cheyne. Thank you for jumping on the call. If people want to know more about you, something that we didn't explore is, you have a program called Dirty Karate. Take two or three minutes and just tell us where can people find out more about you and what you've got going on.

CHEYNE: Yeah, look, Facebook is our big one, I suppose. We have an Australian Karate Academy Facebook page, or just friend me on Facebook. Our karate website is AKA, it's very easy – aka.com.au. Australian Karate Academy is the club name. It's a great name, really, really good name to have as a business because it's pretty easy to remember. But, yeah, Dirty Karate is on our Facebook page. That's being put to the side for a little bit, until I can secure an income teaching karate properly. That is a passion project of mine. We hardly spoke about karate, and I could talk about karate all day.

GEORGE: Perfect. And we can do that for round two.

CHEYNE: Sounds good.

GEORGE: Awesome. Awesome, Cheyne. Thanks for being on the show. I'll speak to you soon.

CHEYNE: Thanks man.

GEORGE: Cheers.

Awesome. Thanks for listening. If you want to connect with other top, 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. 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 Community and an easy way to access it is if you just go to the domain name martialartsmedia.group. So martialartsmedia.group. G-r-o-u-p. There's not dot or anything. Martialartsmedia.group. Then we'll take you straight there. Request to join and I will accept your invitation.

Thanks. I'll speak to you on the next episode. Cheers. 

 

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73 – Is This Why Your Martial Arts School’s Growth Is Stuck?

Sometimes in martial arts business, it's not what we do but what we DON’T do.

 

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

  • How to set your focus on things that matter in your martials arts business
  • Why you should commit to your own game plan and not someone else's
  • How to steer away from distractions and reach your business goal
  • And more

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

 

TRANSCRIPTION

So what are those key activities? Because if you're just jumping from this to that, then you are committing to someone else's game plan and not your own.

Hey, this is George. I'm super-fired up about getting this message and video out to you but everything seems to be going wrong. I tried to film it last week. It came up in conversation again yesterday, and I thought, “I've got to get this message out.” I went outside; the wind was blowing, I thought, “mic might not sound good.” And then a bird craps on me. So I thought, “Come on. Should I be sharing this or should I not?”

Well, I think it's super important, and if you're stuck in your martial arts business or any business for that matter, I think we all deal with this. I could be preaching to the choir, but my gut says no.

Right, so I speak to a lot of martial arts school owners, and I'll give this a bit of context. Last week I spoke to my friend Cat Zohar in the States, and we were talking about the same topic. Yesterday it came up in a conversation, one of our first clients, Dave Richardson in Brisbane, we spoke about this as well. The topic was focus.

When speaking to a lot of school owners, there are some people that just go out and make it happen and run with things, and then others that keep on getting stuck. And then when we look at the ones that are getting stuck, is they're dabbling in low-level tasks and work, never sinking their teeth into the activities and tasks that really matter.

Here's the thing. Facebook groups, I'm sure there's a lot of value in Facebook groups. And the Facebook group is just a thing, you know what I mean? It's just the term for the community, but I mean, there are groups that there's truly a lot of value and we use it in our community, obviously, for our coaching groups, but there's also a lot of distraction in free groups, because there are marketers that are trying to pull you into whatever it is that they are selling.

A wise mentor always used to tell me, “Don't always look at what people are selling. Look at what they are doing.” Side note, when it's different, your radar should be going up and thinking, “Right. Is this really legit or is this really where I should be paying my attention to?”

So here's the thing that happens, is there's all this activity in Facebook groups and there's the latest hack of this and the latest hack of that, and things kind of go viral in a way. Everybody just jumps on, shares the email addresses and wants to be a part of this new hack thing. Now I want to ask you, and if you have ever jumped on anything that was being promoted, how many of those things have really, really planned out and has been a really great success? Or did it actually just take you away from the plan?

Because here's the thing with online marketing. There's always distraction, there's always something that's better, easier, and what really pisses me off about it is it taps into the psyche of, “This is going to be easy.” It's, “Here's the quick hack. You don't really have to work hard. Here's the quick hack to get it done.”

That kind of thinking is not good for you, because here's what happens, if you dabble in this, you dabble in that, you dabble in this, you dabble in that, and you're doing all these majoring in minor things all the time, but then the things that really, really matter, you don't get your teeth stuck into.

So what are those key activities? Because if you're just jumping from this to that, then you are committing to someone else's game plan and not your own.

One thing we do in our Partners program, the first thing we do is we have a game plan session because we want to know … We've got a lot of content and a lot of training programs that we can share, but it’s not applicable all to you at that point in time, so we got to know what it is your goals are and where you want to go and what are the key things that are going to move you to where you need to be?

If you don't have a game plan, then you're just jumping onto someone else's game plan for them to sell their products.

I'm not saying all products are bad or all products are distraction, but if you're not following your own course in a direction of getting you to the goal that you are trying to get to, with student numbers and revenue, etc., then everything is just going to pull you away, and once the going gets tough, the little hack is just going to look so much easier and you're going to jump ship and go for that.

Time can go by pretty quickly, months, years, and you can still be at the same place and you've done all this stuff and why? I've done all these courses, I've bought this, I've bought that, I've tried this, I've tried that. The problem is you are following 20 or 30 plans, except for the one plan that's going to move you forward.

So look. I hope that helps. If you don't have a plan, then reach out to us. I'm not saying that what we've got is going to work for you, but, I mean, we work with a lot of school owners and really helped them move the needle and move forward.

So if you need help with a game plan that's going to work for you, then send me a message. Let's have a chat. You can see if what he has is a fit for you and if not, just make sure you follow someone's plan but don't follow 20 plans. Follow one plan to help get you forward. If you need help with it, reach out. Otherwise, good luck focusing and I'll speak to you soon. Cheers.

Thanks for listening. If you want to connect with other top, 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. 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 Community and an easy way to access it is if you just go to the domain name martialartsmedia.group. So martialartsmedia.group. G-r-o-u-p. There's not dot or anything. Martialartsmedia.group. Then we'll take you straight there. Request to join and I will accept your invitation.

Thanks. I'll speak to you on the next episode. Cheers. 

 

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2. 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.

3. 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 work with me to help you grow your martial arts school, message me with the word ‘Case Study'.

4. Work with me and my team privately.

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

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72 – Greg Probyn: Applying Military Principles To Martial Arts Business

Military man Greg Probyn's big moves in a small town with his martial arts business.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

  • Greg Probyn’s mindset in running a martial arts business in a small town with 38,000 population
  • Why Greg doesn’t treat his martial arts business as a hobby
  • How Greg’s extensive military background helped him build his bjj school
  • How Greg was able to start his business with little business experience
  • How to overcome ‘tall poppy syndrome’ backlash
  • And more

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

 

TRANSCRIPTION

When we talk about the business, again that's … I don't treat this like a hobby. Again, too many people out there think it's only a hobby. It won't last. If you treat something like a hobby, well guess what? People will respect it like a hobby.

George: Good day this is George Fourie and welcome to another Martial Arts Media Business podcast. So today I'm joined with a special guest, Greg Probyn. So Greg is someone that I'm fortunate enough to work with on a frequent basis in our Partners program. To give you a bit of a background on Greg and then I'm going to let him run the show.

So Greg is a military man, has served in both the Royal Australian Navy and Australian Regular Army, traveled extensively around the world and has deployed operationally to Iraq, Afghanistan and Fiji. Greg started his bjj journey in 2008 and due to being in the military training, gained experience from many different clubs throughout Australia.

So Greg also enjoys competing and coaching, more importantly enjoys coaching kids, helping them develop confidence so that if they are placed in an intimidating situation or being bullied, they can say stop. So Greg welcome to the podcast.

Greg: Thanks for having me George. I appreciate it.

George: Awesome. So, it's worth mentioning or not worth mentioning. This our round 2 of recording this. So we've had a good practice run so you're in for an awesome show. And I won't go into the details why but this is round 2. So this is going to be good. So Greg, I've given a bit of an intro just about you. Do you mind sharing just a bit more, just a bit of your background and how you got into this jiu jitsu journey?

Greg: Yeah, sure George. This is kind of ironic as well for me, because of all the times I've listened to your podcasts and I always hear that question so who are you? I always sit there and go, I wonder if I'll ever have that question asked of me? So yeah. Father, husband, yeah. I'm a veteran now. I have been doing Brazilian jiu jitsu since 2008. I spent, three months shy of a full 25 years of a military history or career, it's given me so many different things.

I'm very much in doctrined in terms of the way people think, not necessarily outside of a box, but when things are black and white, I'm the go to man there. By that I mean if it's our policy it doesn't happen. I think Brazilian jiu jitsu has given me a fantastic way to show people that well not everything is black and white. I'm fighting some of my own demons now that I'm out of the military.

George: So, spending all that time in the military, how does that compliment your jiu jitsu training? And I guess … sorry and I guess just to give context, military … I think very sort of precision thinking and very strategic, clear cut plans, preparation, etc.

Greg: Yeah, you're right on there mate. So, I started my career in the military in the navy and I finished up doing a job, that of a fitness trainer or physical training instructor or a PTI they call them for short. Started … you can't just join the military directly into that role. You have to spend several years in another job. So I was what they call a bosun's mate in the navy – did that for about eight years. Then saw these guys that worked in gymnasiums over that time and just managed to work on their fitness and take a lot of people for their fitness. I thought why not give that a crack.

So I spent though the remainder of my years, eight years in the navy, doing that, and then I transferred across to the army and did the same job, finishing up there. It was really easy to transfer the skills that I had received as a physical training instructor, across to being a coach in the sporting sector.

I also pursued different levels of coaching within the civilian sector, doing like certificates and diplomas and it was really … it was fantastic in that when I did my strength and conditioning coaches courses, I was stuck in a classroom with maybe some university students or people that had done a little bit of work in the civilian sector in terms of the fitness industry.

You sit there going wow, I've got it easy because I've got people that have to be there, in terms of doing their own health and fitness stuff. I don't have to worry too much in terms of what people can't do. I mean they are all fit and healthy and then the ability to transfer what I'd learn into training for the defense.

That was again easy because you're able to back what you're doing up with current studies or current technique as opposed to maybe having you know do the tricky thing and get waivers for people. They accept what you're giving them is going to be good for them, and well it is. The proof is in the pudding.

I mean the Australian Defense Force has been a fear fighting nation or a fear fighting force since the Boer War. So maybe you've got relatives back there George who might have come across a couple Aussie's back in the day.

George: Possibly. Yeah. So then was training in the military, right, I mean jiu jitsu is quite a physical thing. One thing that's always fun when sparring jiu jitsu is even if you go 100%, you've got the saving grace of just tapping out and you can just take the foot off the pedal, and you know you always set the pace. Normally the pace starts as a light roll and it never ends in a light roll, right?

Greg: You're correct.

George: But the training in the military, you're training at a whole new level and a whole new purpose and I guess the stakes are real, right? Because it's life and death that you're dealing with. So how do you actually train at that intensity and without burning people out?

Greg: Yeah, good question. Good question. I guess to answer that, what I'm going to do is I'm going to rewind the clock to about well it will till about 2008. Now I've been involved in martial arts since about 1999. Started doing various forms of karate and then I went to muay thai and then I found muay thai as a very practical martial art or sport. Fought nationally and internationally and then I had a hiatus of roughly eight to ten years, and then thought bugger this. Got back into the training for muay thai and recommitted my fighting.

t the time I was working at the Australian Defense Force Physical Training School which is on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria. You've got, you could say the best of the best physical training instructors lecturing all aspects of health and fitness to people that are aspiring to do that job that I do or did. So you'll either work on what's passionate to you or if you're not … if you want to work on something new or improve your knowledge, you'll research a specific topic. So some of the topics that selected from was strength and conditioning, factors affecting human performance, and they are quite big modules in their own right.

And at that time, there was a … the military self program which was headed by the army and at this stage I was still in the navy and I had to do the course because the role of the physical training instructor was required to undertake this because in the navy at the time, there was a lot of boarding operations going on. Now, what the army had noticed, well the field of operation for them heavy in Afghanistan at the time and Iraq, they'd had these close quarter combat course and then but it was only the special forces that were really getting involved in it.

The infantry units were doing forms of self defense. But, the army they initiated this military self defense program. Now, it was heavily based on self defense and there were components of Brazilian jiu jitsu in it. And, when I did it, the military and armed combat cell, they came down to HMA service where I was at the time. I got involved in the course and I hit it off with some of the instructors because they knew that I was fighting muay thai as well at the time as well.

One of the instructors, he's like, come with me. I'll show you this thing called Brazilian jiu jitsu. Now, I'd see the UFC and I'd had a couple little books of Brazilian jiu jitsu but because of my limited knowledge, it didn't float my boat. I went and did this one lesson and I was just totally dominated and I couldn't believe the control. I couldn't believe how an individual could move or escape from somebody that could be heavier than them, bigger than them. How to control a bigger, strong opponent. And I don't think at the time in the military self defense course, we'd done the groundwork components.

Then the next day or the day after, we're doing basic guard escape or man escape or controlling your opponent while still on the ground. And I was like yup, hook, line and sinker. It's got me. And, yeah this military self defense course, when I transferred from the navy to the army, it became even more apparent how important it was. I mean the navy was using it but it's very, very difficult to do it on a very small boat. And at the time, this was when Australia's policy on the control of illegal immigrants or the boat people, were coming across them.

We'd seen through the news how people were throwing kids overboard and this and that. I mean as much as the media sensationalized it, there was a threat and the threat was only the young single males that had nothing to lose, but when you're on a fishing vessel or a boat that's not even 20 meters long and there's close to 100, 150 people on it, this military self defense program, it was very difficult to utilize because you can't keep your distance on a small vessel like that.

If you need to do a high double A takedown, you're not just going to take them down under the deck. You're going to take them down under about four or five other people. So it was difficult for the navy to use. They were able to use aspects of it. When you go across to the army, their field of play is totally different. As we move along in the level of intelligence that was being gathered in the army and across the navy and the air force, there are also personnel on the ground from the other two services. But more from the infantry people.

When they'd go to a compound and they'd notice that there was little to no women and children, well they knew they were going in for a battle. It would be the fighting age males, the adult males and they were always the threat. If there was every any hand to hand sort of combat, well the soldiers were able to utilize this military self defense stuff.

But what they noticed was it was too defensive and it's progressed now into an integrated combat, sorry, the integrated infantry combat course I think it's called now. All about control. Very little defense. You're in someone's face with the full military garb. You're wearing helmets, the body armor, you've got your rifle. You are not working with one other person but you're working in the section with eight to 10 people. Whereas the military self defense course in some respects, as good as it was, the entire time you're only working with a second person through the program, not utilizing the rest of a team.

So unfortunately I never got to do the infantry combat course. But it was really, really interesting. Now how do we link that into the Brazilian jiu jitsu? Well after being totally dominated and seeing how that worked in the military self defense course, it was a no brainer for me. I was getting older. My opponents in muay thai were getting younger. It was taking longer for me to recover and I found that again just like you said, with the Brazilian jiu jitsu, you're able to stop when you're either being uncomfortable or you're having your arm ripped off your body.

And now in the military, we've got these integrated combat clubs. And it's a way now for army, navy and air force people to get back to grassroots in terms of martial arts or some form of competitive sport and the transferability now, irrespective of whether they participated in the military self defense course or the infantry combat course, is so easy. So now the soldiers, sailors, and air men, they've got the ability to be put under pressure in stressful positions or altercations and deal with it as they see.

Then if they end up in that field of operation, especially on the ground, and not on the ground as Brazilian jiu jitsu on the ground, but in the area of operation whichever that is. They are able to best handle situations and know tactically what they can do and how their body is going to respond.

George: Interesting. It just reminds me and I don't know how legit this is and depending on when you are listening to this interview, I've trained with a few people from the police force and they use jiu jitsu all the time. For my international and American friends, in Australia, the police don't carry guns. If I'm correct. We don't. I think some do.

Greg: Some states do. Yeah Victoria does. New South Wales does.

George: Yeah. I know in WA, it's more a thing of … it's always hand controlled and these guys use jiu jitsu a lot. And I haven't checked the, how valid this resource is but I saw an article floating around that it's going to be compulsory now for police, I know police in WA, that's Western Australia where we are, that police will be doing jiu jitsu as a compulsory activity as such.

Greg: Oh send me over.

George: Cool. So I want to change gears here quickly. So, Greg's school de Been 100% Jiu Jitsu is in a little town called Wodonga. I believe 38,000 population?

Greg: Yeah correct George. Yeah that's right. We're a small town, right on the Hume Highway heading up to Canberra City. And we're right on the border. The Mary River obviously separates us from New South Wales as well as the Hugh Molly. Directly on the other side of the border, on the other side of the Hume Highway is Aubrey. So there's roughly 60,000 people in that town. So with the two towns combined, we're looking in an excess of yeah 100,000 people. Nice sleepy little town.

George: Awesome. So now for a lot of people when they hear you're in a town of 38,000, there's two mindsets of that right? I'd love to hear your mindset but a mindset I hear often is … it's a very lack mentality. We don't have enough people. We've got too much competition. There's too many schools in too close a range. What's your take and how do you view your business within a small town with small reach?

Greg: Yeah I like that question. All right, so coming to the decision of having a business that is oriented towards the combat sports, some people said no you're crazy. I've got family members, workmates or ex workmates now, that indicated that it wouldn't work in an area such as this one. I don't believe that it wouldn't work. It had to work. The reason why I say that is because if I can get 1% of just Wodonga, well that's only 380 people. There are some … and listening to the podcasts that you've punched out there George, you've got some pretty successful people that you've interviewed.

And I look at it like this, why can't I get 1%? When you look at it like that, it's pretty inspiring I think. 1%. 1. Yeah, 1%. Why couldn't that occur? And then if you looked at the entire, well if you put the two towns together, well 1%, that's 1000 people. And I've heard you've interviewed people there who have got multiple schools. So when I first came to this idea, I was training at another facility and I shared this dream of mine. Well it's actually not mine. It's my wife's. So I'm very lucky in that respect. I shared this dream with him and he didn't really take kindly to it.

We left, not on the best terms but I remember him saying you'll never go full time here. The place is too small and that's what exactly what I said to him. Well 1%. If I can't 1%, there is something wrong. So I'm a third of that not, and we've been open not yet two years. Which is … I'm happy with. That 1% keeps driving me, you know? 380 people. But we've got people who are traveling as far as 40, 50 minutes to come and train with us. In terms of my competition and I was asked this last night, this same question. I said to this gentleman last night, I said my competition is Aussie rules. Swimming. Hockey. Water polo. Believe it or not. It's huge here in this reason. Net ball. And a little bit of rugby and of course soccer.

And he said well what about other Brazilian jiu jitsu? And I said, they are not competition. We've got to try to raise the profile. Raise the profile of the sport. There are people out in this region that don't really know much about it. They will see it on the UFC. Think it's more of a thugs game. I will laugh when I have MMA people come in, I just tell them MMA is a thug sport. Come and do something with a bit of finesse.

George: Sorry to all the MMA fans listening.

Greg: Yeah, so he was really shocked. There is an older guy, I'm not sure what sort of martial art he does and I'm not sure how he drives his business model, but I don't look at him when I see him in his van and go that's competition. I look at him and I go, let's ban together and try to raise the profile of he's karate. People say to me, well Brazilian jiu jitsu, martial art and I say well you can look at it like that, I'll look at it how it's a sport. I'm big on looking at it as a sport. I treat it like it's a sport.

When I have people talk to me about the self defense applications, I'm like well come down. You're still going to get the same benefits out of it. I might talk about points in the class. I might talk about holding position for a certain amount of seconds to get your points. But at the end of the day, you're still able to, I took at class last night. We were doing transitions.

I shared with this woman, it was her first class. The knee on the belly. And I made a reference about it being points. I said if you want to look at it as a self defense application, what better way to control a human. You've got your knee on their chest. One hand might be controlling clothing or an arm, while the hand is pulling at the mobile phone. You're calling 000. Help, I need some help.

So, she walked away out of the class thinking oh wow. I never thought of it in these different aspects. But yeah. That 1%. Always refer back to that 1%. That's what I want.

George: That's awesome. You brought something up that's … I really want to highlight this for any entrepreneur and I guess any, yeah anybody in business. I mean the worst advice you can get is asking people in the workforce an opinion of you starting a business. Because none of them are going to support it. I don't think they mean bad intentionally, it's more a sense of they are dealing with their own internal dialogue of, it's not possible for them. And they don't want you to get hurt or whatever the case. So it's easier to just shut you down and not support the idea or the dream.

And I saw somebody post a quote yesterday. It was something about, it said, ‘what will they say?’ And below it was ‘these words have destroyed more dreams than any other words’. Because the focus is … you are influenced by what people say. When you've got this idea and you want to create this business and you think I'm going to do this thing and you've got this vision, but you've got this vision and now you've got to tell a family member or somebody you care about, and it's just … I mean that's the first people you want to tell right because it's the people you care about. And you're hoping for that support, but for most people, you just don't get it, because it's just a completely different way of thinking and completely different mindset, right?

Greg: You're absolutely right. Now I can't … I'm not going to talk too out of turn here, because I end up in deep water, but we've got some very close family who when we talk about the business, again I don't treat like this like a hobby. And again, too many people out there think it's only a hobby. It won't last. If you treat something like a hobby, guess what, people will respect it like a hobby. So when I talk to these couple of individuals about the business, one of them is very aggressive towards it. And the other one is very defeatist about it. Like, over Christmas, it was like oh I didn't think you'd be … you'd still be open this far down the track. I'm just like how can you be like that. Just support what's happening.

George: It's the typical tall poppy syndrome as well. I've mentioned it before but for anybody in the states, tall poppy syndrome is the visual aspect of a crab in a bucket. Pulling down anything, anybody that succeeds behind your level. The term exists of trying to pull them back down. It's almost like people want to see you succeed but they don't want to succeed, they don't want to see you succeed more than them.

Greg: That's it. That's it.

George: They want you to succeed but once you go beyond me, I've got to pull you back. I've got to pull you back into my level of thinking and comfort zone.

Greg: Yeah, you're dead right. And look, you asked me that question in terms of like the military mindset and I said I think too much black and white. When this idea of having a business centered towards Brazilian jiu jitsu popped up, well I had to think straight away, well what do I need to do in order to get this happening, you know? I'm not just going to open a place up and people start coming in, we're training, and it's like oh crikey I've got to pay the electricity bill. Well I need money for that. Do I have it there? Or we've run out of toilet paper. How do I go there?

Even having stock on hand to get people thinking with the green side of their brain in terms of the buying power and the military doesn't really give you the opportunity to do business style type courses, so I had to go and research my own thing. I found a company out there oriented towards the personal training industry and I thought, because you know working in the fitness industry? No brainer. But, how do I run a business?

Okay, so I did a little bit of research and I found this one company and they are called the Max International College for Fitness Professionals. I got in contact with them and I said look, I'm just after your business side of things and they had this program. You do your certificate three four in fitness. You do your diploma in business and advanced diploma in business. I said well you know I'm not interested in the fitness components because I've got a diploma up there and I've done this course and that course. They are like well it's a whole complete package. It all sort of intertwines and works with each other.

And I thought all right. I remember seeing somewhere or heard somewhere or something about if you failed to plan, you planned to fail. And, I thought well you know, what do I got to lose? Do everything because it's still going to give me that, the business components that I needed. This admittedly being in the military, you're not walking around with people who are all happy and bubbly all the time. And you know, because you've got this … like a sergeant major and there are all these grumpy people and you're like do this and do that. Just like you see in the movies, people getting their faces ripped off because they might have looked sideways wrong or poor timing.

These people were all happy and bubbly and I remember saying to one of the directors, I'm like is everybody like this all the time when I'm communicating with them? And he goes yeah that's right. Is that a problem? I said that's not reality. And he goes, in my world it's a reality. In your world you've got sharp edges. And you've got nasty corners. So there's that black and white mentality. These people, and they are not walking around with rose colored glasses. I'm like okay. I have to drop a few barriers, get on their boat, start paddling with them because we're all going in the same direction.

This Max International College of Fitness Professionals paved the way in order for me to then get the business up and running and be successful. That comes back down to what I said earlier. If you have your club or whatever martial art that you're doing and you treat it like a hobby. Well everybody else is going to treat it like a hobby as well. We've got people who have participated in other martial arts. I remember when they first started training with us, oh Greg do you want to help us clean the mats? I'm like no dude, you're paying my fees. That's part of the service I provide. I clean the mats. I clean them regularly because that's where we are lying on the mat face down sometimes if you're unfortunate.

But these people are like oh yeah but our last sensei made us do this or the last coach used to make us do … I'm like that's fine but I hope you weren't paying the same amount of fees that you're paying now. And you can see them, they start thinking and it's like oh okay. Then there's a bit more of a respect that comes through as well. So I think people appreciate it more too, when you have that professional outlook and if you pave it professionally, make it professionally. People don't see it. Like the family.

These other members within the family that I've got that are the negative ones. They haven't come in and seen what I do and how it looks, but we're not in a shed. We're not in a factory. I'm actually in an air conditioned and heated facility. It looks pretty neat I think. Well anybody who walks in and walks out, I always get the compliment, wow I never would have thought it would be like this.

George: Awesome. So on that thinking of that planning and that black and white I want to just, before we wrap it up, I quickly want to bring up something, your vision statement. Just to give it a bit of context. Greg works with us in our Partners program and part of our Partners program, we also bought websites to make sure all our members got the right tools. So, before creating the website we always have an interview with a school owner and just ask a couple of questions so that we can formulate a good sales proposition on the website, so it's all customized.

So a question we always ask and it's a question I never really get a straight answer, but I did with Greg. Right? And the question is, what's your mission statement? And it's important for us to know, because then we can sort of get a good perspective on how the club owner sees it. So you nailed it and you just … I was almost shocked that you had it sort of down to a T. Do you mind sharing your school's mission statement?

Greg: Sure. We rolled out vision and mission statement in together and we've added our core values as well. So we foster a family ethos where each and every member feels part of the team environment but more importantly at home we have like minded people. We'll provide the opportunity for you to improve your health and fitness and well being through education and confidence building. Our core values, I like the acronym of TRIC, is teamwork, respect, integrity and confidence.

And it does it and it paves the way. You asked me earlier George about why? Why this mission statement? It gives me direction. It gives people that come in direction. We don't have any … every club or academy or affiliate or what not, they have their cliques. We try to break those barriers down. Everybody is part of the family. You know I've got white belts that will say to colored belt that's visiting, you know where is your shoes if they are walking around bare foot off the mat. And people get shocked. It's like okay fair enough. We're in somebody else's house. And then if we've got somebody that's being negative, within the group, it's not me the head coach that's trying to pull them back into line. It's other people. They are saying to them, you know, well here we do it like this. It would be good if you're like that.

I'm really proud of the ethos that we've got on the mat and that's … I put that back down to the mission statement. It's all about being part of the family.

George: Good note for us to just wrap it up. Greg, thanks so much for being on the call. Thanks and I'm glad that we nailed it this time. We'll get into that story later. But if people want to know more about you, where can they find more about you Greg?

Greg: Oh fantastic George. Well we're all the www.debeenjiujitsuwodonga.com. You could also go to the de Been Jiu Jitsu Headquarters website as well and we'll be there, linked into them. We're on Facebook. Again de Been 100% Jiu Jitsu Wodonga. And we're also on Instagram. Just the hashtag. Just make sure you put Wodonga in there, otherwise you'll probably see someone from maybe Ipswich. There's a de Been in Ipswich. So that one. That's how you'll find us.

George: That's good. We'll put links to all those in the show notes of the interview.

Greg: Fantastic. Thank you very much George.

George: Thanks Greg. It's been great speaking. Speak to you soon.

Greg: Take care mate.

George: Awesome. Thanks for listening. If you want to connect with other top, 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. 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 Community and an easy way to access it is if you just go to the domain name martialartsmedia.group. So martialartsmedia.group. G-r-o-u-p. There's not dot or anything. Martialartsmedia.group. Then we'll take you straight there. Request to join and I will accept your invitation.

Thanks. I'll speak to you on the next episode. Cheers.

 

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